Sunday, March 30, 2008

Sunday Ugly Gun

S&W 25-2 45ACP Custom Short Barrel Revolver

"The barrel and cylinder has been thoughtfully shortened to reduce bullet jump, resulting in a revolver with a 4" barrel and the overall length of a 3 1/2" gun. The work is obviously well done. It looks odd with the shortened cylinder, but it is a great idea."
Must have been pretty inaccurate to start with, if that jump was causing that much of a problem in the stock model:
"Every gunny knows the history of the 1917 revolver. How American industry couldn't build enough Colt 1911 .45 automatics for the handgun-intensive trench warfare the nation had just entered, and how Smith & Wesson came up with half-moon clips that would allow their large frame revolver and Colt's to handle the rimless auto pistol cartridge.
Countless 1917 revolvers served in WWII as well. S&W subsequently produced it in small quantities as their commercial grade Army revolver, but always enjoyed more success with its target version, dubbed the 1950 Model. Auto pistol technology of the time had not yet made a .45 auto as accurate as a target revolver easily available, nor one with a very light trigger that would last a while and still be safe.
Many a civilian target shooter chose to thumb-cock the S&W 1950 Target for each shot, taking advantage of its good accuracy and easy single-action trigger. Among these was a WWII Marine sniper named Jim Clark. He convinced S&W to incorporate a few refinements, including a heavier, untapered barrel, and the 1955 Target was born. A couple of years later, when Smith & Wesson adopted numbers for all models, this fine sixgun became the Model 25.
Along the way, Jim Clark, had become the first private citizen to win the overall National Championship of conventional handgun shooting at Camp Perry. If memory serves, he shot the .45 stage at that memorable event with a Smith & Wesson Target revolver."
From: Guns Magazine Date: 9/1/2002 Author: Ayoob, Massad
Then again, maybe not.
An intact specimen:

Friday, March 28, 2008

Military Weirdness Example #2008-1

Today I had to sign a form promising I would not do any of the following:

Feed the crows;

Tame the crows;

NEVER, EVER release the crows from the big chickenwire crow trap;

Turn in whoever did release them if I know who did it (I don't, because I didn't know there was such a thing as a "crow trap"; where I'm from, you blow them out the sky with a 12-guage);


I will be kicked off post and out of the peace-keeping contingent to "return home in dishonor", as it was put. Seriously.
The general really doesn't like crows.

Same To You

To: Obnoxious Female Trailer Trash Civilian Contractor

From: Army Medic, Charge of Clinic

Re: Our Recent Interaction

Sooner or later, you will be become ill enough that you'll end up in the clinic again. If you're really lucky, I won't be the one starting your IV/thumping home a syringe of Toradol into your wide butt, or I'll have forgotten about your loudly swearing at me for not giving you prescription meds on demand without a prescription, and holding you to the same standard of treatment priority the rest of the camp gets.

Hope To See You Soon,

Pissed Off Medic

Thursday, March 27, 2008


Has anybody else ever looked at Mrs. Beckham and had this other image immediately come to mind?

Wednesday, March 26, 2008


When your patients wear uniforms while they're being radiographed (x-rayed), it pays to remember that there's cargo pockets on the legs. And sometimes, there's ibuprofen in the pockets.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Jet Lag

Four hours from Washington state to Atlanta, three hour layover, twelve hours from Atlanta to Tel Aviv, all business class. Thirty hours of being awake, except for a 30 minute nap over the ocean.
Four days of of sleeping for four hours, waking up at 0200 hours and staring at the clock until 0600 to get ready for the duty day, and losing most higher mental functions by noon.
I love international travel.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Sunday Ugly Gun

The incredibly rare precision grenade sniper system.

Monday, March 17, 2008

"To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence." - Sydney Smith

Just saw The Wife off to home after a four day pass. I'm fortunate beyond what I deserve in the spouse I have. My, or more properly our, second deployment with a teenage boy, three dogs, and a century-plus old house to manage on her own for over a year, and not a complaint out of her. Plus she took time off work to fly half way across the country to spend few days with me, even though it's a major disruption to the juggling act she has to do with work and home.


Thank You. My life would be so much less without you. I hope I'm able to be worthy of the personal sacrifices you've made for me.

I love you, and I'm a better person because of your love.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Sunday Ugly Gun

Doesn't look too bad there, does it?. Little odd, having a little race car there in the case, but whatever......

Until you went and put a little gold car into the pistol. You could have discreetly and tastefully worked the number 30 into the engraving, thus giving recognition to your favorite driver and maintaining a degree of elegance in your personal arm. Instead, we now have a NASCAR pimp gun.....

Friday, March 14, 2008

Die Die Die Die

I swear the next time I have to drive to Seattle on Highway 5 it will be in something tracked, armored, and in a five-digit weight range. I have never had to come to a complete stop on an interstate before, let alone take a quarter tank of gas to go twenty miles. I don't care how many hippies are provided for me to laugh at, it's not worth it.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Affirming Britishness Is Simply.....Un-British?

Britain to have a national day and pupils to swear 'oaths of allegiance to the Queen' under new plans to bolster national pride;

Labour heavyweights, opposition politicians, teachers' leaders and pressure groups also lined up to pour scorn on the plans for citizenship ceremonies in which all teenagers would be asked to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country.


What would you like them to be loyal to?

It seems that if you don't provide something of value, worthy of loyalty, then they will find something that will accept their loyalty. Such as gangs, for example. Or simply themselves. Perhaps a nice charismatic religious or political figure with their own agenda?

Something the Left in both Britain and the U.S. either will not or cannot accept, is a deeply held conviction that one's society is something to be proud of. There is a profound difference between those who see their cultures as something worthy of emulation, and want to lead by example, versus those who see oppression/fascism/racism when others promote their culture and feel the need to muzzle them.

I hope they institute it. The last time I can recall Britain being proud was during the Falklands War. They're better than what they've allowed themselves to become.

Does That Include Shipping?

Abandoned German armor from WWII is going up for sale; the current owners didn't give a damn about it until someone stole one:
"Collectors were apparently willing to pay millions of euros for the stolen tank, which was reportedly a personal present from Adolf Hitler to the former Bulgarian queen."

Monday, March 10, 2008


Word: charge of quarters
an enlisted man who handles his unit's administrative matters after hours

alternate n

an enlisted man who will be stuck in a chair for the rest of the evening, entertaining himself with his laptop.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

It Never Ends

From Health Beat Blog.

March 05, 2008

What Ever Happened to Gun Control?

We all know that guns can be hazardous to our health.

I certainly do. It hurt like hell when the bolt on my Garand slammed shut on the end of my index finger.

The number of children killed by guns in the United States each year is roughly three times greater than the number of servicemen and women killed annually in Iraq and Afghanistan. "In fact, more children -- children-- have been killed by guns in the past 25 years than the total number of American fatalities in all wars of the past five decades," Jonathan Safran Foer pointed out in a Washington Post Op-ed earlier this year.

By roughly, you must mean taking into account children in their early twenties, and children engaged in drug/territory/"respect" wars.

Yet, liberals no longer talk about gun control. As Liliana Segura pointed out on AlterNet recently, usually the subject doesn’t even come up.

You must read different liberal writers than I do. The ones I've read talk about it plenty. Oh wait, you mean liberal politicians.

So I was surprised, a week ago, when Ebony Senior Editor Sylvester Monroe brought up the question, point blank, in an interview with Barack Obama: "What about guns? In Chicago, for instance, 30-some schoolchildren died from gun violence during the last school year."

I'd be interested in knowing the social history of those individuals. I'd bet while there's some that were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, there were more that made a choice of associating with the wrong people.

"We’re not getting rid of handguns In this country," Obama replied flatly.

We'll just keep making it harder to have them legally.

I was somewhat taken aback—it seemed clear that, in Obama’s mind, the question isn’t even open for debate. Meanwhile violence continues to be the #1 cause of death among African-American men.

You may want to consider why a particular group is outstanding here.

Hillary Clinton, the other leading liberal presidential says she is against "illegal gun dealers." But she’s not talking about banning hand guns or assault weapons either--even though, following the shootings at Virginia Tech, she acknowledged "we now know that the background check system doesn’t work." Just two months ago, Clinton "backed off a national licensing registration plan on guns" and in January, during the Las Vegas debate she said: "I also am a political realist and I understand that the political winds are very powerful against doing enough to try to get guns off the street, get them out of the hands of young people."

I'm against people who knowingly sell guns to people with evil intentions. But I don't think that's what you're referring to. And I'd rather take guns out the hands of people who use them for violent criminal purposes. In fact, if it's a really violent crime, I'm OK with taking their gun and their hands.

Children’s lives are at stake. Since when do progressives pay more attention to "the political winds"? If health is a hot issue, why isn’t gun control on the liberal agenda?

Because my son's life was at stake, I made sure he knew exactly what my guns are capable of, and how to use them responsibly. There's no aspect of forbidden mystery about them, and he now finds his hoplophobic friends reactions to our gun cabinets amusing.

The answer, as we all know, is that on this issue, at least, liberals have decided to trade in principles for votes. "Gun control used to be one of those bread and butter issues" for liberals, Segura points out, "but in recent years...easing up on gun control has been critical" to politicians "courting voters in Western and Southwestern swing states...When the Clinton-era assault weapons ban passed expired three years back, few in Congress leaped to renew it. The results have been deadly: As the Brady Campaign's Paul Helmke points out: ‘One thing the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shooters had in common was that they both used high capacity ammunition magazines that would have been prohibited under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004.’"

Well actually, it only made the manufacture of new magazines holding more than ten cartridges illegal for sale to individuals. Government organizations could still order new ones; I suppose due to the overwhelming violent attacks against government employees that are so widespread these days......

Liberal silence on this issue is deafening. "At the very least," Segura observes, "it's an issue that's ripe for debate."

Putting the word silence after liberal defies reality.

So let’s have that debate here. Why do we need handguns?

Because a shotgun won't fit in a purse.

Some libertarians might say that, as individuals, we have a right to protect ourselves, our families and our homes. All I can say that I have lived in New York City for some twenty-two years. During part of that time, I lived alone with two small children in a neighborhood that, when I first moved here, was considered only marginally "safe." At night, I sometimes find myself alone on a dark street, waiting for a cab. But I’ve never wished I had a gun.

"I haven't had anything bad happen to me. You must have done something wrong if something happened to you."

My feeling is that anyone fearless enough (or high enough) to break in, or try to mug me on the street could easily take the gun away from me—and then turn it on me.

The whole point of a gun is the ability to inflict damage from a distance. That's why people who could normally do lots of very unpleasant things to smaller, weaker people prefer victims without weapons. If you're not willing to fight for your or others well-being, your best hope is to keep within a large number of easy victims and play the odds. I'll pass on that strategy. It's morally repugnant.

It turns out that there are statistics to back up my surmise. Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance than to kill an intruder, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. As for what’s happening on the streets, Foer quotes the FBI: "For every justifiable handgun homicide, there are more than 50 handgun murders. The expanding right to carry concealed guns make us even less safe."

See Cogito Ergo Geek for the answer to the "43 times" fallacy. And consider this: how many times have handguns dissuaded a violent act without resulting in the death of the potential attacker? Somehow I don't see you being happier if the ratio where 1:1.

Of course, those who fight gun control like to talk about the Constitution. The right to own a gun, they say, is a sacred part of our history. But if you remember, what the amendment actually says is that "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." If you think that, in 2008, we need armed local militias roaming the countryside, raise your hand.

Thankfully we don't at the moment. Although they were needed during Katrina, the Los Angeles riots, and other sundry incidents in the recent past where the government was unable or unwilling to protect the lives and properties of citizens. Oops, forgot. It would be nice to have organized militia augment the border patrol. I'd think if one officer per who knows how many miles of border is good, dividing it up among more people is even better.

What about hunters? They need guns in order to enjoy their sport. Here Foer asks, "Let's just assume, for a moment, that hunting is good. Really, really good. (It must be, if militias and self-defense don't explain guns.) How many of the nearly 3,000 children who are killed by firearms in the United States each year does the good of hunting justify? All of them? A handful? How many of the students and faculty at Virginia Tech? And what's so good about hunting, anyway?"

Actually, you don't need guns to hunt. Native Americans did a fine job of killing buffalo and bear with stone age technology spears and arrows. And that should give a lot of the "if they'd get rid of those nuts with their military/hand guns, there wouldn't be a problem" crowd pause. Of the "3000" children, I again refer to C.E.G.'s fine article. And if you want to know what's good about hunting, ask your state Dept. of Wildlife. If you're willing to listen, you'll learn some things that don't come out of an animated Disney film about wildlife management, tax revenues, and conservation.

Foer is violently opposed to hunting. I’m not. It’s not a sport that interests me, but I have known seemingly rational men who enjoyed hunting. None of them hunt with a handgun, however---or with an automatic weapon. All I ask is that people who buy a hunting rifle register--and provide some sort of proof that they really do plan to hunt with it. A hunting license would be a good start.

"Seeming rational". No condescension there. We would be rational, if we just didn't have the undercurrent of blood lust. Especially those of us who do hunt with handguns. Not because it takes more patience and skill. No, it's getting close enough to smell the fear. Yeah, that's it.

Finally, I’m not convinced by the argument that liberals couldn’t be elected if they stood up to the NRA. Take a close look at "The Real History of Guns and the 2000 Election" and you’ll find a pretty persuasive argument that Gore made a mistake when he decided to follow the advice of his "brain trust" and duck the gun issue-"losing the ability to attack Bush for signing the law that allowed handguns to be carried in churches, nursing homes and amusement parks."

Because no one ever goes to places with a lot of unarmed people planning to kill as many as possible.

Talk about an easy target. But this is what liberals do all too often. They back away from an issue, even when common sense tells them that they’re right—and instead of leading, they pander to the tiny minority of voters who really believe that having handguns in our churches make us safer.

This would be the same common sense that dictates the sun rotates around the earth, as we can see it change position during the day. Also, the earth is flat.

With a tip of the hat to Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority, who also points out how acting like an ignorant ass will succeed in convincing people that one is an ignorant ass. If you can't rise above prepubescent name-calling, please help out by not speaking up.

Sunday Ugly Gun

Folk Art is best kept to old saw blades, barn boards, & woodshop knick-knacks.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Geek Fisking

Jerry The Geek over at Cogito Ergo Geek has an excellent article up on the oft-stated "Gun Owners 43 Times More Likely To Be Shot With Their Own Gun" myth. If you've ever wanted to point out a fine example of how to fit results to a predetermined outcome in a biased researcher, you won't get a much better example than his.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Difference In The Dead

is in the culture of those doing the killing. As far as I can tell, most of the Palestinian non-combatants killed by the Israelis are due to their being in the immediate area of armed people who are, have, or will soon be doing their best to indiscriminately kill some Israelis. On the other hand, the majority of Israeli civilian casualties tend to be where there are few if any military personnel. And as far as I can recall, I don't remember seeing any scenes of streets full of Israeli's firing guns to celebrate when their forces have caused casualties to unarmed Palestinians.

Keep holding on to the hate guys; it's really helped you out this far.

And Now For Something Completely Different....

I'm speechless.

I Feel Pretty......

Entered a group bet during platoon PT (physical training) today. Conditions of the bet: Make a basket from the half-court line. Last two men to not make a basket get a all-expense paid trip to the local version of "Glamour Shots" at the PX. Together. In the same picture. With one guy wearing a wig.

I lost big time on this one.

I wonder what sizes wigs come in?

Sunday, March 2, 2008

I'm Sure Everything Will Be Fine....

UC Berkeley seeks partnership with Saudi school

A campus faculty leader said some professors in Berkeley's mechanical engineering department -- which would provide consultation to the Saudi school -- had "huge" concerns about the agreement, particularly about academic freedom and gender and religious discrimination.

Come on, guys, have a little faith; it's not like they're a bunch of Republicans.

Oops, spoke too soon.

When you have a host country that practices this
and a university that tolerates, if not encourages, that (NSFW)why wouldn't they be able to sort those minor cultural differences out just fine? Everybody appreciates diversity and tolerance (except those redneck, backwoods, neo-fascist American right-wingers).

I Want To Be Posted Here.....

FORT BENNING, Ga. — Maj. Bobby Toon is known as the Pig Czar at the huge army post on Georgia’s western edge.
He has been assigned to help rid Fort Benning of its unwanted guests: an estimated 6,000 feral pigs that roam the 184,000-acre installation.

Hey, I'm active duty now, and I've got a little leave time built up, plus a Ruger Redhawk that has only punched holes in paper since I received it. It would be a bit of a personal burden, but I'm all about helping out fellow soldiers and saving cuddly forest critters that serve as snacks for the dirty swine. Also, I loves me some pulled pork.......

Hell Lite

While still waiting to deploy OCONUS (overseas), I'm on what's euphemistically called "training status". Which, since the unit has completed all the required tasks to actually deploy, means entertaining myself. However, being half a continent away from home, options are limited, as the following are either outright forbidden:
Rental vehicles
Personal firearms

Or only allowed when specifically noted:

Civilian clothing
Leaving the post
Individual thought

Which gives me a serious case of envy as I watch the local permanent party troops buying beer, riding motorcycles, and listen to the sound of the pistol ranges while stuck here in the mold-infested WWII barracks (seen below in 1943):
Which really went down hill in the '50s:
They actually look better now, but there's six decades of mold underneath them. You couldn't pay me to crawl under one these buildings now, even if they did get rid of the feral cats living under all of them.

Ugly Gun Sunday

I wasn't able to make out any of the markings on this, but the seller stated this is a curio and relic. He also stated that the new finish is dura-coat, although it looks a lot like gray gloss krylon to me. Hopefully this was a cheap beater before the "improvements" were made.