Movie Rule of Thumb 1

On July 8, 2011July 26, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Movie Rules2 Comments

From Night of the Living Dead

I love movies. I’m one of those guys who will quote a movie line to you whenever the situation is appropriate. If you know the movie, and continue the dialog, we can be friends.

Those who follow me on Twitter probably cringe when you see that Tombstone is on.

Some time, long ago, I started accumulating some rules for life, that were based on things that happened in movies. I few years ago, I wrote them down, and I’ve added and edited them a couple of times.

These are my Movie Rules of Thumb.

Over the next few months I will share with you my rules, where they came from, how they apply to movies, how they apply to Real Life, and how they’ve been important to me.

It all began with

Rule 1: Always Shoot Zombies Through the Head.

(Sometimes including the follow-up phrase, “Don’t waste ammo on body shots.”)

Source: Night of the Living Dead and every zombie movie since then.

Lesson: Don’t waste your time doing things you know aren’t going to matter. Consequently, if you try something you think is going to work, and it doesn’t work, believe the evidence. Try something else.

Rule 1 obviously applies to just about every zombie movie. It also applies to a lot of other movies. If you don’t have a silver bullet, don’t even shoot at a werewolf. The same thing goes for vampires, if you don’t have a wooden stake, although I have to admit, I have paid zero attention to Twighlight and other recent vampire movies and TV shows, so I can’t say whether this still applies.

Interestingly, I did a Youtube search and came across this test of zombie killing effectiveness. Apparently, it’s a good thing my shotgun is back in action. Enjoy.

Rule 1 has lots of applications in Real Life as well. Because of Rule 1, I don’t use sarcasm with the TSA agent at the airport. I always go ahead and give my dog his treat when I let him in. I don’t argue about visiting my mother-in-law. I tip the bellman at the hotel.

Self-defense lesson: Never shoot someone to wound, or fire a warning shot, or shoot to get their attention. If you pull your gun, be prepared to shoot until the threat stops. That means shooting center of mass, with follow up shots to other areas as appropriate.

And yes, that might be a head shot.

My Shotgun, Reborn

On July 7, 2011July 26, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn Lee, Mossberg, Projects, Review

One spring day, not long after I had bought my first gun, I was at work, talking with a truck driver, while he was waiting for his trailer to be loaded. The conversation turned to guns. After all, it was spring, we were men, we were in Alabama, and I was a Gun Newbie. After a while, the truck driver mentioned that he happened to have a used shotgun for sale. Would I like to see it?

Sure.

It was a very nice pump shotgun, a 12 gauge. The wood was in good shape, and while some of the bluing on the barrel was worn, there was no corrosion. And the pump action was as smooth as glass. It had only one minor defect – a former owner had written his name on the barrel with a power inscribing tool.

I say it was a defect, but in fact, it was a blessing, because the person whose name was on the shotgun barrel happened to be the plant chief operator, and he was on shift that day. So I went and asked Lee about the shotgun. He told me of the large number of whitetail deer who were prancing in the fields of heaven because of that gun.

Was it worth $100?

Lee said he thought so, because that’s what he had sold it to the truck driver for, 3 years before.

So, at lunch, I went and cashed a check (these were the days before the ATM, friends) and the shotgun was mine. And I named it Lee.

Now, I had no idea what brand of shotgun it really was, and neither did Lee. The brand name on the gun is Revelation, sold by Western Auto. I tried taking it apart, but knowing nothing about shotguns, I didn’t get far.

The next day, my copy of American Rifleman arrived, and the monthly section on gun schematics and disassembly instructions featured the Mossberg 500 12 gauge shotgun. Everything looked the same as mine, and it came apart and went back together just like in the magazine. So, Lee was really a Mossberg 500. Thank you, Lord.

+++++++

A couple of years later, after I had moved away, I went back to my old plant for a visit, and Lee (the operator) asked about the shotgun. He then told me that he had been approached by the truck driver, to try to sell him the gun back, and he had steered him to me.

Again, thank you, Lord.

+++++++

Fast forward a number of years, and a lot of trap shooting, later. Now, the bluing on Lee had gotten a little more worn, so I decided I would like to re-blue it. I bought a re-bluing kit at the gun store, read the instructions, and completely de-blued the whole gun. I sanded all the pits and corrosion out, and – no offense – I used my Dremel to erase Lee’s name. Sorry, man.

Then I decided to search the Internet for info on how to re-blue guns, and I was confronted by tales of woe. It turns out that the Mossberg 500 has an aluminum receiver, which doesn’t take bluing well. So I decided I needed a little more experience in gun finishing before I gave it a try.

Fast forward a little more. Okay, probably 5 years more. The shotgun sat unfinished, all that time, while I periodically thought about refinishing, and stopped, because it made my head hurt. To assuage your fears, the barrel and steel parts were well oiled, and stored in a firearms sock in my safe. The small parts were stored in a plastic shoe box.

At last, thanks in part to the false sense of optimism this blog has given me, I decided to finally refinish Lee.

After a bunch of Internet research I decided to use Duracoat firearm finish, and a Hogue rubber overmolded polymer stock, to make Lee look like his Glock brethren.

++++++

The refinishing process began with the fitting of all the parts onto the new polymer stock, to be sure I didn’t need to do any gunsmithing to make it fit.

Everything fit perfectly.

I then laid all the parts out to get ready. In addition to the Duracoat with sprayer that I bought, I also bought painters tape. I also remembered back when I was researching bluing, and they told me to fill in all the holes in the receiver with Silly Putty, so the finish wouldn’t get in the holes, and make them smaller.

I also got some 600 grit sandpaper for the final sanding, and some nitrile gloves to protect my hands.

I then went over all the metal parts with the 600 grit sandpaper, per the Duracoat instructions.

Here’s the trigger group taped off below the parts that will show in the final gun assembly:

I filled in all the holes with Silly Putty, and taped all the threads and other parts that I didn’t want to spray. I then sprayed the whole gun with the degreaser spray provided in the kit.

Here’s the receiver, hanging and ready to spray.

I then mixed the paint and the hardener in the glass sprayer bottle, and shook it all for the time they told me to. Spraying with a smooth even motion, I laid down the first coat:

I also sprayed the barrel:

Three even coats, and all was done.

Sounds easy, right?

Ha!

First – the sprayer that Duracoat sold with the paint tended to sputter periodically. At random. Leaving some parts sprayed smoothly and evenly, and some running and dripping.

Actually, I’m surprised the paint stayed on, with the amount of cursing that I applied to the sprayer. I guess I’m glad the cliche isn’t really true.

So, instead of letting it dry five minutes between coats like the instructions said, I let it dry fifteen minutes, and tried to sand out all the drips.

Stupid idea. All I got was rolled up drips.

Eventually, my curse vocabulary exhausted, I managed to get it sanded well enough to get three coats on, and it not look like I had welded all the parts together.

Lessons learned:

First, I won’t use the sprayer that Duracoat sells again. Instead, I will invest a little more money in an airbrush sprayer and compressor.

Second – while it may work for bluing, I found that Silly Putty makes water bead up. This means it also repels paint, so that all the pin holes had halos around them, free of paint. I need to find something else to use, maybe just balled up paper.

So, while trying to sand out the drips, I also had to take out all the Silly Putty, and use the degreasing spray again. Then I could spray.

Third – in retrospect, I would not have Dremeled Lee’s name off the barrel. I now think it would have lent a sense of history, which I am trying, in a small way, to preserve here.

After drying overnight, I put the whole thing together. Of course, I had to watch a Youtube video, because I hadn’t done anything with this gun for 5 years. But the action is still smooth as glass, and it looks mean.

Behold, Lee, the Mossberg 500:

Fast and Furious Update

On July 7, 2011 By Tom LindsayIn ATF

The day I decide to air my thoughts on the Fast and Furious scandal, comes word that Acting ATF head Ken Melson took it upon himself to come to Congressman Issa and Senator Grassley, and testify, without a lawyer, and without anyone from the Justice Department present.

On the Fourth of July.

I will let you read what he said here. Just let me say, it looks like the American System I talked about yesterday is working.

Fast and Furious

On July 6, 2011July 26, 2012 By Tom LindsayIn ATF

Sometimes I wonder whether to post about things that so many other bloggers are covering. But I would be remiss if I didn’t air my thoughts on the Fast and Furious scandal.

What if the Canadian national drug enforcement agency told pharmacists there to ignore Canadian law, and sell drugs to people they knew were going to smuggle those drugs into the United States? What if hundreds of Americans were killed by people high on this drug, and no one did anything until a Canadian investigator was killed? We would be calling for heads to roll.

For those who don’t know, this happened, only it was guns instead of drugs, and it was the United States instead of Canada. The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (the ATF) decided at some point and at some level in its management that it would be okay to allow gun dealers in Arizona to sell guns to people who would have otherwise be prohibited, despite the legitimate protests of the gun dealers involved. The ATF then watched those guns, and tracked them with GPS chips, as they were smuggled into Mexico and used by the drug cartels there.

One of these guns was used to kill a US Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry. After that, some ATF agents decided to break ranks and come clean. After some persistent reporting by a few gun bloggers, the story finally got picked up by the main stream media.

Of course, there is much speculation as to the ATF’s motives. Whatever they were, since they led to the deaths of innocent victims, they are irrelevant. But, those motives are not my point today.

My point today is this: this scandal is a test of the American system. Forgive me if this sounds melodramatic, but if we fail this, my feelings are we are in a decline from which this country may not be able to recover.

Our System – law enforcement, Congress, the media, and the people – must see this through to the end. We have to make sure that those involved are discovered, flushed out, and dealt with. Those who lived through Watergate as I did (or who have studied it) know that this is likely to be a long and painful process. I’m not afraid of the long process, only that we will give up, or give in.

There are those who try to blame this all on lax US gun laws, or gun shows, or any of a dozen reasons. The truth is that Fast and Furious is about an out of control US government agency. My hope is that those who insist otherwise sound as lame and pathetic to the other parts of the System as they do to me, and they won’t be believed.

Granted, it’s sad that those diversionary excuses are brought up, because it exposes those who bring them up for who they are, people who would see the Second Amendment dashed at all costs. And that is the central point of all this.

To me, the Second Amendment is the linchpin of the Constitution, and if it goes, there is really nothing stopping anyone who wants to trample the rest. So, if the System fails, or refuses to work, by one or more parts of the System becoming convinced that the ATF’s reasons were legitimate, or by us accepting a scapegoat, rather than dig for the ultimate culprit – then I mourn for us. In my mind, decline is inevitable.

Time will tell. Meanwhile, I pray for the family of Brian Terry, for Congressman Darrel Issa, Senator Chuck Grassley, and the others involved, as much as I pray for our military and political leaders. They must stand strong, and we, the rest of the System, must stand with them.