Went to Dulles Gun Show Today
Rebecca and I went to the Nations Gun Show in Chantilly today. I’d not been to a gun show since I went w/ my grandfather to a show in Colorado Springs over a decade ago, and this one was much bigger. There was the requisite leather/knives/jewelry/food/militaria, but also a good balance of Fudd guns as well as scary black runs. Most of the semi-autos were AKs and AR-15s; I didn’t see a single FAL or HK91, and only a couple SKSs.
Prices were not particularly good, and I didn’t buy anything, but it’s cool to see and handle so many guns at once. What did I learn? The Beretta CX4 Storm carbine feels and handles as well as it looks, and that Fudds and Black Rifle Terrorists can co-exist peacefully.
Still no word on my DSA FAL; it will surely be the longest 3 months of my life.
A recurring theme on the gun forums: Hypothetical Tactical Scenario
Lately I’ve been lurking in the major online gun forums, like TFL, THR, arfcom, etc. As with any activity involving more than one person, there’s a diverse mix of nut-jobs, fuckwits, curmudgeons, trolls, assholes, and the odd decent human being now and again.
A recurring meme on these forums is the hypothetical tactical scenario, which follows this pattern:
Fuckwit666: Say I’m with my girlfriend at a Chechen Tiki Bar two weeks after TEOTWAWKI (That’s ‘the end of the world as we know it’, which is like SHTF (Shit Hits the Fan), only much much worse), and we’ve already taken out a few low-level roving BGs (Bad Guys, that is) with a combination of precision rifle fire and spin kicks to the balls. I order the Chicken Kiev Slushie, and sit down, facing the door and inches away from the shotgun I stashed at the bar before SHTF. A zombie, two midgets, and a mime walk in the front door, and since I’m in Orange my OODA-loop is tight and I detect trouble instantly. Then, without warning, my girlfriend notices six more midgets and a 300lb clown on a unicycle, all armed with M-4s, coming at us from the kitchen. I’m immediately in Red. What’s the right response in this scenario? Can I light up the zombie, first two midgets, and mime with my AR-15 pistol while the GF takes on the six midgets and clown with her M1A, or should I set my Chicken Kiev on fire and use it as a diversion to bug out?
Pedant45: When SHTF, I’m bugging in at my secure compound with roving patrols and overlapping fields of rifle fire. WTF are you doing outside?
Hatr99: That’s easy kick the clown in the balls the M4 sucks and will jam anyway
Glocktard123: I’m wearing Level IV body armor so let the fuckers shoot me. I’ll mow em down w/ my double-fisted Glock .45s hahaha
CopForReal: im a cop and im telling you if you shoot the mime ill arrest your ass
Cluebat_tx: Fuck you copforreal its SHTF its a different mindset
ArrogantPrick: Glocktard, IV armor won’t protect you against M855 AP and they have M4s so u r 0wnd
wtf27: dude ur grl has an ak thats so hot post pics!!
idiot#2: yeah lets em
moronlabe: wtf27 ur a fucking idiot his grl has an m1a not an ak go back to preschool
slightly_normal: um I’m so tired of these bullshit tactical scenarios. if SHTF the zombies will eat the midgets they wont form organized gangs together god your a retard!
hurtmeplenty: d00d, chechen tiki sucks!
8yrsold: unicycles are gay
nitpicr: is your AR pistol a bushy or the old oly ones? I have a bushy and love it i want one in 9mm but no money haha
oldfart: all this tacti-cool high speed low drag mall ninja crap pisses me off. after SHTF, i’ll have my steel shovel. you can carry it anywhere and its handy in a fight. when I smack you in the grape your fancy tacticool shit wont mean nothing
gayrambo: any mime fucks with me i shoot in the face
sksman: whats with the kalashnikrap? I got my sks for $6 at a garage sale, 2 billion rounds through it never failed.
wanna be: SHTF ill have my tactical team outside in the van. at the first sign of trouble they come in and light up everything.
falsonly: dump that bitch and find a girl with a FAL
The threads will go on and on, digressing to focus on irrelevant and subjective arguments like whether carrying a 9mm pistol makes you gay, or how many headshots it will take to kill a zombie if it’s high on PCP. Other digressions will evolve into flame wars, as trolls mix it up with gullible and painfully inarticulate mall ninjas. As the smoke clears and the few relevant posts emerge (if any response to a post about a coordinated zombie/midget/mime/clown assault can be considered relevant) a consensus will form the following conclusions:
- It really depends on a number of variables
- You should carry what you’re comfortable with and can shoot well
- Only you can make the moral and ethical decision to take a (zombie) life
- Kalifornia sucks
Thus, the only value in following these threads is the same value derived from reading YouTube video comments or watching reality television: the perverse satisfaction one gets from continuous exposure to those far more fucked up than oneself.
Something amiss w/ Drupal content
There seems to be something screwed up w/ Drupal atm. Only my last blog post shows up on the front page or when listing my blog posts, but all the others are still on the site, and reachable by their respective URLs. I’m investigating now; nothing’s changed, that I know of.
UPDATE: I’m an idiot. My mall ninja post was being chopped off at an unfortunate spot to form the teaser, and the resulting markup had all subsequent article links rendering improperly (that is to say, not at all!).
43% Mall Ninja!
If you don’t know what a mall ninja is, Google it.
If you do, and you know me, the fact that I scored 43% should be amusing.
</td>
</tr>
|
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: |
| Link: The Mall Ninja Apptitude Test written by Dosing on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Roanoke Times publishes list of VA CCW Holders
Well, the shit’s really hit the fan now.
The Roanoke Times has used a FOIA request to obtain the names, addresses, and permit issue/expire dates for all of VA’s CCW (concealed handgun) licensees, and published them in the name of ‘government transparency’.
The Times has subsequently taken the searchable database offline, supposedly due to some concern that the VSP included information in the FOIA response that it wasn’t supposed to. Not because it was a shit thing to do, or because it enraged its readers; because VSP fucked up.
Not surprisingly, the local and national gun rights advocacy groups are going ape-shit, me among them. Just last week I took the CCW course and will be submitting the paperwork this week, and I find the idea of my name going into a directory for gun thieves to be somewhat disconcerting.
I’ve already written state Del. Rust asking that he see what can be done at the legislative level in the ’08 General Assembly. Apart from that, the shit storm raging on the comments thread for the article and on boards like THR should give the Times pause.
Initial impressions of Bushmaster Carbon 15 M4
I’ve posted my initial impressions of my new Bushmaster Carbon 15 M4 to arfcom, that a wider audience may benefit from its wisdom.
Decided on battle rifle
Earlier I was agonizing over which big-bore battle rifle to get. I considered the FAL, HK91/G3, Saiga 308, M1A, and AR-10. All of these are chambered for 7.26x54mm NATO, are semi-auto, and have devoted supporters.
I don’t like the high cost, recent quality problems, expensive parts, and gunsmithing required for the M1A, not to mention the lack of a pistol grip.
I don’t like the ergonomics of the HK91/G3 (no bold hold-open, charging handle on the left side, awkward safety lever), the horror stories I’ve heard about how fouled it gets, and the relative difficulty in finding parts.
I don’t like the parts scarcity and expensive high-cap mags of the Siaga 308, not to mention the fact that it’t not itself a military rifle.
There are no clear leading mfgs of AR-10s; Armalite and DPMS both make some, but they’re expensive and have proprietary mags.
The NIB US-made DSA FALs are absurdly expensive, and have a 3-4 month lead time.
I’ve ended up choosing the DSA FAL, specifically a Para folder with 21″ bbl. It’ll end up costing me over $1700, but the parts are plentiful, mags are everywhere, and it’s a proven military weapons system on par with the Kalashnikov. It’s been called the ‘right arm of the free world’. It has been used in some form or another by 90 countries, was the standard-issue British infantry rifle before the SA80, and saw action with Israeli forces in the Yom Kippur War, where a superior Arab force was given a vigorous thumpin’. The FAL has the additional advantage of having a user-adjustable gas system, which means it can eat just about any .308 ammo.
Though $1700 sounds like alot (and, in fact, is), I’m not getting a battle rifle for collecting or target shooting purposes; it’s a SHTF/home defense weapon, and it needs to be reliable and accurate. I’ll have my M4 for close-range work; I want something in .308 for long-range accuracy and reliable shooting under adverse conditions. Thus, the franken-FALs and lower-end Century builds, though hundreds cheaper, aren’t what I want.
To get a Saiga .308 up to that standard would take a $350 Saiga and $800 of custom work by Tromix, and I’d end up w/ a gun w/o plentiful parts availability and a sole-source provider of expensive high-cap mags. A PTR 91 would likely work for $500 less, but as mentioned I don’t like the ergonomics or the fouling problems. The M1A just doesn’t appeal to me at all, nor does the AR-10.
In four months when it finally arrives, we’ll see if I made the right decision.
Which Battle Rifle
No sooner did I get my new AR-15 than I started looking for another one.
Keeping with the spirit of buying scary guns with evil pistol grips and high-cap mags, I’m looking at a battle rifle next. ‘Battle rifle’ is a generic term (like ‘assault rifle’, but not so abused) meaning a big-more semiauto rifle designed for or suited to military use. An AR-15 is not a battle rifle, as it doesn’t pass the caliber test. Nor is an AK-47 or AK-74.
Major battle rifles I considered:
- Springfield M1A – .308, uber-reliable, uber-accurate, uber-expensive
- FN FAL – The ‘right arm of the free world’
- PTR91 (an H&K 91 clone) – A reasonably reliable, accurate rifle, but like the AR-15 it has a ‘shit where I eat’ gas system that (I’ve heard) makes it a drag to clean
- Saiga 308 – The Saiga 308′s that are coming into the country via Russian American Arms are really sporting rifles, but Tromix does a cool conversion job, putting in the necessary US parts for Section 922 compliance (after all, we can’t have criminals running around with Russian trigger parts; they might kill someone), and generally tricking it out for more social situations.
For some reason, all the .308 battle rifles seem to be in high demand now; perhaps amid the post-election jitters about another AWB.
At any rate, I’m not willing to compromise on reliability for any of these, so I excluded kits (since I wouldn’t be able to put them together adequately), so-called frankenguns built out of mismatched scrounged parts, and low-grade import jobs from Century Arms and the like.
The M1A is insanely expensive; the Scout Squad in black poly furniture is in excess of $1600, with 20-rd mags going for $60/ea. The high-end SG58 FAL clones from DSR are around $1800, plus they have a 12-week lead time. A decent PTR-91 goes for 1200-1300 NIB, though like the FAL spare mags are plentiful and cheap.
This leaves the Saiga 308, which is based on the Kalashnikov design, but adapted to 7.62x54mm NATO cartridges. With a Tromix conversion I’m looking at $800-$1000, plus $50/ea for the newly-released 20 rd mags. The real problem w/ a Saiga is the utter lack of after-market parts. Sure, it has some parts in common w/ an AK-47, but not all of them, and the high-cap mags are made by FBMG as an after-market part, costing $45/mag.
So, the cheapest battle rifle looks to be a Saiga 308, but after buying 10 mags and a Tromix conversion, I’m in $1500 territory; it’s not much further from there to a top-of-the-line DSR FAL for $1800.
So which one to get? Why is it so complicated?
A variation of Godwin's Law for Gun Rights Debates
Lately I’ve been lurking in a few gun boards, including OpenCarry.org, The High Road, AR15.com, and SigForum. Most of this lurking was research for my latest gun purchase, but I easily digress onto unrelated threads for hours on end.
In so doing, I’ve stumbled upon a number of gun rights debates. Since these are forums for gun enthusiasts, they are seldom control vs rights debates, but rights vs more rights debates, combined with the occasional vilification in absentia of various gun control bogeymen.
This has led me to formulate a variation of Godwin’s Law, specific to online gun control debates. To quote Wikipedia, Godwin’s law is thus:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
My variation, which I shall arrogantly call the Nelson-Godwin Conjecture, is thus:
As an online gun rights debate grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Communists approaches one.
This is an example of the reductio ad Communisto fallacy, which is a close relation of Strauss’ reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, only with Commies instead.
An example is warranted. The irony of this particular example is a reference to another supposed logical fallacy:
LOL Fallacy of Composition ^^^ re: BBT branch locations, and your stupid theory.
What is true about one (crazy people who shoot things up with guns) is not true about the whole (anyone with a gun in public).
Here are a few examples:
A main battle tank uses more fuel than a car. Therefore, the main battle tanks use up more of the available fuel in the world than do all the cars.A tiger eats more food than a human being. Therefore, tigers, as a group, eat more food than do all the humans on the earth.
So take your communist loving, pig eating, liberal progressive, anti-christ bullshit elsewhere!
(From a Fairfax Underground thread linked from a gun forum post. The thread started when a reader posted to express her horror that an armed guard was outside a restaurant where a man was killed, speculating that her five year old could easily disarm the guard and pepper the area with Glock bullets, each of which can kill multiple humans)
Note the reductio ad Communisto fallacy at the end of the post. In this case, the ‘commie’ epithet wasn’t sufficient, requiring in addition a reference to pork (which I don’t understand), liberalism, and the anti-Christ (one could likely formulate a reductio ad Antichristo fallacy as well, but I’ll leave that to another post), while in other cases the invocation of ‘commie’ carries sufficient rhetorical firepower to settle the argument on its own.
I find it interesting that gun rights advocates would settle upon Communism for their reductio ad absurdum fallacy, given that generally all totalitarian regimes, be they facist, communist, or whatever, tend to make civilian disarmament a top priority. Gun rights advocates surely know this, as a common bumper sticker quotes Hitler circa 1938:
This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
Note this quote is likely bogus, but nonetheless demonstrates an understanding that gun control isn’t the exclusive purview of Communist regimes. And yet, the charge of ‘communist’ seems to be the argument-ending rhetorical counter-attack of choice. Why is this? The corrupt regimes of Africa, Southeast Asian despots, and European democracies all disarm their civilian populations.
I can only guess as to the origins of this fallacy. My most rational explanation holds that, since gun control in this country is strongly associated with the political Left, and Communism is a left-wing ideology, the most extremely left-wing ideologue would therefore be a Communist. Thus, the accusation ‘commie’ implies ‘far-left ideologue’.
Perhaps also this fallacy is a vestige of the Cold War era when Communism was the existential threat du jour for Western democracies. I’m not old enough to remember the extent to which Reds were feared in Cold War America, but historical evidence (c.f. McCarthy, Sen. Joseph) suggests it was quite strongly.
At any rate, it would only strengthen the gun rights movement if its adherents would avoid this unfortunate fallacy and instead limit themselves to the ample credible arguments against gun control.
DISCLAIMER: I am a gun rights zealot. I enjoy shooting, and more than that I believe our Founders were right to insist on widespread civilian ownership of firearms. I believe attempts to regulate or restrict access to firearms by statist politicians, regardless of party affiliation or feeble rationalization, are clear and present dangers to American liberty, to be resisted vigorously.
However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people who agree with me on this issue that are nonetheless a little…shall we say…colorful. Just as the moonbat left discredit the more moderate left with all their ridiculous noisemaking and unpopular rhetoric, the wingnut right only weakens the gun rights argument by pulling the ‘Commie’ trigger (no pun intended). I wrote this post primarily because I think it’s funny, and secondarily because I think it’s true. If you are offended by it, take your commie pig-eating america-hating satan-loving sodomite shit somewhere else.