It’s the Monday before Christmas. Try to contain your excitement.
So on to Christmas:
(just a little “historian” humor there)
(I know I’ve posted it before, but I still get a giggle from it)
And on that same topic:
And speaking of elves:
…thus combining two of my favorite themes: Christmas and Train Smash Women.
Oh all right. Just so we don’t make Monday even worse, here are a few real elves:
Some guy has put together a video of the Best-Shooting Pistols. Frankly, I’ll take his word for it, because I do not ever want to get into a gunfight with him. Watch the video to see why.
This, folks, is why one needs to practice a lot — although I will admit that having a little gun range in one’s backyard (as he does) without any discernible neighbors in the area doesn’t hurt. If I had one of those, I’d be the world’s best .22 rifle shooter (and have the world’s largest collection of .22 rifles with burnt-out barrels).
Anyway, the pistols (from #5 to #1):
Honorable mentions: Browning P35 High Power; S&W M&P 2.0 5″, Glock 34.
After watching the video a couple-three times, I came to realize two things: 1) I have got to shoot more often, and 2) I need to look at the CZ Shadow 2. (Forget about the STI; I can’t even afford the “base” model Staccato P.)
Hell, at least I have a High Power. Now all I have to do is ahem practice a bit more.
I have spoken often of my old high school, St. John’s College in Johannesburg, and of its rigorous academic- and sporting regimen.
What I haven’t talked much about was one of the extra-curricular activities called “cadets”. This was a military course: close-order drill, full dress uniforms and discipline. It took place once a week during school hours, and would involve getting dressed into uniform before school started, then breaking from class, going to the armory, drawing our drill rifles (decommissioned SMLEs), then running in formation down the stairs you see in the above pic, and drilling on the “A” rugby field. 
(pic is not of us, but another school)
At the end of the drill period, we would run back up the stairs to the school and to our houses, where we showered, changed back into school uniform and continued with regular classes.
Of course, discipline was harsh because private school duh (to the point where most private schoolboys, once drafted, would find actual Army boot camp not too onerous). “Defaulters” was feared — boots not shiny enough? uniform not pressed? not drilling properly? late for parade? etc. — and Defaulters involved one hour after school or on Saturday morning spent running up and down said stairs (two hundred and twenty-seven, ask me how I know this), carrying the aforesaid rifles overhead and shouting “Coll-ege! Coll-ege!”
Secretly, I loved cadets. I loved the polishing of my boots (to where you could tell the time in their toecaps’ reflection), I loved the precision of the drill, I liked the camaraderie of the shared misery with my buddies; but most of all, I loved Musketry.
Once a week, instead of drawing SMLEs, one lucky platoon would draw BSA-Martini falling-block single-shot .22 rifles from the armory and head off to the 50-yard shooting range for an hour and a half of target shooting. Here’s the rifle we used:
…the rear aperture sights requiring adjustment (“side screw one click, top screw two clicks”) as we shot. (The range master was a U.S. Marine Corps Korean veteran from Georgia, a.k.a. the school chaplain.) We shot from prone, unsupported (“no dead-resting!”) and the greatest disappointment of the day was the final “Cease Fire! Cease Fire!” command, delivered in Fr. Fitzhugh’s stentorian bellow (“Sayce Fahr!” was what it actually sounded like).
With my old and decrepit eyes, I probably couldn’t shoot this vintage thing for peanuts these days, but despite that I would head off to Collectors and get this beauty in a heartbeat, if I had the spare dollars.
Nostalgia is its own reward.
Following my post about the Brno ZKM-611, Reader JohnF asks in an email: “The 611 is a non-starter because it’s so expensive. If you like CZ’s semi-auto rimfire rifles so much, why not just go for the newer 512 model?” (I should add, for those who don’t know, that CZ eliminated the “Brno” brand, but the CZ/Brno labels are essentially the same gun, e.g. Brno 602 = CZ 550 Safari.)
Good question. Here’s a look back at the 611, followed by the 512 (both in .22 WinMag):
Fact is, if I were looking to buy a semi-auto .22 WinMag rifle, I’d give the CZ 512 a long, hard look simply because it’s a CZ. But if I wanted to add a beautiful rifle to my meager collection, gimme the Brno any day of the week. Is the 611 hundreds of dollars better than its successor? Nope, but that’s not the question.
And the 611 is a takedown rifle, whereas the 512 isn’t. That feature also points to the ZKM-611 as the better choice.
Digression:
I should also point out that new semi-auto .22 WinMag rifles other than the CZ 512 are like hen’s teeth, simply because Ruger stopped making their 10/22M line, the idiots. Apparently they claimed unsolvable feeding issues for the decision, but I never had that problem, not once. I wish I’d never sold mine.
As far as I can see, the only other manufacturer currently making a .22 WinMag semi-auto rifle is Savage, with their A22 Magnum. Predictably, being Savage, it’s pig-ugly:
But on the other hand, the A22 features Savage’s excellent Accu-Trigger, so it should be a worthy alternative to the CZ 512. (I’ve never fired the A22 before, so I can’t say.) Savage also claims to have fixed the .22 WinMag’s alleged feeding problem by making it a delayed blowback action. Typically, the A22 sells for just over $400 as I write this, compared to the CZ 512’s $500+ (although it’s discounted by $100 at Cabela’s).
And here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two. The CZ 512 wins, hands down, in just about every department. Clearly, the $100 premium is worth it.
Now where did I put that piggy bank?
Ambrose Bierce would heartily approve of this iteration of his own Devil’s Dictionary. A sample:
* “OK, Boomer” – popular, reflexive and mentally-flabby retort of retarded children who cannot formulate a proper or logical response to an argument, question or premise. A sign of belonging to a group known collectively as “Millennials” whose main attributes include oversized thumbs, limited intelligence, hysteria, extensive knowledge of modern technology but inability to use a rotary phone, can opener or rake, hair-trigger cry reflex, navel gazing, overly-high self-value acquired through a program of low expectations, and a belief that everyone gives a flying fuck about what they’re eating at any given moment.
Much more goodness at the first link above. (Oh, and if you don’t have a copy of Bierce’s Dictionary, hie thee to the second link and remedy that unpardonable omission immediately. For only 99c on Kindle… please.)
One of the real pleasures I had while living at Free Market Towers a couple of years back was going out to the mailbox very early in the morning, retrieving the fresh edition of the Daily Telegraph, then reading the thing cover to cover while drinking my morning coffee, trying to finish it before the Free Markets woke up for breakfast.
If we had a decent daily newspaper Over Here, I’d subscribe to its print version in a heartbeat, but of course we don’t: they’re all total shit, and of course infested with socialist hacks.
This isn’t, by the way, the modern-day meaning of the word, where “hacking” means breaking into someone else’s computer coding program, and “hacks” mean “shortcuts” or “gimmicks”.
In The Oldie days (explanation to follow), the word “hack” usually meant “journalist” — more specifically, a bad journalist. And in perusing the pages of a magazine I’d never heard of before (thankee, BritReader Jeff W), I found a lovely article about journalism, and journalists.
Of course, nowadays journalists are despised, and mostly deservedly so, for being hacks: opinionated assholes who reveal their ignorance with every sentence they write (e.g. when talking about guns), and moreover, who write badly, unsupervised by editors who used to be a moderating influence, but who are now best described as “last week’s journalists” — i.e. no better than the journalists they’re supposed to be supervising.
But it wasn’t always like that. Here’s an excerpt from the article I linked above:
It’s easy to maintain a simplistic stance if you never leave your desk. Google will reaffirm what you already know – or think you know. However if you take the time and trouble to go out and meet the people who are living through the things you’re reporting, and ask them what they think, you’ll soon find your opinions are tempered by reality. Real life is complex and contradictory. Successful columnists are often dogmatists, but good reporters are pragmatists. Regular contact with the folk they write about has taught them that life, and news, is rarely black and white.
It’s also easy to forget that journalists once had to follow an apprenticeship path before they could land a job with a prestigious — or at least popular — newspaper or magazine, that path being: learning how to write proper journalese and prose in a small-town newspaper, and simple things such as interviewing subjects, collecting background material and in short, learning about the topics before committing them to print — all before graduating to a larger, or national publication.
It’s also worth remembering that this path seldom if ever required a university degree which, I think, stopped journalists back then from becoming part of the story: as perpetual outsiders to the system they were reporting about, their job was to be skeptical about the topic — indeed, learning about the topic meant looking at it from all sides so that they could see through the spin being put on it by the interviewees.
Contrast that with today’s J-school poseurs, who graduate thinking that they’re qualified to write about everything, whereas in fact they’re unqualified to write about anything. Nowadays, of course, they just parrot the spin because they literally don’t know any better.
Read the entire article: like all good pieces of writing, it will educate you about the topic. It will also increase your loathing for today’s so-called journalists, if that’s indeed possible.
And en passant, read a few more articles in The Oldie. It’ll be worth your time.