The Wandering Minstrel

Today, the Better Half and I made our last trip to our local (California) shooting range. We haven’t been shooting in the several months since we have been acquiring our new home so we decided we would go today - our memberships expire at midnight tonight (June 30, 2010).

We have been members of the old range since 2006. We decided not to renew our membership despite the fact that we will still be in California on and off over the next year or so. When management recently ‘refurbished’ the range, they introduced a couple of ‘features’ that we don’t like.

The first feature is the flimsy teetering target holders which are no match for the T-bar holders they replaced. They are less stable, wobble back and forth and easily damaged by a not-so-well placed round.

The second feature is the replacement baffles downrange will bounce birdshot back towards the shooters. The rangemaster requires if you shoot your shotguns that you use 00 buckshot or rifled slugs. Both are more expensive than birdshot so we tend to shoot fewer rounds. In addition, slug ammunition cannot be used with either of our shotguns with chokes.

In the video, The Better Half fires five slug rounds with the Remington 870 Security Gun.

The good news is I got in contact with the Wickenburg Sportsman’s Club. We arranged for our safety orientation when we head back later in July. We plan on doing our shooting while we are in Arizona where you can open carry and you don’t have to register your long guns.

In the aftermath of the McDonald victory, Pro Second Amendment organizations gear up for more battles to be waged against anti-gun laws. Wayne LaPierre’s remarks after the 5-4 decision favoring the McDonald case seem to indicate that the NRA will begin picking off some of the more onerous gun grabbers . . .

“This is a landmark decision,” said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. “The Second Amendment — as every citizen’s constitutional right — is now a real part of American constitutional law. The NRA will work to ensure this constitutional victory is not transformed into a practical defeat by activist judges defiant city councils or cynical politicians who seek to pervert, reverse or nullify the Supreme Court’s McDonald decision through Byzantine labyrinths of restrictions and regulations that render the Second Amendment inaccessible, unaffordable or otherwise impossible to experience in a practical, reasonable way.”

Emphasis added.

Clickable image - The Better Half’s S&W .38 special “Rosie the Riveter” and Old Glory.

In preparing for a trip to Arizona in the not too distant future, I reviewed the prohibited carry rules at HandGunLaw.us. We wouldn’t want to unwittingly be in violation of the law, so I thought it would be important to take a look.

Here’s the prohibited places:

Places Off-Limits Even With A Permit/License

Prohibitions on carrying firearms in these venues apply to both open and concealed carry.

• Any establishment or event open to the public where the operator makes a reasonable request for you to give them custody or remove the weapon from the premises. A sign would qualify for such request. By law, cities and counties are required to offer on-site storage if they ban weapons but not all are in compliance.
• The grounds of any school, other than the parking lot. In order to be legal in the parking lot the weapon must be unloaded, and, if left in an unattended vehicle, such vehicle must be locked and the weapon out of sight.
• Commercial nuclear or hydroelectric generating stations.
• Polling places on Election Day.
• Correctional facilities (this includes the parking lot of such facilities).
• Game refuges (except during an authorized hunt).
• You can take a firearm onto school property if you follow the procedure below.

You are an adult in a vehicle and the firearm is unloaded before entering school grounds. Furthermore, if you must exit your vehicle, the firearm must remain unloaded and be secured (locked) within the vehicle, out of plain view (ARS 13-3102.I.1) Use caution and common sense if you must exit the vehicle with a firearm to secure it in the trunk (avoid causing a potentially serious disturbance)

One of our new Arizona friends told us that you could not carry within 1000 feet of a school. Since there are several schools in town (2 on a major thoroughfare) that worried me. I’m relieved to see that the rules won’t affect walking or driving past a school.

SCOTUS votes 5-4 in favor of McDonald. Chicago gun ban overturned.

ALITO, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II–A, II–B, II–D, III–A, and III–B, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts II–C, IV, and V, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SCALIA and KENNEDY, JJ., join. SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. BREYER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined.

The usual cast of commie justices dissent.

I have been reading some articles available at ShootingIllustrated.com on the general topic of in-home defense. There are three articles in particular that get you thinking about how you would go about defending your home, your property and your loved ones.

Home Defense motivational poster - clickable image.

The first article I read discusses techniques for operating your pump shotgun from a prone position. The article “Running a Pump Shotgun from the Ground” asks what would you do if you were to trip and fall or be knocked down by an assailant.

The next article I read was “Using Cover in the Home.” You might think your home is full of things that can stop a bullet, but you’d be wrong. Learn what makes for effective cover inside the home and what won’t have much effect on incoming fire.

Finally, in “Dealing With Home Invasions,” Sheriff Jim Wilson discusses methods and tactics for dealing with an armed intruder or intruders.

I spent most of my day today customizing the new HP G60-630us Notebook PC. I have a lot of favorite utility programs that I installed today.

I also installed the software for our digital cameras but there was a glitch. My installation disk was not compatible with Windows 7. Not to worry, I found a fix on Canon’s website and it went smoothly after that.

I backed up some files from the old laptop to the external half-gigabyte drive. I use Microsoft Office for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. I had quite a collection on the old hard drive (some were already backed up). Thanks to a tip from reader wolfwalker, I am able to connect an old external monitor and if the primary display goes black, I still have the secondary display.

The last thing I got done today was to install the software drivers for my Kensington docking station. It was quite painless and worked instantly.

I figured that was enough for today, but there are a lot more files and utilities to bring over. I’m using the new computer and setup to post this.

By the way, Windows 7 is a lot like Windows Vista with a few additional annoyances. No blue screens of death so far.

When I get up in the morning, I consult my list of RSS feeds to see the latest posts. I got to DrJim’s Every Blade of Grass blog and saw that he would be setting up for the annual ham radio Field Day contest sponsored by the American Radio Relay League. I asked The Better Half if she would like to take a drive down to their setup site at historic Fort MacArthur “Topside” in San Pedro and meet up with DrJim - something we have been meaning to do since we found out we’re practically neighbors. So, we drove the short trip down there and finally got to meet up.

In the clickable image above, DrJim and I are chatting about the amateur radio satellite communications setup he was setting up for the contest. When DrJim finishes the setup, he will have a couple of uplink/downlink antennas mounted on the stub tower with full azimuth and elevation control. The satellite communications will allow the United Radio Amateur Club to claim the bonus points for including his operation in the list of stations.

I was half watching a program on the History Channel today about the evolution of the revolver. They covered the history from before the period of European Pepperboxes to the latest revolvers.

Of all the antique revolvers shown on the documentary, my favorite was Sam Colt’s venerable Single Action Army revolver. The show mentioned the caliber of the gun as simply being “.45 caliber.” I seem to recall that these guns fired a .45 Long Colt, not to be confused with the .45ACP ammunition for semi-automatic pistols. According to GunWiki, .45 ACP ammunition is regulated to under 21,000 lbf/in² (145 MPa), while .45 Colt must be kept under 14,000 lbf/in² (97 MPa) to be safe in older guns.

Technical details notwithstanding, the Peacemaker sure is a pretty piece of Firearms Americana. Clickable image.