Articles by Herschel Smith

Paul Harrell gives us a really interesting video on ammo storage.  What he finds is that if the ammo works, it seems to work well.  Unfortunately, he had some failures to fire in the batch he left in his car for a year.  He suspects (and I suspect too) that further exposure to high temperature and humidity would have further degraded the ammunition performance.

I spent just a little time to locate U.S. Army temperature and humidity storage specifications for ammunition, and while I found a bit of information, I ran out of time on that research project.  I suspect there is much more than what I found.

I did manage to locate an American Rifleman Q&A.

Q: I live in rural upstate New York, and summer temperatures reach in excess of 90° F—with car and attic temperatures exceeding triple digits. Is there a known “maximum safe temperature” for the storage of ammunition? What would be the ideal conditions to store ammunition?

A: Nitrocellulose, the primary ingredient in smokeless powder, is hygroscopic, which means it absorbs water from the air that can affect both shelf life and burn rate. Coatings and stabilizers, such as methyl and ethyl centralite, are added to prevent this. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of these compounds is reduced as the temperature rises.

The standard advice is to store ammunition in a “cool, dry place.” Manufacturers try to store powders at 70° F +/- 5 degrees. For handloaders, the best advice is to store powder in a cool basement or an interior room that is of “comfortable” temperature.

The only thing I can think of to say is if you live in New York, get out.

Recoil.

Palmetto State Armory has been in the budget rifle business for a long time. They’ve offered upgraded versions before, but the difference between an expensive PSA and a cheap PSA is normally just delta ring Vs. free-float and maybe a chrome-lined barrel.

The SABRE line is a whole new beast. Combining some of the best parts on the market, this is a rifle spec’d out to take a beating and keep on shooting.

[ … ]

• Barrel Length: 14.5″
• Gas System: Carbine-Length
• Barrel Steel: Cold Hammer Forged Chrome Moly Vanadium
• Barrel Finish: Phosphate
• Muzzle Thread: 1/2-28
• Chamber: 5.56
• Twist Rate: 1:7
• Barrel Extension: M4
• Gas Block Type: Geissele .750″ Super Gas Block; Pinned to Barrel
• Muzzle Device: Pin/Weld SilencerCo ASR
• Receiver Material: Forged 7075 T6
• Receiver Type: M4 T-Marked
• Hand Guard Type: Geissele 13.5″ Super Modular MK14 M-Lok Rail
• Bolt Carrier Group: PSA Custom Fathers of Freedom BCG by MicroBest with Sprinco Extractor Spring
• Bolt Steel: Carpenter 158
• Bolt Carrier Finish: Mag-Phosphate Finish
• Charging Handle: Radian Raptor LT
• Trigger: Hiperfire RBT Trigger with JP Reduced Power Springs
• Takedown/Pivot Pins: Battle Arms Development
• Buffer: Carbine
• Safety: Radian Talon 45/90 Safety
• Buffer Spring: Sprinco White
• Pistol Grip: Magpul SL-S
• Stock: Magpul SL-S
• Finish: Black
• Furniture Color: Black
• Material: Forged Aluminum
• Upper: Forged 7075-T6 A3 AR upper is made to MIL-SPECS and hard coat anodized black for durability. These uppers are T-Marked engraved.

I normally think of PSA as making budget AR-15s and AKs and AR and AK parts and kits.  They are also known for at least one more thing.  They must have some special sort of deal with the FN pistol factory right down the road from them because they always seem to have FN pistols in stock.

But it would seem they have entered the upper tier AR market.  That’s a tall order in my book, because you can get a BCM upper for around $850 and an Aeroprecision lower for around $350 (or at least you once could), and while the upper is not a complete upper, for another couple hundred you can get a BAD (Battle Arms Development) BCG and a Radian Raptor charging handle for another $100.  Now you’ve put a total of about $1500 into the gun.  But in my opinion this is about the maximum you have to spend to get a really good AR.

That’s more expensive by a couple hundred dollars than the Sabre, but not enough to ignore the build I just outlined if you want a good rifle.

I notice that the Sabre has a Radian charging handle.  It apparently has another BCG (a custom part).  But it’s nice to see PSA into the upper tier market for ARs.  Competition is a good thing.  Here is their site.  You’ll notice right up front that there are various models, with $1250 being the highest cost gun I saw.

See the Recoil article for testing results of the Sabre.

F&S.

On the other hand, every horse is an individual, strong or weak, stupid or smart, slow or fast, placid or panicky. Moreover, horses respond to how well or poorly you ride them. If you saw at the reins, yank on the bit, flop around in the saddle, or kick constantly, you will soon be riding a very unhappy horse who will be thrilled to scrape you off its back by way of a low tree limb.

Horses are flesh and blood, and wear out. The average elk-hunt cayuse will probably be close to exhaustion by the time you get him, leg-weary and suffering from weeks of a poor diet. Have a heart and don’t beat on him. On the other hand, many horses loaf when they can get away with it, and a tap with a Field Expedient Equine Motivational Device (a switch, which you cut) will remind him of where his duty lies.

Horses are subject to panic attacks. For much of their history, they were what was for dinner, and so if something spooks them, they react instantly, either by kicking, or bucking, or stampeding. If you’re in the saddle when this happens, you’re in trouble. I’ve never known anyone who spent a lot of time with horses and did not get bashed, but good, at some point. Getting bashed is part of the mule vs horse equation no matter which side you take, but in my experience, horses employ a wider variety of ways to bash you.

The mule is a hybrid, produced by mating a male donkey, or jack, with a lady horse. Mules were familiar 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, and were originally imported and bred in America by George Washington, who was first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen, and first to ask “Why don’t we have mules?”, and do something about it.

Most mules weigh between 800 and 1,000 pounds. They come in all colors and can range way above or below those weights depending on the size of their dams. The creatures benefit from a phenomenon known as hybrid vigor; they inherit the best qualities of both the horse and the donkey. The list of ways in which mules outshine horses is so long as to be embarrassing.

Mules are stronger than horses. They can carry more weight and carry it farther without breaking down. During World War II, pack mules served the U.S. Army in Sicily, Italy, and the China-Burma-India Theatre, wherever there were mountains that Jeeps could not navigate and heavy loads that had to be carried over them. In Korea, the U.S. Army ignored mules, but the Chinese Army did not, and our G.I.s used captured mules, feeding them the cereal packets from their own rations. Special Forces used mules in Afghanistan, and at one point SF troopers could take a course in mule management at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

There are reasons for all this.

• Mules are smarter than horses (which is not all that difficult) and have better memories.
• They can subsist on less feed than a horse, and poorer feed.
• Their hooves are smaller, and harder, than a horse’s, and mules are much surer-footed.
• They can work in heat that would founder a horse.
• Mules live longer than horses and are more resistant to disease.
• If you treat them with kindness, they’ll bond with you in a way that horses won’t.

Mules don’t react to the world in the way that horses do. In the face of perceived peril, a mule will not panic and go thundering over a cliff. He will stop and think about the situation, and if he decides that whatever is afoot might be dangerous he will go no further. Mules, I’ve been told, will never do anything that might hurt them, and their legendary stubbornness is actually a form of self-preservation. (Mules will also balk if they’re confused or have no idea what you want them to do.)

I love horses, but I’ve ridden a mule before at the Grand Canyon (horses were too skittish to use near the big drops), and let me tell you, they are much bigger and stronger than horses.  Yea, a bit slow to react to neck reigning, but still mine was responsive to me because of my time training quarter horses, and there isn’t any situation where I had heavy weight to carry out West or up North where I wouldn’t rather have a mule with me.

Guns Magazine.

“We’re mighty proud of it,” said Mark Gurney. “But it’s not a Ruger Marlin. It’s a Marlin.”

[ … ]

In July, 2020, Remington filed for its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy in two years. That fall, Judge Clifton R. Jessup, Jr. of the Northern District of Alabama approved the sale of Remington’s non-Marlin firearms business to the Roundhill Group for $13 million. Ruger got Marlin for $28.3 million.

Ruger’s intent? Use lean manufacturing methods to build traditional Marlin lever rifles to original or higher standards of quality. Quite a task! Ruger CEO Chris Killoy and VP Mickey Wilson had visited Ilion before 2020’s auction. A prompt move was imperative; winter was in the wings. Ruger’s engineers arrived to plan extraction of 40,000-lb. loads, take the measure of tooling to be transferred and ready it for the 650-mile journey. The destination was Ruger’s Mayodan, N.C. plant, where the company builds most of its bolt-action American rifles and its AR-556.

In November, Darryl Freeman, facilities chief at Mayodan, kept decommissioning crews working overtime to accomplish a two-month job in one. They did — finishing December 9 just as snow came to Ilion. The 150 tractor-trailer loads included 450-odd pallets of unfinished and out-of-spec parts. At its new digs, Marlin would be assigned a 105×180-foot cell bringing parts in a compact loop through 53 steps in lever-rifle manufacture. Materials would be fed and people stationed to make the most efficient use of space and movement.

Bruce Rozum, whom I knew when he’d headed R&D at Marlin, had moved to Ruger’s Newport, NH as chief engineer. Now he tapped North Haven’s auto-CAD drawings to design a hybrid production model holding CNC tolerances of 0.002″ on a rifle developed 125 years ago.

I remember this, and honestly I simply do not get the sentiment that it’s a Marlin, not a Ruger.  I cannot fathom why the Marlin brand would not want to be associated with a great firearms manufacturer like Ruger, and I also cannot fathom why Ruger wouldn’t get a great deal of credit for having the vision to bring back the Marlin brand, make it better, and give customers what they wanted.

It’s a Ruger Marlin.  That’s good enough for me.

There isn’t anything off limits.  The core doctrine of the progressives is to un-empower you, and that means disarm you.  Oh, they have other doctrines, but they all depend upon and are corollary to disarmament.

They are controllers, and they can’t fully control you if you are armed.  Someone once said “This is all designed to break the bonds of dependency and love between families and church, cause feelings of isolation, and create dependency on the government.  At its root, it is the wicked desire to control other people.  The tools of control are loneliness, poverty and isolation.  Community becomes government.  The desire to control others is the signal pathology of the wicked.”

That is one huge black bear.

This is an utterly fascinating video, and may be the first of a kind.  I spend time finding fascinating things for you that enable learning about nature, and machines and their operation, especially firearms. I hope you appreciate it. This apparently is a recent encounter in Yellowstone.

Believe it or not, the black bear backed down the grizzly, with the grizzly even running from the black bear.  For a while.  The grizzly eventually came in for the food, with the black bear wandering off (probably when he figured out that there would be a fight and someone would get hurt – which incidentally is probably the reason the grizzly ran from the black bear to begin with).  They were both wise bears that day.

Mark Smith outlines it all for us.  BLUF: 37 legal briefs in the Rahimi case trying to persuade the SCOTUS to back off of the Bruen standard.

The communists see this as their big chance to water down the Bruen test (analogous laws on the books and enforce at the time of the founding) and attempting to return the Supreme Court to tiers of scrutiny.

We’ll see, but I’ve made my prediction known.  The women on the court (including Roberts) water down Bruen and side with the communists.

This is cool.  A dog with four prosthetic legs takes a walk with a girl with one prosthetic leg.

Who would do something like this to a dog?  I suggest that we do the same thing to the jerk who had this idea.  It has a nice ending.

@waldosrescue The story of Braveheart is a good one ❤️ #adoptdontshop #petsoftiktok #rescue #rescuedog ♬ Little Bit More – Suriel Hess

That reader The Alaskan is always talking about how dangerous bears are.  He just needs to get a grip and brush those gentle giants like this lady.

A gang of Baboons let a bit cat know what’s what.  Numbers were the great equalizer in this case as I suspect in many others.

Good guy with a leash takes a shelter dog on a day out.  Hey, I know that place very well.  The walk by the river is very beautiful.

@aguyandagolden

We broke this defeated dog out of the shelter for out weekly Shelter Dog Saturday series. You can find him st Anderson County Paws.

♬ Oceans – Instrumental – Marcelo Cacilias

Ape gets freaked out by a Hedge Hog.

Why haven’t you given him a pool party before now?

People can teach birds to do a lot of things.  Please, please don’t teach them to dance to rap.

Good boy.

California.  LOL.

Women’s caucus.  LOL.

But my prediction is that all of the women on the supreme court (including Roberts) will be emotionally moved by the brief and side with the women of California.

Courthouse News.

The plaintiffs’ attorney Amy Bellantoni made little headway in trying to persuade the panel to issue a permanent injunction because, as she argued, the issues are very straightforward given the Supreme Court ruling in Bruen.

“Bruen has put this issue to rest,” Bellantoni said. “Bruen was a public carry case.”

That argument was a little too hasty for the judges, however, because Bruen requires that gun laws be evaluated by looking at the “historical tradition of firearm regulation” and that hasn’t happened yet in this case, VanDyk said.

“What Bruen said is that you look at the historical evidence,” VanDyk said. “Why shouldn’t the state have an opportunity to provide that historical evidence? I think you’d agree that the court doesn’t just have to take your word for it that it doesn’t exist.”

Here’s a quick note to U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyk.  You only said that because you’re an illiterate moron with the attention span of a chimpanzee.  That’s not the Bruen standard at all.  You just made that up because you’ve never read the document or you didn’t understand it when you did.

The Bruen standard is when the second amendment is implicated in an activity, that activity is presumptively lawful.  The burden is then on the state to prove that analogous laws existed controlling that activity at the time of our founding.  The burden isn’t on the plaintiff’s attorney to prove that such a law didn’t exist.  You should be telling the state to go find the law or else you’ll block the ban, not telling the Plaintiff’s attorney to do the state’s job.

Dummy.

U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyk is a Trump appointee.  Good job, Donald.  Some random guy in the phone directory could have done a better job.

Here’s Professor Mark Smith fleshing this out all over again for you, albeit speaking to the current case before the supreme court called Rahimi.

That also reminds me of something I’ve believed a very long time. There is no such thing as justice in America unless by accident. Judges are too stupid to know the law, and juries only get things right by accident. One can claim a right to due process, but unless that’s really “due process” under a viable and authentic justice system, there is no justice. Going before the system in America is like taking a roll of the dice.