reasonablenut

I arrived in Orofino Idaho on Monday night. Since then, I've been a bit of a lazy shit.

On the first night I made a new friend at a bar near the hotel. His name is Victor. He's a former pipefitter, who is a big Rolling Stones fan, on 12 prescriptions and likes to drink a lot. This bar is the only one in town open past 8 0'clock. Being in a new state, I'm always quickly interested in what the package laws are, as I generally don't like drinking with people like Victor. The easiest way to ascertain the law is not the net, or a lawyer, or a local drinker; you ask a barmaid who probably had to study this shit like it was the Bible.

Sure as shit, the barmaid explained package, hard shit, state stores, etc. At some point after that, the barmaid and I were discussing the local depression in the logging business when my new Native American friend fell backwards off of his barstool and tried to plant a hole in the wall with his head.

Needless to say, I spent the last couple of days just sleeping, drinking, and reading.

Today, however, Kirk showed up, I got to go plant target stakes and met AnalogKid, The Son & Heir (whose name I actually know now), and Kim DuToit.

All in all, I very satisfying day. Tomorrow should be even better.

Note: the internet connection sucks now, so I did not link to anybody or try any other schenanigans. If things improve, we might have stills or video by the weekend.

Ben's gone to boomershoot, so he's out of the real world for a week or so.
Back in the real world, it just gets discouraging....

Headlines from today (courtesy of Lucianne.com):

WITH GUTLESSNESS TYPICAL OF THE GRATING GENERATION, HOLLYWOOD TAKES UP 9/11 (I can harldy wait!)

WATSONVILLE APARTMENT COMPLEX WILL BAN SMOKERS (What happened to a man's house is his castle?)

POLL: MOST BACK CIVILIAN PATROLS [on the border] (as opposed to what you read in the main stream press)

SADDAM IN GOOD SPIRITS ON EVE OF BIRTHDAY (Why????)

PROTESTERS [13] TARGET US ARMY RECRUITERS AT CMU (Is this news, 13 strong?)

ZIMBABWE TURN TO WILDLIFE AS FOOD SOURCE (Where's PETA?)

ACTIVIST DEMANDS RESPECT FOR CHICKENS [the bird] (Speaks for itself)

JESSE JACKSON URGES BANK CEO TO AID NEEDY (Where's the rainbow coalition?)

DIPLOMATS: US ALONE IN FIGHT TO OUST UN'S EL BARADEI (Alone again, why does that not surprise me)

SURVEY: US TRUSTS THE NEWS BUT SEES BIAS (How can this be? Contradiction in terms?)

2 MORE BOY BOMBERS NABBED IN WEST BANK [ages 15 and 16] (Palestinians are definitely on the right track!)

PANEL OK'S ID MARKS ON BULLETS (Probably about as effective as "gun fingerprinting", although they will spend a butt load of money on the idea while we pay for it)

AND FINALLY:
ZIMBABWE BACK ON UN RIGHTS COMMISSION, US PROTESTS (Alone again, why do we bother with the UN?)

And that, my friends, is just a mere six hours or so.
It just gets pretty discouraging.

On a different note:
My wife teaches fourth grade, I have an employee with a five year old son. With all the recent pedaphile shit on the news, given the wonders of the Internet, they looked up the list of "Sexual Offenders" in their neighborhoods and/or school districts. Both lists went on for pages.

I looked at the paper that spit out and thought "Why does such a list exist? Why do these people live in houses (across from schools and parks), why do they have jobs, how can they have families?) The existence of this list was abhorant. They should be locked up, institutionalized, or dead. If the STATE can kill a Schiavo, why can't the STATE exercise the same perogitave in this case? (Dirty Harry Quote, roughly, "What about his rights under the .....amendments? Harry: "Well I'm all broken up about his rights.)

I guess the longer I live and I seem to be at the upper end of the scale these days (depending on whether you smoke, drink, are too fat or not fat enough, exercise, eat vegetables six times a day, drink coffee or dont, have a lot of sex or dont, etc.) the harder it gets. I really pity a lot of you guys in your 20's and 30's who have a brave new world to look forward to.

Sorry for the rant, but sometimes it just gets to me.

This is it. I am leaving Sunday morning with a whole buttload of accoutrements.

When I get back, I will probably resume some kind of political commentary and general gun shit, as opposed to the uninterrupted Boomershoot monologue that has been going on for months now.

Don't get me wrong, the old man has his Boomershoot rifle on order and will probably be one of the first fuckers who reserves a spot; so, it seems, the topic may never disappear. That's fine. I almost prefer writing for an empty theatre, as there is lot less criticism.

We did the last range day yesterday. I was gonging shit at 600, which is about where I want to be.

The old man, however, was doing his Big Boy Henry .44. Fucking thing was ultra-accurate to 200 yards, if he was concentrating, and he was planting them around the steel plate at 400 yards. One of the rifles I very much look forward to is the Henry. The ease of operation and its out of the box accuracy cannot be beat.

I leave on Sunday and plan on spending 2-2/2 days on this trip. They probably have a like plan for shopping. I want to rest.

Once I am out there, Kirk will provide the services of a remote machine.

In the mean time, the old man has plenty of shit to talk about, which I hope he will.

Model 70 Winchester, chambered in .270. You may note that there's no fucking scope on it. Nonetheless, a beautiful gun. 

As chronicled in the previous post, both me and the old man had our BAG day guns scored before the day. Nonetheless, as this is the first one I participated in, I had a wish to actually BUY A GUN on BAG day. I went to the local shop, looking for a backup rifle for Boomershoot.

As previously stated, I'm a southpaw. They had a really old, crappy looking .243 and a big-ass Weatherby .300 Mag. Now I will admit, I'm a recoil pussy to some extent. Mag rounds tend to fucking hurt. The rifle felt good although I was anxious about the round it was chambered for. Then I noticed the price tag on this Used rifle: $1,100. Told the nice gentleman, "No thank you" and took my leave.

Fast forward to the evening. Everybody knows I want to buy a gun and they start calling around for Lefty bolts. Finally we connect with the big sportsman's warehouse store (who's company name I will not disclose). Well they had a Winchester 70 in .270 in stock, which is a rifle I've had an interest in for awhile. BUT, in procuring this knowledge, the dick at the other end of the phone insists on being as rude as possible. Whatever. My weekend plans change.

I show up at this Warehouse for Sportsmen at 9:30 the next morning, a half-hour after they opened. I walk back throught the Warehouse, being the Sportsman that I am, to the gun counter. I tell the gent behind the counter that I had called and that I would like to buy the .270 they had buried in the vault. He replies, "Oh, you're that guy on the phone from last night?" I reply in a positive way and apologizes for being a cocksucker to me and my coworker.

He brings out the gun. I dry-fire it once and acknowledge that it has a shitty trigger that I will need to get worked on but affirm my intent to purchase the rifle.

Then the dreaded Brady. I don't understand; I've bought maybe 8 new guns in my life, and seem to have a better understanding of the form than most of these assholes do. I find myself correcting them, when they can't figure out what caliber to list on the back. This process is inevitable, time-consuming, and enraging. I stand around and look at this Warehouse for Sportsmen, wondering whether they find these guys underneath freeway underpasses and offer them jobs that don't involve MD 20/20, and sexual acts that...well, I think you get what I mean.

Asshead finally gets the Brady done and re-emerges. In the meantime, I've piled up some ammo. I politely inquire if he might have the mounts for this particular rifle in stock. He says yes, but adds that if I would be willing to buy one of the shitty Tascos in his case, they'll even mount it for me; that's how big the love is for Sportsmen in this warehouse. I assure him that I have a scope at home that I will be putting on MY rifle MYSELF. That said, he scurries off to find the mounts.

The cashier is stupid bitch and that takes another 20 minutes, but those details are unimportant.

Finally I'm ready to mount the scope (and not it's not a Tasco, it's a Leupold VX-III). I take out the spacer screws in the receiver and proceed to waste about an hour of my life trying to install mounts THAT DON'T EVEN FIT THE FUCKING GUN.

Rude? Fine. Condescending prickishness? Fine. Trying to sell me crap? Fine. Trying to sell me the labor to mount that crap? Fine.

But when you sell me mounts that can easily be verified to ensure they fit that rifle, and I waste a fucking evening on, well, the Sportsman can go get fucked in the Warehouse.

Ruger Single-Six. The Old Man's BAG day gun. 

H&K Full-Size .45 USP. My BAG Gun. 

I was late in posting, even though, like most, our BAG day guns were bought early. I made a concerted effort to actually buy a gun TODAY, but I was looking for a left-handed bolt, which is like a needle in a haystack. I think I have located the bolt and will be picking it up tomorrow.

In any case, the first gun up is the Old Man's Single-Six. 6 1/2" barrel, single action with beautiful iron sights. The cylinder swaps out, so it is capable of firing .22 LR or .22 Win Mag. As far as I know, the old man has only fired Win Mag on the 2 trips it has been to the range with us. Thus far, it is pretty close to being sited at 25 yards.

Secondly, is the H&K USP. Chambered in .45 ACP it is one of the mellowest .45 semi-autos I have ever touched. And it is black and eeeeeevil looking. For all you people who don't have grounds for an Americans With Disabilities Act suit ready to go, i.e., right-handed, this gun has several features outside of its plain bad-assness that make it appeal to the cripple in us southpaws. This is one of the few semi-autos with an ambidextrous magazine release. Given, it it's in a weirder spot than most, but it's ambidextrous, dammit. The other thing is, the safety/decocker is capable of being switched to the other side of the gun. You righties have no idea how nice it would be to actually have a safety/decocker that could be utilized with your left hand thumb while holding a weapon. It's also a shitload of fun to shoot and a very convenient full-size if you are using a shoulder rig.

As stated, we cheated and bought ours early. I made a good faith effort to actually buy a gun today, but alas and alack, it was not in the stars. Hopefully I am posting more pics tomorrow night.

Happy BAG day, everyone!

It's been a bit of a long day, but enjoyable. The old man and I had planned on shooting today and I had already made plans with Joe to do so. It's been about the best the wind has been in three weeks.

We got to the range about two o'clock and the only shooter there picked up his target as I was setting mine up. Had it to ourselves.

Warmed up by confirming that banging and transportation hadn't thrown the zero off by doing 3 shots at the requisite 400 yard zero. All three shots hit.

Moved on to trying to confirm the 600 yard adjustments were right. Tried to gong, but was hitting about 5 feet high. Compensated for the point of impact and eventually got one gong hit. Obviously something was wrong.

As I'm human, I continued to waste expensive match grade ammo until the wind picked up to about 20 mph. All of a sudden I realized that the 8.5-20x scope was still at 8.5x. Not to make excuses, but my brother was over until 1:00 in the morning last night, so I didn't exactly get my beauty sleep or recover my sense.

Full Disclosure: I dislike using tactical knobs. I've done the requisite sighting with them and fundamentally understand them, but even with a quality scope, I've always been taught that fucking with turrets will throw your zero off. It may be a wive's tale. In the final days before Boomershoot, I have been trying to leave off the tactical knobs and practice with the mil-dots. As such, if the magnification is not the same as the one my ballistic sheet is based on, I'm shooting 5 feet high.

After that, I gonged the 600 yard target and it was time to move to paper.

I'll admit, I suck with windage, which will be my major handicap in Idaho. The wind had died down by that point and I was consistently hitting to the left of the 8'x11' paper target. Finally I started compensating for the wind.

Then Joe showed up. I met him at the gate and we exchanged greetings.

It was weird because by the time I was going back to the gate, I had forgotten that the SWAT range next-door was doing something special. When we entered there were about 60-80 cop cars parked in the lot. We got through the gate and halfway down the road and ran into about a dozen swat guys in full armor sporting M-16's. I had read in the newsletter that are club was trying for better relations, but I kind of freaked out. I had pulled up and asked the guy in charge if the range was open. He said, "Yeah, no problem," but didn't really encourage his guys to clear the road they were sitting on. I drove through slowly while the old man reinforced the point that it would not be a good idea to run over a cop's ankles.

I digress. Driving back to the gate I remembered that there may be guerilla teams waiting or tired dehydrated policemen lying in the road. We drove back to the big-bore range slowly.

After that, we all went back to shooting. Joe had planned on taking a Webley .300, which I was looking forward to at least watching. He forgot that, so he ended up with an Olympia Arms AR. Nice rifle and he handles it well.

I have to give kudos to both the old man and Joe today, because I was probably a real pain in the ass. All I wanted to do was make it on paper at 600 yards. So it ended up that the old man would do a Garand clip, Joe would do 20 rounds of AR, and I would take three shots and probably stood around looking like heavy wallpaper until everyone told me I could drive out to take a look. The drive takes about five minutes both ways, including checking out the paper I didn't hit.

After the third time Joe asked me what was going on and I responded that I think my windage adjustments were completely wrong (remember, my brother kept me up very late.) He pointed out that there was effectively no wind and he was gonging with a 40 gr. .223 bullet as opposed to a 168 gr. .30-06. Then it occurred to me that I was still making the same wind adjustments that I was using before Joe had arrived. Got two on paper the next group and quit. I was still happy that it happened, even though I'd been being an idiot.

It actually got more fun after I put the Boomer rifle away. Joe can gong an 18" steel plate about 15 out of 20 times, using a light .223 bullet. He gave me a crack at a magazine and I scored a single hit. Initially when I sat down, he has one of those yellow plastic safety magazine inserts, which I've never seen before. Well, I was figuring there was a release cinch on the plastic and proceeded to look for it until Joe showed me where the magazine release was located. It's been 4 months since I've touched an AR, but I still felt a bit like an idiot.

As Joe mentions, he shot the old man's Garand after that. I think he mischarcterizes by saying he flinched or pulled. Flinch might have been part of his problem, as you have casings and clips flying through your field of view. That weapon is a beast. I've often bitched about the punishment that rifle revels in dishing out, but it goes beyond that. The ghost ring on a Garand is a lot larger than the ones most of us are used to when firing an AR. As such, you've got a lot more space to float the front sight in. I've also found that this leniency tends to let people fine-tune the sighting to their taste or habit. Joe only shot one clip (or two?). That's not nearly enough. It takes me about 8 clips to even figure out where the POI is in relation to my POA. And that rifle makes me flinchy as fuck, just due to the left-hand ejection issues.

After that, we called it a day. We'd been shooting for about four hours and Joe did about an hour and a half, but he had also flown today.

Then we went to some restaurant by his hotel that my mother recommended. Don't get me wrong, it was a burger joint and burgers were killer. But you needed bicycle assembly instructions to figure out how the hell it worked. Put your order in here, get your burger here, here's condiments....where the fuck is the lettuce? We found it on the way out. Additionally, there are no waitresses, so if you want another beer, you have to go stand in line all over again. I tip people well when they bring me beers regularly.

From there the conversation was awesome. Trades, guns, Boitel, guns, family history, guns, explosives, guns. What more could anyone want from dinner discussion than that? Outside of Boitel, of course.

UPDATE: We also discussed Kim du Toit's fiscal fiasco. It would be a shame if he didn't make it because him and the S&H were a few bucks short. Joe's pledged 100 ducks as well as me. Do what you can (and I realize a lot of you are bitching that if you were doing nasty things underneath the freeway overpass on your own time, you'd still only be able to buy a crappy .38 revolver for BAG day.)

Not to get too ripshit over the fact that I'm being screwed on a daily basis (I did my taxes last weekend), the way people think about this is ridiculous.

From a Washington Post editorial on the proposed permanent repeal of the estate tax:

"In other words, no one but the richest Americans would be asked to pay estate
tax."

Where the hell they come up with being "asked" to pay taxes, is beyond me. While I obligingly picked up the soap when I did taxes last Saturday, it sure as shit did not feel like anyone was asking me, "Perchance, Ben, would it be acceptable for me to sodomize you while you are picking up the vehicle of my cleanlieness?" If a memo went out about "asking" me, I didn't get it.

It doesn't stop there. E.J. Dionne, who is a liberal I can usually respect to some degree comes up with this humdinger in his unusally moronic column today:

Counting both revenue losses and added interest costs, complete repeal of the
estate tax would cost the government close to $1 trillion between 2012 and 2021,
according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Let's understand that nothing costs the government anything. They do not need to maintain a bottom line. If payroll becomes a problem they raid the "Social Security Lockbox", which I guess is my retirement. Their funding comes from "asking" people to contribute to their continued power to spend money on shit like the Robert C. Byrd Memorial Dildo in downtown, Nowhere, WV. Shit doesn't cost them anything, they may just be limited by how much they are able to "ask" you to contribute to such noble causes.

Taxes are why I became a conservative/(small-l) libertarian to begin with. The fact that these people cannot even understand a position such as my own, where we don't "fix" shit and tax cuts don't "cost" the government, is ludicrous. These people are socialists bent on nationalizing every possible thing that exists.

For you young'uns out there, they also belong to the AARP while writing this cretinous crap from some tall building in New York City. And if you haven't figured out the MO, it's to pay for their retirement while robbing you blind.

Have you ever noticed that the more insane Paul Krugman gets, the bigger his picture is on the website?



And he's not exactly a handsome devil, at that.

In his usual fashion, he has an extraordinarily moronic piece in the NYTs today.

First off, I have never understood this man, insofar as he does not understand conservatism. He thinks Dems and Reps are just trying to fix fucked up shit and jockeying for votes in the mean time. Maybe being in New York, it's hard to understand a philosophy like my own: I don't want to fix it, I want to get rid of it.

I did my taxes this weekend and, being a business-owner, my cornhole was raw and bleeding by the time I got done. This jerk-off thinks I should get ass-fucked a little more to support people who don't do shit.

Well-informed business executives agree. A recent survey of chief financial
officers at major corporations found that 65 percent regard immediate action on
health care costs as "very important." Only 31 percent said the same about
Social Security reform.

What the fuck is this? "Well-informed business executives agree" that McDonald's has the best fries? They agree that a global government would be worth a shot? By the by, who are these fuckers? Did Krugman give them some change on his way to the subway?

Notice that I said "health care reform," not "Medicare reform." The rising cost
of Medicare may loom large in political discussion, because it's a government
program (and because it's often, wrongly, lumped together with Social Security
by the crisis-mongers), but this isn't a story of runaway government spending.
The costs of Medicare and of private health plans are both rising much faster
than G.D.P. per capita, and at about the same rate per enrollee.

Notice that he's not talking about jacking with entitlement programs, he wants to jack with the market. The fact that government should pay for healthcare is indisputable in his mind. The question is how to rip off the private market.

For example, Medicare recently started paying for implanted cardiac devices in
many patients with heart trouble, now that research has shown them to be highly
effective. This is good news, not bad.

Now if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Krugman has just contradicted himself. The problem is absolutely not runaway entitlement programs, but in the next paragraph he cites a recently added benefit. This guy shouldn't be writing for my local newspaper. He seems to be permanently detached from any kind of reality. I'd like to live in an ivory tower someday (I bet your asshole hurts a lot less after paying taxes.)

...rising Medicare spending may be a sign of progress, but it still must be paid
for - and right now few politicians are willing to talk about the tax increases
that will be needed if the program is to make medical advances available to all
older Americans.

In case this point has been missed, I will state it plainly: Fuck older Americans. Why is the idea of paying for shit yourself so fucking alien? I can't walk into a 7-11 and get a candy-bar for free because I think it's my right. The only thing that makes medical advances possible is free markets, not the billions the government robs from its own citizens. If you think the cure for AIDS is going to come from some government lab, you are sorely mistaken. Some private genius will come up with it and make more money than Bill Gates, as he should.

Finally, the U.S. health care system is wildly inefficient. Americans tend to
believe that we have the best health care system in the world. (I've encountered
members of the journalistic elite who flatly refuse to believe that France ranks
much better on most measures of health care quality than the United States.) But
it isn't true. We spend far more per person on health care than any other
country - 75 percent more than Canada or France - yet rank near the bottom among
industrial countries in indicators from life expectancy to infant mortality.

Well, anybody who believes that a nation that let 7,000 old fucks boil to death while they took a vacation has a more advanced health-care system than us is just fucking stupid. Of course, Krugman's sources (which he doesn't cite) and statistics (which he doesn't cite) may be true, for all I know. But life-expectancy statistics as they stand, I'd rather die quietly in my sleep than be cooked to death in some shitty French apartment.

To get effective reform, however, we'll need to shed some preconceptions - in
particular, the ideologically driven belief that government is always the
problem and market competition is always the solution.

Let's just let the government decide who gets air-conditioning and health-care and feeding-tubes, because that's why we have government. FUCK waging war, which is the only thing I'm happy about paying for. Krugman wouldn't agree that Bushitler's illegal war on Wherever would be a suitable use of taxpayer dollars but paying for every old fuck that lives too long (and we don't deliberately boil to death, like the French do) to get their bedsores looked at twice a week is entirely legitimate.

I'll close with Krugman's final promise (for what that's worth; he's been solving the world's problems for a decade and I haven't seen much improvement from his input), without an anecdotal comments:

Over the next few weeks I'll back up these assertions, and talk about what
a workable health care reform might look like, if we can get ideology out of the
way.

UPDATE: Head is pissed off as well.

The thread I'm referring to is almost worn to the bone.

My fellow sophist references this crap NYT's op-ed. A fisk follows:

Americans stunned at recent sprees of gun mayhem in churches, schools and
courthouses should know that Congress is gearing up for action on this issue.
No, lawmakers are not rushing through legislation to cut down on the 29,000 gun
deaths a year. Rather, the Senate is preparing to revive a craven proposal to
shield irresponsible gun manufacturers and dealers from accountability.

Americans should also know that it is illegal to carry guns in churches, schools, and courthouses in the states where these atrocities happened. Does anyone detect a trend here? If no one but an 80 year old grandmother is armed, one who which can't even safeguard her firearm, no one is safe in those places.

The proposal, which failed narrowly last year, is now estimated to have majority
support from lawmakers who have been either cowed or bolstered by the gun lobby.
It would have stopped such lawsuits as the one that led to a $2.5 million
settlement for the families of victims in the Washington sniper shootings. That
rifle was traced to a West Coast dealer who claimed that it was one of 238
weapons suddenly missing from inventory. The Senate proposal would shelter such
transparently harmful dealers and manufacturers and snuff out more than a dozen
other suits now in the courts.

No, no, no. I reference you to Alphecca's analysis of the law.

What people never understood about the DC sniper settlement is that the gun shop was negligent, but Bushmaster settled for 1.5 mil, or something. They didn't do it because they had to, their insurance company told them this is what we're going to do. Throughout that story, I never even saw circumspect evidence that the manufacturer (Bushmaster) had been negligent in any way. They were selling rifles to a store that was approved by STATE AND FEDERAL agencies. Why didn't they get their pound of flesh from the gummint?

The bill, offered this year by Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican,
goes further, undermining not just lawsuits but also administrative proceedings
to revoke abusive dealers' licenses. Under it, gun dealers couldn't be
disciplined for black-market deals involving illegal weapons unless it could be
proved that they had engaged in them knowingly - as if general ineptitude or a
lack of interest were acceptable. Last year, Congress joined President Bush in
letting lapse the 1994 law restricting the availability of battlefield assault
rifles. Congress also mandated the destruction of gun-sale records within 24
hours.

I myself have engage in numerous private sales. The gummint has no authority over those. I really can't see a retailer being so inscrupulous that the would take the $150.00 profit off of an AR at the risk of their license. What follows is two setences that are completely unrelated to the point the editorial writer is trying to make. I'm not sure what the hell "battlefield assault rifles" are and I certainly know that every libertarian in the lower 48 hate Ashcroft despite his 24 hour record destruction regulation.

I saved the final sentence for last:

Lawmakers were only making things easier for potential terrorists and other
sociopaths.

Now, if I'm not mistaken, 9/11 was carried out with box-cutters in its inital phases. After that it was putting fear into people and utilizing methods of transit to crash towers. I haven't heard of a terrorist using an AK-clone in any recent attacks, except for the ones carried out by the PA who are supplied by the French.

Secondly, the references this editor opens his thoughts with are all "gun-free" zones. So if a sociopath can get a gun into the safe zones, how are we going to prevent him from other weapons of directed destruction?

And, of course, according to this dickhead, I'm probably a sociopath as well. Just lump me in with Bin Laden. There's the NYT's editorial stance. "We took our eye off Bin Laden", wait, No, "We also took our eye off of Ben."

I've set up a blogroll for the Old Man. Obviously the mainstays will always be in the main roll, and those are almost strictly gun-blogs. The Old Man's roll will have a bit more multi-lateral feel to it, as it may just be shit he finds entertaining that may have nothing to do with guns, 2A, politics, or idiot news.

I've been able to preview a couple of his candidates, and they are worthy. So check it out.

Me and the Old Man got out yesterday. I was a bit knackered last night, thus the delayed post.

The temperature was upwards of 65 degrees and the wind wasn't bad to start. I'm beginning to get my back of the neck "redneck" appearance a little early on in the year. Eventually the wind picked up, as it is wont to do around this time of the year.

We basically divided our time between the Boomershoot rifle and the Garand, which is going to be the back-up/optional event rifle.

The Garand performed excellently. The Old Man was regularly clocking 1 out of four hits at a gong that exceeded 300 yards. I always lag a bit, but was able to get the same stats on the last clip I fired through.

Initially, I started gonging the .30-06 as warm up. Past a point though, using match ammo to nail a gong starts to reveal itself as a uniquely stupid idea. Then we went to paper. I shot an initial group, pictured below, at the 400 yard range that the rifle is sighted at. Given that my spotting scope is a POS we had to wait until the range went cold to check it out. By this time the winds had picked up a bit.

I was very happy with the group and am growing more confident that I won't make an ass of myself at this event. I set up two more targets (I have, what I think to be, a bad cant problem) so as to see if the Old Man would have any problem firing a rifle I sighted.

That made no difference as the crosswind picked up with a veangance. My second target is not pictured, as there was one on paper and the other two on the board. The first pic is the Old Man's group. He was not on the board, windage wise, but it is a dynamite group for 400 yards and a rifle that he is thoroughly inexperienced with. Given the uptake in wind, I don't know where he would have clocked on paper, but that group at that range makes me think like I won't look like the amateur who doesn't know what the fuck he's doing at Boomershoot.

After that, I drove out and set the target up at 600 yards. I drove back and the range got called "hot" and the target blew over as I was sighting in on it.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with the now patented Old Man-Thompson treatment of Celotex (translation: he spends a half an hour blowing a head-sized hole in the target board, for amusement.) I flipped a .22 steel target with the Model 41 and we went home.

All in all, a good day. I accomplished more than I wanted to, even with the wind and I can shoot .22 til' the cows come home.

Wide view of my 8 x 11 target at 400 yards. 

Close u of my 400 yard best. 

The Old Man's group at 400 yards, utilizing a 12x scope. 

I don't know about you, but when I hear all this talk about tax returns, it pisses me off. I DON'T GET ONE! I guess I have arrived at that top ten percent that pays 70, 80, 90 percent of the taxes. I am successful, so I guess I get to pay for all the rest.
My tax return measures, this year, about at the one inch level in paper (I have an interest in three corporations and that makes things complicated).

Accordingly,

Since the government is burying ever successful person in the US with PAPER, I would encourage everyone else to do the same thing, namely:

BURY THE GOVERNMENT IN PAPER.

I know the temptation is great to get that refund tomorrow by filing electronically, but just keep in mind that they are basically stealing from a lot of us to fund that refund. You know it is coming, so just put that "buy a gun day" gun on plastic.

I would suspect that if everyone in the US took the paper approach, we could probably choke the IRS for about ten years (just an estimate).

For what it's worth,

the Old Man

Who says bloggers don't break news?

We were out Friday, and it's now Tuesday night.

I've now got the .30-06 to a 400 yard zero, utilizing less than 10 MOA. It zeroed off of a ballistic sheet produced by Joe's outstanding program, which is currently shareware I might add, and I ended up gonging a 3-shot group. Hopefully I will put it on paper tomorrow and see just how wide the group is at that range.

The old man brought out the Henry. For a pistol cartridge with iron sights, it was somewhat amazing that he was reaching out to 200 yards.

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I hadn't notice that it was approved by those twats at SASS. I guess I'm going to have to give him some shit. Regardless, this is a really good shooter up to 200 yards.

Other than that, we tried out our new BAG guns, which we can't disclose for the time being, and I did some pretty good shooting with the old man's Ruger Redhawk, which is a rarity.

The next report should be more timely and fresh in my mind.

Otherwise, never argue with a lawyer named Henry. And if you value the time you have on this planet, you will not touch that hyperlink. My head's starting to hurt after the last three days I've insisted on banging it on brick walls.

Otherwise, it's less than 4 weeks until Boomershoot.

I have no idea where this practice originated, but this whole "ask another blogger 5 questions" thing has been rampant lately. I thought I was going to avoid the whole thing but then Kirk went ahead and put me and The AnalogKid on the spot. So here it is.

1) Living in the southwest, do you find that it is easy to find places to shoot?

Lately, no. We never used to have to bother with a range as there are plenty of arroyos west of town with 12 foot tall clay walls. Then the county passed a ordnance that basically just stated that people couldn't shoot where we shoot.

After that, I had a friend who had nice long narrow piece of land with a berm at the end. You could shoot out to 200 yards and nobody much minded. About a year ago Christmas, some retired jerkoff from one of the coasts started building a house on the adjacent lot. The first time he heard gunshots he came over and that was the end of that.

Last summer, we finally joined a club with formal ranges.

Let me point out that I live in the northern part of the state and that things are a bit laxer (more Republican) the further south you go. One has to remember that New Mexico was the sole blue state in a sea of red in the 2000 election.

Additionally, the old man cranked out a survey. It seems that those in the southwest seem to drive further to get to a range.

2) Do you enjoy being self employed? and if so what is the most rewarding part of your job?

Very much so, outside of taxes accounting, taxes, regulation, taxes, etc. The one downside is the worry that goes into it at certain points.

I find that being able to turn down clients who suck and being able to pack it up and shoot on a Wednesday afternoon are both pretty rewarding.

3) How long have you been a Firearms enthusiast and what made you start procuring firearms?

I've shot and off since my youth, but I wouldn't have considered myself an enthusiast up until two years ago. At the time, I was working a job with a real gun nut. After the job was finished, I found that me and this guy still hung out quite a bit and inevitably he took me shooting. After that I met his son, who convinced me to buy my first gun, a Glock 17.

It's all been downhill from there.

4) What is motivating you to go to boomershoot (besides me)?

Outside of you? My father. He wants me to check out and let him know so he can plan on next year.

Other than that, long-range shooting is something I've never been into before and the crash course that has ensued since my decision to go has been a shitload of fun.

Also, as you mention in one of your first posts on Boomershoot, I'm not big on team shit or competition for that matter.

Finally, and not to be a dick, but have you heard that shit actually blows up at Boomershoot?

5) Iron or Glass and why???

This is the one question I'm going to be squishy on by saying both. Previous to the Boomershoot prep, I probably split my time evenly between the two. Leaving pistols out of it, I love shooting a bog standard AR-15 A4 set-up with peep sights. And given the amount of money I've blown on glass in the last 4 months, I don't think one can argue with my commitment to good optics.

I hope I've done an alright job of answering Barney-killer's questions.

A range report is forthcoming, and a good one at that.

Otherwise, I really do tire of the gun control debate. The other side has not once provided any factual documentation that there is a reasonable return on such regulation.

I generally don't argue it because I don't like listing statistics and arguing minutia. And I don't like reading and don't trust government reports.

Joe, on the other hand, seems to view these discussions as an opportunity to educate. More power to him, I don't have the patience. He has had a spirited discussion with a gentleman who is strongly against private ownership of any kind.

It's worth reading if you like to argue this sort of thing.

UPDATE: Henry has responded twice in Joe's thread. I may have mischaracterized his stance by saying he was against private ownership, as he responed thus:

Where did you get the idea that I am against private ownership of any kind?

Let's just chalk it up to the flavor of his argument. I will hold off on categorizing him until he responds to the question I posted about the outer limits of infringement and where he thinks those should be.

UPDATE II: Please disregard my characterization of Henry. I don't really know what he thinks. It was unfair and off-sides to state that he was against private ownership. I asked him to state his position and he has yet to do so.

UPDATE Ad Nauseum: Henry answered the question:

a) Registration of firearms and firearm transfers - similar to the registration system relating to automobiles, and with similar consequences concerning the liability for civil or criminal misuse or negligence by the owner and by whoever the ower permits to use the weapon.
b) Licensing of people to possess a weapon, and restrictions on circumstances when the weapon may be carried -- again similar to automobile driver licensing. Whether a license is issued to a person and what, if any, restrictions are on the license would depend upon whether the person has the requisite training and whether the person's physicial or mental or behavior characteristics demonstrate that he or she is unable to properly use a weapon or is so unstable as to present a serious risk to himself or to others or has a criminal background that traditionally has been held to disqualify him from public trust.
c) Some types of firearms should be barred from private ownership or use because they are so far removed from leigitimate hunting as to be unsportsmanlike and because their firepower can cause such grave mass destruction to human life that their availability to the private sector is not warranted.
d. Apart from licensing restrictions, of the type already noted, there should be designated places where firearms should be absolutely barred from being carried on the person of private persons. For example, schools, planes, court houses and other places of strong public debate and dispute.