Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Every Picture Tells a Story

Look, I don't have much of a hard time believing that some percentage of stolen or illicitly purchased handguns in the US are finding their way to Haiti, but something like ninety percent of the long guns I'm seeing in photos there are your typical run-of-the-mill Third World Kalashnikov variants.

Which made the photo here interesting:


I'd bet lunch money that that's a picture of the BBC photo stringer's hired private security contractor. I'll bet it got wired to London in a big batch of photos from the current unpleasantness and someone in editorial or the design department (I don't know the exact online workflow at the Beeb, sorry) thought "Ooh! This one looks dramatic!" without understanding what they were looking at, and used it.

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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Meme Dump...




That didn't take long.

The usual suspects are already in full "ship fuel can't melt steel beams" mode at Gab 2.0, I see.



Tab Clearing...



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Monday, March 25, 2024

Time flies like a jet fighter...

I was really not ready for all these fighter planes that were the New Hotness in the mid-late Seventies to be celebrating a half century of flight.

This time it's the Tornado, still in service with the Luftwaffe. I was six when the first prototype flew, and in middle school when they went operational with the Jerries.



I LOL’ed

I saw someone online refer to Candace Owens as “Canned Ass Owens” and it caused me to express mirth audibly.

Look, you don’t pick messy public feuds with the boss, and no single employee is more important than the organization. Start thinking like that and next thing you know you’ll be doing “documentaries” about testicle-tanning on Xitter.

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Ignorance is no excuse, they say…

I just closed a column with the sentence “Know the law, so the law doesn’t get to know you” and I could have kept going for another thousand words.

For instance, there are a lot of very pro-2A states with very relaxed, liberal handgun carry laws that, at the same time, have strict prohibitions against loaded long guns in vehicles.

This isn’t an “anti-gun” thing, it’s the result of the state having a strong hunting culture and therefore having laws intended to thwart poaching and “road-hunting”.

This is the kind of thing folks need to be aware of on roadtrips. Don’t just glance at your handy CCW reciprocity map and think that it’s an indicator of the entire regulatory climate along your route.

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Sunday, March 24, 2024

Finding the Dot


Gideon Optics sent one of their Judge mini red dots to mount on the Taurus 327 Defender TORO, so we'll see how it does when screwed to the topstrap only an inch or so away from the 40,000 psi detonations of full house .327 Federal Magnum loads.

Of course, revolver duty is actually a lot kinder than the whiplash these optics experience when mounted on the reciprocating slide of a self-loading pistol.

I've been using a dot-sighted revolver for about a year now, and I had to learn a different technique of finding the dot than the one I have used for years with semiautos, but that's gonna take a whole post of its own...

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Saturday, March 23, 2024

Friday, March 22, 2024

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #252...


You know how I know that I've been living in plastic pistol land for a long, long time? The Walther PDP Steel Frame Compact test pistol arrived for a Shooting Illustrated review and I was like "Jeezis this thing is a boat anchor. How the hell is anyone supposed to carry this?"

I threw it on the scale and it weighed in at a hair over two pounds, six ounces. You know what else weighs a hair over two pounds, six ounces? The Smith & Wesson 5906, as do the various full-size steel 1911s that I carried every day for something like ten years. 

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Hey, look!

My review of the Girsan MC 14T is online now. The 14T is a blowback .380 with a tip-up barrel that's derived from the Beretta Model 86, albeit with some significant improvements. You should go read about it!



Make your answer in the form of a question.

You know, in retrospect I'm kinda sad that we didn't get more Aaron Rodgers as a host on Jeopardy!, especially as his orbit has gotten increasingly far out there.

Can you imagine this?
Contestant: "I'll take 'People Who've Walked on the Moon' for $400, Aaron."

Aaron: "It's a hoax, you sheeple!"

Contestant: "Okay, then, give me 'Famous Vaccine Inventors' for $200?"

Aaron: "AAAARGH!!!" *rips up note cards*
Later:
Aaron: "And for Final Jeopardy, 'The water is turning the frogs' this. You have thirty seconds." 

Music: 🎶 Doo-do-doo-do... 🎶


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Thursday, March 21, 2024

Automotif CDLXXIX...


The Pontiac GTO is flashier, the Olds Cutlass 442 was rarer, and every muscle car nerd knows that the Buick GSX Stage 1 was the real hero of the bunch at the drag strip, but in my heart the Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sport is the king of the '68-'72 GM A-body muscle cars.

They eschewed the flashy wings and scoops and rubber nose cones of their platform-mates, and that let the really clean lines of the A-body hardtop coupe, with its swoopy fastback roof silhouette, shine through.

Is this super-clean, lightly-modded 1970 Chevelle a real SS? Only the VIN knows for sure. The Monza Red paint was a Corvette-only color in '70 (Chevelles came in a slightly darker hue called Cranberry Red) and it lacks the cowl induction hood, but something over eighty percent of '70 SS Chevelles were ordered with the base juice lifter, 2-bolt main L34 396 and it's unlikely that most of those had cowl induction.

Anyway, whether it began life as an SS or got turned into one with the aid of a Year One catalog, this is one sweet ride.

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Phyllis Schlafly 2.0

On "Tradwife" social media influencers:
"It was only recently that I recognized the blatant hypocrisy hiding in plain sight: I tapped the profile link of a popular Aussie tradwife and was met with a barrage of links urging me to transact: an Amazon storefront, affiliate codes, a mailing list…even an e-book. I tapped through her website and discovered MLM-coded language: “Are you a stay-at-home mom looking to grow your Instagram and earn extra income while juggling the joys and challenges of motherhood?” Oh, no. The “anti-hustle” lifestyle is, in fact, a thinly veiled mega-hustle—one much more convoluted than the Tupperware parties that came before it.

I perused her site. Oh, look, I thought, a lead magnet! (In digital content marketing, a “lead magnet” is a free downloadable item you give away in exchange for an email address.) Hers just so happened to be iPhone backgrounds featuring affirmations like, “With humility, I embrace my role, upholding traditions as the keeper of our cherished home.” What struck me about her website was how familiar it felt: This was pretty transparently a content creator’s monetized hub, no different from the courses, e-books, and affiliate codes distributed by the boss-babe influencers the tradwives claim to disavow. Oh my gosh, I whispered to no one, She’s girlbossing all over us! The call is coming from inside the housewife!

I have to hand it to them: what a diabolical brand strategy! Build a career teaching other women how not to have a career.
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Mash that like button and subscribe! This uplifting of tradional roles is sponsored by Betty Crocker!

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