10X

Liberal Heads Exploding

A month or so ago, Governor Gopher stated "Not on my watch" to the question of whether concealed carry would be allowed in NJ following a favorable ruling. So I guess he has no choice now but to resign. In reality, I expect the state to spend an inordinate amount of our tax dollars fighting this because they seem to operate under the delusion that Supreme Court rulings, or the Constitution in general, don't apply here. Ultimately, NJ won't prevail--they will ultimately have to drop the justifiable need nonsense--so it's just a question of how slow, painful, and expensive they can make it.

WooHoo!! Great News that I didn't expect to hear today.

This! I only get up there a couple of times a year, but whatever my primary reason for going (generally HP rifle), I always toss a .22 or two in the car, and I always end the day on the plinking range!

I sent my email as well, briefly describing my objections to all of the bills. ANJPRC makes this very easy to do, by supplying talking points and cut-and-paste email address lists. You can email all 120 or so members of the assembly and senate in a matter of minutes. I encourage everyone to do so, no matter how little effect it might have in this state. I received 10 automatic replies almost immediately upon sending my email; most said that due to the high volume of email received, I might not get a personal response for several days, but if I had emailed my position on pending legislation, my position had been noted. Assembly members Brian Bergen, Kevin Rooney, Mike Doherty, and Gerry Scharfenberger emailed back that they would be opposing the bills. None of the Senators have responded thus far. None of the authors or supporters of the bills bothered to respond. If past experience is any indication, I'll get a few more replies over the next week, but will hear nothing from most of those contacted.

Yep. I think they look really good right now!

I know, and I do make them. Once I realized it is possible to find cachaca up here. And years back I raved about the caipirinhas at the Brasilia restaurant in the Ironbound enough that the server brough me a Cachaca Pitu muddler from the bar as I was leaving. I do struggle with getting the lime-to-sugar ratio right, so they're not always as consistent as I'd like...but they are tasty! Buenos Aires is beautiful. It's a huge city; I was spending 2 1/2 hours a day in a car traveling back and forth to the lab, and it was about the same amount of time to get to the airport. On the weekend, I walked a full 20 miles, but got to see parts of the Recoleta, Paloma, Monserrat, San Telmo, and Government districts, and quite a few of the major tourist draws. The Recoleta Cemetery is incredible (Recoleta Cemetery Recoleta, again) I've attached just two pics from the city, the Palace of the Argentine National Congress, and the Presidential Palace (Case Rosada), though with no one on the balcony singing 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina" when I was there.

I’d promised to post more meat porn pics, so here they are. These are all restaurant meals, and while my trip was less epic than Tex’s, I did have some good dinners. Not quite two weeks ago, my boss asked on a Friday if I could pretty please leave for Buenos Aires on Monday to help with a lab project. I’d never been there, so…Sure! This required a mad scramble to find flights, figure out Covid travel protocols in 4 countries, brush up on my really bad tourist Spanish (it's still really bad), and watch Evita (my wife's contribution to the planning). Once on the ground there, I didn't have much free time other than over the next weekend when I finally got to sightsee. So that left dinnertime as my down time. And dinner in Argentina often means Argentine beef. Steak and Malbec are staples. So in a week, I hit five different steak houses! The pics include two strip steaks, two sirloins, and a ribeye. The last night I substituted a caipirinha for the Malbec. It’s hard to find caipirinhas in the US. All were wonderful! The exchange rate isn’t great right now, but paying in dollars you could get a nice steak, a side, a glass of wine, and tip for about $35 (about 40% more if paying in Argentine pesos). You could also select from the Wagyu steak list, add a bottle of high-end Malbec and pay over 10 times that, but my employer isn't nearly that generous. If you don't specify how you want your meat cooked, they default to something between medium and well done, which I found surprising for a country that is so into beef. But if you specify medium rare, they nail that perfectly every time. That thick sirloin was the highlight of the week! On the first leg of the flight back, the in-flight meal was beef medallions, and on the second leg, a petit filet. Not bad for airline food, but neither warranted pictures. Now that I'm home, I've been told I'll mostly be eating salads for awhile. Gas, in the city, was just under $4/gallon. I read that nationwide it had only recently gone up to about $3.50, though it's always been low there compared to the US.

Probably for the best. Discussions about technique can get ugly.

That looks really good! All of it!! I assumed you served them over rice with some seaweed and daikon? I should have some more meat porn photos to post in a couple of days.

That’s a Coke can derringer! We’d usually use about 6 cans, one as the combustion chamber ( not fully open at the top so the ball couldn’t drop in) and the rest for the barrel. We also used lighter fluid, and also put an unwarranted amount of faith in the duct tape holding it all together.

Well, they are making a bid deal over how easy it was for him to buy the rifle online. One media site showed that it only took 5 clicks on the Daniels Defense website to order the same rifle. But they pretty much gloss over the fact that the online order only results in the rifle being sent to the FFL who is going to run the NICS check and do the transfer paperwork.

Yeah, that's one of the many things that worries me about Phildo. Whenever California or NY passes a brain-dead law, he immediately feels the need to out-stupid them in his response.

I'd like to hear the board members from NJ explain why they chose to continue supporting LaPierre.

No, you did not. Though I'm sure by now some have. Since I didn't see his broadcast, I was wondering why he would have brought it up, since the crashes had no affect on one plant, and missed the other entirely. I mourn the tragic loss of three pilots.

I assume one of the plane crashes was in Burley, Idaho. I'm quite familiar with that one. A commercial pilot making an instrument approach into the airport in a light plane clipped a chimney on the Gem State (potato) Processing Plant. She was very likely too low on her approach (she had gone missed on the first attempt), and didn't break it off in time. The chimney may have been unlit, and may have been taller than the plant told the FAA it was when the instrument approach was being mapped. Those are questions for the NTSB to answer. But a lovely young woman, Brittney Infanger, died in the crash. It didn't affect the plant's operation at all. The only other one I found in a brief web search was in Covington, Georgia, where a plane crash killed the flight instructor and student in a light twin practicing touch-and-go landings. A lot of pilots refuse to do those in a twin--there is a lot that can go wrong. This one missed the General Mills food processing plant by 300 yards, and also didn't affect the plant's operation at all. If Tucker was trying to weave those into some kind of conspiracy, I'm disappointed in him.

The way the NRA is structured to preserve the status quo, I think Kim Jong-un is more likely to be voted out of office than is Wayne LaPierre. And that's a big problem.

A double barrel shotgun is also acceptable, but only if you fire it through the door. According to Joe.

Somebody needs to start making brass and loaded ammo head stamped '.356 American'

Not legally they can’t. They can’t legally possess, in order to sell, or take possession after they buy. So ignoring the legalities, a felon can do a F2F transfer anywhere.

Yep, they're piling up for everyone who uses curbside or home delivery. Murphy has succeeded in making re-useable bags disposable.

I ran the smoker again today. The entree was chicken breast smoked over apple wood. Chicken breasts aren't smoked often; it's hard to keep them from drying out, but one of Mixon's cookbooks had a recipe I'd been meaning to try: overnight marinade in Coca Cola with a bit of other seasoning, home-made rub, wrap in bacon, smoke in a pan, and sauce after about 1:45 at 275-300F. I then did the extra step of putting them on a hot grill for a few minutes to crisp the bacon. I also smoked a few andouille sausages, rubbed with yellow mustard as a binder and rubbed with a commercial chipotle rub. Both were great; I didn't get pictures of either on the smoker, and they disappeared soon thereafter. The highlight was the pork belly burnt ends; 4 lbs of pork belly cut into 1"-1.5" cubes, homemade rub, 2.5 hours on the smoker grate, then 1.5 hours in a covered pan, sauced with Head Country Spicy cut with some bourbon, then another 15 minutes to set the sauce. They were a big hit. I even managed to have everything done at the same time.

The big Midway bag may well fit three pistols in factory hard cases. It's a huge bag. The main compartment is a lot longer than the factory hard cases, so there would be room at one end for ammo, glasses, etc, plus there are all of the external pockets. They might have the dimensions of the main compartment listed on the website; let me know if they don't and I'll go measure mine. Edit: The dimensions are on the website, bullet points copied below. If you can fit three hard cases into 10" x 10" x 17" (and you probably can), then this bag will work. I also find the removable stage bag handy, and the fired brass carrying bag has a mesh bottom, so if you are picking up brass outside you can shake the sand and dirt right out the bottom of the bag. 5 Bags In 1 9 Total pockets 7 on Main bag 2 on Removable Stage Bag 14 Pistol Magazine Pouches 5" x 6" Fired Brass Carrying Bag Removable Carry Strap with Shoulder Bag 17" x 10" x 10" Main Compartment 2 Removable Padded Pistol Rugs Removable Stage Bag Earmuffs might be a tight fit with all of the other stuff, but they can ride on top of the bag just fine.

Mine was homemade by a local shooter--it's not the box in the pic I linked. I've had it long enough that I don't recall who made it, and I have no idea where he got the plans, but I know plans are out there. I do recall him saying he had a week off one year after Christmas, decided he'd build himself a bullseye box, and by the time he had minimum quantities of wood and a few other components he had almost enough to build three boxes. So he bought a few more parts, built three at the same time, and sold two to mostly offset the cost of the one he kept.

It's true, the trendy cool kids don't use spotting scopes. They also shoot big ragged groups, since they can't be bothered to call their shots, look and see how they are doing, and make corrections. You will rarely see a bullseye box outside of a bullseye (precision pistol, as it's now called) match. Virtually everyone there will have one, though. But I tend to use mine anywhere I'll be shooting from a bench, because I want to have the spotting scope, and all of my other gear is already in the box. And it does lock. They're not really useful if you don't have a shooting bench to put it on, or if you are shooting steel, or other run-and-gun events. Gun bags of various makes (like the Midway) dominate there.