Happy Good Commie Day!

 

New for this year, The Clue Meter brings you Hopalong Ginsbergs Good Commie Day Theme Song!

Trouble in the 98-Double-Ought-3

 My friendly neighborhood gun store, Federal Way Discount Guns, is in the news for defying  Washingtons ban on standard capacity magazines. 

Federal Way Discount Guns faces lawsuit for illegally selling high-capacity gun magazines

On the store’s Instagram account, the company wrote on Dec. 7: “We are in the crosshairs of the WA AG. We will fight this until the end and are going to need your support in doing so. Business will continue as usual. We are committed to serving the people of this state and nation, NOT the state.”

King County judge orders Federal Way Discount Guns to stop high-capacity magazine sales

I love this bit:

The Federal Way gun store also houses an indoor shooting range, which is used by the Federal Way Police Department for training. Department officials told the Mirror in Dec. 2022 that the department will continue to train at the site.

“The fact that the indoor range is within the city limits enhances our operational readiness by keeping officers in the city and available for calls for service, while greatly reducing the travel expenses incurred for firearms training outside the city,” said Cmdr. Kurt Schwan of Federal Way Police. “We utilize the facilities throughout the year for department-wide training, one on one training with an instructor, and individual firearms practice.”

If you watched Top Shot you saw Commandeer Schwan on, IIRC, Season 3. 

Another local store, WGS in Tacoma, got similar charges, but blamed  a new employee and settled. So I wont be visiting them any time soon...

When Joe Waldron, who used to do the GOAL Posts that I used to transcribe here, was asked about legal challenges to some gun control laws, he used to ask in reply "Are you volunteering to be the test case?" The point being that sometimes you need someone with standing to make the legal challenge. 

Now, a legal challenge has already been filed, and put on hold pending the results of similar cases on the least coast. (Trial date set for Washington’s ban on high-capacity gun magazine sales.)

And now we have a name and a face to attach to the case.

At the amateur radio club's meeting last month I asked a fellow member, whom I know frequents the weekly matches there, if there was a Mo Defense Fund yet. 

There is now:

Federal Way Discount Guns was previously featured in the following posts:

• One Step Back, Two Steps Forward?
• Another Step Forward
• "Urban Defensive Tactics" class, 12/14/14

Happy New Year

Bye-bye 2020 II...

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas

 

A moment of silence

 For those who are gone, or who didn't make it back.

Phrase of the Day

 "Atmospheric River"

Battle of Lepanto post, R.I.P.

In case you  missed it, I made a post yesterday about the Battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571. It had a link to the Wikipedia page (that link) and another to G.K. Chesterton's poem "Lepanto" with some excerpts from the latter. 

There was also a meme making a joke about putting your feet up on an ottoman while saying your rosary. (Link. It might work.)

Now I had a devil of a time with stray code showing up in that blog post, screwing up the formatting but I thought I finally had the stray code stripped out. However, when I checked this morning I saw that I had a couple big white bars there indicating there were some stray "div" references, so I went to edit them out.

And somehow screwed up the layout of the entire blog so that my let sidebar was just gone, and only some of the right sidebar was there; what there was, was at the bottom of the page.

I tried several things, but finally deleted that post, and viola! Sidebars are back. So for the eight or nine people that even know this blog exists, that's the story of how I lost a really entertaining, informative post, but also how I came to have a new theme on the page.

MAG-80 Lessons Learned, Pt. 3

Lesson Learned #3: Sometimes the little things mean a lot. 

MAG-80 includes training on weapons retention. This is hands-on training in the strictest sense of the term, I try to grab your gun, you keep me from doing so, and vice-versa. Instructions called for a training simulator (i.e. Rings Blue Gun) and a "sturdy pair of leather gloves" for this part of the class, which was 2-3 hours every day.

My yard work gloves are in good enough shape for yard work, but getting raggedy enough I went and bought a new pair of leather work gloves, to be precise, Wells  Lamont Cowhide Full Leather Adjustable Work Gloves model #1132. Good gloves, you can get them at pretty much any chain or big box hardware store. If you look at the photo you'll see that they have the common strap across the back to adjust size; I bought a size large, which fit snugly enough I paid little attention to it...

Wells  Lamont Cowhide Full Leather Adjustable Work Gloves model #1132

...until during the retention training I was experiencing sharp pains in my hands. I thought my training partners were applying some Vulcan nerve pinch I had missed in the descriptions. I thought my hand was broken. I thought... I don't know what I thought. 

But if you take another look at the photo of the glove again you'll what it was. That little bead at the end of the tension strap? Enough pressure exerted straight down on the back of the hand wearing it in just the right place is very distracting...

Great if your actual assailant is wearing the gloves, bad if it's a classmate... 

EDIT To add: In at least one of the videos on the subject Mas showed us one of the assistant instructors was wearing these same gloves, and did not seem to have any problems. So the gloves are fine.