Note to loyal readers: the usual 0600 gun tech or culture post will not be presented today, due to a veterinary emergency. We meant to clean up the post we had half-drafted this morning, but Small Dog Mk II is pain guarding and on closer inspection appears to have an extra joint in his leg (as a dog diagnostician, we usually stick to malfunctioning firearms, but we’re calling it probable tib/fib fracture, until we can get pro eyes on and x-rays).

First noticed it at midnight. Didn’t hear a yelp or yip, but our best guess is he conducted a substandard PLF on his descent from the recliner after Chair Time last night (usually his favorite). We carried him up the stairs (not the usual drill) and down the stairs this morning (which is the usual drill).

The patient is sleeping quietly, waiting for Regular Vet to open in a little bit. We’ll see whether Regular Vet has this, or whether we’ll have to take him to Big City Referral Hospital for surgery. He’s going to hate this as the weather has been summery warm, his favorite for walks and chasing squirrels, chipmunks, turkeys, cats, and once, a fisher. (Yeah. Twice his size. You know how people are always telling you they got the smartest dog? We got the other one).

We regret the lack of a tech post this morning; normal scheduled posts resume at 1100 with an update of sorts on the US strike in Syria as seen by various participants and observers. We will keep you posted on the little guy’s progress, look for UPDATE below.

And from here on out, he always gets lifted up and set down, no matter how much he wants to jump.

Update 0850

We’re back from the vet, both of us, and as a dog diagnostician Your Humble Blogger really stinks… more like a dog hypochondriac. Injury is not a break, but a sprain from which SDMkII is already recovering.

But what about the “extra joint”? He’s double-jointed in the wrists, which gives him his weird dachshund stance, and the Dumbass Dog Diagnostician was misreading that.

** hangs up stethoscope in shame, sentences self to three remedial episodes of Dr Jeff **

Vet bill: $59. Paid with something approximating glee. By then he was scampering around, bugging an incredibly fluffy white Samoyed that was the doc’s next appointment. We didn’t disrupt the vet’s schedule, because her first appointment canceled. She did have a pretty good laugh at the expense of a dog and his worry-wart Hog(nose).

Coming home, hadn’t put down the garage door when we went out, and an immense grey patchy cat, possibly a Maine Coon, came rocketing out. On exiting the car, SDMkII, all pain-guarding forgotten, launched into Great White Hunter mode and didn’t come back until he had treed the cat. We believe the cat to be a neighbor’s cat gone astray, and would like to catch her for that reason (if it’s the right cat, she’s chipped) but SDMkII wants to catch her for another reason entirely, so odds are we won’t be seeing that cat again.

On the gripping hand, there will be cat pawprints on yesterday’s freshly painted airplane parts in Stall 3. Infernal beasts, both of them.

Update 1400

Small Dog Mk II is showing absolutely no signs of having been showing signs. We reckon too many vet shows on Animal Planet with Dr Blue, Dr Dee, Dr Jeff, or one of their fellow professionals looking at the camera, saying, “well, the injury was just too old, but dogs do fine on three legs,” springloads us in the go-to-the-vet position. It helps that our vet is right in town, a five minute drive away. (10 if it’s drop-off time at the middle school. Can’t the Snowflakes take the bus like we did? Apparently not, as the traffic jam of Audis, Beemers, Benzes, Lexuses (Lexi?) and other helicopter-mom conveyances demonstrates. No Bentleys or Maseratis — even here, those kids go to Phillips Exeter, where they get diddled by one of the teachers and arrive at Yarvard already screwed up for life).

Van’s Aircraft divides its construction plans into Sections, and the Sections have numbered pages. So while the Blogbrother has been buried starting what he swears is his Last IT Job And I Mean It This Time, we’ve tackled the parts prep and prestationing for Pages 21-02, -03, -04, -05 and -06. Parts prep involves removing protective plastic, sometimes tripping parts, deburring and countersinking and dimpling as needed, and generally making the parts fit to snap together and rivet permanently. There’s a rather fiddly bit of filing and fitting on Page 21-02, and the parts for -04 through -06 still need further prep, but we should be able to put on a burst of productivity.

A lot of you know Angus McThag, an occasional reader and a blogger in his own right. He’s the one responsible for this little delight that’s making the rounds:

Why So Many Guns?

Because one is none.

Two is one.  But one is none, so two is none.

Three is just one plus two, which is none plus none, so three is none.

Four is just two times two, which is none times none, or none.

Five is just two plus three, (none plus none) or one (none) plus four (none).  Five is none.

And it just keeps progressing from there.

Mathematically proven!

You cannot own enough guns to have one gun.  So all that money on guns, you spent it on nothing.

Well, that’s that, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, it turns out that Mac got into a jam. As it happens, he has a kid who is growing to adult size with less than adult, or at least, other than neurotypical neurocognition and behavior. So the kid has a number of issues including occasional self-destructive and antisocial behavior… and he’s developed a fondness for going walkabout. One of these peregrinations ended with the kid struggling and spitting on cops, and getting tuned up by eight cops because Officer Safety is the Prime Directive, and maybe his autistic cooties are contagious. And then both Mac and the kid getting locked up.

Leading to court cases. Leading to expenses.

The kid’s already home, and Mac was temporarily restraining-ordered out. (One size laws for wifebeaters and anyone else who gets a police visit to his home). Mac is not going to prison or jail, he’s not permanently ousted from his home, and no prosecutor with two brain cells to rub together, which is most prosecutors, is going to pursue this.

The whole gory backstory is on his blog. (It takes some finding due to his taste for oblique headings). But Mac is out some money for legal defense. He could use some small-dollar pick-me-ups; there’s a DONATE button on the front page of his blog.

And hey, the blog is always entertaining to read.

So we’ll thrown him a few dollars if we can unscrew our accounts today, and perhaps you will incline to do so as well.

Holy latitudes, Batman, it’s sunshiny and sixty-something out there. T-shirt weather, and Small Dog has just met his local dog friends on the dog walk.

One wonders if they see us shaking hands and think, “Shaking paws is how humans sniff ass, I guess. Gross.”

The Philadelphia Story, 2017

Neighbor’s daughter is student teaching in Philadelphia, out to Save The World. It’s springtime there, too, and she’s walking down the street, replying to a text — her world and perceptual field narrowed to a glowing rectangle — and comes a probable truant from her school, scooting by on a bike, and deftly plucks the iPhone 7 out of her hand.

She waited to see it get turned on with Find My iPhone, but that doesn’t work, any more; the Asset Redistribution Technicians of the inner city are on to it, and her phone has already been wiped and fenced and, probably, resold.

Or given to a family member. Your baby sister deserves someone else’s iPhone for her Obamaphone service, not the crappy phones they give you for “free.” Hell, she thought he was about 14, so his baby mamma deserves someone else’s iPhone.

The police don’t care; a stolen phone, are you kidding? Do you know what their backlog looks like? Homicides are up 22% year-to-date. There have been 2,500 violent crimes reported this year, of which few have been closed. Who’s the thief? That general description also fits a bunch of agg assault and murder suspects who are at large, so they’re not sweating a phone thief. Hang up, lady; call us back when he kills you. (She knows this; she probably didn’t bother reporting the theft).

Apple doesn’t care; even though they could brick the phone, they won’t — she’s already bought a new iPhone, so theft is a plus for them. Besides, they’re all SJWs there, and Black Lives Matter, and the only reason a white person has something is because they looted it from slaves, which is why inner-city blacks who are too truculent to stay in school and too lazy to show up at jobs (unlike their competition for illiterate-laborer gigs, criminaliens) are Entitled to Whitey’s $#!+ — something they seem to believe with a fervor a preacher reserves for his Bible.

Her wireless carrier doesn’t care; even though they could brick the phone, they won’t. They may get a new subscriber out of this! So they, too, are in cahoots with burglars and strongarm thieves. That’s their contribution to Social Justice.

In four or five years, when today’s telephone thief has a record that takes multiple pages on a cop-car criminal (and three times as many crimes, at least, for which he was never arrested or charged), he’ll get his gizzard perforated by a cop, and The Community and The Reverends will turn out with pictures from when he was nine years old and demand the cop be punished.

And by then, he probably will be, even though logically it’s like punishing a doctor for curing an infection. Bacterial Lives Matter!

But here in the ‘Shire, we’re spared most of the pathologies of inner cities, except when our residents import their Massachusetts ganged-up drug dealers when our residents are importing their stupidmaking substance du jour.

Hell, you don’t need drugs, to turn on, tune in, and drop out. Look at all the undead around you, shuffling along with their glowing rectangles.

No rest for the wicked, as Your Humble Blogger (and Small Dog Mk II, who is invited) meets with a business partner today. (SDMkII may be meeting the partner’s dog-in-law, that bit’s not clear).

Meanwhile, back at Hog Manor, it snowed off and on all day yesterday. Spring can spring any time, honestly. It reminds us of this, and that’s freaking Finland in the Winter War. (Observe the rifle… there will be questions).

Re the title of this post. We’ve just heard from a gentleman who has a registered Simonov AVS. The AVS is an extremely rare Soviet automatic rifle, adopted in 1936 and rapidly replaced by the broadly similar Tokarev SVT and AVT. Many AVSes were used in the Soviet-Finnish Winter War and large quantities were captured by the Finns.

Most Soviet 1945 and earlier semi and auto rifles that are in US circulation without import marks were imported before 1968 — in the late fifties, actually — from Finnish stocks. This rifle is suspected of being one of those, although the owner has not observed a Finnish property [SA] stamp.

He is missing three parts:

1. The screw that goes into the rear of the trigger guard, through the wrist of the stock, into the receiver. It’s an oddly shaped screw indeed, not a standard part;
2. The gas tappet;
3. The 15-shot magazine. He did manage to find a 5-shot magazine, in a former Soviet republic. (The mag in the photo is a Tokarev mag adapted to fit).

Objective is to get this rare rifle running again, and so we’d like to hear from anyone

1. who has any of these parts and can be induced to part with them;
2. who has drawings of any of these parts;
3. who has any of these actual parts and is willing to lend them for reverse engineering;
4. who has a Simonov AVS (registered, dewatted, parts kit, anything) and is willing to turn one of us loose on it with nondestructive measuring tools.

The screw is odd, but it’s something any machine shop should be able to duplicate with a good drawing. It’s possible that a Tokarev SVT or Simonov SKS gas tappet could be adapted.

Previous WeaponsMan Content on the AVS:

1. 20 Jul 16: SVT-Inspired Italian Rifle: It’s Strange
2. 30 Dec 15: Rare Simonov AVS-36 Sold for $5k — as Parts
3. 31 May 13: More Finnish Archive Rarities!
4. 38 May 13: Are You Finnish with Russian Weapons?

There’s a million stories in the naked city, or something like that. There’s only a few stories a day at WeaponsMan.com, and a lot of them are pretty dry if you’re not a gun person. Here’s a few updated on stories that have been told before:

• Tom Kratman has reappeared in the comments after a long absence. We believe that’s an indicator that he may have just dropped a manuscript on his editor and is in the calm before publication, but perhaps he has other reasons. Meanwhile, Tom and Amazon are offering you the Crack Dealer Special: your first hit of the Carrera Series, A Desert Called Peace, for free (on Kindle). The series was great entertainment even paid for. Some people have charged that Carerra is a Mary Sue: he’s just like Kratman only more so: more handsome, more accomplished, more lucky, and more sociopathic. All we will say to that is that Tom would not center a series on a character who was unbalanced for no reason.

• We mentioned before that even though most “hate crimes” are hoaxes, and most “nazi threats” are as dead as Adolf his crazy old self, there are real neo-nazi murders; even if they’re very sparse compared to the TV version, they actually do occur in non-zero quantities worldwide. And even though TV has 1000 white racists killing black people to 0 black racists killing white people, in the real world the situation isn’t entirely reversed: while whites killed out of black racism and resentment are an everyday affair, there is a non-zero set of real white racists who kill black people. A pox on all of them. (Worse yet, this asshat was a veteran. May his poxes contract poxes).

While the happy news readers on TV are often lying (the tell is: their lips move), the mystery of man’s bestiality to man, and the sheer complexity of the human race, makes life imitate their art, occasionally.

In cheerier news, the Official Blog Niece has distinguished herself in dance competition yet again, and the weather is warm enough for Small Dog Mk.II to enjoy some outdoor time, which is his favorite. (That’s the thing with dogs: everything is their favorite).

And we’re looking forward to a great week in the Extended New England Winter.

This week’s Tour d’Horizon may actually publish on time. That’s kind of a big deal, as last week’s was finally published today (minus a few categories). You can read last week’s TDH at this link. (Link fixed, thanks to Brian Jaynes for the heads up -Ed.)

Guns

I don’t wanna work, I just wanna bang on my gun all day.

Build Your Own… SIG

This post on Gunnit Rust (the reddit gun-building sub-thread sub-thread) about homebuilding a SIG P229 clone reminded us that Matrix Precision Parts can provide with every part, jig and tool you need to make your own, legally (in most states of the US, that is. If you’re in some hellhole like North Korea or New Jersey, may God have mercy on you). First, here are the ingredients:

The basic jig (#2 in that picture, the numbers are fully broken out in the thread) also works with 1911s. There are two setups, here’s one of them (and he warns that the Hyskore “Armorers Vise” he used is crap):

Conclusion: 

Overall, this process took about four hours on my first run (I had to cut the slide rails a little more a second time because the slide was seizing up and refusing to cycle). As you can see, I had a cheap and subpar setup and managed, even though the most complex mechanical tool I was ever entrusted with with were safety scissors. Anybody can do it if they want to.

He did run into problems. The SIG factory coating on the slide chews at the bare aluminum frame, for instance. It’s also no way to save money on a SIG: Counting his tooling costs, he’s out $1500, although some of that was simple unwisdom (he purchased bluing equipment, while what the frame needs is anodizing or hard Cerakote). Still, he up and did it.

1970s Beretta 92S Pistols

If you missed these when a rash of them hit GunBroker, Robertson Trading Post in Tennessee still has them in five grades from $289 to $359. This model (92S) differs from the USGI M9 and commercial 92FS in three major particulars: it lacks ambidextrous controls, it does not have the firing pin safety, and it does not have the magazine release in the customary “Browning” position at the back of the trigger bow. Instead, the push-button mag release is at the rear base of the grip.

Even the lowest-priced firearms are serviceable; these guns predate the economization that introduced plastic and MIM parts. These specific firearms were made from 1977 to 1981.

Now That’s a Bayonet Mate

French RSC 1917 semi-auto with its stabber — all six feet of it. Embiggen for effect. This was one of the first semi-autos, and the first one issued seriously by a major power’s army.

There was actually a lot of innovation in this early shot at a semi-auto service rifle; one suspects John Garand remembered this operating rod.

It was a product of the same committee that gave France the Chauchat — which actually worked OK for France, compared to the monumental failure of the US Cal .30 version.

Ultimately, they gave up on keeping them running and converted ’em to straight-pull bolt-actions That makes survivors extremely rare, and given the gun’s importance, extremely expensive. Here’s the source.

Gun Stocks update

Anyway you want it: we have the table, our analysis, and the popular chart. We have simplified to one chart and table, incorporating Olin.

Gun Stocks since the Election
Week Ending	RGR	SWHC	AOBC	VSTO	OLN
11/8/16	64.40	28.45		38.94	22.45
11/18/16	53.20	24.13		40.02	25.16
11/25/16	52.50	23.82		41.05	25.69
12/2/16	50.25	21.10		39.66	25.94
12/9/16	51.90	21.07		38.62	25.87
12/16/16	53.45	21.59		36.81	25.42
12/23/16	54.05	22.11		38.03	26.21
12/30/16	52.70	21.08		36.90	25.61
1/6/17	54.15		21.00	38.08	26.39
1/13/17	51.35		20.60	28.70	27.07
1/20/17	50.65		20.13	27.78	26.64
1/27/17	51.90		20.58	28.33	26.69
2/3/17	50.05		20.12	26.18	30.83
2/10/17	50.15		20.07	21.58	29.81
2/17/17	49.70		19.22	20.89	30.86
2/24/17	49.85		19.45	20.72	30.78
3/3/17	48.75		18.83	20.47	32.34
3/10/17	52.15		19.52	20.71	31.70
3/17/17	53.55		19.45	20.89	33.07
3/24/17	51.90		18.73	20.31	32.77

Everybody’s down this week, as are the indices (Dow Jones 300 Industrials, Standard & Poor’s 500). Most of the industry news this week has been in non-public firms (Remington, Colt). Q1 of 2016 ends this month and by mid-April we should have some financials to look at.

Disclaimer: Your Humble Blogger holds RGR, bought at about 56.40 on 9 Nov 16. It bottomed in the 40s later that day before rebounding a little by close, but it is taking its sweet time recovering. Yeah, shoulda bought OLN. (It’s still paying a dividend, though).

Gun Poly-Ticks

Head

Kansas, like many states, has a firearms law that explicitly exempts in-state made and -sold firearms that never leave the state from Federal regulation, having, as they do, no nexus with interstate commerce. The law was always arguable if not outright questionable, but many pro-gun legislatures have laid them down as a marker of their pro-gun bona fides. These laws have been the target of anti-gun elements in the DOJ and in the last Administration, and one of the Kansans who acted in accordance with the state law was made an example of. His case is now on appeal, and the state Attorney General has asked US AG Jeff Sessions not to defend the case on the appellate level. Failing that, he wants Sessions’s support for a Presidential pardon for the unlucky Kansan. Sessions has given an noncommittal answer, promising only to consider the AG’s plea. (GOA Article) (KS AG’s letters to Sessions).

Shorts

• New York pols are upset that a Federal law may allow out-of-staters to defend themselves from the NYC criminal element — and cut into the market for $10k bribes for licenses.
• The Czech Government wants to enshrine gun rights in the national constitution. If nothing else, it keeps a market alive for CZ-UB despite EU overreach.
• Back to New York, Attorney General Schneiderman, this assclown… …isn’t very interested in pursuing actual violent criminals, but he’s death on guns — even toy guns. In New York City, there’s actually a Stasi snitch page on the city website for turning in toy sellers!

Usage and Employment

 The hardware takes you only half way.

Negligent Lesson

This guy gave himself one in the hat… which was on his bed-post. The 5.45mm round continued through the bedpost and hit the wall sideways. Here’s his take-away:

[L]ast night I bought myself some nice East German AK-74 mags. This morning I was bored and decided to function check them and make sure they fed properly.

First mistake, I should of just waited until I went to the range on Monday. There is a time and a place for everything, and 7am in my bedroom was not it.

So I cycle a few times and everything was running fine and dandy. I remove the magazine and rack the bolt back. Must be clear! Nope!

Pull the trigger to drop the hammer and BANG! My first and hopefully last negligent discharge.

My idiot self forgot to visually inspect the chamber. The extractor must of failed to eject the round, and the rest is history.

Geez, did  this bozoid do anything right? Turns out, he did.

Fortunately I was following the “Point in a safe direction” rule, so nothing important was damaged.

Not much to add to that. Reddit thread here, pictures of the damage here. If you’re not lucky enough to be good, it’s good to be lucky. (And the only luck you can count on is the luck you make for yourself by not doing stupid stuff).

Cops ‘n’ Crims

Cops bein’ cops, crims bein’ crims. The endless Tom and Jerry show of crime and (sometimes instantaneous) punishment.

Happy Days at ICE

Sometimes a major sea change shows up in the form of … a form. ICE has received a new detainer policy from senior management, that replaces the “hands off, let criminals walk” policy of the ancien régime. 

There used to be one single detainer form, but it was split into three more complex forms, the better to inhibit the detention of criminal aliens. The three new Obama detainer forms are replaced by one (again). And a serving agent observes, gleefully:

The new form is like our pre Obama form. The new policy is detain illegals!!

Long enough to ship ’em, anyway.

Who’s gonna gang rape the 14-year-olds Americans aren’t raping?

Career Criminal has a Second Second Act

Brett Kimberlin is a lifelong career criminal with an unusually eclectic palette of crimes: terrorist bombings, child sexual abuse (not proven but the evidence was strong), lots and lots of perjury and forgery. He did time for drug smuggling. He was a felon in possession of firearms (which were never recovered and are presumed to still be in his possession). He was also the only suspect in a cold-case murder that can’t be prosecuted without a confession, because the other witnesses are dead. He’s an adjudicated pedophile. But he has a new career… in the news media, the demand for dirt on President Trump is so strong that he’s become a valuable, even treasured source for the media.

The Perils of Kathleen: Long Tail

Not a lot of activity week. But it seems that nothing will ever knock former Attorney General of Pennsylvania, and convicted felon, Kathleen Kane, out of the news.

• Item 20 Mar: Merger Kane Opposed between PA health care firms going forward. Her opposition was probably a shakedown attempt, rendered moot by her legal problems.
• Item 15 Mar: Kane Still in Court on a civil suit by victims of her relatiation during her disastrous career as AG. She won dismissal in state courts; now her victims have gone to the Feds in a long-shot attempt to win justice.

The big news, which deserves a post of its own, is the indictment and arrest of the Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. Williams was, briefly, a hero for taking up prosecutions of crooked politicians that Kane had spindled on political grounds. But he turned out to be an even bigger crook himself — while what he did with the public’s trust and money is pretty bad, he’s also jammed up for stealing his mom’s savings, and then, after running a fundraiser for her, stealing that money too!

Unconventional (and current) Warfare

What goes on in the battlezones of the world — and preparation of the future battlefields. 

Cross Putin? Well… He has a Lot of TT-33s

A Russian turncoat parliamentarian who went over to the Ukrainians got the treatment that was once reserved for anti-Soviet exiles, like Stepan Bandera. An unknown assailant came up behind Denis Voronenkov and his bodyguard and emptied a pistol, including several headshots into the downed Voronenkov. The pistol was a 1940s-50s vintage, perfectly deniable TT-33.

It’s a pretty safe bet that investigators will learn nothing from this pistol. What are they going to do, ask Russia?

But let it never be said that Russian chivalry is dead. Despite the opportunity, the assailant didn’t also shoot Voronenkov’s pregnant wife, Maria Maksakova. She’s unharmed, for purely physical values of unharmed.

If I were the Ukrainians, I’d be looking hard at Voronenkov’s “bodyguard,” who seems to have taken a dive in this incident.

This assassination is only partly about whacking Voronenkov, as happy as the Kremlin no doubt is to be rid of him. It’s also sending a message. And that is: our reach is long. Even in the very center of Kiev, under the light of security cameras, mere yards from police positions: we can still find you, reach you, and pay you back.

What Do UN Peacekeepers Actually Do?

We know they don’t keep peace. In Lebanon, they just work for Hezbollah. (But then, so does the nominal Lebanese Army, to which we provide lethal and ISR aid). Seriously, though, you wouldn’t like UN Peacekeepers to do in your town what they do in the unfortunate locales  that have hosted them heretofore. Stuff like this:

In Haiti, UN peacekeepers dumped fecal waste into the local water supply, igniting a cholera outbreak that has killed 9,000 so far. In other strife-torn regions like Congo, peacekeepers have looked on while rival forces plunder the populace.

…peacekeepers stay for years to prop up dictatorships that have little local support.

Peacekeepers sent to the Central African Republic were accused of raping more than 100 girls in one community. Four of the girls were allegedly tied up and forced to have sex with a dog.

Poor dog. But hey, that’s just one country!

Sexual assaults by UN personnel have been documented in Bosnia, Burundi, Cambodia, Congo, Guinea, Haiti, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Mali and Sudan.

Oh.

What they don’t do is keep the peace and protect people. (In the Balkans, Dutch UN peacekeepers handed over civilians to their murderers, for one rebarbative example). So why do we approve and fund them?

When we were growing up, in the 1960s, people thought the UN was a wonderful thing. But they felt that way about tie-dyes, “turn on, tune in, and drop out” and levitating the Pentagon with the power of their minds. It was a stupid time.

Hate-Crime Spree Turns Out to be Fraud

New York politicians, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-Five Families) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Guns Done It) are demanding new powers to fight Hate Crimes, because of bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers across the nation, and because vandals had trashed tombstones in a historic Brooklyn Jewish Cemetery. And they blamed, who else? Donald Trump.

But The Narrative™ is falling apart. First, a suspect for about 20% of the bomb threats was arrested — and instead of being the right-wing white d-bag everyone assumed, he was a left-wing black news reporter, Juan Thompson. Of course, “news reporter” is, as is well known, a synonym for “d-bag” these days. But there was still 80% Real Klan Nazi creeps out there — they couldn’t all be Reporters Of Color, could they? (And it did, in fact, turn out to be a white guy… but we’ll get to that).

Next, the cemetery story turned out to be as phony as that fifth of the bomb calls: turns out that it wasn’t that some random Klansman was turning over the tombstones of the respected ancestors of today’s New York Jews, but that today’s descendants don’t give a rat’s rip about great-great-great-whatsis Schlomo, and the fallen tombstones were the result of neglect, not vandalism. “It was years, if not decades, old,” explained the police.

Is anybody surprised that Chuck Schumer doesn’t honor his ancestors’ final resting place? Seeing as how there’s nothing in it for him?

And finally, this week, the third domino fell: the rest of the JCC bomb threats turn out to have been made by a Jewish kid — a 19-year-old American living in Ashkelon, Israel. And he appears to have been paid by somebody to do it. (We’ll just note that Morris Dees has a lot of money, even after paying alimony to five wives. So does the ADL).

Of course, these politicians, being Social Justice Warriors, double down and insist that even though round-to-100% of the antisemitic hate crime wave was phony, the Dark Curtain of Fascism is Descending on America. After Thompson’s arrest, Evan Bernstein and Oren Segal of the ADL blamed… the goys, of course.

Well, it would if we elected Schumer to anything important. Fortunately, he’s only a Senator, like Caligula’s horse.

Army Has a New Participation Trophy!

An Army that keeps defining excellence down, to the point that a marginal SP/4 with zero deployments has a ribbon rack to match George S. Patton Jr’s after WWI and North Africa, is never going to fail… to entertain, anyway. The Army is developing the “Expert Action Badge” to ease complaints from the 95% of the Army that’s perma-fobbits that the combat-MOS guys get a shiny that they don’t. It’s not faiiiiir! < / whingey millennial voice> The new dongle will go to any soldier who demonstrates proficiency in his or her MOS, and is likely to look like this:

This Expert Fobbit Badge replaces the old motivational approach, the First Sergeant’s $#!+ List for those who don’t demonstrate proficiency in their MOS. (There’s already a shiny ribbon for graduating from Advanced Individual Training, but the Army admits with this badge that soldiers generally come out of AIT incompetent in their MOS). It’ll be interesting to see where the hurdles are set up. Will a finance clerk have to get a soldier’s pay started up within three months of him or her arriving on station? Will a cook have to set up both tray-packs, and MRE issue?

The CIB was created in 1942 to recognize that infantrymen were something unique, and the EIB recognizes the same thing in peacetime. The Combat Medical Badge and CFMB recognized that grunts and special operators don’t go into The Valley alone. But the Army today has to motivate the Tee Ball and Scoreless Soccer generation, and that means lots of praise, earned or not.

Shorts – Islamic Worship Edition

• A Montreal mosque called for the extermination of the Jews, using a hadith, or reported saying of Mohammed — a fundamental scripture of the cult of Mohammed.
• A nominal Briton,  who rented a van and murdered four people with it and common knives was a career violent criminal turned jihadi, who spent four years (2005-09) in top terror exporter Saudi Arabia being radicalized, but was dropped as not dangerous by British police. Now eight of his terrorist associates are in custody.
• Person unknown makes a knife attack on two Swedes in a subway. What odds he’s an actual Swede?
• A Libyan named Diallo Mamoudou assaulted two Italian policemen in Foggia with this kitchen knife or steak knife…  …and his car. He’s a guest of the Italian taxpayers now, which, when you think about it, isn’t really a status change for the bum.
• Turkey’s Islamist strongman Recep Erdogan has begun revoking the citizenship of expatriate Turks in Europe, lest the Europeans try to send them home. Especially true of those suspected of opposition loyalties.
• A nominal Frenchman with the Name of Peace® (Mohamed) loaded up his car trunk with weapons and did his best to plow into pedestrians in Antwerp, Belgium. His best was kind of lousy and he wound up in custody without killing anybody. No 72 virgins for you, Mo!
• Meanwhile, staffers acquired by the Univision illegal-alien-media empire in the break-up of the Gawker gossip and revenge porn site had an active shooter briefing from DHS. Gossip columnist Anna Merlan wrote an outwaged jeremiad about how unfaiiiirly they suggested that terrorists Just Might Be Moslems. Her fear? White Christians, and all males.

Veterans’ Issues

Is it time to o disband this thing yet, and letting all its bloatoverhead seek its own level in the Dreaded Private Sector™?  Just shorts this week, or we’d never get the post up….

Dr Shulkin’s 10-Point Plan

VA head Dr David Shulkin is traveling the nation, telling veterans’ groups and VA workers about his 10-point plan to improve the agency.

1. New accountability legislation
2. Extend the Choice deadline past August
3. Choice 2.0 Legislation
4. Infrastructure improvements and consolidations
5. VA/Defense Department federal coordination
6. Enhance foundational services in VA
7. Electronic medical record modernization
8. Breakthrough in suicide prevention
9. Appeals modernization
10. Accelerating performance on benefits claims

Heh, there are some good points in there, but a lot of them look like the old VA bureaucrats’ wish list. We like our one-point plan better: disband this thing.

VA Exempts More Jobs from Hiring Freeze

Claims processing and cybersecurity jobs have been added to previous exemptions for patient care professionals, National Cemetery workers, and critical positions in contracting and project management. The claims processors were added because the backlog, which a max-overtime effort had brought down since 2014, is rising again.

Angry Feminists? Gee, there’s a change

Feminists were angry about a separate women’s auxiliary in the venerable Royal British Legion, so the leaders rolled it into the main organization. Then the feminists got more angry, demanding that women quit.  (But if you read all the way to the end of the very dishonest article by one Andrew Levy at the Daily Mail, they’re actually quitting because membership dues are being raised to equal mens’.

Health & Fitness

Nothing new. 

Lord Love a Duck!

The weird and wonderful (or creepy) that we didn’t otherwise get to.

Why this Rhino is Getting Chainsawed

A couple of weeks ago, criminals looking to steal something salable on the Asian traditional medicine market broke into a zoo in Thoiry, France, and shot a white rhinoceros named Vince dead. They got away with the animal’s horn, worth hundreds of thousands to unscrupulous merchants and quacks with superstitious customers in China and Vietnam.

So the zoos of Europe are taking chainsaws to their rhinos.

This keeper is dehorning the first of 21 rhinos in the Dvur Kralové zoo in the Czech Republic, but a Belgian zoo is doing the same thing, and others are expected to follow. As gruesome as it looks, the rhino is only sedated to let the keeper work — the horn is made of keratin, and cutting it is like trimming a human’s fingernails or a cat’s claws. Like those, the horn will grow back, requiring repeated trimming every few months.

The hope is that if murdering the beasts for money is made unprofitable, the animals — and the species, because its survival is already a near-run thing — may survive.

The Big Boys Wouldn’t Let Me Party With Them

Chuck Berry died this month. If you listen to or play rock n’ roll, you owe a debt to Chuck (and he owed it to a bunch of other guys that have gone before, like Louis Jordan).  It turns out that he had just cut a new studio album. Pity that now most of the money will stick to the fingers of LA middlemen, but that’s the business. Here’s the one single released so far, Big Boys:

He recorded this at age 89-90. Wow. (Some of the guitar riffing is his son filling in). It’s got those classic Chuck Berry conversational gems of lyrics:

If I would know then what makes the world go round

I woulda known what goes up must go down.

Most interesting guy, three-time felon for three different classes of crime, still playing monthly gigs near his Missouri home at age 88, and probably the most-licks-stolen-from guitarist since Charlie Christian plugged one into an amplifier.

RIP Charles Edward Anderson Berry, 1926-2017.

Oh, what the hell. Let’s bring him back for an encore… live on French TV, around the time Your Humble Blogger was born. Sometimes you listen to Beethoven, and sometimes you just want him to roll over.

This post is actually being retroposted and backdated in the wee hours of Monday, so we were actually signal silent on Sunday.

And on Saturday.

And for the Friday Tour d’Horizon, which got partially written. (Just not enough to hit “publish” on).

Nobody’s sick, dead, or indicted around here; and nobody has run afoul of some even worse calamity, like being experimentally probed on by space aliens, or getting married again. We’ve just been experiencing a lot of disruptions in analog life, and some irritating computer slowdowns.

Since the missing posts are roughed in, we hope to backfill them Monday and Tuesday, but not at the expense of the new week’s content. As this goes live, the only thing in the can for sure is an 0600 Monday post. So we’ll be busy this week to keep all y’all entertained.

This week’s Tour d’Horizon goes to eleven! But no, you can’t touch it. Don’t point at it. We’ll let you know when you’ve looked at it long enough.

It’s a bit telegraphic and just-the-links-ma’am this week, but then, it’s 24 hours late, so there is that.

Guns

I don’t wanna work, I just wanna bang on my gun all day.

Beauty!

Get a load of this Remington revolver.

It’s an Uberti-made Cimarron. It was bought from Bud’s online, no special order; the model is the 1875 Outlaw in .45 Long Colt. That gorgeous case hardening is the way it came. Source of the pic? This thread at Arfcom, where the photographer has a full set, and other users post some other eye-catching Cimarrons.

There’s Always that 5% That Doesn’t Get the Word

We just learned the Bill Ritchie of EDM Arms, maker of accurate extreme long range rifles , passed away 5 November 16 and his company closed immediately thereafter. He used to celebrate his customers’ making the ‘Mile Club’ with their M96 Windrunners or other EDM rifles. The website remains live for now.

OK, at $650 We’re Out

We wanted an AR-24, a relatively uncommon Armalite-badged Filipino CZ clone, pretty badly. Badly enough to bid $650 for a minty one.

We got outbid. What in the name of Niffelheim?

Well, we hope the new owner is happy with his AR-24. We set a hard ceiling of $650 and stuck to it. The only problem is that people with beater AR-24s will now think they’re worth $650.

CMP Garands — Down to the Bottom of the Barrel?

Pretty amazing, but the US Government’s supply of M1 Garnd rifles seems to be bottoming out. All that’s left on the CMP website are a few very late (6 million serial) Service Grade M1s ($1200), a quantity of new-parts Specials with badly pitted receivers ($830), and some grades of snipers ($$$ many) without scopes or mounts. There’s only three M1s on the CMP auction site (usually where they dispose of odd lots or rarities).

What’s the alternative? Pick one up on the superheated collector market, or buy a new replica built on a vintage GI receiver… which sells for $2-3k.

Gun Stocks update

Anyway you want it: we have the table, our analysis, and the popular chart.

Gun Stocks since the Election
Week Ending	RGR	SWHC	AOBC	VSTO
11/8/16 (pre-election)	64.40	28.45		38.94
11/18/16	53.20	24.13		40.02
11/25/16	52.50	23.82		41.05
12/2/16	50.25	21.10		39.66
12/9/16	51.90	21.07		38.62
12/16/16	53.45	21.59		36.81
12/23/16	54.05	22.11		38.03
12/30/16	52.70	21.08		36.90
1/6/17	54.15		21.00	38.08
1/13/17	51.35		20.60	28.70
1/20/17	50.65		20.13	27.78
1/27/17	51.90		20.58	28.33
2/3/17	50.05		20.12	26.18
2/10/17	50.15		21.08	21.58
2/17/17	49.70		19.22	20.89
2/24/17	49.85		19.45	20.72
3/3/17	48.75		18.83	20.47
3/10/17	52.00		19.51	20.72
3/17/17	53.55		19.45	20.89

Ruger’s up a little more this week, but still nowhere near its  and Smith (AOBC) and Vista (VSTO) are essentially flat.

Olin Corporation (OLN) continues its value growth. We think that next week we’ll roll everything into one table and one graph, including Olin back to the election. (We obviously altready have the data, to make this graph).

Disclaimer: Your Humble Blogger holds RGR, bought at about 56.40 on 9 Nov 16. It bottomed in the 40s later that day before rebounding a little by close, but it is taking its sweet time recovering.

Shorts

• Tracking Point has a couple new videos we’ve been meaning to write about. Their YouTube Channel is here.

Gun Poly-Ticks

Kansas Wants Pre-Emption Test Case Guy Freed

Kansas, like many states, has a firearms law that explicitly exempts in-state made and -sold firearms that never leave the state from Federal regulation, having, as they do, no nexus with interstate commerce. The law was always arguable if not outright questionable, but many pro-gun legislatures have laid them down as a marker of their pro-gun bona fides. These laws have been the target of anti-gun elements in the DOJ and in the last Administration, and one of the Kansans who acted in accordance with the state law was made an example of. His case is now on appeal, and the state Attorney General has asked US AG Jeff Sessions not to defend the case on the appellate level. Failing that, he wants Sessions’s support for a Presidential pardon for the unlucky Kansan. Sessions has given an noncommittal answer, promising only to consider the AG’s plea. (GOA Article) (KS AG’s letters to Sessions).

Shorts

• In New York, Attorney General Schneiderman hates guns so much, he’s going after the toys.
• And Senator from New York Chuck Schumer wants to ban 3D-printed guns, but who are we kidding? He wants to ban them all.
• The Bloomberg-owned gun-control-advocacy fake news site The Trace misrepresented a recent DOJ ruling. What the ruling actually does is require due process and a court judgment to strip Americans of their 2nd Amendment rights, not just a fiat from an unaccountable bureaucrat.
• ATF officials refused to attend a hearing on their gunwalking tactics, which were recently revealed to have been behind the death of ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata. (The ATF nexus to Zapata’s death was previously suspected, but not proven).
• Hawaii’s doubling down on gun bans. But the link may be most interesting for its revelation of just how dead a letter the 2nd Amendment is in the Aloha State. It turns out to be a “may-issue-but-never-will” state.

Usage and Employment

 The hardware takes you only half way.

Florida SD/Murder Case Ruling Analyzed

Andrew Branca takes apart a ruling in a “stand your ground” hearing in Florida. The judge’s errors are many and obvious (well, to Andrew; not to a nonlawyer, or a lawyer who isn’t well-versed in the law of self defense). But we think the shoot is, at best, highly questionable. Lesson for everyone: something like 10% of Florida is legally packing, so don’t start none with cranky old men in the Sunshine State. Being right and dead is pretty much the same as being wrong and dead, from the decedent’s point of view. And being right and shooting somebody and being wrong and shooting somebody are pretty much the same thing from the legal-crucifixion point of view, where the process itself is the punishment. (Of course, the court can go either way, and the guy who says he was defending himself is either going to prison for life or walking free. You don’t want to get in that position, right or wrong: random things happen in court).

The press has misreported this as a shooting over texting during the previews, which is a dishonest construction, but then, it’s the press so what do you expect? And what’s wrong with shooting some loudmouth for texting in a theater, anyway?

What’s Your Limit?

What’s the point at which you’d die fighting rather than comply with orders from an armed assailant? We have a post percolating where we’ll be talking about that at some length. Like every other aspect of self-defense, it seems, this is best addressed by making a plan in advance, and executing it with full force, should that day come.

Cops ‘n’ Crims

Cops bein’ cops, crims bein’ crims. The endless Tom and Jerry show of crime and (sometimes instantaneous) punishment.

The Perils of Kathleen: Long Tail

Very little activity this week. But it seems that nothing will ever knock former Attorney General of Pennsylvania, and convicted felon, Kathleen Kane, out of the news.

• Item 20 Mar: Merger Kane Opposed between PA health care firms going forward. Her opposition was probably a shakedown attempt, rendered moot by her legal problems.
• Item 15 Mar: Kane Still in Court on a civil suit by victims of her relatiation during her disastrous career as AG. She won dismissal in state courts; now her victims have gone to the Feds in a long-shot attempt to win justice.

Really borderline news, this week.

Unconventional (and current) Warfare

What goes on in the battlezones of the world — and preparation of the future battlefields. (nothing this week)

Veterans’ Issues

Is it time to o disband this thing yet, and letting all its bloatoverhead seek its own level in the Dreaded Private Sector™?  Just shorts this week, or we’d never get the post up…. (nothing this week)

Head

text.

Shorts

Is it time to disband this thing yet?

Health & Fitness

Nothing new. 

Lord Love a Duck!

The weird and wonderful (or creepy) that we didn’t otherwise get to. (nothing this week)

We’re expecting a blizzard this week, and in advance, the year’s first visitor from Canada is here already: a bitterly cold air mass. Having just had the heating system serviced we weren’t expecting the house to be cold… but it was.

We’d left a door to the insulated, but unheated, garage open. D’oh.

It’s getting back to livable at this writing.

It might be Spring Forward day, but we could use a little more spring in our spring.

Perhaps we’ll take the occasion to write some on cold weather weapons care. We’re still playing catch-up on last week’s Saturday Matinee (a disc of vintage documentaries) and TW3. And, given the low temps in the house, Small Dog Mark II’s tendency to be a lap-seeking missile is more pronounced than usual. As we type this, he is sleeping on our desk, with his muzzle in the crook of Your Humble Blogger’s right elbow. It reduces typing speed rather a lot.

But how can one say no?

Today is a day of solids. Solid food. Solid friendships, staying connected on the phone. Got some solid writing done this morning, stuff promised to another site. Trying to get solidly ahead on the blog so it stays on schedule whilst we work on the book.

And the solid Blogbrother and the Blogneff are coming over to solidify some of the work we’ve been doing on the fuselage center section of the RV-8. Some of the main parts of the center-section carry through are just clamped together and we need to match drill through thick aluminum, and refasten the parts with Clecos rather than furniture clamps. (Not very The Life Aeronautic, them, but we had ’em handy).

Been thinking about some of the stuff Staghounds said in a comment about thefts and recoveries. (He ran a pistol after buying it, and it came up stolen, because the seller who’d bought it new had once mistakenly included it in a list of stolen guns from a burglary). For the average person, there’s no way to check.

More guns are stolen all the time, and criminal gangs have gotten quite sophisticated in terms of adapting the tactics they need to gun-store crimes. Sometimes they use smash-and-grab (and have rammed storefronts with 3/4 ton trucks, and dug through walls with backhoes). Sometimes they use a more stealthy approach. Hundreds of guns a year enter criminal commerce through armed robberies, even though an armed robbery of a gunstore would be a daunting target to most criminals. (And a few criminals get shot trying, every year. There’s always another dirtbag to take his place).

As far as we know ATF has not done any national-level analysis of these burglaries and robberies. They certainly haven’t released anything like that to the public or even inside the LE community.

Everybody seems to think he’s special, and won’t get burgled or robbed. (We’re as guilty of that as anybody, and there’s a bunch of to-be-written-about or to-be-secured guns lying around the Manor right now). The only permanent solution to gun theft is shooting the thieves dead, and unfortunately that’s only legal in some narrow sets of circumstances. In the absence of killing them, perhaps we can do what was so effective at preventing recidivist murders, throwing them in prison for life. Nobody steals 60 guns from a shop because he is overflowing with bonhomie and largesse towards his fellow man.

As a society, we really pay a price for our Christian societal concept that states, “every man is redeemable.” Surely that’s true for Jesus, but let’s stop pretending every connected lawyer in a black robe is the Christ, and start locking more of these creeps away for eternity. He can get straight with Jesus once he’s not able to hurt His children any more.

Amen.