Damn, a British tribunal with intelligence and honor!

I took note here of the utter bullshit being used to refuse entry of Gurkha veterans of British military service to Britain for medical treatment. Well, thanks to Theo I found this:
Two thousand Gurkha veterans should be allowed to live in Britain because their heroic service demonstrates the "strongest ties" to this country, a tribunal heard today.
...
Since the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, Gurkhas are almost automatically entitled to live in Britain after completing at least four years of service - even if it was "just polishing boots in the barracks".

But those who retired before that date have to rely on the discretion of the British entry clearance officer and the diplomatic service procedure.

This states that only those who can demonstrate "strong ties" are allowed residency - and a distinguished Army career is not always sufficient.

Assuming you, as Kim puts it, remove breakables from reach first, I'd really recommend you read what kind of service the God-cursed bureaucrats consider 'not sufficient' to allow them entry to Britain for medical treatment, for God's sake.

Mind you, these are the same jackasses that will let any islamist nutcase who shows up illegally stay, even after they threaten to/plan to/assist in attempts to blow the damn country up.

We need another bumper sticker: Lamppost, rope, bureaucrat...

Well, that was interesting

Went to the range yesterday afternoon, both for some general stress relief and to start testing something(more on that later). I was shooting my M1 Carbine when something bumped off my left hand and fell to the shelf. Picked it up, what the hell... BLEEP! That's my extractor plunger! Look at the bolt, and the bleeping extractor is gone.

If you're not familiar with the bolt on these, the firing pin, ejector & spring and extractor spring and plunger all fit into the bolt, then(and it's a pain in the ass without one) you use the bolt tool to push the ejector back into the bolt and push the extractor spring & plunger back into their recess, slide the firing pin in and then push the extractor into place; sounds a lot more complicated than it is. The extractor locks everything else in, so if it breaks or comes out...

Happily, I found the extractor, only bounced about two feet away and appears undamaged, and everything went back together properly. I've heard of this happening, but this is the first time I've seen it with a carbine. One day at another range I saw this happen to a M1A: first time to the range, about the fifth round of factory ammo. I was firing a mix of Amerc ball(yeah, it's pretty crappy, I wanted to finish off the last bit of it) and some handloads with LC brass and Remington softpoint bullets.

Other than that, nice time at the boom-room. Ran into a man and woman(husband and wife for boyfriend-girlfriend, never did think to ask) who were having some difficulty: they'd rented a AR15 to try out, first time for that rifle with him and for her, the first time she'd ever been to a range. The rifle itself didn't bother her once she'd fired her first shot, but the noise really freaked her out at first. By the time I left she'd calmed down some on that and seemed to like shooting, so I recommended a couple of things, the big one(for an indoor range) being earplugs and muffs. They were planning to come back Saturday, I made a couple of suggestions. I think she'll turn into a shooter.

By the way, why is it that all the good-looking women you meet at the range are already either married or seeing someone? Dammit.

It's confirmed: I won't be browsing through eBay anymore

Fast response, at least. Got this this afternoon:
"Thank you for your recent email to Matt Halprin in regard to changes to our Firearms, Weapons and Knives policy. He has asked that I review your email and respond on his behalf.

At eBay we take the safety of our community and our marketplace very seriously. We have a Trust and Safety team which consists of more than 2,000 experts in online security and safety who are located around the globe. This team is dedicated to ensuring that our marketplace is a safe and trusted place for buyers and sellers to engage in trade.

We value an open and transparent marketplace; if items are legal to buy and sell in an unrestricted manner we allow them on our site. However, there are some items that while legal, may not be safe for our marketplace. In these instances, our applicable policies go beyond the
law to ensure that our marketplace is safe.

Currently we do not allow actual firearms on the site. After careful consideration our executives and our Trust and Safety team determined that any item required to fire a gun has no place on eBay. All of our policies are under constant review. As the Internet and the way our communities use the Internet evolves, our policies and our marketplace must evolve with it. We determined that this policy change was in the best interest of promoting a safe marketplace for all members."

Don't you just love that? "..promoting a safe marketplace for all members."

Now I need to hit the site one last time, to see if there's a way to delete the account.

If true, won't be buying from eBay or Half.Com anymore

Got a sale flyer from J&G today, and it included this:
Also, for years gun enthusiasts have bought and sold gun parts on eBay, J&G included. However eBay has announced that starting mid-August they will no longer allow gun parts to be sold through their website. We encourage you to contact Matt Halpin of eBay who is responsible for this decision at mhalprin@eBay.com. Please be respectful and considerate in your messages. Ask them to review this decision since it goes far beyond any state or federal laws.

I just sent an e-mail to ask if true, and if so, why? If true, hell with it, I'll stop using eBay and Half.com altogether; if they're more concerned with being politically correct and sensitive(which is what it would boil down to, whatever else they say) than with my business, to hell with them.

Found some pictures of a couple of knives

and, having had access to a scanner for a bit, scanned them and decided to post a couple.

This is one of the fanciest pieces I ever made. The blade is O1 tool steel, blade itself about eight inches long. The grip is curly maple stained dark, with spiral grooves carved in and twisted copper wire inlaid in the raised section between the grooves, about five inches long as I remember. Fittings are copper.

















The sheath was made of maple, also stained, with a leather collar around the mouth. You can't see it, but there was a belt hook on the back.

This is one of the pieces I took the time to do a mirror-polish on. Came out pretty nice.

Why Ahmadogcrap of Iran was so worried about squirrels

What do you think, .17M2?

Thanks to Theo

Putting pieces together

Eric at Classical Values has this post on digging out details of a possible murder in Philadelphia, which ends up with:
OK, if we play detective by piecing the three stories together, the following becomes the factual scenario:

Jason Brewer was murdered;

in a robbery;

at a residence;

where he did not live;

where his companion was also wounded during the same robbery;

As a whodunit, doesn't this just cry out for more detail?

I'd tend to think so. For instance, who was robbing who? And was this murder, or bad guy being shot by intended victim?

Down toward the end he leads us to this article, basically on the subject of 'nasty suburban(white) people don't care about black people in the city dying. Except for a few saints. Think I'm kidding?
Whenever I write about Philadelphia's homicide crisis, I hear from suburban readers who think it's a waste of space.

Poor black people killing poor black people, thugs shooting thugs - why should we cry?

Having informed us that people in the suburbs(apparently all white, no blacks/latinos/whatever need apply) don't care about those nasty minority types in the city dying, she brings out her saint:
The Jenkintown graphic designer is obsessed with the death toll - already over 200 - even though the bullets aren't flying anywhere near the home and family he holds dear.
and goes from there.

This is one of the people Alphecca noted had fits over "...Philly-based Urban Outfitters for selling $6 handgun Christmas ornaments in a city ravaged by bullets." Who's now got a poster- made with police department help- to find sponsors for.

It's really fairly standard crap: white people don't care about black people dying, guns are evil, we need more laws, etc. Major Media at its finest.

What's more important? The matter at hand, or the time on stage?

What I've been thinking about is the attitude and thoughts of some of the activist types who do things like threaten the careers- and sometimes lives- of researchers who refuse to follow the 'consensus science' point of view, and the animal rights activists(to use a polite term) who do things like this. I'm not going into the 'a rat is a dog is a cat is a boy' crap of the extremists; they've got a severe mental problem and that's a whole 'nother thing.

I'm thinking of what someone wrote a couple of years ago about terrorism, and how for some of the bad guys it's 'terrorism as theater': something that, even when they know it'll not have the result they want and may even cause very bad things to happen(think WTC attack = special ops troops whacking Taliban) they have to do it anyway because that's what their image demands. Whether it actually accomplishes what they want doesn't matter, it allows them to see themselves as fearsome soldiers of Allah and that's what really matters.

I think that, to a lot of these people- the activists- it doesn't really, in their heart, matter if they actually change someone's mind; they want to
A. Get up in front of everyone and make a spectacle and
B. Force other people to do what they want. They don't care if you actually believe or agree with them, they don't care what the facts(any fact that doesn't agree with what they want is either wrong or simply to be disregarded) are; it's "I'm one of the superior beings, I think this is right, and you will do what I want."

Both are connected, but in some(maybe many) cases, I think A is more important.

Read that passage at Classical Values. This clown specifically sets out to be as offensive as possible, as threatening as possible*, as disruptive as possible without going to far as to be arrested. He dares people to beat him up, and- because they're civil, and not so stupid as to do it- he acts like he's actually braved danger. This jerk may actually care about the deer, but far more important than that is the theater, his theater. He has, in his mind, become the most important actor in that room and that's what really matters.

I'm wondering if this would explain some of the "Ban the evil guns!" activists. I have no doubt some are totally sincere, they've decided these objects are responsible for many ills and all we have to do is pass 'one more law'(Kevin's 'magical thinking') and All Will Be Well. But a good many of them seem to care at least as much about being in front of a crowd(preferably involving lots of cameras) and being seen as a Truly Caring Person as they do about actually accomplishing something.

No, that's not quite right. They DO accomplish something: they play their part in their theater. They have their time on stage and are seen in the manner they prefer. And if they actually do help to gain more control over other people's lives(for everybody's own good of course, and For The Children), that's a standing ovation and bouquet of roses for a fine performance.

Need I even speak of politicians?

Makes you wonder, just how much nanny-state bullshit is based, down inside, on someone playing out their self-made part on stage?

Some more general stuff

These globular warmering people are getting more unhinged:
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency says he will investigate a threatening letter sent by the leader of an EPA-member group, vowing to "destroy" the career of a climate skeptic.
...
"It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar," Mr. Eckhart wrote. "If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on."

Nice, reasoned discourse. Consensus 'science'. Just bloody wonderful.

A Canadian doctor talks about socialized medicine:
Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.

Yeah, Hillary, we really, really want to be just like Canada. And Britain and Europe:
Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled — 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren't available. And so on.

And the arrogant, bullying stupidity of the bambiists:
"Today, I am not asking you to stop killing the deer, I am TELLING you to stop killing deer. There will be no more deer-killings at our metro-parks. It is off limits to you and your hunting buddies. If the HCMA continues on its bloody path, then I will execute justice the way I see fit ... and that means constructing a rogue, independent, deer-police unit to protect them from you. KAPISH!"

Hopefully, tomorrow will have a bit more time to actually write. Something I've been thinking about. So you have been warned.