Author Archives: Commander Zero

Price reduced

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You guys remember this group of properties? The realtor dropped me a line to tell me that the sellers have become ‘more motivated’ with some of the lots reduced by $50-60k. Buddy, you could drop it to $0k and I’d probably still not be interested. Too much going on with these properties that make it a hard pass for me.

So, still looking for a chink of dirt. Interestingly, Im seeing more and more properties getting marked down as I read various news articles about how the housing market is slumping. Perhaps theres a buying opportunity coming up? It’d be nice.

I fully recognize that ‘perfect’ is the enemy of ‘good enough’…but honestly, I haven’t seen ‘good enough’ yet. There’s always “Yeah, its perfect except for…” and some things, like a public road bisecting the property, are just not things Im willing to compromise on. So…search continues.

KEArms and Angstadt 9mm carbines

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Lovely weekend here in the mountain west. Hotter than a two dollar pistol, but, so far, no major fires.

Last year I picked up a pair of 9mm carbines that take Glock magazines. One was an Angstadt and the other was from KEArms (the guys who make the poly lowers). I’d posted about the Angstadt and , I must say, it’s a really nice gun. Strong recommend.

The KEArms gun was also quite nice, but it was giving me fits. I could never get off more than five or six rounds before I’d have a wild failure to eject. Since the 9mm cases are so short, and there’s plenty of room for bolt travel in the gun, a case would fail to eject, the bolt would cycle all the way back, and upon return the bolt would slide forward with the unejected case held firmly to it, and the empty case would actually push the next round out of the mag and into the chamber….creating a hellish doublefeed.

I tried swapping springs, changing ammo, etc, etc. Nothing worked. Since I had a lot of guns here to play with I kinda set the KEA gun back and forgot about it. Last month I finally contacted KEA and explained the problem. They emailed me a paid shipping label and sent it back. Took ’em about two weeks to get to it. There was some problem with the bolt and they replaced it. Got the gun back yesterday and headed to the range. Shoots fine.

One thing about those KEA poly lowers is their claim to fame is that they are lightweight. The 9mm is no powerhouse of recoil, but in a lightweight gun like the one I have it was interesting that the recoil almost seemed the same as what you’d get from a .223. I’ll throw a tri-lug on the end of the barrel and see if a suppressor makes any difference.

Once you’ve played with roller-delayed 9mm guns, you become a little spoiled and a straight blowback 9mm seems ker-chunky and brutal.

Invariably, any time someone brings up the topic of pistol-caliber carbines there will be someone who chimes in with “Ive never seen the point of carrying a full size carbine in a less than full-size caliber” or “You might as well just have it in .223 for the same size and weight”. Arguments that completely ignore everything except caliber. Would I rather run out the door with a 5.56 carbine than a 9mm one? Absolutely. So why would I have a 9mm carbine? Very streamlined logistics for situations where you don’t have the luxury of carrying two different types of magazines and two different types of ammo. If all you can take with you is what you can carry, there’s an advantage to streamlined logistics. Additionally, I can suppress a 9mm carbine a lot easier than a 5.56.

To carry the pointlessness of this argument even further, someone will say either:

a) If portability is a factor then you should just grab a 10/22 and a .22 pistol
or
b) Get a 5.56 ‘pistol’ AR

Firstly, Im not going though the apocalypse with just .22 . As it is, I’m already compromising on terminal ballistics by dropping to 9mm. Secondly, no AR ‘pistol’ is really a pistol. A pistol fits in a holster on your belt or tucks under your shirt for compact and concealable purposes. “Get 5.7 then”, will be the retort. Sure…I’ll get right on that when I can find 5.7 just as easily as I can 9mm.

First choice for Der Tag? Nah. But if I had to run outta here with just a backpack and what could fit in it, I’d probably grab the 9mm Glock, 9mm carbine, 9mm suppressor, a dozen Glock mags, as much 9mm as I have room for, and call it a day.

Overcoming addiction

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Id have to check my records to make sure, but I don’t think I bought any guns in June. Might be the first month in a couple years I didnt buy a gun (or suppressor). My records suggest the last gun I purchased was the SBR lower receiver I used for the stubby BRN-180, and that was in May. Perhaps I’m finally on the downward side of this crippling gun-buying addiction I seem to have developed. Or, more likely, I’ve hit the point of pretty much running out of stuff that I really want enough to actually drop money on.

Speaking of addiction, I finally managed to quit drinking regular sugared Coca Cola. I tend to drink a goodly (and ungodly) amount of the stuff. Probably between 5-7 cans a day. I went to the doctor in January and when she asked how much Coke I drank her professional composure disappeared and she blurted out “Wow!”. And my bloodwork suggested that if I didn’t knock the sugar intake down I might have a future of sticking myself with needles several times a day. So, walked out of the docs office and forced myself to switch to Coke Zero. Tastes horrible, but more palatable than Diet Coke.

I did the math and a can of Coke has 39g of sugar. Multiply by six cans a day and you get 234 grams. A half pound is 227 grams. So, I was sucking back, on  average, a half a pound of sugar per day. Thats three 5# bags of sugar a month. That equated to 840 calories a day just from Coke. Thats 42% of your RDA-suggested daily 2000 calorie intake.

Did switching to the 0-calorie, 0-sugar Coke Zero make a difference? Well, yeah. My A1C dropped by about 20% and I lost about ten pounds. I’ll be getting more bloodwork in October and I expect my triglyceride levels will have dropped from “Thats not supposed to be possible” to “a little high but okay”.

I have no discipline, but as I tell people, I can pretty much do anything when I have a gun held to my head. Staring down the barrel of diabetes was pretty much what it took to make me give up a 45 year habit.

Theres just no way I was going to be like Dan Forrester in ‘Lucifers Hammer’.

The gun addiction only cripples my wallet, the sugared Coke kinda would cripple my health.

And, before you hit the comment button, I am absolutely aware that I should give up the Coke Zero as well. Baby steps, kids.

Buy once, cry nonce

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I hate spending money. However, I seem to have come to grips with that because I often spend money on things that a lot of people would cock an eyebrow at. When I can afford to, I try to by the high quality version of whatever it is I am after. “Hey, we have this version made by a company that you’ve never heard of and its just as good for $240 less”….or you can spend stupid money and get the ‘genuine article’.  If I can swing it, I’ll get the genuine article.

The angle of the photo precludes seeing the reticle

Thats my EOTech XPS2 after spending 45 minutes in the pouring rain running snap-shooting drills with my FN. Theres enough water there to pool on the optic to a considerable depth. And I am completely unworried. I know the product is built for this sort of thing and getting wet isn’t an issue for it. Perhaps for a knockoff or lesser product it might be a problem, but, in this case, I clenched up and forked over the money for a product that I believed would meet the rigors of the ‘real world’. And, it seems that it does.

Crises and disasters rarely make appointments, and you go to war with the gear you have, not the gear you want. When I have to beat feet out the door on some dark and stormy night, heaving ammo cans and cases of MRE’s into the back of the truck at 2am while juggling a flashlight and looking over my shoulder, its nice to know that theres some bits of gear that I won’t have to worry about.

Independence Day 2025

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“The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

Independence Day and Patriots Day are pretty much the only two holidays I take seriously. And, in my opinion, both (esp Patriots Day) are best observed by exercising your right (and duty) to spend time with your favorite freedomstick and work on your skills. Its also a good time to ruminate on the liberties that we (in theory) have that separate us from those cucks in the UK and Commonwealth who get jail time for ‘disruptive’ Facebook posts or saying the quiet parts out loud.

 

The difference, to me, between the two holidays is that Patriots Day is about remembering the grim reality that sometimes the only solution to a problem comes from blood being spilled and unpleasant choices being made, whereas Independence Day celebrates the success that came from it. Kinda like the difference between Veterans Day and VJ/VE Day.

While you can defend your interests with dad’s .30 carbine or grrandma’s .32 Iver Johnson (which still puts you miles ahead of those metric-using cucks). why would you if you didn’t  have to? And you don’t have to. Don’t think for a minute that if AR-15s and Glock pistols were available 250 years ago that the guys in the field wouldn’t have been all over them like fat kids on ice cream. Most of the world can’t have access to these marvels of modernity..you do. If you don’t have a good semi-auto rifle and a quality pistol (or five), then get out there, show some respect to history, and buy them. The most patriotic thing in this world is an Independence Day sale at your local gun shop. Tell them George sent you.

 

Video – A Hunting Rifle 🦌 to 500yds: Practical Accuracy

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“Package guns” are those find-them-in-WalMart type of deals where you get a rifle, an attached scope, and maybe a carry case for a set amount of money. The scope is invariably some variable of the 3-9x variety and the gun is usually a no-frills model. Theyre a nice package for someone getting their feet wet in hunting or for someone on a tight budget. But… is it any good?

The guys at 9-Hole Reviews usually work with military-use guns. In this video, they jokingly and tongue-in-cheek refer to this type of guns use in the ‘documentary’ movie ‘Red Dawn’. You don’t go to war with the guns you want, you go to war with the guns you have. How would a package gun like this acquit itself as an impromptu mid-range rifle? It acquits itself fairly well.

A standard trope of almost every ‘invasion’ book and movie is some non-military dude running around with his hunting rifle nailing invading soldiers from distance. Is it an accurate trope? Well, it’s certainly happened. Is it likely that one woodtick with a hunting rifle is going to materially stop an advance of enemy troops? Beats me. Certainly things come to a temporary halt when someone starts dropping bullets into a dismounted group of soldiers, but it doesn’t seem to stop the advance…it just delays it momentarily. But, hey, Im no expert.

The evidence, at least from this video, seems to support that a good shooter with a Tractor Supply Christmas Sale rifle can pose a reasonable threat at distance. And..doesnt everyone have a gun like this somewhere?

.22 practice

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Went out to the range the other day to see if a problem I was having with my BRN-180 SBR was resolved or not. I swapped out the extractor and ejector with ones from JP Customs and that seems to have fixed it. I say ‘seems’ because I won’t be completely satisfied until I run a couple hundred more rounds through it. There’s simply no room for doubt and lack of faith in a firearm that you may (or may not) want to keep in a ‘serious’ role.

Speaking of serious, the internet gives me no shortage of pistol drills to use to keep skills sharp and active. However, I don’t see as many carbine drills. So, I am throwing this question out to the collective hive-mind: do you have a source for drills I can perform at the range using an AR equipped with a .22 conversion kit? Most of my rifle drills involve ‘snap shooting’ but I’d like something a bit more, for lack of a better term, ‘practical’ or ‘real world’. There are plenty of drills that require use of full blown .223 ammo, and while some of those may be of use when using a .22 conversion, many are not. Because .22 is less powerful than .223, I’m looking for more ‘close in’ drills. Anyone have any suggestions? Bonus points if its a drill that can involve rifle/pistol transitions that enable me to use my .22 Glock.

By the by, the conversion kit I use is the CMMG .22 conversion kit and I cannot say enough good things about it. Just clean and lube it thoroughly when youre done and it’s good to go. Same for the .22 Glock.

 

Guns of color

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I remember when I was a lot younger and a lot poorer I would take what I could get, gun-wise. I owned one AR-15 and I was happy to have it. Nowadays, its a different story and I can have some ‘first world problems’, and , if I so desire, fix them.

Black is a color you don’t really see in nature much except at night. An ‘evil black rifle’ stands out a bit in most environments. Your eye naturally discerns something that is ‘out of the ordinary’ and a perfectly straight three-foot-long black stick is one of those things.

This sort of ‘problem’ is easily remedied with some spraypaint and stencils if youre of the the mind to go that route. I prefer to just skip the issue altogether and, when possible, get a gun in my color of choice – OD green (ODG).

This brings me to the Ruger RXM pistol I bought a while back. Now, I own Glocks and Sig P320’s and the Ruger combined the best of both worlds (without the ‘uncommanded discharges’). You get, essentially, a 3rd Gen Glock 9mm but you get a chasis system like the P320 allowing you some interesting parts swaps. Such as … colored frames. (Frames of color?)

The RXM came with a bluish/gray frame. Fine, it works, whatever. But, for $27 MagPul is offering a replacement frame in ODG. Sign me up.

It’s a fairly petty thing, to be concerned about your guns color. However…why not?

Article – Rodney King-era ‘rooftop Korean’ calls left-wing riots manufactured: ‘looking for the next George Floyd’

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The patron saint of neighborhood defense, Tony Moon, was interviewed about recent unrest in California. The money shot:

“If it’s a riot or if there’s any sort of mayhem, social chaos going on in your neighborhood, invest in firearms,” he said. “I mean, support the Second Amendment. Buy a gun, buy a rifle. I mean, the most easiest weapon to shoot is a shotgun. So invest in something like that and learn how to shoot it and be proficient with it, so that way it becomes part of your defense, whether it’s for your home or your business.”

This man is also active on the various social media platforms and he’s turned his 15 minutes of fame into a real identity. It appears he’s consistently been advocating for dang near 30 years. He’s not wrong though. Most people call 911 after the event, and afterwards is not when you need the cops most. As the man says, “You are your own first responder.”

Article – Chuck Schumer hospitalized, as DC heat wave rages

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WASHINGTON − Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, was hospitalized June 25, after feeling lightheaded in the gym, according to his office.

“Out of an abundance of caution, he went to the hospital to be treated for dehydration and is now back at work in the Capitol,” Schumer’s press secretary, Allison Biasotti, said in a statement.

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”