Jonnin

This. They are flat nosed, so not exactly a wad cutter, but 500 for $30 is hard to beat and you save on shipping as they use the USPS flat rate boxes, fill one up to save money. I have used their slugs and they are great, a little dinged up and that lube they use has a bad habit of getting onto the bullets in lumps, but those are minor issues for the price and other hard cast have the same issues. The hardness hype is apparently working, I have yet to make a load that "leads" the barrel on my guns, one of which has poly rifling. Sportsmans warehouse has hard cast sometimes in a few calibers, and that can be a deal just because it saves shipping (but costs more) for small purchases. Or a gun show may have a deal as well. I bought .40 cal hard cast at SW because I dont shoot it much and didnt need anything else, the shipping on a small order would have destroyed any savings from an online purchase. True wadcutters are just flat nosed, right? You could probably just seat any round backwards to get that effect if you find a deal on a particular shape of bullet...

IMHO the situation is hyped, its politics as usual and most of it is posturing for the 2012 election cycle by the president and congress. If we do not pay our bills, it will have some consequences but they will be minor, probably an additional decrease in our credit rating, possibly some fines/fees, that sort of thing, but hardly the end of the world. The big problem is that if this happens, investors will go ape and the stock market will have a period of absolute chaos, if not a downright crash. This is media caused: the media hype over the problem will lead to this panic. If it had not been such a hot topic for the past month, the effect would likely have been smaller. I voted no increase and cut spending. To be blunt, 50% of the tax revenue needs to be debt payment, the other 50% can be divided into government services. We need to end the wars, all of them, and we need to stop all foreign aid cold, as 2 places to start to recover. In that regard, Reid's plan to end the wars as part of the package was a good idea. If a country wants our soldiers, they pay us 2x our expenses for our presence. If not, the UN can take care of it, and we send no more soldiers than the least of the UN members to support that joint effort.

In 3-gun we shoot at these roughly 5 inch square metal targets. Trust me, you can miss em at 20 feet all day long if you get in a hurry! On the flipside I have seen all sorts of odd stuff with the shotgun stages. I have seen multiple target hit by the spread, and I have seen the plastic shell inserts pass thru a paper target (I wouldnt want to be hit by that!). The pattern for birdshot is about a fist sized hole at any defensive range (we use birdshot because its minimally damaging to our targets, or slugs on paper targets), no more. For all that scatter does a slug is as good for defense, IMHO. +10 for the shoulder saver recoil pads. We had one installed, I forgot to mention it, but its a must have if you are talking a defensive load like a magnum 12 ga.

Best value BBQ and very very good. But its off the main roads somewhat with little else in that direction, so you would literally have to pass 5 other BBQ places to get to it... I would recommend it if you have a GPS or plan for it ahead of time with directions, but its not one you would stumble over if cruising "food row".

Priming the cases on the press and being a paranoid noob who looks inside each case to ensure it has powder, I manage 50 in 15 min on the average for simple pistol ammo. That is 200 / hour without the pre-primed cases, though I cannot sit that long or sustain that pace, so its a box here and a box there which probably lets me go faster (fresh and all that, after 30 min I think I would have slowed way down). Some rounds take longer than others for whatever reasons. I currently do 380, makarov, 9mm, 40, 44, 45, 223, 30-30, and 7.65. The bulk of that is 45, 223, and 9mm, the rest are just a box here and there. I dunno if anyone said it but a turret can be used as a single stage, you can remove the auto index rod on the lee to do that and I suppose the others are the same.

welcome! The cost of living here is going to blow your mind. Are you developing an interest in firearms? You can actually own them here =)

Um, did you punch post before you typed anything or is my browser borked again?

My friends like the indian place at shallowford & lee behind the blimpies, where the good chinese place used to be. I can't stand that type of food so I don't know if its actually good or not. Sweet basil is still going strong, its good, and rain is an expensive thai place that I like, its also off lee near shallowford. Basically, if you circle hamilton place and drive down lee from the city cafe all the way to east gate mall (not really a mall now, its moved on to office space) you will find somethign good to eat. As you drive down lee you will see an ichiban (best japanese IMO) and several good asian places, amigos (my choice for mexican), a BBQ place (one is like another to me), hooters, another indian place (also supposedly good), and much more. I think the road name changes from lee to something else along this route, so be warned.

I shoot there as well, 3+ times a week. Its a nice facility and friendly service. Their gunsmith is good as well. I had a 19, its a find choice. Maybe I will see ya there =)

I travel with the action open on any gun that is not my carry piece which is on my person, sometimes with a range flag. With it open and obviously not loaded, I feel safe enough, full strip isnt necessary though the airport folks do like things fully stripped (bad joke). Not all guns are a 2 second strip but many are, bolt actions its easy to pull the bolt, lot of semis you can pull the slide off, etc. Then there are your ruger marks or other guns that are not so much fun to break down...

I am going to disagree with the drug factor. I am sure its a player, but not so sure that its a major player or the most important one. IMHO, and this is entirely a series of guesswork, many factors were overlooked due to lack of data: 1) number of incidents -- for example 44 mag isnt a popular choice and had only a few data points, so few data points that the results from it are meaningless. 2) Noobilyness. 9mm had a lot of data points but uneducated gun owners often get a 9mm first; how many people ask this and are told time and time again to get a 9mm glock over and over? Talking about people that do not shoot much, but have a gun, and then used it (poorly). 3) As you noted already, drugs or adreneline or insanity or other factors that allow a thug to ignore pain or minor wounds. There are others but you get the point, there are too many variables. Note that the 22 and 380 had a decent fatality rating, better than the 9mm and 44 mag (again, due to problems in the data set most likely, but real data is not easily ignored: the 380 and 22 worked). I do not disagree with you for preparing to meet the ultimate criminal, and I always advise folks to carry the most power they can contol, conceal, and so on, so from the real world data its hard to say that any caliber is the best to use against your super thug. According to the real world data, that 22 is a pretty good choice. Its not legal to hog hunt with any 22 that I know of, so that comment is not helpful in the context. Again, I agree the data is flawed and do not recommend a .22, just saying that the question of "how do you pick your caliber for mr super-thug?" becomes a difficult one when the data points at the mouseguns and there is no evidence to support that a hand-cannon is any better...

Welcome! What gun did you choose? Also, its great to get the wife involved and with her own HCP, and when the kids are mature enough, make some range time a family event. Nothing feels better than knowing your wife can defend herself and the kids when you are not there. Chatt is blessed with some nice indoor and outdoor ranges and some great stores/shops and is a great town esp. for a gun owner.

So far I have worked all day, which is a lot like sitting on my butt doing nothing as I am a computer guy. Learning a new to me library for a project, so the actual stuff being done is not too useful yet but eventually it will be. Soon I will go home & then its shooting night out with the wife and dinner out. Might follow that up with a short workout & some LOTRO before bed.

Ah ok, yea a DA revolver isnt so bad. I have picked up a few with really nice DAO triggers, including a taurus that I almost bought.

Felons should be the most protected members of society, seperated from the rest of us by 10 feet of concrete and steel to keep them safe.

I just cannot recreate in my mind the series of mistakes required to make this happen. Have to load the gun, point it unsafely, and mash the trigger, all while in an airport and supposedly securing the gun for a safe ride. This is after securing the gun to ride TO the airport which means unloading it (mostly to prevent discharge in a car accident, since it MUST be pointed unsafely in most vehicles, usually transported flat facing traffc in one direction or another...!). Its probably been loaded since his last hunt or range trip, however long that was, possibly transported multiple times loaded (at least twice, once from the last time he shot and once to the airport). /facepalm -- because words are not enough.

I wish I knew a good way, I do not. You can always take the hit on a 401 and withdraw it early if you think you will lose the whole thing, thats all I know to say.

By putting it into a stock market account that is not labeled as a retirement account? I stopped feeding my IRA years ago and put all my cash into a generic account. Its taxed, unlike the IRA and 401, but thats ok, I won't have to deal with that when I pull it back out. I can take my money out any time I want with no penalty apart from any losses on that day in the market.

Good call. Mine just worked but you are correct this can be a problem. My gun had indentations in the mag tube that I had to grind out, it took a number of iterations before it was smooth enough to use. You can beat/bend them out but I didnt have anything appropriate.

For defense? It takes a while to learn to jocky a SA revolver fast enough for defense shooting, some never do learn it well enough, and a lot of the carry revolvers are only 5 shot. A SA semi is the same concept except it self cocks and can be rapid fired easily. Does not have to be huge, but most of the small SA guns are a bit pricy ($600-1300 price range NIB). Actually, I guess most of the big SA autos are pricy too. I love a good revolver but I dont think I would pick one to carry as my first choice, esp if I had to pull the hammer back each time (I would consider the right DA (not dao) revolver in some circumstances).

That won't do any good.. they ruined the market so all the accounts are worth a fraction of their value, then raid the pennies that are left? I would be glad to loan what is left in mine to the gov't at 10% compound interest, due in 20 years...

Mag tube. I added one so mine now holds 10 rounds, costs about $30 - $50 (I forget) and if I can install it at home, anyone can (I have no skill and few tools). Mine had a terrible loading ramp so I had that replaced (rem 1100 model has a button on the load ramp that is nearly impossible to hit in a hurry making it hard to reload) with a much more friendly ramp which lets me load it fast. If you are serious about it you can get the speedloader but that is fairly expensive and to be honest, its more for competition than practical use. The trouble with a long tube on your gun is the short barrel, you have to pick the length that makes sense to you (mine is 1 shell longer than my barrel and its a full sized barrel) -- you may be stuck with a 5 or 6 shot gun tops. Other ideas are the metal shell holders that carry some spare ammo on the side of the gun, though I just use the cloth version that goes around the stock. You could do both to carry 10 extra rounds, or one of them for 5. Mine came with a red dot sight and thats nice for slugs but its really a waste, I just dont have anything else that needs the hardware so I left it on there. You might like a sling? You may like to chop it down to pistol grips?

Memphis and Nashville both have 3X the population of chattanooga, Knoxville is similar in population but much, much more dense in a true city environment (chattanoog sprawls and is suburban mostly). When our crime is on par with citys 3x the size or more heavily urban, there is a problem! As for my earlier comments, I haven't been back to st. elmo in years so if they cleaned it up, my apologies. If that is the case, I am glad to hear it as the old homes there have so much character and a little money can make them amazing once again.

Its easy enough to destroy a RFID tag. But thats a pretty lame idea, nice if it gets stolen I guess but it enables too many bad things.

I agree with you and said the same thing earlier.