The Massachusetts Senate Race

This just in... Teddy Kennedy has reportedly voted for Coakley to replace him in the Senate. Twice.

I don't know whether Brown will win this one. Polling says it's close. Several people have pointed out that the margin of victory will unlikely surpass the margin for potential fraud. I think it is great that he's making a race of it though. I also have a wonderful feeling of schadenfreude that this whole situation would be a non-issue if the Massachusetts legislature hadn't been so scared of a Republican Governor appointing a Republican Senator in 2004.

The really interesting thing to me is the Democratic reaction. They seem to be doubling down on the stupid. Hey these policies are so bad we're even having trouble in Massachusetts! Lets do them even harder! I kind of expect this from their party leadership, most of whom are sitting in secure seats. But the rank and file? Not so much, especially the Blue Dogs in the House who are quite likely going to be thrown out on their ear in 10 months.

Orthogonal

The Volokh Conspiracy points out that the Supreme Court likes it's big words. (http://volokh.com/2010/01/11/orthogonal-ooh/) What perpendicular is to 2 dimensional space, orthogonal is to 3 or higher dimensional space.

Sarah Palin

Some new poll of Republican insiders has Sarah Palin running dead last in a proposed 2012 primary field. Which is fine because after shorting her term as Governor of Alaska, I don't think she should run. But Mitt Romney leads the field. You know, the guy who promised Michigan voters whatever he wanted to hear in the 2008 primaries. The guy who passed a horrible failure of a healthcare reform package in his state. He's no a conservative, he's another GOP stands-for-nothing.

If the GOP was smart they wouldn't be asking about whether Palin was going to run in 2012. They would be firing Michael Steele and making her the head of the party in 2010.

Elder Gods Take to the Slopes

This Cthulhu ski mask (http://www.cthulhulives.org/store/store.lasso?1=product&2=33196) is an idea who's time has come. Be the first huge nerd to wear it on your local slopes.

I Don't Get Vertical Foregrips

My understanding of rifle technique is pretty weak, but it largely breaks down to "whenever possible use your muscles as little as possible." This is because your skeleton doesn't expand or contract, but your muscles are always moving whether you like it or not. Therefore you want to support and aim the gun using rigid skeletal members, not by shoving it about using your muscles which are far more variable. This yields better accuracy.

Enter the vertical foregrip which appears to be designed almost solely to allow you to muscle the gun around. I've tried it and except for being a convenient place to hide a bipod, I find that I'll never get proper skeletal support using one. My accuracy drops into the toilet accordingly.

Now I can understand why some people like it. If I had a select fire weapon, the gun is going to be bouncing around anyway. I'm going to have to apply muscle to it to hold it on target so I might as well affix a convenient lever arm to help me out. But like almost all civilians, I don't have a select-fire weapon. That guy isn't me. Accordingly the vertical foregrip looks to me like something civilian shooters adopted from the military without thinking it through.

Now I'm more than willing to admit my shortcomings in this area. Can someone that shoots a rifle/carbine much more than I do help me out?

Climategate!

From the Timesonline via Instapundit:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The issue is not a long-term temperature increase over the last 150 years. 150 years ago was the end of the Little Ice Age, so no one really disputes that temperatures have increased since then. The real issue that has been deliberately obfuscated is (1) how warm the Medieval Warm Period was and (2) whether the divergence of temperature behavior from historical trends over the last 50 years is the result of how the historical data has been subjected to a moving average while recent data has not.

Groan

Six months after putting General McChrystal in charge, the news this morning was that President Obama has finally made a decision about Afghanistan. No idea what that decision was as the White House will not divulge its actual content for another week. Is the man such a lightweight that merely having meetings and deciding something is national news?

What's next? This just in, after intense discussions with the highly trained White House chef corps, the President has opted for Cheddar instead of Swiss on his turkey club. The effects of this change on the Presidential Gastronomy should be known early next week.

Expensive Deer Hunting

And a deductable later...

This Week's Gunblogger Groupthink Is...

The 5.7x28mm round used by the Fort Hood shooter is no more powerful than a .22 rimfire magnum. It's crap. Why? The 40 grain 5.7 is blazing down range at 1750 fps from a pistol. The 40 grain rimfire mag is moving at more like 1200-1300 fps from the same barrel length. The 5.7 has 80% more muzzle energy than the .22 mag. That's a lot people. Now maybe they'll both through and through with similar terminal performance, but you can't just dismiss that level of difference.

Is the 5.7x28 round a copkiller? No. There are no instances of it being used to actually kill cops. For that matter the civilian legal ammo isn't even particularly dangerous to people in common police body armor. At least no more dangerous than 7.62 Tokarev.

New Look

Ever since Blogrolling went down and then came back with crappy popups, I've been looking to rework my layout. I've been running this one for long enough on the test blog (and using the test blog for my regular blogsurfing) that it's time to put it on here. I don't love it, but I've decided it is a 90% solution. Unfortunately that means the demise of haloscan comments for the time being.

Loving Midlength

I think a discussion of AR-15 gas system lengths deserves it's own post and this is it. The big issue here is barrel length and port pressure needed to cycle the gun. As the gas port move closer to the gun's chamber (and away from the muzzle), the port pressure goes up and the gun cycles harder. This is good in that it is more likely to cycle, but bad in that too hard will break things.

Rifle length systems are about 12 inches long. As they are the longest, they are also typically the gentlest of the gas systems. But if the barrel is too short, then they won't cycle properly because the gas port pressure will drop too low after the bullet leaves the barrel. Because of this they are typically used on guns with barrels 20 inches or longer like the M16.

Carbine length systems are about 7 inches long. There are shorter lengths (like the pistols), but for most people this is as short they want to go. These cycle the action quite hard. Hard enough that Colt had to make changes from the M4 to the M16 to beef up some parts, alter the feed ramps, and use a heavier buffer to slow the bolt down. These are typically used on guns in the 14.5 to 16 inch range like the M4 carbine. However civilians can't have barrel lengths below 16 inches without a special tax stamp, so most people with carbine length gas systems have 16" barrels or 14.7" inch barrels with longer pinned flash hiders to meet the 16" legal requirement.

Midlength systems are in the middle and are about 9 inches long. These shoot softer than carbine, but harder than rifle. It's a happy medium and works very well for 16 inch guns. Since I have a 16 inch gun, this is what I bought. The disadvantage is that this is a purely civilian length gas system and has less support than the rifle and carbine lengths in the aftermarket. Until recently only one company made a free float tube for it. About the only accessory my midlength can use that a carbine can't is a standard military bayonet.

And for the record, I think the 14 inch barrels that are pinned to 16 inches are silly. The 5.56 round need all the barrel it can get to tumble and fragment for proper lethality. I also think the stepped barrels on 16" guns are silly. Military carbines have that feature so you can mount M203 grenade launchers on them. Civilians can't own those either.

Shiver Me Timbers

I heard an interesting rumor on the internet. (And with a source like the internet, you know it must be true.) Rumor has it that the US Coast Guard has started reissuing boarding cutlasses for some drug interdiction searches. Evidently a sailor making a standard drug search was attacked and forced to defend himself with a fire axe. You have to wonder what his sidearm was though.

Being Too Niche a Market

I own an AR-15. This is not uncommon. It uses the 9 inch midlength gas system. I prefer that length for a 16 inch barrel, unfortunately very few AR parts makers tool for it. Lots of them only do rifle and carbine length. If I wanted to free float my barrel, I could go to Rock River for a tube or YHM for rails or cut down a rifle length part or spend a lot of money. I even asked several parts shops at small arms conventions I attended in May whether they were planning on supporting midlength. Several hemmed and hawed, but surprisingly it was the guy at the UTG/CAA booth that felt my pain.

UTG now has an aluminum midlength free-float rail. Not sure I want UTG parts on my gun, but I don't think I mind them putting some downward pressure on the market. More importantly Hogue is now making midlength free float tubes for less than $50. Now that's something I might pick up and put on my gun.

Ammo Sales

Looks the like the ammo rush is really over and the suppliers are starting to meet inventory in earnest. While shopping with Amy yesterday, I picked up 200 rounds of 55gr .223 at Dicks. Not only did they have it on the shelf, but it was on sale for $8/20 rounds. That should be my range needs for a few trips at least.

Boom Headshot!

Seasonal hostage situation resolved.

I Concur

Sebastion points out that covering your car in NRA bumperstickers isn't a good idea. Guns are one of the major targets of property crime. Criminals want them and so there will always be a black market for firearms. Criminals especially like to know where you store them, because they don't want to rob an armed man or woman, but they love to rob unoccupied houses or vehicles.

When you put an NRA, pro-2nd, or pro-carry sticker on your car, what you're saying to criminals is "this car might contain guns, rob me when nobody's around." This is also true for anything on the outside of your home.

In a slightly related concept, you're not really concealed carrying if you're wearing overtly pro-gun gear. Some of the esoteric logos might be fine, but anything else calls attention to yourself and makes people take a second look. Not a good idea.

Steam Punk Rock

Note to self: While Jeph Jacques was kidding about the Society for Creative Rock Anachronism, there are actually steampunk bands like Abney Park and Vernian Process. The hard part is going to be finding out if their music is any good without spending money on it.

Snerk

Habitat for Humanity New Castle County has announced their 2009 fundraising Christmas tree ornament: Blue Ball Farm. You may now giggle like an adolescent. But not for too long.

Sometimes Complaints Show More about the Complainer

From this article criticizing the M4:

"My weapon was overheating," McKaig said, according to Cubbison's report. "I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half hour or so into the fight. I couldn't charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down."

360 rounds in 30 minutes through your rifle and your gun became unreliable? Wow I would have never guessed that if you overheat a machine, it becomes unreliable or breaks. Ditto the other soldier who ran 600 rounds through his M249. If you want to avoid overheating, you can change out the barrels on machine guns for a reason.

More telling for me is the opener of the piece:

In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.

If someone is trying multiple types of weapons and none of them work, that isn't a criticism of the weapon. If none of the guns work, the only systematic element they all have in common is the soldiers tasked with maintaining them. And there is no magic rifle design that won't fail without proper maintenance.

This isn't to say that everything is hunky dory with US small arms. The SAW in particular is not a very good gun, something the newer lightweight versions of the weapon only make worse. But the M4 is, by all accounts, a decent weapon.

Hitting the Usual Suspects

Amybear went to a bridal shower today so I was left to my own devices. I was planning on making a trip to Ommelanden, but just as I was getting dressed it started to rain. The doppler map of the area showed that it was going to last a while, so instead I made a survey of the local gun shops.

The result? Miller's has a lightly used Sig P6 for under $400. It was a reasonable piece at a reasonable price. Patriot had a used Heritage Rough Rider with both .22lr and .22 rimfire magnum cylinders. I have a hard time spending big money on a .22 and that seemed like a nice little gun. The also had a Pietta 1858 Navy model converted to .38sp. Great gun except that the bore of a .36 cap and ball is larger than a modern .38 so you can't feed it any old ammo off the shelf.

Patriot is also stocking EAA's Windicator model of .38 and .357 double action revolvers. Good trigger, very nice grips, and all steel so I'm not too concerned about them. They're a lot of gun for under $300 and seem well worth the price.