The girlfriend had her 2-day ‘practical rifle’ course this weekend. Keep in mind that other than about 60 rounds the shot off last weekend she had no experience with a turnbolt centerfire. By the end of the course she was hitting eggs at 400 yards. Man-sized silhouettes were a given at that distance. In fact, she’s now jaded that hitting anything less than 300 yards isnt much of a challenge. The final shoot of the day was at 500 yards and that was a bit trickier, but she gave a good accounting of herself. She’s come to see that a rifle is a very personal firearm in the sense that you cant just pass a rifle around to several different people and have it shoot as well for all of them. So, now she needs her own .308 boltgun. One of the guys there had a Rem. 700 LTR that she liked although I’m leaning towards the Savage for its Accutrigger and easily swappable barrel. (Yes, she could put a Timney in the LTR but the Savage comes from the factory with a fabulous fully adjustable trigger.) Regardless, her confidence in hitting a deer-sized target has increased to the point where she no longer feels that she wouldnt want to take a shot past 100 yards…now its developing into ‘if I can see it, I can hit it’.

Being the ‘gear queer’ that I am, I asked for stats about what the other shooters had. There were two .300 Win Mags, the rest were .308’s. There was a Browning A-Bolt, a Model 70 and a Kimber 84..the rest were various flavors of Remington including one Remington 710 (‘the plastic gun’) that some poor bastard was shooting FMJ out of and having a hell of a time hitting anything. (He was also the guy with the Bushnell…so, obviously, he was shooting the gun as it was packaged – rifle/scope combo). The girlfriend was shooting my CZ550 Varminter in .308. There was a Bushnell, a Burris and the rest of the field was Leupold..mostly variable although one guy was using a fixed 6x…which I think is a good all-purpose hunting scope. The majority of shooters used bipods and the rest just threw the rifles across their packs in the prone position.
=====
The fun never stops in New Orleans. Nice little footage of a grandma in her house with her stored food and a pistol arguing with the SWAT team thats there to ‘help’ her…right up to the point one guy tackles her, snatches away her pearl handled .38 and they hustle the crying woman onto the back of a truck for ‘processing’. And then they feel good because they ‘helped’ her.  And, the great part, is that through the whole video she’s saying ‘I dont want you in my house, get out’ and they just stand there..without a warrant, telling her she has to go and that theyre there to ‘help’ her.

More stories, some not quite verifiable, of one group of cops asking civvies for details on what guns they have just so ‘they know who has what’ and then another group of comes coming along later and working off a list, takes those same guns.

If any of you are surprised by this, then you havent been following the trends since 1992. Its a sad thing to say, but some homeowner needs to sacrifice everything and just start shooting these thugs.
=====
Picked up a very swell little stove this weekend. ( http://www.optimus.se/img/product/svea1.gif, http://www.optimus.se/img/product/svea2.gif) Its ostensibly for the girlfriend during hunting season but I like it alot. Its a little Primus that comes with a small stand and an aluminum cup that all nests together to save space. These things arent as light as , say, a small folding stove with a butane cartridge but its utterly bulletproof. World War I technology, no moving parts, no pumps, no hoses, no fuel bottlle, nada. Just brass and steel and some old-world ingenuity. Oh, and it was $25. A gallon of Coleman fuel and this thing would keep a refugee in New Orleans cooking for a good bit of time. I store Coleman fuel for my lanterns but thats only one part of the fuel equation….I keep propane, kerosene and Coleman but the primary fuel is kerosene. The other two fuels are just for convenience and to spread out my ability to use scavenged fuels.

EDIT: Hunh…turns out this stove is still being sold with almost no changes since it was first made in the late 1800’s. Thats bulletproof tech. Model? Its a Optimus Climber Svea 123R Stove
=====
I can see where in a situation like whats going on in New Orleans it would make sense to answer the door and, when the friendly MP-5 toting people who are there to ‘help’ ask for the guns, to hand over a Ruger 10/22 and a CZ-52 or Jennings and act tearfull about it…then wait an hour after their gone and pull the Glock and AR out from behind the refrigerator and continue with life.