I just read where the more conservative states

 are having an increase in population as people move to them. Most likely because they have lower taxes and most likely a lot of people moving there are the people that have crudded up their own states and are looking for another place to tear up.

An awful lot of the states people tend to move to have financially conservative state governments that do not offer too many services. Few services mean lower taxes because things have to be paid for. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

For example, trash service means that trash trucks, drivers and collectors have to be paid for. While a community or state may say that a person gets free trash collection the truth is that the resident is actually paying for it one way or another.

If they don't get a bill from the trash company they get clouted come tax time. Nothing is free.

Generally the people that live in these states seem to know this and don't lean on government to provide services because they do not want their taxes to go up and I don't blame them.

Over the years I have pointed out that North Carolina has been invaded by residents of New Jersey that leave the Garden State to get out from under the tax burden there. Of course, the minute they get to North Carolina they start turning that place into the sewer that they have just left.

The plains Indians generally did things like this. They would set up camp and stay in the area until they had polluted it and then move on. Then they'd pack up the tipis and move on to somewhere else.

This generally worked quite well in that nature would clean up the camp area in a season or so and they could return to it. The pollution the Indians created was generally organic and broke down rapidly. When they returned the campground was generally a lot more fertile than it was when they left because of their earlier presence.

The mess we make isn't only ecological, it's political and will likely take generations to clean up, although a couple of tar and featherings of the right people might speed things up a bit.

The process reminds me of a guy that has to go to the john in a mall or travel plaza.

He goes down the row of stalls looking for the cleanest one and chooses the cleanest one he can find and uses that for his business.

Here we come to the crossroads.

If the person using the toilet in that stall is a civilized human being he makes a consious effort to leave it as clean as it was when he found it. If he is an uncivilized boor he will leave it worse for the wear with no consideration for anyone but himself and screw everyone else. Let someone else clean up after him.

As a nation we have fifty states and some are well run and others are mismanaged. People are leaving places like California and places like that for places like Arizona and Texas.

That's OK if you are willing to pitch in and work at being responsible and keeping your new home state well managed and financially stable.

Instead what generally happens is the transplant generally brings their baggage along with him and wants to change everything and make it like it was in the sewer they had just left.

I'll put this plainly. We're seeing an exodus in this country. People are moving to well run states. For those that are conservatives they are looking for a nice place to live and are probably going to try and keep it that way.

On the other hand, the liberals and other socialists moving to a well run state are just looking for another clean toilet to $hit in and have someone else clean up after them.



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I suppose

 that the few times in dealing with E-3s and below like I do from time to time at Camp Perry it would be a lot easier and truthful to simply say I am a 61 year old married monogamous guy that is fairly temperate in his habits, which I really am in real life.

Of course, that would be the easy way out.

It is a lot more fun to create the illusion that I am a 61 year old wild-eyed party animal that is responsible for teaching Charlie Sheen how it's done.

I think that I might have posted what I did to three young Marines at Camp Perry the year I turned fifty and they teased me about being a half-century old.

If I haven't posted it, I'll tell you in brief.

Because I didn't have to shoot in the afternoon I went downtown and pled my case to the headwaitress and bartender to fix things so I looked like a hollow-legged whisky drinking stud and they did.

I took the trio to dinner and the meal was constantly interrupted by women coming over to hand me a drink (iced tea in an on the rocks glass) and ask why I hadn't let them know I was in town.

I actually got more than I bargained for when the town drama queen strutted in pouring out of a little blue dress and sat down on my lap and chided me for not calling her up when I got to town.

She also turned the cherubic faces of the three Marines beet red whan she said that she hoped I hadn't started taking viagara since the last year because I was wild enough without it. She said the last time I was in town I had left her sore for a week.

Then she poured an entire on the rocks glass of iced tea down my throat.

She was an amazon of a woman, over six feet tall barefoot wearing 5 inch heels and had a pair of 1952 Caddy bumper bullets on her chest along with the biggest head of flaming red hair I have ever seen.

She missed her true calling. She should have gone on stage and I confess it had a damned hard time keeping a straight face and playing along with such a talented actress. She deserved an Academy Award for that performance.

Their eyes popped out of their skulls when she showed up.

Of course the best part was when they got back to camp and started running their mouths.

"Don't you be goin' drinkin' with Mr. Piccolo! He'll have you all messed up in about ten minutes!" one said.

"Just don't try match him drink for drink! He'll have all the women over your table!" said one of the others.

The senior NCOs knew the three of them had been had. The next day a grinning Master Gunnery Sergeant came up to me and asked me what I had done to his younger guys. He knew it was a sham of some sort. You don't make senior NCO by being that easily fooled.

I suppose the three young guys figured it out a few days later.

The truth is that I knew none of these women and while I was grateful they helped me with my little charade in truth I knew I was leaving Camp Perry to come home with a clean conscience. When you consider the whole show was put together by a bartender, waitress and headwaitress in such short order it is nothing less than amazing.

Still it was fun to pull the wool over the eyes of a trio of youngsters.

Incidentally, one of the women had handed me a napkin with a phone number on it. When I got back to camp I thought I should call her and thank her but the joke was on me. The number was for the Port Clinton police department.

I will admit that I do like a good con and likely if I had put my mind to it I might have wound up as one of those guys that gets everyone else to support their lifestyle. Although one of my favorite movies is 'The Sting', I'm too honest to rob anyone.

However, pulling the wool over the eyes of a trio of youngsters probably taught them a few things. They likely learned to show a little more respect to an older guy. After they finally figured out they'd been had they likely learned to slow down a bit and think.

I'll give the three guys credit because they didn't try and match me drinking, though. They were responsible enough not to get toasted the night before they were scheduled to shoot.

I suppose it isn't all directed to young Marines I meet from time to time. Once on an internet forum someone asked how hard sailors partied. If I recall I was about 55 at the time.

I told him that when I got off of the boat and hit the parking lot I usually downed a half-rack of Heineken, a pint or two of Jack, three or four tooies, six nebbies, five hits of chocolate mescaline, a handful of mushrooms, six or eight quaaludes, a couple of joints, a dozen hits of sunshine and sniffed a couple deep sniffs of ether. Any more than that and I'd need a designated driver.

In seconds I received a back channel message from someone offering to help me get into rehab.

I often wonder what he was thinking. If you look at all of that stuff and divided it by two and fed it to a pair of elephants they would both likely be stone cold dead in seconds. For another thing it is common knowledge that sailors are under the DOT random urinalysis program and there is a zero tolorance policy.

In addition to this, you also have to remember that companies in my business keep a pretty good eye on employees. They are not too likely to put an irresponsible drunken wildman in charge of an expensive piece of equipment. These people are not stupid.

I always wonder why people don't stop to think for a second. Does the answer make sense?

I teach people my line of work from time to time and the first thing I teach about calculations is to look at the answer and see if it makes sense. If you come up with an answer that you are putting 10,000 barrels of cargo in a 5000 barrel tank it is obviously wrong.

Same holds true to other things. There is no way a 170 pound 50 year old guy can pound down 12 or 14 double Jameson's in and hour or so and not simply keel over. That's over a quart of hard liquor!

It's also pretty unlikely that he can walk into a restaurant and be greeted by six or seven babes, either. When you see that it just HAS to be a set-up.

Still, I have to admit it is a pretty funny trick to pull on a trio of unsuspecting young Marines. After all, there's no use letting logic and facts get in the way of a pretty good lesson.

Besides the looks on their faces were priceless.



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David Tubb weighs his primers,

 or so says a new rumor running through shooter and reloading circles.

The rumor is making the rounds and I know it to be a rumor because I met the man that started it. He told me how he got the rumor started.

For those of you that don't know who +David Tubb is, he is a top shooter that has won a truckload of awards and designed equipment, including rifles. He's considered to be one ot the truly top shooters in the country.

Anyway, a lot of people in the shooting community keep their eye on him and emulate him. If Tubb does it, then there has to be a reason so a lot of shooters will try whatever he does in hopes of raising their scores.

A few years back I made the comment that if Tubb took the elastic band off of his dope book and stored it by wrapping it around the stock then you could be assured that about 25% of the shooters that showed up at the Nationals the following year would do the same thing.

About a quarter of these guys that imitated Tubb with the elastic on the stock business would be telling people that they had found the 'sweet spot' on the stock tor the elastic and swear it makes them shoot better.

I guess it won't be long before a lot of shooters start weighing their primers. I can hardly wait to go to Camp Perry and hear some shooter or another start babbling how he rejects any primers that are more than .1 grain off.

This ought to be good.




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One of the things that irks me is people that have a special agenda and no common sense.

I've got a pal that has a part time gig pushing a broom in a building after hours. I respect him for this because he isn't sitting around in the barracks of the Free $hit Army.

When times got hard he simply picked up another gig to supplement his income. Good choice.

Anyway, he reported to me that he was sweeping up a pile of dirt off of the floor and there was an aluminum tab in the pile of floor sweepings and he emptied the whole pile into the nearest trash can and caught hell over the crummy little can tab.

He was told by one of the elite working there that he was supposed to recycle it. Afterwards he got a long lecture about how important it was to recycle every little bit of everything.

I have to give the man credit because he fished the tab out of the trash and handed it to the lecturer and told him to feel free to walk the 300 yards, two stairways and traipse through the rain to make sure it got to the recycling dumpster.

Most likely I would have done the same thing because I generally don't do stupid. Most likely I would have handed it to him and told him to take it to a taxidermist and stuff it.

Truth is that this guy has a lot more to worry about than a lousy can tab because the other guy he works with there has been out sick for a while and my friend is pulling double duty.

The whole thing I see here is someone with an agenda that is certainly willing to bust someone else's ass and waste their time to follow their agenda but are not really willing to do it themselves.

The lecturer took the can tab and solomnly put it in his pocket and walked off muttering and threatening to report him and headed back to his office to get something before he left the building.

My friend was on his game because he followed his gut and went into the lecturer's office which he had cleaned an hour earlier and looked in his trash can. There was an aluminum can tab in it.

He pulled it out and grabbed a sheet of paper and left a note along with the can tab on the lecturer's desk. He pointed out that leadership requires the leader to lead by example and pointed out that the lecturer could have easily walked four or five yards out of his way on his way to his car becaue he was going past the recycling dumpster anyway.

There is one thing I have seen over the years and that is a self-rightous jerk getting what he has coming. Nobody gets as indignant as someone like this. He reported my friend who got called up on the carpet.

Of course, the lecturer lied up a storm but sometimes there is justice in this world. When you see it run straight to the convenience store and buy a lottery ticket.

My pal simply told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and ran with that. Then from out of nowhere came a woman that had witnessed everything her office while quietly working late that corroberated my friend's story.

Two things came out of that. My friend got complimented on doing a good job and was given a small bonus of some sort for pitching in when push came to shove.

The other thing is that the lecturer isn't likely to be trusted in the future.

All this over an aluminum can tab someone took off a can and dropped. Some people ought to get off their high horse and get a life.


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I am now back on the $hitlist

 of a woman in my neighborhood which is nothing new because when I am not on it I am probably not doing the right thing.
I do not know why she keeps coming back for more because she certainly gets a pretty good verbal pounding when she crosses swords with me. I suppose that the reason she crosses paths with me is because one or more of the neighbors probably sets it up for entertainment purposes.

This woman is the same idiot that tried to personally blame me for Colombine several years back.

Anyway shortly after Sandy Hook she went after me again about being a competitive shooter and wasn't too successful about it which is nothing new. Of course, her argument was emotional and I returned it with cold logic.

When she said I should turn my firearms in to make things safer for everyone I asked her why a responsible person should bother to do such a thing. After all, I am a responsible citizen. She told me if everybody did then there was no chance that anyone would freak out and go off on a mass killing.

I told her I'd make a deal. If she sewed her vagina shut so she couldn't become a prostitute and spread HIV and other diseases I would get rid of my guns.

Needless to say she went through the roof and screamed she wasn't a prostitute.

I pointed out that as long as she had a functioning vagina she was just as capable of becoming one and spreading fatal diseases as I was of committing a mass shooting.

A very entertained woman standing behind her looked at me and opened her mouth and pointed at it with her finger. It was Carol Dayham, who is a pretty straight soccer mom and this was way out of character for her. Then again Carol seems to have at least more than half of a functioning brain. I also know she really doesn't like this twit, either.

I told the twit that in addition she ought to sew her mouth shut, too so as to avoid all of the other avenues associated with becoming a prostitute.

Of course she went wild until Carol stepped in and told her that she'd settle for her to simply sew her mouth shut so we didn't have to listen to her $hit anymore.

I am beginning to like Carol. She gets it.




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I read somewhere that there are more billionaires

 in Moscow than anywhere else in the world.

*******************************

"If you are taught bitterness and anger, then you will believe you are a victim. You will feel aggrieved and the twin brother of aggrievment is entitlement. So now you think you are owed something and you don't have to work for it and now you're on a really bad road to nowhere because there are people who will play to that sense of victimhood, aggreivement and entitlement, and you still won't have a job." ~ Condaleeza Rice


**********************************

When I get off of work and drive home the company owes me something. A couple of days later they electronically deposit my pay into my bank account and we are even.

That's because I agreed to work for them and they agreed to pay me for my service. Nothing more, nothing less.

I give them a day's work, they give me a day's pay.

It pretty much ends there.

There are, of course other benefits that go along with my employment but the basic deal we have is a day's work for a day's pay. This is pretty much how it works for a lot of people.

When my shore leave is over and I return to work the cycle repeats itself. I go back on the payroll and work and they accrue my time and pay period we settle up.

I listened to someone a while back griping about how he was cheated after working at a place for several years and getting laid off. The truth is that the contract between him and his employer is over.

When the deal is over I have no right to ask for anything else and when he stops paying me he has no right to ask me to work for him any more. He has no responsibility to pay me as I have no responsibility to work for him anymore.

From time to time I get a bonus of some sort and as far as I am concerned he doesn't owe me that. When I get handed a bonus I am grateful. While I am grateful for it, I never expect it and have no right to complain if I don't get it the next year.

The fact that I have worked here over a decade doesn't mean squat. When the check comes in, the company owes me nothing.

I have no sense of entitlement from my employer other than to live up to our agreement and to be fair and reasonable in matters pertaining to my employment.

It really is this simple.

　


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First things first at Quantico

When I asked the Jim where there was a good place to overninght in Quantico he immediately opened his front door and offered me a spare rack.

His wife, being a Marine wife for the better part of two decades didn't seem to bat an eyelash over it and greeted me warmly. I suppose after almost 20 years in the Corps I should not have been surprised. Service wives that survive service marriages are, for the most part, pretty unflappable.

What I should add is that I wasn't the only one the door was open to. There was another guy around my age that he was putting up. This means that they put up two old men along with the accompanying nightly farting and snoring.

I arrived the afternoon before as it is fitting for an out of towner to at least offer to pitch in and I helped get targets ready for the following day.

You have to remember that this is a family and that is the core and there are other things to do besides entertain a couple of old men.

So I rejoined the Boy Scouts and helped out a little bit with moving a few bags of mulch his son had sold as a part of a fund raiser.

I didn't do that to be a nice guy, but to see the fluid dynamics of a family in action. I have no kids and enjoy watching the process of kids growing up and dads being dads.

Anyone can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a dad and my host proved to me that not only had he served as a good Marine but he was a good dad. A lot to be said for that.

We had an couple of interesting things happen delivering the mulch. I met a retired Sergeant Major that was one hell of a shooter but wasn't able to get to the match.

We also delivered mulch to a place and when we tried to pulll out of the driveway there was a string of cars a mile long. I explained to the boy that Elvis Presley had been seen a week ago in Manassas and had been taken to the hospital where he died the following day and that the string of cars was his funeral procession and we'd be stuck there for six hours.

For some reason he found that funny. Of course when we drove a few doors up and delivered to a house on the opposite side of the road when we tried to leave there was yet another string of cars coming. I explained that the funeral procession had taken a wrong turn and had whipped a U-turn and was retracing their path and we'd be stuck another six hours.

Anyway we returned home at a decent hour and crashed.

I slept pretty damned good and was awake when my host was. We both woke up at the hour called Oh-Dark Thirty and decided to do what shooters have done since Day One. We took off then and there and headed to the range with a quick trip to the local 7-Eleven for coffee and a breakfast sandwich.

At Lexington Green before the Revolutionary War back in 1774 there was a musket match and every single shooter showed up an hour early having finished a breakfast consisting of one cup of coffee, three cigarettes and a half-eaten breakfast sandwich they bought at Ye Olde Seveneth- Eleveneth.

Also at the 7-Eleven I broke a fifty into fives. Everyone and their cousin seems to show up with big bills and the change is appreciated. I was later thanked for this.

There were waivers and registrations forms to fill out, scorecards to pickup and the usual things. Unlike my local club or Camp Perry the system was a little different here. There are little differences everywhere. It pays to pay attention.

While filling out the forms someone asked me if I had ever shot there before and I said I had in either October or November. He said he didn't remember me and I then told him that it was October or November of 1963 when I was a 12 year old Boy Scout. That dropped his jaw.

I was also informed that $20 would buy me a pit puller so I didn't have to pull targets. A deal at twice the price.

It was also cold as hell and I wore a pair of hooded sweatshirts over my wool shirt and I was still chilly. My shooting jacket on top of that made me fairly comfortable.

There were a lot of Marines standing around with their hands in their pockets. I noticed it and jokingly asked them what the Sergeant Major would say. They smirked.

Anyway, we started at the 300 yard line. Most of the shooters were civillians but there were a few Marines which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me for a minute or two is that the Marines were all ammo techs and armorers. I had figured there would be a few scout/sniper types but I guess they wanted a day away from shooting.

I can see why the ammo techs and armorers showed up. They build rifles and make ammo but never get to shoot. What made me grin is that every armorer there was shooting a rifle he had built at home with his hands when he had the time to tinker in his basement or man-cave.

The ammo was supplied by the ammo techs and I looked at the headstamps. They were civillian and obvious handloads. Most likely made by some ammo tech in his basement or kitchen table.

Women, do not marry an ammo tech or an armorer unless you want a vise or a loading press bolted to your kitchen table. These guys take their work home with them and experiment a lot. I can hear it now. An angry wife demanding her husband unbolt the loading press from the kitchen table because her mother is visiting as she readys a tablecloth to hide the bolt-holes.

I fared halfway decently on the 300 and was pleasantly surprised that the little chart I made had me dead on at 300 having arrived with a 200 yard zero. Seven clicks up and dead on.

We wandered back to the 600 yard line and I adjusted my sights and was pleasantly surprised that I was pretty damned close. Elevation was good, but I had misdoped for wind.

After we shot the first course of fire, it was decreed that we would shoot another string after lunch. We broke for lunch which was supposed to be a barbecue but was anything but.

It was more of a big game dinner that should have been served in a pine paneled lodge somewhere with moose, elk and tiger heads on the wall.

It was delicious and sitting out in the cold wondering what the rich folks were having made it even better.

Someone started to ask about my pink CMP baseball cap and was interrupted by a face that looked familiar. "You don't want to go there," he said. "It'll be the most embarrassing moment of your life."

"It's a trap," chimed in a Staff Sergeant. He turned to me and grinned. "Breast cancer awareness, right?"

I nodded and said nothing.

One of the things I noticed about the Marines was that the lowest ranking man there was a corporal. It was a pretty mature group so I didn't feel the need to slap down some Pfc or Lance Corporal by guzzling down 8 ounces of iced tea out of a Jim Beam bottle and handing them a full one and telling them to help themselves.

Actually it was refreshing to be around professionals. Today even most corporals are pretty squared away and are nodbody's fool. It's really rather nice to be around professionals for a change. It was sort of like someone left the kids at home.

We returned to the 600 yard line and then it happened. The Staff Sergeant pointed to his personal rifle, an M40a1 and asked me if I'd like to use it for the 600 yard string and I jumped at the opportunity.

When I reached for my ammunition, he told me to use his and explained they were tailored for that specific rifle. He had a lot of it like most shooters. I was told I'd need about 120 rounds but brought 250 in case someone needed some.

My first shot was an 8 at 9 O'clock and instead of adjusting the scope I held over 1/2 of a mil for windage and then promptly hammered 4 consecutive Xes!

The 10 power Unertl scope was crystal clear and later on at the 1000 yard line I was also able to see the scoring rings.

I wound up with a 192-7X score. While not a winning score by any means it was a personal record at 600 yards. The wind shifted on me a couple of times. I am convinced having a full belly of venison helped.

For non shooters, anything over about 300 yards is all about doping for wind and while I am not a stranger to doping with iron sights I am fairly new to doping with a scope. When you get to the longer shots elevation is a given. You are supposed to know where to set your elevation ahead of time.

Of course, thermals can shift elevation a bit but they are nowhere as powerful as crosswinds as a rule.

I was on cloud nine as I had broken my previous high score at the 600 yard line so I fished into the bag beneath my stool and dug out a small trophy and awarded it to myself.

Shooting for most of us is a sport of self improvement. We generally shoot against our last score. For years I kept that trophy in my bag or at the clubhouse where I often shot and even though it is a little five-inch tarnished cup it is my prize to myself.

One of the guys chuckled and said it was a good idea. As I write it is sitting on my mantle.

Incidentally, the X-ring I was shooting at is only three inches in diameter. That's a half-minute of angle.

The match ended on a good note and we ambled home and I got cleaned up and to my surprise, his wife had pretty good meal set up for our return. While I was still pretty full from lunch, I managed to eat some and it made me grin.

Jim's wife is a good cook and cooks old school. She couldn't give me a recipe because whe made it in her head as she went along. The meal was topped off with fresh molasses cookies.

Bad weather was predicted for the following day and I considered running for home but decided to take a chance and we all hit the hay early. I dropped a couple asprins before bed as I felt something might be coming on but woke up feeling fine.

The next day we were scheduled to shoot at 800 yards and we followed the same course of fire. We actually reshot at six hundred and wandered back to the 800 yard line.

When asked where I had parked I deadpanned that I had found a space with the letters 'C.O.' on it and the Marines grinned. By this time they were on to me. They realized I knew my way around a military base and had parked in a safe place.

"Wonder what the Sergeant Major would say if you took his place?" asked a Sergeant.

"Oh, that's an easy one," I replied. "I'd just say some guy with a single chevron and crossed rifles bet me $100 I didn't have the balls to park there so I parked it and took his money. If ya got change for a Franklin, I'll split it wit ya."

"I wonder what would happen then?" chuckled the Sergeant.

"If it was one of us, he'd be pissed, but I bet if he was dealing with him he'd just walk off shaking his head and park somewhere else," opined another Sergeant. "He'd tell the Old man and they'd laugh about it. One thing for sure. They'd go looking for the Lance Corporal."

Jim Land showed up and I got to meet him. One thing Jim and I have in common is that we got our hearing protection from Celeste Dennison at Camp Perry. She's a wonderful Texas woman that has a wonderful laugh and shares shooter humor. Celeste has been making hearing protection there since the Roosevelt administration. The TEDDY Roosevelt administration. They are the best hearing protection out there.

Celeste has been making earplugs for so long she can tell you things about your infancy. I heard her tell a guy that an a baby he likely slept on his left side. When I was getting mine done she told me I had been dropped on my head.

Jim Land, Major USMC (Ret) is the guy that put the sniper program together in the early 60s. He trained Carlos Hathcock and others. He's an interesting man.

Several of the guys were shooting vintage rifles as was I. My rifle is a 1966 model M40 but a couple of the guys were shooting either 1903 Springfields or Winchester Model 70 with the old Unertl scopes on them. The Unertls have to be reset between shots.

I asked Jim how the hell they were so successful with such primitive equipment. He laughed and said he had been asked that question a number of times by today's scout snipers. He told me that back then the gear was state of the art.

I have seen the picture of Carlos holding the target he shot in 1965 and by the standards of today it is only good, not excellent. Back then it was unbelievably good. However, technology has changed. In 1975 they changed targets to make them more challenging. By then the technology had started to take off and the old 5V targets became obsolete.

I once said that and got dumped on by every Marine in the house but it is true. Someone else told me that the rifle Carlos used in Vietnam was capable of holding 2 minutes of angle. I believe it. Mine is capable of 1/2 a minute. This shows how technology has improved things.

I wonder how Carlos would have made out with today's equipment.

Too bad I'm not capable of using the rifle to its potential of I'd be a world-class champion. Oh, well. I'll get better with time I suppose. I figure I did OK by not embarrassing myself too awfully bad.

Another sidebar here is that one of the shooters had gotten himself into an argument with an IED in Afghanistan and had no legs. He was talking about an upcoming job which is what handicapped people are supposed to do instead of feeling sorry for themselves.

He was simply another one of the guys that was expected to take care of himself as best he could. We helped him do only the things he couldn't do for himself. He'd get a push over rough ground in his wheelchair and helped him cross a ditch or two but otherwise he took care of himself.

He was like a cat getting into position and seemed to be shooting well with an 1903 Springfield and old Unertl scope.

Guys are like that. We make sure we don't rob a guy of his independence and he got around by himself OK for the most part.

Anyway, the following day we shot at 800 and I did well enough not to embarrass myself too much and when things settled down I looked at the Marine and innocently asked him if we were going to move back to the 1000 yard line and he snickered. "Let me check," he said.

He asked the Range Officer and pointed out it was still pretty early. The RO asked the guys and of course, it was like throwing bloody meat to a hammerhead shark. Two minutes later the whole push of us was headed back to the 1000 yard length.

I did OK in that I hit the black often enough at the 1000 yard line. I have a long way to go. Incidentally I used the M40a1 there as my M40 didn't have enough clicks for elevation at 1000 yards. You really lob then in at 1000 yards. I figured I could have held the mildots two over and been able to pick up 20 clicks that way but the M40a1 was handy and the Staff Sergeant insisted. Never argue with a Marine Staff NCO.

Still, at 1000 yards doping for wind is closer to witchcraft than anything else. It is a long way and it is possible for the wind to change directions several times between the muzzle of the rifle and the target.

After that things broke up and I had weather coming so I had to leave without saying good bye to Jim's wife and kids. I had planned on setting up my Prc 320 there afterwards but the weather predictions prohibited it. I had to run and run fast.

Some advice here. Do not program your GPS until you get off the base. Mine took me down a dirt road that ended at a public road in BFE. It would have saved me a lot of time if the dirt road wasn't gated shut. I had to retrace my steps and lost a lot of time having realized I was hopelessly lost.

There are about a gazillion ways on and off of the base but only a couple have open gates of any sort. GPS does not know which ones are open or shut.

Running around the training fields with a rifle and ammunition in the truck isn't a smart thing to do as you are supposed to go from the gate straight to the club house.

Clearing post, I set the GPS to Front Royal, VA and 10 miles out reset it for Breezewood, PA and ran US 522 because you only spend about 10 minutes in Maryland that way. Maryland has screwed up gun laws and while I was 100% legal under federal safe passage laws, I don't trust the Maryland State Police. To get there go to Breezewood and plot a course tor Berkley Springs, WV. There you type in Quantico, VA and you are good to go.

A few miles short of home I ran into the predicted snow but managed to arrive before it got too bad. When I got home the furnace had died and I had to fire up the space heater and sleep under a pile of blankets. It's up and running now.

Thanks to Jim, Andy, Brian all of the locals, non-locals and Marines for a great time and everyone else that helped me out and showed me the ropes.

Special thanks go to Jim's wonderful wife for putting me up without batting an eyelash and opening their house up to me. She shone brightly as a splendid example of a Marine wife.

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I got in from Quantico last night

to a cold house as the furnace had died.

I spent a night huddled next to a space heater and a cat under a pile of blankets a foot thick but all is well now.

I will post my adventures at Quantico tomorrow.

What a wonderful weekend!


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Just got in from Quantico

Yesterday I shot a 192-7X at 600 and did a creditable job of keeping them in the black at 1000 yards this morning.

MUCH more to come.

What a wonderful weekend.

One comment. Marine wife is the toughest job in the Corps. My compliments to a couple that opened their doors to me and kept me out of a fleabag somewhere and fed me.

Much more tomorrow or the next day as I have come home to a cold house. My furnace crapped out.



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Actions have consequences.

I just read that Colt is thinking of leaving the state of Connecticut which makes sense after the recent gun bans passed there.

Magpul is leaving Colorado and they will be out of the state inside the next month or two.

I have read where Maryland may be backing off a bit and I suppose it they do that Benelli and Beretta will stay put. It would be a pretty smart move on Maryland's state government to enact no laws and keep these two gunmakers as they provide a lot of employment. Both of these companies have government contracts.

Right now we can look at Magpul because I have done a little bit of reading on them. They use a lot of plastics and that's going to put a a pretty good dent on the Colorado plastics maker.

Losing Magpuls business means likely that there are going to be a few layoffs there. If no layoffs, employees are probably lose overtime or other compensation. They may, for example, not get a raise to keep up with the cost of living.

The diner down the street is likely to take a beating as is the gas station and the convenience store nearby.

The owners of the now vacant building are going to lose money and so are a lot of other merchants.

In addition to that any employees that decide not to move with Magpul are going to be headed straight to the unemployment line. It is often said that poverty leads to crime and unemployment is a world-class creator of poverty.

So instead of jobs,wealth and security the state of Colorado has voted for poverty cnd crime. Good choice.

It all adds up. And for what?

The Colorado magazine ban isn't going to make the people of Colorado any safer whatsoever. Any criminal that wants a large capacity magazine can get one on the black market.

Incidentally the ban will create a pretty good sized black market and someone will rush in to feed it because if there is a buck to be made someone will, legally or otherwise. Enter crime.

Look at illegal drugs. They're out there and the drug dealers generally drive better cars than most law abiding citizens that work for an honest living do.

In addition to this when you look at it, changing magazines doesn't take a whole lot of time. Back when I was shooting service rifle competition I was doing it in under a second. The rules read that I had to fire two shots, change magazines and fire another eight for a total of ten for score.

It doesn't slow down things at all.

All the Colorado magazine ban has done is make things a little more difficult for law abiding citizens and to move wealth out of the state and move more crime in.

I like the way the spin doctors work when they want to scare the public. They are quick to point out that such and such a percentage of police officers are killed with firearms equipt with high capacity mags. What they fail to tell you is that the shooter killed the cop with two or three rounds and that magazine capacity had nothing to do with it. This is just a spin on the truth, which is what politicians are famous for.

Truth is the people of Colorado are not going to be any safer, just poorer.

Wherever Magpul moves to is going to be on the road to prosperity. They will offer the locals jobs and security and hope. Side businesses will likely start up and success generally breeds success.

In addition to this, there are a number of people that are cancelling elk hunts and ski trips out of protest. Jackson Hole, Wyoming will likely take up the slack. Enter less money coming into the state.

Colorado,of course, seems to have voted for failure.

It looks like Connecticut is doing the same thing and Maryland is also considering it. They are voting for econimic failure.

The next couple of days this blog will be hit or miss because I will be out of town.



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Packing up for a match.

I have not shot a serious match in some time and while my gear is in the locker I keep it in it has not been gone over recently so I have to pull it out and go over it. I find my sight smoker is in good shape but then realize I am going to shoot a distance match through glass and there isn't a whole lof of need for that.

There are Garand clips in the shooter's stool and those are not needed. The spares and the junk comes out. I check put the ball point pens and they are good to go.

My jacket is OK and so is my sexy leopardskin mat which my niece madefor me several years ago. I get kidded every so often about the mat and asked if I shot a leopard or just stole a bunch of clothes from some stripper somewhere.

I simply tell poeple "Chicks dig it."

It doean't take too long for the basics to be gone over because I put them away in good shape.

Next there are the other things to take care of and I grab the old Kelty backpack that has taken me all over hell and check and see if the Primus stove is OK and there is still fuel in the fuel bottle. I put a couple day's worth of clothes in it and a few other odds and ends including a coffee pot and a few prepackaged meals for shooting days.

There are no scheduled lunch breaks during a match. Lunch is generally catch as catch can. A prepackaged meal is a godsend on the line. This reminds me to pack a couple of cokes.

I also toss a jug into the pack and even though it isn't likely that it will even be opened, it is best to be prepared.

I also add a blanket and a poncho liner to fill it up because one of the phases of the match we shoot off of a rest and the pack will provide an adaquate one.

I've also been invited to crash out at another shooter's house but most likely I will not because I think he already has guests and the last thing he needs is an old man sleeping in a corner farting and snoring.

Still, I am going to an unknown situation and having at least some rudimentry bedding isn't a bad thing in case something comes up. A poncho liner is a good thing to have anyway.

My cart came out and I went over that. It's bigger than most shooter's carts but generally I use it to help out either an elderly or handicapped shooter. At Camp Perry and other places it doubles as a cart to move my stuff into the barracks.

Now that I am a ham I run a quick check on my PRC 320. That's going either for me to set up on the range if I am between firing strings or back at the motel I will likely be staying at.

It's a pretty good way of passing away any time I might wind up with and is a lot better for me than planting my ass on the nearest barstool.

A glance in the bed of the pickup tells me that it is time for me to unload the winter tube sand I keep there as ballast for snowy days. I did that this afternoon and even though I am not leaving for a couple of days I have loaded most of what I need and only have to add a few odds and ends and a rifle and I'm good to go.

I'll pull the rifle out for a good cleaning tonight and it gets put back into the safe until I actually leave.

I've put a lot of work into this project. Working up a load has taken me several hours and several trips to the range just to work up a load. It has already cost me a lot of time, effort and money.

Right now for the next couple of days I am going to be looking around for little things that I might have overlooked.

I'm glad in a way that I have taken a break from serious matches because it feels pretty good starting up and entering another discipline.

It's nice to have something to look forward to in the shooting sports again.


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Running late today as I had

to takc care of a Living Will so that if something nasty happens I don't have to sit around and rot in a hospital with a bunch of tubes sticking in me because some medical genius has decided that live includes laying there in a vegitive state.

That's done.

I woke up this morning having to fast because I had to have blood drawn for my annual physical.

Anyway it is 11:00 am and I have not even had a damned cup of coffee and I stiill have morning mouth and as I type I am letting George Foreman heat up so I can have a steak and three eggs.

I had to wait to start to cook the steak because a relative that is here is some kind of dammned vegan and started to give me hell. The last time I got this lecture I fire blackened a 2 inch thick of beef and wolfed it down in front of them and as I did I explained all about what I was doing to my body and cholesterol and all of that crap and figured they'd learn to shut up every so often.

No avail. You can't fix stupid. WHen I mentioned steak and eggs athey started another lecture. The lecture ended a minute ago when they left as soom as they saw me plug Old George Foreman in.

I have to get packed for my match today and tomorrow so that is another story.

God, I hate days like today.





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I always liked the way things were done in ALaska.

One of my favorite stories os Alaska is the time the Department of Fish and Game

They needed three airplanes and decided the modal was to be the Grumman Goose.

However, while they knew the plural of the bird called the 'goose' is geese, they were not too sure about the plural of  said airplane. (It's generally agreed the plural of the airplane is gooses)

Anyway, they didn't know so they wrote Grumman saying they wanted a Grumman goose and described all of the options they wanted.

Then they ended the letter with, "Better yet, send us three of them.'

Pretty clever.






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Have a Dr appointment today

Leaving in 20 minutes.

Might make a post when I get home if I'm OK.


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Checking in.

I'm up and having coffee and right not the ham rig is on and I'm checking in with YL system as I generally do in the morning.

My work on getting ready for the upcoming match is almost over as I have finally figured out a load that my rifle likes and will stay supersonic out past 1000 yards.

My load is 45.5 grains of IMR 4064 under a 155 grain Sierra Match King bullet and they're running about 2860 feet per second which means they're going to be 1250 fps at 100 yards.

I had a different load with a slightly different bullet that chronyed a little over 3000 fps. That's fast for a .30 caliber bullet but it didn't group very well so I rejected it.

There are a lot of people out there that do not understand handloading ammunition and think it is simply a case of dumping powder in and stuffing a bullet on top but there is more to it than that. WHile there is a cheapie kit out there that will allow you to do just that, there's a lot more to it to get a good, accurate load.

5/8ths  of an inch at 100 yards isn't all that bad a group but I had to work at getting things that good.

I won't get into it right now but I have put over a week and several trips to the range to develop this load for this rifle and today I have to crank out 150 rounds.

Incidentally this is  particular match is going to be fun for me because it has been a dog's age since I have shot anything but a 200 yard reduced course of fire and this course of fire is 3, 6 and 800 yards. The truth is that I don't have a chance in hell of doing very well in the match but I'm going there to simply do the best I can and learn the basics of another shooting discipline.











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there is a shortage of .22 ammunition

One of the things that has surprised me is the shortage of .22LR ammunition. You can't seem to get it anywhere.

Generally when I have taken a break from match shooting like I have I like to get out there in the spring and relearn my basics with a .22 because it is cheap.

Right now there isn't a whole lot of .22 out there which surprised the hell out of me. I could understand the shortages of the larger calibers as I sit here and watch the country gear up for some kind of internal war.

Then it occurred to me that .22s are the most common firearms out there and that it is likely that people are considering them to be some viable form of self-defense.

Actually the .22 rifle IS the most common firearm used for self-defense because it is simply the most common firearm out there.

While it certainly isn't the first choice, if it's all you have it is certainly better than nothing and in the right hands it can be downright deadly.

A .22 is a lot quieter than a regular rifle, too. They also make subsonic ammunition for it which doesn't muffle the muzzle blast but it doesn't crack as it travels through the air.

I have used subsonic ammunition before to eliminate a pest about 10 years ago. Neighbor Bob wanted a ground hog eliminated and his next door neighbor was a chronic cop caller. I loaded a .22 with subsonic ammo, stood in his dining room and waited.

The neighbor was outside and probably 75 feet away when I let fly and dropped Mr. Ground Hog and was none the wiser.

My guess is that a lot of the .22 ammunition is being bought up by suburbanites. I think the mentality is that they want it to keep people out of their back yards when the whatever is is that's going to happen happens.

Over the years a number of doomsday preppers I have met have suggested that any collapse is going to hit the cities the first and the hardest. That will be followed by groups of hungry city people making their way out to the 'burbs to forage.

It does make sense and you can well imagine that there are a lot of people in the burbs that will be hit also and want to hold onto what they have.

I suppose that when you think of it a .22 would be a pretty good tool to discourage would be thieves to go somewhere else. I sure wouldn't want to get gutshot with one.

All of the above is total conjecture. I really don't have a clue as to why the .22 ammunition is unavailable but it is. It just seems odd that it is so hard to get now.

As I am writing this I have just had a thought and the next time I go shopping I am going to start casually looking in other people's carts and see what kind of grub they are buyiing.

It would be interesting to see if people are stocking up on canned goods and other things that fare well in long term storage.

Incidentally I am just pretty much a neutral observer. I have no stake in what I post, financially or otherwise.

What I do have is that when I am not at sea making a living I am ashore and have free time to look around and notice what is going on around me.

I have an old friend that has spent the last couple of decades in a rural area running livestock and he has questioned my observations claiming he has access to the same things I do, meaning media and internet.

He does and he doesn't.

I run. I am on the streets, stores, bars, pool halls, rifle ranges, and whatnot. I am constantly in the 'burbs of Pittsburgh, the cities of New York and Philly. He's not. He misses a lot because of that.

When I chat withs someone I can hear the tones and inflections which can change meanings of things said radically.

I still come home to the usual pile of things to do. There's housework and honey-do lists but I do get time to get out and see a few things. All I do here is pass on what I see.


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The other day at the range I saw something very much out of place.

 Frankly it frightened me a bit.

I went to the range to shoot groups as I am in the process of working up a good load for an upcoming match.

There I saw two women which, while not unherad of, isn't too common. Generally women gravitate to the pistol range as the club does give self-defense courses from time to time and seeing a woman practicing with a pistol raises no eyebrows.

Both of these women had AR 15s, one in the typical service rifle configuration and the other was in a carbine configuration.

Both women were on their feet practicing offhand shooting.

What was odd about this pair is that they were a pair of soccer moms, complete with a nearby mini van parked alongside.

One was a soap and water woman and the other had makeup and manicured and polished nails. The latter one had the carbine.

I set up and fired my groups and then we all went down to check our targets. Of course, they marveled at my groups which in reality sucked. Time to try another load.

But I pointed out that they were shooting offhand and I was on my belly resting my rifle on a seabag.

We chatted as I wandered over with them to check their targets out. Like most shooters they were not happy. Ain't a single shooter out there that's happy unless they get a 100-10X score, so it was par golf.

I ventured into why they were shooting and the soap and water woman said she was practicing for a match and that her neighbor was learning to shoot for self-defense purposes.

The made up woman let her mouth run away with her and mentioned that between their houses they had a pretty good setup for interlocking fields of fire and that set off a red flag instantly but I didn't let it show.

Soccer moms generally don't talk that way. They are generally interested in the garden club, school activities or things of that nature. Interlocking fields of fire is generally not a part of their vocabulary.

I've not shot a match at the club in a while and wasn't surprised to see a few female shooters had entered the game and while Mrs Soap and Water had joined the match game, Mrs. Manicured nails had not. She was shooting for another purpose.

Mrs.Manicured seemed disappointed in her scores and I decided to give her a little encouragement. I went to the trash and fished out a shot-out target and folded it so it was about the size of my torso. We went down range and I held it over her target. About 90+% of the shots at the 100 yard mark were covered, only a few outside of the folded target.

"Well over 90% of your shots would have been disabling to a guy my size at 100 yards," I said. Then I grinned. "Keep practicing."

I went about my business and started to pack up when an expensive looking car drove up and a man got out of it and walked up to Mrs.Manicured nails. "You two going to teach me how to shoot?" he asked.

He picked up the carbine and it was obvious he didn't know how to use it, but at least he was safe. He kept the muzzle downrange. He also told his wife that UPS had dropped off another two cases of ammunition.

That opened my eyes. I think he just bought the carbine on recommendation. He was clearly not a shooter.

Mrs.Soap and Water tool charge instantly and started a safety briefing. I figured everything was under control and everything was going to be OK so I packed up and as I was leaving I saw that the guy was paying attention. It was clearly his first firearm.

To me this scene just ain't right. I could see it if it was a woman taking a pistol class or a guy that wanted to take up hunting but this was like a latter day Ward and June Cleaver.

They should have been home with Wally and the Beav or over at Fred Rutherford's house. They just didn't seem the type to be at a rifle range learning how to shoot an AR 15.

While I like to see people enter the shooting sports these two are for reasons I would not have thought of even six months ago.

I was kind of shaken when the woman had mentioned interlocking fields of fire. That's GI stuff, and as a former GI I understood but I was floored a civillian scooer mom would be interested in the concept.

Even among longtime shooters the subject of infantry tactics never really came up unless some veteran was telling a war story. Yet here was a soccer mom seemed to be studying up on tactics that were once the realm of the Army and the Marine Corps.

Then it occurred to me that people like that are the reason there isn't any ammo out there for the regular shooters. These are simply two of the many people that are first time gun owners.

These are actually people that used to laugh at the preppers. They thought they were nuts but these are people that are arming themselves for trouble ahead.

The ranges never used to see people like that before. They were the domain of hunters sighting in their rifles, target and match shooters like myself and the experimenters that were trying out different handloads.

While these are the first people like that I have met. On the way out I met the groundskeeper and we chatted. I brought up what I had just seen and he told me that they were only two of quite a few that he had seen learning to shoot military rifles.

He also told me that the club is running self-defense courses every single weekend. They used to run one every six months. He said the questions they seemed to be asking were not the usual questions about street crime. The questions were closer to being infantry tactics. Even the instructors are worried because they have never had to deal with that before.

Most non shooters don't see this, but I do as I am part of the firearms world. Things are going nuts when soccer couples are arming themselves like that.

All I can say is that there are a lot of people out there that are expecting trouble. It doesn't feel very good.

I've said it before, it looks like people are arming themselves for a civil war.

When you see that DHS has just ordered 7000 rifles, over a billion rounds of ammunition and is getting over 2100 vehicles designed for urban assault you stop wondering whypeople are going this route.

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The classics never change

I had a talk with a father and son yesterday and found out that things haven't really changed a whole lot over the years.

I asked the kid how far his father had to walk to school and the kid told me "It was barefoot for five miles through four feet of snow, uphill both ways."

This is what fathers are supposed to tell their sons and everything seemed OK until the son told me his dad grew up in Arizona.

I turned to the father and told him that he was entitled to use the Texas exemption. He wanted to know what that was and I explained that The Texas exemption applied to most of Texas, parts of Arizona and New Mexico.

Page 14,article 2, amendment 6 paragraph 9 subsection A states specifically that the Texas exemption allows fathers in certain southwestern sections of the United States to substitute "Barefoot through five miles of cactus and rattlesnakes in lieu of barefoot for five miles through four feet of snow." when they tell their sons how far they had to walk to school when he was their age.

For any of you in the southeast there is the Florida exemption that permits fathers in certain areas to substitute 'Five miles barefoot through waist deep swamp full of alligators and water moccasins" in lieu of the four feet of snow.

Both exemptions do not excuse fathers from the 'uphill both ways' part, though.

Anyway, what was a joy was that as I was leaving I heard the father start to tell his son, "Back when I was your age..."

The son did his job, too. "Aw, come on, Dad. Not again."

It is good that the classics never go out of style.


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Kalashnakitty.

Yesterday I saw my pretty pink Kalashnakitty T-shirt in the drawer, grinned and said, "What the hell. Why not?" So I put iton.

I had a Dr's appointment and some shopping to do and the sight of an Old School tough guy in a Kalashnakitty T-shirt generally draws comments,mostly from women.

Picture this on a lovely pink T-shirt.

 

Anyway, the shirt drew comments from the medical people and when I went grub shopping a number of women saw it and smiled. A couple did comment that they thought it was cute.

 

One guy laughed outright and told me I was either crazy or bad and didn't want to find out. I grinned and told him I'd just have to keep hum guessing and we left on amused terms.

 

Then it happened. There is always one and this one was some kind of braided armpitted,hairy legged Humboldt Honey. She told me she didn't like seeing the kitty carrying a machine gun and asked me why I was wearing it.

 

I went into a different dialict of English I can speak sometimes.  It is a combination of Trailer Trash Redneck, Northern Jersey Guinea gangster and Andrew Dice Clay.

 

"I woke up dis mornin' lookin' ta pick a f***in' fight wit someone an cut someone tree ways. Long, deep and continous so I put dis f***in' shirt on an none of da guys wants ta fight me. All I wound up with was some f***in' hippie chick broad an I can't cut ya of I'll go ta f***in' jail.  But if ya's wants I can take ya out to da parkin' lot an bitch slap ya across it if it'll make ya f***in' happy. Da pimp hand can use some f***in' exercise."

 

She went agape and fled and I heard someone behind me laugh like hell. It was the produce woman that I have known for years. She looked at me, looked at the shirt and glanced at the fleeing woman and laughed. "You ought to get an Academy award for that!" she said.

 

Everyone I meet makes my day in some form or another. Some by entering my life and others by leaving it.

 

 

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I'm successful. Kiss my ass. You could have been, too.

There are a couple of guys that I started working with 20 odd years ago that are in the same damned thing they were doing when I worked with them instead of climbing the ladder.

Of course, they say that I brown nosed my way up the ladder.

I didn't. I simply wasn't belligerent to my seniors but I did speak my mind. Maybe that's why I am not further up the food chain but the truth is I don't want to be promoted because I'd have to come ashore and I would lose my lifestyle of being either at work or off.

Let's get down to bare bones here and look at me several years ago when I was an entry-level deckhand.

When I was a deckhand I was often seen with my nose in a book during my off watch time while the other guys were busy watching TV or porn. I was studing for my Able Seaman and tankerman's endorsements.

While some of my shipmates at the time were doing the same thing, there were quite a few that loafed. I put my nose to the grindstone and eventually got myself promoted and became a little more successful than some of my peers.

They're envious even though they made the decision that American Idol, porn and partying when they were off was more important than getting promoted.

Their choice and they chose poorly. Not my fault.

The envy of the unsuccessful have for the successful is universal. It crosses race, and religious barriersand sometimes it doesn't.

If the loser is a Gentile and the successful person is Jewish, he gets labeled as one a them rich Jews.

If the successful person is black, the unsuccessful blacks call him an UncleTom and hate him for his success. Non-blacks mumble that he got a break based on race (which sometimes holds some water, as there are set asides made for minorities. Successful blacks that have made it on their own hate the set-asides)

A lot of losers of all races enlist in the Free $hit Army and get ahead that way. After all,they think, it's only fair for them to take from The Man.

Personally I hate it when able people do this. I am not alone.

I have a sister that when she gets ahead financially she takes time off and does relief work in South America for peanuts. She works for an organization that sends people that sign up pictures and letters from the child that a person supports for about $30/month.

I looked at my paycheck and saw what they had taken out and I'm pretty upset because Uncle Sam sends me no pictures and letters from the people that I support with my tax dollars.

I pay a hell of a lot more than $30/month to support and damned well deserve pictures or letters from the people I support and to tell you the truth, I'm not too pleased about it.

Uncle Sam should make people receiving aid send pictures of themselves to the people that support them. After all, the kids in South America have the decency to do this.

I want a picture of someone sitting outside of their Section 8 home with their kids sitting next to them smiling and saying thank you.

On the other hand, feel free to ask me how it feels to want because I do not see it happening.

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I am of the opinion that when a boy reaches 8

 years old he ought to be wrested from his mother's bosom and raised by his maternal grandfather.
The other day I wanted a Guiness and after shooting a few groups I cased my rifle and went in the the clubhouse and over the the bar. I only drop in on the bar every other year but decided to have a Guiness. They only charge $3 for one there.

I sat down at the bar in an empty seat and found myself between an older woman and a 9 year-old kid that was sitting there with his grandfather.

The grandfather offered to change seats with be but I told him it was likely the kid would be better company. The Grandfather looked a bit offended for a second, rethought and snickered.

The kid was pretty sharp and I told him the usual things old men are supposed to tell kids. Walking 5 miles to school, having to fight Indians to get home, things like that. I showed him a scar I got from getting hit with an arrow when I served with General Custer.

The kid didn't say much, preferring to talk with his mischievious sparkling eyes. I think he knew if he said anything disrespectful his grandpa would whack him one.

Finally I looked at the kid and said, "I'll bet you think I'm full of carp, don't you?"

The kid laughed like hell.

Then I looked at the TV and there was some little hottie on the screen. I looked suspiciously at the TV and at the older woman sitting on the other side of me. When she got nervous, I turned to her, pointed at the TV and asked, "Is that really you?"

At the same time she smiled and blushed the guy next to her snarfed beer and said, "She was better looking than that back in the day!"

We all chuckled and I went back to watching the dynamics between the kid and his grandfather.

I figure that maternal grandfathers are the people that ought to raise boys. Lord knows that grandmothers ought to cook for him as grandmothers are the best cooks in the world.

Wives are generally leery of their husbands but worship their fathers. A father will catch hell from the wife for setting off a small firecracker near the kid, yet when the kid reports that he and gramps got some dynamite somewhere blew a stump 300 feet into the air, the wife will simply say, "That's nice."

The kid could come home and tell his mother that gramps took him to the Kit Kat club and introduced him to a bunch of nice ladies and the mother will smile and say, "That's nice. I'm glad your grandfather took you somewhere and you got to meet some nice people."

Grandfathers are in a better spot than fathers to raise small boys because they can get away with murder and introduce boys to the finer things in life.

Grandfathers can teach the kid about spirited horses, firearms, fast cars, blowing $hit up,good liquor and just about everything else and get away with it.

They are also generally pretty good disciplinarians, too and they generally don't play along with the sissified disciplinary games they use today. If the kid screws up he gets a good whack on the ass.

If the kid's dad did this, the mother would likely have her husband jailed, yet Gramps can get away with it.

Having grandparents raise boys doesn't sound like too bad of an idea.


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SO this day sucks

Someone needed my pickup for a couple of days and I figured I could boot around in the Miata for a couple of days but when I went to fire it up it wouldn't light off. A basic check told me it is most likely the fuel pump.

I towed it down to the local garage because I simply do not have the patience to screw with it any more.

I have no lift and they do and I'll be fooling with it for days and I don't want to.

It is now 11 and I have not even hada crummy cup of coffee yet but I'm going to make myself a good sized venison burger to cover both breakfast and lunch with in one fell swoop.

Maybe I'll have another post later on today.



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Jammed up today

The car won't start.

Gotta get mobile again


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This country has too many humanities majors.

Yesterday I was working up a load for my upcoming match and the Gods of Bullet speed played a little prank on me. The load I tried came smoking out the muzzle at a little over 3000 feet per second which is FAST.

The load didn't group too well so I guess I'm going to have to slow things down a bit.

Anyway later on yesterday afternoon I mentioned it to a friend who was with another person I know that's somewhat of an idiot. II didn't know the idiot was in addition to being an idiot was afraid of firearms and I got an earful, or started to until I told him to go piss up a rope.

The guy is some kind of art teacher which now that I think about it does not surprise me because it seems that most of the people that are anti 2nd Amendment appear to be arts and humanities majors. I have had a bunch of these people over the years get on my case regarding being a shooter.

On the other hand, when a techno-geek or an engineer gets wind that I handload for matches the conversation draws to things like twist rates, speed, harmonics and the trans-sonic zone. These people are interesting and I have yet to have had one of them criticize me for being an experimenter and several have wanted to accompany me to both the bench and the range.

I wonder about this. I think there are too many humanities majors in this country and no where NEAR enough engineers.

I said that once to an English teacher and she started babbling that there are enough engineers and we need more humanities majors.

I shot back with ,"Then why are humanities majors paid so little and why are we importing engineers by the thousands from India?" Then I pointed out that the little girl up the street that just graduated college as a civil engineer had about 25 different offers long before graduation. She started off at more than her father is making which is more than the English teacher is making.

She didn't like that very much and said it was unfair. I said that it was unfair she was making as much as she was and that promptly started World Wars 3, 4, 4 and 5/8th s and 6. We skipped World War 5 as there was far too much rubble laying around to fight in.


The reason is simple, really.

Arts and humanities majors are generally dealing with intangibles. The science majors are not. The science types are dealing with real things and can create things that we need. It is the scientists that create longer lasting light bulbs and even come up with ways to clean up the earth.

All the humanities types do is talk and bring things down.

Right now Yoko Ono (who really does nothing these days) and a bunch of Hollywierd types are griping about fracking and so on. Of course, these actors and singers likely have never built anything or created anything tangible. You can't eat a movie or a song.

Ask one of these so-called artists against fracking how they plan on keeping us supplied with energy and you're going to get the same old tired crap about solar and wind power. The woods are full of abandoned windmills and solar panel farms.

Of course, the artists will babble that the government ought to subsidize such things which sounds good until you remember that Joe who works at the plant will now have to pay twice. Once to the power company and again to Uncle Sam who is footing part of the bill.

These are the same people that gripe about people not having enough to eat, yet I don't see them figuring out a way to get people to feed themselves.

Yet out there there are agricultural types that understand the biology of plants that can figure out a way to get something edible to grow someplace to feed third world people.

Of course, when they do that the very artists piss and moan that the food has been genetically altered or such crap.

I get a hoot out of seeing Pamela Anderson babble about eating animals and peace and love and everything. It's funny to watch. She's another Hollyweird type that does little. Yet go out to eat and you can find an engineer or techno geek sitting at the next table wolfing down a huge blood rare steak.

One thing that these humanities types ought to do is shut the hell up and go and make their movies or sing their songs somewhere, keep their mouths shut and let the rest of us build things.

Oh, yeah. Today I have to try out another load or two. I have built a set of rounds to test that are 42 grains of powder and 44 grains. Down from 46. We'll see how they group and work from there.





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Yesterday I posted somewhere that the Ft. Hood shooter had been promoted.

It was from a post I read on "The Duffel Blog".

A lot of you out there know that the Duffel Bog is a spoof website run by a group of both former and serving GIs. If I'm correct the starterer-upperer of the thing is a recently discharged Marine.

The Duffel Blog is sometimes called 'The Onion of the Military' but they got that squared away after the Duffel Blog team launched an airborne assault on the Onion's office and set them straight. The Onion is bow referred to as the civilian version of the Duffel Blog.

Anyway, I posted a link to a spoof article that the Army had promoted the Fort Hood shooter and had also given him the Legion of Merit in a ceremony in the jail. The thread got over 2000 hits in a short time.

I suppose that some of the hits were people expecting something along the lines of the Duffel Blog article but I'd just bet that there were quite a few people that opened the thread that expected to be outraged that the Army actually HAD promoted him.

What gets me is that those people that expected to find out the guy had been promoted while in jail have a valid point looking for something like that to happen. Over the years the government has done an awful lot of weird things and it simply sounded like the Army had just done another. The Army does have a history of doing things that don't make sense. After all, they promoted me to sergeant.

(Now that you mention it, it does make sense that they promoted me to sergeant and the mistake they made was to promote me to Sp/4 which is the same pay grade as corporal. Former corporals sometimes grow up to become dictators and other megalomaniacs so I guess they corrected their error by promoting me to sergeant. They figured making me a sergeant would save them considerable work further down the line.)

The very fact that something like promoting the Ft Hood shooter is even remotely believable doesn't speak well for our society.









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Sorry for the late post but

this morning I hit the deck running.

I'll make sure I do something tomorrow morning.



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This I guess is Daylight Savings weekend coming up

It is somewhat of a pain in the ass because it means I have to change the clocks back

It used to be a pretty easy thing to do but with electronic clocks it is a nuisance. The damned things are complicated, every one of them is different and because you only change them areound every six months you never get very good at it.

As a ham radio operator and a celestialnavigator I have worked with UTC or what used to be called Greenwich MeanTime.

Sometimes I think the solution to this crap is to put the entire world on UTC and call it good.

I think the reason we split the world into time zones is so that lunch time is at noon on the clock. Noon is when the sun is at its highest.

Big deal. You can still eat lunch when the sun it at its highest, only where I live it will be at 4 pm.
So to be a nine to fiver you just go in at 1pm, eat lunch at 4pm and go home at 9pm.

Once you got used to it it would probably be a lot easier for international business and business between the time zones.For Daylight Savings time it would be pretty easy, too. You just tell everyone to come in an hour earlier.

At least you wouldn't have to go through the frustration of changing electronic clocks and watches every six months.

Then again, maybe it's easy for me to say because I'm a sailor and it doesn't matter what time it is. When there is work to be done,, you work.




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"If you are taught bitterness

and anger, then you will believe you are a victim. You will feel aggrieved and the twin brother of aggrievment is entitlement. So now you think you are owed something and you don't have to work for it and now you're on a really bad road to nowhere because there are people who will play to that sense of victimhood, aggreivement and entitlement, and you still won't have a job." ~ Condaleeza Rice

**********************************

When I get off of work and drive home the company owes me something. A couple of days later they electronically deposit my pay into my bank account and we are even.

That's because I agreed to work for them and they agreed to pay me for my service. Nothing more, nothing less.

I give them a day's work, they give me a day's pay.

It pretty much ends there.

There are, of course other benefits that go along with my employment but the basic deal we have is a day's work for a day's pay. This is pretty much how it works for a lot of people.

When my shore leave is over and I return to work the cycle repeats itself. I go back on the payroll and work and they accrue my time and pay period we settle up.

I listened to someone a while back griping about how he was cheated after working at a place for several years and getting laid off. The truth is that the contract between him and his employer is over.

When the deal is over I have no right to ask for anything else and when he stops paying me he has no right to ask me to work for him any more. He has no responsibility to pay me as I have no responsibility to work for him anymore.

From time to time I get a bonus of some sort and as far as I am concerned he doesn't owe me that. When I get handed a bonus I am grateful. While I am grateful for it, I never expect it and have no right to complain if I don't get it the next year.

The fact that I have worked here over a decade doesn't mean squat. When the check comes in, the company owes me nothing.

I have no sense of entitlement from my employer other than to live up to our agreement and to be fair and reasonable in matters pertaining to my employment.

It really is this simple.

Incidentally I was once asked if I owe my employer my best efforts. I answered that I owe it to myself.



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So where are all of these jobs we're supposed to have?

I've been hearing all of this hoople about eliminating poverty since the Johnson administration but I keep seeing the same old group of people sitting around doing nothing but collecting some sort of government assistance.

Can't say I blame a lot of these people because the government has made poverty pretty comfortable. Unemployment has been extended for up to 2 years and any woman that wants to get knocked up can get on the welfare rolls instead of having the father of the kid(s) cough up and pay support.

Yet the Great Society programs and the programs that have followed them were supposed to provide jobs and get people working again.

So how come unemployment rates are so high?

My guess is that there is an awful lot of capital tied up awaiting opportunity which is not here yet because we have come up with a lot of good reasons not to invest in America.

If I was sitting on a chunk of cash I certainly would have deep misgivings about starting a business up in this economic climate.

With little opportunity to make a decent return and a big opportunity to lose, why take the risk?

We have decided to make things difficult for businesses to prosper. If the rules don't get you, taxation is very likely to.

One of the things that make places business unfriendly are taxes. I have covered the fact that businesses move from time to time because of excessive taxation. I used to work for a company that was based in Philly and when Philly taxes got to the point that they hurt tooo much the CEO simply moved the business headquarters to Tampa.

When I heard that I laughed like hell. Philly got greedy and wanted a bigger piece of the pie. Instead they got none. The CEO grabbed the whole pie and left town with it. They also lost the money they were getting from the shoreside employees from wage taxes on top of that.

I wonder what the city council meeting was like when they brought the subject up of a shipping company leaving because of their taxing it too heavily. Likely a lot of hemming and hawing.

Right now there are a lot of businesses moving, planning on moving, considering it or threatening to.

Magul in Colorado is leaving Colorado if a gun ban is passed and they will take quite a number of jobs and several million dollars they put into the Colorado economy with them.

Of course, the politicians told Magpul that they can continue to manufacture their shooting accessories there but Magpul has decided that if they can't sell their shooting accessories there they will uproot.

What is interesting is that several other states have offered to help them move and have guarenteed a better working enviornment. Wyoming is interested and I heard that one state offered to pay their moving expenses.

It isn't just that Magpul leaves, either. It is a lot more than that. Deliveries to and from the present location cease , subcontractors get hurt, suppliers get dinged and the whole thing keeps going on as the money from the Magpul payroll disappears and local businesses get hurt.

Some politician may tell his constituants that it's ONLY 3 or 400 jobs but few will tell them the rest of the story.

Maryland just sneaked a ban through and Beretta and another armsmaker, Benelli, are planning on moving. Beretta is a pretty big outfit. They do a lot of defense work and supply the services with the M9 pistol among other things.

I have just read where West Virginia is wooing Beretta. I'll just bet you that West Virginia is going to offer them a pretty good deal to move. Likely a lower tax base, too. They can use the jobs there and they will do what they can to get them.

In addition to the jobs at the Beretta plant there will be a lot of work created. Subcontractors will be hired, delivery people will be needed and it will even trickle down to the point where someone will likely open a diner outside the plant gate.

The influx of people will require homes, food, clothing and everything else and if West Virginia is where Beretta lands there will likely be a booming community overnight.

There is another large government contractor and firearms business named Benelli that is likely to move, too as are a few other businesses. Benelli has a reputation for making first class high end shotguns and has government contracts to the services to supply them with specialized military shotguns for urban fighting.

Maryland has also had a history of taxing the wealthy and has driven quite a number of the wealthy out of the state.

Some who used to live near the state line have simply sold their homes and moved across the state line and continue to commute, bring their tax monies and expendetures to their new home state.

I can't blame them. I would move it they did that to me.

So instead of getting money from businesses and individuals the state of Maryland now has less money coming in than they did if they had left things alone.

Actions have consequences and it pays to think about what they are ahead of time.

Since New York passed the SAFE act there are murmurings that Remington firearms might pull up stakes. They have been in Ilion, New York for the past 200 years. Tha are very much a part of the community of Ilion and if they do you can imagine that Ilion is going to be hurting.

Businesses like that in addition to factory jobs generally hire a lot of subcontractors and delivery people and it would not surprise me to hear that if they do move that UPS is going to have to lay off a couple of drivers. It works itself that far down.

When a company leaves they take a lot more than their basic assets with them. Generally some of the work force moves but not all of it. Some people have ties to the community and opt to stay and see what happens. Figure they are likely to go straight to the unemployment office and collect, adding to more unemployment.

When a company like that moves into a disadvantaged area they generally hail the new arrival as a hero because he provides much needed jobs.

Someone I know in North Carolina also told me that one community that has wooed Remington has promised to add a machinist curriculum to the local community college to provide them with entry level machinists so as to insure them a supply of good labor.

Another thind I have seen is that there are a number of companies that have decided that they are simply not going to do any business at all in a state that has a ban.

I have seen a pretty long list of suppliers that have decided not to do business with any governmental agencies in New York, California, Maryland and if Colorado passes a ban they will simply add them to the list.

Actions have consequences.

Of course, the New York politicians are going to play this down but the truth will trickle out. The next elections in Upperstate New York and other places will prove to be interesting.

You have to remember that when a guy has his job legislated out of existance that isn't just one vote. People have friends and families and they don't like to lose breadwinners or see their relatives out of a job.

Of course, there are a lot of people in these states that are going to be outraged but they can be as outraged as they want as it is going to do no good whatsoever.

The whole thing reminds me of a Smothers Brothers skit I saw in the 60s where the local NAACP guy comes into the factory ordering the owner has to make sure there are so many Blacks on the payroll. Tom Smothers, playing the part of the factory owner, promises to make sure he has the required number of Blacks. He then picks up the phone calls personell and asks a couple questions and then tells personel to fire sixteen Blacks leaving the NAACP guy with egg on his face.

The GIs have a far less eloquent saying. "It looks like someone just $hit and fell back in it." is how the GIs put it.




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ANother right we are losing

There is one right that seems to have been taken away from a lot of people. It is seldom ever discussed but it seems to have been taken away from us by a series of safety nets.

If I lose my job I can likely get on unemployment which to a certain extent is little more than cashing in on an insurance policy although it seem that it has been extended to about two years. It used to be only good for about three.

If I get sick I can go out on disability and milk that because once you get on it it is nigh on impossible to be booted off of it.

In many places anyone hiring me will play hell getting rid of me without my committing a serious offense like coming to work drunk or workplace violence, although in my case I am in a work at will state.

In other places I am forced to join a union and in a lot of cases that means an employer is going to have a pretty hard time getting rid of me unless I do something like commit homicide or intentionally run a truck through a warehouse full of cut crystal.

In my place I have no union to back me and being in a work at will state I can be let go for any reason. Truth is I kind of like things that way because I am not being cheated out of one of my rights.

I have to work my ass off and stay ahead of the game and play things smart if I want to stay employed. That in itself is a pretty good way of keeping me motivated which is a good thing. It is a good thing because it keeps me going and I keep going so I don't have to exercise the right I have that is seldom mentioned.

The right I am talking about here is the right to fail.


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