|
September 2007 9-30-07: OPEN LETTER TO CZ USA: As The Horde (my regular readers) knows, I am inclined to Arm Chair Quarterback the gun industry. In the past I've criticized Ruger, Remington, S&W, FN, Browning, and just the other day it was Detonics. Which doesn't really count because they are not even a company anymore. (again) Most of these criticisms are amiable and constructive... because I want all Gun Companies to succeed. I want them to do well. I feel that if one of them fails, it weakens the industry as a whole and a small part of our own Liberty has flaked off, like a rusting out 84 Bronco. It weakens the whole. Even if it was an insignificant portion. Now I am going to go over one of my favorite companies... one that is above par and is in no danger of failing. It's just that they can be better. I've always been a fan of BMW, as you all know. The reason for that is that everything they do is just right. The lines, the proportions, the balance... just looking at them, they look right. Even the old outdated models are still great looking cars. CZ USA has the potential to be like that. They are almost there. So close... but they are not “just right”, yet. They have holes in the product line up that are less like gaps and more like chasms. Let's go through these holes, starting at the small end. The Kadet Pistol and the Kadet Adapter. The Adapter is basically the Kadet slide and magazines that allow you to turn your CZ 75, P-01 or SP-01 into a .22. I've shot the Kadet and it is brilliant. The only problem with the Pistol and Adapter is that it is only available in .22LR and in black polycoat. CZ USA needs to offer three or four things with the Kadet. First off is an alternate .17M2 version. .22LR is great, but the growing popularity of .17M2 and the fact that no one else that matters is doing a pistol in it yet would put CZ USA at the front of the line. They also need to offer a longer barreled version for more serious target work. A threaded barrel option would also do very well here as a factory option. Gun mufflers are gaining back some popularity as they are more pleasant to shoot and are less annoying to neighbors when doing some pest control. Lastly, I want to see an option for a Satin Nickel finish. CZ offers the 75B in Stainless now, a customer might want to top it with a Kadet Adapter that matches. For the P-01 and other pistols for more serious work, Tritium needs to be a factory option right off the bat. For the P-01 specifically, I'd like to see a “P-01 Operator” version. It would come from CZ USA directly with night sights, a stainless or tungsten guide rod (not the rubbish plastic one they have now), 25 LPI checking on the front strap, and an option for .40 caliber. I know CZ makes a Compact in .40 but it is different... while it has the same frame as the P-01, it doesn't have the same decocker lever. Same options should be available for the larger SP-01 handguns. And while we are on the subject of Stainless... Why not make an option for Stainless slides and anodized frames? Not everyone wants black polycoat and black rubber grips. Giving customers these options would go a long way to improving sales. I say this as a guy that works at a gunshop with a large selection of handguns... and we would sell a lot more CZ pistols if they didn't all look like something that the military uses. The last thing for these pistols, is that they all need to have decockers. If you offer the DA/SA trigger system, make them like SIG in that they can all be decocked in the same way, regardless of model. The P-01 decocker is cool, but not everyone likes it. Even if I love it. The 97B is a fantastic handgun. Unfortunately it is perceived as an overly large handgun. The reasons for this are two fold. First, the trigger reach when the hammer is down. It feels like it is just short of a mile. Sure, staging the trigger back by thumb cocking the hammer makes the pull just right... but then there is no decocker again. This is an oversight. If you want this gun to go head to head against a SIG P220, you gotta do it right. It also needs a full length metal guide rod and the other options I mentioned earlier for the P-01. I also want to see a “97 Compact” version that sports a shorter barrel and grip frame. 10MM would also be brilliant as the caliber has a cult following. A compact 97 in 10MM would be astounding. One of my favorite things to do is to sand those wood grips till all the checkering is gone. While I don't like smooth grips, this makes the grips thinner and they feel “just right” in my hands, and in the hands of a lot of other guys. Your Dan Wesson handguns are nice. But the Alaskan Guide looks hideous. The turn off is the abbreviated sight radius thanks to those ridiculous porting vents. Lose the vents, lengthen the sight radius and keep the barrel at 4 inches. If you still want the gun ported, allow that as an option but drill the ports in at 10 and 2 instead of across the top. You can still make them effective without making it look like Buck Roger's revolver. I like the cartridge choice there. The Commander Bobtail is going to be my next 1911 type automatic. Hopefully it will be a Christmas Present to myself. I'll get it in .45 but I could easily be tempted to get it in 10MM. I've handled one before, at SHOT '06 and again just a month ago... clean lines, brilliant simplicity... it is one of my favorite 1911's out there. But it needs something. The checkering is too course. The LPI should be around 25 instead of, what is it, 8? Now, in 10MM, a solid stainless frame is ideal... but .45 doesn't need it. Couldn't you get a lighter alloy frame for it? Everyone else makes a lightweight frame... you could buy them off the rack from S&W if you had to. I don't care how – just get it. A lightweight Commander with those clean lines you have? I would so buy that. I'd buy buy 2 of them... I'd have to because Mrs. Ogre would want one something fierce. I would also want mine to have simple rubber grips just like what Kimber offers on their basic Custom II pistols. The wood grips you have are nice... but for a 10MM or a lightweight Commander, I want more grip in my grips. And less worry about keeping oil and sweat off them if I'm going to be packing that thing every day. Just like what I will do when I buy it. I might just buy some rubber grips from Kimber, and cut the corners off them. But I would rather buy them already on the gun – especially if they had a little medallion in the grips with the CZUSA logo. Stainless medallions that match the gun, not gold or brass like Colt... That would be slick. Come on CZ – this would be so easy for you guys to do... you own Dan Wesson – just tell them to do it. Done. Your 452 Lux rifle is awesome. For a .22 bolt action, it's my favorite. But I want it in stainless and synthetic. You offer the “Style” version of the 452, but it doesn't have the same stock profile or the adjustable sights of the Lux. This is why I've not purchased one of them. If it's not stainless, I can live with the nickel, but you don't offer the nickel on the version of the rifle that I want. I also want that rifle with the 453 trigger system. What's the point of putting the best sights on the rifle without your best trigger? If one wants a rifle without sights, you have the 452 Style, but why not a 453 Style? Again, the better trigger would be a blessing. The 527 series of rifles is one that has a lot of gaps where there need be none. I just ordered a 527 Carbine in 7.62X39MM. What I would rather have had was the same caliber, but with the 527 Lux stock and barrel length. I'm a fan of the 527 FS rifle as well, but you don't have the 7.62 caliber option there. I would have been very tempted if it was. You give the 527 Carbine great wood for the stock, but the lines of it make it look like a short fat little sister to the rest of the line. Then there is the 527 Prestige... very nice... but it is only in .22 Hornet? In the last two years do you know how many rifles I've sold in .22 Hornet? None. The ammo is 45 bucks box now, fading popularity, and there is little reason to offer this caliber at all. .223 Rem, .204 Ruger, and 7.62X39MM. Chambering in Hornet you might as well chamber it in .218 Bee for all its worth these days. Still no stainless or even nickel finished versions of the 527... The one I ordered, the Carbine, is supposed to be a good Brush Gun, well why not make it an All Weather Brush gun? At least make it an option. I really do like the Carbine... but had it offered the LUX stock, and if it had an adjustable rear sight – it would have looked like a Mini Safari rifle and that would have been slick as hell... I'd have ordered that one, even if it was 150 or 200 bucks more. Now on to the 550 series. The first oversight I see is the lack of .25-06. One of the most popular hunting cartridges in the USA, and you leave it out. Same with 7MM Rem Mag. You don't offer 7MM Rem Mag or .300 Win Mag until you step up into the Medium Magnum... which is nice... I love that rifle. But not everyone likes the iron sights. One guy I work with just hates iron sights on any rifle and thus would never buy one. Where is a rifle in .300 Remington Ultra Mag? Out here where we are, we probably sell more .300 RUM Rifles than any other “Big Caliber” guns. You guys offer kevlar stocks and big calibers and nickel finishes on other guns but you don't put them all together into a rifle that a lot of hunters out here in the Western States would want. Guys out here want a long range, all weather, Elk Cannons. They don't hunt Cape Buffalo out here, or African Lions. They don't need Safari guns. Your close... very close... take the Kevlar or some other synthetic stock, drop in a stainless barrel and action, and leave the sights off it – and you would sell more 550 rifles out here. Or at least, I'd be able to sell them for you. Chamber them in .25-06, .300 Win Mag, 7MM Rem Mag, and .300 RUM. Your Safari Classics rifles are fantastic... but they use what you call the “American” style stocks while all your other Safari rifles use what you call your LUX style stocks with that nice curve along the top of the stock... Beautiful lines... but not for the famous .505 Gibbs? I don't get that. I have to say that the rifle you call the Ultimate Hunting Rifle isn't quite there. While it is a work of art and just might be the next rifle I order – and I am serious about that – it is not quite right. Namely because of the caliber. Again, .300 RUM needs to be in the mix as is a .338 caliber. .338 Win or Ultra Mag would put this over the top. Not that there is anything wrong with the .300 Win Mag... Not saying that. It's just that a lot of my customers only see that cartridge as a starting point. I kid you not, the last one of those I sold was to a woman for her Elk hunt. Short Mags are becoming hugely popular, yet you don't have anything for them. I'd really like to see one of your Medium Safari rifles in .325WSM and the new .375 Ruger caliber. We've has requests for them, but we've had to say “CZ doesn't make those.” And then we sell them a rifle from someone else when we could have sold them a CZ. Then there is the 750 Sniper... now THAT is a rifle that would benefit from .300 Win Mag. Serious military snipers are moving away from .308... taking options that offer more long range punch than that old medium thirty. Both the 750 and the UHR are offered with the Nightforce scope. Great scope and that scope works on the 750... but on the UHR? I'm sorry but it looks like crap. Very expensive crap. You have an elegant hunting rifle with nice scroll work in the checkering... and then you top it with a flat black knobby tactical scope? Again, this is one of those things that BMW has, but CZ USA doesn't... a sense of style and grace. I don't care how good that scope is, it looks like shiat. This is the automotive equivalent of taking a new Jaguar and fitting it with a 4 inch lift and BFG Mud Terrain tires. For the UHR, you should get into some talks with Leupold for a VX-7 series 3.5-14X scope with the Boone and Crockett reticle. That would be my first choice of scope for this rifle and when I do order one come spring time, that is the scope I'm putting on mine. The 5.5-22X50 is nice, but sometimes 5.5X is just too much magnification... it isn't an Ultimate scope if you have to make sure your target is far enough away to see it in the scope. As far as your shotguns go, CZ, I think you have hit the nail on the head with them... or at least with what you have got. You need a few more though. You need a slug gun for hunting in areas that are shotgun only. Eastern States there. You also need a turkey gun because not everyone wants Grouse on Thanksgiving. I would also be interesting in seeing what you could do with an automatic shotgun. What does the Czech Police use for regular law enforcement use when it comes to shotguns? Probably Benelli? Look at what Saiga has done with the AK... they made AK based shotguns. CZ has an AK type rifle that is tremendous from what I've been told. Why not take that internal action, beefed to 12 gauge, but feed it from a tube magazine like a regular automatic shotgun? Nothing too fancy or complicated, just a mesh between old and new. Development wouldn't be all that difficult and I bet if you put your mind to it, you could have one prototyped in a matter of weeks. Think about that for a bit, wont you... It could be the base for a whole line of new shotguns for police/military and for hunting. It doesn't have to look like an AK on the outside, give it clean lines and good ergonomics, but keep that rugged reliability and blunt force simplicity on the inside... I think you would have a winning combination. Do a similar thing but in .308, feeding from M1A/M-14 or FAL mags and you could give these SR-25 and AR-10's a run like how Saiga is doing. CZ has come a long way since when I first looked at them... Everything CZ makes is fantastic. But like I've said – they could be better. If they do these improvements to the product lines... not even improvements – just filling these gaps... then CZ would slingshot up the ranks to the very top. H.R. 2640: Have you guys heard of this? Chuck Schumer calls this the Veterans Disarmament Act. What it will do is ban you from owning a gun if you have been diagnosed with PTSD or ADHD or even Depression. If you have been diagnosed, you could have your door kicked in and your guns seized. I like how they at least call it what it is... Veterans Disarmament Act. This lets you know exactly what they want to do – which is to take away the arms from those that know how to use them. This is chilling. And it is completely founded on bullshit. I've studied PTSD and specifically Veterans with PTSD a hell of a lot more than Chuck Schumer has and more than probably 95% of practicing psychologists out there. The Hollywood myth of Ex-Soldiers flipping out and slaying people in a PTSD caused hallucination where they think they are slaying phantom enemies is completely unfounded. I've never seen this, never even heard of it in real life... PTSD just doesn't do that. I've never had a Vet tell me that they have gone for a weapon. They might toss and turn in the middle of a nightmare, they might kick or punch against their blanket... but they don't go to the gun safe and open it and pull out a gun. What really makes Ex-Soldiers flip out are jackasses like Chuck Schumer... but since he is still converting O2 they are obviously and unfortunately not the menace that Schumer is making them out to be. This is a blanket insult to all those that have served in the Armed Forces and are now serving or are thinking about serving. That some how military veterans are dangerous people, like convicted felons. The Act is not called the “Veterans with PSTD Disarmament Act”. I want to see on CNN and FOX, some Soldier – a Marine guard or someone from The Old Guard, salute Schumer, and when Chucky pauses to decide what to do, shake hands or salute or whatever spins in that hollow cavity inside his skull... I want to see that soldier kick Schumer square in the balls, then turn his back on him. Right there on camera. Villains like Schumer need to be punished and stopped – evicted from Washington DC public office... they shouldn't even be allowed on a PTA committee. They are destroying our Constitution, they are destroying America, and they are selling us out to the Hippies and the Chinese. I would like to see the old tradition of Riding Out On Rails... Of course it would be hard to carry Schumer, tied to a rail road tie and covered with tar and feathers, through DC traffic. It would be difficult, but I am willing to try. Of course we wouldn't have to carry his screaming ass too far. Just to the Potomac is good enough. 9-29-07: Ogre has a lot of interests... Firearms, Automotive, New Tech and such... you guys know this. You might have also picked up the hint that The Ogre also likes good food. Food, to me, is more than just nourishment. It can be anywhere from a snack to spiritual awakening. So of course, I take restaurants very seriously. As much as I love a good gun shop, a well tuned V-8, a new scope... I relish a good eatery. I got to tell you – a good restaurant is one of my favorite places to be. All my friends know – this is just the Law of Ogre – after I go shooting, I must go to a good food joint. But I have a major problem out here in my little corner of nowhere. There is no good place to eat out here. None. I mean, come on... the best we have out here is Wendy's. No, I'm not kidding. Wendy's is the top place out here. This is so sad I could cry, and sometimes I do. Getting lunch out here is a joke. Check this out. McDonald's has been torn down so they can rebuild a new facility to serve the same crap... Burger King is closed so they can remodel their place to serve the same crap. Those were the two main food services here, and now that they are shut down – every other place we have here is PACKED. You have an hour for lunch? Good luck getting a burger before you are late getting back. Seriously sucks out here. Most of the time the situation is so dire that I don't even want to eat any place out here. The need for a good food joint out here is pressing. If you want to make a MINT selling sandwiches – come to Vernal, Utah. You will have a LINE at your door from day one. Carl's Jr, Sonic, Del Taco, any one of those places will do very well. If you just want to open a sandwich shop and just serve sammiches and maybe a soup of the day... throw in a soda fountain... Gold. Pure gold. You could print your own money with sandwiches. Why? Because people out here are hungry. And if you make some good food – you will never want for customers... because we have no good food here. Sure, we have a couple places that try. They wish they were good... but they are not. We have “Stockman's” which is a sad little wannabe steakhouse in the basement of a shabby hotel. They charge enough to serve good food, but they don't know what that is. I've never had an order right there. Ever. I've got a gift card for that place, still has about 25 bucks left on it. I've had that card for about a year and half and just have not had the reason to use it. The food is pathetic there. Some guys like it... guys who have never had anything better... guys who have lived here in Vernal for their whole lives and have never left... sure, they love it there. Me? I've had good food, I know what it is – and I miss it. I'm going to be going out to SLC in a week or two... no specific reason for going. Just to visit a few folks, and to get something decent to eat. I'd love to see the Travel Channel guys hit the Uintah Basin for a travel show. Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations or Andrew Zimmerman's Bizarre Foods. Each one of those guys would come to Vernal... Andrew would go to Stockman's and find plenty to eat there, much of it disgusting. Tony would ride a horse, eat something grilled out of a fire. It would be depressing, because even these guys that can find good food to eat in the deserts of central mexico wouldn't be able to find a decent meal here that wasn't advertised at the drive up lane – or something different that couldn't be found in any national franchise. Both guys would say “Fuck this place, let's go to Denver.” And that would be it. Not even half a show. And much of it would end up on the cutting room floor. The Travel Channel need not come here. Samantha Brown's Passport to Vernal would be interesting. She'd walk around the desert wearing a big hat and grin and then after 20 minutes she would pout and say that she's going home, giving up travel forever. The only thing to do out here in Vernal is going Four Wheeling and killing shit. That's the technical phrase for the activity. Killing shit. Different seasons for different shit to kill, but it's still killing shit. Considering the meal I've just partially consumed here at Arby's... I think the shit that got killed are the lucky ones. These Southwest Egg Rolls make me envy the dead. It's like someone ate and taco bell, vomited into egg roll pastry and rolled it up and fried it. It's probably a good thing there is no really good restaurant out here. If you have ever seen Once Upon A Time In Mexico, you will understand why. Because some good chef will come to Vernal, cook up an actual honest to Buddha decent meal, and someone here will decide that they have to balance him out and cap his ass for not ruining good ingredients. We can't have that here. I think it's a state statute or some local ordinance about it. Some guy will finish his dinner, walk into the kitchen, and shoot the cook. The only upside to me living out here... is that I love four wheeling and killing shit. So I guess this place remains home. Even if I can't find a decent lunch. Bad Guys: Two prisoners escaped custody from Daggett County, just north of here by about an hour. They were seen heading this way. A lot of folks are really shook up about this. The local radio guy, a guy who has been known in the past to be a liberal... has just purchased a .357 Mag snubby. Good for him. There is a bounty on these guys... if you catch them, you get 10 grand a head. Thats nice, but if they really wanted these guys caught. Make it 50K each, DOA, with immunity from prosecution. These guys would be laying in the back of a pickup within an hour. The upshot to that is that if this was the SOP for escapees – we wouldn't have escapees. Prisoners would be following the deputy like a line of baby ducks. Wouldn't need cuffs or chains or even jails. Now don't think I'm being too harsh about these escaped convicts. One is a rapist and murderer. He deserves to be shot on sight. The guys should not even have been in Daggett County. They should have been at the state pen in Draper. A joint with much better security than a county jail. A lot of places farm out prisoner housing to smaller locations with less population because of over crowding. I think this is usually fine... but dangerous prisoners should not be farmed out. Prisoners like guys convicted of tax evasion or smoking a joint... prisons are full of them. And dangerous animals like these two escapees are farmed out. And Career DUI'ers get off scott free too... Justice isn't really justice any more. Remember, I believe in the system... just not the people in it. American justice can be the best in the world, but it is corrupt and stupid and this is a dangerous combination. Especially when the results are two slime bags getting away, on the run, and a danger to everyone in the Uintah Basin. They had best not come my way... I've got 5 sons and a pregnant wife. I will defend them by ending the threat. A loaded .45 and 12 gauge is at hand as they always are. Oh, and a rifle, of course. I think more minor sentences need to be dealt with using alternative means. And dangerous ones need more intense treatment. Emails: I do read all my emails. Unfortunately I am not able to respond to them.... I download them and read them when I can. But since I get very little connection time, responses are not always possible. Where I live, we don't have a broadband connection and we don't have a land line for a dial up. I've posted years and years ago my strong distrust of China. Now we see my fears and misgivings have been amply justified. China has been carrying out a cyberwar campaign against the West. US and European networks have been under constant siege. These attacks are serious... mainly because we don't know the true extent of the damages. What attacks have been simply to create back doors into critical or sensitive systems... what attacks have stolen critical intel. We just don't know. This is just one aspect of China's subtle warfare against us. More aggressively is that poisonings they are attempting. Lead based paints on toys, tainted food products. Not a lot of damage, but damaging none the less. Don't think this is just poor manufacturing or bored hackers. How many other aspects of their quite war have we seen? What about the ThinkPad fiasco? IBM used to make ThinkPad laptops. The sold the manufacturing to Lenovo, a Chinese firm. Many government agencies buy IBM ThinkPads, and in the transition, this meant that soon we had US Government agencies buying Chinese laptops. I knew what was coming and it didn't take long. Some of these Chinese computers had built in spies. Keyl loggers, memory dumps that phoned home. Next thing you know, ThinkPads were not allowed in certain .gov offices. How many more aspects are out there? Think about it. This quite war is not random. This has purpose. There is structure to it. There is a goal. Its an easy one to see if you are only willing to look at it. At the core of it, China as a whole has to be considered an enemy state. I'm going to post something here that I want everyone to read carefully. One of The Horde has spent a lot of time in China as a teacher. His observations are interesting and important for us to understand: “The following is a series of impressions and thoughts written right before and after I left China. I did not feel comfortable keeping a diary of these thoughts while I had much time left in the country. No significant attempt has been made to make the ideas logically flow and while I have tried to write it well, it is not well written. I did not have a particular audience in mind when I wrote this. I just wanted to get down my impressions so I could share them with others. I don't know what I will think in the future but what follows is a pretty good representation of what I thought in July of 2007. It is not exhaustive (I figured five pages was long enough) but it is reasonably complete.
China is not our friend nor are its people. Individual citizens of China may love individual citizens from the US but they will not be friends of the US until their government tells them that the US is the friend of China and the friend of China's people. I have never heard anything genuinely positive about the US from anyone, anywhere in my whole time here. Additionally they are being unfriendly as evidenced by the discovery of Chinese weapons in Afghanistan.
The lack of critical thinking skills amongst the university students is striking.
Isn't it interesting that everyone is mad at Starbucks for being in the forbidden city and nobody is talking about the managers of the Forbidden city who were the ones who allowed and may have even asked (I'm not sure) them to be there. This is a small example of the prevalent idea of the west imposing or bullying China or the east.
There is this mania for never coming to a conclusion which dictates action. “Both sides have good points. This is a complex issue and we will need to continue talking about it.”
It feels to me like there has been a long and concerted effort to improve the world's view of China. Factual errors like the great wall being the only man-made structure that can be seen un-aided from outer space. The sudden influx of Chinese movies. I am hearing a lot about China in pod-casts for everything from news programs to cooking shows. I am always hearing positive things or almost always. Occasionally I hear about exploited workers and the fiasco of the Three Gorges Dam but I never hear about the brutally suppressed farmers who are starving and disenfranchised. I hear polite references to the PRC government's denial and revision of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It feels to me like there is almost some sort of psy-ops against the American people (and perhaps the world) so that they will not so readily support military conflict with mainland China.
The PRC is building it's Army. Why? Attributing motivations to actions is fraught with peril, even when it is your actions, but I think I can put forward some reasonable possibilities. In fact I would go so far as to say that they are likelihoods. To begin with a sane person does not acquire something without intending to use it. Therefore I will treat the PRC's intent to use the military as a certainty. This begs the question of what this use will be. Two possibilities immediately present themselves. The first use is the suppression of uprisings, particularly from the farmers and peasants. The second use is imperial expansion. I know that in current times imperial expansion sounds antiquated but I will substantiate this. The suppression of uprisings is clearly an intended use for the military. There are reports of using the military to put down revolts of farmers in recent years. We are well aware of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It is reasonable to believe that the military will continue to be used for this purpose in the future. However, this does not account for the military buildup. I am not educated in these matters but it seems to me all you need to suppress uprisings of peasants is infantry. From my understanding of Chinese history I see thousands of years of imperialism. I don't mean dynasties and monarchies. I mean that each dynasty went out and conquered as much territory as it could. The present government is no different. With the possible exception of the Qing dynasty (the most recent), the current boundaries of mainland China bear little resemblance to any of the previous dynasties and its claimed boundaries are that much more different. However, just the habit of imperialism does not mean that imperial expansion is going to happen. There needs to be land available to take. Without doing any research beyond listening to the news and looking at a map I am aware of several different areas available for armed conflict*. Aksai Chin at the north of India is claimed by India but controlled by the PRC. Most of India's state Arunchai Pradesh is claimed by the PRC. The Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan but claimed by the PRC. Finally Taiwan and its associated Islands are controlled by the ROC but claimed by the PRC. I watched the president of the PRC speak about Taiwan and heard the translation of his comments while in China. Words like “rogue” and “renegade” were used. The PRC wants the ROC. A couple of my more “liberal” friends have said that military actions on a large scale are a thing of the past because it would mean one country invading a part of its own economy. They say that it will not be a military takeover (i.e. Taiwan) but a willing coalition from the business men. I hear what they are saying and I think that there is some truth in these statements. However, I see a flaw in that thinking. Those statements are built on the idea that things change, but things don't change. It has been powerful people with armies since the beginning and it will continue to be so. To add to this, The PRC president's language was clearly military minded and mentioned nothing of a proposed business alliance and can only be described as barely stopping short of threatening (or not stopping short).
I do not know what the PRC's grand strategy is but I guarantee they have one and that we have seen the preliminary steps being implemented. I cannot say exactly why I thought this but my gut seemed to think, after spending 11 months there and listening to the people and watching what was going on, that the ultimate goal of the PRC is world domination and I don't think it cares in what way, military, economic it doesn't care. I am aware that this sounds a little kooky and I am not going to defend it. That was my sense of things, do what you will with it. There is no question though that the PRC's ambition is to be a super power. I'm not sure how one would define a “super power” but what ever it is Mainland China wants to be one. I believe that they will do ANYTHING to accomplish this.
In China, right and wrong, and good and evil are far from absolutes except as it pertains to family. It is my sense after listening to my students speak (and has been confirmed after talking with other foreign teachers) that if something is good for the family you do it and if it is bad for the family you stop and this is without reference to the well being of anyone who is not your friend or your family. I do not believe that the government of mainland China cares about the wellbeing of anyone else at all. This is supported by its cruel treatment of its own people.
China's weakness is energy, in particular oil. But if you can put a kink in the energy supply line you can significantly interfere with almost every part of China.
I had a great experience in China. I would heartily recommend anyone who can walk two or three miles at a time to go there. We met some wonderful people, both Chinese and ex-pats. With everything that I know now I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. It is a different culture and as you begin to understand parts of it you begin to see your own beliefs and culture from a new perspective. You find that things you thought were givens and reasonable certainties are actually wildly ranging variables. That being said. . .don't believe the hype. China is not a land of wonder and mystery. It is a land of pollution and ignorance. It is a land where most of the people don't know that plastic bags are not biodegradable and so dump their garbage in ditches by the road and railroad tracks, and in waterways. It is a place were nearly all of the trains' toilettes dump their waste directly on the railroad tracks (you are not allowed to use the bathroom while the train is stopped at a station). The people do not know about germ theory. I have a friend who works at a cheese factory there. They are having a very hard time getting the workers to wash their hands at all and to get them to do it well and every time after using the bathroom is almost impossible. It is a land where the national hero killed MILLIONS of it's own people yet his portrait is hung from Tiananmen and his mausoleum is located in Tiananmen square. It is a country that censors the Internet. It is a country that distorts it's facts. It is my understanding that government agencies routinely inflate or deflate figures and statistics to make them more favorable. (As a result if the figure passes though many different agencies it is often inflated or deflated beyond any semblance of reality.) This is a country that is built on lies. They are a people without dignity or a sense of fair play. Just observe any bottleneck. Buses are great examples. Everyone mobs the door. They push and shove. There is no dignity. This was driven home when I was in Xian on a bus coming back from the terracotta warriors. The whole bus wanted to get off but we couldn't at first because of the mob pressing up against the door. When we finally got off, and had pressed our way through the crowd, I looked back and saw people pushing and shoving and, since you would buy your ticket after the bus was under way, people were climbing in through the windows. It is not about right and wrong, it is about what you can and cannot do.
As a general principle we need to not do business with immoral and corrupt governments. There are obvious moral reasons for this. However, there is a purely practical aspect and this practical side is extremely significant with China. If you support the immoral government, do business with them, establish a relationship with them. You keep them in power and give them no reason to change. Then there will come a point (or even many situations) where the corrupt government will, for lack of a better expression, be corrupt to you. We are engaging in trade relations with a government that essentially denies the Tiananmen Square “Incident.” We are engaging in trade relations with a government that is afraid to give the public uncensored news. A government that regularly puts down revolts using the military. A government that is supporting the government of Sudan and thereby NOT helping to end the genocide in Darfur. A government that is selling weapons with full knowledge that these weapons will be used against us in Iraq and Afghanistan. This government is not our friend. Its people are not our friend.
I wish I could explain it better but I didn't have this clear realization until I had been in country for several months. There is this constant “buzz” of propaganda. A few big things, like constant hashing and rehashing of Japan's invasion and occupation. Continual coverage of “The Rape of Nanking” and so on. However, it is this constant. . .pressure. It is almost like background radiation. No clear incident but this ubiquitous force of over-statements, under-statements, lies, ethnocentrism, nationalism and so forth. At first I attributed this to a natural and reasonable pride in their country which does have a great history. However, I began to realize that it was something more. There is nothing wrong with China! It is perfect! Everything that is wrong with it is being addressed in the best way possible! (yes the sentences contradict) However, everything that is wrong or could be wrong with other countries, the US in particular, amounts to their sum total.
I realized while I was there that I could not classify the government or its economy. So I decided to ask my classes. They said it was socialist. Since I couldn't see a single socialist thing about mainland China I asked them how it could be socialist when there was nothing socialist about it. This was about halfway into the second term so my students knew me and knew that I wasn't attacking them or the country and really wanted to know. One class in particular got rather excited and eloquent. (The following are not true quotes but they are close. I should have written then down at the time.) “No, China is not socialist now but it will be. This is just a step towards a wonderful dream. Maybe you don't believe in this dream but we do. No one will have to work if they don't want to. Everyone will get paid for what they do. Everyone will work for himself.” I think they also said something about everyone being equal (which obviously implies that people currently, in China, are not). I asked them how you could not need to work when you don't want to, get paid for what you do, AND work for yourself. They were so enamored with the “beauty” of their “dream” that I got no real answers. What was striking was the unity in the class on this idea. Sometimes I got the feeling that students were saying what they knew they were supposed to say. This was not the case with their “beautiful dream.” Their enthusiasm was clearly genuine. This reminds be of another interesting thing. In the textbooks for Intro to the US and Intro to the UK classes. When the cold war came up it was never Democracy vs Communism, it was Capitalism vs Socialism. I thought that was an interesting distinction to make considering that the UK was socialist for some time and that much of Europe was/is based on some degree or flavor of socialism. I also discovered that they do not view the PRC or the USSR as communist but as socialist. I had a class where I would bring in contemporary articles in English and we would read them. Not wanting to stir up feelings I was careful to not select articles that were at odds with the Chinese government's policies. North Korea had just detonated a nuclear device. This was a historic situation. Not because there was now possibly a new nuclear power but because the PRC and Japan were on the same side working together. I brought in an article that discussed the situation and how the East Asian countries were working together. I broke them up into groups and told them to give me a summary and write about there opinions of the article's contents. Every single group returned papers discussing the unfair treatment of North Korea by the west and how the US needed to stop bullying North Korea and said nothing about the cooperation between the PRC and Japan. I found these results particularly interesting in light of the fact that the only reference to the west and the US was that it was a US government agency that had confirmed it was a nuclear device and not a conventional one.
The people seem to be carefully taught all the negatives and problems
With few exceptions, perhaps 5%, no one in China can think. They are carefully trained, very effective recording and play back devices. Students are regularly incapable of admitting that there is another point of view much less conceding it has any points worth considering. A fact all the more disturbing when you consider that these are the educated people who will be running the government in the future. I had a class where I showed movies. It was up to me to select and purchase the movies. I showed the movie “Spy Game” with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. I selected it because it had a lot of dialogue. It had completely slipped my mind that the PRC was an antagonist in the movie. While most of the movie takes place in other parts of the world the beginning and end take place in China. When the movie was over I asked them how they liked it. You could feel that they were not entirely happy. I said, “Did you like it?”
They said, “No.”
I said, “Why not?” expecting them to say that they thought China was shown in a bad light or something like that.
A student said, “They break our laws!”
I was surprised at that reason.
“This is a movie about spies! That is what spies do! They break other countries laws. Do you not think there are Chinese spies in America right now trying to steal American secrets?”
This seemed to unsettle them a bit. There was a pause and the student who spoke before said somewhat hesitantly, “We don't know.”
My initial interpretation of this response was that they were afraid that by admitting to the existence of Chinese spies in America, they would be divulging state secrets. Upon reflection I found that there may be another explanation. The students, or at least that student, felt that to acknowledge the existence of Chines spies would somehow make them loose face. Clearly to acknowledge their existence would diminish the absolute evil of spies breaking Chinese laws. That said I am not entirely confident the students were capable of this level of reasoning.
I was also surprised that the response about the movie was based on the breaking of Chinese laws when the rest of the movie was rather damning of the US intelligence service. However, their language skills may not have permitted them to follow the movie very well. Additionally, there may have been other cultural factors I am not aware of influencing or directing those responses.
I said, “Of course there are spies in the US! At least there had better be! Your government would not be doing its duty if there weren't.” This statement appeared to be a new way of thinking to them.
I was not able to get them to continue talking about this.
In my Introduction to the United States class I had a policy of requiring all the students to write questions (about anything) on slips of paper and giving them to me at the beginning of class. One day I had a slip of paper with the question, “Why does the west say that people were killed in Tiananmen square when all witnesses and historical documents prove that it was resolved peacefully?”
Feeling deportation was at hand but not wanting to lie (I had decided that I would do my best to always speak the truth) I spoke to the dynamic. The one thing that I soon started trying to teach was how to think. I said, “In a situation like this, where there are two such different accounts, one person is lieing and you need to decide which one to believe.”
I have been reading T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I think that China, its people, and its culture are just as different from the west as the Arabs he describes. The difference is that Lawrence's Arabs are riding around on camels and set on staying the way they are, whereas the Chinese are furiously emulating the West. As I trying to get more specific about this I see a lifetime of research and writing on this topic opening up before me so I will leave it there.
I could just keep going on. I didn't know what I wanted to say exactly when I started this and I didn't know who would be reading it. It is a mess but it is a reasonable collection of thoughts and impressions from 11 contiguous months and 15 months total.
9-27-07: Yesterday was murder... I'll set up 5 to 10 scopes a day. I think my record was 18 in a day. I've come to know all the problems and solutions with a scope... the ins and outs and little secrets about any given make or model of scope. I've come to learn more about rifle optics than I ever thought I could know. Never have any problems with it. Until today. First problem was that I mounted a new scope on a rifle that had a scope on it. Dude said that it wasn't shooting. After futzing with it, with the new scope in the old rings, then with new rings... turns out it was the screw holes tapped into the receiver done at the factory... they were not aligned. The result was that the Zeiss scope – which do not have much adjustment in them... couldn't get it to come over to the bore. Solution was to ditch the Weaver bases and throw on Burris dovetail front and adjustable rear set. Then you can just align the scope for windage at the rear base. Done. But the real Bugbear was the second problem. Busted bits and screw heads with a carbide tip busted off inside the torque screw. Drilling out carbide doesn't work. The ring around the carbide had to be savaged so severely that the ring just let go. Took an hour. I'm not exactly happy about that, only happy that the scope wasn't thrashed in the process. Such a stupid thing... a tiny bit of steel... totally buggered the whole works. And don't say that there is an easy answer like an “easy out” bit to back out a stripped screw... because the carbide tip bit prevented that from biting and we couldn't get the bit of carbide out of there. Gravity was no help. NOTHING worked. This was hell. The only saving grace was that the owner of the rifle wasn't there. Arrgh. That Zeiss scope a Conquest 4-12... for the money, that's some danged good glass. The Conquest series is hard to beat. It's right there with the Leupold VX-III series, less than a VX-L. Some of the clearest, brightest glass on the market. But you have hardly any adjustment inside. The only way to do these are with the windage adjustable bases. Not the windage adjustable rings – I hate those freaking things. I just don't trust them. No way I'd ever have them on one of my guns. Anyways, I like the Zeiss, but it isn't my favorite do to the lack of adjustment. Some guys might say that if you mount it right, you don't need all that adjustment... but yeah, you do. If you are doing some long range shooting you have to account for the wind and the range – you can't have all your adjustment used up for just the bore sight. What if you have a 15 MPH cross wind? What if your target is 1000 yards? Now if you want all the adjustment... look at a Shepperd. Those things can adjust all the way around you. They are crazy. But the color and sharpness isn't quite there... and recoil management isn't there either. You don't want to mount one on your .300 or bigger. Just aint going to stand up. Now say you want a scope that is going to handle big recoil, have the clarity and brightness, and have the adjustment? Man, I tell you, it's all about the Leupold VX-7. The money for them is ludicrous. Seriously, you could get a BNIB SIG 556 Carbine for the price of a 3.5-14 B&C VX-7. But I think it is the best scope on the market. There are others out there that demand higher prices – but I for a field gun... for a working rifle... for a practical gun... nothing is better. Nothing. Looking through the Zeiss, VX-III and VX-L, Swarovski's, and some others... The VX-7 is just flat out the best scope out there that I've ever seen. If you think there is a scope out there better than a VX-7 – send it to me and I'll test it. Put it through an evaluation and we shall see. I dare you. But be prepared to have your preconceived notions shattered. That being said, there are a couple scopes out there that I really want to check out. Kahles and Vortex. I've not seen a new Kahles in years and years so I don't know what their new scopes are about. Vortex is still new to the game, and I've not seen one yet. I'd really like to. Note to Vortex – I would love to test one of your Viper rifle scopes. Hook me up! Simons, Tasco, Bushnell, Burris... Life is too short. Bushnell and Burris used to be good – but they are now made in China. Products from China do not qualify... and even if they were still made in the US or in an allied US country – that would be one thing. But they just suck. Small details that keep those scopes – even their best examples – from being right. Nikon has really let me down with there Monarch series. The old Monarchs made in Japan are awesome. But the new ones.. the latest in the Monarch series are just not nearly as good. Made in Japan? Nope. Philippines. These things have parallax like crazy. I've seen better from BSA! RSS Feeding: Hordeman Eagle is an RSS Feed kind of guy and found us an easy solution to get MadOgre.com via RSS Feed. Nice. Click here. I'll add it to the menu over there in the upper left. Thanks Eagle.
9-26-07: Would
you shoot Hitler? If you could go back in time to before Hitler took too
much power... would you kill Hitler? The answer to that for a great many
guys I know is “hell yes.” Okay, now we have the President of Iran here in
the US, on US soil... and moronic, slack brained Liberals are cheering this
guy. Do you guys know how Amadinajad took power? He gained prominence as a
torturer. He took power through torture. This psycho is the Hitler of Iran.
I'm not the guy that has called him that... people from Iran has called him
that. And don't think for a moment that this guy wouldn't kill you and
everyone you love if he could. He calls our nation “The Great Satan” and
believes that the Holocaust was a fabrication. When asked about the
Holocaust at that school of lower learning in New York, this A-hole's answer
was a smoke screen that talked about Scientific research and Palestinians...
I listened to the interpreter and tried to follow what he was saying – but
it quite literally made no sense whatsoever on any level. This guy is pure
evil unadulterated. If there is one guy that can make claim to the title of
“The Antichrist” it's this guy. Well, him or Harry Reid. I can't decide
which. Back to The Mad Iranian... What I don't get is why in the hell are
these Liberal students bowing down to him? This guy would enslave all the
women here, and imprison, torture, and eventually kill all the men. All
homosexuals would be put to death. Women would be repressed with all rights
removed... they don't even treat women like fellow human beings. He believes
that his use of nukes will bring about some religious miracle. He believes
that his using nukes on Israel will make the sky bluer and his 72 virgins
hotter. The man is a total hate filled maniac. So explain this to me... all
you left leaning Readers out there... Why are Liberals fond of him? It makes
no sense to me... this is why I have a firm belief that Liberals are
complete idiots. So what does this have to do with Hitler? I know that
because this jackhole is a visiting dignitary, that we as a nation have a
responsibility to protect him and that he makes it home unharmed. But there
there is The Hitler Question. I find it a shame that this guy will indeed
make it home alive and unharmed. Let's just say that he is fortunate he is
not visiting a college in Utah... because he would find himself “answered”
and I don't think I would feel a bit bad about it. I took an oath to defend
this nation from all enemies... and it pisses me slam the fuck off that so
many people can not see this man for who and what he is – the enemy. Plain
and simple. Speaking of Kimber Rifles: Why doesn't Kimber make a synthetic version of the 8400 Classic? I would really like an 8400 Stainless. The Montana rocks, but I want a floor plate on my hunting gun. Makes unloading the gun so much easier... if I can talk about my wants, I'm going to go all the way there. I want a Stainless 8400... simple as that. Just like a regular 8400 Classic, but in stainless and with a synthetic stock. Doesn't have to be Kevlar. Okay? Cool. Now build a whole line of these in all the popular calibers because I can't decide on just one right now. Thanks, Kimber... you are a peach. Flight of the Phoenix: The latest version of Detonics has flamed out again. I am told that Jerry Ahern had been given the boot and that shortly there after the company totally went under yet again. While some folks have had personality issues with Jerry, I'll be honest... I liked him. And I was happy to see him pick Detonics up out of the ashes. It's too bad that the company failed again... but I can see why. First off, the bread and butter gun was Combat Master. They didn't quite make it just like the older Combat Masters were. The artistic scalloping to the ejection port wasn't there, instead it has a beveled relief cut. Some of the edges were sharp and unforgiving when they should have been rounded and softened. My first review of the new Combat Master was positive, but after living with it for an unintentional extended period... I've grown less tolerant of the character flaws. For one, the gun is made of cast parts, cast frame, cast slide... I don't care how tough casting can be, for a 1200 dollar gun the damn thing should be milled from forged billets blessed by the Gods. It should have night sights. The only real competitors are the couple small STI's out there and the Kimber Ultra CDP... The Kimber Ultra CDP kicks the Detonics' trash on multiple levels for the same amount of scratch. Looking at the two side by side, I can't see why anyone would opt for the Combat Master. Then there is the weight issue. The Combat Master is freaking heavy. For a Concealed Carry Gun, it needs to be smoother, softer, and lighter. Not heavy, coarse, and unrefined... you don't want to put this down your pants. You would rather have a Rosie O'Donald going down your pants, or a Kate Beckensale? You decide. The last thing about the Detonics that needed to be addressed, the trademarked chopped rear portion of the slide. This is an outdated styling feature that does give the gun some character, but ends up reducing the effectiveness for no useful purpose. If The Ogre was to buy Detonics and put it into operation, I would do it easily... I'd farm out to Smith & Wesson for the frames and slides. They would all be light weight Officer sized frames, not specially shortened so they require special mags because they are just too damn short frames. I'd put night sights on, and leave the profile alone. Everyone wants Novak style rear sights – I'd give them Novak style rear sights with tritium inserts. To give the gun a “Detonics” kind of look, I'd leave out the characteristic 1911 style muzzle end milling and make it with a full length dust cover. Some versions would have a rail that would accept the Springfield XML light. Only then would I have the balls to call my little 1911 mutant a “Combat Master”. Next size up would be a straight up Officer's model, then a Commander sized pistol, and then the regular 5” Government Model. Stainless slides on top of light weight alloy frames, full melt jobs and all ready to roll with widened mag wells and good safety levers. Why would I want to make my 1911's like this? Because these are the 1911's that are selling. 1911's with features like these are what the market wants – and if you are not making 1911's that has these – then you are not going to be selling many guns. If you are not selling them, then you are going to crash and burn like Detonics has been doing. If they are going to try to make another come back – then they are going to have to do it right. Sure the 1911 market is a crowded one, but there is room at the table if you are doing it right. Grasping on to 1970's/80's nostalgia only works so far, and then again, it could only be a fad at best. The original company had vision and made some great innovations... the company was truly ahead of its time... but the later incarnations have all been “Remember how cool we used to be?” That act reminds me of the father from Married with Children when he talked about high school football. It really sucks that Detonics had to learn that lesson the hard way. Again. I don't expect this company to rise out of the ashes again... I think this one has closed the chapter on the company for good. I mean, you take Detonics' biggest fan, put him in charge, and then still drive it all into the ground. The problem might not be in the CEO, but in the board. What did the board do to ruin the guy's enthusiasm? What did they not allow him to do? Interesting questions, eh? We finally got in the SIG 556 rifles! Looking at them side by side with the AR-15... the AR-15 is just a silly rifle now. The 556 Carbine is a combination of all the best features of the best rifles out there. AR style ergos, AK like bolt, Para FAL like gas system... fantastic. And not much more than a regular AR-15. I meant Craig Boddington, not Boyd Coddington. Duh. I swear, I'm loosing my mind sometimes. 9-24-07: Spleen Vent: Quick Takes On Current Events that I've not talked about this last week... Things I've been meaning to remark on but never have. Hillary vs Petraeus – When Hillary said that the General's report required a suspension of disbelief, that pissed me off. The General should have stood up at that point and said “Mrs Carpetbagger, I am a General of the US Army and you are not in my chain of command. I do not need to lie for a living. I am not a politician. You have my report.” Then he should have walked out. Done. A General off our Military should not be batted about like a toy for these political assclowns. The Surge is WORKING, that is all there is too it. Tribal leaders in Iraq are coming on board and the whole country is starting to shape up. Slowly, sure... but it is happening and it wasn't happening before. The President of Iran in the US? Yeah, I know all about the requirement of allowing these guys to come in to the US because of our hosting of the UN. This is an illustration of why we have to evict the UN from US soil. Let the UN be held in Iceland. Get them out of here. Speaking of the UN... I read something that flat out scared me. The slack-brained idiots in Washington want to give the Oceans to the UN. The implications of this are not just huge, but it would crush the USA. Our Navy would be put in legal checkmate. These guys are completely stupid. Washington DC needs to wake the hell up and start putting their homeland first and foremost. Each one of these A-holes were elected to represent a part of America and by that extension, America as a whole. As it stands now, the represent nothing. Bush is giving America to Mexico, Congress is giving it to the EU... and yet we keep these clowns in power... we are going to end up in a depressed, fascist controlled, communist dead zone. We have got to vote, we have to get the clowns out and get good people in. Resident Evil – Extinction: This film was a very special category 4 storm of suck. Mila was packing a pair of Paras and Kukris, shorts, high boots... and airbrushed makeup. She is lovely and moves well but the movie was just flat out stupid. The plot was retarded, the dialog was useless, the action was redundant, half way through the movie I wanted to get up and leave. The big boss man fight at the end was pathetic. Thankfully the movie was short. Unfortunately, it ended about 3 seconds after it just got interesting and about an hour and half after I lost all capacity to care. The commercials advertising the movie are the best parts of it... everything else was nothing you haven't seen yet in any other zombie fest. The best thing in the theater other than the girl that kissed me on the cheek because she liked my pony tail and thought I was a sweet guy. That was nice... she had nice rack and a pretty face. On the movie screen? Well there was a trailer for a new movie coming out, 30 Days of Nights. Now that looks interesting. A mix of Salem's Lot and The Thing. That has all the potential of a fantastic flick. Rudy at the NRA: Nice try, Rudy... you jack-off. No one in the NRA likes you. We know you are a fake. We all know you are Anti-Gun. You filed a lawsuit against Gun Makers to try to hold them liable for the actions of criminals. Are they going to hold Volkswagen responsible for drivers breaking the speed limit in every GTI they ever sold? For every drunk driver? For every failure to yield or signal? Don't be stupid. And don't even think of voting for Rudy. Don't Taze Me Bro! The cops involved did the right thing. This student was out of control and got what he needed. The guy was flailing, creating a scene, and disturbing the peace. The police were not going to arrest him, just remove him... he got out of control and failed to comply with the orders of police officers. You act like a wild animal, you get treated as such. You fail to comply, you get tazed. Next time this jackass needs a tazer, I recommend a .40 JHP. I heard Michael Savage say that the cops should be arrested for it. I think Savage needs to calm down and rethink things. Who has the best Jubblies on G4? Layla Kayle from The Feed, or Olivia Munn from AOTS, or the chick from Cheat? I'm thinking Layla. And why is there not a “Girls of G4 Gone Wild”? Just wondering. I still would rather have The ScreenSavers back, but G4 seems to think that better cleavage makes for better TV. What is this really? Technology you want to use or Technology you want to Snog? Speaking of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ghost Whisper keeps it jiggly, doesn't it? Hornady TAP: Hell In A Handbasket noticed that two different sources speak of .223 TAP ammo in different lights. Bane says it is a light penetrator, and another review says that it is a heavy penetrator. Frequent commentator and Hordeman HK Latham of course asks me what my take on this was. As soon as I got this question, I snap fired an email back: “Ah yes... the TAP loads. This is easy. There are 3 different flavors of TAP for .223. The light one breaks open easily and doesn't penetrate deeply. The heavy one is a penetrator, and the middle one is right, well... in the middle.” So HK Latham posts my response on Hell In A Handbasket... evidently Bane of “Shooting Gallery” fame got a little defensive and posts on Hell's page a 3 page response detailing Hornady's marketing... tediously doing in what I said in a single paragraph. And he said it hours after my words were posted. Then he takes credit for setting things straight. WTF? He gets it wrong & or fails to inform... I explain it... and then gets long winded and takes credit. Nice. Not really a big Bane Fan over here. Don't even really like his show on the Outdoor Channel all that, but that's just me. I like G&A TV better. Boyd Coddington is the man. You might not find Boyd the most entertaining, but at least his hands constant moving doesn't distract you from what he's saying and his head doesn't move like a Katherine Hepburn bobble head. Boyd actually gets out there hunts... really using the guns for what they are designed to do. I like that. Actual application. I don't know... maybe I am hard on Mr. Bane. Maybe Bane is a nice guy. Then again, maybe I bumped into him at SHOT and found him to be otherwise when I was talking with a factory rep in a certain booth and he basically pushed me out while I was in the middle of conducting some business. I didn't even know who he was at the time. And then again, maybe Bane's blog needs more font colors. Hornady doesn't sell these TAP bullets for Reloaders. Here is a little tip for you... if you want to make your own light penetrating TAP type rounds, use the Barnes Varmint Grenade bullets. Those suckers explode like crazy and will do tremendous soft tissue damage and has ZERO chance of over penetrating anything made of meat. If you want a better penetrator, you don't need anything all that special. Just don't use a .223. Correia has made an interesting post about longarms for home defense. What's better, rifles or shotguns. I'll let you go read his post. Now, what I have for this use? Easy. Shotguns. Specifically Remington 870's. Simple, rugged, pump action shotguns. Mine is my beloved Marine Magnum. The other one is an Express in 20 gauge. The wife and boys can handle the 20 so much better than the bigger heavier 12... and there are few men on the planet that can catch a blast from a 20 gauge and just shrug it off. BB Shot gives a good balance of devastation and reduced wall penetration and it has a high pellet count. If you need more punch, a simple rifled slug is easy to throw in and that will give you all you need... even from a 20. I like BlackCloud shells and Remington Buckhammer slugs. A lot of guys have handguns for that purpose. Correia says they suck, but they are better than nothing. A lot of guys insist on handguns for this purpose. If you do, and if this handgun is not for carry use, just for home defense... then go big. Size is not a concern and it can be as big as you can handle. So at least make it intimidating. Go ahead and get that Beretta or Model 29 if you fancy it... but the PPK for Home Defense? You might want to reconsider that one. Now think about this for a moment – If you know you are going to get into a gunfight, what gun do you want to use? The correct answer is a long gun. If you plan on using a handgun for home defense, then that is what you are planning on to use for a potential gunfight. If a hand gun isn't your first choice, then you need a rifle or a shotgun of some sort. It doesn't have to be an AR or AK type rifle, but your scoped Elk Cannon isn't really going to do it. It has to be easy to use and easy to hit with. This is an area that is ideal for a pistol caliber carbine. Now that you picked out your defense gun – practice with it regularly. Because that is what makes it effective, not the brand or caliber. Remington kind of irked me off today. While I like Remington rifles a lot, I do recognize their extractors as their weakness... but I've never had a problem with them before. Well, one of our customers purchased a 700 XCR Rocky Mountain Elk foundation rifle in .300 RUM. Very nice rifle. Only problem is that it wont extract round one. Second attempt after getting the case out, same thing. We had to use the bolt out of another 700 in .300 RUM to get the cases out. Examining the bolt we found the extractor to be totally muffed. Bad part from the factory. Simple as that. This cat has a once in a lifetime hunt in 2 weeks, got this gun for it, and Remington wont do a damn thing for him. Wont send out a new bolt, we have to send the whole damn rifle in. I'm not happy about that at all. Remington used to bend a little in cases like this in the past... so the hunter who trusted their brand can still make the hunt. Looks like that isnt the case anymore because they flat out didn't give a damn about the hunter. And we couldn't just swap him bolts because Remington serials their bolts. So you know what we had to do? Trade in the now used rifle at full retail and put the guy into a new rifle. So we send the rifle off for repair and when it comes back, it's still going to be used – so we will have to sell it as used. We are losing about 400 bucks on this deal. And now Remington has lost a customer too. This hunter isn't going to want another Remington. I'm not sure I do either. How much effort would it be to just yank a bolt off the factory floor, drop it into a mailer and send it overnight? Instead they would rather have a hunter miss his Once In A Lifetime Hunt because they are slackers. No, I think my next rifle, (ahem, after this CZ 527 Carbine gets here) is going to be a Kimber. Remington's new 798 rifles? They are straight up nothing more than Serbian made Mausers. This isn't such a bad thing, but they are rough... very rough. For the money, you could buy a lot of other rifles which are better built, and will most likely be more accurate. I'm not at all impressed with them. If they were about 300 bucks cheaper, then I could see it as a good project rifle. But for the money they are requiring – I'll pass. I'd rather buy (shudder) a Ruger M-77. I'll post about the Iranian in New York later - after the red curtain of blood fades enough for me to see what I'm typing... 9-22-07: There has been a small flap about the NAA Guardian CCM Edition that I reviewed. Now, understand that this NAA Guardian article series was put together a long time ago. I met with NAA at the 2006 SHOT SHOW and we discussed this way back then, made the handshake agreement and then I finally got to writing this article in mid 2007. Things can change in a year and a half... and that is just what happened here. NAA ran into a little snag. The reason for this is that NAA has only been able to produce 5% of the order for any Guardian pistol. Kahr Arms had been the ones to make the frames for the Guardian. NAA is a small shop, and the number of orders have been vast. As such, they have elected to outsource the frames. Kahr dropped the ball so often it was like dribbling at a basketball game. NAA is in the process of switching over to Ruger for the production of the Guardian frame. This is a good move. Ruger is world class when it comes to precision casting. All their guns are cast, and they do casting for lots of other folks. Ruger can do it in the volume that NAA needs. Once NAA gets everything sorted we will be seeing lots of new Guardians out and they will be able to get back to the custom CCM edition. Our best wishes to NAA. Victims of their own success. This is what you call “growing pains”. None of us tried to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. Not I, CCM, or NAA. As you can see, I had the gun that NAA did produce for us. I shot it, I photographed it. Unfortunately I gave it back to NAA. I don't have time to BS about firearms. I've got better things to do. I've got a reputation for being straight up about guns and I'm not going to bend that for anyone. I reviewed the gun that I was sent and at the time I had the understanding that these guns were going to be available. It's not my fault they are not... it's not CCM's fault. Hell, it isn't even NAA's fault. I personally blame Kahr Arms for jacking around with NAA. So here we are... if you want a CCM Edition Guardian, you are going to have to wait, just like me. One gun I wish NAA would roll into production is a slick new Mini... a top break auto ejecting Mini. A little Schofield... it's cute as hell. Cross your fingers. Gun Geek makes a good point: “It doesn't matter how well the standard Weatherby Vanguard rifles shoot, something inside me just won't let me buy one. When the new sub-MOA rifles first came out, I read a nice article about them. When I read that they test fire all the Vanguards and take the ones that shoot the best and sidetrack them into the sub-MOA production line for some further work, my first thought was "Why would I ever buy one of the standard rifles that has been practically guaranteed to shoot poorly?" Sure, the standard for what constitutes "poor" may be higher than other off the rack guns, but the whole concept of buying a gun that the manufacturer admits doesn't shoot so well just seems wrong. Mathematically, it's a fact that if you remove all the top scores, you lower the average. If Ford started testing all their Taurus's and pulling the ones that ran smoother and quieter off to be made into their new Taurus Gentle Ride model, would you want to buy a standard Taurus? Knowing that it has been tested and failed the smooth and quiet test? Count me out. GunGeek (Marty) p.s.- Love your blog.” Thank for the email, Marty. I see what you are getting at and where you are coming from. Now take a look at this... Howa is the outfit doing the manufacturing of the Vanguards for Weatherby. Howa also has their own line of essentially the same gun, but in a different stock and using a different bolt. Howa doesn't have an accuracy guaranty like the Vanguards do. Weatherby guarantees that the Vanguards are going to be good shooters. You have that promise in writing. Weatherby test fires each one before packaging. The ones that just happen to shoot very very well get pulled, tested, and packaged as being above par. I've shot a lot of Vanguards this last two years, and Howa 1500's too. All are great shooters that I wouldn't mind buying if I was in the market for a decent off the shelf shooter. It's not that the regular Vanguards of sub standard, its just that some are fantastic. Isn't it worth a little extra coin for one that is fantastic? Every once in a while we will open up a Vanguard box and take a look at the target that the rifle shot... DUDE! You would be amazed at some of these guns. Like the .243 we unboxed last week. Amazing. You could cover the group with a dime. I'd pay some extra scratch for that one. (But I am not in the market for a .243) Come on Marty, you've probably done this yourself. Haven't you ever paid the extra 10 bucks for a “Hand Picked” example of a Curio & Relic or Surplus gun? This insures that you get an example that is above par. And it may sound silly, but Ford has been doing that for decades on their cars and trucks. They put badges like S or LS or SE on the unit... Sure they throw in a nicer radio or something... but the base car is the same.... the SE's are just better than average. I have an SE, and I love it. It's not saying the lower grades are poorly. Don't be so hard on the Vanguards for under 500 for a black synthetic version, it's the best bang for the buck. Truth be told, I think they are undervalued. They should be about a hundred bucks more. IDPA Night Shoot: Last Saturday night was an IDPA night shoot. I think I mentioned this before. I got the overall results back. I took 3rd place. Not bad. Last Night Shoot I took 4th just hours before I went in for knee surgery. I did loads better. The 3rd place is acceptable to me for the moment. The #1 and #2 shooters in my class are fantastic handgunners. On several stages I was dogging the second place slot but one certain stage had me at a disadvantage because a steel plate target did not fall after being hit solidly with 230 grain SXT hollowpoints. A fellow I worked with ran that stage and had the same problem, but he but almost a whole magazine on it before it finally fell. There was a hitch in it... sometimes a strong fart would knock it over. This happens in shooting sports. Certain variables will play an effect for some shooters and not others. It isn't perfect. But it is fun as hell. If you are not participating in IDPA or other practical handgun type event, you are missing out. It is a great schoolmaster. I know a lot of guys that don't like IDPA or PPC or IPSC shooting because it is too gamey. Yeah, sometimes it is. But at it's least, it puts you the shooter on the spot and under some pressure to perform with your firearm. A badguy is not going to allow you Do Overs or ask you to wait for the buzzer. You can learn more in one IDPA competition than you can in hundreds of outings of casual shooting. Problems with Reloading: Ogre Ranch has a little territory war going on. Mrs. Ogre is the Queen of the Castle here. I have had a small office which is becoming a nursery. This means my office gets to move to a larger room now, but I have to share it now with Mrs. Ogre and my Eldest Son who is home schooling again. The boy reads at a collegiate level and public school is holding him back like he was chained to a boat anchor... like on off the USS Nimitz. How many kids do you know that have read damn near every book Dad has read? How is this a problem for reloading? Now Mrs. Ogre is saying that I can not start reloading in the house. She says her Dad reloaded and it was a mess and dirty and she doesn't want it. This is a problem. Ammunition is getting expensive and I need more of it. What is going to have to happen is that I am going to have to rebuild The Shop, get it weatherized, weatherproofed, and insulated before I can start reloading. This actually isn't going to happen. The Shop is in shambles and it would be easier to raze it and build a whole new shop in it's place. So I am left unable to get back into reloading as I had planned. I'm sitting her sipping on a Coke Zero with a twist of lime, and the song playing on the MP3 play list right now is “House Full of Bullets”, by Joe Satriani. A fantastic bit of work. It's one of my favorites as is “Raspberry Jam Delta-V”. But that's another thing... Right now Ogre Ranch is not a House Full of Bullets. This saddens me. I would have expected Mrs. Ogre to be supportive in something that saves us money. A lot of money now days. My favorite cartridge to shoot is $1.70 per shot now. If I reloaded it, I could have it for about .50 cents. Less even. If you want to get into reloading – NOW is the them. Right now. Hornady has a great deal going on. Buy a Hornady reloading press and you can get up to 200 bucks worth of Hornady bullets for free. That should help get you started. Only problem is I could buy the press, but I've no where to set it up. I'll have to break through Mrs. Ogre's wall first. Easier task would be to storm the beaches of Normandy – but it history proved that it was possible. When will somebody start making a new Winchester 1895? I want one. But I want a shooter and originals are too valuable to shoot regularly. I don't know about .405 Winchester, but one in .325WSM or .375 Ruger would be fantastic. Regarding Requiem – WTF WAS THAT? 9-18-07: At my little shop in the middle of the Uintah Basin, we are doing a package deal special on some hunting rifles. The guns with scopes mounted and bore-sighted, ready to go at good discounts. So I was mounting scopes all freaking day long. I can't stand even looking at a set of rings anymore. Stevens, Howa, or Weatherby Vanguard in all common chambering. So its a low, low medium, and medium level quality. These are ready to go... off the shelf ready to go to the range to get zeroed. But say you want something that isn't ready to go... no problem. We can do a package in anything else you want. No worries. Speaking of bore-sighting. We don't have a bore-sighter that can do .204 Ruger. The rod/shank that the g |
