Range Report II: Ruger PC9 Carbine

Having played with this indoors, and gotten it sighted in at home defense range, it was time to take it outside.



The carbine as tested. Note the charging handle on the left side.
And yes, that's the finest piece of Chinese glass $39 will buy. 

It was a perfect day. 75°, sunny, 1/10 clouds, with a 0-10MPH variable crosswind in the canyon varying from 3 o'clock to 8 o'clock.

And if you're keeping score at home, indoors was with Federal 115gr FMJ. Outdoors was with Winchester white box 115gr FMJ.

Shooting it this time off a sandbag on a concrete shooting bench, the 20Y zero proved to be low and right at 100Y.

I made similarly bold dope corrections to the previous settings, but at a more normal zero distance, they were overmuch. The next group was all high and left. Having some wee life experience with bracketing a target (with howitzers), I took off half the original change, and achieved everything in the black inside a 4" circle.

Which reminded me why I like going to the range.

Then I settled down, and focused on slow, steady groups. The variable wind made this a small challenge.
So did the jackhole who decided, on a 75% empty range with 50+ stations, to settle in right next to me and begin rapid-fire strings of turning money into noise with his AR.

Which reminded me why I hate going to the range.

(Which is why a priority for Castle Anthrax is outside-city-limits ability to shoot on the property, WheneverTH I feel like it, consistent with safety and neighborliness.)

After relocating away from Slob A$$hole, re-arranging my gear, and setting up my target 3/4ths of the way to the other end, things were much more agreeable.

The wind died down for awhile, I took my time, and the groups tightened up to where I was moving the centers 1 click at a time.

The final adjustment was 2 3/4" L, and 3 1/2" Up, from the 20Y zero.
I then put the best part of two 10-round strings into the same fist-sized group I'd achieved the other day at 20Y, with a couple of fliers that were me jerking a trigger that is anything but a smooth precision rifle example, and lets off when it feels like it at nearly 5 lbs. of pull. And I think Ruger was using Soviet trigger pull gauges when they made that claim.

Nonetheless, you won't shoot yourself in the foot with it if your aren't an idiot, and I didn't buy it to shoot precision marksmanship. But as I'm not alone in my estimation, there are several after-market drop-in trigger groups on the market, one of which may find its way into my carbine.

According to comments elsewhere, a carbine that will put pistol rounds into minute of chest pocket at 100Y is no improvement over a Glock pistol, for a penalty of 5-5.5 pounds.
Elmer Keith being dead, I will shoot any non-professional using their stock Glock pistol against my Ruger rifle as described, for $1/point at 100Y and farther, and we'll see whether the 5 pounds is worth it.

It was windy, and yes, I rushed a couple.

Just to rub it in, I had 25 rounds left over from the 100 round box I started with.
I was originally going to sight-in at 200Y, but as it was both late in the day, and not worth the walk, I opted for some fun instead, with a bit of serious effort.

The range has metal gongs set up out to 600Y.
Including a 15" circle, and a 14" tall pig silhouette at 200Y.

Standing offhand, and using Kentucky windage, I used the duplex reticle to address the problem. After 2 "overs", it turned out the part of the reticle where the crosshair fattens up to a post at 6 o'clock is the exact bullseye for 200Y, with no farther sight manipulation whatsoever.

Just the way it worked out.

So I then proceeded to clang both the chest-width circle, and piggy, 23 times in a row.
Bang-clang. Bang-clang. Lather, rinse, repeat. Bang-clang.
Like I said after dialing it in indoors: tedious regularity.
Standing.
Offhand.
200Y.

{Next time I get back there, I'll shoot a video of that, too, and post the YouTube of it. -A.}

Come show me you can do that with your pistol at 200Y, and when you fail, ask me what the extra 5 pounds gets you. More importantly, anyone with minimal training could do the same thing, which cannot be said of pistol shooting at that range, ever.

Another commenter asked why a carbine for 9mm now weighs 2-3 pounds more than an M1 from 1943.
1) a heavier barrel, that takes down in about a second
2) a non-locking straight blowback action
3) which includes a molded tungsten firing block weight inside the PC9 bolt group, to keep the rifle from doing what Marlin's Camp guns did: battering themselves to pieces, even with hot +P 9mm rounds.

Words fail to convey how happy I am not to have to clean any part of a gas system on this thing. A quick spray-down of the bore with Break Free CLP, and half a dozen patches wrapped around a bronze bore brush, and the barrel is clean.

Word to the wise: blowback means the charging handle is coming all the way back, each and every time, whichever side you have it on. I watched to know this, I did not experiment by putting my mitt in the way, but if you do it the hard way, well, look up Mark Twain's comment about the man who carries a cat by the tail.

Tomorrow, I'll crack open the manual again, and take the action apart for a proper cleaning.
All I did between Range Days 1 and 2 was Q-tips and a few wet patches inside the open action, to get the worst of the crud out from around the bolt and such.

The down side of a blowback action is that everything does, in fact, blow back into the action, so everything from the ejected brass to the working parts get dirty. Coal miner's face dirty, in fact.

Tomorrow is cleaning day.

When I get the camera and card reader sorted out, I'll start posting my own pics, instead of web grabs. (Maybe even crank out short YouTube snippets.) But that's something for another day.

And the fact that I did two weapons-related posts (which happen around here randomly, at best) on the day before and the day after the anniversary of Weaponsman's passing: pure serendipitous happenstance. I think. (Cue spooky music.)

Next project is upping my Vaughn hammer-hatchet to something close to what PJF did with his:

 

Absent Friends

Never got to meet the guy in person, or shake his hand.
Still miss him, his blog (which has evidently bitten the big one as well, but mirrored here), and the commentariat it produced. (Those that drop by, say 'Hi.')

 

Range Report I: Ruger PC9 Carbine

As noted a few days back, I picked up one of these recently, and today was time to try it out, and do some sight adjustment.

The Good:
Ruger. I.e. built like Russian tank.
It feels solid, sturdy, and compact.
6# 13oz stock, and mine was about 8 pounds as tested, with scope and sling.
Points well.
Aperture ring rear and protected front blade iron sights, on barrel assembly, adjustable for windage and elevation.
Picatinny top rail built into receiver.
Comes with multiple stock spacers to adjust length of pull.
Breaks into two pieces for compact storage.
(With weapon unloaded, draw bolt slightly back, pull up on takedown plunger, rotate 1/8th turn counterclockwise, then slide barrel assy. out of receiver. That fast and easy.)

Charging handle and mag release are ambidextrous.
Ruger OEM mag well swaps out with one that takes Glock 17/19/26 mags.
Threaded 1/2-28 muzzle w/thread protector, for flash hiders, and/or SHHH! cans, if you've got the federal tax stamp.

The first thing I did was use one of the three included Allen wrenches, remove the factory Ruger mag well, and swap in the included Glock block instead. I already have the above models, and have no desire to buy OEM Ruger mags at whatever the market price is, for something that's been Californicated to hold only 10 rounds. (Hopefully if Duncan v. Becerra is finalized, that'll sunset that nonsense hereabouts.) Meanwhile, since I'm going to be round-limited, I opted to use G26 mags, for minimum profile.
Provided one seats a loaded magazine firmly into place, they work just fine.
(So do G19 and G17 mags.)
If you don't check it, you'll find the magazine now with nine rounds sitting under the weapon after your first shot jiggles it loose.

The second thing I did was swap the charging handle to the left side of the receiver, where it belongs for right-handed shooters with two hands. That leaves your dominant hand on the stock grip, which works just fine. The changeover took about 90 seconds, 20 of which were reading the manual to see how to do it. If you can screw in a light bulb, you can change the charging handle over.

As presbyopia means never having to worry about your iron sights, I acquired an optical sight to make this fully useful. (If I wear my readers, I can see the sights, but not the target. With naked eyes, I can see the target, but not the sights. I still have better than 20/15 vision. It's just that after a certain number of birthdays, it now starts 4' from my face, rather than at the tip of my nose. And my arms aren't that long. So optics.) Given what the weapon costs, I couldn't see blowing $300 or more on optics for a short-range carbine. This is not an M40A3, it's a truck and brushwhacking gun.

So, instead of a spendy red dot, I bought the $39 Chinese-made Barska 3-9X w/duplex at WallyWorld. (No, I don't ever expect to need more than 3X, but fixed magnification wasn't an option.) But, true to form, the Barska came with rings made to mount that thing on top of a 10/22 or Marlin .22, not full-sized Picatinny rail. So I bought a pair of Leupold 1" rings, for as much as the scope cost, and mounted the whole assembly on top.



The carbine as tested. Note charging handle is on the left side.
And yes, that's the finest piece of Chinese glass $39 will buy.

 

Thus prepared, it was time to head to the range.


It took about 40 rounds to get it centered, shooting 5-shot groups, and at an indoor range with about a 20Y max range.

Recoil?
What recoil?!?
It's a 9mm carbine. Your 10 year old daughter could shoot this all day long.
One-handed.

I started about 2" right and 2" high, but given the relatively short range, the scope corrections were rather bold. By the 40th round, the rifle was more accurate off-hand than I was capable of, and keeping 10 round mag strings all in not just the 10 ring, but the middle of the 10 ring at 20Y became child's play.

To the point that I was able to Have A Nice Day on the last string.

The Bad:
I have the takedown 10/22, which comes with a nice backpack carrying case to stow and tote the weapon broken down, with space for ammo, additional mags, cleaning gear, survival supplies, etc.
The PC 9 does not include such a case. Pity. It should, even if it's sold as an after-market accessory.

I had one stovepipe, which annoyed me, but it's still getting broken in.
As it gets dirty, you may need to assist the bolt to close home on a new mag, due to residue fouling.

I went through 100 rounds in less than an hour, slow-fired. The barrel is fluted, which aids cooling. Which is fortunate, because even that modest amount of firing got things h-o-t.

And though I may or may not have some legally-obtained higher cap pre-ban Glock mags, what this thing wants is the 33-round happy sticks, or better yet, the 50 rd. drum or the 100-round Beta-C mag.

And a place to shoot outdoors where you can practice rapid fire.
On pumpkins, watermelons, and old plastic milk jugs filled with water.
Wear gloves. (Be careful: the piece is hot!)

The worst thing about this weapon is that they aren't yet making it in .45ACP (they have evidently announced a .40S&W version for next year), and capable of accepting M1911 mags. I would buy twelve of those. (I have no idea if Ruger will figure this out on their own and add that choice, or whether it will take them another 20 years to clue in, if ever. But it should be a slam-dunk business decision.)

The Ugly:
This thing comes from the factory with a front sling swivel, and a molded swivel loop at the butt as part of the plastic molded stock.
Ruger was 0-2 on this.
The front sling swivel was 20° out of whack, because some flunky was too lazy to put it on straight. So I had to fix that.
And then the mold job on the rear sling swivel leaves the loop too wide to put on standard QD sling swivels, necessitating some Bubba gunsmithing on one side of it with a mill bastard file, to get the sling ring profile to accommodate the QD swivel and close properly. This tells me that Ruger either didn't check, or doesn't care. Sloppy.

That's it.
I have nothing else to complain about regarding the weapon.
IMHO, Ruger has another winner, and a worthy successor to the discontinued Marlin Camp carbines.
This thing is the poor man's Tommy gun, esp. if you slap 33-50-100 round magazines into it.
If you have a 9MM Glock pistol, you should get one of these to make it a matched set.


Sometime in the next couple of days, I'll take it to an outdoor range, and get it dialed in for 100Y. I may even see about learning its 200Y zero for the scope mounted on it, just because I can. When I do that, Range Report II will follow.

Addendum in re: Comments:
Boys and girls, there are limits to what I'll do.
Putting a $300 (or more) sight on a $600 pistol-caliber carbine is one of them.
No matter how quick and nifty it would be.
Even with just the irons and my eyes, I could still point and hit minute of bad guy out to 100Y, just from muscle memory.
At this point, just on 3X with the cheapie Barksa, it holds minute of X-ring at house and yard-width distances. My group at 20Y slow-fired offhand would fit under a teacup. Tomorrow (probably), at longer range, I suspect it'll be dialed in even farther out, and I'll see what the overs and unders are for intermediate ranges.

At that point, lacking the legal ability to add the can it wants on those threads, and the drum mags I want (yet), the only thing I'm adding is a thumb-buster loading block to make reloading the 10-rd G26 mags even quicker and easier, and probably another handful (6-8) of those, and a pouch or two on the gun case to hold them in.

And in case anyone at 5.11, Maxpedition, Fox, Voodoo, Condor, etc. are listening/reading this, WTF don't any of you guys sell MOLLE pouches cut to hold
a) Californicated 10-rd standard rifle mags for things like ARs, AKs, M1-As, etc.
b) 10/22 mags by the triple or more
(currently I use MOLLE grenade pouches instead, lacking a steady supply of M67 frags)
(Hint: a bandolier that had 10-12 pouches for them? GENIUS!)
c) G26 mags 4-, 6-, or 10 across, on a belt or MOLLE grid???

When Ruger's PC9 case becomes a reality, I'll probably get one of those too, if it stores it broken down.

The only reason now to get an Inland M1 Carbine is nostalgia.
(Which doesn't mean I won't acquire one, or a WWII original, at some point.)
This thing does everything the M1 would do, cheaper, and with far more utility.
I still have a Camp .45 around somewhere in vintage shape, which wants the after-market recoil springs, buffer blocks and such, but the day Ruger does a PC45, that old Marlin is going on the sale block, to help pay for the dozen PC45s I'll want in a ready rack.

And the Ruger PC wants three, maybe four, after market stocks:
One in solid wood. Birch, walnut, whatever.
(That may be a weekend/retirement project someday.)
A wood one with the M1 carbine sling cut and profile.
A plastic one like they make, but with a sliding/folding adjustable length.
A plastic one, with a pistol grip.
I suspect in a year or two CM&T, Magpul, and a dozen other companies etc. will get hot on those last two. If not, they're fools.

Follow-Up: Range Report II: Ruger PC 9 Carbine

Cathedral - by David Macaulay

Fire and cathedrals are nothing new.
This 1986 PBS documentary, based on the Caldecott Medal-winning book by David Macaulay, should give you a bit more insight into the topic.
Enthusiastically recommended.

Borepatch yesterday, in the same vein .

Sunday Music: Kool & The Gang - Summer Madness

Original cut released in 1974, extended cut a year later.
Either 40+ years ahead of its time, or timeless. Take your pick.

Long Past Time To Get A Net

 

 

In my travels, I was in a department store the other day. As I made my way to where what I wanted was located, I could hear someone loudly mother-effing everyone from 50 feet away, over the buzz and throng of shoppers. He proceeded to circle the entire store, shouting, cursing, carrying on, pacing, and slamming items as he passed them. He was clearly and undeniably out of control. And most of the store staff, with the wits of hamsters, wasn't sure if this was a problem. No, jackass, having someone so out of control he's flinging heavy items onto the floor and yelling and cursing at the top of his lungs is everyday behavior, everywhere. Of  COURSE he's a problem, dipshit, so either deal with it or call the cops! Well, dozens of school shootings having taught people nothing, they had to ask an assistant manager if calling the po-po for out-of-control lunatic publicly trashing the store was allowed. I sh*t you not.

 

Fortunately, enough bystanders had essentially cordoned fucktard to the point that his only option was out the front door, and out into the parking lot, before store mismanagement could create a mass-casualty incident. Now he's the city's problem. And then his (adoptive, and also fucktarded) mother gets in the store staffs' faces for "creating a scene" (No ma'am, Junior Fucktard did all the scene creating and loud mother-f**king...perhaps you noticed?), and tried to assure one and all that the guy, well into his majority, six feet tall, and loudly violent, was "fine, no danger to anyone" because he was autistic. To her, apparently, taking him out in public when he was completely unhinged and out of control, and a threat to anyone within reach, seemed like a good idea. The depths some people will go to define deviancy downwards is breathtakingly unbelievable until you have your nose rubbed in it.

 

Which brings us to larger realms of discussion of the same phenomenon.

 

Mind you, I'm not advocating anything here, just stating clinical facts.

Given two-plus years to adjust to the reality of a Trump presidency, and despite how unpalatable it may be for them to acknowledge that reality, the fact remains that the Left is simply incapable of maintaining a grip on reality.

 

psychosis

noun

noun: psychosis; plural noun: psychoses

A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.

 

psychotic

adjective

 

 relating to, denoting, or suffering from a psychosis.

 "a psychotic disturbance"

 synonyms:

severely mentally ill, insane, mad, certifiable, deranged, demented, of unsound mind, out of one's mind, not in one's right mind, not together, crazed, lunatic, unbalanced, unhinged, unstable, disturbed, distracted, stark mad, maniac, maniacal, manic, frenzied, raving, distraught, frantic, hysterical, delirious, mad as a hatter, mad as a March hare. delusional adjective characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder.

Who, looking at the Left, as exemplified by current leadership, could seriously contend that they're merely misguided, misinformed, or sincerely but goodheartedly mistaken?
They openly advocate confiscatory levels of taxation, draconian attempts to dictate thought, word, and deed in every aspect of everyone's life, and embrace the wholesale destruction and starvation of the society to bring it into compliance with their barking mad fantasies.

Global warming, shown again and again to be nothing other than political hoax and junk science of the rankest order, still rules their thinking. They're Paul Ehrlich acolytes, stuck in 1968.

The want wide open borders, consequences to the nation be damned, purely so they can undo the realities of a majority overwhelmingly more-educated white society, in order to achieve irrevocable political power for themselves and their cronies.

They have robed lunatic acolytes who think one federal judge can re-interpret the Constitution and all federal code on account of his or her purely personal whims, and dictate national security and federal policy from one bench in the Ninth Circus.

In the nonsensical frothings of functional retards like Avocado Occasional Castro, and the knee-jerk anti-Semite death-cult mutterings of the two jihadists all recently inflicted on Congress, even professional meatheads like Chuck U Schumer and Queen Alzheimer's Pelosi have begun to see inklings of what happens when they hand the revolution over to the machete-wielding cannibal younglings.

Do they stop any of this behavior, upon mature reflection? Censure them? Remove them from the chambers of power, for cause (as is their right)?

Hell, no!

They double down on it.

When their frothing partisan witch-hunt and attempted coup predictably explodes in their faces, they try to gaslight the once and current Attorney general, who accuses the law enforcement and intelligence communities under the illegal Kenyan president of turning the full force of governmental power against his political opponent for political reasons. They feign shocked incomprehension at how using secret intelligence courts and vague malarkey about imaginary foreign influence as carte blanche to go trolling through then-billionaire and current POTUS' entire life and business dealings is banana-republican at best. Then they turn on their attack dog for failing to manufacture fake news goods, when he and his rabid Shrillarites turn up nothing but a couple of sleazy lawyers self-sliming themselves.

And then double down, and claim there was something, rather than nothing, there, even though they had two years and millions of dollars to find something, anything, and came up empty.

These are not the actions of rational people in control of their faculties.
They are not, despite the likelihood of criminal indictments potentially all the way to the entirety of the last administration, the actions of merely evil people facing the  consequences of their crimes coming to fruition and punishment.

These are people deep in their own fürherbunker, cheerfully directing sweeping counterstrokes by armies long ago wiped out and surrendered, and waving their arms in delusional glee as they imagine their triumphant return to power and the destruction of all their enemies, real and imaginary.

Such satire pales in the face of documented reality.

One does not put delusional psychotics in charge of anything.
One does not indulge their rants.
One throws a net over them, straps them down, and medicates them into oblivious silence, until the rabid squirrels in their heads stop running the bearings off their exercise wheels, and they can once again be re-acquainted with reality.
If necessary, by electroshock therapy to the temples.

These are not sane, evil people you're dealing with.
These are insane evil people you're dealing with.
Cornered, unpredictable, unreachable, and with an army of similarly deranged flying monkeys every bit as irrationally delusional as their psychotic overlords.

They're either going to have to be put into restraints (gently or not), and then secluded and treated according to the magnitude of their psychoses; or they're going to have to be put down like rabid dogs.

There is no longer any third option. One does not let a mad man into the cockpit or onto the bridge of a jetliner or aircraft carrier, and one cannot abide them running rampant citywide, creating chaos and mayhem at every place the voices in their head so direct them.

That there is going to have to be an intervention is a given.
Whether they survive it is an open question.
But whether the insaniacs of Leftardia can be trusted with any power whatsoever, for generations at minimum, has been decided in the negative, without any other recourse.

They are going to have to be removed unless and until they can at least maintain the façade of sanity. If that's even within the realm of possibility for them.

But go they must.
That much is beyond any dispute.

The rest of the country has been patient beyond sainthood waiting for them to come back into the fold of reality.
It isn't happening, and probably never will.

The only choice that remains, for them, is whether they go quietly, or forcefully.

 

And don't think for a second, even though I didn't mention them or show faces, that the ABCNNBCBS media is off the hook in this either. They belong in the same padded wagon.

Spring Cleaning II

As mentioned earlier, Spring has sprung. Besides better days and weather, most of us have also rolled our clocks forward in service to a stupid idea from when America was 80% rural (except for those of you who live in states with common sense, who refuse to play The Man's game). But there are a few other seasonal tasks you should get after now besides screwing up your sleep patterns.

When does your CPR card expire? (You have one, right?) If you haven't bothered in awhile, catch up. It's been dumbed down to the stupid simple level, and technology is now there to help you out. Call up the local chapter of the Red Cross or American Heart Association, and get a new card.

FWIW, Red Cross also can roll it into a (very) basic first aid class, in one day.
OTOH, American Heart's card is good for 2 years, vs. only 1 for the ARC. Choose one or the other, but bust a move. And if your employer offers it or pays for it, you'd be a fool not to take the class.

American Red Cross

American Heart Association

Oh, you've already got your CPR and First Aid stuff together?
Think about taking a CERT class. (Another class frequently paid for by employers. Sometimes even on company time!)
Or upgrade basic first aid to EMT, or to Wilderness Medic.
(See if you can guess what first aid after a disaster is like, when everything is impacted/wiped out: like being in the Amazon jungle or the sub-arctic tundra. Learning to improvise is a survival skill. Much more so than learning to dial 9-1-1 is.)

And you probably moved your clocks up. Here in earthquake country, that's also when you should be checking over your emergency/disaster stuff. Add to your stash of supplies, rotate food and water. Pull old batteries and purpose them for everyday use, and put fresh ones in the O Sh*t! Kit. Change the batteries in all smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. (I do the clocks too. YMMV.)


Go through your car kit (you have one of those in each vehicle too, right?), and swap the cold and wet clothes for hot and wet clothing. Unless you have dehydrated or hardtack lifeboat rations, swap out what's in the car, rotate it into regular eating, and put fresh stuff in the car kit. Water your plants with the water, and put freshly bottled water back.

The medicine in your first aid supplies in the car should be nothing but tablets. No gelcaps. Unless you're very rich, or not too bright. (I don't know you, so I can't say which. If pressed, I'll make a guess.) But adhesives, including medical tape and band-aids, also die in hot-and-cold storage in a vehicle. Make sure yours are okay, and/or replace the ones that have gone bad. This is even more true of barrier gloves. They die in cars. Keep just a couple of pairs in the car, and swap them out several times a year, and whenever you use them. I get mine free where I work, and usually come home with a pair or two in my pockets.
If you don't, buy a box, put 2 pair in car and first aid kits, and change them out every month or two. Then you'll never pull on a pair that disintegrates when you pull them on.

If you have anything else, like tools, spares, or equipment, make sure it's all there and in good working order. Needing an air compressor and finding out it doesn't work in BFE at 3AM is not the way to do things. Ditto for things like spare fuses, spark plugs, tire patches, hose clamps, etc. If you've been meaning to add something that's missing, and needful, do it. Make sure everything is clean, not all rusted out. If it is, clean it up.

Doing things like function checks on generators should be a monthly task, but if you're too smart for that kind of sense, at least do it semi-annually. Like now.

And if you're looking at this on a computer, make an inventory list of what's where: home, car(s), office/shop, etc.
Highlight the items with expiration dates, or that are perishable.
Put one list in the kit inside a sheet protector, or laminate it.
Keep one on the home computer or your phone. Now you have an easy way to make a shopping list for what needs to be replaced or added.

If you do this regularly, on time, 99.9999% of the time, you'll never need it. If you put it off and let it slide, you can count on Murphy making an appearance, and you with a half-assed set of gear to deal with things. Ask me how I know.

If you're really on it, do a drill: See how long it takes to get your crap together, whether to stay, or to go. Find what and who the weak links in your Clever Plan are. Straighten both out, gently, but firmly.

And assume everything you depend on is gone: power, water, internet, POTS, ATMs, the works. Test your plan hard. Otherwise, if you half-ass it, and expect minimal problems, you're planning to fail when it's worse. As Gen. Honoré ("Don't get stuck on stupid!") told the idiots of officialdom in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana after Katrina, "You all didn't really plan for a disaster, you just planned for an inconvenience."
Don't be those guys. Plan for a full-blown sh*tstorm. Fail now while you can fix it, and your life (and your family's) and welfare isn't at stake. Then correct the deficiencies.

Lastly, put an ICE ("In Case Of Emergency") number in your phone(s); update as necessary.
Call all those numbers and check them. (Dumbass Baby Brother decided after nothing but robocalls to simply turn off his landline one year. And told no one. Least of all me, merrily listing the disconnected-and-no-longer-his number on about a thousand applications and next-of-kin notification lists. I only found out because someone tried to get in touch with me through him, and then couldn't. Good thing it wasn't the hospital after I was in a car accident. Check your contact numbers for functionality.)
If you have kids or close relatives, make sure they have your current phone numbers, emails, etc.
Update your medical information card behind your driver's license (You have one of those too, right?), including allergies, conditions, and Rx meds, for all members of your tribe. And yes, you should have your spouse's/SO's info, and they should have yours. When you're unconscious and can't answer is no time for family members to be playing "Twenty Questions" with a surgeon in the trauma bay at the ER.

None of this is hard. It's the kind of thing you can do on a Saturday afternoon.
Don't say "Screw it." Do it.
Then you can blissfully forget about it, knowing that you've got your crap together if bad things happen.

Got all this wired down tight, already?
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Not Busy, Just Pre-Occupied

Oh, did I mention? It's Spring outside.
75°, sunny, shorts-and-T-shirt weather all week.

All y'all have fun. When something gets my attention, I'm sure I'll wind up the hamster and crank it out.

For now...just not feeling it.
And a couple of new bangsticks to play with at the range one of these days.

Breaks down to backpack size.
Cocking handle now on the left side, and mag well set up for G26/19/17 mags.
Still deciding on an optical supplement for the Mk I eyeballs.
Ruger starts making these in .45ACP for 1911 mags, and I'll take a dozen.

Sunday Music: Tangerine Dream - Love On A Real Train - State Azure cover

Every once in awhile, the algorithms of YouTube align, and they burp out something new that's genuinely worthy of a look or a listen. This cover of the original Tangerine Dream track from the RiskyBusiness soundtrack in 1983 is one such serendipitous happy accident.

BTW, the guy laying it down filmed himself doing it in real time, which is some prodigiously good synth and dub work. Dude should get the rights to this and release it IRL; it's better than the original, IMHO.

And I'll leave you with visions of the confectionary Rebecca De Mornay in her 1980s prime somewhere in the mists of your consciousness...

But Wait! There's More!

An Open Letter To Concerned American And WRSA

Western Rifle Shooters Association site has a simple comments policy:
Anything Goes.
Period.
Don't like it? Lump it.

That can be rather abrasive, to both host and hosted, but Concerned American has maintained it despite brobdingnagian reasons to swing a ban hammer, and for consistent altruism and principled reasons. But he hints none too subtly that things are coming to a close:

"Before WRSA turns into just another abandoned website, what else needs to be discussed?
Open thread.
And no, not tomorrow.
But sooner rather than later."

Dear CA,
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re nowhere close to done, any more than the Patent Office needed to be closed in 1875 because “everything has already been invented.”

You have an unavoidable (within the constraints of posting at liberty) set of OCD trolls who just can’t help themselves and won’t take their meds, but in recent go arounds, I counted about a dozen and a half folks calling the Usual Suspects out for their cut-and-paste shitposting and general underbridge-dwelling behaviors. So even trolls can’t stop the signal, Mal.

As to what’s left to cover, we both know the woke fraction is outnumbered 20:1 by the new-to-the-game-yesterday fraction, and probably always will be.

One such info-bleg gem was a thread or two down:

“My wife and I have a 14 yo, 1 college grad, and in-laws at home and what I wish WRSA provided was more professional / expert advice for securing our home and being able to hold out until the zombie wave passes. How much food, water, alternate water options, guns, ammo, erecting (not the blue pill) a better home defense, etc… I hope WRSA will start a regular series on this, because there are millions of us that need this practical and critical information as we cannot “bug out” anywhere due to the family makeup.”
Link

Norm Abram and Bob Vila by way of James Wesley ,Rawles?
You could go for days to weeks on that topic alone.
Rural version, suburban, and yes, even urban, for those too stuck to budge.
Start from the basement retreat or saferoom, work upward and outward room by room, to outer walls and doors, planters, landscaping, fenceline, and so on. In bite-sized chunks.

And have done before, and will need to do again. Like Walt Disney’s classics release schedule, your audience is new every several years, and as long as you (we) have been doing this, you’re probably on your second or third generation, overall.

You are John Connor at the end of T3, and your site is the CB.

What you do with it is your business, but beyond the OCD trolls, you still have quite the audience, the vast majority of whom just lurk here and observe. There are maybe 50-100 commenters out of 7K hits/day. And they come there because you’re not pimping anything for personal gain, and have no axe to grind except liberty and common sense. That’s incredibly rare on the net.

And you have a Who’s Who of solid content producers “in the trade” with rock-solid bona fides who read and post in Comments, and have had for some time.

I would argue that if you have the inclination and time, the candle there still has a lot of inches left on it.

Don’t let the turkeys get you down.

I say this in full (and grateful) acknowledgment of the symbiotic draw of readers here from there, and there from here, over the years.

DOA: He Brings Too Much Gropitas

h/t American Spectator via Cold Fury

So long, Gropey. It was funny while it lasted.

Maybe instead of running for president, you and Fat Bill can go out together on the Hooters circuit.

Spring Cleaning

Upsides:
I can see areas of floor I haven't seen in months.
The Cat has the rips, because there is now a runway through one room that used to be piles of piles.
I've got stuff I forgot I had.
Including my ARRL study guides. This year I start working on tickets, I swear.

Downsides:
I'm not 18 any more.
Neither is my back.
I'm running low on Motrin today.
Tomorrow, I'm going to pay for this. Heavily.

Fixed It For Ya

Fox is taking a lot of crap because some Common Core grad on their chyron biffed the newsbar under their morning show. They've probably already sent the poor schlub to re-education camp.

Fortunately, every pencil has an eraser.

Your Math-Fu Is Weak, Prog-san

r/t comments

 

Weimar x Zimbabwe = Venezuela

h/t Daily Timewaster

Evidently from this photo, the easiest way to become a millionaire in Venezuela today is to pick up that many pesos with a wheelbarrow.
(Hot Venezuelan chicks wanting to become American brides for the price of a Big Mac combo!)

Apparently, those bills are worthless as anything but kindling or toilet paper.

Ponder how utterly valueless they'd have to be to just be sitting in the gutter like that, in such numbers.

A smart socialist government (oxymoron alert!) would be selling that crap on E-bay as souvenirs, for hard-currency $US.

A boxed set with Zimbabwean $1,000,000 notes and Weimar reichsmarks might even fetch a pretty penny as a collector's set. Maybe even a penny and a half.

Literally.

Evita Guervara-Castro's office could not be reached for comment.
To be fair, she may be in Caracas, trying to salt away a nest egg of Venezuelan pesos, as that hoard there has to be about what she made in tips the year before her fellow NYFC retards elected her, to dethrone both Speaker Alzheimers and Mad Maxine Waters as the Stupidest Women In Congress.

Unconfirmed rumors are she plans to give away those Venezuelan pesos to help pay for that green New Deal, after they outlaw cars and cows, and nobody has a job but the government gives away money to everyone, and just prints more money to pay for it.

Cuz that'll so work.

Or maybe she's going to use it to pay back her college loans for that international relations and economics degree from Boston U. At least then they'd be getting fair market value for what was delivered.

Random PPE Notes

In regard to CA's ongoing "15 Fighters"* series at WRSA, this response regarding sundry PPE:

Latex is a fool's errand for gloves.
1) You risk a severe and permanent dermatitis any time you expose yourself to it. No one uses it professionally if they can help it.
2) It starts weakening and breaking down starting the day it's made. After several months, even under best storage conditions, the product is generally worthless. If you bought low-budget shit, a lot shorter timespan than that. Including pinhole gaps, which means you're wearing latex mesh pantyhose, not a fluid barrier, and will find out in the least fun way, when it counts.
3) Nitrile is what you want: it lasts longer, and avoids the latex allergy problems, for minor incidental contact.
4) For those with prior service in the dot mil, no points for knowing that the CBRN overgloves were heavy butyl rubber.

Those are for serious chemical problems, and should be worn inside an oversized sacrificial pair of heavy leather gloves, lest you puncture them while working with anything sharp or high-stress.


N95 masks are a minimum, and will work for TB and ordinary minor exposures like colds and flu.
If anything more serious is about, you want N100/P100 filtration, followed if necessary by a mask rocking a combination acid gas/organic vapor cartridge.

In some environments, the half life of your filter may be measured in minutes, and nothing but a dedicated air SCBA will suffice.
If you aren't going to learn enough to be your own NBC NCO, you're setting yourself up to fail, in a situation where fail=die.
Possibly twitching and jerking in convulsions, or a slow, agonizing debilitation from a hemorrhagic fever.†
You can't half-ass that stuff, unless you have a death wish.

Unless they're factory sealed, military charcoal suits are Airsoft window dressing with little effectiveness. Use one for practice, but know that it provides virtually zero protection for CBRN or BBP.
Tyvek overgarments work for BBP, as well as nuclear fallout protection.
(Radiation and problematic chemical gasses, not so much.)
If you have more money than sense, you can go all the way up to a Level A Encapsulating Suit, but they require testing annually to verify that they're still working properly, and they go for $800-$2K@. And don't include the requisite PAPR or SCBA to breathe, which is another $500-$1K.
They're also bulky, hot, and will overheat you anywhere but above the Arctic Circle in about 30 minutes of average use, or 10 minutes of heavy work.
Like patrolling with just a weapon and LBE.

If fluids and blood-borne pathogens are your worry, wearing a full-face flip down shield, like you should always use for welding or metal grinding,

is a great idea for splash protection, which is exactly why they wear them in trauma work and the OR, especially if power tools are being used to cut things (like bones).
Spurting arterial bleeding or bone fragments in the face (or entering mucous membrane orifices like your mouth or nose) aren't funny, unless they bounce off your full-face deflector screen.
If you have a spare set of eyes in your medical kit, disregard the previous.

Not to mention they come in handy for urban SAR work where debris is a problem, in conjunction with other PPE, like breathing gear.

Oh, and kneepads always move around when you need them most.
Sew permanent pockets for oversized (in length and width) ones inside your trouser legs. You can cut up an old OD military closed-cell mattress pad, or a new extra thick yoga mat from Wally World with a utility knife, and make knee pads that will never be out of place, and provide as much cushion as you need, for generally less than the price of the tacti-cool pads that snag, pinch, cut off circulation, overstretch, shift, and fail just when you need them. You can also glue on jeans material or patches to the front side of your pads for abrasion resistance, and if you're a belt-and-suspenders guy, epoxy a square of velcro loop to your  pants, and Velcro hook to your pad, inside those pad pockets, so when you put it somewhere, it stays there until you take it out.

(If you apply an extra abrasive-resistant layer to your outback play togs, at the points on the legs where your legs push while low-crawling, and on the arms where your arms do the same, you'll triple the life of the garments for a modest expenditure of time, and a slight weight increase. You're not in the 3rd Infantry Regiment on post at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Customize your field gear for utility, not absolute parade-ground uniformity.)

The same fix on the outer leg and inner side of a pistol holster or leg pouch also makes a drop holster stay put, instead of becoming a dick-banging castrating jockstrap when you run.
Hint: Don't use the stickum 3M counts on to keep Velcro patches where you want them.
Use clear Shoe Goo. (About $5/tube@ WallyWorld.)

It will outlast your garments if you press it in with a C-clamp overnight before you use it.
I have constructed entire garments using this, and then five years later, gone back and sewn the seams with a machine. The Shoe Goo was still bonding the fabric like it did on Day One.

And BTW, if you don't have heavy duty sewing tackle (including sail-mending gear), heavy thread in earth tones, buttons, an assortment of brass safety pins, plus some duct tape, Shoe Goo, cyanoacrylate glue, etc. squirreled away somewhere in your LBE/pack in a roughly fist-sized kit, for on-the-spot repairs of clothing and gear, you're doing it wrong.
Just saying.

Read the original post (hell, the entire series) at WRSA, and probably 75% of the comments (i.e. the ones from the non-knuckleheads not stuck on stupid). I didn't address normal work gloves in this response, because others covered it just fine. FWIW, my personal preference are leather Wells-Lamont gloves, by the dozen. YMMV.





*(This is fifteen guys doing, ahem, "community security work", etc. not 15 guys working in the woodshop, the ER, or anything like. But that work may encompass local clean-up, and not just infantry combat after the radioactive acid-rain nuclear apocalypse where Bladerunner meets The Road and The Book Of Eli by way of The Walking Dead.)

†( Nota bene: This is not intended as an Ebola-environment comprehensive load-out. Refer to the relevant WHO and MSF/DWB guidelines [look them up your own damn self] on proper equipment required and suiting up and de-suiting procedures for working in Ebolaville in the Hot Zone. If you don't do that, you're an idiot, soon to be a dead idiot.)

Void where prohibited by law.
May contain peanuts.
Remove shirt before ironing.
Wearing cape does not allow user to fly.

Ebola Update

Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man is worried Ebola has finally jumped the shark.
RTWT.

My response:

Not quite so much. (Yet.)

1) This is only moving fast for the DRC.
Compared to 2014 in West Africa, this epidemic is moving glacially slow.
Mainly, because unlike 2014, there is an effective experimental vaccine.
But this outbreak hasn't even reached exponential growth, unlike 2014, and it's still barely 1000 cases.
In other words, half the pure exponential growth seen in 2014.

2) The potential is still there.
We're talking about pre-literate anti-science tribal cement-heads.
They burn down the treatment centers, and steal the infected corpses back to do traditional funerals, where they fondle the festering carcasses. After eating rodentiiae from the bush that harbored the virus in the first place, and then undercooking them.
These are not humanity's brightest lightbulbs.

3) Most of them cannot cobble up bus fare to the next village, let alone air fare out of Africa.
Thank a merciful heaven.

That's on the plus side.

On the minus side:

1) The numbers we have are based on WHO and DRC self-reporting.
There is no reporting from multiple regions where they've burned the ETCs and chased out the survey teams. So it may be far worse. (The fudge factor in 2014 West Africa was 300%, minimum. I.e., if they report 100 casualties, there were at least 300.)

2) The "screening" at airports is kabuki theatre. This strain shows no fevers - the only sign checked at the airports - in 50% of confirmed cases.
IOW, this one will escape the jungle eventually, to a metaphysical certainty, five minutes after it gets to a city with an international airport. And you won't know until it's well and truly out. First notice of a case may come 5-40 days after it arrives. Now imagine how many contacts there are by Day 40, unknown and untraced. This is playing Six Degrees of Bacon with the Black Death.

3)Exactly as noted, there is no cure for Ebola, and contraction is a lifelong torture sentence, including repeated positive titer of live virus every time they check, at every known post-infection marker date: 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, etc. Like Chicken pox, it never goes away, it just becomes dormant. Until it doesn't.

4) A dozen cases won't overwhelm a city's resources: 12 cases in the US will overwhelm North America's resources.
There are only 11 BL-IV beds in all of the U.S., and none in Canada nor Mexico AFAIK.
Case #12 goes to outside hospitals.
(FTR, we had 10 Ebola cases simultaneously under treatment in the US in 2014. That's how close we came to disaster: two more patients.)

How bad is that?
One case - with the best CDC guidelines - overwhelmed all of Dallas' ability to cope, and took down a 973-bed major regional hospital for six months.
One. Case.

5) Absolutely nothing has been done from 2014 to now to better prepare any American hospital for Ebola. Neither in general, nor specifically. If anything, we're worse off.

6) The way to personally cope with Ebola isn't masks and gloves. That's too little, too late.
It's concertina wire and buckshot.
Followed by gasoline and road flares for the slow learners.
You aren't going to "save" nor "treat" a family member who gets it. They're effectively dead.

In Africa, Ebola Treatment Centers provide "palliative care".
Not IVs. Not medicine. Just cool cloths, cleaning up their vomit and diarrhea, and zipping them lovingly into body bags when they die.
Provided mainly by the 10-20% who manage to survive the disease, and have nothing better to do afterwards. Because as noted, they're still riddled with virus afterwards, in breast milk, sweat, semen, other secretions, etc. For God Alone knows how long afterwards.

Trying to treat even one person overwhelmed a major hospital.
You aren't going to do it with less than a staff of 50, and a warehouse full of gear, plus a crater-sized burn pit for waste products.

IOW, once it gets near you, you either self-quarantine inside a clean zone, or you don't.
There will be no going back and forth.
And bringing someone infected inside your clean zone will just make it a death zone, and kill your entire clan.

Welcome to Italy in the 1300s, when Plague arrives.

You either have enough food and water to wait it out inside a safe zone, or you don't.
In which latter case, you'll likely catch it, and then die.
So stock up on the appropriate canned goods.
In #10 food cans.
And OD ammo cans.