Good Luck at Area 4!

Most of the Tattler crew is off shooting the Area 4 USPSA match this weekend. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. Below is a picture of Pimp Daddy last year as he jumps over a cattle gate, on the way to get his gun. I thought the picture had a lot of potential so I decided to have a little fun with it.

Good Luck Everybody!

Speaking of Gone Fishin'

Ah, fishing with the girlfriend. Is there nothing better? Here she is holding the two fish I caught. She didn't catch anything, but she came back with a big ol' red snapper!

Seriously the most fun I had fishing was going out with my dear old Grandpa. Here is a shot of Grandpa and his trout (NSFW).

Speaking Of Double Rainbows

So JR, was this what you were referring to in your comments in Catfish's post? I took this from my front porch a couple of days ago.

I think we have had more rainfall this spring than we had all last year.

Gone Fishin'

We're heading out to the USPSA Area 4 Championship in Shreveport, LA. I'm bringing a laptop, and assuming we have better than primitive conditions, I'll post some action updates here.

Thousands of Turkish troops enter Iraq

So, if the Turks take over the Kurds, and they intermingle, do they become Turds or Kurks? Turdistan has a nice ring to it.

Square Pegs: "Summer is here in Texas" | pegasusnews.com

One of Big D's classics got picked up by the Pegasus News here in Dallas. Trigger-happy? Yep, that's us!

Lucky Shot

Snapped this photo yesterday, just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This one's for you Dick

Here's an all too brief synopsis on picking a pistol. Dick, over at Big Dick's place has penned a gem of a list on his favorite guns. One of them is the Beretta 92. Personally, I think that there are several better choices out there.

Here's the why:

1. I like a pistol to have the same trigger pull every time I pull it. The Beretta has the horrid DA/SA pull, and the first trigger pull is just terrible. The subsequent "single action" pulls aren't much better either. Regardless, if you want to get good with a pistol (or rifle), you do so by practicing a bunch either at the range or dry firing at home. With the Beretta, you basically have to teach your finger two different trigger pulls and being the moron that I am I like to simplify. I don't really care if the trigger pull is a crisp 2.25# like on my 1911s or 2011 or if it's a semi-crisp 4.5# or so like on my SW MP40. What I want is for them to be the same, every time. KISS.

2. Mass. You can pretty much teach any monkey to make an accurate shot if you give them all day to do it. Teaching someone to accurately and rapidly fire shots takes more work. The Beretta ain't helping the shooter to rapidly fire multiple shots. The barrel sits high over your hand, and the center of gravity is such that in rapid fire there's a lot of muzzle flip, which makes rapid follow up shots difficult, and slow. Whether you're competing, or fighting for your life, you want to be able to get multiple rounds on target as fast as you can; the lower the barrel is to your hand, the faster you can control the pistol in recoil. Compare how high the Beretta's top end sits compared to a Glock, 1911, XD, or MP.

3. Ergonomics. The Beretta is grossly un-ergonomic. The controls are in the wrong place. You want the safeties and slide releases to be where they make sense, and where your fingers naturally fall. The Beretta's do not. Yes, you can get used to it and train yourself to do so. But again, compare the controls to the other pistols and you'll see what I'm talking about.

4. Reliability. I've seen just about every kind of gun out there puke or jam. But I've seen very few of them actually break. I've seen first hand 3 different Beretta 92s come apart at the seams when their locking blocks gave up the ghost. Had that happened after 100,000 rounds or so, I could understand it. But of the three I saw break - two had around 20,000 rounds through it and one had less than 5,000. All 3 happened at national level competitions, fully adhering to Mr. Murphy's law.... And when you consider that this year I'll shoot about 20,000 rounds through my pistols, that's not a real long time before you start needing to worry if your gun will go bang when you pull the trigger. You also want to know that your pistol will function with minimal care and will function properly in a variety of conditions. Compared to the other 3 choices I've mentioned, the Beretta loses out here as well.

5. Competition. I fully believe that the cream rises to the top in competition. No one wants to spend thousands of dollars a year in ammo, practice time, match fees, travel, etc, to go to a match and be handicapped by your weapon platform. When you look at the top shooters in the sport you see that there are very few pistols that are used. By far the most popular platform is the 1911/2011. The Glocks rule the plastic gun division, but you are seeing inroads made by the XD, MP, and CZ. I've owned and shot all of them, except the CZ. If I was going to buy a pistol, or recommend one to someone wanting a gun that worked, every time I'd recommend the Glock, XD, and MP to those folks who aren't all that familiar with pistols. I've heard alot of folks rave about the CZs, I just don't have any personal experience with them one way or the other to make a recommendation.

What I tell new shooters to do when they're considering buying a pistol is to go to a range where you can rent a Glock, XD and MP (or come to a match with us and borrow one of ours....) and see which one fits your hand best. For me, that's the MP. The Glock's too big, the XD's too small, and the MP is just right. I don't think you can go wrong with any of those pistols, you just need to find the one that fits you the best.

I'm sure the other guys will chime in here with something I've forgotten or left out, but in the meantime, if you've got any questions, lemme know!

Nothing to see here folks; move along

We have been saying it from day 1. Our country is so wrapped up in not wanting to offend someone's feelings that we are in the act of committing suicide.

Read the report, read the whole thing. And then ask your Congresspeople why nothing is being done.

Just a little something to go with your foil hat...

Here's some classic marketing mumbo-jumbo for you:

"Even ISA Bodywear's Andreas Sallmann, the guy who came up with the idea, admits that the scientific evidence linking cell phones to reduced male fertility is ambiguous at best. "But if a risk exists, I make it possible to avoid it," he told Le Matin, a French-language newspaper in Switzerland."

I wonder if they come in boxers, briefs AND banana hammocks?

Memorial Day

“I now know why men who have been to war yearn to reunite. Not to tell stories or look at old pictures. Not to laugh or weep. Comrades gather because they long to be with the men who once acted their best, men who suffered and sacrificed, who were stripped raw, right down to their humanity.

I did not pick these men. They were delivered by fate. But I know them in a way I know no other men. I have never given anyone such trust. They were willing to guard something more precious than my life. They would have carried my reputation, the memory of me. It was part of the bargain we all made, the reason we were so willing to die for one another.

I cannot say where we are headed. Ours are not perfect friendships; those are the province of legend and myth. A few of my comrade’s drift far from me now, sending back only occasional word. I know that one day even these could fall to silence. Some of the men will stay close, a couple, perhaps, always at hand.

As long as I have memory, I will think of them all, every day. I am sure that when I leave this world, my last thought will be of my family and my comrades...such good men.”

From "These Good Men" by Michael Norman

Arkansas Sectional

Finally got some time to sit down and make some videos for your viewing pleasure.

Here's a couple from the Arkansas Sectional; shot the beginning of May.

Fun stuff!!

FW students protest TAKS decision

Students who had been planning to walk across the stage at graduation ceremonies this weekend were instead walking a picket line Thursday morning.

WTF? "Let Are Kids Walk"? Are you kidding me?
I have never liked the idea of the standardized TAKS tests, but if that girl can't even get her protest sign right, she needs to miss graduation. In fact, if none of the other protesters were smart enough to see it and suggest that she correct it, they need to miss graduation, also.

See you in summer school, dumbasses!

Boy Bags Wild Hog Bigger Than 'Hogzilla'

An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.
He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50- caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

That's gonna leave a mark

Make sure to watch this act of tactical brilliance alllll the way to the end.

I feel safer already

In yet another of many such examples, Her Majesty Miller has proven to me that she really shouldn't be Mayor.

Said Mayor Laura Miller: “If toy guns look exactly like real guns, I think that we should not allow them to be on the streets of Dallas. It's dangerous. In moments of high adrenaline, our police officers, when they can't decide whether it's a toy gun or a real gun, shootings may happen that shouldn't occur.”

Yeah, that's it.

Don't want to get shot by the cops?? Then don't go pointing guns at them - real or otherwise. But instead of using common sense, the citizens of the grand city of Dallas get another worthless law they can feel good about.

I feel safer already. How 'bout you?

Sacrifice

As a historian, I come across some interesting articles from time to time. This one today rang especially true.

Our society as a whole is so well off, so lazy, and so unaffected by the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan; and it's a night and day difference to how the country as a whole was organized during WWII.

When the United States entered World War II, the whole nation became committed to the war effort. "Victory gardens" and "Rosie the Riveter" were all the rage. Scrap drives and blackouts were part of life on the homefront.

Where's Rosy the Riveter today? What about victory gardens? While we do have blackouts today, they are not the result of rationing, but rather the end result of 40 years of bad energy policy. (Making fun of the eco-movement will be the topic on another day...)

However, rationing was the largest contributor to the war effort, by evenly distributing goods and reining in prices. A nation already used to doing without during the Great Depression continued to do so, despite a dramatic increase in buying power.

Can you imagine anyone in this country going without anything?? Thanks to the boomer generation and their ME ME ME mentality, we haven't (as a nation) done without in quite some time.

Imagine, if you will, if rationing were in effect today.

Tires were the first item to be rationed, in January 1942. Quickly following were passenger automobiles, typewriters, sugar, gasoline, bicycles, footwear, fuel oil, coffee, stoves, shoes, meat, lard, shortening and oils, cheese, butter, margarine, processed foods (canned, bottled and frozen), dried fruits, canned milk, firewood and coal, jams, jellies and fruit butter, by November 1943.

We are so fat and ignorant as a nation that it's hard to believe that the WWII generation were our fathers and grandfathers.

America needs to wake the hell up.

Monkey dead from bubonic plague in Denver | Reuters

Bring out your dead!...monkeys.

Zoo veterinarian Dave Kenny said that the risk of plague spreading to humans was extremely low but that visitors were being urged to avoid squirrels and rabbits.

Duly noted, thanks.

I wonder if there's any poo left to fling?

Grandmother Finds Source Of Headaches: Bullet In Brain

I think the headline sums it up nicely, don't you?

The 77-year-old finally went to see a doctor after suffering persistent headaches since she was a child.
Doctors at Shuyang Leniency Hospital sent Jin Guangying for an x-ray to find out the cause. "We were surprised to learn there was a bullet inside her head," her son, Wang Zhengbang, told the Yangtse Evening Post

Yeah, "surprised" is an adequate description.

Sorry I missed this one!

It would appear that gun grabber Mayor Bloomberg of NYC has ticked off some interesting fellows in Virginia.

In response to Bloomberg's attempt to sue gun shops for allegedly selling guns to NYC undercover officers, these guys staged a rally and gave away a coupla free guns!

How cool is that? Looks like they had a decent turnout and coverage by the press wasn't all that bad; nowadays, that's a victory.

There was some whining going on; seems like parents of some of the kids killed at Virginia Tech don't like guns at all - never mind the fact that VT essentially begged somone to go on a gun rampage by declaring it a "gun free zone". Ever notice that the only people that don't carry a gun in gun free zones are the good guys? Those among our population who are defective don't seem to pay those silly gun free zones much attention now, do they???

Nevertheless, I digress.

Any chance to win a free gun is a good day! Wish I could have been there.