Well, Shit

From National Treasure Joe Huffman:

Boomershoot 2020 is five weeks away and COVID-19 infections are still increasing across the country.  I’ve had several people tell me they are not coming this year.  Many states, including Idaho, have travel and social contact restriction.
I’m canceling Boomershoot 2020.

As the title says.  And as if I needed another reason to hate the ChiComs.

Apart from the disappointment of the thing, this also means that I’m faced with two choices:

  1. delay the raffle for the Hawkeye/Zeiss setup until after next year’s Boomershoot, or
  2. hold the raffle, send the rifle off, and have another raffle for Boomershoot 2021.

It’s going to be 2.

So I’m going to finish sighting in the Ruger (setting it up for a 200-yard zero rather than a 400-yard zero as originally planned), and making sure which ammo it “prefers”, before holding the raffle and sending it off (probably towards the end of May, in case the ranges haven’t opened before then — another reason to curse this fucking virus).  I’ll keep everyone informed, of course.

I’m still mad as hell / disappointed…

Value

Suppose somebody said, “Here’s $1,500 and a list of shotguns — and you can only buy from the list,” I know what I’d do:

Buy two  of these:

…rather than just one of these:

…and I suspect that 80% of my Readers would do exactly the same.  (The other 20% would buy one  of the 590A1s and a boatload of ammo with the change.)

A note to all the manufacturers of tacti-cool firearms:  there’s a price point for most people when it comes to any gun, and just calling it “tactical” doesn’t warrant a 70% jump in price for very little added utility.

We may be Ignorant Clingers from Flyover Country, but that just means we’re familiar with the smell of bullshit.


I’m not a huge fan of shotguns for the above purpose — I belong to the AK-47 School Of Home Defense — but the one I would  consider is the Mossberg 500 or 590 Mariner for under $600, because it’s weatherproof and pretty much unbreakable.

Unnecessary Protection

I see that despite his support for MOAR Gun Control, Doddering Joe Biden has decided to surround himself with armed Secret Service agents, exactly like his erstwhile boss did:

Now that’s all very well, but unless there are a few disgruntled Bernie Bros around, I cannot see any danger whatsoever coming in Biden’s direction — certainly not from the Usual Suspects (e.g. the Beer ‘n Treason Crowd, which meets informally in country bars and gun shops all over the U.S.), and certainly not from any other conservatives in this  election season.

I know that there’s considerable irony — not to mention hypocrisy — in arming your bodyguards with all the guns you want to ban from private ownership, but having no social conscience to speak of, socialists are largely immune from guilt or indeed irony.

What I think should happen is that Biden should limit his security detail to carrying only the type of guns the old fart once suggested are  okay — double-barreled shotguns — just as a token gesture on his part.

Don’t hold your breath.

MOAR Gun Control

From some Commie mayor in California [redundancy alert] comes this opinion:

[A]fter customers lined up around gun stores in several counties Tuesday — including outside the Bullseye Bishop in San Jose — San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo declared that “gun stores are non-essential.”
“We are having panic buying right now for food,” Liccardo said Wednesday. “The one thing we cannot have is panic buying of guns.”

Why not?  Actually, if there’s a risk of society breaking down (e.g. L.A.’s Rodney King riots), that’s precisely the time when law-abiding people have an absolute need for guns.

However, as this little Stalinist is in charge of San Jose (home to the largest per-capita population of socialists outside San Francisco or Seattle), I say:  fuck ’em.  They voted him into office, let them deal with the consequences thereof.

And when the Unwashed Horde comes a-callin’ for some impromptu undocumented property redistribution, most of the good citizens of San Jose won’t be able to defend themselves — although Hizzoner, protected by the mayor’s Praetorian Guard, won’t ever have that problem now, will he?

The same kind of thing is happening in D.C. and Philadelphia as well, but I’ve long since ceased to care about those shitholes.

However, there is one unexpected light in the looming darkness:

When Illinois Gov. J.B. [“Fatboi”] Pritzker (D) issued an executive order Friday to put a statewide shutdown in place, he exempted gun and ammunition stores by labeling them “essential.”

Illinois?  Illinois??  ILLINOIS???  Talk about unexpected.  Had you asked me earlier, I would have put Fatboi near the top of the list of socialist governors standing in line to use the Wuhan virus excuse to hack away at gun dealers’ businesses.

He’s still a total asshole, but hey… I’ll take ’em where I get ’em.

Scopes: Zeiss Conquest V4 6-24x50mm

A couple of people have written to me following my selection of the Zeiss Conquest V4 for the Boomershoot ULD project, asking for details about the thing.

I know Zeiss glass, of course, both the binoculars and scopes, but not this particular model.  So rather than waiting for for my poor efforts to zero the thing, here’s a decent video about setting it up to shoot.  Note the groupings (but that lil’ 6mmBR target boolet would just bounce off a boomer instead of detonating it — assuming the wind hadn’t already blown it over into the next county).

Just one last point:  I know  that there are better scopes out there, but they cost at least double what the Zeiss V4 does — and they can’t be twice  as good, because with any Zeiss scope we’re pretty far up the cost : quality curve already.  And I didn’t have the budget for (to name but some) Swarovski , Kahles or Nightforce glass.  I’ve used all those, or seen them used in the past with excellent results, but I’m pretty sure the V4 will not be disgraced.