The Freeholder

Want a revolver?

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:07:00 +0000

The lunacy continues unabated

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:04:00 +0000

And why should it abate? After all, it's not like we're living a police state or anything.

Wilfredo Seda was arrested Monday for openly carrying an umbrella.

And also for dressing in black.

Ye flippin' gods.

Oh, way to go Colorado

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:05:00 +0000

(Via The Shooting Wire)

Just way to effing go.

Daniele Perazzi, president of the Italian Perazzi Shotguns firm, was taken into custody yesterday by Adams County Deputies along with several prototype shotguns. The executive was picked up in the parking lot of the Denver Merchandise Mart, hosting the high-end Colorado Gun Collectors show this weekend, after a taxi driver, likely reacting to a suspicious activity reporting outreach program conducted by law enforcement, told authorities he thought he could be transporting an armed “foreign speaking” terror suspect.

Fortunately, one of Mr. Perazzi's attorneys was able to persuade the police that "the owner of one of the most expensive shotgun companies in the world was not a terrorist."

O. M. G. But wait, because it gets better.

That attorney essentially confirmed the account provided by Schreiner, albeit she characterized the authorities’ position on Perazzi leaving the state more as advice than an ultimatum by the sheriff to get out of town by sundown -- something that would have no readily apparent legal basis.

Word has it that Mr. Perazzi and his attorneys will be filing legal action. Someone pass me the popcorn, because this will be worth watching.

(Edit, 5/21/2013 2115: The Gun Rights Examiner may have been the victim of a rather elaborate hoax. According to an update to the original story, Perazzi SPA has issued a press release noting that Daniele Perazzi has been deceased for over a year, something that I have Googled and found on a popular shotgunning web site. Obviously the Examiner and those of us who picked the story up from there have some egg on our face. The author and motive behind this hoax is unknown, but the update to the original story has some speculation. Someone went to a lot of trouble for this. But thanks for the popcorn; it was most tasty.)

Yeah, I can go with that

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:11:00 +0000

Why military guys (and likely gals) think Prince Harry is the shit.

This will not end well

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:11:00 +0000

(Via SurvivalBlog)

The mass exodus of Christians from the Muslim World

The "religion of peace" strikes again, and new Dark Age continues to bear down upon us.

And for my last effort today

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:08:00 +0000

A "Thank You" for those who serve.

Backlogs

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:37:00 +0000

From time to time, you'll see a blogger who is "tab clearing"--just tossing out, with minimal comments, all those links that tend to accumulate in open browser tabs because "Now that's interesting...."

In my job, I often need to take a mental break for a few minutes between tasks, just to allow my brain to cool down. So I surf things I've been wanting to look up and email them to myself, forgetting about them until I need to clean up my inbox. I need to clean up my inbox now.

How to Build Log Furniture
To go along with that, sort of, a TV show--Rough Cut Woodworking.
The Art of Manliness has a tutorial on the proper use of the combat tourniquet. Times have changed since I was in, 2 days before dirt.
Accurizing your Garand for Camp Perry. Or the Zombie Apocalypse.
Researching a picture that hung in my parents home as long as I can remember. Now it hangs in my office.
Need to rip a DVD? Free is always a good price.
The Joseph Ducreux meme archive.
Home page for the Kenwood Hybrid Amateur Radio Net.
A food storage seminar of video.
Gun unfriendly (or friendly) businesses.

That ought to keep you people busy for a while.

High tech target spotting

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:55:00 +0000

At first glance, spending $549 for a wireless camera system to spot your 1000 yard target might seem a bit crazy. But have you priced top-of-the-line spotting scopes lately?

A hint to my family that stumbles around here from time to time--Christmas is in December, and I don't mind if you team up on gifts. :-)

Online learning for grownups

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:46:00 +0000

The heck with a degree--let Rob Pincus teach you techniques to counter an ambush in the comfort of your own home.

How is our economy like a sand pile?

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:43:00 +0000

Because either can collapse in the most unpredictable of manners. John Mauldin addresses the critical state and fingers of disequilibrium and how those concepts apply to our economy.

It's been a long time, but this sounds a lot like a branch of chaos theory to me. Wholly appropriate since that's what we'll have should our economy collapse.

Warning: Another Cyprus likely to occur soon

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:04:00 +0000

(Via SurvivalBlog)

The International Monetary Fund, that paragon of fiscal virtue, thinks that Spain may be all but bankrupt. Here's the link--96 pages of dense bureaucratese in PDF format. This fellow has it in considerably simpler terms.

If I lived in Spain or had any money in a Spanish bank, I'd be looking for other arrangements. This is one to watch carefully. While the Cypriots were pretty pissed, it seems they've knuckled under for the most part. I suspect the Spanish will not be as easily handled.

OK...

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:26:00 +0000

Smoke caused an early morning evacuation of the White House Press Room. There is no truth to rumors that mirrors were also involved.

Behind the curve a bit, aren't we?

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sat, 11 May 2013 12:19:00 +0000

(Via Frugal Squirrels)

Gun grabbers get their panties in a wad (again) because a guy posts pictures of gunz on teh Intertubz! They call it...wait for it...

Gun porn.

*snort*

I hate Mother Gaia

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sat, 11 May 2013 11:57:00 +0000

(Via Frugal Squirrels)

CARB and the EPA may pucker up as well.

EZ- Pour Replacement Spout Kit

Now I can stop pouring that expensive gasoline all over my equipment and allow it to evaporate into the atmosphere where it belongs.

Delivering the beatdown

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:51:00 +0000

(Via the Drudge Report)

A 70 year old man is at home with his girlfriend and hears a noise in his yard at 3 AM. He checks and sees Sum D00d, who had already shattered a window to gain entry to the home and then majestically stumbled back outside.

Our intrepid homeowner calls the police, and turns around to find Mr. D00d standing right behind him. So he promptly decks him and leaves him groveling for mercy.

D00d! He's 70 and he's at home with his girlfriend. What are you thinking?

Do not mess with us old guys. We can't run anymore (even if we can satisfy our girlfriends). We're just going to hurt you.

Barry Snell almost gets it

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:39:00 +0000

I was directed to an opinion piece by writer Barry Snell entitled "Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned". A lot of folks are telling me how this guy "gets it". I'm unconvinced.

For the first 90% of the piece, he does a really good job pointing out all of the farcical issues with the current "debate" on "gun control"--or what we more hard-core gunnies see as the latest attempt to abridge our Constitutional rights by those who would impose ~~mob rule~~ democracy on our Constitutional Republic.

But right there at the end, in his conclusion, he blew it.

Sleeping dragons and terrible resolve
I do not want to live through a war in my own backyard. I do not want our children to grow up in such an America, either. So anti-gunners: Please stop, I beg you. See the writing on the wall before it’s too late.

Yes, there is a terrible crime problem, and yes, that problem sometimes involves guns — but it is the perpetrator that is the problem, not the instrument. Yes, there is a great divide between liberals and conservatives on the issue of guns. And while I will be the very first person to criticize the Republican Party on its many and frequent mistakes, and even stand with my democratic friends in my disfavor of those things, on the gun issue it is not the conservatives who are mostly in the wrong this time.

We want the crime and killings to stop as much as you do, so to my fellow citizens who are anti-gun I say: So long as you deny our humanity, so long as you malign our dignity, intelligence and wisdom, so long as you seek to shade us under a cloud of evil that we do not partake in or support, so long as you tell us that because we own guns we are terrible people, you will prove yourselves absolutely right in that we won’t come to the table to talk with you.

And there will be no hope for resolution but through victory by force initiated by one side or the other, God help us, for we will not plow for those who didn’t beat their swords into plowshares.

That third paragraph is the killer. Barry, you were so, so close, but you missed it. It isn't that we won't talk because they "deny our humanity" or "malign our dignity, intelligence and wisdom" or any of the rest of it. We won't come to the table and talk to these people because there can be no conversation. Conversation implies communication, and that is a two way street. I talk, you listen. You talk, I listen.

With the gun grabbers, that isn't going to happen. That's because this isn't a philosophical discussion. Civilian disarmament, which is what they really want (and you acknowledge it yourself, in so many words, earlier on), is the goal. That's because, as you also acknowledge, they are "commanding us to shut up, because we’re just a bunch of stupid radicals and liberals alone know what’s best for America." Render us powerless and themselves powerful, and we have no choice but to shut up--or die.

I don't want to live through a civil war either. I'm too damn old to be out running around in the woods playing Rambo. I don't want my kids to have to fight one--hell, I don't want anyone or their kids to face that situation. I don't have to live through it to know that it will suck in ways we can't even fathom.

But I fear it's coming. I not only fear it, but I'm scared to death of the prospect. But I'm pretty sure we're far gone down the road to it, and it will take Divine intervention at this point to stop it. When half of our population "votes for a living", when our elected masters take it upon themselves to begin denying us our rights for our own good, when the rich and powerful drive the economy into the ground for their further gain and working people become dust under their feet, it's coming. The questions are "When?" and "How bad will it get?"

We can hope for a relatively painless revolution, or perhaps one no worse than Russia in 1917. We may get Adolph Hitler, Uncle Joe Stalin or Pol Pot instead. Perhaps Mad Max may come riding in--or it may be the Four Horsemen themselves. There's no way to know. We can expect that civilization, in some form or another, will reassert itself. It always has, and we can hope that it will again.

If we don't get "lucky", we can be certain that hundreds of years of progress will be, for the most part, lost. Our ability to build the tools to build the tools to build the tools to build the things may well erode completely away, and we find ourselves living a 17th-19th century lifestyle in large part.

Hopefully we can keep the germ theory of disease and a few other important concepts.

Yes, there are some hopeful things out there, and I console myself with the thought that they are not the gutterings of a candle that is dying out, but the first flash of an even greater light that will take humanity out into the solar system and then to the stars.

I'm still getting ready for that long, cold winter, however. Pray for the best, prepare for the worst. That's the old saying, and there's a lot of wisdom to it.

Defending the Defender

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Tue, 07 May 2013 00:27:00 +0000

Shawn at Loose Rounds does a bang up job.

The only reason we need to march to Rob Pincus's defense is because the mainstream media, ever hostile to gun owners, decided to pick and choose, slice and dice his comments from a talk at the NRA convention and make him out to be some sort of ogre.

First of all, if you have guns in the house, you must do the gunnie equivalent of drown proofing--you gun proof your kids. That means that they are taught from birth that guns are treated with respect, that they aren't allowed to handle a gun without Mom or Dad there, that if they find one they are to not touch it and go find Mom or Dad (Thanks, Eddie Eagle), the Four Rules, you take them shooting, demonstrate what a gun can do (that means milk jugs full of water, you PSHysterics), and never, ever let the guns be a mystery. Mysteries are absolute magnets for kids.

Second, let me tell you this--if you put a gun in a quality gun safe in your kids room, and kiddo manages to get into it, that kid needs to go to engineering school pronto. There is no way, short of parental carelessness, that a kid can get into a good gun safe.

Something to think about in terms of self defense

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:40:00 +0000

A 46-year-old soccer referee who was punched by a teenage player during a game and later slipped into a coma has died, police said.

The kid hit him once, with his fist, and the result was death. This piece of data ought to figure into your calculus on the use of deadly force in your defense.

The Liberator Mk II

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:35:00 +0000

(Via the Drudge Report)

Once again proving that the legal system has a difficult time keeping up with technology, Distributed Defense will be releasing plans for a gun that can be constructed entirely by 3D printing. In keeping with its heritage, it isn't much of a gun.

However, gun banners are quick to understand that their wet dream of civilian disarmament is in danger of going up in flames once and for all, and are calling for more laws of dubious utility (at best).

As soon as the files are released, I'm planning on downloading them. I don't have a 3D printer and have no plans to buy one, but I figure that anything that gets the banners worked up into a frenzy is a good thing to have handy.

Have I mentioned that "Stupid hurts"?

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:29:00 +0000

First Magpul, now HiViz. Michael Bane moved his production activities some time ago. I heard on the Survival Podcast that Gene "Evil Roy" Pearcy is leaving for Texas--and taking his earth-sheltered home business with him. Hunters are staying away and I'm hearing rumors that some vacationers are planning on doing so.

Do you think the fools in their legislature and Gov. Hickenloopy are wondering what that burning sensation is?

On the back of humanity's tombstone will be the words

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:58:00 +0000

Made in China.

I iz loling

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:00:00 +0000

Roberta X has the the most succinct and funniest take on the economy to date.

You don't need one of "those guns"

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Wed, 01 May 2013 23:04:00 +0000

Right up until you do.

Police say an Iraq War veteran thwarted two would-be burglars at his northern Michigan gas station by kicking one of them and ordering them away with an AR-15 rifle.

No, we don't need one of those rifles. Just because they're the best tool to defend the country and the best tool for law enforcement to do its job, why should we peons be saddled with such a complicated gun? Why, no woman could shoot it!

Sometimes, I think the gun grabbers are so stupid that they need someone to remind them to breathe.

"Do no evil"

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:33:00 +0000

(Via Claire Wolf)

You may recognize that phrase as the famous Google motto. Compare that to this person's experience and see how that works out for you.

Sure, I use a lot of their services (Blogger is one), but I have no illusions about them. Neither should you. Keep all your electronic data that is critically important (those torrented tunes don't count) in at least 3 places--or you may someday find yourself missing a large chunk of your life.

Seeing as how this is supposed to be a gun blog

noreply@blogger.com (The Freeholder) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:14:00 +0000

Perhaps we should discuss guns.

Let's start off with a link I found on a blogosphere walkabout on the subject of gun oils. Interesting. In my emergency supplies, I have stashed a couple of tubes of lithium grease and a quart of a synthetic motor oil. I figured they would be better than nothing if things went really bad.

I'll also note there are a number of products out there (FIREClean is the latest I'm auditioning) that do seem to be designed by gunnies for gunnies, if the advertising can be believed. I've seen others but don't recall the names. If you do, leave me a comment.

-------------------------------------------

Took a trip to the range yesterday. This one was a special trip, requested by a young lady and her new husband in order to introduce said young lady to firearms and her husband to something larger than the .22 LR cartridge. Therefore we took everything from a .22 revolver and .22 semiauto through the .38 Special, the 9mm and the .45 ACP plus an Evil-15. I left the high capacity assault pressure cooker at home, figuring we didn't want to over do things.

Young Lady was a bit hesitant, despite having requested the trip. Even though she grew up around firearms, she is somewhat timid around them. It turns out that she is rather timid about many things, ranging from driving to loud noises and a cat walking by her. It seems odd given her gregarious nature, but it is what it is.

We were able to work around it to some extent. We started off with the .22 revolver, but she had some problems with the proper grip and quite honestly couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it. I switched off to the .22 semi and we had better luck, but even after several versions of how to aim properly (including visual aids) she was still not doing so well. Part of that had to be that we had went in mid afternoon, and the sun was facing toward us. The bigger part was that she was squeezing her eyes shut as she squeezed the trigger.

That problem somewhat solved, I moved her from the 8" hanging plates over to some large (about torso sized) hanging plates. I figured that a easier to hit target that gonged better under the impact of the .22 might help her out from an enjoyment standpoint. After all, the goal here was to introduce her to firearms and show her that shooting is enjoyable, not to turn her into Ninja Self-Defense Goddess in one lesson.

At that point, she started doing dramatically better. She began keeping her eyes open (most of the time, anyway) and began hitting well over half of her targets. As she gained confidence, she started shooting target sequences, moving from left to right and back again. Doing this, she finished off the 250 or so rounds of .22 I had brought along. I just smiled at her and told her that age old wisdom I received many years ago and that has stood me well in any number of areas where the female of the species is involved.

"Always leave them wanting more."

He husband, on the other hand, required very little in the way of training. Some work on proper sight picture and grip and he was off to the races. He tried everything that was brought along and seemed to enjoy it all.

All in all, it cost me around $100 (current cost) in ammo and I view it as money well spent. Perhaps not two more hard core shooters, but at least two people who now realize that guns are fun. Mission accomplished.