Perspective

Of course some of you may not be familiar with U.S. politics to the point where you don't recognize what I'm talking about, so I guess I need to add a few references here. If you're already familiar with U.S. politics, you may want to skip down just a bit ...

Most people think of the National Rifle Association as a lobbying group - an organization that exists to get government to make laws supporting their position. It didn't start out that way. During the U. S. "Civil War", a few of the military leaders involved were disappointed with the poor marksmanship of many of the new recruits. So they created an organization to promote marksmanship by organizing, supervising and overseeing shooting competitions, and that was the NRA. They still do this, and of course I have no problem with this part of their purpose. Unfortunately they are more than that now, you don't get a choice of whether or not to support their politics. If you want to participate in any of their sponsored competitions, you have to join ... and of course I don't believe in that kind of coercion. (Side note - I'll have to log back in with Opera 10.20 so I can check my spelling there, they don't have the spell checker working in 10.50 yet.)

Anyway, over the years they have had to get involved politically. You can't exactly have marksmanship training if they ban firearms, can you? In that sense, their politics is actually too moderate for me. I'm an idealist, I believe people (and laws) should say what they mean, and mean what they say. We live in an imperfect world, I can accept that, but I can't accept any form of dishonesty.

The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

When you think about it, it is really hard to believe how much arguing has been done over commas and capitalization of that particular passage. It really looks pretty clear to me - and as I say, laws should say what they mean and mean what they say - if you disagree with either the intent or implementation then you should work to change it.

That's where the people trying to regulate guns are dishonest, there has never been any attempt to modify the second amendment. According to what it says, all the laws on the books which regulate the ability of normal people to own firearms are unconstitutional and thus not valid. Do we need such laws? Maybe, no one has ever tried to justify them sufficiently to get the Constitution changed.

So as I say, I think the NRA is too moderate. They should challenge the constitutionality of these illegal laws, and they don't. But while I'm an idealist when it comes to "should", I will concede to reality where necessary. They don't have the resources to launch 20,000 court cases tomorrow, they have to work with what they have. But on the other hand, they should never claim to support a "compromise". Acceptance and support are not the same thing, you may have to accept a compromise - at least temporarily, while working for a better result.

Though really, that's neither here nor there. There are other "pro-gun" groups out there - if you're not on this side of the issue you have probably never heard of any of them. The NRA is the "800 pound gorilla", you either play ball with them or you go home. Yes, monopolies are terrible things, but reality is reality.

Some 15-20 years ago now, "I'm the NRA" was their ad slogan. They had various spokespeople - some celebrities, but also soldiers and cops and even housewives saying why they supported the NRA. And while it might not be correct to say I supported them myself, I accepted that I had to deal with them. But I haven't been a member in years ...

Actually, it all happened because I was out of work at the time when I was supposed to renew my membership. When I didn't renew (because I didn't have the money), they of course sent me a reminder. When I still didn't renew, they sent me one of those "last chance" notices, and that's what really did it.

This particular "last chance" notice was a letter that claimed to be from NRA Executive Vice President Wayne Lapierre (though of course it was probably from their ad agency, still they must have been authorized to use his name) and contained a little index card with my name and renewal options. The problem is, the letter claimed it was actually my card from their membership files and obviously it wasn't. Okay, a cheap gimmick, right? Sorry, I don't accept "cheap gimmicks". To me it was an insult to my intelligence, and worse than that it was simply dishonest.

Yeah, worse. In this society everyone insults everyone for anything, while I certainly wouldn't appreciate an insult from someone who was supposed to be representing me (which is to say, working for me), I could tolerate it. But I can't tolerate someone who claims to be "working for me" who is dishonest with me. Yeah, I have no real tolerance for politicians - who does - but you have no real choice in regards to them. You will be represented by some politician or other, you try to get the best you can but that's your only choice. I do have another choice when it comes to the NRA, I can refuse to take part.

Is 12 years or so too long to hold onto this sort of thing? Yes and no. You see, Executive Vice President is not an elected position. While the other officers come and go, even the NRA President has changed several times over that span - but not Wayne Lapierre. If he were no longer in office, I might give them a chance. But as far as I'm concerned, Wayne has proven to me that I can't trust him, even about something as small as a supposed file card - as long as he remains in office they won't get anything from me.

So now you're asking what brought this up after all this time. Actually, for insurance reasons my local club decided to become NRA affiliated. It's a sound financial decision, I can't fault them for that, but it looks like I'm going to have to go elsewhere for a safe place to shoot.

Never tried embedding before, we'll see if this works ...
That's What Christmas Is To Me

John M | MySpace Music Videos

As Jerry at the door said, this is really cool.

I'm sure many of you have heard - and some even participated in - that peculiarly American madness called "Black Friday". For those who may not be aware ...

We have a big US holiday at the end of November called Thanksgiving. Skipping all the details about what Thanksgiving is, suffice it to say that it is by law celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. No idea why it was set on a Thursday, but ... well, it results in a 4-day weekend for most people in the US - except those of us in retail.

Since so many people have the day after Thanksgiving off, and since it's just about a month before Christmas, a lot of people go Christmas shopping on that day. So much so that it is the busiest shopping day of the entire year. Since so many retailers depend on their sales from that one day to make or break their entire year, it has come to be known as "Black Friday" (as in "in the black", having a positive number in accounting practice - negative numbers were written in red). And since it was such an important day to their business, most retailers have some pretty fantastic deals to try and get you to come to their store before you have spent all your money, leading to an absolute frenzy sometimes ... in fact, last year a mall security person in New York was trampled to death when the Wal-mart at that mall opened on "Black Friday" - so you see what I mean by "madness".

Don't get me wrong, they can have some fantasic deals - but of course they are "while supplies last, no rainchecks" and the bigger items tend to be in limited supply. If you're not there within an hour of when the sale starts, they're all gone. Well, usually.

Anyway, so much for introduction. (And for the record, Wal-mart made several changes to prevent a repeat of last year, but this isn't about that.)

Personally, I can't stand that kind of frenzy - or even that big a crowd - so I'll never be in a store at that time of the morning on Black Friday. It's just not worth it to me. Okay, so I'm not going to get one of those $120 televisions or whatever unless something really strange happens. And as I work second shift, I won't even be in the store working at that time - in fact, I'm sound asleep then.

This year though, my dad actually decided to brave the madness. He was asking if I had any special perks as an employee that could get him one of those $200 laptops they advertised. I told him sorry, I couldn't get one without going through the same line as everyone else. I know him well enough to know he was talking about the laptop before he even said so - of course I'd seen them when they arrived off the truck nearly a week ago, that was really the only item he would be talking about. I told him we had at least 10 of them (I hadn't really counted), but if he wanted one he'd have to be there when the sale started at 5 AM just like everyone else.

He was still talking about it the next couple of days, making plans and all that, but apparently at he last minute he changed his mind. Another store in town had some sort of $130 netbook for their Black Friday sale, he thought he'd try that instead. But when he got there he found out some kids had been camping out - in a tent - the previous day, and he was number 20 in line ... when the door opened several hours later even though he was number 20 he was too late - they had only had 5. Needless to say, when I spoke to him he was rather bitter about the whole thing.

(For that matter, we have two Wal-marts in town and only one of that other store, presuming the other Wal-mart would have had as many as we did his odds were much better on the $200 laptop. Still awful small I'll be the first to admit, but anyone could figure out that's at least 4 times better odds. But ... well, he wouldn't want to hear that, so I didn't say it.)

But every once in a while, just by being in the right place at the right time, I manage to defy logic, probability or even common sense. And so it is that when he gets up tomorrow (well, technically today) he's going to find one of the $200 laptops on the table.

Let me tell you how that worked out. By some fluke, we were still getting some of the Black Friday merchandise in today. Hundreds of tee shirts that were too late for the sale and bunches of other stuff - and one $200 laptop that somehow arrived over a week later than its counterparts. No, I didn't do anything unethical like hide it away or whatever, but I did remember it. When I got off work, I sought out the electronics guy (there's only one person in the department on third shift) and asked him about it. He was somewhat incredulous at its late arrival (understandably), but he said "The sale price is good until midnight. If it's back there, it's yours."

Jerry was the guy at the door who checks receipts for expensive merchandise, when he saw me walking out with the bag I told him the story (and of course showed him the receipt) and he was impressed. I'd say that goes somewhat beyond being lucky though. And I guess I do have one or two perks after all ...

When I was talking about that Rossi 851 feeling oddly familiar, I mentioned to one poster that no, it wasn't a particularly good fit, it just seemed like something I'd become accustomed to though it was actually new to me. I guess I've managed to prove the point.

The other day I stumbled upon an old Smith and Wesson model 10-6 at an auction. The old style of box places it in the 1960s or '70s - the box has a date of 1955 on the disclaimer, but this particular variant was introduced in 1962. Of course they stopped using boxes like that sometime in the 1970s, though I couldn't give an exact year.

Whoever the former owner was, they took extremely good care of it. Yes, it had been fired, but probably less than 100 rounds. Other than things associated with that (burnt powder on the front of the cylinder, "ringing" where the pawl drags on the cylinder - stuff like that) it could have passed for new. There's no rust, no holster marks, the bluing is 100% - it looks like it must have been in a museum for most of its life.

There's one thing it came with when I bought it that would not have been original ... for most people, the grip on pistols of this era is actually too small, it was common for people to buy either a grip adapter or larger grips so that it would fit their hands better - this one had such a grip adapter on it.

But I'm not most people, I have really small hands - which is why you no longer see the grip adapter, I removed it. And you know what? It now fits like it was made for me.

If you've ever seen a model 10 before (or if you look it up on Wikipedia), you will see one difference between this one and the standard version. This one has a heavier barrel. The barrel on a standard version tapers a bit from the cylinder to the muzzle - this barrel is the same size its whole length. Which brings me to one strange detail ...

I said that the Rossi actually felt a little too muzzle-heavy to me. With a heavy barrel, this gun certainly has even more weight in the muzzle - yet because of the grips I really don't feel it as much as with the Rossi.

A heavy barrel like that is more common in a target model, but this doesn't have adjustable sights one would hope for on a target gun. Also if you look closely at the box, you see that it doesn't have a target trigger or target hammer. Yet the trigger pull is about as nice as you'll ever find, and it shoots right where I aim it.

My friend Todd that I typically go target shooting with also prefers the grips as they are now, but he holds the gun a little differently and so has a bit more trouble with the aim. His comment was that obviously the gun was made for me and not him ...

As much as it could be said of anything, yes, this gun was made for me. Okay, not actually custom fitted or anything, but probably as close as you'd come short of that. The apparent familiarity of the Rossi is still an open question and probably always will be, but the issue of "just a particularly good fit" has been laid to rest. (No pun intended)

Ever heard that expression, "... like finding an old friend"? It refers to finding something which is new to you yet at the same time intimately familiar, as if you'd spent a lifetime with whatever it is.

There are a few topics I tend to steer clear of because of the controversies. Well ... not steer clear of, but I'll state my view and then leave it at that. Religion and politics are good examples. I have a right to my opinions, you have a right to yours - I can't do my job if I let my opinions get in the way. And it's probably not a good idea for you to get into a big argument with a moderator over his opinions anyway. So while a number of people in the forums could tell you my religious and political beliefs, you won't see them mentioned often - and when they are, I state my opinion and then drop the subject.

Well, another of those issues is firearms. I know for a lot of people firearms are something that only the government and "bad guys" (terrorists, mafia, gangs - whatever) has, well, that's not how things are here. In this country and state, as long as you're over 21 and don't have a criminal record you have the right to own a gun. Okay, there's a background check when you buy to be sure that you aren't a criminal, but other than that anyone can do so. And you can use that gun for target shooting or hunting or even self-defense, though in the latter case you may have to prove in court that it was self defense ...

So anyway, I am a gun collector, I actually have a pretty sizable collection by now (after all, I am 46), and I enjoy target shooting when I can get somewhere that it is safe to do so. Nothing even noteworthy for this area, but this is a little different ...

My latest acquisition is actually a fairly cheap revolver named a Rossi model 851. Rossi is a Brazilian company, not quite as well-known in the firearms business as the other Brazilian company Taurus though actually Taurus recently bought out Rossi (okay, like a couple of years ago - to me that's still pretty recent) ... but back to the subject at hand. You can see pictures of it here.

Generally speaking, it looks like any revolver might have 20 or 30 years ago. Rossi appears to have copied the older Smith and Wesson designs, the way the firing pin is actually attached to the hammer there isn't common any more. And you rarely see wood grips these days ... a few of the pictures feature a Taurus revolver of similar size for comparison, you'll notice that the Taurus has rubber grips. The full length underlug (the part under the barrel) is pretty much for looks, I can't see it serving any real purpose on a .38 Special caliber gun - likewise the ventilated rib. It does have adjustable sights, but I have my doubts that you'd really call it a "target model" ... (I enjoy target shooting for fun, I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars - if I had that kind of money - on a gun that is supposed to be a little more accurate. As long as it'll hit the target at a reasonable distance, I'm satisfied.) And so, ... this is just a nice looking, cheap, "plinker", nothing special.

Good theory, but somehow it's different. It's not particularly comfortable to hold - I have small hands, so the grips are just a little large for me. And that full underlug means it's a bit heavy, especially towards the muzzle. Yet somehow, it just feels familiar, as if I used to have one just like it for years. I didn't, that's the strange part. I had a few revolvers with wood grips over the years, my favorite would be an old Ruger Security Six that I sold years ago - but the grips were different, the weight was different, all in all nothing like this gun.

I try very hard to be a reasonable, rational person, though at the same time I tend to trust my feelings ... and usually I can find a reasonable explanation for them. This time, I really can't. If you believe in reincarnation, you might be tempted to say it must be something from another life ... but they wouldn't have had this style of gun that long ago, so that doesn't really fly either.