Choices

Came into the possession of a little bit of extra change thanks to an award I received at Dining Out tonight. I am probably planning on purchasing guns and/or ammo with the money (surprise, surprise.) As usual, I'm leaning towards guns as the supply of particular surplus guns tends to eventually dry up permanently (excepting resale by private parties, of course) whereas ammunition will almost always be produced in any given cartridge, it's just a matter of price going up with time. Given my prioritization of collection (not that I'm not a shooter, just that I really like the collection side of things), I'm pretty set on purchasing firearms. I've narrowed my options down to three, with a subsequent choice in the first option.

Option one is to purchase either a Yugo M24/47 or Czech vz-24 Mauser and also purchase an M1895 Nagant revolver. Right now I'm leaning towards the M24/47 if I choose this option simply because it's in better condition for the same price. Owning the Czech gun would be fun, but not enough to justify buying a lower quality gun for the same price. The revolver is because it's a historical unique design (the cylinder moves forward when the gun is cocked) that can be had for $80. Besides, I need at least ONE revolver.

Option two is to purchase just a Yugo SKS. The Yugo SKSs are fairly good quality, but they've got two differences from most other SKSs, one of which is a definite negative the other of which I'm not sure about. The first is that Yugo SKSs are the only SKSs that don't have a chrome lined barrel. This is obviously a negative. The second is that Yugo SKSs have a grenade launcher affixed to the end of the barrel. A cool feature, but not sure if I want all that extra weight at the end of the barrel. Both this option and the first option would cost about the same ($275 or so altogether).

Option three would be to get a red dot optic for my AR (an Aimpoint CompM3 or M4 seems the most likely at the moment). On the downside this would be considerably more expensive (more to the tune of ~$400 as well as another ~$100 for a mount) but I do REALLY want a quality red dot for my AR.

Other random things I need to purchase are a few boxes of 8x56R ammo, a case of Czech light ball 7.62x54R, a case or two of 5.56 (preferably M855 spec ammo), as much GP11 as I can get my hands on (got 240 rounds in the mail, could use another thousand), and some wooden grips for my vz-82.

However, at the moment I'm leaning towards the M24/47 and M1895 combo. The red dot isn't really a realistic option due to my firm belief in the need to buy quality (which is why I don't feel bad about spending $17 a piece on AR mags from Brownells). Unfortunately the cost of buying quality makes it a little hard to justify at this moment. If I can't buy quality, I'd rather just wait. The SKS is attractive, but I'm not entirely sure I want a Yugo SKS for the reasons listed above (grenade launcher and lack of chrome lined barrel). It's unlikely that SKSs will dry up any time soon, even if the supply of imported ones goes away, due to the large amount in circulation.

Bottom line is that I "need" (really want) a Mauser. Given this desire and my penchant for picking up unusual mil-surp firearms available for fairly cheap (see my random purchase of the Steyr M95) the M 24/47 and M1895 Nagant option seems the best fit. However, feel free to talk me out of it or into something else.

What a Moran

Seriously, is Eric Holder dumb or just plain stupid?

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

Our illustrious Attorney General is apparently so stupid he can't even remember 15 years into the past. Ask Bill Clinton how well the '94 ban went over. Even better, ask the Democrats in Congress at the time how well it went over. Wayne LaPierre has it right:

In a brief interview with ABC News, Wayne LaPierre, president of the National Rifle Association, said, "I think there are a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill cringing at Eric Holder's comments right now."

In any case, I am glad I now possess a EBR with a collapsible stock, bayonet lug, pistol grip, and flash suppressor, as well as several "high-capacity" magazines. All of these features make the gun that much more deadly in my hands when I inevitably snap and start killing people. Of course, the OTHER EIGHT FIREARMS I own are not nearly as deadly and are thus okay for a serf like me to possess.

And by the way, ABC News, a clip is something used to load an internal magazine. Every gun banned by the '94 AWB uses an EXTERNAL MAGAZINE, which is what your dumb ass is referring to when you say "clip." Put down the Ahnold film and actually do some fucking research. We're not talking about rocket science here, but then again, we're also talking about journalists. I should just be glad they included the phrase "semi-automatic" instead of implying that the ban is on full-auto rock 'n' roll guns like they usually do.

Mid Week Rock

Given the rant on my previous post, seemed necessary to have some Rush this week:



Probably the best example of a non punk major band that has a libertarian message in some of their music.

The Presidential Address

I didn't watch it (had better things to do with my time, like watch South Park while pretending to do homework) but I heard it went something like this:



Seriously, halve the deficit by 2013? The war in Iraq might be expensive, but it's not THAT expensive. I see a month in office hasn't stopped his campaign habit of making promises that he knows (along with all the adults in the room) he can't keep. I'm at the point where I don't even care anymore...thanks to policies started under the last few years of Bush and that will only be expanded under Obama, the country is fucked. The best case scenario ends with several years (a decade or more, at least) of economic and social mediocrity, thanks to creating a whole new class of citizen who lives in a post moral hazard America, suckling at the government teat.

South Park Monday

This is all the funnier because my French professor has used the "telephone" as a teaching tool in class.

The Lonely Island

This is some pretty funny shit:



Shades of Gunther but much heavier on the sarcasm. Yet more proof that Samberg is pretty much the only funny thing to come out of SNL the past 5 years.

Reminder

Taking Chance is on tonight at 1900 CST. Unfortunately it doesn't appear that I'll be able to watch it as I'm a poor college student as are all of my friends, so none of us have access to HBO. Still, if you've got the opportunity I highly recommend it.

Quote of the Day

"Perhaps race relations would improve, Lester said, if black people lightened up a bit: "They're not too good (at being) made fun of. We can all take a joke.""

From this story about editorial cartoonists discussing the problem of drawing caricatures of Obama. I think there's a clarification that needs to be made in the quote: "...if black people WHO AGREE WITH AL SHARPTON lightened up a bit..."

h/t: Radley Balko

Conan's last show

In honor of Conan O'Brien's last show on Late Night...



I can remember watching this bit when it first aired...just as funny now as it was then.

Mid Week Rock

Some Freddie for your Wednesday...

Beer

Your result for The If You Were A Beer Test...

Guinness

(100% dark & bitter, 67% working class, 100% genuine)

Okay, we all know Guinness is the best possible score on any "What Kind Of Beer Are You" test, so you can just go on and pat yourself on the back now. Like the world's most famous brew, you're genuine, you've got good taste, and you're sophisticated. What else can I say, except congratulations?


If your friends didn't score the same way, get ready for them to say: Guinness is too heavy; it's an acquired taste; it's too serious--and they probably think those things about you at times. But just brush 'em off. Everybody knows Guinness is the best. Cheers.

Take The If You Were A Beer Test at HelloQuizzy

Sounds good to me.

h/t: Lex

Programming Note

Looking at the TCM schedule for the remainder of the month and a few movies caught my eye...

This Wednesday I have the choice of either watching this at 2100 (CST)



Or going to bed early/waking up early and watching this at 0300 (CST)



At the moment I'm leaning towards waking up early, but we'll see.

And then on Friday at 0930 (CST) there's this



If you haven't yet seen it you really should make time.

South Park Monday

Had to do something aviation related as apparently someone (who may or may not have been an AFROTC Cadet) was flying a remote controlled airplane around the Armory tonight and pissing off the hippies. I might have a little more sympathy if they didn't insist on building a house in the Armory every Sunday night...



UPDATE: I can indeed confirm that there was an r/c airplane being flown around the Armory, as I may or may not have buzzed a few of the hippies with it. We even thought ahead to maintain plausible deniability...the aircraft is modeled on one of those inferior Navy/Marine Corps short legged plastic bugs. The designers of the model also accurately modeled the type's poor performance and difficulty to fly by only allowing control along the yaw axis (although ironically enough, it actually does have fairly good high alpha control, just like the real Bug).

Knowing enough to be dangerous

...is usually the worst level of knowledge: enough to think you know what you're doing but usually missing some key piece of information. I demonstrated this tonight when cleaning the cosmo off of my Steyr M95 (spare me the psychoanalysis of cleaning guns alone on Valentine's Day). Anyway, my gun is absolutely CAKED in the stuff, so I bust out the mineral spirits for the small metal parts and get a heat gun for the furniture and larger metal parts (barrel/receiver). Unfortunately, I hit a snag early when the front barrel band won't come off. This is the very first step in disassembling an M95, so we've got a problem. Three hours later, it's finally off (dried and hardened cosmo acted like superglue). Llike I said, everything is absolutely coated in cosmo, so I start giving the barrel/receiver the business with the heat gun. The cosmo is coming off nicely until I realize that there is some smoke in the air, just a few wisps. Shut off the heat gun, wipe off the gun, everything seems fine. Check the heat gun settings...low is 750 F and high is 1000 F. That's considerably higher than I thought. Oops. Cosmo MELTS around 120 F and has a flashpoint of 365 F...that might explain the smoke.

Diversity

The Navy seems to be having some more issues with "diversity"...here's one of my favorite takes on that horrible word:

6th SOS Pic o' the Day

source (Click for high-res)

Going along with that, here's a pretty good article on the USAF and FID.

Mid Week Rock

The hippies actually had some good music playing at the Armory tonight...Layla, Dylan's Hurricane, and then this:

South Park Monday

Needed to do something referencing the homeless since my truck currently looks like a hobo is living out of it. The AFROTC Regional/CC is coming to visit Tuesday and there's a ton of random crap from around the Det that needed a temporary home out of the way that he wouldn't see. That home happened to be the bed and/or passenger seat of my truck.



Since V-Day is coming up, here's an extra vid...



Yeah...you like that? Yeah...

More on Taking Chance

An interview/conversation between Kevin Bacon and the Marine he plays in the movie, Lt. Col. Strobl:

Me - 1 Gun Grabbers - 0

Well, I suppose the closet full of C&R mil-surps would beg to differ with the "1" notation, but in any case, I now have in my possession a Superior Arms mid-length S-15 (their version of the AR-15). 16'' bbl, 6 position telescoping stock, also got 2 3o round mags (one Colt, one Brownells, got another 2 on the way from Brownells).

In other gun news, in the past few weeks I've taken possession of a Swiss K-31 with EXTREMELY rough wood but pristine metal and a brand new bore, a Hungarian Steyr M95 Carbine with a few small cracks in the wood in front of the receiver but gorgeous wood on the butt, and a Mosin Nagant M91/30 hex receiver with a nice surprise: brass inlays on the metal at the front and rear of the handguard. I might have a problem, but my logic is that I'm not going to buy hardly any ammo for any of these guns until I've got more money. In effect, the ammo for a few of my earlier purchased guns has been deferred in order to buy more guns. Heck, in the case of two of the guns I'd like to buy ammo for (the AR and M-1 Carbine) ammo is almost impossible to find, and that which is available is through the roof on price so I'm probably saving myself money in the long run by buying guns instead...minus the additional ammo costs from buying more guns.

Owww...my head hurts...

One suspects that these might be the human equivalents of the Dodo...setting aside personal religious beliefs, the real irony here is that a belief that a higher power created everything IS NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH EVOLUTION. Treating them as mutually incompatible identifies you as the fundamentalist idiot you are.

h/t: Radley Balko. Make sure to check out the "Ex-Masturbator" t-shirts.

Mid Week Rock

We get letters...

It would appear that the letter to the Daily I wrote (linked in the hippie post below) got a bit of a response, at least from an ISU alum. Got the following email tonight from the email address idiosynchronic@gmail.com:

Awww . . . poor baby. You never ask, I notice, if the Design students enjoy the frickin' Armory. Too bad you'll no longer be at ISU when they finish their nice big studio space and finally leave you whiners to your own damn facility. About frickin' time, IMO. I hated that damn studio and your mil sci passive aggressiveness.

-id.

Oh, what's that? You were finished? Well, then allow me to retort...

I just assumed, given the pristine condition the design students keep their studios in, that they love the Armory. /sarcasm. In fact, they keep it in such fine condition that the ROTC units were ready to demand that the University put some sort of a covering over their studios so visitors to our units wouldn't be put off by the absolute shit hole that the studios are. I understand that it's a working space, but apparently taking a little pride in your public appearance is too much to ask. (Given the personal appearance of many of them, I can't say I'm surprised.) Also should note that not only do the design students feel the need to keep their part of the Armory a pig sty, but they take the liberty of using (and trashing) space ROTC pays for as well.

I can see why he would call us whiners, though. We get SOOOO much support from the University compared to your sorry selves.

Oh, and for the record? This time when you design the facility try not to fuck it up like you did the Design Building...

South Park Monday

Because apparently every fucking hippie is in the Armory tonight making as much goddamned noise as they can. Seriously, it sounds like there's a house being built in here. The best part is that since they're worthless design students, all they'll have to show for it is a few pieces of foam taped to a piece of wood and, if they really push themselves, maybe some squiggles on a piece of paper. That will be the sum total of the massive project they've spent "all week" working on...in between the movie breaks, TV breaks, music breaks, frisbee breaks, and brushing their teeth in the Armory restroom breaks because they're dirty hippies that don't have an apartment to live in and who wouldn't take a shower in it even if they did.

Did I mention I REALLY hate design students?

On the topic of design students, here's a link to a letter I sent in to the Daily regarding a design student's column bitching about the College of Design taking away some of their facilities. It was basically a polite way of saying "too the fuck bad, your shitty College has taken away facilities from the ROTC units for going on two decades."