This ought to make you feel all warm & toasty inside. In Colorado a couple was detained by armed guards while the state ordered & carried out an injection on their newborn daughter against their wishes.

This started because of a doctor urging the prents to sign a consent from to allow a vaccination. when the couple refused the doctor contacted teh SS (Social Services) & they in turn arranged for an emergency hearing of the matter, saying it was a matter of life & death that the baby receive the shots within a few hours.

"Faced with opposition from the parents over the vaccination of "Baby M," the doctor called in hospital social service worker Joni Vohs, who reportedly threatened the parents with the loss of custody of their baby if they did not comply with the vaccination schedule.
Next, hospital administrators called in attorneys who persuaded Chief District Court Judge Charles Buss to hold an emergency, after-hours hearing at the hospital on the basis that the baby's life would be in danger if she was not vaccinated within hours. The family was given 15 minutes' notice of the hearing and was unable to secure competent legal help in time.
As the father describes it, he went up against a 10-person panel of attorneys, social workers, hospital administrators and the doctor who argued for the immediate vaccination.
The father pleaded for second opinions. He also pleaded for the judge to wait for the results of a more confirmatory test which were scheduled to arrive in 16 hours.
During the four-hour hearing, the father cited the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and Colorado revised statute, which states there are religious, medical and philosophical exemptions to medical treatment.
Rather than share the 19-year-old's passion for U.S. constitutional history, the lawyers reportedly mocked him.
"When I was reading, the lawyers were whispering back and forth almost laughing at me," the father told WorldNetDaily. "In retrospect, reminding them of the Constitution hurt me more than it helped."
The judge ruled the baby should be vaccinated immediately and also ordered her put into protective custody with the Mesa County Department of Human Services, which the parents were told meant social-service agents had the ability to intervene in the medical treatment of the baby at any time and could take physical custody of the baby if deemed necessary to "protect the child's best interests."

Now keep in mind the couple & the article itself provide plausible reasons why vaccinations are not neccessarily beneficial for the child. But a judge placed the perceived interests of the state above the Right & Duty of parents to provide for their child as they saw fit.


Chief District Court Judge Charles Buss. Social Service worker Joni Vohs. Remember their names & explain why you refuse to do any business with them should they come your way.

Course, maybe it's caused I just watched the movie the other day, but how the hell is this - in principle- any different than Napoleon taking away Jessie's pups in Animal Farm? Personally, I wouldn't have blamed the father or mother if they took out as many of those statist thugs as necessary to protect their child from the threat they perceived.

This was found over at End the War on Freedom who found it at Keep & Bear Arms.com. It's fiction & damned improbable fiction at that. But we can all dream can't we?


"Stirring from deep thoughts, the man's wife looked with respect and affection at the grizzled old man who was her husband and her hero. "Of course, they rewrote the Second Amendment", she said, "It wasn't the same back then. They added a line. Before the war for independence started, the Second Amendment said, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It wasn't until 2011 that they added, "Any person who questions this right in a legislative body may be shot without consequences." The change was enacted exactly four years after that first encounter with the U.N. troops, on the day when ordinary citizens took their firearms into the Nation's capital and came back with our freedom... Independence day, September 6, 2007."

You may find the rest here.

I found this over at End the War on Freedom. It's a rather thoughtful look at the M-16 platform of weapons over at MadOgre.com. Here's a few choice selections:

"The AR can jam so easily, and it doesn’t even make a good club."

& perhaps my favorite:

"The best way to improve the AR-15 is to unscrew the front sight, and put a new gun under it."

Go read the whole thing for yourself.

A very interesting Livefire is on this week. Livefire is the weekly radio show hosted by Larry Pratt, the head honcho over at Gun Owners of America. His guest is an attorney by the name of Scott Bach who took on a case that concerns anti-gun groups influencing children at school. I'll leave it at that so as not to spoil the show for ya. Clicking this should open a Realplayer window with the show in question loaded.

Part of the reason blogging has been light - okay, damn well non-existant - is because here at the Publicola house we have a new mouth to feed. You can see pics of her here. It should work for those w/o a Yahoo account, but worst comes to worst Yahoo accounts are free & have some handy features.

The vitals -
weight - 9.5 lbs.
length - 43.5 inches
color - light grey/dark brown
Date of Birth - august 1944 (i think)

In case you haven't figured it out, the new mouth to feed is approximately .308 in diameter & is attached to what is commonly know as the M1 Garand.


More or less I think the serial number puts it as being made in August of 1944, though the literature that came with it had 1941 serial number ranges. Probably a simple mistake as my serial number was 3,xxx,xxx & the 1941 serial numbers covered the 300,000's. It was made by Springfield Armory. It was re-barelled in 1949 with a Springfield barrel. It spent some time in the Danish military. It came my way via the CMP.

Now why would a simple purchase take up most of the free time I spend blogging?
Well the military hates rusty rifles in warehouses, so they dose them liberally with cosmoline. Cosmoline is a great preservative - for metal at least. Over time it's not real good for wood. & in any event it's not a good lubricant. So before firing it's advisable to remove all the cosmoline, clean & lubricate the rifle. Cosmoline gets everyplace. Every little nook & crevice that you could never purposefully lubricate in a decade cosmoline will find its way into.
The best method for cleaning cosmoline off metal is gasoline. But gasoline isn't the most stable of cleaning agents. Next best is kerosene. It's an improvement over gasoline but not by much. So I opted for method No. 3 - mineral spirits.
After detail stripping the Garand, which due to my rusty memory took more time than it should have, I washed all the parts in mineral spirits. I scrubbed with an old toothbrush (at least I hope it was an old tooth brush!) to make sure I didn't miss anything, as cosmoline can gumm up in places. I then let the parts dry. When they'd been drying an hour or so I then degreased the whole thing with a spray degreaser. It ate a nice layer or two off my hands before I remembered I had some rubber gloves laying around, but the important thing was I then had a clean, grease,oil & cosmoline free rifle.
After that oil it all over, wipe off the excess & then use grease (not oil) to take care of a few of the more critical contact points.
The stock was a little trickier. I hadn't decided then whether or not I was going to re-finish the whole thing, so I taped off the outside portion of the stock with masken tape, then sprayed the inside of the stock ( where the rifle sits) with easy-off oven cleaner. Nothing I know of works better when it comes to removing oil from wood. After spraying a coat, letting it sit & then scrubbing the hell out of the barrel & receiver channel I let it dry for a day. Then boiled linseed oil was applied to restore some of the oils the wood is suppossed to have.

Ammo is another consideration. The Garand likes ammo that uses a medium to medium fast powder & sends a bullet along at between 2500 & 2800 feet per second, depending upon the weight. heavier bullets, slower powders or faster velocities won't hurt the action, but they may very well bend the op-rod, which is something that must be replaced - not fixed. So new factory ammo is out of the question. There are some good deals on military surplus ammo but I handload so it's not that economically enticing.
Handloading for a gas operated semi automatic is a bit different than say, for a bolt action. Cartridge headspace, primer depth & over-all length are much more critical. A Garand has a free floating firing pin, so if the primers are too high, or too sensitive, then there's the possibility of a slam fire. A slam fire is when the cartridge discharges the instant the bolt locks shut. Sometimes this will happen the instant before the bolt locks shut, which is called an out-of-battery fire & they are mucho dangerous. This can also happen if the cartridge headpsace is longer than the chamber headspace.

& a good bit of time has been spent searching for parts. Not just any part mind you, but the parts that will make this Garand into a decent macth rifle. I've also been pricing gunsmith work that I don't feel up to doing myself.

So if you add all of that on to the normal things that keep me from blogging as much as I should (such as making a living) then you'll understand why blogging has been light to damn well non-existant as of late. Lord willing & the gas port pressure don't rise I'll resume a semi-normal schedule sometime within the next few days.

In the meantime please check out the blogroll. there are some excellent bloggers over there. The Smallest Monority is always worth a visit, as is Kim DuToit, Annika, Rachel Lucas, Courtney, Random Acts of Kindness, Lileks, The Volokh Conspiracy, Lay Lines, Boone Country, Jen Speaks, Say Uncle, A Coyote at the Dog Show, Weck Up To Thees, & Kippercat among others.
& worth special mention is Alphecca. Not only has he done more to help out pro-Right to Arms bloggers (like myself for instance) than any other blogger I know, but he's added some neat graphics to his Weekly Media Anti-Gun Bias Survey. If he keeps up with the fancy graphics, I suspect he may become the first gay gun nut to have conservative heterosexual gun nuts visit his blog just to look at the pictures! In any event throw something in his tip jar as he has hungry cats to feed. In fact any & every blogger you enjoy reading that has some sort of tipping system, throw in what you can.

& for your enlightenment here are a few links I found which provide some helpful tips for High Power Rifle competitions.

Equipment for High Power shooting

Forum about High Power shooting

Several articles discussing various aspects of High Power shooting

Several more articles about High Power shooting

CMP's National Matches page

Home page of a High Power competitor

Camp Perry website - home of the National Matches

National Association of Shooting Sports Athletes

Shooting coach Chet Skinner's Homepage

Yes, I have been slack. It might even be a day or two longer before posting returns to normal.
In the meantime, for your amusement please have a glance at "You Might Be A Gun Nut If.....

Here are a few of my favorites:

You ever seriously thought about dabbing a little Hoppe's #9 on your neck before going out on a date.
You ever bought ammo/reloading dies in a caliber for which you have no gun, because you thought some day you MIGHT get a gun in that caliber.
You bought a barrel of Garand clips for the Garand you're going to buy.
You have ever had your local gun store call your house and ask "We are doing a stock order, did you need anything??"
You've ever slept more than five minutes while lying strapped to your rifle in prone position, waiting for the "commence fire" command.
Your alarm clock actually screams, "Ready on the RIGHT! Ready on the LEFT! Ready on the FIRING LINE! LOAD! COMMENCE FIRE!"
You've ever shot offhand through a thunderstorm while standing in water because the other 150 members of your relay kept going until the targets washed out.
If Federal sends you Christmas cards and the wife flowers on your anniversary.
If Sierra goes on double shifts when you place your order.
Every time you decide to sell leftover parts from your Garand restoration projects, prices at the Gun Show and even at the DCM are affected.
Every year you bug your accountant to run an cost/time savings analysis on the possible purchase of Springfield Museum versus collecting Garand variations one at a time.
Four local gun shops know you by name.
You're friends with 90%-100% of the employee's at every one of those shops.
You own enough guns to arm everyone on your block
You preach how stupid gun laws/bans are at work when you work in a predominately ANTI-gun company.
You list your local FFL dealer as a dependent on your tax return.
If "Miller Time" means plinking at beer cans.
Your wife wants to wear black leather, so you buy her a carry holster.
The smell of 30 year old cosmoline attracts you like perfume.
You keep leaving home with the empty gun case, while telling your wife that you are taking that one gun to be fixed, and returning with a full gun case.
When you have enough guns to take over a small third world country.
You go to a gun show and contemplate buying a particular gun for a half an hour before you remember you already have that one.
You buy a gun that is a duplicate of one you already have because the original one might break someday.
You have to run out to the range this weekend to shoot up some ammo because you need some brass to reload.
You keep a framed picture of John Garand on the mantelpiece.
When your littlest son cheers and yells "DEER MEAT" when Bambi's mother gets shot.
Your car has a bumper sticker that reads "My wife - yes, my car - maybe, my gun - NEVER!"
You buy a gun you know is cheaply made and won't work well out of the box because all the guns you have work too well and you don't have anything to play with.
If Peter Alan Kasler owes you a lunch because you caught him out on an obscure fine point of firearms law.
You get a flat and realize that you've got 400 pounds of shot, a Hefty bag each of wads and empty hulls, and enough primers to re-open the main shaft of the Lost Dutchman on top of your spare tire.
Your gun dealer owes you $500 bucks rather than the other way around.
If the largest gun store in your area calls you if they need something they can't get elsewhere.
If your wife/girlfriend starts using Hoppes No. 9 instead of perfume to get your attention.
(follow up: Truth is stranger than fiction: I have witnessed friends being asked by (attractive) waitresses what kind of cologne they were wearing, because it smelled good. The cologne in question: Hoppes #9.)
follow up: You know, I've been waiting years for Hoppes to make a cologne, and it makes a nice room freshener. : )
You call your local store to tell them where they can get a hard-to-find item, and then they piggyback their small order onto your larger one.
You read that "Brady II" would outlaw possession of more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and think "I have more than that rolling around loose in the trunk of my car!"
You teenage daughter's next date is introduced to you while your sitting at the loading bench cleaning your M-1.
You buy a .25 Beretta to keep inside your Bible cover, 'cause everybody needs a "hideout church gun".
You buy a used holster at a show for $5.00, and then spend a few hundred on a gun that fits it..
Your teenage daughter's new boyfriend asks, "What are the flags at different places along your driveway for?" and you reply, "Young man, they're range markers."
You're in the army reserves, and they can't figure out why every time they send you out to shoot the M60 with 100 rounds, you return with a shot-out barrel. It never dawns on them you're bringing your own ammo.
If, upon seeing your 1978 wildcatting project (a .375 on a .50 Sharps 3-1/4" case, 3340 FPS with a 300 Sierra boat tail), Elmer Keith says "You're nuts!"

& no, that wasn't all of them. There's 279 total.