So Boston has decided to follow the English pattern:

"Constitution? WE don't see a problem here."

Saw this at Instapundit, and then saw that MArooned had already taken note of it.
In the next two weeks, Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager's parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.(bold mine)

Oh, of COURSE they will. They'd NEVER think of pressuring the parents to let them in. Would they?
"Ma'am, you know if you don't let us look and something happens, you might be seen as responsible?"
"Is there some reason you don't want us to come in?"
Hell yes, they will. If not at first, soon.

I guess Boston liked Clinton's idea: that if you lived in public housing the authorities ought to be able to search for drugs or guns anytime, day or night, with no warrant. So they're working up to it slowly.

You know, this kind of crap pretty much clinches it: if somebody offered me a job in MA at big pay, I'd say "Hell no!" Having your rights and life trashed by a bunch of socialist politicians and their minions cannot be compensated for by money.

Range day, project pistol tryout

Did indeed make it out today, and put about 65 rounds through it. The polishing on the feed ramp worked, it digested 185-grain Gold Dots, both factory and handload, without a burp. The only problem in shooting was one failure to go into battery, and that was with a 200-grain flatnose load. I don't blame the pistol, I blame the magazine: this was the original, which is rather, ah, 'well-used' would be a polite term. Somehow the body has spread out a touch, you have to push harder to seat it and pull it all the way out of the mag well. Using a couple of Metalform 7-round mags for all the other shooting, no malfunctions at all.

I did notice one thing: if you didn't have the grip safety depressed ALL the way, you could feel the trigger bow dragging on it a touch at times. Why I didn't notice it before, I don't know. Did a small amount of file work and polishing on it, and that seems to be gone.

Overall, it worked as well as I could have hoped for. I am going to flare the bottom of the mag well a bit, and do a full trigger job. This being the first time I'd worked on the fire control group of one of these, when I followed the 'Poor Man's Trigger Job' instructions I went very lightly; it did indeed smooth things out and lighten them a bit, but now I need to hit it again and all the way, should make a big difference.

I just realized I forgot to take a picture of it before breaking it down, and right now it's on the table in pieces. I promise I'll remember in the near future.

Dead goblins and whining RWPP* clowns

This kind of crap, and these idiots, are why we have the racial problems we do.

Short version: three goblins break into a home at 4a.m. and attack the people there, beating one so badly he'll be in a rehab center for the rest of his life. Homeowner opens fire and kills two, the third got away(dammit).

Third is caught and charged, and since he's black and the people the goblins attacked are white, why, it's "Racism!" behind his being charged.

This from the surviving goblins female parent sums up the bullshit:
Hughes' mother, San Francisco schoolteacher Judy Hughes, said she believes the group didn't intend to rob the family, just buy marijuana. She called the case against her son a "legal lynching."

"Only God knows what happened in that house," she said. "But this I know: My son did not murder his childhood friends."

This is why the public education system is so far in the toilet: idiot teachers like this one. Oh no, they just wanted to buy some grass. So they broke in and attacked people and damn near beat one to death. Yeah, sounds like customers looking for service, all right. Effing idiot.

Mrs. Hughes, your son and his 'childhood friends' decided that what someone else owned was worth more than those peoples' lives: when they acted on that, they opened themselves up to whatever was necessary to stop them. And they- and damn sure not you and your whining associates- have no right whatever to bitch because they were hit with more resistance than they expected. Your son and his friends are('were' in the case of the friends) vile, disgusting predators, and the sheepdog nailed them. You need to deal with the facts of what your son is, and what he's been doing, and stop blaming other people.

Ever consider that always blaming someone else may have something to do with what happened, by the way?


*Race Warlord Poverty Pimp. Borrowed that from Denny.

1911 Project Gun

Some months ago I picked up a Sistema Model 1927, one of the Argentine 1911A1 pistols. This one had the usual badly worn bore and finish, and had one other 'feature': the numbers on the frame and slide did not match. The shop where I bought it had received a bunch(probably one of the last lots we'll ever see) and, of course, there were some with problems. So he'd taken the good slides and frames and put them together. They were checked thoroughly- I trust the people on this- for fit and operation. And, since it's mismatched, which kind of ruins any collector value, I'm using it for a project gun.

First thing was to detail-strip it and check everything. I will be replacing all the springs, for now just the sear/safety spring as I had one available. Next, strip off the old finish. Such as it was. That was done with 220-grit wet/dry paper, used wet with a backing piece. Cleaned and smoothed things out considerably. I'm going to leave it at this until everything is done, then I'll either blue it or parkerize it. Although, as it seems to be holding up quite well on my Kimber, I could use the moly-resin.

Down the road I'll probably have a dovetail cut in the slide for a new front sight, for now I decided to try making a new front using the original hole(gee, thanks for that idea, Og). If you're not familiar with this, in the original 1911 design there's a slot cut lengthwise in the top of the slide, deep enough for the base of the sight to sit in. Then there's a hole cut through the bottom of the slide. The sight fits into this and the tenon on the bottom sticks through the hole into the inside of the slide. The sight is braced, and a special chisel is used to spread out the tenon, riveting the sight into place. I needed a thicker front sight(getting old sucks), so, after taking off the original front and the annoyance and frustration ofmaking of a new one that fit(someday, I really want a small mill) and making a chisel to rivet it, I got it fitted. A little too tall, which is no problem, as I'd rather file it down a touch to adjust the point of impact than have it too short.

The rear sight was easy: widen the slot a touch with a file to match the wider front, and- since the corners were pretty beat up(what the hell did the Argentines do with these?!?) they were rounded. Again, later on I'll get a front & rear set and mount them.

Speaking of things in the slide, I'll be getting one of the EGW oversize firing pin stops and fitting it. I was holding off an order to Midway for some things hoping to get it from them, but they're ALWAYS out of stock on the damn things, so I'll probably go ahead and get it from Brownell's.

While back a friend had picked up a GI-spec barrel for me, and it dropped in. Seems to fit and function properly, though it won’t give the same accuracy as one fitted to the frame & slide. Down the road, I'll pick up a suitable replacement. Probably one that comes with a bushing.

Last weekend there was a small gun show in town and one of the dealers had 1911 parts. I picked up an STI extended thumb safety, a grip safety and a long trigger(with the overtravel adjustment screw). First time I’ve ever tried fitting any of these pieces.

The trigger was no problem; tweak the bow just a touch and it slid right in. I may need to do a touch of polishing on the outsides, but that's it. The grip safety seems to need no work. The thumb safety, on the other hand...

As I say, I've never fitted one of these before, and it did need fitting. So I pulled up some 'how-to's from M1911.org, studied things, and began, very carefully, to work. Took a while, but finally had it fitting nicely and working as it should. With me sweating over every stroke of file or stone.

Then I fitted everything together and shazam! It works! Except for one thing... cock the hammer and pull the trigger and ease the hammer down, and it caught at the half-cock position. Disassemble, examine, try, no change. Finally, after a while of trying, and some language practice, I had a thought. When I'd put the screw into the trigger so I wouldn't lose it I'd run it quite a ways in. Did you know if you have the thing too far in it messes with things? If it's WAY too far in you can't pull the trigger back enough to trip the sear. If it's not quite that far in, it can cause this problem, not letting the trigger move the sear all the way out of the way of the hammer notches. Backed it out a bit extra and no more problem. I'm going to loctite the damn thing in place.

Got everything cleaned and assembled and tested multiple times, and all's well. I'd fired this pistol with ball and it worked well. So, just to check, I stuck a Gold Dot hollowpoint in the magazine and cycled the slide, and it jammed solid.

Not in the barrel throat*, the edge of the hollow was hanging on the feed ramp. Tried again, then tried with two other magazines with the same result. A close look with a good light and magnifier showed why: machine marks left in the ramp. Not horrible deep ones, but just deep enough.

So, I needed to polish the ramp. VERY carefully. Take a look here and here at High Road and Tuner will demonstrate why he tends to cringe when he reads "Get your dremel". I'd read that before, so I knew the risks of getting careless or a bit too enthusiastic; you can screw up the feed ramp to the point that the only fix is to have a ramped barrel fitted. Or the frame machined to accept a new ramp. So I started off with a suitable dowel wrapped with 1000-grit wet/dry paper**. Colored the ramp with marker, then started with light strokes. As the marker rubs off it shows exactly where you're cutting so you can keep the angle correct: you don't want to change the angle or cut too deep. So I took that only far enough to remove the lighter marks completely. Once that was done, I took a dremel with a felt polishing bob loaded with fine polishing compound and polished the surface smooth. With steel it's hard to cut too much unless you're using a coarser cutting compound, BUT it can be done. Especially if enthusiasm gets the best of you and you use high speed and a lot of pressure. Polishing is actually cutting away some of the surface, same as a grinding compound but on a much finer level, so I used the marker again, recoloring the ramp several times. I stopped when the ramp was nice and shiny and slick; the deepest marks were still there but were now smaller and had smoothed edges. Cleaned off all the abrasive and polish traces, reassembled and tried it, and now the bullet slides perfectly up the ramp. Final proof will be shooting it next time I can get to the range.

So far, so good. The slide/frame fit is a little loose, down the road may try my hand at tightening it up. Definitely to come is a better barrel fitted to the slide and frame. And new sights, maybe something with a fiber-optic front. I think I'll wind up with a very good shooter,and a lot more understanding of how this thing works.

I just realized I have no pictures of this, I'll take a couple and add them in soon as I can.


*A lot of standard barrels will not feed hollowpoints reliably, some not at all. The barrel can be often be ‘throated’ to take care of that, or the original can be replaced with a suitable one. My Kimber has happily eaten everything I’ve fed it with one exception: semi-wadcutters. Almost all 1911’s have to be throated for them, or have a target barrel installed, to feed them reliably.

**1000-grit was the finest I had, the next coarser was 220. I decided I'd rather use the very fine stuff and cut very slowly. I will say that with that fine a paper, 'very slowly' is the only way you can cut by hand. Which was just fine with me.

On the original barrel, I did find that, even with the worn bore, it shot very well with jacketed bullets, though lead bullets fouled the bore badly.

"Don't actually describe the criminal!

That's racist!"
If a person of Hispanic origin rapes a woman and, in an attempt to catch this violent criminal, police publish a description identifying the suspect's general racial makeup, is that a "racist" thing to do? Apparently the folks at KMYL (1190 AM) in the metro Phoenix, Arizona area think it is. It appears that we cannot even discuss the basic appearance of a wanted criminal now without being "racist" about it all.

Tim Blair has had a bunch of posts noting cases in which police put out descriptions of robbers, rapists, etc. that included descriptions but made no mention of the race. Specifically, when suspects were of, say, 'south Asian' appearance(or whatever the current PC term is for people from Pakistan or wherever) not one word about their physical appearance. Clothing, yes: people, no.

I'm not surprised some idiots here would do the same thing, I'm just amazed it took this long for it to happen and get publicity.

I think France 2 TV

is in a bit of trouble.
Charles Enderlin came to court personally today to defend the images shot by his trusted cameraman Talal Abu Rahma at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000. The cameraman had declared under oath that he filmed 27 minutes of the ordeal of Mohamed al Dura and his father Jamal, pinned down by Israeli gunfire. France 2 turned over to the court a CDRom certified as an authentic copy of the raw footage, of a total duration of 18 minutes. Despite those statements the pertinent al Dura scenes contained in the rushes lasted one short minute. Nothing more.(bold mine)
and
The remaining footage, 17 minutes, was consistent with what was already known about that day at the Junction: staged battle scenes—out of range of the Israeli position—with instant ambulance evacuations, alternating with images of men and boys attacking the Israeli position with stones, firebombs, and burning tires.

If you take out the flowery words and BS denials, this translates to "We not only used staged images to put out a fake story, and swore it was true, we're not going to give you all the actual footage you ordered."

I've got a pretty good idea what would happen to an executive who did that in most U.S. courts, we'll see what happens in this French court. I tend to think most judges most places don't like being gamed this way.

I'd forgotten this picture 'till Theo reminded me

"Furball's about to squat, boss, easy shot."

"Working this bolt with paws

flat sucks."

This is just downright cool!

A laser IED and dud ordnance killer:
Late last month, Boeing conducted a series of tests at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama with a 1-kw laser mounted on the back of a converted anti-aircraft Humvee. Shooting an invisible beam just a few centimeters in diameter and 20 times hotter than an electric stovetop, the laser burned a hole through the casing of artillery and mortar rounds, detonating them more or less instantly. (As for bystanders, all bets are off.)

Damn, I hope this pans out as working equipment.

This is starting to look more like equipment from David Drake's Hammer's Slammers stories. Powerguns, anyone?

Do not forget

to pick some up. Remember, when you buy ammo Dianne Feinstein chokes up.

And when you buy eeeevillle hollowpoints or anything 'armor piercing', Chucky Schumer and Ted Kennedy get a hemorrhoid.

"Operation Holiday Homecoming"

It's a good cause, check it out here and send a few dollars if you can.

Joined by state military and veterans affairs leaders at a Capitol news conference, Henry urged Oklahomans to donate to an American Legion of Oklahoma fund that will enable members of the 45th Infantry Brigade to be home from Dec. 23 to Jan 2.
.....
To ensure transportation for the estimated 2,600 troops, "Operation Holiday Homecoming" needs to raise approximately $600,000 to cover the use of 60 buses. Already, three Oklahoma-based Native American tribes and several corporations have come forward with major contributions. The Choctaw Nation is supplying 14 buses and the Chickasaws are supplying two buses. The Cherokee Nation has donated $35,000.
...
Members of the Oklahoma National Guard's 45th Infantry Brigade are currently training at Fort Bliss, Texas, and will have 10 days of leave before deploying to Iraq in January, 2008. Nevertheless, U.S. Department of Defense regulations preclude the Army from paying for the soldiers' trip home while on leave. The expense of getting home therefore falls on the responsibility of each individual soldier, many of whom might not have funds to pay for the trip to Oklahoma.
...
Donations to bring the members of the Oklahoma National Guard home for Christmas can be made at any BancFirst Branch to the Operation Holiday Homecoming account or, to The American Legion of Oklahoma, Operation Holiday Homecoming, P.O. Box 53037, Oklahoma City OK, 73152.

Unfortunately, some of the people in the military are

lawyers and politicians(and assholes, but I repeat myself) in uniform:
For three months after the non-incident, none of his superiors in his chain of command suspected a law of war violation, and it seems from his fitness report that his command style and his ability was something the Marine Corps could use more of.

Then, out of nowhere, some gutless punk up the chain of command panicked when the Time article came out and decided that this guy needed to take the fall for this "incident" so that their backside could be protected and their career could be guaranteed at the expense of this man because prior to this, Lt Col. Chessani was, according to his superiors, "a superb leader, who knows his men, knows the enemy, knows his business."

Proof that, despite the efforts of the good people in the forces, slime does manage to sneak in.

Veteran's Day

QandO has a very good piece on who all it covers: ALL the people who get the job done so those at the point of the spear can defeat the enemy.

And, I realize I'm a day late, but Happy Birthday, Marine Corps.

This Vet's Day is a bit unusual for me. Last year at this time son was in AIT; today he's at a camp in Iraq getting the job done, alongside a whole lot of other sons and daughters. Hot, dusty, carrying a huge weight of armor and weapons and responsibility, and getting the job done.

Every once in a while I catch myself in that parent thing, the image of him with a lapful of kitten almost as big as he is or dog bigger than he is, or receiving a kick in the butt when caught at something gets overlaid with the image of him now. Time do go on.

Added: I occurs to me there's a lot on the line in the families: son's wife is at a base stateside, and her brother is Airborne, over in Iraq for, I believe, the third time.

It's November, we've had a few days of really nice weather,

the birds are singing outside, and Iraqis are whacking tangos with great glee:

BAGHDAD: Former Sunni insurgents asked the U.S. to stay away, then ambushed members of al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said Saturday.

Fighters of the Islamic Army in Iraq staged the surprise attack Friday afternoon near Samarra — sending advance word to Iraqi police and requesting that U.S. helicopters stay away, since the fighters had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from al-Qaida.

A top Islamic Army leader known as Abu Ibrahim told The Associated Press that his fighters attacked al-Qaida southeast of Samarra, a mostly Sunni city about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad.

"We found out that al-Qaida intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday," Abu Ibrahim said.

And America-hating 'anti-war' movies are tanking at the box office. And please take note of this observation of Hollywood:
UPDATE #5, 11/11/07 -- Some commenters say that these anti-American films may be produced for foreign rather than domestic U.S. consumption. First, I don't buy it, since such a huge chunk of the money each movie makes comes from American box office and U.S. DVD sales and rentals. Even if that were so, however, and money were the primary motive behind these "blame America first" films, what would that tell you about the moral character of the Hollywood whores who are producing this crap?

It tells us a lot, it do. And an additional take on the matter:
They will flop because the human psyche, especially the American variety, prefers real heroes--like the original hero of the Valley of Elah, a young shepherd named David who killed Goliath then cut off the giant's head.

In the latest round of war movies the heroes are not the Soldiers and Marines who every day fight and defeat a vicious and barbaric enemy--the heroes are reporters, lawyers and activists.

And since every story requires a villain, the real enemy--Mohammedan Jihadists--are replaced by neo-cons, politicians, Soldiers and Marines.

This substitution of the traditional mono-myth away from a hero who faces physical danger and conquers an enemy is a result of cowardice of the modern story tellers.

And, to add to the general happiness, the Clinton's are getting caught in the act:
For the second time in as many days, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has had to deal with accusations of planting questions during public appearances.

In a telephone interview Saturday with Fox News, Geoffrey Mitchell, 32, said he was approached by Clinton campaign worker Chris Hayler to ask a question about how she was standing up to President Bush on the question on funding the Iraq war and a troop withdrawal timeline.

Why the major media is not to be trusted

Reason #568: we now return to our previous griping

Go here and read. This is specifically on the Al Dura case, but has big ramifications to all reporting, in this case specifically in the mid-east and on stuff touching on Islam.

And yet, one of the major differences between Western journalism and self-styled “Islamic media men” emerges on just this issue of the permissibility of staging the news and attitudes towards what constitutes honest information. According to the Islamic Mass Media Charter (Jakarta, 1980), the sacred task of Muslim media men [sic], is on the one hand to protect the Umma from “imminent dangers,” indeed to “censor all materials,” towards that end, and on the other, “To combat Zionism and its colonialist policy of creating settlements as well as its ruthless suppression of the Palestinian people.”

So when asked why he had inserted unconnected footage of an Israeli soldier firing a rifle into the Al Dura sequence in order to make it look like the Israelis had killed the boy in cold blood, an official of PA TV responded:

These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth… We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth.

This is from a Palestinian media weenie, so not unexpected: to these people 'the Truth' is what puts out the message they like, not what actually happened. But crap like this is not supposed to come from western journalists:
Here the evidence provided by the Al Dura affair suggests that, in some sense, journalists are “in” on the public secret. When representatives of France2 were confronted with the pervasive evidence of staging in Talal’s footage, they both responded the same way. “Oh, they always do that, it’s a cultural thing,” said Enderlin to me in Jerusalem. “Yes Monsieur, but, you know, it’s always like that,” said Didier Eppelbaum to Denis Jeambar, Daniel Leconte, and Luc Rosenzweig in Paris.

As an echo of this astonishing private complacency, Clément Weill-Raynal of France3 made a comment to a journalist that he meant as a criticism of Karsenty: “Karsenty is so shocked that fake images were used and edited in Gaza, but this happens all the time everywhere on television and no TV journalist in the field or a film editor would be shocked.”

That last is supposed to be a cricism of Karsenty. It's a criticism to say "It's dumb for him to be shocked that we slant and fake the news!"

"An incident at Ramallah, however, suggests that Western journalists have systematically submitted to Palestinian demands that they practice Palestinian journalism. On October 12, 2000, to cries of “Revenge for the blood of Muhammad al Dura,” Palestinian men tore to pieces the bodies of two Israeli reservists. Aware of the potential damage, Palestinians attacked any journalist taking pictures. And yet, one Italian crew working for a private news station, at great risk to their lives, smuggled out the footage. Eager to avoid being blamed, the representative of Italy’s “official television station RAI” wrote to the PA that his station would never do such a thing,

…because we always respect (will continue to respect) the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for (journalistic) work in Palestine…

Translation: "We will show the news the way you want us to; who cares if it's factual or true?"

And we're supposed to trust these people to tell us what's going on?

And it can actually get worse. There's this near the end:
More ominously, just as Al Dura represents a “higher truth” for Muslims — a justification for hatred, a call to revenge — so does it carry symbolic freight with Europeans. Catherine Nay, a respected news anchor for Europe1, welcomed the image:

The Death of Muhammad cancels out, erases that of the Jewish child, his hands in the air from the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto.

This is from a 'respected news anchor' in Europe. Saying that. I do not have the words to express the contempt I feel for this uselessful idiot.

Rope, lamppost, journalist...

In which I return to the fray,

having been otherwise busy the last couple of days. Got several things to scream about, but currently I'll mention my range trip Friday. Had a couple of loads to test, and wanted to do some 'just because' shooting.

The testing was a load for .30-06, tried out in the M1 Garand. I'd wanted a good soft-point load that could be used for hunting and, er, 'social purposes' if needed, and decided to try the 150-grain Seirra Game King bullet over a load of IMR4895. This is about typical of the groups it gave:























I tend to think the horizontal spread was due to me. For a semi-auto not set up for targets, not bad groups at all. Next time I'll take the 1903 to try it in. So the testing part of the day was successful.

The 'just because' part was trying out some M1 Carbine magazines I'd worked on, and- mostly- hauling the Martini 12/15 out to shoot. Been a while since it'd had an outing, and I'd wanted to try some new ammo in it. But mostly, just wanted to shoot the thing. It's one of those rifles that makes it easy to shoot well.

I'd picked up a box of Eley Practice ammo the week before. It's a mid-grade practice ammo, between the rabbit & squirrel thumpers on the low end and the Tenex match grade at the top. I started out with stuff I knew the performance of, the Eley Sport(ten-shot groups with all):






















This stuff is about $1.50/box last time I bought, probably closer to $2/box now. I'd class it as practice & critter-thumper ammo, quite consistent.

Then I tried the Eley Practice(please ignore the larger caliber holes):




















Very close to the Sport in performance, maybe a touch more consistent. It runs $3/box where I got it.

Then, since I had plenty with me, the Federal Champion, now $1.20/box since prices have gone up:






















Well, hell, if I want to try for something really better I'm going to have to pony up for some of the actual match grade. Which I've held off on, being cheapfiscally conservative: that stuff runs $12-14/box now. Still, I'll probably pick up a box of Tenex or Lapua Midas one of these days, just to see how much of a difference I can get with it. Of course, if you're shooting matches you get what shoots the very best in your firearm, with as little concern for cost as possible. But for fun shooting, I've been fairly amazed at how consistent and accurate this Federal is in a variety of firearms.

Oh, to add to why I like shooting the Martini so much: all groups were shot at 100 yards from a rest with iron sights. Did I mention I love shooting that rifle?