My favorite toy
Yesterday, in the great state of Texas, I filled my tank at Kroger’s in-house gas station, and paid $1.86 per gallon.
Granted, some of this was via a discount through Kroger’s points program, but I’ll take it any way I can.
I think I’ll pop over to New Wife’s workplace and get her car filled as well. Maybe take a few jerrycans along for the ride.
And then I’ll swing by the range, because Murka.
Probably the only scenes I found objectionable in the classic movie Casablanca was when Inspector Renault utters the line: “Round up the usual suspects.”
Of course, in the context of the movie, the line is heavily ironic not to say satirical because Renault knows exactly who the criminals are, but he deflects suspicion away from Rick Blaine by saying that.
In reality, however, rounding up the usual suspects is not only sound police procedure, it generally solves about 90% of the crime, as seen here (and read it all because it’s good):
Almost every perpetrator of horrific crimes is a “known wolf.” Most of the violent crime in our society is committed by a very small group of easily identified criminals, and most of them have had many interactions with law enforcement over the years.
Violent crime in U.S. cities is not evenly spread. Not culturally. Not geographically. Not mathematically.
It’s concentrated – absurdly concentrated – in fractions of fractions of the population. This isn’t ideology. It’s decades of DOJ, PD, and academic data all pointing at the same tiny cluster:
• ~0.5% of residents linked to 50–70% of shootings
• Most homicide suspects have 8–12+ prior arrests
• Victims usually know their attackers
• Violence clusters block-to-block, not citywide
We all know this, but when I say “we”, I’m referring to people who live in the here and now and can read statistics unencumbered by dreamy and mistaken dogma and its mantras, e.g. “Ban guns and violent crime will end” or some such crap.
Honestly? I’m heartily sick of talking about this because I’ve banged on about it so often in the past that I don’t want to talk about it ever again.
But as long as these assholes keep on with their bullshit, the more I feel I have to rebut it, again and again and again and fucking again.
I think it’s time I let off some steam, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.
Via Insty (again), I see that Overfinch has crafted a line of bespoke Range Rovers in Holland & Holland livery:
The 2025 Range Rover Holland & Holland Overfinch’s interior is much more overtly extravagant, though Range Rover’s minimalist form language still dominates. Most surfaces are wrapped in Bridge of Weir leather, and those that are not are instead covered with open-pore French walnut veneer or real metal. The stainless-steel inserts in the doors feature the same engraved scroll work as on the “Royal” shotguns, the engraved diamonds embedded in the veneers in the doors echo those on the guns’ stocks, and the Holland & Holland crest is inlaid on the front and rear center consoles, the latter housing a Champagne cooler and a pair of Champagne flutes.
The leather seats feature a unique quilting pattern that also echoes the Holland & Holland diamond motif and features illustrations of game birds stitched into the backrests. In the duo-tone colorway the front seats are trimmed mainly in Harris Green and the rears mainly in London Tan.
Sounds like something an Arab oil sheikh would want to putter around his Scottish estate in, playing a Laird. Still, I like that interior.
Of course, from the outside the thing is 2025 Rolls-Royce-level Fugly:
…but not as ugly as its price of $650,000.
To put it into perspective, that’s just over the price of three new H&H Royal and a couple-three of their secondhand Royal shotguns.
Lovely as all get-out, but not even with a lottery winning would I be tempted. And that’s by any of them: the H&H Range Rover or the H&H shotguns, which taken as the package above would set you back about a million bucks.
Maybe the parvenu status-seekers of today’s ultra-wealthy set would be tempted by such blatant brand-harvesting… hence the title of this post.
As for myself (given a lottery winning as above), my choices are below the fold. Read more
Some Black Friday silliness from PSA:
As I pointed out to Mr. Free Market, that’s $350 for a rifle and cartridge I’d take out into the bush with confidence, any day of the week.
Despite that ugly-ass plastic stock.
You might assume that since I first started shooting .22 ammo at age 7 or 8, over the following 60-odd years I have sent quite a few rounds thereof downrange — “range” being our backyard, any open piece of land I happened upon, and so on all the way to indoor ranges here in northwest Texas.
And your assumption would be correct. The other day I was organizing Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere, and at a rough count I had on hand about 30,000 rounds of the lovely stuff*.
When I broke it out and tried to sort it out by type, I discovered that about two-thirds of that was 40-grain bullets, and the rest 36-grain. And that puzzles me because for some reason, I’ve only ever had consistent accuracy with the heavier bullets, regardless of the gun used; so why do I have so much of the lighter stuff?
I think it has mostly to do with price, as exemplified by the latest offering to arrive in my emailbox from Lucky Gunner:
It is rather tempting, I will admit: that five cents per pull is very alluring, but for the fact that over time I’ve found the 555 brand rather spotty in terms of consistency, in terms of both accuracy and ignition. (If there’s anything more irritating than hearing a click rather than a bang after squeezing the trigger, I’m not aware of it. And my go-to CCI Mini-Mag ammo is astoundingly reliable: I cannot remember a non-fire with that brand, ever.)
As far as I can recall, however, I don’t believe I’ve ever shot anything with a pulse using the lighter bullet, so I can’t testify as to its effectiveness. For some reason, I’ve always preferred to use 40-grain ammo out in the bush, for reasons I just can’t explain; “bigger is better”, maybe? And what price those extra four grains?
Given that the likely target is going to be small game of the rodent variety, I’m not sure that the hollow-pointed 36-grain stuff is that much more effective than the solid 40-grainers.
But I’m willing to entertain war stories from others on this topic because as the Krauts say, immer werder lernen.
Anyway, all this talk of rimfire has got my digit tingling, so if you’ll excuse me…
…this may take a while.
*I later discovered another thousand or so rounds (all 40-grain solids) in the hall closet and range bag, not to mention a few dozen secreted in the gun bags I typically carry the rimfire guns in. There may also be a box or two hidden away in the car, I dunno; it wouldn’t be the first time.
Gun control politicians, long in control in the Empire State, have passed so many restrictions on law-abiding New Yorkers to exercise their constitutional rights that far too many simply give up out of frustration. Those roadblocks, in essence, deny New Yorkers their ability to keep and bear arms and, at a time when many rush to licensed gun retailers, the backlogs and bottlenecks can be jarring— especially for first-time buyers. Erecting barriers to the exercise of Second Amendment rights to frustrate citizens into just giving up is the intent of this regulatory scheme.
And now?
Gun permit applications are skyrocketing. Prior to the Bruen decision, on average, fewer than 100 law-abiding New York City residents each month applied for a permission slip to carry a firearm in the city for self-protection. There was a surge during the coronavirus pandemic and a post-Bruen surge, with the monthly average reaching 600 before stabilizing at between 400 to 500 for a consistent stretch, according to data from the New York State Police Department. Following the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, the next month permit applications reached an all-time high at more than 1,270 — led by Jewish New Yorkers who decided to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Since then, an average of 700–800 permit applicants attempt the process each month, all just to exercise a God-given right enshrined in the Constitution.
But New York still has in place restrictions that make it overly burdensome, time-consuming and difficult for law-abiding New Yorkers to purchase a firearm — a process that can take up to a year or longer. That includes a rigorous firearm training and safety course despite the fact that “New York hasn’t standardized the classes beyond outlining a handful of topics to touch on.”
That makes it extremely difficult for would-be firearm purchasers to go to their neighborhood firearm retailer and go home with a safe and reliable self-defense tool.
Extremely difficult? Try impossible.
I can’t get worked up about this, because the people who are being inconvenienced are for the most part the people who voted for the politicians and bureaucrats who actively built and maintained this situation in the first place.
So fuck off, you New York assholes. You created this problem; now you get to live with the consequences. You don’t need a gun (you told us smugly for decades and decades) because you have the police to protect you.
Well, good luck with that.