Lawrence linked to a follow up story from Bearing Arms about a weird case I wrote about back in February: an ex-stunt woman formerly from Bee Cave and her husband drove to Ohio to shoot her ex-husband, and instead were shot by the ex.
Spoiler: the grand jury no-billed the ex-husband and his current wife.
The Saturday Night Live channel on YouTube has posted “Midday with Jennifer Hicks”. This is the “interviews with Bond villains” sketch that contains the frequently quoted (in my circles) line, “I question the wisdom of having a self-destruct button at all.”
(See also, especially number 9, number 9, number 9…)
This surfaced on Twitter, and I have not seen it before. I wouldn’t say I can’t stop laughing, but it does make me giggle.
Please watch this 35 second Magnum clip. I have not stopped laughing. pic.twitter.com/nneXjJxUPj
— Chris “Wear A Mask” Driver (@Jerkwheatery) June 30, 2020
I wasn’t a regular “Magnum” watcher when it was on the air, but I sometimes think I should go back and watch from the beginning. (In addition to doing the same with “Blue Bloods”.)
Oddly, though, I have a weird allergic reaction to “Quigley Down Under”, and I don’t know why: that movie should push my buttons, and I’d kind of like to have an (accurate) reproduction of the movie gun.
I’ve backed the Kickstarter for Escape the City: a How-To Homesteading Guide by Travis J I Corcoran.
For those unfamiliar with Mr. Corcoran, he’s won two Prometheus awards (back to back) for his SF books, The Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation.
Unlike those books, this is not fiction: this is a how-to/things I wish I had known/lessons learned book from someone who abandoned suburban life, moved to a farm in the country, and maintains an active coding career while raising his own food and living as close to a self-sustained lifestyle as he can get.
I have personal reasons for backing this book. But even if you don’t plan on moving to a farm, there’s almost certainly something in it that will justify the $20 you spend on the e-book: stuff about meat and meat processing, recipes, workshops and workshop tools…well, there’s a table of contents on the Kickstarter page.
Mr. Corcoran probably doesn’t need my help, though I’m happy to provide it: we’ve had friendly correspondence in the past. The Kickstarter is already at $25,000+ out of an initial $2,000 goal. But I’d like to make sure that everyone who can get any sort of benefit from it has a chance to kick in and get early access.
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Noted: The National African American Gun Association. I didn’t know about this (though it’s been around for five years) until SayUncle mentioned it. Now that I do know about it, I’m delighted and fully support the organization, just like I support the Pink Pistols/Operation Blazing Sword.
This seems like a good day to post some more military themed stuff, so here you go:
“Know Your Enemy: German Equipment”.
Bonus: I was trying to figure out if I had posted this before. It looks like I haven’t, but I did post about someone else’s link to it nine years ago. At that level of time and indirection, I think I can get away with it this time.
“Stop That Tank”, a Disney produced 1942 training film about the Boys anti-tank rifle.
Here’s an interesting essay I’ve been meaning to bookmark for a while, and finally got around to.
“Chesterton: Patron Saint of Handgunners” by Patrick Toner, from “Crisis” magazine.
The jumping off point is a Chesterton quote, talking about his preparations for his honeymoon:
Mr. Toner uses this to discuss the idea that defense of one’s self or those one loves is an obligation. More to the point, it is an obligation one has to assume on their own, rather than delegating to other people.
He goes on to propose that Chesterton be named the patron saint of handgunners, though he doesn’t shy away from the two major problems with this idea:
Slightly more seriously, this month’s essay by Tiger McKee in “American Handgunner”, “3 Questions To Stay Alive“, is worthy of your consideration. I think this is especially relevant if you are a new gun owner, but I’d argue that even experienced ones could benefit from asking these three questions. I’ve asked some of those questions myself in the past. I particularly like his “kitchen fire/building fire” analogy.
I think we’ve all heard the Creepy Joe quote about how police officers should be trained to just shoot people in the leg. Everyone who is a person of the gun (and a lot of people who are not) should realize this is obviously bolshie bushwa. (If you don’t understand why: try hitting a small target like a leg under extreme cognitive and physical stress. This is why police officers are trained to shoot “center of mass” aka “the biggest part of the body”.)
I’ve had this video in the back of my head for a while now, and I thought I’d post it as another reason why “shoot ’em in the leg” isn’t such a good idea. This is from Iran: the suspect in this video allegedly robbed a bank.
As best as I can tell, the police officer shoots the suspect in the leg at about the 30 second mark. Two points:
1. The suspect is still conscious and capable of putting up a fight for another 45 seconds or so after he was shot. How much damage do you think someone can do with a knife in 45 seconds?
2. The suspect bled out and died. Shooting someone in the leg does not mean “not lethal”. If you hit an artery, the person you shot can bleed to death before the ambulance gets there.
I’m hoping to be able to post some more firearms related stuff over the next week, including (if I can get my stuff together and am lucky) two gun porn entries.
In the meantime:
“A Federal Case”. A very 1970s promo film about the production of ammo by the Federal Cartridge Corporation.
Bonus video #1: the good folks at Starline Brass make cartridge cases, including cases for a lot of obscure ammo. As I recall, they even produced .356 TSW brass, though I can’t find it on their website at the moment.
Here’s a behind the scenes tour of their brass manufacturing. It has the advantage of less 1970s music.
And they have a YouTube channel, though it doesn’t look like they’ve uploaded anything since 2016.
Bonus video #2: You know who else has a YouTube channel? Norma. You know who updates their channel more often? Norma. You know who else uploaded a factory tour?
One of the things Mike the Musicologist and I keep talking about doing is taking some time off and driving to Nebraska to visit the SAC Museum. From Ashland, Google Maps says it is only about two hours to Grand Island and the Hornady plant, which is something else we’d like to see (and tour, if they’ll let us in).
One of these days, when all this stuff is over and we’ve got time and money. Until then, this will have to do.
How do you know when you’ve got a problem with bibliophilia?
One clue is when you start buying bibliographies.
Something else I like, from Rod Dreher: “Ode to the Roof Koreans“.
Thanks to all the folks who stopped by and left comments on my Memorial Day post. Thanks also to Borepatch for the linky love.
There are some videos on YouTube about Father Capodanno, but I have not been able to watch any of them yet, and I don’t want to put them up without watching them first. So here’s a couple of things I thought were odd or diverting.
Many of my readers are probably familiar with the idea of ASMR videos. I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing as ASMR gun cleaning videos.
(I have another reason for posting this video. But I’ll go into that at some point in the future.)
Bonus: More hot metal! “Modern Steel Making”, from the United States Steel Corporation in glorious Technicolor!
Legendary Army Ranger, trainer, and gun guy Chuck Taylor passed away a few weeks ago. I wasn’t aware of this until Bayou Renaissance Man posted a nice tribute to Mr. Taylor on his blog, which I encourage you to go read.
Theodore “Ted” Keith passed away last September. I was not aware of this until it was posted on one of the forums for Smith and Wesson collectors.
Ted Keith was the son, and last surviving child of, the legendary gun guy Elmer Keith, about whom I have written in the past and certainly will in the future.
Ted Keith was a special guest at the 2012 S&WCA meeting in Boise. I didn’t get as much of a chance to talk to him as I would have liked (his time was pretty booked), but I have one outstanding memory of him: I was standing in the Boise Cabela’s with a bunch of other S&WCA folks looking at the Elmer Keith Museum (which, at the time, was located in the Boise Cabela’s). Ted was going around introducing himself to everyone there: he walked up to me, stuck out his hand, and said “Hi, I’m Ted Keith.”
The man was a class act.
From the 1950s, Shell’s series of “High Speed Flight” films. Lots of video of vintage airplanes, for those of you who like that sort of thing.
“Approaching the…….Speed Of Sound”:
“Transonic Flight”:
And “Beyond the Speed of Sound”:
There’s also a “simplified” version for those with short attention spans (and, possibly, children) that compiles stuff from all three films:
A couple of things I wanted to make note of, but didn’t want to put in the main video feed:
Great and good FoTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn did a really cool short video targeted at newer shooters explaining ammunition (and the various types thereof):
This was done for the Polite Society Podcast, which does, of course, have a YouTube channel.
It’s also worth pointing out that Karl has his own channel as well.
Ryan Cleckner, author of the excellent Long Range Shooting Handbook: Complete Beginner’s Guide to Long Range Shooting, has a playlist on the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) channel devoted to long range shooting. This is something I’ve wanted to work on for a while, and I’m hoping once things get back to normal I’ll be able to pursue that.
Also on the NSSF channel: Bryan Litz, author of Applied Ballistics For Long-Range Shooting 3rd Edition and other related works. I got my copy of Applied earlier this week, but haven’t had a chance to crack it yet.
(I should note that any Amazon links here are affiliate links, and I do get a small kickback if you purchase something through those links. I use those small kickbacks for good, not evil, though others might differ with that assessment.)