Jonnin

while it is wrong, I have a burning curiosity to see how many members of congress or local government or other such folks are busted.

No. It will get you close, but it won't do 100% of the work for you.   Lasers shoot in a straight line.  Bullets are subject to gravity and aerodynamics and other things.     You can get a casual bore-sighting for free @ academy, for one place.  Might be other places too.  Theirs is not at range, they use a special "target" at short range but it gets you on pie-plate at 100, maybe 200 yards.    The type you are talking about gets you within an inch or two usually.

  both guns have millions upon millions of spare parts and aftermarket parts etc. both will hold up for many, many thousands of rounds.  the 1911 is more complex and therefore most likely to need maintenance.  Things like busted extractors happen more often in a 1911.  By more often, that is still pretty rare. the safety on a 1911 is critical if you are carrying it (range guns you can leave it off all the time).  Trigger is too light and short to risk it, and any carry besides cocked and locked negates the entire platform. the safety on a glock is a joke.  It does not really prevent idiot discharges, and it makes the already mushy and weird trigger even weirder.  I took the spring out of my only trigger safety gun and glued it in place (that is, pushed back and flush to the trigger).  I hate them.    either is a fine choice.   1911 is a heavy, low cap, large gun that is well made with an awesome trigger.  Glocks are high recoil, annoying trigger, high cap, well made guns.   They are nothing alike in any way apart from both being firearms.   Pick whichever you like best.

what about a kel tec p32 or other 32?   The gains you get from a slightly smaller 380 will be minimal, you might need to consider a smaller caliber?   The latest generation of rugers has had a somewhat better trigger in some of their copied models.  Last couple I tried were actually pretty good for a dao.   I don't have the pico but I do have the nano.   I didn't like it much; its stashed as an emergency weapon.  I had high hopes of it being a true left handed weapon (and it does that pretty well) but the trigger just feels like trying to slide two gravel over each other.  And that is after tons of shooting it... it just won't smooth out.

  Um, quite a few.  I have a little stick flag on my desk, and it can't be lowered.  Some people have the 45 degree angle mounts on their homes, and those can't be lowered.   A number of other "short pole" home mounts are fixed at one position.   Basically, any pole where the flag is directly attached to the top of it cant be changed, and is excused.    The ones indoors like near the presidential podium can't be changed.  Stuff like that.   Outside, most taller poles are real and CAN be, but a few that are like on rooftops etc are affixed.    check out this, for one example: http://www.theflagpoleco.com/20brcoshbpr.html   which I think would not be able to fly at 1/2.  

FWIW some flags *cant* be lowered to 1/2 and those are excused in the rules.  This does not apply to the WH setup, of course, but in case someone sees one that is not lowered it does not always mean someone is doing wrong.   Sometimes ppl got their heads up their backsides and don't lower it because they forget etc too.   Its rare that someone who bothers to fly a flag would intentionally fly it wrong; most are patriots and try to do it right.   Then theres the whitehouse...

  Technicality.   Its name changed so they could split out the commercial and free versions.  The same mothership still controls and "owns" both (if anyone really owns a free Linux).   Not being a huge unix fan anyway (I use it when I must, which is rare, usually I can hack out what needs doing in Cygwin) and truly hating their version, I had not kept up with their line.   But even if I personally hated it, its should still be a very viable choice.

  Perhaps.    It really depends on the situation and location what you can find.  If its the great plague that drops 99.999% of people, I think I could find an axe or a hammer somewhere.   If there are tons of survivors, its another story.  I wouldn't go looking to steal until I was pretty sure the owners and everyone else around were pretty much dead.  Going outside at all is a risk, of course, mean people are mean.

the only one I really ever loved is very expensive... if its still around.. QNX high performance distribution.  You could boot a rather powerful OS off a 1.4 meg floppy back in the day, as a free demo.      Red hat frustrated me, but that was like the late 90s.  I never really made friends with it, it always seemed to do everything the roundabout way.   Its probably 10000X better now.

Ubuntu is pretty nice.    It is less aggravating than most.  If it recently did not work for you, try one of the others... if it was a while back, try it now, its grown up over the last decade or so.   ALL Linux builds are free.     UNIX and specific vendor OS are not free, like solaris (or it once cost, may not now, I forget). 

  the flag is flown at 1/2 on memorial day and by presidential or governor's order.  It may also fly on certain disaster dates like 9-11, for a period of time, or forever, depending.   (they actually made 9-11 a forever day by making it a "holiday" of sorts).   http://www.flagandbanner.com/flags/when_to_fly_your_American_flag_at_half_mast.asp has dates listed.

The M&P is a well made, good gun, but its also an inexpensive line of guns and not precision target grade equipment.    Let me ask the obvious questions... does the trigger pull make you miss (hardish to pull) ?     What can the gun do if you lock it into an unmoving rest and fire it with your ammo?   What power optics are you using, have your tried an excessively powerful scope at 200 (say, 30+ power?)?    Do you let the gun cool down between shots?  If not, you might prefer a bull barrel (you might want this anyway).    Can you hear the sonic boom of the bullet?  Supersonic ammo can have some jitter when it does that... there is a known issue "around" the speed of sound that causes problems *in some cases*.   Adjusting the ammo speed a little can sometimes improve the accuracy if this is a problem (from the sound of it, haha, it isn't an issue, you did some good shooting already).   These are the sorts of things you can look at *before* spending a ton of money.

  The regulars are on thin ice as a lot of people are asking questions about why marines are unarmed.   They don't know where the guns came from yet, is my take on the second bit.   Why the guy didn't just say "investigation is ongoing on the others" is beyond me.   But some folks get a little dumb in front of a camera or when being pestered, could be the "media effect".  They also cut and chop on interviews ... he could have been led to say that by biased questions that were cut out... who knows.

Looking good.  I love a fixed barrel gun, strange we don't see more of them eps in the target arena.    Ive liked walther's frames for many years, they feel great.  

  Doing this, whatever you cook up should be safe.  If you seat them like wadcutters they will be approximately actual 38s of that data, but this may have some other effect on accuracy or something that I am unaware of.  Ive only shot a few of those, when a 357 sneaked into my 38 brass pile.   Edit, mixed threads.

if the os partition mirrored properly, by the time you get a better answer you could have just copied a data partition over, if you can put them both into one pc. So I would say make sure the new drive is partitioned and boot sector is cloned, and copy the sucker.   Alternately, there are other disk clone tools out there, you could try again with another tool.     Never used clonezilla so I can't offer insight into it with that tool.  Its been a while and I can't even recall what I used last time I did this.    If a second tool bombs out, you may want to scan for bad sectors etc to see if its choking on something.

  this.  I do it, but I am shooting fairly soft LRN that can be squeezed thru safely.  Zero experience with trying it on jacketed, but its always good advice to take care when using a substitute.

  this may be, out of the box.  My mk3 has been converted to mk2 and is mostly metal.  Out of the box, it had a sorry trigger, the buck was better.  After the TLC, the ruger was better.  There are so many versions of both guns, its a tossup.  But out of the box, yea, browning is better, largely because of that trigger mechanism they stuck in the mark 3s for 'safety'.

soft points usually use copper data.  The copper is what will go down the barrel, usually the soft point is narrower and inside the friction.  So you use the copper data.   IMHO if you use data for something the same weight and if you can approximate shape,  and use the lightest load for that, it should be fine.    are you loading it as 38 or 357??   38 in a 357 will be safe unless you go way, way off the deep end.   if making 357s, just use like 85% or so of a copper 125gr starting load and work up or down until it hits where you want and feels good.  Theres tons of room to play in a revolver, all it has to do is exit the barrel and hit where you aim on the light side.   On the heavy side, you said you were not going there, and I wouldn't.  Light bullets and hot loads are hard on the gun.

  probably could save a buck unless you want some 380s for something (they shoot fine in 9mms and light 38s as well as 380).    took a few measures for you:   the standard 380 90 grain I use is approximately .46 inches.  The JHPs I use are approximately .43 (also 90 gr, gold dot) the OAL of a loaded 380 is about .985 the length of a case of a 380 is .68    calculating... .985 - .68  ~=  0.3 inches.  That is how much of the bullet is sticking out of the case.  So...  .46 - .3  = .16 inches stuck into the case.  or,  not quite 1/6 an inch.   if that helps. 

As I understand it the biggest use of sidearms in the military are special forces missions (unclear how often) and military police in some circumstances.     And I am ok with that.  What should simply be allowed is that all soldiers, after completing basic training and being moved to duty, should be allowed to carry a pistol.   Their own would be fine.  Issued would be fine.  I don't care what it is or where it came from, but they should simply be allowed the choice of doing this.  And that should over-ride 100% of all state laws until such time as their discharge.

  well, when you mount it, you must consider a number of things.  Too far out the barrel and it pulls off the balance of the gun badly (extra noticeable for 1h shooting style).  Too far back and it messes with racking these types of guns.   Some positions can get the sight chipped by flying brass, esp the cheaper models, and esp the windowed models (compared to tubes).    I dunno about position vs adjustments.  All I know is for sights, dots, scopes... the closer you get, the more elevation varies from yard to yard.   It has to do with the barrel and sight not being on the same vector, but parallel with a gap between.  The closer you are, the more that height over the bore matters.

  I do not know about suppressors.  But poly is pretty durable, and the suppressor is mounted on the metal barrel anyway, so I don't understand your question?   IMHO the ruger is better made than the browning, but not by much.     The rail is fine for your red dot.  You can adjust those red dots quite a bit and it will do fine once sighted in.    The trouble is elevation adjustment ...  is very tied to range in a .22 handgun.   At less than about 15, maybe 20 yards, if you shoot up close, the elevation needs to be adjusted nearly for each 5 yard increment.  Past 25 yards or so it holds steady for a long time then gravity starts to kick in hard and you are back to adjusting.   Anyway, my advice is to pick a known distance to shoot it and keep it "around" that range with a red dot.    No idea about your specific brand of sight but Ive long suspected the electronics are all made in a couple of places regardless of brand.  That aside, my #1 comment here is to make sure you have a good (lifetime...) warranty.   I used a tru-glo cheap one but it had a warranty, and the couple of times I had problems, it was replaced no questions asked.   Ive moved on to a precision ultradot, but I have to say, I did have a few problems with a couple of brands and the warranty is really the key to my happiness with red dots (scopes too, for that matter).

Yes, but you need to be careful because the 9mm is very long (usually) and may jam up into the rifling unless seated deeper than is normal.  When seated deeper, as stated, pressure rises rapidly ...  you need to start with very light loads and work up carefully.    It largely depends on the bullet shape.   If the bullet shape allows it to be seated to normal 380 depth, its easy to make the load.  If it needs to go deeper, it will take some caution.     I would figure out just how shallow you can seat it to feed/fit your gun via trial and error with a case that has been sized and deprimed and nothing else, then go a half turn deeper and then work on the powder charge from there.    One other word of caution:  make sure the rounds ALSO fit in your mag properly.  You need to push one round of it all the way to the bottom to be sure it fits.  That longer nose might hose up in some mags.

Cool.   If it turns out to be a decently accurate long range gun, I might just get one of these.   You would need a special built tripod or something though, at 20 pounds with equipment on it and bullets in it ...