Someone was selling them on eBay a while ago, but there's none available now. So I'm offering one of my own. Inexpensively!
http://cgi.ebay.com/new-freshly-generated-GUID-/320690777459?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aaaa8ed73
Monday, April 25, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Kimber 82 Government
The Civilian Marksmanship Program, a quasi-government organization set up to promote firearms training among the US population is selling surplus military rifles.
The rimfire rifle of the day is Kimber 82G. 20000 of these were made in the late 80s for the Army's marksmanship training. The ones on sale by CMP are unused.
http://www.thecmp.org/22targetsurplus.htm
I've been eyeing these rifles for a long, long time. Target rimfire rifles (in fact, target rifles of any kind) is a scarce - and dwindling - commodity. In fact, I don't think anyone in the US makes target rimfire rifles any more - if you want a new one, it has to be Anshutz, they are expensive and they are sold through relatively vague channels - you definitely cannot just play with one at a store. At least not at a store anywhere near Seattle.
Unfortunately, the requirements to buy rifles from CMP are quite onerous as well - you have to have a "demonstrated" interest in shooting (C&R license works for this). You have to be a member of the right club (http://clubs.odcmp.com/cgi-bin/clubSearch.cgi). You have to have a proof of US citizenship. You have to send an application for the purchase, signed and notarized (http://www.thecmp.org/orderinginfo.htm), by snail-mail.
So a couple of months back I have finally collected all the necessary documentation, joined the right club, and sent in the paperwork for three "rusty" Kimbers. The consensus on the Internet was that the "rusty" version is the way to go - the actual amount of rust is minor and in any case if shows (if at all) in the places where it does not matter. So I figured I'd take the risk and get 3 for the price of 2 regular ones.
It takes 45-90 days, according to the CMP website, to get the rifle, and so it was in my case. They ship them back FedEx next day, morning delivery, and email the day before, so I waited for them to show up at home.
The very first thing that I did that same morning was to check them for rust. The rust definitely was there. The rifle came with match aperture sights, and that's where a lot of visible rust was concentrated. Not one of the three sets of the sights was rust free. The rusting was light - just tiny dots of bright red.
The photos overemphasize it, somehow, it looks much better in real life.
How the rust got there, given the fact that the sights were in a sealed plastic bag, is completely beyond me.
All three bores had a few imperfections, mostly close to the chamber, but in one of the three rifles it was roughly 1/3rd barrel length from the muzzle. I do not have a boroscope, so I could not tell if these were rust spots or tool marks, but the patches came out with not even a minor tinge of red, so I assume that they were the tool marks. Other than these impefections, the bores were mirror-bright.
The were much smaller specs of rust on the trigger assembly and the receiver. All of them came off easily after being rubbed by a patch soaked with Break-Free CLP, or drowned in the CLP bath. There were a number of posts on the Internet forums about rust inside the bolt, so I took apart mine. (The instructions on how to do it are here: http://solyanik.com/drop/k82bc.pdf).
Two of the bolts had very minor amount of rust specs on the outside. One had significant amount inside - to the point that rust has caked the gaps between the strands of the spring. It was not deep, though, and all came off after an overnight soaking in CLP and going-over with a patch.
The final imperfection was a shallow cut in the stock made when the rifles were opened for inventory in the mid-90s. The pictures below show the damage, which was approximately the same on all three rifles.
Other than that, the rifle looked perfect - blue, wood, everything was new.
On to the range. This is the result of shooting CCI Green Tag, American Eagle, and Wolf Match Target today. Conditions - light rain, calm. Shooting was at 50 yards, the orange dots are 1" in diameter.
The results are as follows.
CCI Green Tag:
Smallest: 0.312
Largest: 0.788
Average: 0.588
American Eage:
Smallest: 0.404
Largest: 0.840
Average: 0.525
Wolf Match Target (*):
Smallest: 0.242
Largest: 0.489
Average: 0.376
(*) The top middle group shooting Wolf was 10 shots and was excluded from the sample. The other groups were 5 shot groups. The 10-shot group measured 0.624".
Next round will be on a 100 yard lane...
The rimfire rifle of the day is Kimber 82G. 20000 of these were made in the late 80s for the Army's marksmanship training. The ones on sale by CMP are unused.
http://www.thecmp.org/22targetsurplus.htm
I've been eyeing these rifles for a long, long time. Target rimfire rifles (in fact, target rifles of any kind) is a scarce - and dwindling - commodity. In fact, I don't think anyone in the US makes target rimfire rifles any more - if you want a new one, it has to be Anshutz, they are expensive and they are sold through relatively vague channels - you definitely cannot just play with one at a store. At least not at a store anywhere near Seattle.
Unfortunately, the requirements to buy rifles from CMP are quite onerous as well - you have to have a "demonstrated" interest in shooting (C&R license works for this). You have to be a member of the right club (http://clubs.odcmp.com/cgi-bin/clubSearch.cgi). You have to have a proof of US citizenship. You have to send an application for the purchase, signed and notarized (http://www.thecmp.org/orderinginfo.htm), by snail-mail.
So a couple of months back I have finally collected all the necessary documentation, joined the right club, and sent in the paperwork for three "rusty" Kimbers. The consensus on the Internet was that the "rusty" version is the way to go - the actual amount of rust is minor and in any case if shows (if at all) in the places where it does not matter. So I figured I'd take the risk and get 3 for the price of 2 regular ones.
It takes 45-90 days, according to the CMP website, to get the rifle, and so it was in my case. They ship them back FedEx next day, morning delivery, and email the day before, so I waited for them to show up at home.
The very first thing that I did that same morning was to check them for rust. The rust definitely was there. The rifle came with match aperture sights, and that's where a lot of visible rust was concentrated. Not one of the three sets of the sights was rust free. The rusting was light - just tiny dots of bright red.
The photos overemphasize it, somehow, it looks much better in real life.
How the rust got there, given the fact that the sights were in a sealed plastic bag, is completely beyond me.
All three bores had a few imperfections, mostly close to the chamber, but in one of the three rifles it was roughly 1/3rd barrel length from the muzzle. I do not have a boroscope, so I could not tell if these were rust spots or tool marks, but the patches came out with not even a minor tinge of red, so I assume that they were the tool marks. Other than these impefections, the bores were mirror-bright.
The were much smaller specs of rust on the trigger assembly and the receiver. All of them came off easily after being rubbed by a patch soaked with Break-Free CLP, or drowned in the CLP bath. There were a number of posts on the Internet forums about rust inside the bolt, so I took apart mine. (The instructions on how to do it are here: http://solyanik.com/drop/k82bc.pdf).
Two of the bolts had very minor amount of rust specs on the outside. One had significant amount inside - to the point that rust has caked the gaps between the strands of the spring. It was not deep, though, and all came off after an overnight soaking in CLP and going-over with a patch.
The final imperfection was a shallow cut in the stock made when the rifles were opened for inventory in the mid-90s. The pictures below show the damage, which was approximately the same on all three rifles.
Other than that, the rifle looked perfect - blue, wood, everything was new.
On to the range. This is the result of shooting CCI Green Tag, American Eagle, and Wolf Match Target today. Conditions - light rain, calm. Shooting was at 50 yards, the orange dots are 1" in diameter.
The results are as follows.
CCI Green Tag:
Smallest: 0.312
Largest: 0.788
Average: 0.588
American Eage:
Smallest: 0.404
Largest: 0.840
Average: 0.525
Wolf Match Target (*):
Smallest: 0.242
Largest: 0.489
Average: 0.376
(*) The top middle group shooting Wolf was 10 shots and was excluded from the sample. The other groups were 5 shot groups. The 10-shot group measured 0.624".
Next round will be on a 100 yard lane...
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Reddit on taxes
This is the original link:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs6ov/people_are_angry_the_ge_did_not_pay_us_taxes_but/c1px4sv?context=1
Saving the text for posterity (because who knows what Reddit's retention rules would look like in a year), because it deserves it.
By kleinbl00 (http://www.reddit.com/user/kleinbl00)
"I have a financial planner. He's a dyed-in-the-wool PNAC militant Republican, all the more ironic considering he's an Iraqi with family ties to Chemical Ali. I watched him give a seminar once where in one breathtaking sentence he managed to tie Rosie the Riveter to Osama Bin Laden and blame the rise of Islamic terrorism to the post-war appearance of women in the workplace. I mention this not only to illustrate that his mindset is very much not my own, but to illustrate exactly how far away it is from anything I would consider "progressive."
Yet he manages my money. And he manages it aggressively. When we had this come-to-jesus about philosophy he said "I'll tell you the same thing I told (a prominent liberal whose money he also manages). I don't make the laws. I just play by them. You can hate the policies as much as you want but if I leave money on the table, I'm not doing my job. What you do with it is up to you - give everything I save you to Greenpeace for all I care. But can we have an understanding that because the tax code is written for the rich by the rich, you'd be a fool not to play the game by our rules?"
We fully arrived in Bizarro-World when we were talking about how our current state and our former state don't grant the same professional rights to my wife (a naturopathic doctor) and that her scope of practice would be significantly curtailed compared to what she was used to. "The cheapest thing to do would be to hire a lobbyist and get the laws changed," he said. We just sort of stared at him, bug-eyed. Cheapest? "Well, you're talking a state law with a very narrow scope. We could probably overturn that for ten, twenty thousand dollars." It turns out he was speaking hyperbolically, but he wasn't far off. The list of lobbyists he showed us was the same as the list of lobbyists my wife's professional organization hired off of. His prices were off - maybe a factor of two, factor of three. Not a factor of ten.
Americans need to understand down to their very bones that their money is going to - and their country is being run by - people who know that an inconvenient tax law doesn't need to be suffered, it needs to be changed. These people know that if $200k of lobbying saves them $200m in taxes that lobbying is their most financially efficient tax strategy. Americans need to understand that the entire system is rigged against people who take the 1040EZ, who always get the Standard Deduction, who think that their $10k account on eTrade makes them a "player." The entire system is rigged so heavily against the individual with a middle-class income that the average taxpayer still thinks he's a small fish in a small pond - he doesn't even realize he's a goldfish in an aquarium bought and paid for by people whose fortunes dwarf his so extravagantly that scientific notation is necessary to illustrate the difference.
The AP ran a pie chart in 2001 that I saw in a newspaper once and haven't seen since. It broke down who, exactly, benefited from the Bush Tax Cuts - remember, back when you got a $300 check as pablum to get you to shut up? Prosperity for everybody, right?
That graph had a lot of stuff on it that wouldn't surprise you. "Businesses" got a big chunk of it. "The Middle class" got a tiny chunk of it. "The wealthy" got a big chunk of it. But way down at the bottom, next to a "2%" there was an asterisk. That asterisk, down in the footnotes, said "Samuel, John, Christy, Alice and James Walton."1
2% of the benefits of an entire national tax cut - about four billion dollars - went directly to five people. Who happen to own Walmart. They cut you a $300 check so yo wouldn't grumble about it. Each Walton, individually, got more tax cut than 2.5 million people, collectively. But it's okay, because you got an X-box.
That's the system we live in. And the people who have the most direct power to change it are the ones that are benefiting the most. Be angry at GE. Be angry at the tax laws. Be angry at the lobbyists. Be angry at the people taking advantage of it. If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs6ov/people_are_angry_the_ge_did_not_pay_us_taxes_but/c1px4sv?context=1
Saving the text for posterity (because who knows what Reddit's retention rules would look like in a year), because it deserves it.
By kleinbl00 (http://www.reddit.com/user/kleinbl00)
"I have a financial planner. He's a dyed-in-the-wool PNAC militant Republican, all the more ironic considering he's an Iraqi with family ties to Chemical Ali. I watched him give a seminar once where in one breathtaking sentence he managed to tie Rosie the Riveter to Osama Bin Laden and blame the rise of Islamic terrorism to the post-war appearance of women in the workplace. I mention this not only to illustrate that his mindset is very much not my own, but to illustrate exactly how far away it is from anything I would consider "progressive."
Yet he manages my money. And he manages it aggressively. When we had this come-to-jesus about philosophy he said "I'll tell you the same thing I told (a prominent liberal whose money he also manages). I don't make the laws. I just play by them. You can hate the policies as much as you want but if I leave money on the table, I'm not doing my job. What you do with it is up to you - give everything I save you to Greenpeace for all I care. But can we have an understanding that because the tax code is written for the rich by the rich, you'd be a fool not to play the game by our rules?"
We fully arrived in Bizarro-World when we were talking about how our current state and our former state don't grant the same professional rights to my wife (a naturopathic doctor) and that her scope of practice would be significantly curtailed compared to what she was used to. "The cheapest thing to do would be to hire a lobbyist and get the laws changed," he said. We just sort of stared at him, bug-eyed. Cheapest? "Well, you're talking a state law with a very narrow scope. We could probably overturn that for ten, twenty thousand dollars." It turns out he was speaking hyperbolically, but he wasn't far off. The list of lobbyists he showed us was the same as the list of lobbyists my wife's professional organization hired off of. His prices were off - maybe a factor of two, factor of three. Not a factor of ten.
Americans need to understand down to their very bones that their money is going to - and their country is being run by - people who know that an inconvenient tax law doesn't need to be suffered, it needs to be changed. These people know that if $200k of lobbying saves them $200m in taxes that lobbying is their most financially efficient tax strategy. Americans need to understand that the entire system is rigged against people who take the 1040EZ, who always get the Standard Deduction, who think that their $10k account on eTrade makes them a "player." The entire system is rigged so heavily against the individual with a middle-class income that the average taxpayer still thinks he's a small fish in a small pond - he doesn't even realize he's a goldfish in an aquarium bought and paid for by people whose fortunes dwarf his so extravagantly that scientific notation is necessary to illustrate the difference.
The AP ran a pie chart in 2001 that I saw in a newspaper once and haven't seen since. It broke down who, exactly, benefited from the Bush Tax Cuts - remember, back when you got a $300 check as pablum to get you to shut up? Prosperity for everybody, right?
That graph had a lot of stuff on it that wouldn't surprise you. "Businesses" got a big chunk of it. "The Middle class" got a tiny chunk of it. "The wealthy" got a big chunk of it. But way down at the bottom, next to a "2%" there was an asterisk. That asterisk, down in the footnotes, said "Samuel, John, Christy, Alice and James Walton."1
2% of the benefits of an entire national tax cut - about four billion dollars - went directly to five people. Who happen to own Walmart. They cut you a $300 check so yo wouldn't grumble about it. Each Walton, individually, got more tax cut than 2.5 million people, collectively. But it's okay, because you got an X-box.
That's the system we live in. And the people who have the most direct power to change it are the ones that are benefiting the most. Be angry at GE. Be angry at the tax laws. Be angry at the lobbyists. Be angry at the people taking advantage of it. If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.
- "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporality embarrassed millionaires."
John Steinbeck"
Why is Idiocracy so funny? Because it's true...
(Idiocracy) "The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b4225060960537.htm
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads"
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b4225060960537.htm
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads"
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