Buffalo Chip Machine Gun Shoot, Days 2 & 3

Sorry for the delay in getting the updates up, the other night saw me head into the Buffalo Chip to work the booth we had set up. Didn't know who was playing, but as soon as they started, it was pretty obvious.

If you look really close, you can almost make out Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons. Yup, ZZ Top was headlining that night. From our vantage point, they were about an inch and a half tall.

So, you're probably wondering just what actually happened at the shoot. Well, I've got some pictures of the idiot who put a camper at the back end of the range.

Here's a better picture of the baffle we installed with the help of the construction crew from the Chip.

Not much to report on Day 2, it was pretty busy when I arrived, and didn't let up until some weather moved in around 3. Once the weather moved off, it was right back at it until Mother Nature shut us down at dark.

Day 3 started the same as Day 2. Arrived to find a line of folks waiting to shoot. We were hustling pretty good until around 6. What effectively shut us down was last nights event, Kid Rock.

As you can see, we were pretty busy. We didn't even have time to clean up the brass. We weren't able to clean up until around 6 or so.

One highlight of the shoot so far has been the use of Star Targets. They're a binary explosive similar to Tannerite. When mixed, it takes a high velocity impact to set them off. .50 BMG usually does the trick.

2010 Buffalo Chip Machine Gun Shoot, Day 1

Well, Day 1 for me anyway. The guys have been there since Friday.



Got there a Little after noon, and things were at a standstill. Seems the guy who owns the land behind the Shoot site, put a guy up in a camper at the top of the hill over looking the range, about 700 yds from our firing line.



So the owner of the range decided that baffles had to be installed post-haste in an attempt to keep the boowits from hitting this pwecious wittwe camper.



(Only one guy put any holes in the new baffle we installed, and he put two in it. The bonus is, he's a cop. Go figure, eh?)



After a 3 hour delay getting that set up, we were off and running. Had around, I dunno, about 30 or 40 come through in the next 5 hrs. Not bad.



The most popular weapon today had to be the .50 BMG rifle. Next on the list was the M1919 in 8mm.

If you look in the top portion of the pic, you can see the new baffle we installed. This was before the UMP .45 and 1927A1 each put holes in it.

Well, that's it for today, I'll try to put more up tomorrow with a report on how things went.

Thinking Out Loud

Was listening to a call-in conservative radio show today on my satellite radio and this question came up.

"What kind of impression do you think the current administration has made so far?"

What immediately went through my mind was "A divot in the forehead made by the ball end of a 2 lb ball-peen hammer."

Buffal Chip Machine Gun Shoot

For the last 3 years, the fine folks from Guns of Freedom have been doing a machine gun shoot and rental at the Buffalo Chip Shooting Complex east of Sturgis.

This year is no exception. They'll be there again, with Mother Deuce, a couple of MG-42s, a few M-1919s, a 1910 Russian Maxim, a Mag-58, and enough shoulder-fired hardware to whet your appetite. There's also be a .50 BMG rifle, a .500 S&W revolver, and loads of Tannerite. I sincerely hope they bring the bowling ball cannon back this year. That was a real treat.

So if you're planning on hitting the Sturgis Rally and Races this year, go hit the Shoot. It's a blast!

Scarrrry!

If this doesn't piss you off, I don't know what will.

(hat tip to Radley Balko from The Agitator)

DISCLOSE Act Dead

Well, it seems that the minority party managed to block passage of the of the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (D.I.S.C.L.O.S.E.) Act.

For those keeping score at home, the NRA got themselves on the wrong side of the issue when the House of Representin' carved out an exemption that made everyone else disclose who their largest donors were for political ads.

By a 57-41 margin, the measure fell on the Senate floor. I say good riddance to bad rubbish.

Udate On The Bad Week

It's been about almost two weeks since my Week From Hell, so an update is in order.

First, my Mother. Broke two ribs on the left side, two lateral fractures on the right side of her pelvis, and 7 staples in her forehead. All in all, she got away pretty clean from what could have been an otherwise nasty wreck. Talking to my Dad, if the 4-wheeler had flipped over one more time, it would've landed right on top of her.

As of right now, she has no recollection of the accident itself. Just before the accident is clear and then sitting on the running board of the 4-wheeler with my Dad talking to her.

My cousin, is good news and getting better. Seems she was having constant migraines as the result of work related injuries. The docs were just kind of paying lip service to the issue and kicking the can just far enough down the road to not do any good. After 2 yrs of constant headaches, she was after anything that would take the pain away.

Fortunately, when she did what she did, drinking antifreeze, she immediately threw it up, but there was enough in her system that it attacked her kidneys which resulted in a trip to the ER in Colorado Springs.

The good news in all of this is she's getting the help she needs.

So, there's the long and short of it. Everything came out all right. Thank God.

Bad Day, Yet Again

So, it seems today was NOT a good day.

First, I find out my cousin down in CO tried to commit suicide last weekend. The worst part was no one took her seriously until it was almost too late. She's in ICU and is expected to recover, though she will have on-going issues.

As if that weren't enough, tonight I got a phone call from my Dad that my Mother was involved in a 4-wheeler accident today.

Preliminary reports are that she's got a rather large cut on her head, bruises from stem to stern, and a broken pelvis. She was life-flighted from Sundance to the Wyoming Medical Center in Casper around 1730 MDT today. I'll be heading out first thing in the morning on my way to Gillette to meet up with my Dad and Brother, and then on to Casper.

What Is It...

About Big Box sporting goods stores and left handed people? We've got 2 here in RC, Cabela's and Scheels. I went looking for an inside-the-waistband holster for my Ultra-Raptor today. Both stores had plenty of IWB holsters on the racks, but nary a one, IWB or otherwise, for leftys. Now, in Cabela's defense, they have had lefty holsters on their racks before, but it's a hit-and-miss thing with them. Scheels? Not a one, ever.

Now I know that left handed folks are a numerical minority, but come on, really? Is it so hard to stock a FEW things for us southpaws? Kinda makes me feel about like a second class citizen. 'I'm sorry sir, but we don't stock them. We could order one for you...'

If I wanted it ordered, I would have ordered it and not came into the store looking for it, mmmkay?! Isn't that the point of having stores? So you don't have to order a product from either a catalog or online?

Is it too much to ask to be able to walk into a store and find something, ANYTHING, for a southpaw in the gun section of a Big Box sporting goods store?

It's enough to piss a fella off...

Gots Me an Idea...

So, I know there's a couple of folks out there who stop by occasionally. I would like your opinion.

What would you all think if I took this (Saiga .308):

(pic borrowed from this Gunbroker auction)

And turned it in to this (AKS-74U), in .308 of course:

Think it'd be too much? Or would it be sublimely evil? Thoughts? Prayers?

Edit to Add: Am bumping this up for a couple of days to see what kind of reaction I'm going to get.

It's Enough To Piss a Feller Off

Wondering the AlGorian intertubz this afternoon, checking the links on the right side of the page and came across a couple of really egregious stories.

First up we have this little gem via Sispey Street and WoG. Seems that a be-ridden grandmother was tased by an overly aggressive PD down in Oklahoma. That she did not succumb to the torture these imbeciles in blue subjected her to is both a testament to her spirit and a blessing. I'm sure that had she expired from the wounds and treatment inflicted upon her by her captors, it would have been deemed as 'within department protocol'.

Second, we have this from Joe Huffman, video here. Seems an amputee was singled out for 'extra security' at an unnamed airport in Kaliforn-I-A. While not being particularly troublesome before, the numbnuts in TSA got all kinds of cry-baby-pissy-pants when her young son tried to go to Mommy. This, evidently, led to an almost pedophilic moment where the goons from TSA copped a look at the young lads privates to ensure there weren't any 'explosives' hidden in his diaper. (For a bit of irony, it would have been the ultimate irony had the young'un dropped a particularly nasty radioactive load in his Pampers, wouldn't it? Better yet, the supreme irony would've been if he'd done it while being leered at by said baby diddler.)

All this led to a 'rule change' just for her. Not only was she subjected to the humiliation this extra screening brought on, but they potentially could have cost her even more of the limb by exposing her to bacteria and germs that don't go well with amputations.

My bet, is in neither one of these cases will anyone be held to account for their actions. And that, folks, is what has become of the once Great United States. A petty tyrant on every corner.

I Met A Real Celebrity Today!

This weekend, there's a big auction and gun show in Deadwood, SD.

So, I took the day off from work to go wonder around the tables and see what they had to offer. I've already seen what they've got listed for the auction, so this was an opportunity to see what else was for sale.

Holy Smokes! There's enough vintage and antique Winchesters there to outfit the 7th Cavalry! If I had to venture a guess on how much money is sitting in that room, I'd run out of zeros.

So, while I was wondering the aisles, I passed a guy in a green Hawaiian flowerdy shirt. I thought to myself, 'Self, that guy looked awful familiar, that couldn't have been Michael Bane, could it? Nah...but it looked an awful lot like him didn't it?'

My wonderings took me to a table of vintage Winchesters and Colt Lightnings, and standing there talking up a kid at the table is the guy in the green Hawaiian flowerdy shirt. So, my curiosity getting the best of me, I politely introduced myself by asking the gentleman why he looked awful familiar. Lo and behold, it WAS Michael Bane. Yes, that would be THE Michael Bane. Star of Downrange TV and The Best Defense, and probably the easiest guy to talk to I've ever met at a gun show.

And to prove it, I'm going to break my longstanding rule on putting my face on the interwebz just this once.

My apologies for the grainy picture, the kid taking it wasn't quite sure how run the camera on a Droid. Seems they were in the area doing some filming for an upcoming episode and decided to stop by and see what was what at the show.

But I gots proof that I got to meet THE Michael Bane!

Range Clean Up

Out here in flyover country, or tourist trap, or playground (call it what you will), we have several open, free, and very public gun ranges. There are several around the Hills, the most famous and used one is Beretta Road.

The down side to having these free public ranges is that people think they are their personal target dumping grounds.

Yesterday (that would be June 12th for those keeping track at home) we had a Shoot-N-Clean Day out at Beretta Road. 7 folks showed up, ranging in age from 13 to around late 30's-early 40's. We shot a bunch of different stuff, from AKs in almost every caliber imaginable (5.45x39 all the way up to 12 ga.) to a trap gun to an AR and a 1911. Oh, and one guy brought out his registered FA Uzi in .22.

After the shooting part of the day was over, about 2 hrs after we started, the serious side of the day began, the cleaning part. Aside from the usual stuff folks will use as targets like empty milk and water containers and pop cans, we ran across some, shall we say, interesting items used as targets. We found the equivalent of 7 old TVs that had been shot up (some still mostly intact, others literally in pieces), one computer, 2 monitors, 2 microwaves, a bed, a sofa, part of a boat, half a rack of storage shelves, one either dishwasher or stove (it was partially submerged face down in a creek so we couldn't really tell), a section of exhaust pipe, a light bar from an emergency vehicle complete with inventory number, and enough particle board to make 4 or 5 cabinets.

It's also not unusual to find used condoms and broken beer and licqour bottles laying around the area either.

This is the result of our work, around 5 hrs worth:

The grayish white stuff on the tail of the trailer in the above pic is the remains of a bed we picked up. We also picked up the tattered and ruined remains of a sofa.

Another view:

What you see here is the tip of the iceberg. We only grabbed the big stuff. Not only did we fill the bed of this trailer, the bed of the truck pulling it was full as was the bed of another truck. I brought back 2 bags, as most of what I picked up found its way onto the trailer.

Oh I forgot. We even found a door. In one range we found what appeared to be the remains of somebody's divorce. Broken plates, picture frames and embroidery.

The one things that sticks out in my mind as the worst thing we found was in a creek bed behind one range: there was a plastic bag with the remains of a dog in it. That struck me as wrong on soooo many levels. I certainly hope the animal that was inside was already gone when that sack went into the creek. If it wasn't, I hope whoever did such a cruel and ugly thing roasts in the lowest levels of Hell.

But that, folks, is what we have to deal out here. Some folks are good about picking up after themselves and others not so much. Mostly not so much as you have seen.

More Idiots On PeeRade

Well, the Brady Bunch is at it again. With the release of of the ATF Firearms Trace Data for 2009, we have the proverbial knickers in a knot response from the Brady Campaign.

I haven't had time to sit down and run any data, but from the states I looked up (NY, CA, MA, SD, and WY) the bulk of the 'crime guns' numbers came from inside the state itself. NY had over 1800 trace requests, CA had over 11,000, and MA had over (of course with the most draconian laws in the country, is it any wonder?). SD and WY each were under 200 (167 and 192 respectively) total trace requests. Makes you wonder, don't it?

Overheard In The Gun Store Today

One thing I have to give my new adopted home of Rapid City is they are definitely a tourist trap. We usually see all manner of tourists around here over the course of the summer months, from the odd occasional wandering Canadian to the odd hippie or two, to the bikers that come to town during the Sturgis Rally.

Every once in a while, one will wander through the doors of my second home here, First Stop Gun and Coin. Today was no exception...except for the elderly couple and their grandson.

Grandma: Why don't they have any different books here?

Grandson: Blink....Blink

Grandma: I mean, all they have is books on guns. Don't they have anything else?

Grandson: Blink.....Blink

Grandma: Oh look, here's one on fishing. I wonder why they don't have any other books here other than stuff on Winchester and guns.

Me (to myself): The fact you're standing in a gun store is completely lost on you, isn't it?

I'm From the Government and I'm Here To

Slam! That would be the people of Magnolia Springs, AL slamming the door in the face of the government, both state and federal.

What would make a seemingly sleepy little town on the Magnolia River do such a thing you ask? How about the fact that after repeated attempts to protect their homes and livelihoods from the worst man-made disaster in our nations history, and getting rebuffed by all levels of government, they had to take matters into their own hands.

Bravo to the folks of Magnolia Springs!

Telling, Ain't It?

Why, you'd think the anti's over at the Huffington Post had stumbled upon something...incriminating.


Turns out, nosso much. Try as they might, all their arguments are reduced to jokes about the inadequecies of gun owners and putting things in places that are well, better left to others to describe.

Another Grizzly Tale

Out of Jackson today, we get a report that a man, one Stephen Westmoreland, was found guilty of shooting and killing a grizzly bear.

Of all the stuff I've heard about from first hand accounts to tales related around a campfire, this (and they let you know right up front) is the first successful prosecution of somebody killing a bear in self defense.

From what I've read in the linked article, what got him convicted was the fact that the bear was 40 yds away. Now, I'm no genius here, but 40 yds is nothing when you stop to think that your average wide receiver in the NFL can do 40 yds in around 4 seconds. The fastest human runs at around 20 mph and the average pissed off bear can outrun them hands down. There's a reason why they tell you never try to run from a bear. If you do, they'll only chase you down and kill you, and you don't want to die tired.

So to set this straight, according to those in the know, even though they fall all over themselves telling you it ain't so, you've got about 2 seconds to figure out if the bear you've come across on your nature hike is going to come after you for dinner or is just trying to make an impression. Of that 2 seconds, there's that little thing drag racers like to call reaction time. The bear's already made up its mind what it's going to do, so you've got about .5 seconds to figure out what YOU'RE gonna do. And you had better hope it's the right decision, or you may well wind up in jail over it.

The prosecution wanted everyone to know that "This should not be interpreted as a message that you cannot defend yourself." Yeah right. Given the make-up of Teton County over the last 10 yrs, I think that's exactly the message they wanted to convey. Signed, sealed, and delivered.

And Now A Word From The Opposition

Having gone from trying to beat Starbucks into submission, and failing, Paul Helmke of the Brady Bunch For The Prevention of Gun Ownership is getting his bleat on about the NRA.

What does he have to say? Well, you can read for yourself, here.

Keeping up with the whole 'NRA's all about letting terrorists have guns' thing, he tries to guilt the membership into supporting his point of view.

Supposedly taking a piece from the NRA's pledge in 1954, we get this little gem:

'I certify that I am a citizen of the United States; that I am not a member of any organization that has any part of its program the attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by force or violence; that I have never been convicted of a crime of violence and that if admitted to membership I will fulfill the obligations of good sportsmanship and good citizenship.'

Now, when I got my life membership last year (I upgraded to Endowment this year on the legacy plan) I got a copy of the Bylaws of the National Rifle Association.

Reading said bylaws, Article 3, section 1, paragraph b states:

'No individual who is a member of, and no organization composed in whole or in part of individuals who are members of, any organization or group having as its purpose or one of its purposes the overthrow by force and violence of the Government of the United States or any of its political subdivisions shall be eligible for membership.'

I don't see where the NRA has ever been about giving guns to terrorists. Either by selling them or giving them away. Nobody wants terrorists, or criminals for that matter, to have access to firearms. That said, what the NRA, and a lot of others don't much care for is putting somebody's name on a secret list and then denying them civil rights with no way or hope of ever getting off the super secret squirrel list. There's something about 'lists' that conjures up all kinds of bad history and memories; from the NKVD to the Gestapo to the Stasi to the KGB and the FSB, nobody wants their name on a list for no other reason than somebody, somewhere didn't like the way they looked or acted. Those kinds of things can get ugly in real hurry.

His other complaint, about the so-called 'gunshow loophole' or as he puts it 'loopholes that allow criminals to buy guns' is a tired old argument he's been at for some time.

His latest, though, is trying to equate NRA membership with militia membership. Now, knowing what the bylaws from 2009 and the pledge from 1954 say, I think he's trying to urinate up the long hemp object hanging from the ceiling. Reason I say that is, everyone I know of who hates the government also can't stand the NRA. Most, if not all, of them think the NRA is too squishy on gun rights for their tastes.

You know, the Prez may have been right. You've got to hitch your wagon to something bigger than yourself. My wagon just happens to be the proverbial 800 lb gorilla in gun rights.

Much Ado About Parks Lately

Seems that with the passage of concealed carry in national parks where legal, there have been some, shall we say, issues.

First up, we have one Jerry Ruth. Mr. Ruth was on his own in Yellowstone NP and was attacked by a grizzly last month. Nearly losing his jaw in the fight, he shot and killed the bear with a .41 magnum revolver of undetermined manufacture. (My guess is it was a Ruger Blackhawk, but it may well have been a S&W Md 57, too.)

And now we have an incident in Denali NP in Alaska. Via the Fairbanks News Miner, we learn of a pair of hikers who had a run-in with a grizzly in a foul mood. What we know from the linked article is they used a .45 caliber pistol to defend themselves.

And in true hysterical fashion, we have an editorial from Anchorage high on emotion and rather short on logic or facts. Same with the commentors there. High on referenceto anatomical shortcomings, short on anything else.

Now, from what I have gleaned from discussions around the intertubz and with folks familiar with these types of situations is that neither cartridge is particularly suitable for large, pissed off bruin. While a .41 mag beats a .45 ACP, both beat a sharp stick hands down in fending off 1000 lbs of mad grizzly.

So now I have to ask, how would these situations ended had the ban on concealed carry not passed?