Divemedic

I Guess the Climate Isn’t That Important

According to Canadian climate warriors, beating people who don’t follow their communist belief system is more important than saving the environment. Canada has decided that preventing Tesla from installing battery systems, solar panels, charging stations, and inverters in order to punish and attack Elon Musk is more important than saving the environment. They have removed Tesla from the list of products that are eligible for clean energy rebates, and are even talking about revoking Musk’s citizenship.

Leftism is a religion, and Musk has been excommunicated.

By Divemedic, ago

Court Says 21 Year Olds Are Minors

The 11th Circuit ruled that Florida’s law banning those under 21 from purchasing a firearm is Constitutional because:

The Florida law that prohibits minors from purchasing firearms does not violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments because it is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation. From the founding to the late-nineteenth century, our law limited the purchase of firearms by minors in different ways. The Florida law also limits the purchase of firearms by minors. And it does so for the same reason: to stop immature and impulsive individuals, like Nikolas Cruz, from harming themselves and others with deadly weapons.

The 11th Circuit on Friday ruled that the laws at the time of the nation’s founding restricted the purchase of firearms by minors and defined a minor as someone under the age of 21. The court stated that minors needed parental consent to access guns, even if they were performing militia service.

“First, minors generally could not purchase firearms because they lacked the judgment and discretion to enter contracts and to receive the wages of their labor. Second, minors were subject to the power of their parents and depended on their parents’ consent to exercise rights and deal with others in society,” Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor wrote on behalf of the majority. 

Except Nikolas Cruz wasn’t a minor. He was over the age of 18 when he bought that rifle. This means that those citizens who are 18, 19, and 20 years old are not adults, if one is to accept this reading of the US Constitution. If one were to accept this definition, then those in that age group cannot enter contracts, receive wages, and must be dependent upon their parents consent to exercise rights or deal with others in society. To say otherwise means that those in this age group are second class citizens.

This is a court that is clearly twisting the law to mean whatever they decide it will mean in order to achieve their desired results. Anyone who depends upon the courts to save them is sadly delusional.

Again, there is only one sure result- this nation will fall. Whatever replaces it is likely to not look like it did in George Washington’s day, or even in Teddy Roosevelt’s day. Those days are gone forever and will not return.

By Divemedic, ago

No Saving This Sinking Ship

Proving that Trump is merely trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, a total of 26 Republicans in the Senate voted to keep funding USAID in full. Of course, some of them made vague claims in order to make it seem pragmatic that they do so. The Republicans have both houses of Congress AND the White House, yet don’t seem willing to use that power to do anything useful. You have to admire the Democrats- they at least know how to get shit done. When they had power, they forced things through.

There is no saving this nation. We will keep spending until the entire thing collapses. Why? Because everyone agrees that cuts need to be made, but no one wants to actually make them.

This nation is doomed to failure, and anyone who can use a calculator should be able to see that.

Just because Democrats are your enemy doesn’t mean that the Republicans are your friends. They are all, every politician, in it for money and unchecked power.

By Divemedic, ago

Excessive?

Take a look at this video. A man resists arrest and the cops use force to get him under control.

At first blush, I would say that it looks proper- you resist arrest, the cops can use force to affect the arrest. However, if you look closely, the officer is holding handcuffs in his fist, and is using them like brass knuckles to punch the man in the face. Some rando on Twitter made the point that police training allows the use of handcuffs as weapons. He even posted an excerpt of the policy to make his point.

Except he was lying. If you read the entire policy and not just one isolated sentence that was selected to try and make a point, you see that it only permits police to use the cuffs to push on pressure points like the hands or ribcage. It does not mention using them to deliver blows, especially not to the head or face.

The use of brass knuckles, especially to deliver blows to the head, is lethal force. While police CAN use force to affect an arrest, nothing this man did justified shooting him, nor did it justify repeated blows to the head with a weapon. This arrest did not rise to the level of lethal. The cop was out of line. I would have made that point there, but like a chickenshit, he made his comments and then blocked me before I could respond.

I would also point out that lying and misleading people in order to make a point usually indicates that your point didn’t need to me made.

By Divemedic, ago

Ikea Ammo

Since we are getting tied into all of the holy grails of Internet gun arguments this month, I thought to myself, “Why not complete the circle and get people riled up about another one?”

Yep, reloading. I periodically hear from people who proclaim that reloading is the answer to whatever ammo discussion we are having, and I have even thought about doing it myself, but I just don’t see a reason to do it. I have blogged about reloading at least 4 or 5 times, but it’s been awhile, so let’s rehash it

There are a number of reasons given for getting into reloading ammo.

Cost Savings

I examined that back in 2020. To begin reloading, I would need to get the equipment, so right there you are looking at $400 for a progressive press set, and another $300 or so for tools and accoutrements. Then there is the ongoing cost of supplies:

ItemAverage Cost, $
Small Primers70/1000
Large Primers140/1000
Gunpowder50/lb
Brass60/1000
9mm Bullets200/1000
.45 Bullets400/1000
  • all supplies sourced from Midway Shooters’ Supply
  • Brass sourced from US reloading supply
  • Also note that 10mm & 308 brass are out of stock

9mm were the cheapest bullets I looked at, .45 were the most expensive (even more than rifle), so I used those two calibers to give us a good range of costs. So even assuming that we can get the supplies, it costs an average of $620 for 1000 rounds of ammo to be reloaded, plus the cost of the press and equipment, which would be amortized across the ammo you reload with it. It also takes about 2 hours to load 1000 rounds of pistol ammo. More for rifle.

Buying quality stuff, I can buy ammo right now for:

Calibercost $/1000 rounds
62gr, .223 Green Tip570
150gr, .308880
9mm FMJ200
9mm JHP330
.45ACP320
10mm1250

Except for 10mm and .308, it costs more to reload the calibers I have than it does to simply buy it, and that doesn’t even include what my time is worth.

Shortages of Supplies

Yeah, I get that you can load ammo when it is unavailable commercially, but it’s also true that there can be shortages of primers, bullets, and other reloading supplies. I think this is a wash.

Risk

Reloading carries a risk. A person loading in their garage is more likely to make an error than commercial reloading. While it is a small risk, it can’t be ignored. If you are running a 4 Sigma reloading operation, then there is a .006% chance that a round will be improperly loaded. That seems pretty good until you realize that one round in every 17,000 will cause a problem. This doesn’t happen in commercially loaded ammunition because they use lasers and precision scales to make sure that defects are rejected before they are sent out.

Conclusion

That leads us to the end. The first thing we see from this post is that there are not many things that we haven’t already looked at in the nearly 7,000 posts and 18 years that this blog has been around.

With that being said, reloading remains a poor choice, at least for me. You may feel differently with regards to your own situation. If you like to sit at the reloading bench, then this may be a good way to spend a Saturday. Some people like to tie flies, some like to load ammo. To each their own.

By Divemedic, ago

Gaslighting

A Congressional hearing was derailed when the Democrats refused to participate in the hearing because the Chairman ‘misgendered’ male Representative Tim McBride by referring to him as Mr. McBride.

Look, I don’t care if you identify yourself as a dog and insist on being called Snuffles, you cannot force me to participate in your delusions. Every time you get in a discussion with a tranny, they always try to gaslight you by claiming that gender and sex aren’t the same thing. That is complete and total horseshit. Gender has been the linguistic representation of sex since, well, forever. From the 1898 version of Webster’s dictionary:

GEN’DER, noun [Latin genus, from geno, gigno; Gr.to beget, or to be born; Eng. kind. Gr. a woman, a wife; Sans. gena, a wife, and genaga, a father. We have begin from the same root. See Begin and Can.]

1. Properly, kind; sort.

2. A sex, male or female. Hence,

3. In grammar, a difference in words to express distinction of sex; usually a difference of termination in nouns, adjectives and participles, to express the distinction of male and female. But although this was the original design of different terminations, yet in the progress of language, other words having no relation to one sex or the other, came to have genders assigned them by custom. Words expressing males are said to be of the masculine gender; those expressing females, of the feminine gender; and in some languages, words expressing things having no sex, are of the neuter or neither gender

Gender is from the word “engender,” a word which literally describes how something was created, caused, or born. If you have a Y chromosome, you were born with a penis, you are a man. There are only four lights.

By Divemedic, ago

Good Guys with Guns

A study of records shows that CCW holders stopped 180 of 515 active shootings in the decade that ended in 2023. When the study excluded gunfree zones, it turns out that there were 350 active shooters, and private citizens stopped more than half of all active shootings, did so with fewer lost lives, and fewer bystanders hit.

In fact, in those 180 shootings, only one innocent was hit by the CCW holder, only two of the CCW holders was killed, and none of them were of any hinderance to law enforcement. In 44 of those shootings, the CCW holder was injured.

Compare that to the police. In the 156 active shooters stopped by law enforcement, police accidentally shot the wrong person 4 times, killing fellow officers twice and private citizens twice. That’s more than double the rate of private citizens accidentally shooting a bystander.

During the events, 27 police were shot and killed while trying to stop an active shooter, a 7.7 percent rate, which is nearly six times higher than the rate for private CCW holders.

By Divemedic, ago

Brand Wars

When it comes to the gun world, there are few things that cause disagreements more often than brand wars. I have said before, and I continue to say that there is no such thing as a brand that is perfect for everyone. There are, in my opinion, models or even brands that are too unreliable to be good for anyone.

Grip angle

The angle of a handgun’s grip to the plane of the barrel can vary from the 55 degrees of the Luger P08, to the 18 degrees of the 1911 and Smith and Wesson’s M&P autoloaders, or even 17 degrees of the old Ruger P95. Glocks have a grip angle of 22.5 degrees. Each person will have an opinion as to which one fits their and and shooting style.

Whichever grip angle is right for you will see the pistol pointing at the target without any conscious effort on your part. Here is how to check yours:

  1. Set up a target in a safe area (even if you shot it, the bullets wouldn’t go through and hit someone or something important).
  2. Unload your pistol.
  3. Present your gun at the target as though you were going to shoot it. Get a good sight picture.
  4. Lower the gun (or holster it, if you have one).
  5. Close your eyes. Present the gun again at your target.
  6. Open your eyes. Are your sights on target?
    If they’re too high, the grip angle may be too steep.
    If they’re too low, the grip angle may be too shallow.
  7. Repeat this at least 5 times to be sure you get consistent results.

If all your pistols have about the same grip angle, you won’t have to adjust your aim when switching pistols. That is why all of my carry handguns are of the M&P line. You will get the same results if all of your carry pistols are Glocks, or Springfield, etc. As log as your grip angle is consistent, you can change handguns without a problem. If you change to a new grip angle, you can figure about 1,000 rounds to adjust to the new one. Pick a grip angle you are OK with and stick with it.

Bore Axis

Another thing that matters is bore axis. The bore axis is the distance between the top of the shooter’s gripping hand and the center of the barrel. In a pistol with a hammer, this distance can be quite large.

Note that the line of where the gripping hand is is located quite a bit below the center of the barrel. This forms a lever, with the fulcrum being where the web of the thumb grips the backstrap of the pistol, and the force being applied down the center of the barrel. This force causes two types of recoil- backwards through the barrel, and a bit of muzzle flip. The larger the bore axis, the more pronounced the muzzle flip. The greater the muzzle flip, the more time it takes to get your sights back on the target for a follow up shot. For most people, this won’t really be noticeable beyond a perceived increase in recoil. 

The bore axis for the following handguns is:

  • The 1911 has a bore axis of 1.75
  • Glock 17 Gen 4 is 1.26 inches.
  • Smith and Wesson M&P 2.0 is 1.41 inches
  • Sig 320 is 1.78″
  • Sig P226 is 1.80

As a general rule, striker fired pistols will have a lower bore axis than do pistols with a hammer, because the fire control group of a striker fired pistol takes up less room.

Grip Size

I have large hands and a pretty good grip strength. That means I can handle full powered handguns and double stack magazines. Not everyone funds this comfortable. Make sure that the grip of the firearm fits your hand. and easy way to do that is see if you can push in the magazine release with your gripping hand’s thumb without shifting your grip. If you can’t, that particular handgun may be to fat for your hand.

Another consideration is grip length. If you are gripping the handgun and your pinky finger is hanging in the breeze, maybe your hand is too large for that pistol. One solution is an extended magazine with a boot on it, like the ones they have on the Taurus Millenium.

Conclusion

There is a lot that goes into handgun design- the grip angle, the bore axis, the size and power of the cartridge, the weight of the handgun, and many other factors go into the perceived recoil, accuracy, and the speed of follow up shots. Combine that with the ergonomics, style, and skill of each shooter, and the interplay makes a virtual unlimited number of possible combinations, making a determination of the “best” pistol impossible.

If you don’t yet have a handgun, find a gun range that rents firearms. See if a gun owning friend will take you to the range and let you shoot a few of his guns. In short, don’t let someone else tell you what gun you should buy. The only things that should matter are:

  • Is it reliable enough to go bang every time you squeeze the trigger?
  • Can you reliably get multiple hits with it?
  • Does it fire a cartridge that passes the FBI test of 12-18 inches of gel penetration? (This generally means 300 or more foot pounds of energy)
  • Is it small enough to do what you want to do with it? (Carry, home defense, etc.)
  • Pick a gun maker that offers a lifetime warranty. The pistols that they sell are generally pretty reliable.
  • If you are a more experienced shooter, make sure that you can pass the 5 test with it- Draw and get 5 hits in a 5 inch circle at 5 yards in less than 5 seconds.

I have seen far too many gun store employees try to sell people guns that are obviously not right for them. For example, selling a small woman a tiny pink colored .357 magnum. Don’t let someone else tell you what you like and what you need. You are the only one who can determine that. Others can only guide you there, but at the end of the day, it is your decision to make.

By Divemedic, ago