10X

Something in .22, or a centerfire revolver

NJ has a great competitive shooting tradition, and has produced some outstanding junior shooters, including national junior champions (both individual and team) in rifle and pistol events. They’ve set national junior records, they’ve been named to the national team, earned college scholarships for varsity shooting teams, been nominated to the military academies, etc. etc. Four-time Olympian Matt Emmons got his start as a junior shooter in Mt Holly. This, of course, requires that the schools don’t try to implement such friggin moronic, overreaching idiotic, brain-dead, totalitarian control over what their students do in their free time. This policy, if it’s really as described, won’t stand long. But I’m furious that a school thought they could get away with it

I've no experience with Clifton, by my town uses the same bullsh*t playbook. They won't accept applications, or issue the FID or P2P, unless you have an appointment with the detective. And those appointments are really hard to get. What is more annoying, is that the town apparently got called out on this, and so the Firearms tab on the PD website prominently states that you can drop off applications "24/7/365". Problem is, when you do this the dispatcher has been coached to tell you that nothing will be processed until you have your appointment. And by the way, take your application with you because they won't hold it for you. They come through eventually, but it adds a month to the process. I hope your experience is no worse, and ideally a good bit better!

Power came back on last night, we'd been out about 56 hours in our corner of Morris County. Unfortunately, we'd already opted to pass on a nonrefundable ski weekend in Vermont, so I could stay home and keep the generator running the chest freezer and fridge/freezer. House got down to 49 degrees, and the furnace didn't come back after the outage, so we'll have a cold, well-lit house for a few more days. Lots of outside cleanup to do, too, and the town doesn't do brush/limb pickup.

Frame work + some slide work + a LOT of trigger work + replacement sights = Glock Perfection

I'd never heard of him either, so I got through the video without being weighed down with personal opinion. And I'm cross-eye dominant too, so this has been an area of lifelong interest. In general, his pistol advice wasn't bad, though he did confuse dominance with acuity at one point--they're not the same. It's perfectly possible for your non-dominant eye to have better visual acuity. As he said, with a handgun, it's easy enough to line up your dominant eye when shooting with two hands, and that works pretty well for most folks. Shooting weak hand only will line up the sights with the dominant eye, so that also works. Strong hand only, you might have to close your dominant eye, or better still squint it a little bit, so that the eye behind the sights picks up the picture. In the precision events, it's better still to use a blinder of some type on the non-shooting eye (tape or a translucent blinder that still transmits light is best...if you put your non-shooting eye in the dark, both eyes will dilate to compensate). I don't think precision events aren't his area of interest, so he didn't talk blinders. I don't really shoot the run-and-gun rifle events, so can't comment there. For precision events, the translucent blinder is also the way to go. Shotgun, which he didn't address, is the hardest for the cross dominant shooter. Two eyes open helps a lot, and cross dominance will force the wrong eye to try and put the bead on the bird. Most serious advice I've read on the topic says you're better off learning to shoot with the other hand, because you can't change your eye dominance. Personally, I just finished a 4 year experiment trying to shoot trap left handed, and never got my scores up to where they were when I shot right handed with my left eye closed, so I just changed my stock setup back for right handed shooting, and I'll be doing that in 2018.

Thanks for posting this. It made it easy to run through the list and post my 'I'm joining the many, many, many law abiding customers who will never again do business with you' messages.

Like this link? School district allowing armed teachers

I've testified at one of these before, and I'd do it again, but I can't make this one. I did contact the committee members, though. Whether the outcome is predetermined or not, "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing".

Bailey's comments to the press are misguided, but I seriously doubt they are shared by the rest of the team. I'll bet the official response he got from the USA Biathlon organization was along the lines of 'shut the hell up.' Enjoy the recording if you are able--biathlon coverage portrays the shooting sports in a positive light. And Bailey didn't medal--let him fade into obscurity.

I think you're largely correct, Jim. It's long been lamented that a lot of talented shooters that could be competing in international events are getting siphoned off into other forms of competition that might be better known and certainly are easier to find in the US. The US is big enough that it evolved a lot of forms of competition that aren't done in the rest of the world. Even I rarely shoot the international events anymore; it's just a lot easier to find other forms of competition. Of course, the biggest problem we have in biathlon is that other countries have a history of developing better cross country skiers, and there is a lot more skiing than shooting in a biathlon event. Yes, Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins just won gold in the the women’s team sprint freestyle race, but that is the first Olympic gold medal ever for the US in cross country skiing, and the first US medal of any kind in XC skiing since 1976. That said, the top level competitors in the US do face a number of challenges. States that shut down internet sales and/or require background checks for ammo effectively shut down competitor's supply lines, because the specialized, high end ammo and other gear either isn't available in retail channels at all, or might be carried by only two or three stores in the entire US. The patchwork of transport, storage, and possession laws across the country are pretty daunting to someone who may be competing in a dozen or more states a year. The mere prospect of being arrested flying in or out of JFK or Laguardia, despite being in full compliance with both state and federal law, is chilling. And competitive shooters don't get much in the way of positive publicity in the US anymore; they are much more likely be vilified by the press. I don't think that happens in other countries; my impression is that top competitors still have strong support in their home nations, and their accomplishments are celebrated.

The biathlon events have concluded at the 2018 Winter Olympics, so I'll post a quick summary. There will be much less detail here than in my Summer Olympics thread, because I've no experience in biathlon, but hey, it's a rifle event! Ok, it also includes a bit of XC skiing... Your US Biathlon Team Members are here: US Biathlon Team The official Olympics Biathlon page is here, with a good bit more detail about the events: Biathlon events There are 11 biathlon events in the Olympics, including Men's and Women's Individual, Relay, Sprint, Pursuit, and Mass Start events plus a mixed Mens/Women's relay. The distances skied range from 7.5 to 20 kilometers. Shooting is done with highly modified .22 bolt action rifles (iron sights only), fired at 50 meters from the prone position at targets slightly under 2" in diameter, or from the standing position, at targets that are about 4.5" in diameter. Targets are simply scored as hit/miss, and depending on the event, a miss either adds a 1 minute penalty to the skiers time, or requires them to ski a 150 meter penalty loop before continuing. Most events only allow 5 rounds for the 5 target string, but the relay events allow the competitors to single-load up to 3 additional rounds if they exhaust their 5 round magazines before all targets are hit. As you might imagine, it's enormously challenging to ski at your maximum speed for several kilometers, then stop, quickly slow your breathing and heart rate enough to permit accurate shooting, then immediately transition back to ski racing until arriving at the next shooting station. When it was all over, Germany lead the medal count with 7, three of which were individual medals (two gold, one bronze) won by Laura Dahlmeier. Norway was just behind, with 6 medals, France won 5, Sweden 4. The US was shut out of medals; in fact, the US has never won an Olympic medal in biathlon. In the 2016 Summer Olympics, the US won just 3 of 45 medals. Perhaps the gun culture in the US isn't quite so strong as the media would have us believe. On a positive note, there were no reports of North and South Korean biathletes lining up on opposite ends of the firing ranges and shooting at each other.

I didn't realize that. But I was pretty excited to find 19.95 bricks of CCI primers, and a number of common pistol powders for $12-$15 lb!

I'd not ordered from Bullets.com previously, but I saw a note on the Brian Enos forums saying that they were closing shop, and blowing out everything they had in stock. I was just on the site, and I can confirm that the deals are really good, but inventory is dwindling rapidly. I may be partly responsible for that...

Skittles They’re also useful when your blood sugar starts getting low late in the afternoon.

Maybe this court won’t, but it will be a different court soon. Ginsburg is, what, 135 years old?

Same at any trap, skeet, or sporting clays club. If you are shooting above the horizon (i.e. no backstop) you don’t use buckshot or slugs.

I’d avoid anything from ConnectAmerica, whose products include Medical Alert, Alert 911, Alert 365, and Caregiver365. My parents used them, and despite a lot of verbiage on their website about round the clock monitoring of system and connection health, when my parents moved to assisted living and disconnected the phone, no alert was generated. For 4 months, the system was stone dead, and ConnectAmerica never sounded an alarm (but they kept up the automatic billing). When I finally found the unit, I called and cancelled the service, and shipped back the hardware, whereupon they continued to bill for another six months! I had a signed receipt for the package arriving at the ConnectAmerica office, and they told me that only proved I had sent a box, not the hardware. It took almost a year and a lot of legal threats to get it cleared up, and I remain livid that for the first 4 months they didn’t respond to a ‘system offline’ error, and so had no idea if my parents were ok or not.

Well, it is a mental condition, but I agree it doesn’t seem like it should be a factor here...except ADHD might make you buy and enjoy a lot of different kinds of guns. :-)

I'm just back from the match--had a great time, as always! Thanks to the organizers; it's a very creative format for a competition, and a nice donation was made to the local PBA with the proceeds.

Because that experiment hasn’t already been done hundreds of times before...

Listen to the Texan. Most of the dual probe thermometers also allow for remote monitoring, so you can keep an eye on the temperatures without having to hover over the smoker. That is a very useful feature. Some useful links are: http://www.smoking-meat.com https://www.smokingmeatforums.com http://www.thesmokerking.com There are also some very good cookbooks out there. I also recommend keeping a notebook with all of the details of things you smoke; prep, times, temperatures, how well everything turned out... Also, don't forget to try making some less traditional things in the smoker...some of our favorites are smoked nuts, cheese (gotta do this with minimal heat on a cold day), baked potatoes, meatloaf (wrapped in a bacon weave), quesadillas...and don't forget appetizers like ABTs, moink balls, pig candy (you can find the recipes online). After I conditioned my smoker, the first thing I smoked was a whole bunch of assorted sausages. That's a fairly foolproof starting point. Chicken is also fairly simple, as are the pork chops you mentioned. Ribs are pretty simple; I favor this recipe: Best Ribs in the Universe Brisket is more involved, and it's a loooong smoke, so with a wood or charcoal smoker it's best tackled once you've got down the basics of maintaining temperature in the smoker. You'll have a lot of fun with it, and your wife will consider it the smartest present she ever gave you.

All the trap and skeet clubs with which I’m familiar keep their clays outside in unheated trailers sheds, or shipping containers. Doesn’t cause a problem for them.

None of which I'm aware. I've seen nothing in the regulations that would allow more in checked baggage, and I don't see the airlines making any exceptions just because the cartridges are bigger. If you're traveling in a group, you could ask each member to check ammo. If you find great ammo deals in your travels, your best bet might be to ask if the dealer ships, and if not, consider slapping on an ORM-D label and shipping it yourself.

My simplistic take on the subject is this: More ranges and dealers are a good thing. Free enterprise allows for a wide variety of pricing models in the marketplace. Free enterprise allows me to decide where and how I spend my money-so I'm not bothered by point #2. Getting robbed really sucks; It doesn't matter if the losses are largely covered by insurance. That doesn't make them 'free'.