The Gunner's Blog

So I took this crazy online survey to find out what sort of Dungeons and Dragons character I would be, if I were such a thing. You can try it here:   http://www.easydamus.com/character.html There were some questions about spending time in the woods, which is something I like to do, and so I can see why I ended up a Ranger, but the rest of my characterization seems to derive from left field. I dunno, give it a whirl and see what manner of creature you are. Stats on the sidebar indicate that most visitors to the site score as humans, which is I suppose reassuring. Also, most people rated themselves high in intelligence. That is rather an awkward point; most people think they are above average in that way, but it can't possibly be true. In fact, half the people you meet are below average. Appears I am a Neutral Good Human Ranger (7th Level) Ability Scores: Strength- 15 Dexterity- 12 Constitution- 14 Intelligence- 16 Wisdom- 15 Charisma- 14 Alignment: Neutr...

Suggested by an essay at DiploMad2.0 OZYMANDIAS By Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Personally, I like a wide open pattern.The whole reason for preferring a shotgun over a rifle is its hit probability and I don't intend to compromise that. Is it better if your gun throws a broad, open pattern of shot or a small tight one? It isn't a simple question. The shotgun's hit probability, which is superior to any other small arm's at close range, owes to the spread of the shot. If you reduce the spread, you reduce the shotgun's advantage. Things get more complicated, though, when you consider that a pattern that is too wide increases the number of pellets sailing past the target, doing you no good. Since pattern size increases with distance, a loose pattern loses effectiveness rapidly with range as the pattern's density degrades. What to do, what to do? As a sort of baseline to the discussion, the riot gun for its first hundred years or so was almost always cylinder bored or Improved Cylinder choked, and threw open patterns, firing shells concoc...

My thinking is that #1 buckshot is the best choice most of the time, though #4 buck has a lot to recommend it some of the time. Today I'm launching a series that will be ongoing for some time. As I noted previously, my posts here will  be on a now-and-then basis. But I have a number of things to talk about on the topic of defensive shotgunning. Expect this to take a while. For years and years, the 12 gauge riot gun has been my preferred 'preparedness' weapon, for potential use during some sort of hypothetical societal crisis, such as a general breakdown of law and order, or perhaps a zombie apocalypse. It is also what I keep on hand for home defense. I like the shotgun for its outstanding hit probability at short range. Since nearly all lethal force encounters, apart from the battlefield setting, are at short range, I don't worry very much about the shotgun's uselessness at long range. I will be writing up a series of suggestions on how to use a riot gun ef...

To my profound lack of surprise, it now appears that  the Navy Yard shooter had mental health problems  of a serious nature and an obsessive interest in  violent video games . As I blogged previously, this country's high profile, big headline mass shootings have  a common denominator in the mental infirmities of the perps. A possible exception is the crime of Maj. Nidal Hasan; his motive may have been religious. Or crazy. You decide. Following the Navy Yard shooting there was a rush in the news media to blame the AR-15 , the 'evil gun' scapegoat du jour of the gun ban chorus, though at this point it is highly doubtful whether such a  weapon was used; if it was, it was obtained by the killer from a victim . No matter, Dianne Feinstein decried the "military-style assault rifle." These shootings form  a convenient pretext on which to hang calls for gun bans and other infringements. But what we need here is not more gun control laws, of which we have more t...

John Morse, ousted president of the Colorado Senate, was quoted this way by the New York Times: “We made Colorado safer from gun violence,” he said afterward, as his supporters trickled away from a hotel ballroom here in his district. “If it cost me my political  career, that’s a small price to pay.” The thing is, pushing through a packet of anti-gunner laws did not make anyone safer and everyone knew it. Coloradans saw the gun control push as funded from out of state and an imposition on their rights, a feel-good measure that burdened the innocent while skirting the very problem it supposedly addressed. I hope the rest of the country's Democrats are paying attention. Less than half the states have  recall election laws, but all of them have elections, and siding with Nanny Bloomberg against the Second Amendment is perilous. There is an undercurrent of resentment out here in the electorate, not just over ill considered gun laws but over a wider perception that we are se...

Here is why they tell you to keep your eyes up and looking around while you reload your gun.