Spam Comments

This blog gets anywhere from 20-40 spam comments per day. I periodically scan the spam filter to make sure legit comments are being filtered out. Spam comments are trying harder and harder to appear as though they are legit. This one tickled my funny bone:

I appreciate the way you use your platform to advocate for positive change, social justice, and equality, making the world a better place for all.

This one obviously doesn’t read this blog.

Of Course It Was A Show Trial

The left keeps saying that Biden had nothing to do with the Trump prosecution. They are also lying. The third highest ranking official in the Department of Justice under Joe Biden, a man who was once the Acting Attorney General, Matthew Colangelo, resigned from his job at the DOJ in December of 2022 so that he could accept a job as Senior Counsel to the District Attorney of New York, working directly for Alvin Bragg. His job for Bragg was to oversee the NY AG’s most sensitive and high-profile white-collar investigations.

The issue is that Colangelo doesn’t have much experience in white-collar prosecutions. What he did have, however, is a wealth of knowledge about Donald Trump. As early as the Spring of 2023, the Daily Beast was celebrating the fact that Colangelo was the “secret weapon” of the DOJ that had been “dogging” Trump for years.

Colangelo delivered the opening statement at the trial, telling jurors that Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election; then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

Before he worked for the DOJ, he worked for the NY AG’s office as the Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice, before being hired to serve in the Obama administration as a Deputy Assistant to President Obama.

This is nothing more than the communists who are running the Obama administration are trying to seize power and overthrow the government.

Choosing a New Caliber

It’s Just Boris asks: “What, no M&P 5.7?”

I have handguns in .22LR, .38 Special, .380 ACP, 9mm, .40S&W, .357 Magnum, .357 Sig, and .45 ACP. Rifles are chambered in 5.56mm and 7.62mm. Adding a new caliber to the stable doesn’t just mean adding a firearm, it means adding magazines and ammo as well. It complicates the supply and storage situation here, and for that reason, adding another caliber means that it has to be a proven performer AND it has to fill another (at least to me) niche that must be filled.

The 5.7mm just doesn’t do that for me. What you are looking at with the 5.7mm is a bullet that is .224 inches in diameter. In a handgun, if I were to add it, the most likely candidate would be the M&P5.7, with its 5 inch barrel. There are no compact or carry sized 5.7mm pistols in Smith and Wesson’s lineup. Now that would mean that I have 22 round magazines, but magazines filled with what? The only real advantages that the 5.7 has, is in muzzle velocity and magazine capacity. Let’s say that I was interested in carrying lots of fast bullets.

  • The Speer Gold Dot 40grain hollow point has a stated muzzle velocity of 1750 feet per second from a 5 inch barrel. For reference, a .22LR is about 1100 feet per second.
  • Now compare that to the 9mm +P loadings from Speer (1220 fps), or Corbon and Black Hills (both 1250 fps), but a much heavier 115 or 124 grain bullet.
  • Similarly, using it to replace 5.56mm is a non starter. It’s essentially the same round, with the 62 grain green tip hitting 3000 feet per second from an AR carbine length barrel.

So I get 4 extra rounds with the 5.7mm over the 9mm, and I am defending myself with what is essentially a .22 pistol. So I am not interested in the 5.7mm.

But if I were going to add a new cartridge to the stable, I would choose one of three:

Good Questions

Some good questions to my security post of this morning, so let’s take a look:

  • I’m curious as to what you use as a training load equivalent?

I don’t for the higher powered 45 loads. How I address this, is nearly every pistol (as opposed to revolver) that I have is a S&W M&P: I have M&P40s, M&P9s, M&P45s, a Shield 380EZ, several Shield pluses, as well as Shields in 9mm, .380, .40S&W, and .45ACP. I also have a few Glock 19s and 19 clones, but I rarely shoot them and can’t remember ever carrying one.

Having the same models as carry pieces simplifies the manual of arms, makes repairs easy as they all look the same on the inside, and makes switching firearms and calibers smoother and easier. I know that full power loads don’t shoot the same, but it’s close enough for what I am doing here. I can still do A-zone shots quickly and effectively out to 15 or 20 yards with little effort, and that is all I am concerned with.

  • IDK if I’d go to a full size .45 tho, a single stack 9mm is very svelte, easy to carry, and similar capacity. A subcompact .40 a bit thicker, but smaller than the .45 and similar power/effect.
  • Open carry is legal in Florida on your own property. But wear a light cover garment anyway; they don’t need to know until it’s time for them to know, and you’re still “legal” if you step into the street.
  • It wouldn’t hurt to have a Glock 19-26 ish type pistol concealed appendix ish.

All handguns are a tradeoff. They have low power, not as much firepower as a long gun like an AR-10 or an AR-15, and not as much punch as say, a shotgun. We carry handguns because we aren’t sure whether or not we will need one, but it is useful to have one just in case. When I am at home, I have more freedom to carry a large handgun, hence the double stack .45.

One firearm on me at a time is all I need, especially when at home. All I need is something to bridge the gap that exists between me and a long gun. Remember, you carry a handgun in case you might be in a gun fight. If you KNOW you will be in a gun fight, endeavor to not be there. If that is impossible, bring a long gun, and bring a friend with a long gun, if possible.

When working on my property but outside, I just wear a baggy t-shirt and pull it over my OWB holster (a DeSantis Speed Scabbard that I used to use back when I was an IDPA competitor. A funny story about that below the divider)

When I am away from home, I avoid areas where I am likely to need a firearm, but just in case, I carry a pistol or revolver that is easy to carry and easy to conceal. Think a Smith and Wesson Shield, Shield plus, or J frame revolver. My EDC is usually a Shield plus (they hold 13 rounds of 9mm), or a J frame .38 loaded with wadcutters.

  • Have you made realistic plans for the “temporary” removal of your firearms after a “Good Shoot”?

I have caches of firearms. I have guns in safes. I’m not opening or revealing either to the cops.


I have a Tshirt that says “DeSantis, Concealment Perfected” on it that I bought some years ago. One of my wife’s coworkers saw me while I was wearing it out with her and some coworkers at an event. She told me that seeing DeSantis’ name on a shirt was a trigger for her because he was an evil fascist. I told her not to worry, that the shirt had absolutely nothing to do with the Governor, it was a brand of holsters that I liked carrying my pistols in, “and in fact I am carrying a handgun in one of their holsters now.”

She practically ran out of the venue and hasn’t spoken to my wife since. My wife says that she didn’t like the woman anyhow, but that saying what I said was hunting over bait, even if it was funny.

Security

A group of young men were seen in my neighborhood on at least three days last week. They were walking up to houses and knocking on the front doors. On the first day, if the homeowners answered, they would ask them a series of (in my opinion) intrusive questions, like how many people lived there, how much they made, how much they paid for the house, those sorts of thing. The second time they were seen, they were acting like they were selling solar systems, and when they came by yesterday, the same guys were selling home improvement supplies. Each time, the cops were called, but twice the guys were gone when the cops got here, and once the cops talked to them but they left- only to return the next day.

I was at work for the third day, and I told my wife not to open the door, and to tell them through the video doorbell that they were trespassing. She knows how to shoot, and I told her to then call the cops, and if the person tried to enter the house, to defend herself.

This is sketchy as hell. A bunch of us talk, and we have pictures of the three men involved, pictures of the two vehicles they were seen driving, and pictures of license plates. I will be keeping an eye out for those guys. Our neighbor’s husband works during weekdays, so I will keep watch over the house and wife while he is off at work.

I also pulled an outside the pants holster and mag holder out of the closet and will be wearing a larger firearm than my usual EDC whilst I am home. I will be open carrying an M&P 45, loaded with a 10 round mag filled with Speer Gold Dot G2 230grain +P hollow points while I am home (I got a great deal on a case of the GDHP last year from Lucky Gunner). Add a couple of spare mags to my belt, and I have 30 rounds of “you aren’t robbing MY fucking house without sustaining a sucking chest wound, asshole.”

Also available are shotguns, rifles, and other assorted mayhem should they give me a couple of seconds to get all of my shit in one sock.

I will keep an increased security lookout for the next few days.

Side note: The Speer G2 is a good looking load. 230 grains moving at 950 feet per second gives you 461 foot pounds of energy at close range. Expansion looks good. Check it out.

This is how Liberty Dies

I usually comb the Internet and social media in search of blog fodder. That is hard to come by today, because the Internet and the news cycle is dominated by the left cheering that the sitting President was able to toss his main political opponent in prison. This makes it difficult to find anything to write about that isn’t simply TDS porn.

Trump understood something that Biden does not: Throwing your political rivals in prison may make your supporters cheer with glee, but at the cost of destroying the very rule of law that always made this nation the shining beacon on the hill. That is no more…

We have officially joined the long list of nations where votes don’t matter, and dictators have their political opponents jailed or killed.

Loads Update

Here we are, in the summer. Time to revisit our calculations on power consumption for our planned solar installation. Here is the usage data, combined with temperatures for the month.

  • January: Average use was 27kwh per day. Average Temp 60 degF, High 82 degF, Low 35 degF
  • February: Average use 27kwh per day. Average Temp 61 degF, High 87 degF, Low 37 degF
  • March: Average use 22 kwh per day. Average Temp 69 degF, High 89 degF, Low 43 degF
  • April: Average use 20 kwh per day. Average Temp 71 degF, High 92 degF, Low 48 degF
  • May: Average use 36 kwh per day. Average Temp 79 degF, High 98 degF, Low 63 degF

You can see that electric use varies with the temperature. The hot months of summer are going to be more costly in terms of electrical use, but that is somewhat offset by more daylight hours. I will continue using the estimated figure of 48 kwh per day. If we assume an average of 6 hours of peak daylight per day, then we need to be generating about 8 kw per hour of daylight. Since I am pricing out 9.6-10 kw of capacity, I think that I am right where I need to be.

Now I need to figure out how much battery capacity I need.