On Cosmoline

Chris Byrne at The Anarchangel Blog talks about what he calls the most hated substance on earth - cosmoline.

Any long-time Cruffler (collector of curios and relics firearms) will understand his angst in dealing with cosmoline as we've all done it in the past. Personally, I've used the boiling water method, the Simple Green method, the steam method, and the hot car method. They all work - somewhat.

Read his whole blog post to get more tips on how to deal with it.

Update on the RightHaven Lawsuit Against the Armed Citizen

Clayton Cramer posted yesterday that the he plans to fight the lawsuit against him and The Armed Citizen by RightHaven LLC. Given that he won't roll over like a submissive dog to Steve Gibson's threats, it is going to cost money to fight it. He has issued an appeal on The Armed Citizen website for donations. I plan on making a donation and I hope that you will as well.

Handgun World Video Review of the Kahr P380

Bob Mayne of the Handgun World podcast has just done a video review of the Kahr P380. He notes that he has about 1,400 rounds through it so far.

Stephen Hunter's Ode to the .38 Super

Stephen Hunter has just written what I would term an ode to the .38 Super cartridge. His novels featuring the Swaggers have, in their own way, helped to build the mystique of the round. Whether it was the father Earl carrying one in "Havana" or the son Bob Lee using it in "Days of Thunder",  you knew that Hunter had a soft spot for it.

the .38 Super represented one allure of gun culture that only occasionally gets acknowledged, and yet one that is absolutely fascinating and all but impenetrable to those who don’t feel the pull. That is, it has charisma; it has personality, pizzazz, and vividness. It’s out of the ordinary, beloved by some, aggressively non-generic and it carries information with it. It says—and we love to say this—“I have thought hard about these issues and come to a logical conclusion and made these sound decisions. I am not passive; I am active in deciding about my own defense.”

So it was ideally suited to a novelist’s purposes; it’s what we call a resonant fact, and it’s why my characters never just carry “a gun” but instead have thought about, chosen and most importantly express themselves in their world by virtue of the gun and caliber they chose. Someone once said, “Beware the man who owns only one gun; he probably knows how to use it.” I would append to that: “Beware the man who carries a .38 Super; he knows what he’s doing.”

He notes that two factors that have kept the .38 Super in production are pistol competitions and the vagaries of Mexican gun laws. The latter is the result of Mexican gun laws which forbid "military" calibers such as 9mm and .45 ACP from civilian use and the former was the result of how Col. Jeff Cooper wrote the rules defining a "major" caliber for competition.

Hunter examines the pluses and minuses of the cartridge. In the end it works for him.

Which leads me to what the gun represents today and for whom it’s good. There is one person in the world for whom it’s a best choice: me. That is because I love the M1911 platform for its reliability and its heritage. It’s like shaking hands with John Moses Browning, with Sam Colt looking on fondly.

He concludes his ode to the .38 Super by saying,

Understand and love it for what it is: a cult cartridge with a whiff of romantic history to it, as launched from the most American of platforms. It has a place on the shelf of the safe that began as a place on the shelf of the memory and the imagination. As Pike said to Dutch, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

So if you want to read about an interesting cartridge with a cult following and, as Hunter call its, "a whiff of romantic history", go read this article. And while you are at it, go back and read his whole string of novels featuring Earl and Bob Lee Swagger. But be careful, you might end up like me and buy a 1911 in .38 Super.

They Are Shocked, Shocked I Say!

The British newspaper The Sun - not generally considered one of the "serious" newspapers - is running a feature on how their readers are shocked (!) about two teen-aged girls posing with their hunting trophies.

TWO teenage girls have shocked MY Sun by hunting down wild animals and posing with the corpses.

Sara-Rose and Katey Brandenburg are snapped smiling next to their kills which include a grizzly bear, zebra and giant eland antelope.

The gruesome snaps leave an unpleasant taste in Ishane's mouth: "So many people put so much effort into keeping animals safe, well and protected - only to be killed by spoilt girls who use these kinds of pictures for their MySpace page.

"I cannot see how some parts of the USA still allow this."

Fortunately, there are still some newspapers who take a more realistic approach to this. Her hometown newspaper, the Longmont (CO) Ledger, has a story about how the younger of the two - Sara-Rose, 15- may just become the youngest woman to take a North American sheep grand slam. She only needs to get a Stone sheep to round out the grand slam.

According the paper, Sara-Rose takes off tomorrow for a 12-day hunt in the Canadian Yukon in her quest to get the Stone sheep.

If she successfully kills a stone sheep, she will shatter the record for the youngest female winner of a grand slam. The current record-holder was 32 when she achieved the title.

You go girl!

H/T Say Uncle

A CMP Man-Haul

Courtesy of Blackfork we have this video of a "man-haul" at the CMP North Store at Camp Perry. One of these days I need to finish up my paperwork so I can do a "man-haul". However, I think I'll be going down to CMP South in Anniston, Alabama as it is closer. The video of those M-1D Garands has me drooling!

Exporting Guns to Mexico Canard

David Ignatius, in an op-ed in today's Washington Post, says the gun lobby is holding Mexico hostage. Forgive me but I thought it was the drug cartels and narco-terrorists that were doing this.

Ignatius blames both the Arizona illegal alien law and the lack of a permanent director for ATF on the gun lobby. I know it is a stretch but that is what the Washington Post pays him to do. He claims that Arizona enacted SB 1070 because it was concerned about the violence from the Mexican drug cartels who in turn get their guns from the US which is because we have such lax gun laws which in turn are because Congress and the Obama Administration are afraid of the gun lobby. I'm sure we can all see the logic there. Not!

Likewise, there is no permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives because the Administration is not willing to take the heat of a confirmation hearing. Ignatius follows this with the obligatory quote from Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign.

"The absence of a chief has hamstrung ATF's ability to aggressively target gun trafficking rings or corrupt firearms dealers and has demoralized its agents," Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote in a June 10 letter to Obama. Nearly two months later, the job is still empty, and there are no leading candidates.

Obviously, neither Ignatius nor Helmke saw my post on Andy Traver despite the fact that someone at DOJ was doing a Google search and found it. Nor have they ever gone to the website CleanUpATF.org where the demoralization of ATF field agents is usually traced to incompetent managers and the Office of Legal Counsel.

The rest of the op-ed goes into all the usual (and fallacious) arguments about 80% of confiscated weapons come from the United States, etc.

I guess it is worth reading if you have been suffering from low blood pressure lately and need a boost. Gun owners who have hypertension should avoid it at all costs.

New Jersey Gun Laws - Ripe for Challenge

Daniel Schmutter thinks New Jersey's gun laws are ripe for challenge. He should know. He is the attorney representing the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs in their lawsuit against the State of New Jersey over the state's one firearm a month rationing law. He also authored amicus briefs in both the Heller and McDonald cases on behalf of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms.


In an op-ed piece in the second-largest newspaper in New Jersey, The Record, he examines what the McDonald decision means for New Jersey's restrictive firearms laws. First, he says gun control advocates who say most of the state's gun laws would pass muster because they are "reasonable restrictions" are wrong. He notes that neither Heller nor McDonald said "reasonable" gun laws are valid under the Second Amendment. Furthermore, "reasonable" is not a legal standard that offers any basis for saying a law would survive a challenge or not.

As it turns out, New Jersey gun law offers fertile ground for challenge, not merely because the state has such strict laws but because New Jersey law is exceedingly aggressive toward the law-abiding gun owner.

New Jersey’s regulatory scheme is highly unusual in that it approaches gun control by categorically banning guns and then carving out extremely limited exceptions to the prohibitions.

Thus, for example, possession of handguns is generally prohibited unless the possession falls within certain narrowly defined exemptions, such as possession inside one’s home or place of business.

This has two main effects. First, it shifts the burden of proving lawful possession to the gun owner. Second, it keeps the circumstances under which one may lawfully possess a handgun very narrow.

Schmutter asks what would happen if one were to substitute "book" for "gun" in the law.  It would force readers and book owners to make absurd contortions in order to exercise a fundamental right. By Schmutter's hypothetical example, you wouldn't be allowed to have Tolstoy's War and Peace because it was a long book and had too many pages (think restrictions on standard capacity magazines) unless you were a Russian lit scholar at Princeton or Rutgers.

He concludes,

The New Jersey Legislature must face the reality that the gun owner and the book owner alike must be treated with equal constitutional dignity. After McDonald, we now see that the emperor has no clothes.

New Jersey gun law is upside down, and if the New Jersey Legislature does not fundamentally reform its scheme of regulating guns, the courts will likely do it for them.