Month: September 2008

Trickery Works

Only 51% of Americans think McCain is better than Obama on guns.  We laugh at Obama’s attempts to convince us that he supports the second amendment, and won’t take our guns.  But it really does fool a lot of people.  This is going to be a tough election.  As Bitter points out, Obama has a much better ground game, and a much larger warchest.

Obama is determined to have Pennsylvania.  We have to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make that not happen this election, or at the very least force Obama’s campaign to spend like hell to hold onto the Keystone State.  That ties up funds and volunteers here, and McCain can shore up his support in other battleground states.  This is definitely not the election to sit on the sidelines.

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A Lie Repeated Often Enough

Now the Washington D.C. police chief is claiming that HR6691 allows people to carry loaded guns in public in the District.  I guess she got the Brady Campaign press release.  I’d still like someone to point out to me where this bill does anything to address the issue of carrying firearms outside the home.

UPDATE: More here.

Hat tip to Carl in Chicago

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Weeding Out Corruption

Looks like a federal grand jury has indicted a New Jersey Democratic Party boss, and one of their attorneys in scheme to defraud local governments.  The Republican Party in New Jersey should starting feeling better now.  Maybe this is how the GOP will start winning again in New Jersey… all the leading Democratic politicians will be in jail on corruption charges.

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Later in the Week

I will be going to the fall meeting of the NRA Board of Directors this Thursday through Saturday, to report on the major themes, or any interesting happenings.  What I expect will be major topics of discussion are the coming election in November, getting H.R.6691 passed as quickly as possible, and legal strategies post-Heller.  The board meetings also allow me the opportunity to meet up with fellow bloggers Scott Bach, Tom King (both blogging board members), and usually Dave Hardy and Dave Kopel (not board members, but usually around).

As I’ve said before, NRA is not a closed society.  Any member is free to attend the board meeting and watch the proceeding.  If you get to know some of your local board members, they can invite you in to sit in on some of the committee meetings, which are open for observance by members.

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Going Progressive

So I have decided that I am in need of a progressive press.  The main thing keeping me from practicing my shooting more is the fact that for guns other than .22LR, I’m either stuck paying in limbs for ammo, or spending hours at the reloading press.  I can reload about 50 to 60 rounds per hours with the single stage press.  What takes me an hour to load, I can shoot in 10 minutes.  This has to change, especially if I get into action shooting sports.

I know there will be myriads of folks who will say “You just need a Dillon.” but Dillons are expensive, and while I like the idea of a no-nonsense warranty, for all practical purposes, I’m not likely to need unusual warranty service.  I’ve had a reader who has graciously offered to send me his Lee Pro 1000 that he’s no longer using, and it’s a tempting offer, since I’m already using their stuff, and it’s working fine for me.  But if I choose Lee, and make an investment in caliber kits, I could be sinking money into something I might just decide to upgrade later.  Should I go whole hog, and just get a quality press?  If I go that route, I’m torn between the Hornady Lock-N-Load AP, and the Dillon XL 650

Here’s what I want to reload, in order of volume:

  1. .45ACP
  2. 9mm
  3. .44 Spl/Magnum
  4. .223 Remington
  5. 6.8 SPC Remington
  6. 30-06

Now if I have to do 6.8 and 30-06 on the single stage, I’m not going to be all that broken up.  Though, the 6.8 would be nice to do on the progressive, if only because I would shoot it more if reloading speed weren’t an issue.  I’ve been considering this review of all three progressive presses, which says good things about the LNL AP.  I’ve also been looking at Chris’ review, and also here and here, which is largely favorable to the Hornady.

What to do, what to do.

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Bad Idea

Ry Jones reports that the Sportsman Guide is selling a Ruger Charger Kit that converts it into a carbine.  The problem?  It’s 10 inch barrel makes it a Short-Barreled-Rifle under the National Firearms Act, which means if you don’t fill out your ATF form to register it and pay for the tax stamp, you’re a felon.  If Sportsman’s Guide is going to sell these, they need to warn gun owners about the legal requirements.  Otherwise someone is going to go to prison for a very long time, figuring if they were selling the kit, it must be legal right?

UPDATE: Whoops… looks like what this kit does is convert a 10/22 into a pistol.  Actually, I think you can legally do this.  Let me check into it.

UPDATE: Yeah, I’m pretty sure this falls under United States v. Thompson Center Arms.  This kit should be legal.

UPDATE: Wrong again.  It seems ATF asserts that you can convert a handgun into a rifle, as long as you add a barrel longer than 16″, but you can’t convert a rifle into a handgun.  That would be making an NFA item, and you need the registration and tax stamp to do so.

Do the Brady Campaign folks want to come on here and try to tell me these are reasonable gun laws?

UPDATE: See here, here and here.  Given the case of US v. Thompson Center Arms, I don’t think ATF is likely to prevail in court here, but I wouldn’t risk it.  You can be arrested and prosecuted.

UPDATE: Looks like they updated it with a warning.  Good.

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Mail Troubles

My mail host is having difficulties that have been exceedingly difficult to diagnose.  If you’d have troubles e-mailing me, I do apologize.  My mail service is through my friend Jason’s Mac, and we’ve been trying to figure this problem out for the longest time.  Basically what happens is postfix decides to stop recognizing local users, and starts rejecting mail saying the user doesn’t exist.  Restarting postfix seems to fix this, but it usually comes back within a few hours.  Even more oddly, rebooting the host sometimes fixes it for weeks and months.

The real trouble with figuring this one out is not having a good google search term.  There are lots of very simple problems with local mail delivery, and this isn’t a very simple problem.  Finding good information through all the reams of people who just don’t have their mail server configured properly is rough.

Hopefully we’ll figure this out soon.  In the mean time, if anyone has experienced anything like this with Postfix running on MacOS or BSD, let me know.

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