Sig P229 shines at the range, ready for prime-time

What's the most fun you can have with your clothes on? Shooting .357 Sig pistols is right there at or near the top of my list. So in addition to taking my brand-spanking-new Sig P229 SAS Gen2 .357 Sig pistol to the range for its debut, I also packed my two S&W M&P .357 Sig pistols, compact and full-size (or in most other pistol makers formulations, compact and subcompact).

And I took my Charter Patriot .327 Fed. Magnum along for more fun with a couple of boxes of .32 S&W Long wadcutters to take a break between shooting hot .357 Sig loads.

I started off with the P229 naturally as the new kid on the block. First shot with the P229 was smack dab in the center of a full-size blueman target at 10 yards offhand. Precisely the same experience I had with the first round out of my Sig P226 full-size pistol, so I wasn't really surprised. Pleased, delighted, happy as a pig in deep doo-doo, but not really surprised.

It shoots like a dream with the Short Reset Trigger system, the SigLite Tritium Night Sights are easy to see in the daylight too and overall I just couldn't ask for an easier-shooting, perfectly balanced pistol in my favorite caliber.

I only had the one magazine supplied by Sig (you buy a pistol that costs just shy of $1K and they give you one mag. Go figure. But so does Kimber and several other pistol makers, so you just gotta get your own mags). So I reloaded a lot with my UpLula mag loader and kept shooting. Holes in the center of the blueman are from the P229. Then I fired a few mags from my two M&Ps at the head of the blueman. No jams, no slams, no errors, nothing but perfection from all three pistols.

Only problem is operator error. You'll notice that the holes tend to stray a bit right of center, where I was aiming. I'm a lefty and when I pull the trigger off-center just a bit, it pulls the rounds to the right. I gotta work on that. Pulling the trigger straight back without pulling it right or left is the essence of good pistol shooting.

Then I took a break from .357 Sig and shot a few loads of .32 wadcutters with my Charter Patriot. I hadn't tried the .32s with my Crimson Trace grips and was delighted to find the zero was only off a couple of inches low from where I set it with the Speer Gold Dot .327 Magnum carry loads I use.

After shooting hot .357 Sig loads, the .32 wadcutters were like shooting .22s. I've found it's good to lighten up with easier shooting in between rounds of higher recoil loads. Seems to keep me from developing flinches.

The .357 Sig loads I fed the Sig P229 ran a wide range but all were hot. I used hollow-points by Speer, Winchester and Cor-Bon and for range ammo, Georgia Arms Canned Heat FMJs, Speer CF Frangible and Winchester White Box FMJs.

The Sig chewed 'em all up and spit 'em all out without ever missing a beat. It's true what Sig says about their pistols, "To hell and back reliability." I've never had a Sig pistol jam in my limited experience shooting them. I plan to widen that experience as early and often as possible.

After the .32 wadcutter break, I loaded up the last of the range ammo for the P229 and launched it at an orange 8" bull on top of the blueman at the same 10 yards.

The Sig's Short Reset Trigger just begs you to shoot quickly and even though I tried to slow down at first and be deliberate to check the sights, after the first few rounds of the day, I found myself shooting faster and faster, as quickly as I could realign the sights and launch another round downrange.

As the French cop said to Bogey, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship, me and my Sig P229 SAS Gen2. I shall be carrying her when I go back to work on Monday at the gun shop.

Now for a name. How about Sexy Sally? She's slick and smooth, quick and dangerous. And unlike some women I've known with those qualities, I think this one can be relied upon when needed.

Happiness arrives early in a blue Sig Sauer box

Have you ever noticed that good things come in small packages?

The boss lady where I work, Village Pawn & Gun Shop in Wadesboro, NC, is a little dynamo named Jennifer. She's about 5-feet-nothing and wouldn't weigh 100 lbs. in a wet raincoat.

Technically, she's not the boss. Her dad Billy has been in the gun shop business for more than 20 years, first as a partner and for the past 18 months or so as owner. His wife Dorothy, Jennifer's mom, is a retired school teacher who got no retirement at all as she went to work full-time at the gun shop immediately. Jennifer's husband Jonathan helps run the gun shop, so it's a mom and pop and daughter and son-in-law business.

Me and a couple or three other nonfamily members make up the entire staff. I've only been there full-time since January, but I quickly figured out that Jennifer is the boss. Nobody there, including mom and pop and husband Jonathan, can do hardly anything without asking Jennifer how to do it.

The whole family is a gaggle of work-a-holics, working 12 hours a day seven days a week with few breaks. They go to a gun show almost every weekend, putting in long days Saturday and Sunday and then returning to the shop Monday to start all over again. They love it and so do I.

As you may have heard, since the election -- and really for several months before -- the public has been on a guns and ammo buying binge and it shows little signs of easing off any so far. A slim majority of voters were foolish enough to elect Obama, but the gun-buyers were not fooled. They know a gun-grabber when they see one and they've been acting accordingly, buying up AK and AR rifles, high-capacity short-barrel pump shotguns and handguns of all types.

So when Jennifer promised last week to special order a Sig Sauer P229 for me, I wasn't disturbed or even surprised that it was Monday before she found time to place the order. The usual waiting time for any order from Sig Sauer, AR-type rifles or handguns, is usually weeks and since I was ordering a P229 from the Sig Custom Shop, I didn't expect it anytime soon.

But to our amazement at the shop, my new Sig P229 SAS Gen2 .357 Sig pistol arrived today!

Happiness is indeed a small blue pistol box from Sig with my name on it. It's got everything, Sig Anti-Snag SAS Generation 2 carry-melt treatment with all the sharp corners and edges smoothed out, Short Reset Trigger System and the Short Trigger, SigLite Tritium Night Sights, Two-Tone Stainless Steel Slide and black polymer frame.

And best of all, the Sig Sauer factory crew in Exeter, NH, bent the rules and made this model for me in the Sig Custom Shop in .357 Sig, while the SAS Gen2 is supposed to be offered only in .40S&W and 9mm. I suspect Jennifer did a lot of sweet-talking to the Sig factory rep.

And that factory rep also promised Jennifer he'd send me a set of those really nice Rosewood grips that were offered on the SAS Gen1, which is now discontinued.

The pistol arrived with black polymer grips, so I'll just have to wait on those Rosewood grips. But I don't have to wait to shoot it. Range trip tomorrow!

Gotta sort it out so I can carry it to work on Monday. I'll be giving it a workout with Speer Cleanfire Frangible, Georgia Arms Canned Heat FMJs and an assortment of hollow points. I'm sure it will do fine, but never carry a pistol until you know it's gonna work when you need it. Sig's have well earned their motto: "To hell and back reliability," but as Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify. I shall verify tomorrow at the range.

Demographics of faith have consequences for our future

Numbers don't lie and actions have consequences. Take seven minutes to watch the video below and consider what the future holds for America and Europe if current trends continue. Greg Hengler at Townhall.com sums up what the video tells us about our near future in this world.

So far, this video has 1,232,787 views! Devastating. Just devastating. More so when it is condensed to seven and a half minutes. Don't think there is not a direct correlation to the much touted polls showing a decline in faith to the decline in birthrates. Hedonism is the wide path and a greater number of us Western "civilized" folk are choosing to walk it. Problem is, Muslims are walking in the opposite direction on an even wider path.

The summation of this video is this: You can't fight something (faith in Allah) with nothing (faith in whatever god you created). Your god may be good -- in your eyes -- but what does he call you to do? What does he say about persecution? What does he say about dying? What does he say about giving birth? What does he say about other faiths or non-faiths? Whether you believe in Christ or not, the Christian God has a lot to say about all these questions, and has answers to all these predicaments.

The results of Western Civilization's choice to abandon the Judeo-Christian God speak louder than a million Christopher Hitchens' and Oprah Winfrey's. I pray for real change. I pray that God softens our hardened hearts so that we may receive Him. It's ours -- and our kids -- only hope.

A call to action indeed. If you're a Christian, pray God will intervene in the affairs of men. If you're not a Christian, all I can say is God help you, because the Islamic mullahs surely won't.

Biden disappears to V.P. bunker at 'undisclosed location'

Pay no attention to that strange-looking guy with the bushy eyebrows and the comb-over. It's only Joe, formerly known as the Vice President of the United States. And I predict you won't be seeing Joe in public for a while. Former V.P. Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location" now has a new V.P. in occupancy and Obama has the key in his pocket and Secret Service guards at the door.

Joe Biden's latest foot-in-mouth-disease eruption is his remarks about the swine flu, which meet the standard for a genuine political gaffe: It's when a politician accidentally tells the truth. He said all Americans ought to avoid public transportation. Oops. He missed the briefing from Team Obama about how to spread panic without mentioning trains, planes and buses, which of course are all beloved to leftwingnuts everywhere as "public transportation." (Which is what all Americans should be riding instead of the gas guzzling automobiles every single member of Team Obama drives every day. "Do as we say, not as we do" is the Team Obama motto.)

The White House scrambled Thursday to tell Americans to pay no attention to the advice of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said he's told family members not to travel in subways or airplanes to avoid catching the swine flu.

The latest gaffe from the vice president directly contradicted President Obama, who Wednesday evening had told Americans not to panic or overreact, and instead to take simple measures such as washing hands to combat the flu outbreak.

"I would tell members of my family - and I have - I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Mr. Biden told NBC's "Today" show as he earnestly explained how he is handling the flu situation himself.

Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden peeks behind the curtain and translates for us what the Wizard of Odd is really doing while scaring the public to death about pandemics.

At midmorning, President Obama, jealous of his constitutional prerogative as the panic-spreader in chief, sent his press agent out to rewrite what good old Joe had said. "The advice [the vice president] is giving is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans, that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico."

That's not at all what good old Joe had said, but this was good spinning practice. Over the next few weeks, the president and all the president's men will be trying to take back a lot of the stuff they're saying to punch up the panic over the disease formerly known as swine flu.

After several days of crying that the end is near, the White House finally came up with a celebrity victim, a presidential aide who had traveled to Mexico with the president a fortnight ago and started coughing when he got home. He didn't actually get very sick; this flu so far is mild stuff and the aide is already back at work. There was no need to worry about the president himself; he has no symptoms. Besides, even if he dies he'll only be gone for three days.

The Great Disease Formerly Known as the Swine Flu Pandemic of Aught-Nine is convenient for a lot of folks. The panic focuses everybody's attention on the glory of the government, and impresses the easily impressed that only the feds can stop a pandemic in its tracks, just as easily as it can take over the banking system, assume control of what's left of the American automobile industry, restore international bonhomie (surely you've noticed) and "reform" the health system so that health will be carefully rationed and your doctor will be mentored by your postman on how to deliver efficient government services.

Now, don't you feel better? Swine flu is not a threat, but Obama's "cure" for our nation is.

Scenes from forgotten war like ghosts from the past

Some long-lost work of one of the pioneers of photojournalism has surfaced, shedding light on one of the long-forgotten wars of the past.

Robert Capa is known as the pioneering war photographer for his work covering the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, which was essentially a tune-up for Hitler to try out his new weapons and give his troops some experience prior to launching World War II.

The strange thing about the Spanish Civil War is that the Communists were considered by the liberal press -- and Capa and his fellow war photographers -- as the good guys in this confrontation with the Nazis who were trying to take over Spain. There were no good guys in that Nazi-vs.-Communist war, unlike WWII which followed. But then liberals seldom get history right.

The long-lost 35mm film that has surfaced are some 4,300 negatives taken by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, groundbreaking work that was long thought to be lost but resurfaced several years ago in Mexico City.

The top photo is by Seymour of a Spanish partisan who proudly wears a Nazi swastika on his beret. Next photo is of Taro, who was Capa's co-worker and sweetheart, who was killed in 1937 when run over by a tank.

You can view a slideshow of some of the images here at the New York Times online. The article about the restoration of the photos in the NYT is here.

And though Capa is widely credited with being the first war photographer, I did some research in Photojournalism school at the University of Missouri at Columbia about a far earlier war photographer than Capa, who really was one of the pioneers of the dangerous art.

His name was Timothy O'Sullivan and many of the photos of the American Civil War which were credited to Matthew Brady were actually taken by O'Sullivan on the battlefields. He worked for Brady and sent his glass-plate negatives to Brady in New York, who etched his name on the plates.

O'Sullivan was the first photographer on the scene at the Battle of Gettysburg, Pa., and his images of the war dead are still haunting today.

O'Sullivan was also the first photographer to travel down the Colorado River as part of a mapping expedition in 1871, where he took many beautiful photos of the American west, including the first of the Grand Canyon. He took the below photo in Black Canyon.

Single-Action bug bite may be worse than swine flu

A funny thing has happened again on the way to downsizing my handguns.

I keep getting sidetracked in my plan to downsize from full-size pistols to subcompact, light carry pistols. I nearly gave in to the lure of my first single-action 6-shooter a couple of weeks ago when I took a Hy Hunter Six-Shooter for a test run from the gun shop where I'm working. That's it in the top photo.

The beautiful black-steel single-action with fake pearl grips caught my eye when someone traded it in and with a bit of googling, I discovered it's a copy of the Single Action Army Colt known as the Peacemaker. And the killer is this particular model was made in what was then West Germany in the 1980s by J.P. Sauer & Sohn. In case you're not a gun nut like me, that's the Sauer that merged into Sig Sauer, which IMHO makes some of the finest handguns in the world, bar none, at any price.

So I shot it, which I loved, but I reloaded it very slowly, which I don't love. As I reported at the time, now I know why all the old cowboys are dead. They got killed while they were reloading, one cylinder at a time.

So I thought I was over my single-action pistol desires. And then this week, somebody traded in a Ruger Blackhawk .41 Magnum with a 4-5/8" barrel, second photo. My S&W 29 .44 Magnum has a 4" barrel which I think is just about perfect for balance while shooting as well as ease of carry and quick handling. And the extra 5/8" on the Ruger .41 Magnum barrel feels pretty darn handy, too. I may have to beg the shop owner to let me take the Ruger for a test fire run, too. God help me, I think I'm getting bit by the single-action bug. Again.

I've always wanted a .41 Magnum but never shot one. I love 10mm pistols and .41 Magnum is the revolver equivalent of 10mm in semi-auto pistols. Maybe somebody in the shop or on gunbroker will buy this Ruger before I can find time to scratch this itch. I've already made plans this weekend so I can't make it to the range. But if it's still there next weekend...

Global warming, global freezing, kudzu, swine flu, who's on first?

My favorite pundit, Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden, is an old geezer like me and like me, he's having a bit of trouble keeping up with which Chicken Little is running about.

Global warming, global freezing, poison peanut butter, kudzu, swine flu, who's on first? Pruden updates us on the panic du jour in A pandemic of panic -- are we dead yet?

We were all supposed to be in the graveyard by now, done in by AIDS, SARS, bird flu, poisoned peanut butter, Hong Kong flu, killer tomatoes, global warming and strangulation by kudzu. But here we are, proof that there really is life after death.

Now we learn that we might freeze before the pigs get us. (The chickens failed.) NASA scientists have observed that the solar wind is the weakest since we began keeping such records, that the magnetic axis of the sun is tilted to an unusual degree, and Ol' Sol is the quietest he has been in a century. A chill, say the solar scientists, may be on the way. (Or not.) Worse, says one of them, this could compel reappraisal of the science of global warning. Try as he might, poor old Al Gore just can't keep the cosmos in line.

But this week Ol' Sol has been put in the shade by a new panic du jour. The cable-TV networks and the Internet are bubbling with sunspots, even if the sun isn't. Sample these latest headlines from the Drudge Report: "Two flu cases confirmed in Scotland. Has globalization made us more catastrophe-prone? Swine flu sweeps the globe. Swine flu closes football stadiums. The world must work together against this threat."

We haven't seen a panic quite like this one since the last one...

The director of the World Influenza Center in London says of the outbreak, such as it is so far: "It's difficult to look on the bright side."

No, it's actually not difficult. About 2,000 persons in Mexico are down with flu, and about 150 have died. That's a mortality rate of about 7 percent. Sad, even tragic, but not exactly the most lethal flu virus we've ever seen. There's no mortality rate in the United States because no one has died. Only a few, very few, cases have been reported, and nearly all are described as "mild." You have to give the medical bureaucrats and the media credit for chutzpah to think they can keep such thin soup on the panic menu.

There are no firm estimates or even hopeful guesses of how many Americans are likely to contract flu this spring, but fortunately the ratio of panic to reality is not governed by facts. In the early hours of counting, barely 50 cases had been reported in the United States, and only two in Britain - that's 2, not 2,000 or even 200. About 300,000 to 500,000 cases of flu are reported every year in the United States, where 10 percent to 20 percent of the population comes down with the sore throat, coughing and achy bones of flu. Of those, 30,000 to 40,000 die. What we have so far in the United States is a 50-case panic, caused by a remarkably mild variant of the flu.

The medical researchers say it might mutate. Or it might not. If it does, it might, possibly, maybe, potentially be the worst killer since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Or it might not. Researchers are working on the vaccine, and the media is working on the panic. We may not get a vaccine, but soon there won't be a dry pair of pants on six continents.

And in case you missed it, I was too busy to blog about Pruden's Friday column, when he wrote about the law of unintended consequences in Obama's on-again, off-again, on-again flip-flopping about whether Bush administration lawyers should be jailed for saving the nation after 9/11.

Exacting revenge for unpopular policies is the norm in the third world, heretofore more likely in Barack Obama's ancestral Kenya than in America, more in the tradition of gangland Chicago than in Washington, where we count on cooler heads to prevail when raw emotion threatens to overwhelm sobriety and the undisciplined senses. We recall perceived national mistakes with the sadness of regret and even gratitude for lessons learned, not the frenzied catharsis of a St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Mr. Obama, having won the White House fair and square, is entitled to change any presidential policy he chooses, but the vindication of a national election does not entitle any president to exact mindless revenge...

The loquacious prince of Hyde Park should understand this, having eloquently sounded caution and reason on his inauguration as president, promising as he had during the long campaign to "look forward," not "backward." Rahm Emanuel, once described as the president's alter ego (if indeed such an outsized ego could have an "alter"), said as recently as Sunday that "it's not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution."

This was in line with what the president had said all last summer when he was campaigning for the White House, what he had said on his inauguration, and in line with his oft-stated goal of restoring bipartisan civility and mutual goodwill to governing the country. Mr. Emanuel's reassurance was regarded in Washington as putting paid to an ugly era, an emphatic determination to "move on" to something close to national unity.

The president hadn't counted on the rage of the jackals on the leftmost fringe of his party, organizations like MoveOn.org, which want only the "unity" of the lynch mob. They demand a hanging and the president promises only to think about it. Ever confident that his golden tongue, with or without the teleprompter, would mesmerize all foes and vanquish all rancor, Mr. Obama then threw George W. Bush's lawyers to the mob.

Perhaps the president imagines that nobody cares much about what happens to lawyers, but he has set in motion something neither he nor anyone else can control. Some of the Democrats in Congress, eager now to join the mob, will regret what they cry for. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, for one, was a member of the House intelligence committee and sat in on super-secret briefings after Sept. 11. She concedes that she heard about waterboarding but she doesn't remember exactly what she heard. Just like Barack Obama sleeping through 20 years of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's rabid sermons, Ms. Pelosi dozed through the briefings. Her colleagues on the intelligence panel say they remember her demanding that the CIA do more to get the "intelligence" to prevent another attack.

Now wouldn't that be sweet justice, if Nancy Pelosi should get snared in the revenge frenzy?

Rookies and Idiots Rule! (And other depressing news)

Been busier than a one-handed paper hanger working at the shop this week, so haven't had time for any blogging since briefly early Wednesday. Plus it's been a week with disaster upon disaster rolling out with great regularity from the bunch of rookies and idiots in charge in Washington, so all the news is bad. I don't know about you, but it's depressing to see what a train wreck this Obama administration is turning out to be.

But I've got a few minutes before I head to work this morning for a concealed-carry class at the gun shop so I just had to post a quote or two from Mike Gallagher's column on Townhall.com.

First, here's a multiple-guess test about the terrible, gruesome practice of waterboarding torture which Gallagher offers.

I watched former New York Times reporter Judith Miller wail about waterboarding on Fox News this week. She complained that she can barely complete reading the released documents because they are so grisly and awful.

I wonder how she compares putting a caterpillar in a cell with a bad guy to taking a knife and slicing off the head of a screaming college kid in front of a rolling video camera?

Rep. Pete Hoeskstra was a guest on my radio show and repeated something that the released documents about interrogation revealed. Do you know how many people our country “waterboarded” over six years ago?

Based on the hysteria we’ve been hearing, surely it’s a big number, right?

Well let’s take a multiple choice test.

How many suspected terrorists have we waterboarded?

A) 500
B) 1200
C) 3
D) 900
The answer, of course, is C.

Three people.

We poured water in the mouths of three stinking, miserable, murderous terrorists. And you’d think we re-enacted the Crusades.

Out of the thousands of terrorists we’ve managed to kill or capture, three people were subjected to waterboarding. And that causes bleeding heart liberals like Judith Miller seem to want to break out in tears and move to France.

It’s positively disgusting.

I have to believe Americans are paying attention. Thousands and thousands of us took to the streets last week in peaceful, spirited demonstrations against the way this country is headed.

And while I'm stealing from Gallagher, here's his summation of recent events about Obama.

Let’s sum up just the past couple of weeks: President Obama goes to Europe and the Middle East, bowing and scraping (literally, just ask King Abdullah) and apologizing for the United States of America.

His Treasury Secretary announces that banks needing “exceptional assistance” under the TARP bail-out could be forced by his administration to make management changes akin to those that occurred with General Motors.

His Homeland Security Secretary sends a memo to law enforcement agencies warning them to be on the lookout for returning veterans and citizens who believe in state’s rights and are against abortion because we’re potentially violent “right-wing extremists.”

Later, this same Homeland Security disaster tells an interviewer that the 9/11 terrorists came across the Canadian border; this, on the heels of her stated position on CNN that sneaking across the border isn’t a crime, it’s a civil matter.

Obama rejects the advice of his own CIA director and decides to release specific details about the interrogation tactics our intelligence community used against some suspected terrorists, demoralizing and humiliating the men and women who are in the unenviable position of trying desperately to keep this country safe from another 9/11.

The president says that he has no intention of fulfilling the Moveon.org crazies’ desire to prosecute members of the Bush Administration who devised harsh interrogation tactics for harsh, murderous terrorists and then, a week later, changes his mind and leaves the door open for going after members of our intelligence community, all while seemingly ignoring the chorus of voices around him that are confirming that the tactics have actually worked.

If George Bush had such a disaster-plagued couple of weeks, I think the editors of the New York Times would be literally storming the White House with pitchforks and torches. First 100 days, indeed.

God help us, the juveniles are in power and our great nation may not survive the chaos.

And speaking of The New York Times, I gotta admit I'm an online subscriber and scan the headlines every morning. Old habits of 30+ years as a journalist are hard to break and the NYT is supposedly the leading newspaper in the country. But mostly these days, I scan the headlines and delete the email without reading a single article in the Gray Lady. They call the paper that because it's never been flashy and avoided color for many years, sticking to black and white.

But in recent years, the Noo Yawk Times has gone so far into left field they've met themselves coming back around a hairpin turn and become a train wreck of journalism transformed into a warmed-version of the Huffington Post or Moveon.org bloggers. Giving away national secrets is their most cherished recent tradition and no terrorist is too vile to be coddled by the Times.

So the news that the NYT is about to go under, at least for the print edition, is sweet justice from the marketplace. There's a reason that Fox News is so far in the lead in ratings that all the other news outlets are fighting for 10th place. Fox really is fair and balanced and after them, there's a host of leftwingnuts masquerading as journalists.

And when the NYT is being kept afloat with loans from a mysterious Mexican benefactor named Carlos Slim, that might be a sign that business is not doing well. Say good night Gracie.

Obama pushes treaty to ban reloading and BB guns

If President Obama could slap us gun-owners with restrictions that could ban reloading and perhaps even BB guns without having to seek Congressional approval, would he do it? According to the Gun Owners of America, he's doing just that with an international treaty he's supporting.

President Obama is determined to eradicate the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens.

In recent meetings with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, the American President promised to urge the U.S. Senate to pass an international arms control treaty.

The treaty, cumbersomely titled the “Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials” (known by the acronym CIFTA), was signed by President Bill Clinton, but never ratified by the Senate.

President Obama is hoping to capitalize on an increased Democrat majority and push its quick ratification. The U.S. is one of four nations that have not ratified the treaty.

If ratified and the U.S. is found not to be in compliance with any provisions of the treaty -- such as a provision that would outlaw reloading ammunition without a government license -- President Obama would be empowered to implement regulations without Congressional approval.

This CIFTA treaty would ban "illicit manufacturing of firearms" but what does that mean?

“Illicit manufacturing” of firearms is defined as “assembly of firearms [or] ammunition... without a license...”

Hence, reloading ammunition -- or putting together a lawful firearm from a kit -- is clearly “illicit manufacturing.” Modifying a firearm in any way would surely be “illicit manufacturing.” And, while it would be a stretch, assembling a firearm after cleaning it could, in any plain reading of the words, come within the screwy definition of “illicit manufacturing.”

“Firearm” has a similarly questionable definition. Borrowing from the open-ended definitions in federal law which have continue to vex us (and people like Olofson in Wisconsin), any barreled weapon “which... may be readily converted to expel a bullet” would be a firearm. Even worse, “any other weapon” (a term which is not defined) is a “firearm.” This surely includes BB guns -- and who knows what else.

“Cartridge cases” and “projectiles” are defined as “ammunition.”

How Clintonesque. If Obama can get the Senate to sign the CIFTA treaty, then he gets to define what "illicit manufacturing of firearms" means. Or as Bill Clinton so famously said, it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Are you surprised? I'm not.

If you'd like to write your Senator to oppose CIFTA, go here at Gun Owners of America.

Another .357 Sig is being built for me in the Sig Custom Shop

Top photo is
step two in my new concealed carry campaign. Step one was my new Charter Patriot .327 Fed. Magnum with Crimson Trace Lasergrips. Step two is a special order I placed today through the gun shop where I work for a Sig P229 SAS Gen. 2 Custom Shop pistol with Sig-Anti-Snag carry treatment, Short-Reset Trigger, Night Sights, Stainless Slide, Custom Wood Grips and of course, it's a .357 Sig.

Sig Sauer's website says:

Quote:

The P229® SAS Gen 2, joining the recently updated P239® and P220® Carry versions, features a melt treatment on frame & slide, SRT Trigger System, short trigger, SIGLITE® Night Sights, and black polymer grips. The slide features an engraved SIG SAUER® Custom Shop logo. The Generation 2 SAS is available in a Nitron or Two-Tone version. The P229® SAS Gen 2 comes in 9mm, .357SIG, and .40S&W calibers. This P229 pistol from the SIG SAUER Custom Shop has gone through a radical dehorning process resulting in an ultra smooth, snag free profile that’s ideal for concealed carry.

The Sig rep said he could get the nice wood grips from the now-discontinued SAS Gen 1 shown in the photo above and put them on my order. "To Hell and Back Reliability" and beautiful, too!

Second photo is what I think will be step three of my plan, a Smith & Wesson Night Guard revolver. I'm mulling over three models, .45 ACP, 10mm/.40 S&W or .44 Special.

Third photo is probably an alternate, say step 3A, a S&W 632 Carry Comp Pro Series in .327 Fed. Magnum. I probably won't have the funds to get both the Night Guard and the Carry Comp, so it will end up being one or the other. For now. But before I do any of the above, I gotta sell off at least two and perhaps three of my current pistols.

Understanding Obama's Anti-American Tour of Latin America

If you don't read Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden's twice-weekly columns, you're missing one of the sharpest minds in the news business, though that is faint praise these days. Pruden's analysis today is about Obama's current Anti-American Tour in Latin America, where Pruden says The insults were only for America.

Only Barack Obama knows what's in his heart, but there's the possibility, not heretofore considered by his critics, that the blundering loose tongue he packs with his teleprompter, scorning the dignity and good name of his country for the cheap applause of tin-pot dictators eager to throw rotten bananas at their betters, comes easy and naturally to him.

This wouldn't be one of Dr. Freud's difficult cases. He was born to a mother obsessed with the pursuit of inappropriate men who would treat her badly, abandoned by his father from Kenya, uprooted again from life with a stepfather in Indonesia and ultimately raised by a grandmother he would later publicly scold for her presumed racial bigotry. Why wouldn't he feverishly pursue sanction and esteem, however mindless much of it would be, wherever he could find it?

Only a man with a screwed-up psyche, the likes of which we've probably never had in the White House before, would fly off to foreign shores to campaign against his predecessor and to offer abject apologies to anyone listening for the harm he imagines his country did to others, while carefully excluding himself from any of the criticism.

All for the embrace, physical and otherwise, of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez, of Evo Morales and Danny Ortega. Most of us would say, in word or deed, "insult my country, dude, and you're insulting me, so back off." But this is the kind of fierce pride in home, kith and kin that Barack Obama never knew; he even married a woman who said she never felt love of country until her husband reached the front gate of the White House.

Read the whole thing and perhaps you'll have a better handle on who Obama is and why he does the seemingly incredibly stupid and unpatriotic things he does as President of the United States.

Frankly I gotta say having our first psycopathic president is scaring the heck outa me. Rush Limbaugh essentially says the same thing in this 10-minute interview about Obama's tour.

Economic Lenin-Socialism signals the end of American freedom

I haven't always agreed with George Will, but at present he's one of the few voices crying out in the wilderness while Obama leads our nation into socialist slavery, right over the cliff of freedom.

Will flatly says the Obama administration has "adopted an economic model of Lenin-Socialism" and Sam Donaldson calmly agrees but argues that it's the only way to save our economy. Remember the Vietnam War saga of the village the army had to destroy in order to save it?

As Hillary and Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, have both openly said, they're not going to allow this economic crisis to go to waste. This is the left's chance to take complete control and consolidate their power forever and they're not going to miss it. Marx to Lenin to Obama. It's not a triple-play combo, it's not a game, but the endgame of our free republic. God help our nation.

Pay no attention to those leftwingnut UNC students rioting

Right is wrong and wrong is right. Up is down and down is up. The whole world is backwards and upside down, but that's OK because the leftwingnuts say it's OK.

Got it? Let Mike Adams explain the 10 rules of liberal-think, as he explains why the white students at the University of North Carolina had every right to riot, throw a brick through a window and chase U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo off campus because he dared to make a speech saying our borders should be secured.

Read all 10 rules, but here's the closer, which sums up the previous nine.

10. The law is an instrument of oppression and criminality is a form of expression. Tom Tancredo supports the enforcement of the law. He is an oppressor. The protestors were breaking the law as a form of expression. In the same way, illegal immigration is a form of expression protected by the First Amendment and unaffected by antiquated notions like “citizenship.” Citizenship is oppressive.

Got it? Me neither. Now you know why the Department of Homegrown Stupidity is getting their panties in a wad about veterans, pro-lifers and other right-wing conservatives without even noticing that white students are rioting on campus to chase conservatives out of town.

Bitter, backwoods God and guns lovers threaten DHS

I've been thinking about how to comment on the idiotic Department of Homeland Security report about us dangerous God-and-guns-loving-bitter-backwoods-right-wing-extremists, but just haven't been able to get a round tuit.

And lo and behold (that's a Bible quote in case you missed it, DHS listeners) along comes Doug Giles, who has such a way with words I'll just let him speak for me on that topic. His latest column is about The Department of Homegrown Stupidity.

Let’s see, according to the Whitehouse’s Wizards of Obfuscation, who are the terror threats America needs to be on the lookout for? Is it anti-American douches like Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright? Nope. Is it G20esque smelly-as-a-goat-scrotum eco freaks? Wrong again. Is it Muslim radicals who are sprinkled about our country in both covert sleeper cells and plain as hell death camps? Quit being silly, that’s so yesterday. I know, I know, our cultural Dennis the Menaces are the drug cartels and their rabble that are pouring through our southern borders and kidnapping our kids? No, you lunatic, Pepe ain’t the problem. Quit being so judgmental. Hey-Soos said, “Thou shalt not judge.”

No, serfs of Obamaland, the bad people, the extremists, according to the Department of Homegrown Stupidity are the peaceful millions who love God and the Constitution and are sick of watching the clowns in the Whitehouse drive our country into an economic and moral ditch of which there isn’t a tow truck big enough to winch it out of.

Essentially, the folks everyone in America needs to be on the watch for are . . . themselves, the American soldiers and civilians who don’t do the grinning bobble-head nod when Barack spends our kids’ cash, bows to a Saudi king, trashes our Judeo-Christian heritage and disses the USA on EU soil. Yep, the terrorist threat is now folks like you, me and millions and millions of other peaceful patriots who are waking up to the fact that we are being screwed, glued and tattooed while being utterly ignored.

Don't hold back now Doug. Tell us what you really think about the DHS and BHO's ratpack.

The short (.327 Fed. Mag.) and the long (1894 Marlin .44)

Went to the range again today and shot the shortest gun I have, Charter .327 Federal Magnum 2.5" snubby revolver, and the longest gun I have, Marlin 1984SS .44 Magnum lever-action rifle.

Top photo is the Charter with its new Crimson Trace Lasergrips. First handgun I've owned with CT Lasergrips, and I like it. I see more in my future. The Charter is vastly improved since I had to apply Kentucky elevation for its fixed sights, which aimed about 4" high from the point of impact of most loads. Now I can put the red dot where I want to hit and let 'er fly.

It's also an improvement because my 61-year-old eyes have a hard time seeing short snubby sights in the first place, so now I can forget about the sights and keep my eyes on the target. I'm a bit fuzzy up close without glasses, but I can see crystal clear once I get beyond the length of my arms. So my pistol shooting will improve with the Lasergrips.

First I zeroed it with American Eagle JSP 100-grain loads, then had to zero it again with my carry loads, Speer Gold Dot JHP 110-grain loads. The second photo is the results of my zero work, sitting at bench rest at 21 feet, a reasonable distance for shooting a snubnose revolver.

Third photo is a closeup of the CT Lasergrips beaming brightly from my Charter Patriot .327.

I gotta say it's a real handful sitting at a bench rest. It's a totally different experience than standing offhand with a two-hand grip and sitting down you really appreciate what a nasty round the 327 Federal Magnum really is. I don't wanna get shot with nothing, .22 included, but I'd really hate to get hit with 110-grains of .327 sizzling at 1400 fps. That's .357 Sig or 9mm +P kinda speed, two of my favorite auto pistol rounds. And I read an article this week that FBI-standard gelatin tests are showing 13-14" of penetration and very impressive expansion with either .327 Fed. Mag. load.

I do believe a S&W 632 Carry Comp Pro Series is waiting out there for me in my near future.

When I got the Charter suitably zeroed for carry, I moved on to my new Marlin 1894SS Stainless Steel .44 Magnum lever-action rifle. I brought my sight-tapper to the range and a couple of boxes of .44s, .44 Magnum and .44 Special, both 240-grain. The rifle and ammo is the next photo, followed by a small redman 11x17" target at 20 yards.

The first couple of holes in the redman were shot at 50 yards which confirmed what I found the first time I shot the Marlin, off to the right. So I decided to take the work out of it and move the target in to 20 yards to finish the zero. One little love tap on the dovetailed sight is all it took.

I love this Marlin rifle. It's a tangent from my current plans for carry pistols, but a very nice one.

Krauthammer decodes Obama's Grand Plan for America

It's been said if you give a fool enough rope, he'll eventually hang himself. Or in the case of our wordy resident of the White House, perhaps his egoistical need to hear the sound of his own voice will eventually bring about his downfall when the American public finally hears what he's saying.

Sir Charles Krauthammer is becoming quite adept at decoding Obamaspeak. His latest translation is of Obama's grand plan, which he unveiled in a speech that borrows its title from Jimmy Carter's failed presidency. He names his autobiography by stealing a title from crazy ol' Uncle Jeremiah Wright's sermon and now he steals his grand strategy title from a failed Democrat president? Is he nuts?

You really oughta read the whole thing, which Krauthammer calls The Sting, in Four Parts. As usual with swindles, Obama begins The Sting with an outrageously big lie, a real whopper.

The Whopper: The boast that he had "identified $2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade." It takes audacity to repeat this after it had been so widely exposed as transparently phony. Most of this $2 trillion is conjured up by refraining from spending $180 billion a year for 10 more years of surges in Iraq. Hell, why not make the "deficit reductions" $10 trillion -- the extra $8 trillion coming from refraining from repeating the $787 billion stimulus package annually through 2019.

The Puzzler: He further boasted of his frugality by saying that his budget would reduce domestic discretionary spending as share of GDP to the lowest level ever recorded. Amazing. Squeezing discretionary domestic spending at a time of hugely expanding budgets is merely the baleful residue of out-of-control entitlements and debt service, which will increase astronomically under Obama. To claim these as achievements in fiscal responsibility is testament not to Obama's frugality but to his brazenness.

The Non Sequitur: "To make sure such a crisis (as we have today) never happens again," Obama proposes his radical health care, energy and education reforms, the central pillars of his social democratic agenda. But Obama's own words contradict this assertion. Notes The Washington Post: "But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery." Obama rarely fails to repeat this false connection. A crisis -- and the public's resulting pliability to liberal social engineering -- is a terrible thing to waste.

The Swindle: The Obama administration is spending money like none other in peacetime history. Obama is smart. He knows this is fiscally unsustainable. He has let it be known privately and publicly that he intends to cure the imbalance with entitlement reform.

An excellent strategy. If it takes throwing nearly $1 trillion of "porky" (to quote Sen. Charles Schumer) stimulus spending to soften up a Democratic Congress and make it amenable to real entitlement reform, then fine. Reforming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would save tens of trillions of dollars, and make the current money-from-helicopters spending almost trivial by comparison.

I'm guessing that Krauthammer is Jewish, but not a particularly religious one, judging by some of his off-the-cuff comments, such as when John McCain's campaign came back from the dead and Sir Charles said he was considering changing his belief in the resurrection. I wonder now if he's beginning to feel a bit like a famous Jewish prophet, John the Baptist, who was "a voice crying in the wilderness." Krauthammer is one of the few pointing out The Sting is afoot.

But is anybody listening besides me?

Colt joins the 10mm revival with Delta Elite's rebirth

Reports of the demise of 10mm pistols are greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain said about himself when finding his obituary in his morning newspaper. At right is the new/old Colt Delta Elite 10mm Stainless, an old 10mm pistol newly brought back into production by Colt.

I love my job as a gun store salesman and gunbroker poster for a local gun shop, which is how I came to hold this fine piece of Colt workmanship in my hands and take photos of it for posting. It's up on gunbroker now for a mere $950 if you want one.

(P.S. Too late. The Colt Delta Elite is already sold. It didn't stay on gunbroker but a bit more than 24 hours. That was fast!)

I wrote earlier about the revival under way in 10mm pistols and being a 10mm gun lover, I'm delighted at this market correction. Frankly IMHO there is no finer pistol caliber than 10mm. It offers the size and grain weight that nearly equals the famed one-shot stopper .45 ACP with ballistics that far outstrip that caliber.

In my view, 10mm is the perfect pistol caliber and I'm still perplexed as to why the .40 S&W, which is a shortened 10mm, didn't find a way into my heart. Millions of law enforcement and civilians love .40s, so I expected I would, too. But alas, when I bought my first it turned out to be probably my last also. I bought a Steyr M40-A1, loving Steyr pistols, but I just didn't care for the caliber when it came to actually shooting it.

It's recoil is sort of weird, a slapping kind of torque that twists in my hand and I've got pretty big hands. I love shooting 10mm, .357 Sig, .45 ACP, .44 Magnum, .44 Special and all three flavors of 9mm I've tried, 9x19, 9x23 and 9x25, but I just don't like .40. So I swapped it for a 9x19mm.

But getting back to 10mm, I met a genuine fellow 10mm gun nut the other day in the gun shop. This gentleman has an entire collection of Bren Ten pistols and is one of the early members of the Bren-Ten Forum, where he snatched up the username of SCrockett for Sonny Crockett.

In case you're not an old gun nut like me, Sonny Crockett was the Bren-Ten-carrying detective in Miami Vice, that TV cop show of the olden days, recently revived as a cop movie.

And the Bren Ten, the daddy rabbit of 10mm pistols, is supposedly being revived also by gun manufacturer Vltor under a new name, the Fortis. According to the Vltor blog, its promised arrival in early 2009 has been pushed back a bit due to overwhelming demand for other products, in particular military contracts. I'm looking forward to seeing my first Fortis.

The story untold about the U.S. Navy's Somali pirate rescue

What really happened in the hostage standoff with Somali pirates? One fact is crystal clear, the three U.S. Navy SEAL snipers are the obvious heroes for their life-saving shots that took out the three pirates who were holding their U.S. citizen hostage, commercial Capt. Richard Phillips.

If you believe the Noo Yawk Times (and all the rest of the unanimous praise chorus being spewed out by the so-called mainstream media) the biggest hero is their glorious leader, President Obama, who bravely showed he is master of the universe and not a raw rookie unable to handle an international crisis.

WASHINGTON — President Obama vowed Monday to “halt the rise of piracy” off the coast of Africa following the dramatic rescue of an American merchant captain, foreshadowing a longer and potentially more treacherous struggle ahead as he weighs a series of problematic options.

Of course, nobody in the MSM even reported that Obama vowed to fight "privacy" when he misread his teleprompter. They just corrected his pronunciation and smiled wisely. (Just like they did when President Bush said "nukulur" for nuclear. Not!)

In permitting members of the Navy Seals to shoot the pirates holding the captain, Richard Phillips, Mr. Obama navigated a crisis that played out in full view of the world.

Note the careful phrasing of the NYT writer, Obama permitted Navy SEALS to shoot. Which is true only in the reverse. Our rookie president first forbid the Navy commander on the scene from shooting at the pirates while he tried to micromanage the situation diplomatically from afar. That's what led to the ridiculous scene when Phillips jumped overboard from the lifeboat the first time and the Navy held its fire while the Somali pirates fired on him and recaptured him.

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations military veteran and now a military writer and blogger, gives the whole story of the incident.

After four days of floating at sea on a raft shared with four Somali gunmen, Richard Phillips took matters into his own hands for a second time. With the small inflatable lifeboat in which he was being held captive being towed by the American missile destroyer USS Bainbridge, and Navy Special Warfare (NSWC) snipers on the fantail in position to take their shots at his captors as soon as the command was given, the captive captain of the M.V. Maersk-Alabama took his second leap in three days into the shark-infested waters of the Indian Ocean.

This diversion gave the Navy Special Warfare operators all the opening they needed. Snipers immediately took down the three Somali pirates still on board the life raft, SEAL operators hustled down the tow line connecting the two craft to confirm the kills, and a Navy RIB plucked Phillips from the water and sped him to safety aboard the Bainbridge, thus ending the four-day-and-counting hostage situation.

Phillips’ first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country’s Navy possible, Phillips threw himself off of his lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors — and none was taken. The guidance from National Command Authority — the president of the United States, Barack Obama — had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage’s life was in clear, extreme danger.

The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating raft was fired on by the Somali pirates — and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed. This was again due to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel thanks to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington and a mandate from the commander in chief’s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a “peaceful solution” would be acceptable.

After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the on-scene commander decided he’d had enough. Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer — unnamed in all media reports to date — decided the AK-47 one captor had leveled at Phillips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.

Three rounds downrange later, all three brigands became enemy KIA and Phillips was safe.

Emanuel then recaps the aftermath as Obama boldly steps up to take all the credit.

Almost immediately following word of the rescue, the Obama administration and its supporters claimed victory against pirates in the Indian Ocean and declared that the dramatic end to the standoff put paid to questions of the inexperienced president’s toughness and decisiveness.

Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday’s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort.

What should have been a standoff lasting only hours — as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location — became an embarrassing four-day-and-counting standoff between a rag-tag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship...

However, instead of taking direct, decisive action against the rag-tag group of gunmen, the Obama administration dilly-dallied, dawdled, and eschewed any decisiveness whatsoever, even in the face of enemy fire, in hopes that the situation would somehow resolve itself without violence. Thus, the administration sent a clear message to all who would threaten U.S. interests abroad that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has no idea how to respond to such situations — and no real willingness to use military force to resolve them.

So the real hero here -- in addition to the Navy snipers of course -- is not Obama, but the unnamed Navy commander who decided to ignore the stupidly restrictive no-firing rule from our alleged commander-in-chief and told the snipers to do the right thing. If the situation had turned out badly, that Navy officer would now be facing a court-martial and discharge. But since it turned out well, he will remain nameless and the rookie president will stand in the spotlight.

And how's our rookie president doing on those other international crises currently on the table?

Just this morning, the Noo Yawk Times reports Obama is sending signals to Iran they can go ahead with their uranium enrichment program toward building their first atomic weapons while talks continue. God help the nation of Israel because Obama certainly isn't. He's doing exactly what he promised during the campaign, talking with Iran "with no pre-conditions." So far as I've noticed, this is the first campaign promise Obama made that he's actually keeping.

And the NYT also reports North Korea has also decided the Obama administration is toothless.

North Korea said Tuesday it saw talks on ending its nuclear weapons program as "useless" and it planned to restart a plant that makes arms-grade plutonium, state media quoted its Foreign Ministry as saying.

Never thought I'd agree with anything North Korea says, but it's quite true that the talks are useless. Nutjob Kim in North Korea and the nutjobs in charge in Iran have quite accurately assessed the rookie president. They know he's all talk and no action. God save America and the world. The adults are out of power and the children are running amok.

8 Inglorious Basterds kill Nazis behind German lines in WWII

I do love good war movies. The Dogs of War is one of my all-time favorites and I could watch the Guns of Nazarone a dozen times in a row without getting bored. Kelly's Heroes is another classic that comes to mind. John Wayne's In Harm's Way is his best war flick, IMHO.

I liked Brad Pitt as the cocky younger brother in A River Runs Through It and maybe he's old and wrinkled enough now to play a decent warrior. Here's his latest, Inglorious Basterds, a new film by Quentin Taratino, a WWII tale about 8 G.I.'s behind German lines killing Nazis. I have no idea why Tarantino can't spell bastards properly.

Charter Patriot .327 Mag gets an upgrade with Lasergrips

My Charter .327 Federal Magnum got an upgrade today. The gun shop where I work got in a set of Crimson Trace Lasergrips for Charter pistols and it just so happened I had a little surplus built up in the pistol fund.

So the Patriot is now laser-powered. Can't wait for Saturday to take her to the range and zero the fierce little bugger. My only complaint with the Patriot is that she shoots about 3-4" low from point of aim, forcing me to use Kentucky elevation with the fixed sights to hit what I'm aiming at.

The Lasergrips will solve that problem pronto. But with every solution comes another problem. For lo these 61 years I've been using these eyeballs, since the day I first fired a thunderstick, I've been taught to focus on the front sight, not the target. Lasergrips change that to focusing on the target, not the sights.

I've played around with my daughter's .38 Special S&W with CT Lasergrips, but was never serious about learning to shoot it well. Now I gotta get serious and teach an old dog new tricks.

It's a skill that has real-life application. I've never shot anybody in a real face-to-face fight, with the sorta exception of shooting 5-inch naval shells from a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam. But in a real gunfight, I strongly suspect all your focus will be on whoever the threat is, particularly if the threat is shooting at you or threatening your life. So I probably wouldn't see the sights anyway. And if someone isn't threatening your life, you don't want to shoot them anyway.