MaDuce

I have a very similar octagonal bolt carrier in my AR-15. On top of attractive appearance, that's a very good and even critically important feature, given the past issues with the AR-15. It might not be as big a deal for the .308s but a plus is a plus.

Yours is on it's way Timing.

A funny but honest article I wrote a few years ago about Russian Women. Anyone who knows any will tell you that this article is truthful. LOL. Inspired by a personal friend of mine.

Only a half a dozen or so available. Limit is 1 per person. I'll give out some seconds if the demand disappears before the supply. These are basically rubber bumpers I've made that fit over the shell deflector to prevent finish damage. They also look cool. I haven't had a chance to test their efficiency yet but they don't disrupt the action and they're free. Only available for the receiver pattern shown in the picture.

Impounds, fines, prison labor etc. Basically anything that financially motivates anyone within the law enforcement business to punish folks. I'm not sure how the above are currently practiced, but I'm sure you know that it can lead to corruption and wrongful punishment if not treated very carefully.

You can say that again. This Zombie Apocalypse stuff never was very amusing and now it's getting downright annoying, not to mention scary. It's only a matter of time before some idiot takes this stuff too far. I appreciate the post though.

I never looked much in to how much cops make, but don't have the impression that they're over paid. I DO however have some issues with police departments making $ off of crime. It's not hard to see the potential problems with turning crime fighting in to a money making business. In any case, it sounds pretty sad, the way you guys got treated over there in New Mexico. Sounds like that politician could have used a few home invasions and muggings to take him off his high horse. Robobot, good quotations. I voted for Ron Paul last election and will again this time around. Mine and his political views are virtually identical.

I'm no expert on the process of carving bores, but contouring should be done PRIOR to heat treat. Contouring an already drilled barrel is doable without any harm to the bore of the gun, but in many cases, it will be wise to re-treat the barrel. However, doing it SAFELY after the barrel has already been heat treated is going to be a nightmare. I'm guessing that's the main reason manufactures do it as early on as they do. You've got a huge jump in time and a dramatic amount of wear on your milling bits that is going to hike up the price. Doesn't make much sense when you can save hundreds per barrel by doing the exact same thing in a different order.

Bordering Sacramento County here in California is this county called Placer. That county sheriff's department's reputation for all the above spans far and wide. Locals often refer to them as the "Barney Fifes". I even have a gun buddy who's dad worked for that department and he (my gun buddy) has downright ventilated to me how bad they've gotten. Don't get me wrong, they have some good cops in that department. One even picked me up and gave me a ride home when I was broke down and stranded and the conversation on the ride home convinced me that this was a good fellow. But police harassment and bullying stands out in that county over others and most of the reports seam to be directed at the sheriff's department.

Hello. I'm not quite sure why I didn't post this earlier. This is the 1st. chapter to that book. When writing a book, I at least (and probably most novelists) start out with what you might think of as a sketch of your chapter and then broaden it in to a portrait. This one is just past the sketching phase. This particular battle is a sour subject in the Balkans and; in addition to being a matter of historical accuracy (which is very tough due to the controversies involved) there's also a need to be careful about NOT treading in the wrong territory. So much as taking a neutral stance is offensive to someone and it's impossible to tell this story, regardless of how accurate you are, without offending someone. Simply minimizing the damage without sacrificing historical accuracy is a huge challenge with the book as a whole, but this particular chapter especially. Likewise, this part of the story; despite being the very beginning, is the slowest development in the entire story. TBH, I'm on the brink of keeping it short just for the sake of staying out of the political crossfire. Anyway, this part covers the 1389 Battle of Kosovo and it's infamous aftermath:The field of Blackbirds. enjoy! ........... Though some guesses and potentially fictional details have been added to fill in gaps and breathe life in to this story, the story as a whole is based very closely on real historical records of a forgotten titanic turning point in world history. Some depictions in this story are controversial and not agreed upon by all historians. It is recommended that those interested in the events of this story engage in independent historical research for a better understanding. 01. Prologue. 1191. A vast army led by King Richard I of England landed in Acer as part of a major military campaign that would come to be known as the 3rd crusade. Despite the failure of the crusade, thousands of Muslims would be murdered in cold blood throughout the campaign, triggering resentment in the east that has lasted to this day. 1204. Armies of the 4th crusade pillaged the East Christian Empire of Byzantine. As result of the damage caused by the crusaders, the once prosperous and powerful empire that protected the west from invasion would be reduced to a mere city state; the city state of Constantinople. Despite its limited size, the city state of Constantinople would continue to repel Muslim armies, protected by her strong walls. 1349. The battle of Crecy in France marks the beginning of the age of cannon fire. In subsequent years, castle walls would continue to prove an insufficient defense against the mighty new weapon. Despite a major defeat by the Samarkand King, “Tamerlane” the Muslim Ottoman Empire remained determined to overthrow Christendom once and for all and continued to build vast and powerful armies for that very purpose. Despite early warning signs, European powers seamed ignorant of the severity of the brewing threat. A conflict unlike any the world had ever seen was about to begin. It would take a miracle to save Christendom from total conquest. Kosovo June 15, 1389 European cavalry rode in to position past small artillery units and halted amidst archers in the hot summer day. Before them, a vast dust cloud was stirred up as the Ottoman soldiers took positions. Both armies took a moment to observe one another. The Ottoman army was vast and well equipped with a suspicious volume of the latest powder guns and, Arabian stallions, bows and a wide variety of blades, including many of their infamous Damascus swords. To make matters worse, the Ottoman ranks were overwhelming in size. Large formations could be seen gathering over a mile behind the front line and were thickening by the minute. Ottoman soldiers seamed to liter the countryside for miles like a vast flower field. But the European army was also vast and could also be seen gathering as far as the eye could see and beyond. And the European army was a coalition of troops from several European countries and principalities. Some of these united armies had proven potent adversaries to the ottomans all by themselves. To see them now united in to a single fighting force drove home to the Ottomans that this was going to be an extremely tough battle to win. The order was given and Ottoman arrows flaw over head towards the front lines of the European ranks like a violent rain storm. While foot soldiers and archers raised their shields, the cavalry received their order and charged forward, missing most of the arrow barrage. Among them were some of Hungary’s famed archers who some began maneuvering around the Ottoman ranks, picking off Ottoman troops at speed, making themselves hard to hit. In the at the same time, European knights raced in to the Ottoman front line, trampling rows of Ottoman soldiers and causing disorientation and panic. However, it started to backfire and the cavalry themselves found themselves mixed up among enemy troops and the battlefield instantly irrupted in to a massive brawl. But things were not at their worst yet. As the brawl expanded, artillery units of both sides began firing canister shot at one another and those equipped with handgonnes were using them. As night fell, the battle continued to rage on, though the vast littering of human and animal bodies made fighting much more difficult and ranged weapons such as bows, cannons and handgonnes were finding themselves as much in demand and use in the dark as in daylight, transferring the look of the battlefield to the image of a vast and violent lightning storm. The overwhelming smoke and dust in the air from the fighting only added to the confusion and chaos. The following morning, the sun rose over a very different sight. Both armies had been nearly wiped out and the few survivors had left the main battlefield. The battlefield it’s self was a horrific sight. The bodies of fallen men, horses and ruined equipment was condensed enough to cover the ground it’s self from visibility, and this sight of tragedy and devastation covered the earth much further then the eye could see, and the bloody red sunrise and vast swarms of blackbirds traveling the sky and picking at the corpses of the fallen added to this surreal sight that seamed as though it came right out of a nightmare. And the stench of the decaying corpses meant that it stunk as much like a vast landfill as it looked. But people still dared venture in to this horrific sight, for nearly each of the thousands of fallen men on this battlefield were a loved member of someone’s family. Some families had journeyed to see their loved ones home from the battlefield or were local residence. Sadly, there would be no homecoming. Mothers, who only the previous day, had anticipated the happy and glorious homecoming of their young boys they had raised from birth, taught morals and filled the hearts of with the dreams of were searching this massive pile of rotting bodies, only to find the butchered and mangled remains of their loved one. The sight of a heartbroken and agonizing mother cradling the mangled body of her youthful and once happy little boy and weeping to the point of insanity over the loss of love and shattered dreams was so common that any witness would have been desensitized. Thousands of young lives, dreams and families destroyed. And for what? Disillusion made the true inevitable end results of men’s pride and ambitions clearly visible and inescapable on this field. Sadly, pride and selfish ambitions are perhaps the darkest qualities of human nature, and anything that is part of human nature is not easily overcome. Likewise, the lesson this tragedy should have taught would never be learned by man as a whole, and it would not be long before history would repeat it’s self yet again.

I've run across my fair share of bad cops here in California and believe you me, the bad ones are often MAJOR CREEPS. But I have come across an equal amount of good cops who actually care about the welfare of citizens and have many times gotten in to conversations with them in which the expressed equal or even greater disgust in some of the local laws then guys like you and me. I get the impression that Robobot belongs to the later crowd. He will get in trouble for NOT enforcing the local laws whether he agrees with them or not but has made it pretty clear that he shares our sentiments about them. TBH, I don't envy the man one bit. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I stand with this nation's founders on this matter. That ALL citizens have a right to own any and ALL small-arms. If you can't be trusted with a gun, you can't be trusted in society. Due to where I live, it seams as though 2-3x per month someone tries to sell me or get me to deal in hot firearms (and no, I don't do any of that, especially having had a very expensive handgun stolen from me). That goes to show how well controlled they really are. I; the law abiding citizen have a much harder time getting my hands on guns then any of the local criminals do. Blowing the whistle is going to have a very minimal impact on criminal firearm ownership. Probably half my friends came here from Communist countries and they have had plenty to tell me about communist gun laws in addition to all other aspects of communist life and political structure. Communism is basically an entire country that works like the military. Everything is rationed to you with very limited say in what goes on in your life. In a communist system firearm possession works very strictly on an "as needed" basis. They are literally government property and never used as anything but that within the bounds of the law. So, in a nutshell, this idea of issuing AWs only to people who "NEED" them is where our current AW laws mimic communism. My guess is that very few of us "NEED" a .308 AR rifle, but we have them. I think Thomas Jefferson once said something along the line of tyranny being defined by legal for the government but not for the citizen. That about sums it up. I'm very talented in pretty much everything needed to be a LEO (particularly detective. There's a reason why I have not taken up that job. BTW. California state law makers already admitted openly that the tightening of gun laws is intended to make the lives of law abiding citizens harder without even mentioning criminals. The real agenda of the California government is no longer a secret.

Awe, that's cute! Little Squeak heart. I hope she got stuffed full of goobies too!

DANG. I thought I had it bad. Sheesh. You have my sympathy!!

If you are all sad about being alone this Christmas, rejoice! The grass is burning hell on the other side!

I really hope your Christmas was that which a sacred moment in your life should be.

LOL. No thanks. I don't want them coming over and making me wear my ZK for underwear.

NICE!!

Thought I'd share this with you guys. These are some simple lines I often replay in my head to myself which help guide me through life, and find myself using in conversion regularly in hope to encourage similar behavior among others. While these are ultimately lines I came up with myself, they are mostly based on lessons learned from wise men throughout history, including but not limited to some of our founders and even Jesus. * The natural punishment for violating the liberties you don't like is the loss of the ones you do like. * You deserve no better treatment then that which you show others. * For some mysterious reason people usually only give serious consideration to the words you preach when they see you put them in to practice. * If you don't learn to control your behavior, you'll repeat history even if you've learned it's lessons. * All men harbor evil wishes. What separates the good from the evil is not what their bad wishes are but which men have enough love for others and moral grounding to refrain from acting on them, and those who do not. * Either control your emotions with reason or your emotions will control your reason. * If it's not proven to be impossible, then it potentially is possible. * The stronger you feel about something, the more reason you have to question it. * I'm not religious but if I had to chose between the two, I'd rather live in a country ruled by Osama Bin Laden then a country ruled by Stalin. * How strong a nation stands depends upon it's treatment of the legs it stands on. * Very often, the biggest difference between some of the worst tyrants and butchers in history and your next door neighbor is which had the power to do what. * If religion is man made then it's nothing more or less then what man makes of it. * We have the power to deny what we believe, but we don't have the power to choose what we believe. * One of the great challenges for those who wish to prove there is no God is the painstaking task of disproving the existence of each version. * The man who knows everything has a brain larger then our solar system. * Never do anything to others without imagining it being done to you. And last but not least, one for the season. * My favorite dollar bill is the one dollar bill. Why? Because it has a picture of the man who invented one of my favorite drinks. (Egg Nog)

The leader of a terrorist cell in Afghanistan was preparing his men to fight American troops who were expected to attack the next day. But he knew that all terrorist cells the Americans had encountered so far had been wiped out and he did not want his cell to share the same fate. So in what seamed like a stroke of genius, he gathered his men in front of a TV and said to them, "Men, the Americans will meet us in battle tomorrow. I want you to be best prepared, so I want you to watch this American movie. It's Called, "Black Hawk Down". It was made by the Americans and it shows how the American soldiers fight. Watch this and you will better understand what to do tomorrow when they arrive." So they watched the movie as he had ordered. When the American soldiers arrived the following day the terrorists promptly surrendered. "During the raid over 1000 Somalis died and 19 American soldiers lost their lives." Black Hawk Down's Epilogue

There's no question that gold is a good looking metal. Who DOESN'T like a gold colored watch or gold plated cookware. But why pay so much money for good looks that can be replicated for a fraction of the price out of brass? The answer you can expect most people to give is because of the rarity and it's effect on one's ego, and these are unquestionably historical causes for it's value and demand, but perhaps there's another reason why the ancient world has been so crazy about gold? To understand what people have seen in gold, we must first understand who was most crazy about it. Today, when we think of Gold and historic love for it, we usually associate it with royalty, pirates, bandits and fortune hunters. But there was actually another class of people out there who was even more crazy about it - the medieval alchemists. So, why would an alchemist be so crazy about Gold. Oh, that's right, they wanted to figure out how to make the stuff. After all, can you imagine how rich you'd get if you figured out ho to make Gold back then? Actually, it's not hard to imagine at all. Contrary to how things initially sound, medieval alchemists probably had more to loose in figuring out how to make Gold then they had to gain. Gold's high price tag, just like today, was based on supply and demand. There was allot of demand but short supply. If you were to figure out how to mass produce the stuff, the value of Gold would be vastly depleted, which means that people who's wealth was based in their gold reserves would suddenly go from rich to poor. So figuring out how to duplicate Gold was more likely to earn you a visit from an assassin then a wealthy benefactor. So, why on earth would anyone waste so much time and resources trying to accomplish such a thing, let alone a massive undertaking that spanned multiple continents? To understand this, we must look at the other factor that gives gold it's value - demand. We associate gold silverware and gold cups with kings and wealth, and there was undoubtedly an element of pride associated with drinking out of a gold cup rather then a wood one, but this is actually just a bonus. In the pre-antibiotic age, folks did everything they could to prevent disease and though they never really understood it, they often found precautions that seamed to be effective. One for instance was drinking alcohol rather then water or juice as alcohol sterilized the drink. But people didn't always drink alcohol and royalty undoubtedly needed to spend much of their work life sober. So drinking out of a wood cup, which could collect and build up nasty bacteria, just wasn't very smart and was often avoided when possible. Of course, you could also use clay dishes and cups as many do today, but even this was a "poor man's" solution and as we all know, clay likes to break. If we wanted a remedy for that today, we'd just go buy plastic cups and be done with it, but the ancient world didn't have this luxury. So, if you could afford it, you went with gold. This is just one of the many examples of Gold's mechanical values. Perhaps it's most outstanding value however is it's survivability. We often think of stainless steel and aluminum as non-corrosive metals, yet if you left a coin made of either at the bottom of the ocean for 1000 years, you'd be lucky to find a trace of it. Yet we've found gold that's bee at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of yeas and, after cleaning all the gunk off of it, found it to be in nearly the exact same condition as it was before the ship sank. It is this sort of property that medieval alchemists were obsessed with and it is here that we find a hidden value in gold. Alchemists were trying to figure out perfection on earth and they believe Gold to be one of the few substances in nature to be truly perfect. This belief came, not from mystic ideas, but from the actual mechanical properties of the metal. If you have studied anything about Area 51, undoubtedly you've heard claims about the government finding crashed alien space craft and trying to reverse engineer them so we can figure out how that technology works and make use of it in our own pursuits. This may be pure fiction when it comes to UFOs, but the medieval alchemists were actually doing the very same thing with Gold. In a time when disease was rampant and extreme violence was common place, the desire to find a way to live in harmony, free of disease, violence, starvation etc. was extremely attractive. In fact, it seamed to take priority over ever lasting life, which was considered a possible result of reverse-engineering gold. Ironically, science has since moved on and the alchemists effort to reverse-engineer gold, also known as the search for the philosopher's stone has since vanished. Today, there are known examples of gold actually being made by man. First was an accidental discovery by, of all people, the Soviet Union. This happened during all of those rural Soviet Nuclear production experiments that got portrayed in early James Bond movies. It's been reported that; during an experiment, a led shield against nuclear radiation had been transmuted to gold. Unfortunately this was the USSR and under a communist regime gold wouldn't have had the value to individuals that it does in a free society and this all happened under secure, almost war time conditions. There seams to be little known about the details, probably as result. Later on, a fellow named Glenn Seaborg used a particle accelerator to make gold. Seaborg; a Nobel prize holder, seams to have shared the enthusiasm of the medieval alchemists in search of the philosopher's stone, yet never fulfilled their ultimate goal. That's where the irony comes in. While we can now MAKE Gold, the mission of the medieval alchemists is far from complete. While making Gold would have sent shock-waves throughout their world, it would have still only been a huge step towards their real goal. For the goal was never to duplicate Gold but to understand how it works so that the means could be applied to human life. If you really think about it, it appears they were really on to something. Much of our progress is achieved by taking something that works in one area and applying the same concept to a completely different subject matter. The gas piston in an automatic rifle for instance works on the same principal as an automotive car engine. Perhaps it's time to start looking at the nature of gold and how it's immortality and perfection is achieved. Who knows. We just might discover a major way to significantly improve the body and the mind.

I'm with Mr. Robobot 100%. Know you are lucky to have had such a good friend in the first place. Decent folks are becoming increasingly scarce.

Believe it or not, I have a shooting trip planned with some Ukrainian friends of mine on Christmas eve. On Christmas day, I'll be trapped at my mother's house and she's going to be going a million miles an hour, so I am sure I'll be escaping the chaos from time to time by jumping on the forum with my laptop. So this might actually NOT be a total ghost town, though it may be nothing more then myself and if lucky, one other member practicing our fast draw. LOL.

Patenting that mechanism and putting a gun like that in to production are two different ballgames. I'm still pondering whether or not I'm even going to bother pitching that gun design at the industry. As it stands, it's just a personal build. I am thinking of maybe bringing it to the attention of a few manufacturers, studying their reaction and going from there. FWIW, a production variant of that design shouldn't have any trouble with "Ruger only" .45LC loads. It's an unusually solid design and still built to take unusually little beating. I myself have no interest in a .45LC version of the gun. I MAY make a .50AE version just because it's cheap and convenient and because I already have a 10 round mag for it but anything beyond that you'll have to bug manufacturers about, assuming they take any interest in the gun and assuming I'm willing to let them play with it.

What I think would have been a great, even better idea is if someone started a raffle sight where guns were sold only by raffle. Then a gun could be put up with a list of how many raffle tickets at what price must be sold before the raffle is concluded and have a random entry generator to elect the winner. Then people can spend a fixed amount of $ each week, 2 weeks, month etc. on guns, with the likeliness that they'll probably win sooner or later. Imagine if for instance they held a raffle for a .308AR here. You'd probably enter out of commitment, but still know your odds of winning anything are slim. Then imagine if everything on gunbroker were being sold by raffle. Lots of options to choose from and you could probably enter 5 different raffles for $5 total, depending upon the deal and just by number of entries, your odds are increased. Kinda like buying scratchers with the chance of getting a gun out of it. That's what they need to do.