Friday Tour d’Horizon, 2017 Week 12

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.