Had a chance to shoot one of these a few days ago

Yes, like the one an Eastwood character carried.  It's made by Cimarron in .38 Special.

How'd it shoot?  Very well.  If you look closely at the top rear of the barrel you'll see a small sight dovetailed in, and it works quite nicely with that front brass to put shots on the target.

The one distraction is that, with no topstrap, some of the flash from the barrel/cylinder gap is vertical, and in a not-very-bright range it definitely got your attention.

No, I do not need another .38.  I want one anyway.

Well, hell, with crap like this coming to light

why WOULD you trust the system?
A Texas man is battling a court order that mandates he must pay tens of thousands in child support for a child whom he did not biologically father and whom he met only once.
This is utter bullshit.  And the woman should be prosecuted for fraud.  Or perjury.  Possibly both.


From the Dark and Fascist State of New Jersey.  With a side note from the People's Republic of Californicated.

New Jersey will consider allowing law enforcement officials to access the state's prescription drug monitoring database without a court order. 

The legislation, which was introduced Tuesday, is meant to combat the opioid crisis, but brings up questions of patient rights to privacy versus the government's ability to investigate so-called doctor shopping.

"Privacy?  What is this word, and why do you want people to die?"  etc.
In California, the Supreme Court ruled recently that the state Medical Board can dig through prescription drug records without a warrant or subpoena.
"Because we're saving you from yourselves, filthy peasants."

Remember those Democrat tech people

caught in shady doings?
Shortly after the criminal probe was revealed in February, Imran abruptly moved out of his longtime home on Hawkshead Drive in Lorton, Va., and listed it for rent on a website that connects landlords with military families.
One of the new tenants — a Marine Corps veteran married to a female Navy Officer — said he found “wireless routers, hard drives that look like they tried to destroy, laptops, [and] a lot of brand new expensive toner.”

The tenants called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and, not long after, FBI agents arrived together with the Capitol Police to interview them and confiscate the equipment.
My, isn't that interesting?

Then throw in
Wasserman Schultz has demanded return of a laptop seized by the Capitol Police because it was purportedly used by Imran and was found hidden in a vacant office. The Florida Democrat used a Capitol Police budget hearing to threaten “consequences” for them if the laptop wasn’t returned. 

On Thursday it was reported that police have not examined its contents because of the invocation of the Constitution’s “Speech and Debate clause,” and after months of refusal, her lawyer is now “negotiating” access to the data on yet-to-be-determined terms.
Wasserman Schultz is in this up to her hairline, and has to be seriously worried to try this 'speech and debate' crap. 

You may have heard that in Minneapolis a cop killed a woman in great error

(to say the least).  With more coming out, looks like two things may be true:
This clown should never have been allowed to wear a badge, 
and
He's an idiot.

Example:
The officer, who is now suspended form the Minneapolis P.D., feels he has been 'thrown under the bus' by his Minneapolis police colleagues, the friend said. 

'He is aware that they normally come together at times like this and support each other with slogans like 'Blue Lives Matter'. 

 'But in this situation he has realized he is probably alone with his legal team and Somali police colleagues.
Speaking out of my ass here, but this sounds like he expected, based on usual behavior, that the other cops would have his back no matter what, and that them not doing so is based on his ethnic background, not his conduct.  Or whether he should've been there at all.  Hopping out in public with this crap sounds like setting up the 'It's all because RACISM!!' defense.

Since the victim was Australian, there's lots of yelling from there(appropriately), including bitching about guns in the US(No mention as to whether they plan on disarming their cops).  There's also the complications for the Usual Narrative people:
In both Oz and the US, the next stage of the story would be cherchez le cop - lots of reports of a redneck officer with a hair-trigger temper and various personal issues.

But there's a complicating factor. It's so complicating that The Washington Post finds itself running a 1,200-word story on the death of Justine Damond without a word about the copper who shot her - nothing about his background, record, habits, behavior. Not even his name.

Because his name is Mohamed Noor. As Tucker Carlson pointed out on Fox News the other night, the reason you know the officer's identity is significant is because the Post went to all that trouble not to mention it.

So: we've got a city run by politicians who seem to have their head so far up the 'PC at any cost' ass that they've lost even more brain cells due to oxygen deprivation, where there've been problems for years with immigrants who don't want to become American, and now this. 

'Messy' it is already, we'll see what comes next.

Saturday evening, still hot and humid

so if you don't have somewhere to go, stay cool indoors.  Data to check over.

About that brass processing,

since I got the Lyman rotary tumbler here's what I do:
Get home, throw the brass into the old vibratory tumbler to clean powder residue and such.  Picked-up cases are sorted and run through separately.

Bottleneck cases such as .308 and .30-06 I lube and resize, then measure.  Any that require trimming are trimmed.  These are set aside until there's enough of them for a load in the rotary.

Straight-wall cases(.357 Mag, .45-70, .45 colt, etc.) are checked over.  Then, for most of them, I use a depriming die to punch out the primer, then set them aside until enough for the rotary.  They rarely need trimming; those that do get it now so they'll be ready to load.

Cases intended for general practice I take no special pains on.  Cases intended for serious shooting I sort by length, or pick a lot and trim them to exact length before loading.

That's my process.

Finally, some range notes

On Blackhorn 209:
Did some checking around, and decided to start with 33.0 grains under the 500-grain Lee bullet.  Three variations on this:
Resized cases*, wad under the bullet.
Resized cases, wad under bullet and about 1/4 sheet of toilet paper under that as filler,
Black powder cases, same filler.
All worked.  The group with resized cases and the filler grouped better than without filler; the black-prepped cases a bit better yet.  According to data gathered, I can safely increase the charge up to 35.0 grains**; that would eliminate the need(such as it is) for a filler, and I'm going to work up to it.

Velocity on those loads was very close to that given by the compressed charge of 2f black.  With, as noted a couple of days ago, no need to use a blow tube between shots, or wipe the bore every five-ten.  The wiping being a pain because you have to remove the tang sight so the cleaning rod can go in.

Some vertical stringing with some loads(couple of black and Blackhorn), which- until I can try them again- I'll have to blame on myself; the velocities were fairly consistent on the black, very on the Blackhorn, so almost certainly my fault.  If there were a simple way to put a scope on this rifle for load testing, I'd do it to eliminate such error as much as possible.

So that's the results on that.  Spent a little time after the shooting was done scrounging for brass, and I've got to finish processing that stuff.  And loading some other stuff.  And more .45-70 for next time.


*I only resize the first half-inch of the cases; that works the brass as little as necessary while providing consistent neck tension on bullets.
With cases intended for black, I don't resize at all; only flare the case mouth enough to allow the bullet to slide in cleanly.
Both of these work because the cases are being fired in one rifle, so don't have to worry about any chamber differences between different ones.

'Progressives'

After the scandal involving the ejection of Jewish women carrying Star of David pride flags at Chicago’s Dyke March on June 28, a sister organization in the city has announced that it will follow suit by banning “Zionist displays” from its upcoming protest against sexual violence and “rape culture.”

The ban was announced this week on social media by the organizers of SlutWalk Chicago — part of an international protest movement that “fights rape culture, victim blaming, and slut shaming.” The Chicago event is set to take place on August 12.
Wonder when they'll start issuing their more devoted members some snazzy armbands?


"But lying under oath and submitting false documents and violating borders is different when WE do it!"

From Madam Hoyt:

Enter Marx and his “scientific socialism.”  It wasn’t.  And frankly, anyone who looked into Marx -- who not only didn’t know science from a hole in the ground, and who had many of the things he wrote about already wrong as judged by his contemporary economists -- would have known it wasn’t scientific.

But people wanted to believe it was possible, all the more so after WWI turned Europe into an abattoir and planted doubts about Western civilization.

...

As all the attempts at communist (or to be fair even socialist, though the collapse there was slower) governance failed, and the horrors unfolded for all to see, all these “progressives” turned, with hatred and disgust not against the philosophy that destroyed formerly prosperous countries but against the entities who were, somehow, responsible for their dream not working: the US, Western civilization and, ultimately, humanity.

Scene from the range

A bit more blunt than what the guy actually said, but I think covers it:
"No, you can't shoot your new AR.  Because while it does have a rail, you didn't put any sights on it.  And you're not allowed to shoot something without sights.

Also, what drew our attention to this is that you were rapid-firing said rifle.  Which is strictly against the rules you read and signed off on.

Refund?  Because you're a dumbass who brought in a rifle with no sights?  Really?"

This is about the third time I've seen this.  One guy had a brand-new AR variant chambered in .30-06, and wanted to try it out.  WITHOUT SIGHTS.  What the hell are these people thinking?

It's Friday, and still hot outside

Therefore, stay inside and get to studying