Uncategorized

I was looking for a small, easily maneuvered, pistol caliber carbine. Many of them were not any more compact than a rifle caliber carbine. I looked at AR platforms, as well as offerings from several manufacturers, and I just couldn’t find anything suitable. If you’re going to carry a firearm the size of a rifle carbine, you might as well carry a rifle carbine and get the improvement in power, range, and accuracy. Until, that is, I saw a CZ scorpion. Being the same length as an AR, the carbine was longer than I wanted, but the pistol version was exactly what I was looking for.

I plunked down $850 and bought one. It came with a pair of 20 round magazines and two 30 round magazines. The pistol has a 7.25 inch barrel, and the end of it has a flash suppressor threaded onto the barrel. The weapon also has picatinny rails and iron sights, as well as provisions for a single point sling. Removing the flash suppressor reveals a set of threads that fit my Tundra suppressor.

The charging handle is non-reciprocating and has a handy slot to lock the bolt open. You can give it the old H&K slap to put the weapon in battery, while getting that satisfying 80’s action movie sound. (OK, just kidding about that last part)  The charging handle on mine is on the left side of the weapon, so it can easily be operated with the left hand, but it is easily changed to the other side in the event you are a left handed shooter.

The magazine release is mounted on the front of the trigger guard, and is easy to reach and operate with the trigger finger. The safety is mounted on both sides of the pistol just above the grip.

Magazines are an opaque polymer, and there are generic as well as factory versions.

I only had two complaints: the pistol is too bulky to be fired with one hand, and my hand rested right on top of the safety, and caused it to rub the palm of my hand raw when I fired the weapon.

I wanted to put a stock on the pistol to make it easier to handle, but I also didn’t want to make an NFA weapon out of it. I found a solution: a pistol stabilizing brace. I bought mine at preppergunshop.com and it came with 4 generic 32 round magazines for $199.99. This allows me to stabilize the pistol for shooting, and doesn’t require the year long wait for approval.

The second problem was solved with the removal of the safety lever on the right side and replacing it with a right side safety delete from HB industries. It was easy to do: just field strip the pistol, remove the right side safety by unscrewing the set screw with a 1.5mm allen wrench, and replace it with the delete.

I took it to the range and put the Scorpion through its paces. It ate anything I fed it without complaint. I fired over 500 rounds through it. It fired subsonic, +P, and standard pressure loads in 115 gr, 147 gr, and 124 gr. I also varied between round nosed lead, FMJ, and JHP. All of them fed and functioned without a single failure. I fired 100 rounds with the suppressor- both sub- and super-sonic. No issues, and the subsonic rounds were about as quiet as dropping a paperback book on the floor. You could clearly hear the action cycling.

I turned on the laser sight I mounted, and put an entire magazine through the center of the target just as fast as I could squeeze the trigger.

Greta Thornberg is just the front, an empty set of pigtails. Her page is being written by her father and an environmental activist from India. 

A decade or so ago, I paid $400 for an EOTec holographic sight. I encountered all sorts of issues, the worst of which was the life of the batteries. So when I saw an online discussion about the new fad in microdot sights, I was less than enthusiastic.

US hospitals and drug companies are claiming that a Trump regulation demanding transparency in pricing is violating their right to free speech. The rule demands that health and pharmaceutical companies disclose pricing of their services as well as the discounts that they negotiate with trade groups and insurance companies, and they don’t want to do so.

Let me explain:
I went to the emergency room about ten years ago because I woke up with my heart racing along at 140 beats per minute. An EKG showed an abnormal heart rhythm called Afib. I was far too young for that, so I was admitted to the hospital. They attempted several doses of medicine to no effect. After an hour or so, while the hospital was running tests, the problem resolved by itself, They hospital held me overnight, and then I was discharged.

A week later, the bill came in the mail: it was over $13,000. I went in to talk to the hospital’s billing department to give them my insurance information. They gave me a revised bill that reflected the “negotiated discount pricing” from the insurance company. The new bill was $1,100, with $500 of that being my copay and the insurance company paying the other $600.

How can a negotiated discount be over 90% off the full price? Since the hospital is willing to accept that low of a price, it seems to indicate that they can make money at that price, so what is the deal? My opinion is that the insurance companies need prices for uninsured people to be scary high, so that people all clamor for insurance. I could see a discount of 10, 20, or even 30% off, but more than 90% as a discount seems to be some kind of scam.

This is why the companies hate this rule demanding transparency, because that practice would have to come to an end, once people realized they are being duped. Disclosing prices and discounts would be a great way to allow consumers to decide for themselves whether or not to patronize a business. Can you imagine any other business where the prices are not disclosed to the consumer until after purchase?

Bring free market pricing back to health care. Let consumers know the price beforehand, and watch medical pricing become more affordable.

I spent a good ten minutes formulating my points opposing another’s opinion on gun control. This was what I got in return:

Fuck it. I’ve done my research and have been immersed in all this mess the last couple of days and just all of a sudden, I don’t care about making my point or hearing any more of yours.
Corvus oculum corvi non eruit, right? Have a good life.

I especially love the condescending use of a Latin non-sequitur (see what I did there?) at the end.

Referencing my last post: I used to laugh at people who believed in conspiracy theories with regards to the government staging or encouraging mass shootings in order to enact more gun control. I was even willing to believe incompetence was the cause of “Fast and Furious.” However, start looking at the incompetence involved: 

The recent church shooting has everyone fortifying their positions on gun control. The would be mass murderer used a shotgun, despite the fact that he was apparently a prohibited person. However, there is a monkey wrench in that theory.

Under Texas law, a convicted felon may possess a firearm in the residence in which he lives, once five years have elapsed from the date his sentence was discharged. What this means is that, while he may not have been able to buy a firearm from a dealer (who would have had to follow 18 USC 922) there is no problem with him having a shotgun in his home.

Now suspicious me seems to notice that every time the gun control debate heats up, there is a mass shooting that seems to happen at the most opportune (for the Democrat gun banners) time. I am going to predict that this shooting, had Wilson not shot the bad guy in the face, would have been the poster child for nationwide UBC.

Virginia, Texas, and whichever state is convenient for the next time, are being used to push the narrative.

Reading about this interview between Crowder and this professor, the biggest problem that I have is that major universities have professors of hip hop. Yes, even Harvard. If you are majoring in hip hop, you are wasting your time and your money. (Hint: Dr Dre isn’t a real doctor.)

The saddest part of all of this is that most of those who would major in rap music are doing so using taxpayer funds in the form of Pell grants. You and I are paying our taxes so that some aspiring rapper can hand $150 to $500 per credit hour over to this guy. Once they get their degree, the graduate has spent tens or even hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and are now just as qualified for employment as they were before they started college.