Snowflakes in Hell

Bruce seems to have found a mystery object.  I’m stumped.  Any of you have an idea?

A commenter in Paul’s post over at HuffPo gives a pretty good education on how Lauer Custom Weaponry’s Duracoat process works.  For the sake of brevity, I’m only pasting the relevant bits:

I am a frequent purchaser of Lauer products and the only travesty I see in this report is the fact that the Wisconsin dealer charged $200 for the Duracoat (your first error, its not “paint”) job. I’ve done several, and $200 seems a little steep.

It’s actually a neat process. You have to completely disassemble, degrease, and bead blast the firearm first with 120 grit aluminum oxide, then parkerize, then duracoat, making sure that you have the correct “paint” to hardner ratio between 10:1 and 14:1 (personally, I find an 11:1 ratio just right).  It requires a good bit of tools an know-how. Air compresser, media-blasting gun, air brush (I use a Paasche dual-stage) parkerizing solution, heat tank (or a good sized crock pot), and a few other odds and ends.

The end result, if done correctly, is a beautiful, rock-hard, durable firearm finish resistent to holster wear, self lubricating, and, which happens to come in a multitude of colors.

No doubt it’s expensive, now that, thanks to Bloomberg and the Brady Campaign, Lauer is now the hottest name in Duracoat.  Clearly if we don’t get this technology off the streets immediately, we can expect drug dealers and gang bangers to immediately start procuring bead blasting equipment, parkerizing solutions, and heat tanks, and to begin reading up on hardener ratios.  If this scourge is allowed to continue, they’ll soon be so obsessed with Duracoating, they won’t have time to sell drugs and shoot up street corners!

Thirdpower’s response to The Brady Campaigns bit over at HuffPo:

Obviously Paul’s been nominated for the board in Pleasantville.

Zing!  That deserves to be comeback of the week, I think.  For those of you who are 90s challenged, here’s what he’s talking about.

It’s quite probable that not too many people would have ever heard of Lauer Custom Weaponry if it hadn’t been for Mayor Bloomberg, and now The Brady Campaign.  In the tradition of “There’s no such thing as bad publicity!”, there’s little doubt in my mind the notoriety they’ve gained through the pant shitting hysterics of leading anti-gun groups is bound to drive the sales of their product through the roof, and make even the grizzliest of grizzled gun guys long to paint their rifle pink.  Why?  Because there’s one thing The Brady’s and Mayor Bloomberg don’t understand; we gunnies hate people presuming to tell us what is and what isn’t acceptable when it comes to our private affairs, and we’ll go out of our way to patronize companies and products just to piss them off.  The more hysterics they cry, the more colorful guns will be out there.

I’m not going to run out to buy any of the Bloomberg Collection any time soon, because I’m a traditionalist, and I like my rifles like I like my coffee: black.  But make a serious effort to ban this stuff, I might just do up an AR in Barney Purple just as an act of defiance.  Yeah, because I’m like that.  Most of us are.  So go ahead, Brady.  Continue to vilify this stuff, and Lauer will be seeing $$ in their eyeballs for every nasty editorial.

But what of colored guns?  Are they really a threat to law enforcement?  As much as I’m trying to imagine that drug dealers and gang bangers are going to run around with a Bryco 9mm painted in Barney Purple, I’m having a difficult time.  Besides, colored gun are not anything new.  They’ve been around for a long time.  Here are some examples:

So are the Brady’s wanting to be the deciders of what is and what isn’t part of the art of gunsmithing?  Do they want to dictate which decorations on guns are OK, and which aren’t?  I have no doubt they do, but decorating guns is a tradition as old as guns, and this is merely the latest incarnation.  I’d be more sympathetic to the arguments that if these dasterdly paints ever fell into criminal hands, all holy hell would break loose, if brightly colored spray paint weren’t available in every home depot.  Sure, it won’t look as nice as the custom paint Lauer makes, but if you’re a gang banger and want to paint your gun Barney Purple so the fuzz will hesistate to shoot you, well, the technology to do so has been readily available for years.  If painting guns suddenly becomes the fashion among criminals now, we’ll know who to blame, and it won’t be shooters, or Lauer Custom Weaponry.  Color me skeptical that will happen, though.

I can see our friends at the VPC blog are in hysterics over the threat of handgun snipers.  No doubt this threat is real.  Here’s some video of these dangerous individuals training:

What’s even more scary, is you can tell those folks aren’t only training to assassinate pigs, turkeys, rams, and chickens, presumably to be followed by babies and small children (obviously they kept the baby silhouette’s hidden for the cameras), they actually seem to be enjoying themselves!

UPDATE: Note they use the small children for what they call “target setting” and force these poor kids to hide behind bunkers while these people practice their asassination techniques.  No doubt one day these kids will be in the crosshairs.

In Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

The House yesterday rejected a measure aimed at curbing illegal handgun trafficking, the first substantive gun restriction considered by the full chamber in more than a decade.

By a vote of 128-75 the House defeated an amendment - attached to a separate gun crime bill - that would have made it mandatory to report lost and stolen handguns.

The amendment won overwhelming support from Philadelphia-area lawmakers, where polls show majority support for the reporting requirement. House Speaker Dennis O’Brien, a Republican, was the only representative from Philadelphia to vote against the measure.

O’Brien said he could not support what he called a “flawed bill” and felt it could have “unintended consequences” for legitimate crime victims, such as felony charges for not reporting multiple missing weapons. “It’s a difficult vote to explain why you’re not for it, but the deficiencies were glaring.”

Hat tip to Speaker O’Brien for knowing a turd when he sees it.  I wish more Philadelphia area reps were able to see through the bullshit.  It’s going to be the poor who own guns to protect their homes in Philadelphia who are going to be most at risk for being prosecuted under this bill.  I’m glad to see Speaker O’Brien realized that.

Gun-control proponents hailed the vote itself as a historic achievement for opening floor debate on gun violence and forcing lawmakers to take a formal position on controversial legislation.

You know you’re in good shape when gun control people are happy just to have a vote, even if that vote meant they lost resoundingly.  I agree it’s good to have these reps on record, because now we know who is and who isn’t on our side.

Rep. David Levdansky (D., Allegheny), the amendment’s sponsor and an avid hunter, argued that most sportsmen do not have an issue with reasonable handgun restrictions.

Notice how our opponents these days are always avid hunters?  The media seem eager to make sure you know that.  I mean, how else are you going to make the people who are against this look no better than kooks?

“We find it disappointing that even the most commonsense crime-control legislation can’t muster a majority in the House at this point,” Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said. “But we will continue working with our allies to build support for another day.”

Keep spinning Ed, because we’ll be doing the same thing, and there are more of us than there are of you.

UPDATE: Armed and Safe has more.

It’s not number one, but when you’re competing against that many shooters who are that good, you end up pretty happy with fouth in class in the latest March E-Postal match.  My fly swatting was good, ended up in a three way tie for second in that part.  Could have done better on the bullseyes.  I need to work on follow up shots.  Overall, I scored 7.  Mr. C. is a tough man to beat, and so is Merle.  Looks like JimmyB is going to be as well.  Gotta worry about Denise too, and then there’s Ahab, who didn’t shoot this match, but no doubt will shoot others.

SayUncle points out that American Hunters and Shooters Assocation is shilling for Obama the Socialist Messiah.  AHSA has pretty thoroughly unmasked itself as an anti-gun false flag operation, especially with Bob Ricker occaisonally making appearances in the comments of gun blogs berating gun rights activists.  The Jolly Roger is flying high on AHSA mast, but that actually doesn’t matter too much, in their minds.  What Ricker and Schoenke are hoping for is that most hunters and shooters don’t know what a pirate ship looks like, and will hear their endorsement and think it means Obama is down with the hunters, and by association gun rights.  The problem is, people aren’t that stupid, and the word is getting out there.  It takes an extra special kind of prick to take people for such fools, but that’s exactly what the Schoenke and Ricker do.

Obviously, as you all have noticed by now, I’m playing around with a new theme.  The one I was using was getting pretty long in the tooth, and didn’t support WordPress widgets, so I decided to grab and heavily modify a theme that did.  I tried to do my best to change as little as possible from the way the old theme works, but there are differences.  Feel free to let me know if you find anything particularly annoying, as changes can be made.  Especially let me know if something doesn’t look right in IE, Opera, or some other browser I don’t use.

Added benefit to the new widget based theme is I’ve added a “Top Commenter” sidebar, which shows those of you that most need to get a life ;)  Don’t feel bad, I’m really the top commenter, but I figured it wasn’t fair of me to compete against you all in the “need to get a life” category, so I excluded myself.

UPDATE: Folks seem to like it.  I might have to put up a poll after a week or so.  I’m still getting used to it myself.  It’s like looking at someone else’s blog.