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The beards of Big 3 East trade show
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This is my (first) safety!
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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Gunstock color has no effect on the bullet velocity.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Savage Rascal .22 rifle, Vortex 2-7x rimfire scope. It’s the same optic I use on a Marlin 60.
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A maquisard and his nemesis.
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First Halloween snapshots
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
A well-hung dinosaur with friends.
Jello shot.
Bunny hostess.
Zombie schoolgirl.
Harambe?
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Season’s Greetings?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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Two new articles on AllOutdoor
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Winchester 1886 Rifle in 45-70 and 450Marlin.
HTA convertible 10-22 magazine
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Shepherding citizens
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
“If you aren’t paying for a service, then you are the product and not the customer.” On the national scale, this concept came in widely with Bismark’s welfare state. Prior to the 1870s, less numerous rich families usually had more surviving children because they could afford to raise them. Closer to WW1, the incipient welfare states were raising more future soldiers by encouraging and supporting less prosperous parents with wealth transfers from others. In effect, they ranched people to increase the size of draftable population, along with the future tax base.
Perverse incentive being what they are, eventually the less productive started having more kids, while the more productive were paying the freight. In farm terms, the mules do the work, while the meat breeds reproduce. I strongly suspect that the sudden world-wide interest in socialism after WW1 had more to do with population increase strategies and less with fears of revolutions or kindness to the masses. After all, handouts don’t stop revolutions — they are far more likely to foster them by giving resources to the idle.
The first time something is given freely, it may be appreciated. The second time, taken for granted. After that, the paucity of the handout is held against the givers. Witness any urban riot in cities where half the adult population is on the dole. With the perpetual underclass neither improving its station nor getting syphoned off through colonial or continental warfare, socialism as a dampener on unrest doesn’t work. And while recent immigrants are viewed as takers who don’t honor the concomitant social contract, native upstate residents can view metro dwellers the same way.
Shepherding of people, by the state or by religious authorities, is all about the milking of taxes and tithes, and about access to labor. The state, being more coercive and forcible about the process, is even less ethical than the various cult leaders who rely only on brainwashing. Religious cults acting as national governments combine the worst features of the two.
We see the drastic differences between prices of men in different countries by how they war: the West would rather use up a million dollar missile than lose an expensively trained soldier, while the Third World casts their combatants as bomb controllers in preference to simple electronics. The scarcity of the trained soldiers comes not only from the expense required but from the reduction in the population growth rates. On the flip side, each productive Westerner can support rather more government activity thanks to increasing productivity. Since each productive person represents a long-term value, I would expect jurisdictional competition for them: the US reality does show consistent migrations from high tax and social control states to those with lower monetary and regulatory burdens. By contrast, the welfare population has lower mobility that’s generally directed towards higher tax and more socialist states. As the paying customers exist and the dole-collecting product moves in, I wonder how those states would put them to use. For now, their main use to the masters has been in the voting booth.
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A lady with a 1911
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Writer Monalisa Foster with her .45 Sig Spartan. Professional make-up by Paula Petry.
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UTAS XTR12 shotgun
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
XTR12 is essentially an AR10 in 12ga. Currently, it takes 5 or 10 round box magazines, but 15/20/25 round drums are coming. This photo is an outtake from the upcoming Small Arms Review article detailing my experience with this gun.
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How and Why.
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Martial skills aren’t very good without the underlying ethics. Teach the “why” along with the “how”. Project Appleseed does a good job, but the bulk of the task falls to the parents.
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Gothic piratical?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Writer Monalisa Foster with a rare .34 caliber percussion revolver. A friend of mine is selling it (as is, the lockwork isn’t right) — let me know if interested.
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Flint River Armory CSA45 mark 2 is coming soon
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
While at World Rimfire Challenge in Alabama, I met with the new lead designer from FRA and returned the CSA45 I had. The original, while very promising, under-delivered on accuracy. He promised a revised version and I expected to see something minimally different. Not so!
The new version of CSA45 exceeded my expectations:
- Uses Glock magazines rather than proprietary mags, which also makes loading much easier.
- Much lighter and better balanced.
- Uses standard AR15 buttstocks.
- Has a much superior longer rail with plenty of slots.
- Has much stronger ejector.
The design will evolve a little more, in part to reflect my input, but it looks like a serious competitor to MPX (albeit in 45ACP rather than 9mm) and far superior than UMP. Hopefully, the new barrels would provide good accuracy. We should know for sure in a month.
A friendly ammunition maker may be offering a new load for it, 185gr with an all-copper expanding bullet loaded with slower powders to maximize velocity from the 16 inch barrel. 1400fps is the expected velocity and, like all offerings from that makers, it should have excellent accuracy.
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Gothic piratical?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Writer Monalisa Foster with a rare .34 caliber percussion revolver. A friend of mine is selling it (as is, the lockwork isn’t right) — let me know if interested.
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SIG Spartan’s Little Brother: new on AllOutdoor
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
.177 caliber trainer for the .45
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Jard J68: new in Dillon Blue Press
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A Magazine That’s a Clip, Too: new on AllOutdoor
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
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SAR9
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
I have not had a chance to shoot it yet, but other people have.
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Hero Pioneers, as real as Rambo?
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Growing up in the USSR, I was raised on the conventional WW2 propaganda which included lots of “hero pioneers” as example. Soviet pioneers were an organization loosely based on Boy Scouts but more analogous to Hitlerjugend in its ultimate form. Most kids aged 10 to 15 were a part of it. The kid below was supposedly 15 (the actual existence of characters written out by the Soviets tended to be as uncertain as those from Minitrue of “1984”), but drawn much younger. The propaganda effort worked just fine, if my perception of it back then was any indication.
When I first saw MP40 and PPSh submachine guns in museums, I started wondering about all the images which depicted underfed 10 year old kids handling full size weapons. As the photo of my friend’s 11 year old daughter shows, that was only sometimes possible. Both the MP40 and the PPSh — 9.5 to 10 lbs loaded — too heavy and long in the stock for her to fire effectively.
Czech vz58, though more powerful, actually has a shorter stock and weighs less than the open bolt submachine guns of WW2. My friend’s 10 year old could run it easily, but he’s also been shooting since age 3, unlike the kids from the USSR.
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A classic Russian-made camera support
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
RPD seems so worthless as a light machine gun due to heavy recoil, it might actually be more useful as an improvised camera support. How the guy who designed lightly recoiling DP27 in 7.62x54R managed to make a 7.62×39 weapon with such jarring kick, I have no idea. I’ve shot two samples so far, didn’t fire over ten rounds form either. This was on the lowest gas setting, too.
To be fair, it can probably be fixed with the changing of the gas regulator to one with smaller openings.
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