I bet there will be some extensive posting and commenting on this (another link here) in upcoming days.

I think somebody is getting punked.

(And if I didn't misspell that correctly--I don't care).

From globeandmail.com:

Vancouver school board trustee Sharon Gregson loves to shoot her Colt .45 handgun.

She's posed with her prized weapon on the cover of a national magazine and even went to the United States to obtain a concealed handgun permit, which is good in 30 states.

She thinks Canadians need to broaden their thinking about handgun ownership.

"There is a thinking that guns can only be bad and related to crime, and that's not my experience as a legal gun owner, participating in a gun sport," Ms. Gregson said, explaining why she decided to get a handgun permit in Utah.

Good article. They include some hysterical anti-self defense rantings which are both illogical and inaccurate. But no news article would be complete without that.

Someone visited here after searching "is the Taurus 44 ten legal in California."

I think the correct model name is 4410.

And I think the correct answer is no, but someone who actually lives in California might know for sure.

I think that handguns which can shoot shotgun cartridges are illegal there.

Yes, it's a stupid law.  No, it doesn't make sense.  And no, such a law would not exist if the Constitution actually mattered in this country.

Every year my dad has an early Christmas party for our branch of the family.  All his surviving siblings come, plus a few of my cousins and in-laws.  The owner of the ranch I just blogged about also joins in.  Although he is technically not related, he is still considered more of a family member than some actual blood relatives.

And he once had a bit part in Viva Max!  But I digress.

A couple of months ago when I first went over to his place to shoot my EMF Winchester replica, I told him about the M1917 Colt revolver that my wife had come into possession of.  The M1917 shoots the .45 ACP cartridge using moon clips.  I had told him that someone had given me a bunch of semi-wadcutter reloads in .45 that probably wouldn't ever work in a semi-auto, but would be great for using in that old revolver.

Today he showed up with this:


Turns out he had once had a custom M1911 competition gun which had been customized to use this specific type of match ammo.  It had been stolen, and he had never replaced it.  He still had a full box of 50 cartridges of this 30-year-old or so Winchester-Western Super Match.


Nickel plated cases and 185-grain "Full Metal Case" (I guess they mean full metal jacket) semi-wadcutters which they call "clean cutting bullets" on the box.


I'm honestly kind of reluctant to shoot these, just because it's a full box of 50 of such old ammo.  But that's what he gave them to me for, and that's what I'm sure I'll do eventually, although I'll save at least one in case I ever get around to collecting cartridges (sounds like a fun hobby).  The headstamp on these is "WESTERN 45 AUTO."

I wandered on down to what's left of the the animal pens just to poke around.  Here are the scant ruins of the legendary rat killing.


There are two of the trees that had their branches covered with rats that night.  I think the one in the center of the picture is now just a dead stump.  The large object on the ground to the right of it is a pig feeder--the only evidence remaining that pigs had ever been there.  The clear field in the far distance was dense forest when I was a kid.

My dad is going to get into raising deer.  He had mentioned to me before that he was thinking about it, and today I found that he has already begun building the pens he will need.  It requires licensing, inspection, and capital to purchase the deer.  The money is no problem for him and he is already scheduled to receive his stock in February.  He wants me to get involved in it with him.  That sounds pretty cool to me.  Due to a life insurance "inheritance" or whatever you call it that my wife received a couple of years ago when her mother passed away, we can actually afford to buy at least two bred does.  It would be an interesting way to make some extra money, especially since my dad is covering all the materials for the pens.

So I asked a lot of questions about it today and it sounds promising.

What do you do with them?  I'm sure someone is thinking that.

The deer in south Texas tend to be pretty puny.  I think they are probably some of the smallest white-tails in the entire country.  Deer can't be legally transported across state lines, but white-tails from other parts of the state are much bigger, and people who have property which they lease for hunting like to buy deer from other areas to bring in new blood.

Another question I'm sure someone is pondering is:  do you raise them to eat?

The answer to that is absolutely not.  They are worth too much money to eat.  We'll have to stick to eating the wild ones.

I became a gun owner in 1978 at the age of 14.  My dad filled out the paperwork for it, but I bought it with my own money, and it was a Ruger 10/22.

During my freshman year in high school, I was a member of the FFA.  After that one year, I decided to pursue other goals and didn't remain a member.  However, during that year I had a subscription to Future Farmer magazine, and CCI was one of their biggest advertisers.

I didn't read the magazine much, but my favorite thing about it every month was the full-page CCI ad.  They knew their target audience (high school age mostly boys), and they didn't bother advertising all their cartridges, only the .22.  Since the only gun I owned was a .22, I immediately became interested and fascinated by all things related to that cartridge.  (Okay, at that time I also had temporary custody of a .218 Bee, but there wasn't much info floating around for that cartridge).

I also learned that ammo (like Federal, for example) with that gunkily lubed lead bullet didn't feed reliably in my 10/22.  CCI ammo, with its thin brass jacket, was always 100% reliable.  I became a big CCI fan.

One of the ads I remember best from the FFA magazine was the one when Stingers were still new and they had side-by-side pictures of a coke can shot with a regular .22LR and another shot with a Stinger.  I immediately had to get some Stingers, filled a Dr. Pepper can up with water, and shot it.  That exploded can got hung on a nail on my wall, next to my gun rack.  I was already a gun nerd back then.  It was the first of many cans to suffer a similar fate.

At one point, CCI had in their ad that if I sent in a dollar, I'd get this nifty ammunition guide, so I did.  It also came with a CCI sticker which got stuck to the wall right next to the exploded Dr. Pepper can.

For some time I had wondered whatever had become of the old ammo guide.  A few weeks ago when I was looking through some other old gun books, the ammo guide fell out of one of them, having been sandwiched between the pages for several years.

So here is the nearly 30-year-old CCI Ammunition Guide from the late 1970s, scanned and preserved for posterity.  The resolution should be high enough that you can download them and read them in your preferred graphics program.  The double pages are around 250k each.

I scanned the ballistics pages separately so I could set them in landscape and make them easier to read.  They are the most interesting and useful part of the guide, to me.  The cartridge illustrations are in scale with each other.

Click on the thumbnails to download the files.

  
Front and back covers.


Pages 1 and 2:  firearm safety, ammunition care, 22 rimfire history.


Pages 3 and 4:  "treat the 22 with respect," testing from a bench rest, sighting in, velocity loss in autoloaders.


Pages 5 and 6:  causes of misfires, Stinger, Stinger velocity vs. barrel length.


Page 7:  Green Tag competition ammo, CCI rimfire shotshells.


Page 8:  22 ballistics--short, long, long rifle, magnum, and shotshell.  Handwritten notes are mine.  Something about the percentage difference between the standard 40-grain bullet and other bullets used in other cartridges, it seems.  I don't really remember.


Page 9:  ballistics--380 ACP, 9mm Luger, 38 Special and 38 Special +P.


Page 10:  ballistics--38 Special +P (continued), 357 Magnum, 44 Magnum, 45 ACP.


Pages 11 and 12:  CCI Lawman Ammunition, barrel length and velocity comparisons.


Pages 13 and 14:  handgun barrel life with jacketed bullets, bullet lubrication, centerfire shotshells, CCI equipment for the reloader.
I remember when I sent my dollar in, I wrote a note that although I had seen the ads for the shotshells, there weren't any in the stores yet, and I was looking forward to trying some out when they finally became available for purchase where I lived.

As I told in the story about the rats, I did end up using their shotshells quite a lot, but I used them in my dad's old pump action.  This was because the shotshell load isn't heavy enough to fully cycle the action of the 10/22, and they jammed it.  Years later, their shotshells often turned my Single Six into a very effective snake gun.

So there it is.  I hope you find it interesting.

Today I noticed a referral from Gunner's Journal, so I had to go check it out.

Gunner has a new blog, and he has lots of good commentary on M1911 pistols and other guns.

His blogroll is a real honor roll of top-notch gunbloggers.  I don't know how I merited being included in the list, so:  thanks!

Go give it a look.

It slipped up on me and I almost didn't realize it.  I would like to take a look at some S&W snubby prices, see if that new Kel-Tec pistol has hit the shelves yet, grab a handful of Bianchi Speed Strips if anyone has them, and get a box or two of ammo.  Maybe a knife, to replace my lost kerambit, if I can find something I like.

UPDATE:  Came away empty-handed.  There were a few interesting things there, though.  I saw one Taurus Thunderbolt, this one a stainless version in .45 Colt ($600).  There were a couple of those Kel-Tec .223 "pistols" but none of the new PF-9 pistols.  I also saw one Winchester 1894 in .218 Bee!  That would be such a sweet gun.  He wanted $695 for it.  Prices on S&W Airlights were also quite reasonable, I just didn't have money to spend on guns today.  One guy had a big table covered with enormous Wildey semi-auto pistols.  Also I noticed one of the new Taurus 1911's priced at $430.  This guy also had all the nicely-priced S&W snubs and some other guns.  They were all marked with two prices, one regular and then another "on sale fox $xxx."  I think maybe he was trying to move some inventory before Christmas or something.

Then I stopped by a T-Mobile shack and upgraded my antique cell phone to a new RAZR.  Just ordered Motorola Phone Tools 4.0 from Amazon so I can easily transfer pictures to my computer.  Looks like they have it the cheapest at $4.69 or something like that.  Most other places want $30 or more for it.  It also comes with a USB to mini-USB cable, in case you don't already have one.  Battery technology has really improved in the last few years. The new battery has about the same surface area, but is only about 1/4 as thick as the one in the old phone.

One question:  Aren't all the Ruger P-series 9mm mags the same?  I saw one guy selling 15-rounders that were Ruger factory mags for the P85, but then he had some aftermarket mags for the P95.  I was under the impression that all the mags were the same for all models of the same caliber, so a mag allegedly for the P85 would work just as well for the P95.  Am I wrong?

UPDATE 2:  Just to clarify.  I did not get the phone at the gun show. As I said, I stopped by a T-Mobile shack.  It was several miles away and on a different side of town from the gun show.  The gun show is on Broadway at Loop 410.  The T-Mobile store was on Walzem.  Sheesh.

I know I haven't done much gun-blogging lately.  I've been in kind of a slump, I guess.  But I have something in the works which I should be able to finish this weekend.  It just involves a lot of scanning and uploading, so it's somewhat time consuming.  Another item of half nostalgia and half historical interest that I accidentally found several days ago.