Bang for the buck

I have a Colt Combat Commander .45 with a Crimson Trace laser sight, but I haven’t carried it since we moved to Arkansas and my Indiana concealed carry permit expired. And I haven’t felt any strong desire to get an Arkansas permit, mainly because the .45 is just too heavy and bulky to carry comfortably.

And I haven’t seen a gun that I’d be interested in as a daily carry weapon.

Until Saturday, when we went to the local shooting range to pick up a gift membership that a friend bought for her husband.

One of the guys there showed us his .380 Ruger LCP with Crimson Trace laser sight. The gun holds 6 rounds in the magazine and one in the pipe and weighs a scant 9.4 ounces. It’s only 5.16 inches long and you can get a finger extension magazine like the one for the Walther PPK. And the price is amazingly attractive, especially if I can find a used example in good condition.

No, it doesn’t have the knock-down power of a .45. Hardly anything else does. But the .45 is pretty useless if it’s at home in a drawer when you’re out and about and discover you need a gun.

I used to have a motorcyclist’s grudge against Ruger because the company denied health insurance coverage to motorcycle-riding employees, but that issue got resolved years ago.

Giving it some serious thought…

Pirate justice, Russian Navy style

 

This  videotape shows Russian Navy commandos on a Somalian pirate  ship shortly after the pirates had captured a Russian oil  tanker. The Euro Union navy that patrols these waters would  not interfere because they feared there could be  casualties.
All explanations are  in Russian with a single exception of when a wounded pirate  says something in English and the Russian soldier says "This  is not a fishing boat." All conversations between the  commandos are in Russian. If you don't understand Russian, the pictures speak for  themselves.
The soldiers freed  their compatriots and the tanker. The Russian Navy Commandos  moved the pirates back to their own (pirate) ship, searched  the pirate ship for weapons and explosives, and then they  left the ship and exploded it with all remaining pirates  hand-cuffed to it.
The commandos sank the  pirate ship along with the pirates and without any court  proceedings, lawyers etc. That is, they used the anti-piracy  laws of the 18th and 19th centuries where the captain of the  rescuing ship has the right to decide what to do with the pirates. Usually, they were hanged

Michigan clergyman weighs in

My thoughts exactly.

Thank God for the school security officer

All outta bubblegum

Watch this. Then click this.

Some Austrians have had it with the Islamification of their country

Pearl Harbor day and the man who delivered the payback

This is the 69th anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, so what better time to revisit this photo of me shaking hands with Paul Tibbetts, the man who many of us believe won World War II.

Tibbetts, for the historically impaired, was the pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay (named for his mother) that dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Tibbetts died in 2007 at the age of 92. He had no regrets about the mission, nor did he bear any animosity toward the Japanese. In his later life, his car of choice was a Toyota.

Uncle Ted

He has no time for fools.

Mary's Bar and the economic crisis

Mary's Bar

Luger lore

I got a call from my Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity brother Oz Morgan in Indiana this afternoon who has a buddy who inherited a Luger and wanted to know whatever I could tell him about it.

I got out my Luger for reference and gave him a guided tour of the waffenamt markings, confirmed that all of the serial numbers on the parts match (including the magazine), walked him through the use of the loading tool and warned him against using any of the WWII vintage 9mm Parabellum ammo that came with it.

The holster was marked for a P38, so it wasn’t original to the gun, but it was still a genuine Wehrmacht issue holster.

I also referred him to Pistole Parabellum for reference information.

I kinda surprised myself with how much I know about these things, especially since I haven’t fired mine in more than a decade.