The Saiga 12

My brother bought one quite a while back and I've shot it a few times at the range. It's reliable, but I don't love it especially as a sporting arm. Oleg Volk did a photoshoot with one a while back. I can understand the folding stock and pistol grip. The 20 round drum must weight a ton, but ok. The dark earth refinish kind of looks nice, I guess.

Honestly I can take or leave all of these improvements. What is a must for a Saigo? Better sights. The stock sight radius is pitiful and the sights are really small. Even the bead on the end of my 590 puts them to shame. Oleg's gun doesn't seem to have these.

Ghastly Truths

From a really old on of IMAO's random thoughts:

Why do liberals need federal money for abortion? Can’t they just start a “Stop the Babies!” charity? “Right now there are babies waiting to be born and ruin people’s lives. We can stop that. With your help.” See, you can voluntarily spend you money on others. It’s called charity. I’m not sure who came up with it.

That would be a really funny idea if I hadn't heard of someone who actually did it. They didn't start a charity of course, they held a "Get Maggie an Abortion" party instead. People brought their kids.

Easy Mark

I also seem to be the type or person that con-artists pick as a likely mark. But because Delaware is pretty small state, people tend to work the same areas over and over. Back when Amy was taking the train in a lot, I used to get hit up by the same well-dressed twentysomething at the Wilmington Train Station. He didn't remember me, but I sure remembered him. He doesn't take it too well when you inform him that he gave you the same sob story last month. Especially if you say it loud enough that the whole train station can hear. Other people have tried to work me in the Newcastle Walmart parking lot as well. They tend to hoof it towards their cars when you tell them you've heard it before from them.

The weird thing about all of this is that regular people didn't tend to bother me on the street. Even as a scrawny college student people ignored me or got out of my way. Perhaps I just don't look angry or purposeful enough anymore?

This Just In

Derange Gunman Opens Fire On Shooting Range. Or in other news someone involved in an open-carry shooting is revealed to have "additional artillery" of 6 guns and 1300 rounds of ammo in his home. Sadly the second story is not from the Onion.

For Use with a Detroit Tigers Cap

Jalopnik noticed a 1981 Ferrari GTSi for about $12k on eBay. Why so cheap? Well the body and interior are in good shape, but under the rear bonnet is... the 2.8 liter V6 and it's manual transmission from a Pontiac Fiero. It's like every kit car in reverse.

Now the commenters over at Jalopnik are split. I'm in the little bit of awesome camp. The bodywork and interior are in great shape. The stock Ferrari tires are oddly sized and therefore ridiculously expensive, so the owner changed hubs to something widely available. The original US spec Ferrari engine is both ridiculously maintenance intensive and woefully underpowered because of it's 80s era smog controls. Was the Fiero transplant the best way to address this? No. But a change to something more powerful and more reliable would be very interesting. Something high-revving would be appropriate. Several people have suggested the Yamaha V6 from the SHO. I would think a number of 3ish liter Honda V6s might work as well.

And I love the 308 GTSi. Maybe it's the years of watching Magnum P.I. as a kid. Just looking at the pictures makes me want to buy a Tigers cap and a Hawaiian shirt. When I think about Ferraris, I think of the US Spec 308 GTS. Unlike the rest of the world, I actually enjoy what the US spec bumpers do to the cars lines. If I had a garage, I'd think about bidding. Since I don't (and this car has '80s era rust proofing) I guess I'll have to pass. And keep my eye out.

Fun with Acetylene

Even though a coworker recently bought a FourTwo, I think I'd still rather have this chopped and welded, superdeformed VW Golf.

No-Fly 2nd Amendment Abridgement

Fifteen months ago I addressed a Rahm Emanuel clip from before the 2008 election that suggested using the no-fly terrorist watch list as a basis for denying gun ownership to a large number of individuals.  The issues with this proposal are:

• Gun ownership is a constitutionally enumerated and protected right which ought not be abridged without due process.  The no-fly list ain't due process.
• The no-fly list is a joke.  It is a list of names and lacks truly unique identifiers.  This means that the false positive rate is ridiculous (just ask my wife's uncle).  It can also be easily foiled by such simple linguistic tricks as alternate name spellings.
• Buying a gun from a dealer requires a background check.  Anyone on the no-fly list ought to be flagged for further review anyway.

Spearheaded by NYC Mayor Bloomberg, the left has picked up on this concept again after the Times Square non-bombing and is running with it. If you'd like to read more, here are some links in order of occurrence:

• The NYT gets behind Bloomberg's proposal with an Op-Ed.
• SayUncle notices that apply this standard of review to speech would never be acceptable to the Times. Also notes that the Times bomber was removed from the watch list.
• Pajamas Media wades in on the side of the Angels.
• The NSSF responds to NYT editorial.  Also here.
• Bill Clinton gets behind Bloomberg.
• The Atlanta Journal Constitution calls compares opposition watch-list proposal to witch burners.  Well hey at least I'm not a Nazi yet. The inlaws would probably find that embarrassing.
• Bloomberg and Clinton videos.

Death of Blogger

It seems that Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, passed away a couple of days ago. I knew he had cancer, but I didn't realize his case was this severe. From diagnosis to his passing was only 4 months.

Michael wasn't the only God Blogger fighting cancer. David Wayne, the Jollyblogger, has been fighting colon cancer for almost 18 months. He reflects on Michael from the point of view of someone else fighting the disease.

Completing the Census

I must say that the advertising for this year's Census has been either inept (snapshot of America) or offensive (get your piece of the pie). But we still filled ours out and sent it in this week. Unless you're a reality show family, this decade's form is thankfully quite brief. It sticks to the standard name, sex, race statistics that have been present on the form since 1790.

One question I was surprised wasn't on the form was whether each inhabitant was a US citizen or not. It would seem to me that you would want representation to be based on the number of citizens in an area, not merely the number of inhabitants. But I don't think this has ever been the case, going back to the 3/5ths compromise the founders themselves created.

Offshore Drilling!

Obama seems ready to allow drilling off of new portions of the US coastline. This is a good thing. Of course the specifics of the proposal seem to indicate that it will be saddled with extensive environmental roadblocks and require local state approvals. Which means that at this point it is all talk.

A Divider Not A Uniter

I spent most of today running around doing errands. I spent a fair bit of it waiting for various things and people. This allowed me to sit and observe or as we say in my household "people watch."

For instance while in Walmart I watched two African-American men arguing quite loudly about the relative merits of Obamacare. One was for it, citing the need for easier access to medical care for the poor. The other was against it because he knew that as responsible adults they were going to have to pay for it. And in his opinion he was already paying enough taxes for lazy good-for-nothings without picking up the tab for their medical care as well.

Once again I learned not to assume. And once again I am amazing with how divisive some policies can be even within demographic groups that are amazingly one-sided in their political support.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

An economist wrote my wife's cookie from tonight's dinner:

The value lies not within any particular thing, but in the desire placed on that thing.

Or in other words, something is only worth what someone will pay for it. This is one of the foundational principles of free market economics.

The Worth of a One-Liner

Comics jokes from IMAO that really tickled my funnybone this week:

If Jim from the Office is going to play Captain America, then Dwight should be the Red Skull.

Wolverine’s self-healing ability was evolved in response to Canada’s government run health care.

An Engineer Does Good

Starting in 1947 and working into 1948, automotive engineer Norman Timbs built his dream car out of steel, aluminum, and spare parts. The result was the '48 Timbs special. It's a steel space frame with an aluminum body, independent front and rear suspensions, and no doors. The mid mounted Buick V8 pumps power to the rear wheels. It also has a full spare. I'd say that they don't make them like this anymore, but frankly they never really did.

Not Fitting the Narrative

Let it not be said that bloggers can't do this too. Mainstream Baptist is heavily invested in the principle Separation of Church and State and lead a post with the title "Supreme Court Affirms 10 Commandments Decision" this week. The problem? They didn't.

The Supreme Court denied cert. That's legalese for refusing to hear the case. The Supreme Court does this to the vast majority of cases that petition them for appeals because they just don't have the time to hear everything. Denying cert allows the lower court ruling to stand, but does not imply that the Supreme Court agrees or "affirms" it.

Funny how I posted as much in his comments, but that one never came through his review process...

Training for the Zombie Apocalypse

Cheaper Than Dirt's current e-postal match is zombie themed and emphasizes headshots. Looks like fun and I may print those targets out for my next trip to the range. Of course I have to question the idea of not shooting the humans. They're in the middle of zombie mob, they're almost certainly infected. HT: SayUncle

Awesome Trivia

The four spikes at the end of the stegosaurus's tail are call a "thagomizer." This is not some sort of obscure technical term derived from latin or greek. It is a reference to a Far Side cartoon Gary Larson drew in 1982. Thanks to Irregular Webcomic for another cool piece of trivia.

History Threatens to Repeat Itself

Why didn't we get HillaryCare in 1994? According to Robert Reich, it was because Fed Chairman Greenspan let the administration know that he wouldn't go along with it. Fast forward 16 years and Bush appointee Ben Bernanke is saying the same thing to the Obama administration.

J&G Sales Offers Argentines

My standard sidearm is a 9mm hipower made by FN. When I bought it FN was blowing them out through CDNN for $400. Since then the price for a hipower has skyrocketed to around $800. In retrospect I should have bought two. Since then several of the manufacturers of hipower clones, like Hungarian firm FEG, have also gone out of business. You can't get a cheap clone anymore either. The good news is that J&G is now offering Argentine M90 hipowers for around $330.

These aren't as slick as FN made guns and they don't have the modern extended manual safeties or firing pin safety. I think that makes them around a MKII in FN nomenclature. But they are made under license to FN and parts should still interchange (unlike say the Inglis slide and frame kits from Numrich). That's good news if you want to drop in Cylinder and Slide parts kits.

I may still pick one up as a potential build gun.

Tracers Work Both Ways

As two recent photo sets from Oleg Volk demonstrate, the same goes for green laser sights.