Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Praxis: Sweet Home Alabama. An All-Alabama AR platform.
I was at the range the other day scrounging brass and lead when I noticed a shooter with a well turned-out AR. Upon inquiry, he was kind enough to show me the rifle and commented that he had it built here in Alabama from in-state components with the lower receiver coming from MHT Defense in Wedowee and the upper and assembly of the weapon by Red Dot Arms in the Birmingham suburb of Alabaster. When I feel a bit better, I intend to check out these establishments and will give a review of their operations and products in these pages when I can.
Brief report on AGCA show, Birmingham.
In a word, it was lousy. Poor turnout and poor sales complained of by every vendor, including those with ammo and reloading components. July is historically one of the worst months for firearm sales and it seems that we are slouching back toward that old paradigm. Now, I will say that AGCA continues to cut its own throat by having the show at the Birmingham Civic Center, where the parking is scarce and if you get there late you've got a choice between a prohibitively expensive parking garage (which may be full if there's another couple of events elsewhere in the complex -- which there often is) and parking further out where public parking abuts inner city neighborhoods containing a number of budding Trayvons who specialize in identifying and breaking into gun show attendee's cars. (A good friend had his broken into a few years back and the only weapon they didn't steal was a carry piece stashed in a used McDonald's bag.) The AGCA has enough resources to arrange another venue but the leadership sticks with the Civic Center year in and year out even though they know the difficulties of the place suppresses the turnout.
It has been suggested by members (of whom I am not one) that the AGCA could easily find an old grocery store somehwere convenient to the freeways in a much safer part of town and lease the bloody thing, using it for its own shows and subleasing it to other organizations. They would, it is estimated by some AGCA members smarter about such things than me, actually make a ton of money doing so. But they continue to hold it at the Civic Center for the inertial excuse that they have always done so. Stupid is as stupid does, according to smart old Mrs. Gump.
In any case, although I made some wonderful new friends last weekend (and reacquainted with some old ones), I made just a fraction of the money I was hoping for, even though I received a couple of healthy subscription donations. I did, however, have plenty of company among other vendors, so I guess it wasn't my bad breath which put off the customers.
The rush to buy arms and ammunition, at least in Birmingham, seems to have peaked. Now if prices will just fall back in line with that new reality.
Praxis: Reloading for the Match M14 & Case Head Separations.
Reader Scott forwards this link, "Reloading for the Match M14," with the following comments:
I was researching online about that Lake City primed brass and came across the above article.Lots of great info about reloading for the M14 and Garand.It put me more at ease about the case separations I've had lately.It also tells me I'm going to have to keep brass that runs in either in lots by number of firings.Pretty much too late for the batches I have so I will do the next best thing and start checking for incipient separation by the wire method as shown here. I've done it in the past and got to where I could catch them by looking so I quit using the wire.
Scott also forwarded this article about Case Head Separations from The Rifleman's Journal.
"We can't keep on blaming the white man." Race, Politics and the Zimmerman Trial
The left wants to blame black criminality on racial animus and 'the system,' but blacks have long been part of running that system.
Any candid debate on race and criminality in this country would have to start with the fact that blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes. African-Americans constitute about 13% of the population, yet between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the U.S. The black arrest rate for most offenses—including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes—is typically two to three times their representation in the population. The U.S. criminal-justice system, which currently is headed by one black man (Attorney General Eric Holder) who reports to another (President Obama), is a reflection of this reality, not its cause."High rates of black violence in the late twentieth century are a matter of historical fact, not bigoted imagination," wrote the late Harvard Law professor William Stuntz in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice." "The trends reached their peak not in the land of Jim Crow but in the more civilized North, and not in the age of segregation but in the decades that saw the rise of civil rights for African Americans — and of African American control of city governments."
. . . Did the perception of black criminality play a role in Martin's death? We may never know for certain, but we do know that those negative perceptions of young black men are rooted in hard data on who commits crimes. We also know that young black men will not change how they are perceived until they change how they behave.The homicide rate claiming black victims today is seven times that of whites, and the George Zimmermans of the world are not the reason. Some 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks.So let's have our discussions, even if the only one that really needs to occur is within the black community. Civil-rights leaders today choose to keep the focus on white racism instead of personal responsibility, but their predecessors knew better."Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."
Channeling Nixon. Again. Still.
Feds admit improper scrutiny of candidate, donor tax records, Justice declines to prosecute.
The Treasury Department has admitted for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases.Its investigators also are probing two allegations that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted for audit candidates for public office,” the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, has privately told Sen. Chuck Grassley.In a written response to a request by Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. George said a review turned up four cases since 2006 in which unidentified government officials took part in “unauthorized access or disclosure of tax records of political donors or candidates,” including one case he described as “willful.” In four additional cases, Mr. George said, allegations of improper access of IRS records were not substantiated by the evidence.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Blocking freeways and beating folks up for Trayvon.
Trayvon Martin Protests: 10 Freeway Shut Down in Los Angeles.
‘Justice For Trayvon’ Rally Shuts Down Major Newark Intersection
From Mississippi: Man Claims Attack Was Trayvon Retaliation
And from Maryland: Baltimore police say they are investigating a witness account that a group of black youths beat a Hispanic man near Patterson Park Sunday while saying, "This is for Trayvon."
Oakland rally for Trayvon Martin turns violent
From one street in Sanford, Fla., to the streets of N.Y. and L.A.
Logistics: Improvised ammunition supply (in the middle of World War II's largest logistical feat)
American artillery prime mover towing captured German 88 into action.
Most folks -- even those comparatively well-read about World war Two -- don't know about the October-November 1944 ammunition famine.
A little paperback volume that I traded for at the gun show this weekend -- 48 Million Tons to Eisenhower by LTC Randolph Leigh, Infantry Journal, December 1945 -- details how the Americans improvised a stop-gap solution:
In the November ammunition shortage in artillery shells, Ordnance technicians made good use of captured enemy ammunition and weapons. In overrunning France and Belguim to the Seigried Line, American troops came upon large reserve depots whih the Germans had established in the vicinity of Verdun and the Argonne Forest. Many thousands of rounds of German 75mm, 88mm, 105mm, and 155mm artillery ammunition were found within easy reach of the forces in the Metx sector. This ammunition was tested, tagged for proper use and distributed to our own gun crews, Where certain types, such as the German 88mm, did not fit U.S. weapons, captured German guns were put to use after being serviced and repaired. In order to make use of large stocks of 50mm mortar ammunition, for which neither American nor German weapons were available, a weapon was improvised by an Ordnance officer and its manufacture was carried on locally. -- Page 95
Does this collectivist look pissed to you?
"And last night, I thought, I live in a country that makes me wish my sons away, wish that they don't exist, because it's not safe."
The Daily Caller reports -- MSNBC’s Harris-Perry: Zimmerman verdict says it’s ‘OK to kill’ unarmed African-American child.
And HuffPo tells us about -- Melissa Harris-Perry On George Zimmerman Verdict: 'I Live In A Country That Makes Me Wish My Sons Away'
Terry Doolittle: "You look like a smart guy, Earl. See this face? This is the face of a woman on the edge, Earl."Earl the Security Guard: "I know. My wife's got the same face."Terry Doolittle: "You have to make a decision. Do you wanna work here, or do you want to live?"Earl the Security Guard: "I quit, I quit."
"By the rivers of Babylon..."
1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.4 How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land? -- Psalm 137
British Praise for Ancient Mesopotamian Tyrants.
But if they really are acting like Nazis, does Godwin's Law still apply?
A predictably anonymous reader criticizes me at one of posts below for violating Godwin's law:
The wikipedia link to Godwin's law, and the inevitable sink of political conversation to comparisons to Nazi Germany or Hitler, should point to this site, as the lead example. You know of course, but don't care, that such mention, is taken as proof that your arguments are too weak to otherwise carry the day (but of course you have the alternate high ground of threatening your adversaries with a shot to the head or treason trials once your ilk has magically transformed our great land and people). What an abscessed hole ...
My reaction? If they really are acting like Nazis, does Godwin's Law still apply? The latest example:
U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News To Americans.
For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts.
"This is not an assault! We are not Nazis! Okay, so maybe we're ACTING like Nazis, but Godwin's Law still applies and you can't say so . . . Not that your dead gassed children will care."
Bloomberg weighs in on Trayvon, but Kurt Hofmann's analysis is spot on.
New York nanny state dictator Bloomberg is at it again: "End ‘shoot-first’ laws."
Kurt Hofmann points out that Bloomberg's not the only collectivist dancing in Trayvon's blood: "'Gun control' pushers hope to exploit Zimmerman verdict for more oppressive laws."
Stand Your Ground did not kill Trayvon Martin, and neither did the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, that bearing arms is an individual right protected by the Second Amendment, just as keeping them is. On the other hand, concealed carry might have saved George Zimmerman's life. And "gun control" pushers can't stand that.
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