So I was trolling through backpage.com craigslist and found this: Pelican 1700 Long Case (waterproof, crushproof, and dustproof) – $100

Hmm. A Pelican 1700 for a C note would be pretty sweet. But….

Let’s bring up an image from Pelican’s website.
Now lets snag the picture from Craigslist

Three things jump out at me:

1. The logo’s on the cases are completely different. A Google and Yahoo image search for “Pelican case logo” does not return that logo you see on the CL case.
2. Notice the two protrusions on either end of the black case. Not present in the tan Pelican image
3. Pelican product has metal reinforcements at the padlock holes, the black CL case does not.

Is any of this definitive? I don’t know. It’s possible this is an old Pelican case that predates the metal-reinforced lock points, is an older mould that has those projections on the end, and perhaps the logo did change. Also, if you look at Pelicans product page for the 1700, some do have those round doughnuts on the corners, and some do not.

Or its a fake from our Most Favored Trading Partners over in China.

I was a tad disappointed that I couldn’t find much on the internet about spotting counterfeit Pelican cases. And, as I said, this case on CL maybe the real deal….but I’m thinking it isn’t.

Moral of the story: know your dealer. I came *this* close to buying this case until the odd logo threw me and I started to get suspicious. Amazon sells the real deal and if you shop around on there you can often find a decent deal on shipping.

From MGE Wholesale, in case you’re curious.

Personally, I wouldn’t trust my precious tuchas to a sub-$500 AR. I mean, they had to cut a corner (or five) somewhere, right? But A sub-$500 AR becomes a $900+ AR once the election is settled.

For what is basically dealer price on a Glock, you can drop this and a couple pmags in a box and double your money in three months.

Interesting video about one person’s experience with almost two dozen different flavors of AR mags. Worth a watch, even if you don’t necessarily agree with the opinions.

My own experience is that I prefer regular plain ol’ GI aluminum magazines over everything else. I used to swear by the CProducts mags but haven’t bought any from them since they had that ugly change of ownership a few years back, so I can’t speak to current quality.

Although I prefer GI aluminum magazines, I do stockpile Magpul Pmags as trading stock. I’ll use them if I have to, but I feel more comfortable with the aluminum mags in terms of reliability (which is everything) and durability. I’ve used AR mags from the Vietnam war with original followers and original springs and they’ve worked fine. Not sure I can find a forty year old plastic mag I can say that about.

Again, it’s personal preference…I’m sure you’ve had great experience with your carbon-fiber windowed magazine with round counter. Awesome. Good on ya. I’ll stick with the aluminum GI mags.

But….I’m a hidebound curmudgeon. I encourage you to research and try, try, try before making up your own mind.

H/T to guns.com

Someone very thoughtfully (thank you, DD!) sent me a link to this article:

BLAINE — In real estate, the term “unique” is a common description, even for a stick-frame rambler. But this property is as unique as they come.

For sale at $1.5 million: a five-story massive concrete building, on top of which once sat a 70-ton rotating radar.

This was during the Cold War, and the radar was part of a system on the lookout for incoming Soviet bombers. It was in a prime location to search the horizon, right by the Canadian border, with a magnificent view looking out at the San Juans.

Potential buyers ought to have no earthquake worries. Each floor has four solid concrete columns. Each column is 3 feet square. Outside walls are a foot thick and reinforced with rebar.

“It was explained to me that it was constructed to withstand a nuclear attack,” says Stefanie Fuller, who in 2003 was in charge of selling the surplus radar tower for the state.

But here”s the real money shot – ad with pictures!

Kinda looks like one of those old German flak towers that they can’t cheaply tear down these days.

I remember looking at one of those microwave relay stations that were for sale years ago…it was constructed in a similar ‘-nuke-resistant’ fashion. They’d make awesome retreats if you could modify them for full-time habitation without compromising their integrity.

A fascinating story about WalMart and how it seems to be a hotbed for crime. The article, from Bloomberg, mind you, makes the implication that it’s WalMarts fault for all the crime and this it is somehow taking advantage of overworked police departments.

It’s not unusual for the department to send a van to transport all the criminals Ross arrests at this Walmart. The call log on the store stretches 126 pages, documenting more than 5,000 trips over the past five years. Last year police were called to the store and three other Tulsa Walmarts just under 2,000 times. By comparison, they were called to the city’s single Target store 44 times. Most of the calls to the northeast Supercenter were for shoplifting, but there’s no shortage of more serious crimes, including five armed robberies so far this year, a murder suspect who killed himself with a gunshot to the head in the parking lot last year, and, in 2014, a group of men who got into a parking lot shootout that killed one and seriously injured two others.

I shop at WalMart for groceries. There is no doubt in my mind that WalMart id a good place to save a few bucks on things like groceries and housewares. However, because of those ‘everyday low prices’ it is also a magnet for the very low income. Now, not all very low income people are criminals or troublemakers….but many of those VLI people are VLI people because they’re scum. In other words, because they’re tweakers, drug users, criminals, gnagsters, and morons, thats the reason they’re very low income…not the other way around. A person can still be dirt poor and still be a good person…if they already started as one.

Anyway, this is the reason I never, ever go to WallyWorld without a pistol and a healthy dose of situational awareness. And a huge bottle of hand sanitizer in the vehicle.

The article goes on to say that the Target stores don’t have the same issue. Interestingly, in this town, Target has a rep for being *very* pro-active on the shoplifters. They take that stuff quite seriously and their loss-prevention guys sometimes wind up getting into law enforcement. Back in the day, Rudy Giuliani had the ‘broken window’ approach to crime fighting…previous administrations had let the little crimes (fare jumping, drinking in public, littering, etc) go ignored in the name of concentrating on the big crimes. Giuliani figured if you come down on the little crimes, you stop people from graduating to bigger crimes, improve quality of life, and reduce crime. To a degree, it worked. (There were some..uh..civil liberties…issues raised, but thats another story.)

As I used to tell someone, when there finally is a mass shooting event of some type in this town it’s gonna be at the Super WalMart. Sometimes its a freak show out there. Especially in the South.

At this moment, $15 a spool which is a crack-smokin’ price for commo wire for your TA-312 or anything else that needs some two-strand. Pricing will probably change as sales go up, so be early.

An article about folks moving into the neighborhood. And a nod to Friend Of The Blog ,Rawles.

ASKED by an out-of-stater where the nearest shooting range is, Patrick Leavitt, an affable gunsmith at Riverman Gun Works in Coeur d’Alene, says: “This is Idaho—you can shoot pretty much anywhere away from buildings.” That is one reason why the sparsely populated state is attracting a growing number of “political refugees” keen to slip free from bureaucrats in America’s liberal states, says James Wesley, Rawles (yes, with a comma), an author of bestselling survivalist novels. In a widely read manifesto posted in 2011 on his survivalblog.com, Mr Rawles, a former army intelligence officer, urged libertarian-leaning Christians and Jews to move to Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and a strip of eastern Oregon and Washington states, a haven he called the “American Redoubt”.

A report of a car full of men in body armor with semi-automatic weapons brought Lexington police to the Walmart on Richmond Road on Saturday night. Officers found two men, one in body armor, a 20-year-old woman and a six-month old baby.

Lt. Jackie Newman said that when Lexington police officers got the three people out of the car about 11:15 p.m., they said they were preparing for doomsday and needed supplies. A 26-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman were in the car with their 6-month-old baby and a 19-year-old man, police spokeswoman Brenna Angel said Monday.

Oh merciful Crom, it is *hot* out there…. someone get Putin on the phone and tell him to dial down the weather machine.

Some interesting tidbits from around the interwebs…….
When Dyeing PMAGs, Liquid Or Powdered Dye? – An interesting piece from TFB about dyeing sand-colored pmags to whatever color you happen to need. I generally don’t use plastic mags but color-coding magazines has some appeal to me. I’ve always liked bright orange magazines for range practice and this would be a good way to readily segregate ‘practice’ mags from ‘critical’ mags.

Citizen science takes on Japan’s nuclear establishment -DIY nuclear background monitoring. I’m a fan of empirical data over government supplied data. What’s interesting is that some placesdont want you to own early warning systems because you might misread them and cause panic. And, of course, you might stray from the ‘official’ reports.

The new Microgun – Smaller than an M4, but with a cyclic rate of about $1400 rpm. This really might bring the man-portable Jesse Ventura backpack electric gun into reality… these would make amazing suppressing-fire weapons for light vehicles and temporary facilities. I thought I read somewhere that someone was working on a version that ran off a cordless drill…..

And just for fun…rubber-band MP5 – Because.