Tag Archives: Patriot’s Day

Patriots Day = Range Day

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Today is Patriots Day. A day that is the perfect reason to go to the range and practice with your favorite freedom-securing device. As our buddy Heinlein said, the price of freedom is “the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness”. What does that mean? Let’s ask the AI:

“Robert A. Heinlein famously defined the price of freedom as “the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness”. This recurring theme in his work, notably in The Puppet Masters (1951), emphasizes that liberty requires active, often violent defense, rather than being an unalienable right.

Key aspects of this philosophy include:

  • Active Defense: Freedom is not free; it is paid for with the willingness to fight.
  • Individual Responsibility: True freedom involves being personally responsible for one’s actions, often requiring hard choices and vigilance.
  • TANSTAAFL: Popularized in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” implies that everything, including freedom, has a cost.
  • Vigilance: It mirrors the sentiment that liberty is maintained only through constant vigilance.

Heinlein’s stories, such as Starship Troopers, often tied the right to vote to the willingness to serve and sacrifice for society.”

Sounds legit.

So, let’s hit the range today and put some metal in the air.

I used to know someone who would buy a new gun, stick it in his safe, and go for months, or even years, without shooting it. I used to tease him about it and now I have become that person. I have a small mountain of guns here that I need to take to the range and get set up. Todays range trip was a CZ .22, the Marlin .45-70, and a pair of Rugers.

The Rugers were a pair of PC 9mm guns. The first was a takedown PC Carbine I picked up a few weeks back and rehoused into a new Magpul Backpacker stock. The other gun was a factory SBR’d PC Carbine from Ruger. Just recently Ruger has started offering a few SBR’d guns that are coming straight from the factory as SBR’s.

I dropped an AR-180-style folder on it, a tri-lug adapter to allow me to drop one of my Obsidian 9 cans on it, and tried out the new Olight Osight.

For me, the attraction of these two firearms is that they can be broken down into compact packages that stow away nicely for when you need some firepower but space is limited…..bugout bags, caches, vehicles, etc.


When you take the SBR and break it down into it’s smallest configuration, it isn’t much larger than my Glock 17.

The SBR literally fits in the bottom drawer of my desk at work. No substitute for an M4 or similar carbine, but better than just a pistol.

One of the other guns I shot today was the Marlin .45-70 I picked up in an estate a few months back. The gun came with a bunch of reloaded ammo which I figured Id use to get on paper and build up a supply of empty cases to reload. I had forgotten how thumpy a rifle can be when you’re launching a 400 grain bullet. Ow.

I had removed the barrel-mounted sight, which was a Rem 700 sight someone had bolted on there, and replaced it with a receiver sight. At 25 yards it was shooting almost two feet low. Adjusting the rear sight accordingly was a bit of a stretch and left the rear sight sitting rather high above the receiver. Clearly a replacement front sight, with a lower profile, is called for. I ordered a few replacement front sights with different heights and I’ll swap them out as necessary until things are where I want them. I’d like to use some hardcast bullets for their penetrative properties, and I have some gas-checked RCBS 300- and 400-grain FN gas-checked bullets to use.

And the CZ? Shot wonderfully. I know everyone has their favorite bolt .22, but I genuinely think that you can spend a lot of money and not gain any advantage over one of the nicer CZ bolt .22’s. I have two of these guns and I really, really like them.

So…nice day to go shoot.

Patriots Day

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Its that time of year again. Head to the range and work on your freedom-maintenance skills. This year is 250 years of BFYTW.

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

But…freedom means other things as well. Being prepared gives you another type of freedom…the freedom from worry, stress, and insecurity. You can starve to death as a perfectly free man. Guns and ammo, absolutely….but the instruments of freedom don’t stop there. Gold, food, land, fuel, information, friends…all are arrows in your quiver. Don’t get pigeonholed into thinking its all about the guns.

Patriots’ Day

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Annoyingly, there is a Partiot Day, Patriot’s Day, and a Patriots’ Day. Every single year I have to go look up the correct one. Anyway…

‘Tis Patriots’ Day! A day that has a host of meanings and symbolism to a buncha different crowds. To some it’s a day to mark the beginning of the American Revolution. To some its the day to commemorate some terrorist events. To our friendly fedgov it’s a day to be on ‘heightened alert’ because..well..because. And to some folks it’s just plain ol’ Monday.

For your buddy Zero, it’s a day to reflect on what your role in .gov is, and more importantly, what is .gov’s role in YOU. And it’s a great day to head to the range and practice with your firearms .

In the meantime….

Patriots Day 2020

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One of only a a handful of holidays I actually get enthusiastic about, today is Patriots Day. You can do a search on the blog under ‘Patriots day’ and come up with previous posts on the subject. I try to keep to it’s spirit by going out to the range and practicing for the next shoot-the-Redcoats episode that comes along.

Interestingly, you can buy multicam versions of those hats online.

I understand many of you cannot, for various reasons, get to the range today. It happens. But if you can’t get out and put some lead in the air, you should at least give some thought to the history of the day and what it means to you.

 

Patriot’s Day

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Think, really think, about what it must have been like to literally bet your life and the lives of those you love on what was, at the time, treason.

Sure, everyone says they’ll pick up a rifle and ‘fight for their freedom’ but these guys actually did it.

While we may not know if we’re made of similar stuff until called upon, we can at least try to be ready. So…head to the range and put some metal in the air.

Patriots Day and 25th anniversary of Waco atrocity

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‘Tis Patriots Day!

You know what to do, you know where to do it! Get out there!


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It is also the 25th anniversary of the ATFE burning down a building full of women and kids in Waco Texas. This utterly inexcusable atrocity was the impetus for ‘militia movement’ that the 90’s was known for. To this day there are still a lot of unanswered questions from Waco. It continues to serve as an excellent reminder of what government can do when it wants to. As a result of this incident, and the Oklahoma City Bombing several years later, April 19 is a day of extra caution in some government agencies.

Patriot(s, s’,’s) Day.. or is it?

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There’s only a handful of holidays I get worked up over…Independence Day, my birthday, Valentine’s Day, Paratus, and one or two others. And then there’s Patriot’s Day…the moveable feast of the political right.

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Maybe someone really said this. Maybe not. But the sentiment certainly seems apropos.

First, there’s a bit of ambiguity about the name..is it Patriot’s Day, Patriots Day, or Patriots’ Day? I go with Patriot’s Day. You can figure out which punctuation rings your (liberty) bell. It most certainly is not ‘Patriot Day‘ which is, I think, a holiday in poor taste since  we already have a holiday with that name and ‘re-using’ it is patently disrespectful to the original holiday.

Then there’s the date. To me, Patriot’s Day is April 19. Why? Because that’s when the shooting started. The notion of making it the third Monday of April, regardless of date, for the purpose of creating a three day weekend is abhorrent to me. You make a holiday to remember and act upon a historical event. You don’t make it for the sake of getting a three-day weekend. *

Folks are calling today Patriot’s Day but I’m going to be a stickler….orthodox, if you will…and say that Patriot’s Day is April 19. Period.

* = Having said that, yes, Paratus is a moveable holiday. BUT..Paratus was designed from the get-go to be held on a Friday so you could have a weekend to play with your Paratus gifts. I do not find this inconsistent with my attitude about re-arranging historical holidays to fit modern demands for three-day weekends.

 

Patriots Day

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To be fair, there is some confusion over whether it is Patriots Day, Patriot’s Day, or Patriots’ Day.

51862212Succinctly, its the anniversary of the opening salvos of what we call the Revolutionary War. (Remember – if  you strike at the .gov and win, it’s a revolution; if you lose it’s a civil war.)

The history is available at the usual sources.

In a sad commentary on the cynical nature of .gov, this day is also a ‘heightened alert’ day for many .gov, .mil, and LE agencies. Apparently those of us who remember days like this are considered a suspect group.

So what’s the great purpose of Patriots Day? Well, I think it’s one of those holidays open to personal interpretation. I think its an excellent excuse to head to the range and practice with a firearm. I also think it’s an excellent day to contemplate what patriotism is to  you, how it is manifested, what it’s qualities are, and what you’re willing to do and not do in the name of it. In short, it’s an excellent occasion to mull over your ideals and beliefs vis-a-vis government and individuality.

In olden day, there used to be Liberty Trees or Liberty Poles…these were features that served as rallying points on days like this.

liberty-poleNowadays rallys tend to be held at places like the federal courthouse or other building, which seems a little counter-intuitive to me. It’s using ‘the other guys’ features as your own rallying point. However, I was in Kalispell last weekend and saw a bunch of armed, Gadsen-waving folks with signs at the war memorial up there…so perhaps that has become the new de facto ‘liberty pole’. Although, really, I like the notion of a huge sprawling liberty tree that people can gather under and around…have rallies or simple picnics on Independence Day..that sort of thing.

Regardless…it’s a holiday today, and it’s not a bad idea to head to the range and punctuate the day with gunfire.