This cutie is the daughter of a dear friend of mine and fellow IDPA shooter. Being a responsible parent means to teach your kids ammo does not grow in the fields of amber wheat for free but must be carefully crafted for consumption.

She is loading her own special formula of AK 47 rounds:

3.0 gr VV N320
125 gr .357″ LRN bullet
Seated to 1.145″ OAL on necked up 45-70 cases.
Remington 5-1/2 primer

Start them young!

PS: In case you do not reload/handload, the formula above is complete BS. You never try what some unknown idiot in the interwebs says is a good formula unless you have hot desire of picking pieces of gun out of your face and hands..

Follow the damned reloading manuals, they are there for a reason.

For citizens of Nicolas Maduro’s socialist paradise the news is terrible, and getting worse with every passing day.Yesterday, we reported that one year after our November 2014 forecast, Barclays has decided that Venezuela is now past the “point of no return”, and a bankruptcy in 2016 will be “difficult to avoid.”

.According to the latest IMF estimate, Venezuela’s consumer inflation, already the world’s highest, will triple this year to a level above all estimates from economists surveyed by Bloomberg. This is because the IMF, which until recently had predicted “only” 204% inflation for Venezuela, already higher than the 140% consensus, revised its numbers and now sees a mindblowing 750% hyperinflation in 2016: this means that the average price of products and services will increase over eight times over the span of the next 12 months.

Source: This Is What The Death Of A Nation Looks Like: Venezuela Prepares For 720% Hyperinflation | Zero Hedge

While Brazil features more frequently than any other country, the deadliest place in the world in 2015 was Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, a city of 3.3 million people which recorded 3,946 homicides in 2015 – equivalent to nearly 120 per 100,000 residents.

Source: Caracas, Venezuela named as the world’s most violent city – Telegraph

It must have been around February 1996 in Venezuela, the Friday before Mardi Gras. I was driving to work when I saw a man with his tyke dressed this way. Down there you dress up for Mardi Gras the way you do it here for Halloween.

Obviously the kid did not have a say on what to wear, so it had to come from either Dad or Mom. That year, the “fashionable” costume was paratrooper, what one Hugo Chavez wore during his coup attempt.

Chavez had been pardoned before his trial was over and that made him eligible to run for any political office he wanted and he, of course, wanted to be President and made it clear.  The paratrooper-costumed boy was a serious indicator that he was resonating with the people and he would end up as head of the Country.

That night I had a long talk with the missus and it was decided it was time to pull out the stakes and “go north.” Financially we were damned good for a young couple: She had a job, I had my own business with a partner and it was doing very well. We had no mortgage or car payments, we had a great health insurance paid out of our pockets,  so other than the utilities and food, we had no obligatory expenses to speak of.

When we announced we were leaving and why, we were either laughed at or severely criticized. I was called crazy for leaving such a good standard of leaving and begin basically from nothing and worse, I was accused of abandoning my parents to live in Gringoland.  It was both hurtful and funny: My parents was one of the reasons I was leaving both for what they had to endure in their youths and was told to me (Spanish Civil War and Cuban Revolution) and because I wanted to establish a home where I can bring them to safety when shit hit the fan down there. They were not happy with our decision, but understood I had to follow my instincts.

Dad passed away unexpectedly before Chavez got elected. I had to return and arrange all the legal paperwork and set up Mom with her new life as a widow. She refused to move with us and I couldn’t blame her: Her mate was buried there and all we worked for was there. She had already migrated twice in her life and was in no mood to do it a third time. It took almost two years and the change of a country to convince her it was in her best interest to make a third migration.

By this time, the novelty of the Revolution was wearing off and my original crazy idea of moving out of the country was not so crazy after all among some of the original naysayers. For some, it was too late and only those who had ties to other countries via blood lines were able to escape…. if they had the balls.

I was amazed to find out how many decided to endure just a bit more because they were afraid of starting over in a different country. “It cannot get any worse” was they kept telling me. The first time I head that, my brain brought front and center a scene from Schindler’s List where the Jews had just forced to live inside the Krakow ghetto. It was winter, very cold and several were around a 55 gallon drum burning wood trying to warm when one of the made a very similar comment.

So it is almost 20 years later, “It will never happen here” and “It cannot get any worse” have been tragically proven wrong. Some of those who chided me are dead now because of medical reasons or crime, some changed their tunes and left (very few) and the rest are now living trying to survive the Socialist nightmare.

To all of you: Fuck You. I was right, you were wrong. Deal with it.

Australia is a mostly gun free paradise, with no appreciable violent crime, worth emulating by the United States, according to President Barack Obama and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.  So imagine my surprise when I read about an armed robbery that occurred down under.  The store owner, lacking any legal firearms, did his best to defend himself from two armed individuals, with what he had… a homemade flamethrower (not pictured below)!!!

Armed with his bug spray and BBQ lighter, the store owner valiantly defends his life and livelihood for about a minute, and then is overpowered by the men with guns.  Fortunately for the store owner, he managed to escape with his life.  This could have ended a whole lot worse, which is what happens when you bring bug spray to a gun fight.  This is of course the same bad advice that NBC has given on the Today Show, minus the fire.

Beyond the theft of $680AUS, the real crime was that one of the robbers mutilated a Marlin Model 56 Lever-Matic .22 LR.  That alone makes me wish the store owner had managed to light one of the robbers on fire.

As far as I’ve been able to glean from the interwebs, the store owner will not be charged with a crime.  At least he has that going for him.

I can’t say the same for the poor peasants living on the other side of the globe from Down Under.  In the wake of the Cologne New Years Eve rape-a-palooza, a Danish girl had the audacity to defend herself from a migrant attacker with a can of seasoning.  For her actions defending her womanly virtues, she is being punished for carrying a weapon.

In the countries our progressive betters believe are so much more sophisticated, the people have lost first the tools to, then the right to defend themselves.  There are states and localities in the US that are pushing for the same sophistication.

This I cannot abide.  I’m sorry, but pepper spray is not a weapon.  A Sig Sauer is a weapon.  Which is why I chose to carry the latter not the former.  Then again, I’m also an American.  And in my America, if you try to rob a store store owner at gunpoint or rape a woman, you get shot.  Then again, I’m as sophisticated as my paring of a bottle of Sam’s Club wine, Hickory Farms Smoked Cheddar Blend cheese, and Netflix.

Miguel made a couple of posts about the Hugh Glass of Possums.  I thought nothing more of it until the Academy Award nomination worthy story of the possum came back to me the long way around through the Book of Face.

As I read the comments posted on  Sunshine Haven Animal Rescue & Wildlife Rehabilitation‘s page I realized this episode is a perfect example of the incredibly wide and continuously growing cultural gulf that exists between liberalism and conservatism.

Between the two Facebook posts by Sunshine Haven, the original post and the one about the possum’s recovery, I counted 33 posts referring to the possum as a “baby” (including six calling him a “sweet baby”),  six calling him an “angel,”  as well as a few calling him “little guy” and “sweetie.”  A dozen people offered to adopt the possum.  There were demands that the person responsible be punished for animal abuse, and one person felt that the person who did this should be maimed.

The possum went though extensive surgery, and is recovering with a course of antibiotics.  I have not seen a cost listed for the surgery on the possum, but I know when my dog was playing with some of my wife’s yarn and then had bloody diarrhea, it cost us $900 to find out that she DID NOT swallow something and need to have surgery.  So I can only being to imagine how much saving this possum cost.  If there are any readers out there who work in animal or veterinary medicine and want to speculate, please leave your guess in the comments.

Over on the other side of of the known universe…

Here are some things facts about possums.  They have one of the smallest and least developed brains for a mammal of their size, and are remarkably stupid creatures.  Their lifespan is described as “unusually short” being only 2 to 4 years.  Possums rarely carry rabies, and eat ticks which helps prevent the spread of lime disease, but they poo a lot and can spread a number of parasites through feces as well as diseases like salmonella and toxoplasmosis.  They can do extensive property damage, a lot of it relating to pooping in insulation (gross pics).  There are a number of posts about the problems possums pose to chickens and horses.

While I, and most people, have no problem with possums in the wild, they are disease spreading nuisance creatures when they invade your home and yard.  Growing up in South Florida, I can attest to the annoyance they do when they get under your house and die there.  There are a number of websites that talk about how to get rid of possums, including how to humanly kill them.  They are no where near endangered and relocation can be difficult or illegal, not to mention all you are doing is making the possum someone else’s problem.

Of course there is no excuse for animal cruelty.  While I don’t know the motivation for someone putting two crossbow bolts through a possum, my speculation is that it was someone trying to dispatch the critter while it was on his property.  Given that there is a $5,000 reward for information on the shooter, made available by through donations by people who presumably have their pitchforks sharpened and torches lit, we may never know the motivation.

Possums are notoriously hard to kill.  I showed Miguel’s post to a coworker who is a big time hunter.  I mean, has a taxidermy animal at his work station level hunter.  He commented that possums are just about bulletproof, recounting that his dad put about a dozen rounds of 22 LR HP into one, and had to finish it off with a splitting maul to the head. The ability to withstand multiple gunshots, both 22’s and 45’s has been confirmed on other message boards.  So I can only imagine that the shooter thought that he had made two good, killing, shots on the possum, not realizing just how Wade Wilson these critters are.

So there you have it.  One side that thinks of possums as “sweet babies” and “little angels” and just wants to give them hugs and snuggles; and will spend an incalculable sum of money to save one from death for another… 6 months to a year of natural life.  The other side who acknowledges that they are wild animals and a nuisance that spread disease and are damaging to property and livestock.

This difference in attitude is how Californians can prioritize the water needs of a bait fish over hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.

This difference in attitude is why places like California and Colorado can decriminalize marijuana in defiance of federal law while clamping down on gun rights in a continuous attempt to do away with the Second Amendment in their states.

This difference is seen in every response a terrorist attack and mass shooting, whether we should increase the number gun free zones or ease how law abiding citizens obtain concealed carry permits.

This is the difference between believing “hands up don’t shoot” and a non-indictment by a grand jury.

I think Bill Maher put it best when he said “I think liberals have to stop insisting that the world is the way they want to it be instead of the way it is… [Y]ou cannot just insist that the reality that you think about in your head is the reality that exists in the world.”  Sure he was talking about ISIS, but he could be talking about just about any issue in America anymore.

How we as a nation address our national problems is a directly related to how we view them.  Were the rioters in Ferguson and other cities sweet babies or wild animals?  What about the San Bernardino terrorists?  Homeless peeing in the streets of NYC?

Like Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  For me, the fact is a possum is a nuisance animal.

This guy approves:

You know? I am amazed that nobody in Hollywood has decided to remake the movie. Let’s keep it that way.

Hat Tip: Dale G.

You will see her at the end of the run where she takes a fall and gets a spiral fracture of the Fibula.
She finished shooting, cleared, safed and holstered the weapon. Then she went ouchie mode.

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/jessica.nietzel/videos/1107702142582385″ width=”500″ height=”400″ onlyvideo=”1″]

Hats off!

… according with Everytown for Gun Safety, this is what passes for smart exchange of ideas.

Kinda reminds me of the old intermission clips in the movie theaters back in the 50s

Is anybody getting the feeling Michael Bloomberg’s money is being wasted?

Not that I mind.