Wife's First Gun

Kim spent part of our wedding gift money on her first gun Monday. She bought a very nice used Smith and Wesson LadySmith 4" in .38 Special. It is a nice little gun. The finish is some kind of satin coating I think. I will get some pics of it tonight. She loves it, and we plan to test it out this weekend at the local range. This will be her carry piece once we get our CHLs. While I had no idea, she is apparently quite the revolver fan! Before finding the one she chose, she eyeballed a Ruger Security Six 6" .357 in stainless, a Uberti .45 Long Colt, and a nice little Ruger "Last Cowboy" in .32 H&R.

Her thoughtfulness at picking out the gun she selected is quite amazing for a new gunnie really. She eliminated the Security Six because it would be nearly impossible to conceal, even though she just loved the way it handled and looked. Her big concern with the .32 was the relative lack of ammo availability and she was concerned with the finish holding up. She chose the LadySmith for it's concealability, fit to her hand, and it's durable looking finish. She is more rational than I when it comes to picking out guns! :)

Kim also let me know that she is a revolver fanatic apparently. She also is a bit of a snob, as she said she "wants to collect Smith and Wessons only". What can I say the girl has good taste! Am I a lucky guy or what?

I am a Married Man!

Kimberly and I finally tied the knot this weekend! Our ceremony was at her mother's house, and was attended by our immediate families. It was wonderful. There is no doubt that it was the happiest day of my life. The feelings I experienced during the ceremony itself are indescribable. There is something surreal about committing oneself to a life long covenant with your wife and God.

After the ceremony, cake cutting, and all of that we left for our honeymoon. We stayed at the wonderful Hideaway Ranch outside of Glenrose, TX. The owners are a family that runs longhorn cattle on the ranch. They are some of the nicest people we have ever met, and really make you feel welcome. Our cabin was named the Yellastone, and is decorated accordingly. All of their cabins are in secluded spots on the ranch, and have a hot tub on the back deck. It is a very romantic setting really. I would recommend them highly to any couple that lives close enough.

On Sunday morning we took a trip to the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center. This place is completely awesome. It takes about three hours to drive through the park. The various animals come up to your car, begging for a little feed. The closeness of these amazing creatures is something everyone should experience. It is quite entertaining to have an ostriche, zebra, fallow deer, and numerous other species stick their head in your car window looking for a handout. Some of them are quite aggressive about it! We even got to hand feed a giraffe! What an awesome way to see some exotic animals. They have multiple species of antelope, deer, and oryx. You can also see cheetah, bison, rhino, and ocelots. The tour was a very enjoyable excursion to be sure.

There are pictures of the animals and our cabin here.

Concealed Carry on Campus

The Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, had their national protest today and Fox News has a modicum of coverage at least. CNN appears to be ignoring it.

The Story

"You don't like the fact that you can't have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school," said Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
When someone pulls out a gun and starts firing in a crowded environment, it's more likely that additional victims will be harmed, Hamm said.
"Let's be grateful that those holsters are empty," he said.

Ah how typical. What a snide attitude this gun grabber has. I bet if he had been scared senseless hiding behind a desk at Virginia Tech, his ignorant dismissal would have been a little different. Hamm is obviously a complete idiot. How would having a trained person with a gun in the vicinity at VT caused more deaths exactly? It would have more than likely stopped the rampage and saved lives. It is kind of hard to continue a murderous rampage when you are dead, or lying on the floor bleeding to death. This stupid rhetoric passes no common sense judgment.

Here is a nice quote from a campus police officer at Penn State.

"We think this would create more of a hazard if anyone could carry a firearm on campus," Parham said. "When you shoot the weapon, you have to be mindful of what's behind the person two miles down. What happens if you miss your target? Where does that round go?"

Link

This reminds me of the genius that shot himself in the leg, while claiming only the police are smart enough to have weapons. It shows his complete ignorance of firearms as well. His "two miles down" comment is a perfect illustration of this. These are the people protecting are young men and women on college campuses. They don't know their butts from a hole in the ground when it comes to personal defense.

The encouraging thing is that this protest will bring awareness to the problem. It is a good step in the right direction. When all you can come up with are these kind of specious arguments against concealed carry on campus, there is obviously a shortage of valid reasons not to change the policy.

Disarmed people are lambs waiting for slaughter. The murderers know exactly where to go to find loads of unarmed people to kill. It is like shooting fish in a barrel for them. Maybe less of our best and brightest would have been killed on that day at VT had some of us "responsible adults" pulled our heads out of our butts, and allowed them to defend themselves.

No More Iraqis!

This is getting ridiculous. I swear every day I hear another commutard making some idiotic claim about the number of Iraqis our boys have "murdered" in Iraq. The common figure today from the unhinged fringe seems to be 400,000. I have heard them claim 600,000, 1,200,000, and the freak that tried to attack Secretary Rice said that Condi was responsible for "murdering millions of Iraqis".

What the hell is wrong with these people? The truth is we don't have an exact number. The UN said it was around 34,000 for 2006, which was the most violent year so far. Any number of course would include all the terrorists, insurgents, innocent collateral damage numbers, Iraqi security and police force fatalities, and the biggest group of dead. This is of course the number of people that have truly been murdered. The innocents that have been killed by the terrorists and the innocents that have been killed by the various internal groups murdering their fellow countrymen.

Somehow they blame Bush for the overwhelming number of dead Muslims that have been killed by Muslims. Every time a market gets blown up and 150 people die, it is not the work of the evil fascist stormtrooper American soldiers! This is like blacks blaming the white man for black on black violence.

If we are to believe the numbers of the commutards, Iraqis should in fact be getting hard to find in Iraq. We have already killed them all!

Cheney Nods Off During Wild Fire Meeting

Make the Bad Woman Stop Mommy

There isn't many women who instantly induce bile to build up in my throat more than Hillary Clinton. Susan Estrich is, in fact, one of those women however. I can't stand her. Seriously. This woman causes my soul to wretch with agony when I hear her voice, or see her stupid smarmy face on Fox News. She is right up there with Babs, and Barbara WaWa. The only satisfaction I ever felt after seeing her was during the last POTUS election. As the bogus exit polls started proclaiming Kerry as the victor, she was beaming with joy. She was so stuck on herself and her new CIC, Lurch, that she could not contain it. She had to take the opportunity to get some snipes in on all the stupid conservatives. I don't remember her exact words, but they did irritate the hell out of me. Once we found out the truth, however, I was overjoyed at the prospect of her finding out Lurch had indeed lost.

It isn't just the fact that she is a liberal that gets to me. Her voice is about as annoying as they come. It is a gravely mixture of Stalin, and Chomsky rolled into one onerous nightmare of noise. She is also a lawyer that headed up the abysmal Dukakis campaign, and has been a professor of law at Harvard and USC. Enough said, eh?

She now has a book out deriding Ann Coulter apparently. Here is the cover. I like Ann's better.



I suppose the premise is that Ann is a meany. We all know conservative speech is really just hate speech that should be illegal.

Why is it, by the way, that libtards always have to write books about conservative books? They rip off the cover concept, and write a supposed refutation of the original work. They can't come up with anything on their own I suppose.

Senator Shmuck

“One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, stressing the need to pass the Democrats’ comprehensive energy package.

Moments later, when asked by a reporter if he really believed global warming caused the fires, he appeared to back away from his comments, saying there are many factors that contributed to the disaster.

Leave it to Dingy Harry to open his mouth without thinking. What a stupid statement. I swear this guy gets dumber every time he opens his mouth. It is almost enough to make one feel sorry for the guy, but not quite.

Additionally, I have heard various Californistan officials blame the fires on Bush and the Iraq War. Let's make sure we don't mention their lunatic fringe environmental policies that make all of our forest lands giant tinder boxes.

Story

Neat Emergency Headlamp

I was perusing some camping sites and saw this little jewel.



It is the Petzl e Lite Emergency Headlamp. It is a waterproof, explosion proof, long lasting emergency headlamp. The batteries apparently last for up to 10 years in it's little storage case. Pretty versatile little gadget really. I think I will order a couple. One for the boat, and one for the SHTF bag. Of course, actually having a SHTF bag would probably be a good idea as well. :(

Edited to add: This is a french company. Here is a goofy video that describes the device. It is cooler than I thought.

Video

Fun Range Trip

The stepson and I went to the range Saturday for a little plinking fun. We took the 10/22, the new XD-45, the new Hi Point 9mm Carbine, and my Marlin 917vs. I had not taken that many guns out there in quite some time, as it tends to be a PITA. The range was surprisingly empty Saturday, so we were able to spread out comfortably and take up about 4 lanes of bench space with no worries. I, of course, would have consolidated had it gotten busy. We spent about 3 hours throwing lead downrange. Christian focused on the 10/22. He ended up shooting a whole box of Federal bulk with no problems. He also sent a couple clips through the XD and the Hi Point.

This was the first range trip for the XD, Hi Point, and the Marlin. I was pleased with all three. We shot at 30 yards all morning. The Hi Point is an ugly utilitarian weapon. It's beauty lies in it's functionality to be sure. There is nothing attractive aesthetically about this cheap carbine. It was purchased Friday night at Cheaper Than Dirt's retail store. After we figured out it was actually shooting a foot over the target, I was able to dial it in after about 20 rounds. What a crude exercise this was. The "rough" adjustment involves loosening the front post with a box wrench and sliding it up or down. I ended up moving it about an inch, and then dialed it in with the rear peep sight's screw adjustment. The sights are crude, but very serviceable. They provide a nice sight picture at just the right height. The gun's light plastic stock and giant bolt make it quite a recoil monster for it's cartridge. It actually started bothering me after about 150 rounds. I am not ashamed to admit that for whatever reason, I am quite sensitive to recoil. I don't know why that is, as I used to shoot high brass 12 gauge bird loads all day with no worries. I have not developed a flinch or anything, but it does get on my nerves after a few hours. At any rate the carbine functioned flawlessly through 200 rounds of WWB. It did smell quite bad for about the first 100 rounds or so. Probably just oil burning off. For $179 I am more than happy with this ugly little space gun. I managed to put 50+ rounds in about a 4" group freehand at 30 yards, which is about the limit of my eyes and skills.

I also put about 100 rounds through the XD. It functioned perfectly as well. I need some more practice to get back into the rhythm of shooting it. My "groups" were about 10" in size at 30 yards. That will improve with some more practice. I was routinely shooting 5" groups at this range with my previous XD before it was stolen.

The most fun of the day goes to the Marlin. After adjusting the scope, I was sniping thumbtacks at 30 yards easily. I can not wait to get this thing on the 100 yard range with a decent rest, to see what it can do. The scope is a bit eye relief sensitive at 14.5x, but not horribly so. I am happy with it so far. I only put one box of ammo through her, as I want to reserve the rest of my meager 17 HMR stockpile for longer range work. This stuff is fairly expensive.

Overall it was a great morning of shooting. I will post some detailed entries of each new gun in a few days for my "Guns That I Have" section.

Sheila Set To Return

As some of you may remember, my beloved XD-45, named Sheila, was stolen some time ago. I am finally able to purchase her replacement. Hopefully this will happen within the week. I am so excited! I loved that pistol!

Oh yeah. I got my BKL mount for the Marlin .17 this weekend as well. More on that later...

Sad Day

My sister's little Boston Terrier died last night. His name was Rock, and he was one of the sweetest dogs I have ever been around. She only had him for six years, but they went through a lot together. Rock was her child, and my parent's grandchild really. It is amazing how close we humans get to our pets. Rock was an especially good friend.

R.I.P Rock. You will be missed.

New Rig

Well, I got a new truck this weekend. New to me anyway.

I traded my Dad a set of used golf clubs for his '84 Ramcharger 2WD. I will try and get some pics up soon. It is a great truck. He has really taken care of it over the years.

The motor, tranny, and front end only have 42,000 miles on them! They were completely rebuilt. He also painted the truck himself at the same time. This thing is a grandpa truck for sure. It needs very little TLC really. I am already driving it daily.

I plan to put a new intake, carb, and exhaust on it. It is going to serve tow rig duty for my bass boat, and 4 wheeler. The upgrades should make it a good little tow truck. It already has tall gears and a limited slip diff.

I Can't Hardly Wait!

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