Fun with Headlines: Reckless Endangerment Edition

By | July 22, 2014

Actual headline: Police: Homeowner fired shot because kids wouldn’t leave
Accurate Headline: Homeowner fired shot at parent angry he wouldn’t let kids steal his fruit.

Yesterday afternoon the story was pretty sparse, but last night the local Democratic Party ABC Affiliate’s story just said someone shot at some kids in his yard. I thought maybe it was a group of teenagers menacing the guy, so when I opened the story I was shocked to see actual children in the story, and not a bunch of 17 year olds.

What a horrible person, right? Who shoots at 9 year old girls?

Well, no one in this story:

She said she and three friends were picking pears and went through Harrison’s backyard. He then told them to get off his property.

“This guy started cussing us out and stuff so I just told him to leave us alone because he kept on cussing us out,” said Freels.

The group then left and told a parent, Brittany Foster.

Foster said she went to confront Harrison and that is when he fired the gun.

“Especially with children being in the present, I just can’t understand why, why he would do that,” she said.

“I got scared,” said Freels.

He told News 2 he is sorry for scaring the children but said he felt like he was in “imminent danger.”

He thought a man was “charging” toward him.

Note that in neither the story nor the video does anyone dispute that a man was rushing towards the homeowner when the shot was fired. I would think that would be a point to emphasize if it were the case.

So to recap:
1. Children “wander” onto property
2. Children begin picking pears that do not belong to them
3. Property owner tells them to stop stealing and leave, using colorful language
4. Kids go tell their parents about the mean man who told them to stop stealing
5. Parents confront/assault homeowner
6. Homeowner fires warning shot at man rushing towards him

Now, it could be that the homeowner is a despicable person who jumps to violence the first chance he gets, or it could be that the unidentified man really was there to do harm.

What doesn’t appear to be the case is that the homeowner fired a shot “because kids wouldn’t leave.”

ETA: I see that the story made it to Knoxville without the important details.

Some house keeping

By | July 9, 2014

If you’ve been hit by one of those annoying “please wait x seconds for a word from our sponsor” ads, please know that this is not intentional.  Turns out sitemeter has decided to turn into adware and inject this redirect code into our website.  At least, according to this site, and this site, that is the case.

Wizard will be removing sitemeter from our site when he gets home from work tonight (Done – ed.), and I suggest you do the same if you have it installed on anything you own.

Gun Porn: Fixing a PF9 edition

By | July 9, 2014

At the bidet shoot this year, which I have yet to write about (bad blogger, no cookie), I had a very disturbing failure with my 4 year old Keltec PF9.

I was taking some videos for a future purpose and I had a failure to extract on the first round I’d shot that day out of the PF9:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-kF8D5UoB0

So I turned the camera off, dropped the magazine, and racked the slide several times. The video I was shooting required 7 rounds, so I topped off the magazine before reinserting it and dropping the slide. Then this happened (NSFW language):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07UjfkZmTOk

That cursing at the end was because after dropping the magazine, I couldn’t rack the slide. The gun was completely locked up with a live round in the chamber and no way for me to get it out. I bought this PF9 new to replace a P3AT in 2010. I have put about 800 rounds through it, I think, and this was the first time I’ve had anything like this happen to any of my guns. But, it’s a blogger shoot, so someone has to break something. I put the magazine in my pocket, cased the gun, and finished up the rest of the day.

When I got home, I unloaded the magazine….and there were 7 rounds in it. I was very, very confused. How was that possible? I had 7 rounds in the magazine when I racked the slide and had the failure to fire and subsequent lockup. So I took my smartphone and used it’s camera to look down the barrel….where I saw an empty shell casing. Yay for no live round in the chamber!

So by this time I think I’ve figured out what happened: While shooting these videos, I had 7 or 8 pistols lined up on a railroad tie loaded and ready to go. I was shooting lacquer coated Wolf 9mm. It was 95 degrees and there was no shade, and this was at about 2pm. The PF9 was the second to last in that line, so it had been sitting there for about 20 minutes. I suspect that the “melting lacquer” problem you hear about in AR’s shooting Wolf got me.

I take the pistol to the garage and use the nylon side of this hammer to beat the slide open. Problem solved, right?

Well, not exactly. See, when I inspected it to try to figure out what happened, I found this:
Keltec PF9 Breech Face

That gouge just above the extractor? It’s not supposed to be there. Now, I have no idea how long that’s been there but I’d never noticed it before. So with that, and the lockup, I called a friend of mine for some help. He said he had a box of parts that would probably fix my issues so I swung by and picked them up.

When I got home, I disassembled the PF9 before getting started:
IMG_4571

I tried to put the replacement slide on, but it wouldn’t quite fit:
IMG_4573

It was also a little bit too short for the PF9 frame:
IMG_4572

So I dug around my box of parts and found an extra frame. The new slide fit much better on the new frame:
IMG_4576

But I still had a problem. My old magazine wouldn’t fit in the frame:
IMG_4574

Luckily, there was a magazine in the box as well.
IMG_4575

And for good measure, I picked up a new holster as well. Pro-tip: The old holster would have worked, but most of the stickiness had worn off after 4 years.

In all seriousness, I’d been entertaining the idea of picking up a CM9 for a couple of years now. I literally called my FFL on the way home from the bidet shoot and had him order it for me. I took both pistols to the range last week and put about 80 rounds through each of them to check function. The PF9 actually performed better–easier to load, less muzzle flip, no malfs–but I think I can contribute that to having a worn magazine spring, finger extension, and unfamiliarity with the amount of travel in the CM9’s slide. I had several rounds go nose down and not feed correctly. They were all first rounds in the magazine and I release the slide from lock by pulling back just enough to disengage the slide stop. I’ve already ordered some Pearce Grip Extensions.

Also, Kahr is running a promotion right now where if you buy any of their 9mm pistols, they’ll send you a free magazine. I submitted mine electronically last Thursday and the magazine was in my mailbox on Monday—and there was a three day holiday weekend in the middle of that.

Overheard in #GBC and dumb laws

By | July 5, 2014

The_Jack: Yes, ponder that.  You can make your own guns, but you can’t toss some booze in the freezer.

For context, we were talking about the possibility* of making home made applejack.  If you’re going to be proper and old school about it, you freeze distill apple cider.  Unfortunately, while you can make beer or wine for your own consumption without running afoul of the law, you can’t distill a drop without a license.  And, yes, freeze distilling counts just as much as using a still.

So… you can legally build your own gun legally, but you can’t leave a bottle of cider in the freezer for too long, or leave it in the trunk of your car overnight on a cold winter night, or…

*purely theoretical.  I am strongly in the camp of not doing anything that might make the BATFE upset with me.

Gratz to ASM826, and some thoughts

By | July 1, 2014

It’s a bit late, but I’ve been a bit busy.

ASM826 has tested for, and received, his second degree black belt in Wadoki Aikido.

He’s had some commenters that have clearly gone down the path of “I don’t need no fancy Jui-Jitsu, I’ve got a gun!”  This has always been something that has puzzled me in the gun community.  So many of us on the pro-gun side have fought hard to dispel the “magic talisman of death” belief that some anti-gunners clearly have, that it’s frustrating to run into the “magic talisman of protection” that some on our side have.

I’m not saying that a martial artist can deflect or dodge bullets.  A deployed gun is a hell of an advantage.  Especially if there’s some distance between you and your foe.  Of course, for several reasons, wandering around with a gun in your hand at all times is neither practical or a good idea.  Hell, there’s the always ongoing debate about whether simply having one strapped to your hip wear others can see it is a good idea or not.  This isn’t even taking into consideration the fact that there are many places where you’re not allowed to go strapped.

I think it’s important to ask the question “if you’re already up close in personal and/or being physically attacked/grabbed/whatever, what do you do?”  Sure, “draw and shoot” works if you can manage it, but I can think of a lot of scenarios where that would be a difficult option to pull off.

Remember that a gun is a tool, and martial arts is a bag full of tools.  Don’t be the guy that says “I’ve got a hammer, I don’t need anything else.”

*EDIT* Bah, I did something that I know annoys the heck out of me and forgot to check to see who actually wrote the post.  It was ASM826, not Borepatch that made 2nd degree.  I’ve fixed the post to reflect that.