Straight Case

The 40 S&W as a revolver round

Whatziss you say? a Fotay Revolver? Ain't no sucha thang, you say. Yes there is, and I own one. It is the Charter Arms Pitbull snubbie in 40 S&W caliber. Charter arms deals with the concept of using rimless ammo in a revolver by a mechanical construct which projects little tabs out of the ejection star to grab the cartridges by their rebated-rim channel for ejection. The cartridges headspace themselves in the cylinder by the mouth of the brass.

When you think about the 40 S&W, it is simply a larger semi-auto cartridge than the 9mm Luger, and it will handle the pressures that a Nine will, up into the mid 30,000 CUP range. 38 Special, even in +P+, won't take over 20K-CUP. 45 ACP, same as 38 Special. 357 Magnum will take up into the low 40,000 CUP range, but for most snubbie applications, you have to load it down well below what it will take.

So, the Fotay makes a decent snubbie cartridge. Out of the Charter Arms' 2.5" barrel, it will make close to 1,000 fps in most defensive loadings, and closer to 1,050 fps in the lightest bullets.

I am currently loading some 40 S&W for my Pitbull in 135-gr, the lightest bullet commonly available. I get these from MidwayUSA, which house gets them from Rainier Bullets. They are Copper Plated Lead Truncated Cone. The first batch for testing will be shoved by 6.2-gr of IMR Hi-Skor 700-X. Federal Small Pistol primer lights the fire. In a 4" test barrel, these get 1,210 fps, which would be 439 #/ft muzzle energy, about a third more than a 9mm out of that barrel. Out of the 2.5", with a cylinder gap to jump, I will likely get 1050 fps, translating to 330 #/ft muzzle energy, about a third more than a 38 Special loading out of a snubbie revo. For comparison, the NATO 124-gr 9mm war round gets 336 #/ft out of a 5" service auto.

After the 135s, I will load some with Hornady Action Pistol JHP-180s. This is a bullet designed for the competition crowd. It has a tough hide of copper to handle metal targets, unlike the lightly-plated Rainiers. It will make decent penetration, pushed by 6.0-gr of Unique out of the snubbie at about 950 fps, giving me 361 #/ft of muzzle energy, just a tad more than 45ACP military ball gives. I have a 1911A1, and it weighs twice as much as the Pitbull, carries 3 more rounds and does not easily conceal. My shoot-all-day Glock Model 22 doesn't conceal well, either (no Glock double-stacker does).

The revolver, with two reloads of ammo, gets me to my rifle, in the case I can't end the fight with five rounds, but that's why we make lots of ammo and practice a lot, isn't it?

Public money DIRECTLY spent for a gun grab

Interesting case, all the more so because it all happened within 5 miles of my residence.

Fact set: Crazy kid defeats lock on older brother's gun safe (a sheet-metal type, it sounds like), takes an AR-15, a vest and plenty of ammo then goes to shoot up the local High School (biggest high school in the State). He kills one, wounds another, but when the pressure is applied by the good guys, he kills himself (standard MO of these cowards).

Of course, that's when the gun-grabbing drama-llamas took over, and as a result, you have probably heard of the Reynolds High School shooting of last year.

Continuing. At the time, there was quite some speculation that the liberal Multnomah County District Attorney would charge the shooter's older bro (gun owner) with some crime, but in the end, no one could prove that the safe was left unlocked (and Oregon lacks "safe storage" laws anyway), and older bro said he had locked it. So, no crime was charged, but the authorities kept the AR and associated equipment. The older bro SUED THE CITY OF TROUTDALE, because Oregon law is quite clear that when no charges are preferred, evidence seized MUST be returned to lawful owners within a time certain.

Enter: the Troutdale City Attorney. It seems that he disagrees with his superior prosecutor, the DA, and wanted charges on older bro, but lacks jurisdiction to file them (in Oregon, only minor crimes may be charged by a City, most crimes have to be charged by the District Attorney), so he dithered and kept the gun, which was in the custody of the Troutdale Police Property Room. A State Judge heard the lawsuit, and ruled in favor of the plaintiff (older bro) that the gun and equipment must be returned. The City Attorney stalled, but apparently figured out a way to keep the plaintiff's gun: give him Fair Market Value for it. The lawsuit was soon settled.

According to this article, the City Council buried the payment to older bro on a lengthy and boring agenda of City Council administrative business, and snuck it through, except for the reporters on the City Beats. Oregonian Reporter Steve Duin, a gun-grabber himself by many previous writings, noticed and wrote the story up. Okay, at least said reporter is a digger, is willing to take on government hanky-panky, right?

Nazzofast, Guido. Read the whole article.

About fifty words in, Reporter Duin writes a paragraph listing the property involved in the lawsuit:

"One Daniel Defense Armament DDM4 carbine rifle, one of the bullies in the AR-15 family (emphasis added). Eight 30-round Magpul magazines. A “plate carrier” vest, a United State Army standard-issue laundry bag and “several hundred rounds” of ammunition."

It appears that TWO people have now personified the rifle (illogically made an inanimate object into a person), not only the City Attorney, who could not bear the idea of the gun being returned to it's rightful and blameless owner, AND Reporter Duin, who has declared that the most popular rifle in the USA is a "bully".

I was taught that there is no higher authority on the etymology of the English Language than the Oxford English Dictionary, so I went there and looked up "bully":

"(pl. bullies) a person who uses their strength or power to frighten or hurt weaker people"  (my emphasis).

O.E.D. very specifically refers to a "bully" as a PERSON (twice, once directly and one indirectly).

So sorry, Steve Duin, old sport, your anti-gun predjudice is STILL showing in your public writing. Don't bother apologizing or issuing a correction though, it would compound your anti-liberty personality defect by adding insincerity to it.

 

Defending Fallen Veterans

Again!

This is cross-posted from my Rivrdog Blog.

Typepad is fixed, so I write...

So now I can scribble my sweet nothings about Saving The Culture again! Oh, goody!

Bragging Humble: Yes it is possible for a little fish in a big ocean to matter, all you have to do is migrate upstream to a smaller water body, to wit:

Gresham, Oregon. I live in the 4th largest city in Oregon, and all of the other Cities bigger than Gresham are far more liberal. Portland being the best example of a lib-town.

Gresham is over 100,000 now, but there are enough conservatives (relatively-speaking, the citizens are "conservatives") living here to actually cause the City Administration and other functionaries of Government to have to plan to accomodate our points of view.

Example: Recently, a wrong-headed school Principal sent a lad home for wearing a tee shirt depicting the "Battlefield Cross", or combination of boots, rifle and helmet that has come to symbolize a soldier who fell in battle, making the ultimate sacrifice for his country. This caused an immediate outrage in Gresham, an outrage which spurred the liberal Oregonian newspaper to opine:

  Common sense deficit: The subject of firearms is a sensitive one these days, particularly in schools. Even so, the treatment an eighth-grade student in Gresham’s Dexter McCarty Middle School almost beggars belief.    Alan Holmes wore a T-shirt to school last week that featured an image of a rifle. No, Holmes wasn’t wearing promotional NRA gear. On his shirt, rather, was an arrangement of helmet, boots and rifle widely used to indicate respect for fallen soldiers. Lest anyone mistake the arrangement for anything but a memorial, the shirt also read, “Standing for those who stood for us.” Holmes was told that his shirt violated the school’s dress code, The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Laura Frazier wrote. His choices: Change it or go home. He went home, and the district has since promised to review its dress code. We’ll see where that goes.    The code, as Frazier reported, prohibits clothing with, among other things, “violence related references.” To cram Holmes’ shirt within this definition is a stretch, to say the least. But if a memorial arrangement that contains a rifle is too disturbing a thing for Gresham’s eighth-graders to witness, district officials might want to reconsider Gresham High School’s fight song too. It begins as follows: “March, march on down the field/ Fighting for Gresham High/We’ll back the blue and white/With the spirit of do or die.”    March, fight, do or die. That’s awfully martial.    And talk about “violence related references.”

Well, then. If Liberal Portland can opine, conservative Gresham might feel a tad stronger. The Gresham Outlook published my letter on the subject, a letter in which, as a Veteran, I demand redress of insults to me and all local Veterans, as well as the child directly affected. Note how the Editor dressed it up with a bold sidebar of my demands:

Folks, this business of Saving The Culture can get into some conflict. I am laying MY creds on the line here, and demanding, as a citizen, that the culture be protected from the erosion of the faceless liberal zombies. In MY day, this erosion would never have happened, because respect for veterans who fell in battle was automatic, and never questioned. Maybe we can't go all the way back to that time, but we can and MUST demand the respect due our heroes of war.war.

I am shortly going to have major surgery, and will miss the next meeting of the School Board, in which I would, in the normal course of events, have presented these demands in person. I am working on a surprise for the School Board, though, and my message should still get through. Let's just say that I am not the only Grumpy Major in these parts, and two others ought to be there in my stead at the meeting on November 5th. Thanks to the magic of You Tube, I might be there myself...more later when I get that video up.

POTUS shows his colors

On Wednesday, the pro-2A site, Bearing Arms, published an article detailing several parents of Roseburg shooting victims who had objected to President Obama's political blood-dancing for gun control immediately after the horrific crimes were committed.

Yesterday, as the parents/families of the victims were assembled at Roseburg High School to meet Obama for his supposedly-humanitarian trip to Roseburg, one parent was excluded. Note that he was one of the parents who had expressed his displeasure at Obama's blood-dancing.

Several observations:

• This puts the definite lie to Obama's claim that the trip was solely for humanitarian purposes, to "hug" the parents and family members of the victims. Even if Mr. Cooper had had an angry moment before, he should have been invited. He could have been privately frisked for weapons and accompanied by several Secret Service agents if there was any threat past verbal anger, but he should have been invited, not excluded.
• Obama can't stand the heat, and should stay the HELL out of the kitchen.
• Politically, Obama just lost ALL of the bona fides he might have built up for making the trip, and the National orgs which protect the 2A ALL need to follow my example and spread this news far and wide. NOW!

Anyone who still lacked an insight into Obama's character need look no farther than this display of discourteous cowardice.

Yes, COWARDICE.

Resign, Mister President. You are unfit to hold office for another minute.

Cross-posted to the Rivrdog blog.

 

Try THIS Background Check, Obama

...and BTW, NRA, you should have no objection, either.

The Straight Spine people propose that NICS be replaced with a system that:

1. Works. For EVERYONE, not just gun dealers and cops. The present NICS totters along, breaking down frequently. It needs to be scrapped and replaced. BTW, Mister President, there are just a few states requiring NICS checks on all gun transfers now. If you DID get your way, and suddenly, ALL gun transfers in the whole Nation had to go through NICS, it would prevent gun transfers because NICS would fail at the start of every business day when it was turned on. You KNOW that, though, don't you?
2. Gets the minimal information. We are checking only PEOPLE here, so there is absolutely NO reason to have to enter any descriptors for the gun. I give you MY name and DOB, then the name and DOB of the transferee, and you check us out. You then issue a confirmation number for the transfer which we must keep for a time, or the dealer must enter on the 4473. The system keeps the record for the current 24 hours allowed by the NICS enabling law, then flushes it.
3.  Performs as close to "instantly" as possible. The system designers would be required to sample current NICS traffic to determine the period of highest traffic the system handles now, to set performance the new system would have to handle. The system would have to handle TWICE that traffic at acceptance, and be scalable to handle FIVE TIMES that traffic with minimum adjustment.
4.  Has no enforcement action attached. Two things: the current NICS, which HAS enforcement action avenues attached, results in VERY few enforcement actions, and also, few people who know that they must hide their gun possession from the authorities are going to involve themselves with the new system anyway. Criminals do not do regular gun transfers.
5. Has no cost to users, other than as a budget line item. The Feds can just eat the cost if they want the transfer checks made. The wet dream of gun-banners, of course, is to figure out some way of attaching crippling fees to all gun transfers, solely to discourage gun ownership. That is probably actionable as being a Civil Rights violation, BTW.

Some of my more die-hard 2A-defending buddies are going to scream at me for this, but I don't give a flying fig what they do, frankly. There is ONE very good reason to have this system. Can you guess what it is?

If you said, "keep crazies from getting guns", you get to wear the Dunce Cap.

If you said, "let the Government track guns", you are not only a Dunce, you didn't READ my proposal. No gun info in the system, remember, Sparky?

That reason is Civil Liability. I will predict right now that Obama could be successful in harassing gun owners if he wanted to be. He COULD impose (Congress would have to go along) Liability Insurance on us. I can predict that such a mandated insurance system would be as much of a clusterfuck as ObamaCare is now, maybe worse, BUT IT WOULD PASS. It would pass because the claim will be made (and sold) that it imposes NO undue hardship on gun-bearers to buy insurance. If my system is in place first, it will serve as a model to insure PEOPLE against civil liability arising out of their ownership/carriage of firearms. It will NOT involve registering the guns. It MIGHT involve so-called "safe storage", and insurers MIGHT be allowed to require certain other ameliorations of risk, perhaps even TRAINING in firearms use (horrors, say my buddies) or maybe even standardized QUALIFICATION (double horrors, isn't there an inalienable right to shoot things that you don't intend to?). I do NOT disagree with the idea of insurance. I would buy it myself now if the available policies were any good, but they suck, have too many "outs" for the insurers, too many limits on the insureds.

In summary: Our Courts have ruled that certain folks may not possess firearms. We are not likely to change that short of a total Re-Do of the Republic. Given that certain persons MUST be excluded from possession/commerce in firearms, some sort of background check is appropriate, so let's design a system we can live with. That system is NOT NICS.

 

Re-purposed blog

Straight Case, formerly a simple gun-blog dedicated to older cartridge weapons, will now become the home of Straight Spine, a prospective new organization which I am putting together.

Watch this blog for details.