In places where cannabis has been legalized, the DUI laws regarding THC blood levels are often insane. Completely out of touch with the reality of what’s an intoxicating level and what’s not. Although the laws are bad, there’s good reason for the badness: It’s impossible.
Los Angeles just “won” the 2028 summer Olympics. Nick Gillsepie tells Angelenos: run like hell before it’s too late. And that’s without even talking about the effects federal “homeland (achtung!) security” will have on the city.
Another city from which to run like hell. Oh, Baltimore. A second video has come to light showing cops conspiring to plant evidence.
The only right you have is the “right not to get shot if you cooperate”. This innocent SWAT victim and his family went through hell. But at least they were allowed that one, single “right” that so many others have been denied: to stay alive and in one piece.
A conservative decides that v*ting Republican is a waste of time. (Of course this is a conservative writing for the uber-liberal Guardian, so take it FWIW.)
If you had any doubts that a) the media have turned into a cesspool of trivia and b) they’re looking for anything — anything — unpleasant to say about Donald Trump, this should dispel your illusions.
I think the driving while high situation will be resolved the same way alcohol was – some kind of consensus will emerge among policy makers and they will pass a law that is a ‘one size fits all’ blood THC level law for ‘impairment’.
It’s BS, and anybody familiar with having drinks with friends knows that some are stupid with 3 drinks, others unaffected. Everybody’s body chemistry is not the same, so a percentage approach to blood content of anything is by nature too high for some and too low for others. The story already states all of that about the experiment the police did, but it wont stop legislators from passing a percentage based law. Legislators gonna legislate!
I agree with david, that policy makers will decide on a “one size fits all” THC level for impairment, and you’re right, it is BS! As with booze, its effects on people vary. In my dad’s era, this was referred to as “holding your booze”, being able to maintain without getting stupid and out of control. One could reach .08% legally intoxicated level drinking a couple of IPAs, but not show any signs of being intoxicated. With the way things are nowadays, if I’m going to drink my preferred adult beverage, which is beer, I either do it at home or amble up to my neighborhood dive bar that I can walk home from. I haven’t tried the “drunk taxi” (Uber and Lyft) yet but have the app on my phone, just in case.
E. Garrett PerryAugust 2, 2017 6:41 am
One of the grand upsides of living where I do- there’s always a pub within staggering distance.
Voting for any politicians is a waste of time. I still think the US is going to collapse and balkanize eventually. I now suspect it’ll happen after I’m dead — or maybe that’s wishful thinking. I hear the California secession movement is picking up steam. I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen, except that there are still some decent folk there.
davidAugust 2, 2017 9:53 am
“Decent folk” can move to another state as soon as it looks like Calipornia really will break off. If not, then they can apply to come here as immigrants after. I know, it’s hard to leave ‘home’ and to find a job somewhere else, especially when jobs are hard to find even where the work is. But life forces us to make choices. Folks can get out while it’s easy, or stay and take their chances with even being permitted to leave. CA government will really need every tax dollar they can squeeze from citizens when they lose fed funds sharing from the rest of us, and they may make if illegal to leave without permission.
PatAugust 2, 2017 10:20 am
“…they may make if illegal to leave without permission.”
And if there were a mass exodus from California (or any State), what could CA do about it – send the FBI to arrest anyone who crossed a border?
Passports, photos, and other ID are bad enough. Do we all become “illegals” because [Jerry Brown or X, fill in the blank] wants to keep our tax money at home? Do we all have to prove that our visit across country was to visit our poor sick mother in Kansas?
They’d better start bringing the military home to make a law like that work, because they’re going to need that many enforcers to cover every traveler in the country.
Comarde XAugust 2, 2017 10:58 am
You may (and I say may) have a right not to get shot as you may (and I say may) have a right to not have your home car, house etc not taken and sold off before you are found guilty of anything.
I would recommend a silenced 22 over air guns any day, probably won’t cost much more if DIY!
davidAugust 2, 2017 11:29 am
It’ll cost a whole lot less if you use some pipe fittings and a small oil filter. Cheaper still is a piece of garden hose you attach with a hose fitting and slice down the sides like a Halloween noise maker.
But, if you can use .22 Short ammo, it’ll bring down anything small enough to be called ‘pot meat’, and makes no more noise than stepping on a dry stick when fired from a long gun. It doesn’t attract attention at all. Unless you’re standing in clear view, most folks glance up, decide it was some animal breaking a stick by stepping on it, and go back to what what they were doing. I’ve hunted small game this way – about a baseball throw away from homes.
And if there were a mass exodus from California (or any State), what could CA do about it
Freeze funds in a California bank, tax the hell out of your home or business real property sale, levy a departure tax on your last state income tax form, allow any employees to sue you for outsourcing jobs, allow any employers to sue you for outsourcing job skills, refuse to release your or your kid’s school records, cancel any professional licenses, immediately cancel your driver’s license and refuse to release your vehicle titles, levy an exit tax on moving vans or rental trucks and enforce inspections of contents…
Thanks for inviting me to “fix” that link, larryarnold.
BTW, I also agree with you on air rifles vs .22s. Nothing wrong with a .22; I still have my brother’s old Cub Scout .22 and it’s great. But the only actual critters I’ve killed I killed with a good German air rifle. I was surprised at its power and precision. And yep, can’t beat the relative price of the ammo, especially these days.
Air rifles and pellet guns for SHTF, not for me thanks. Before any air rifle I would use a good flint lock. A person with a little savvy can make gun powder (if you can stand the smell) and cast lead wheel weights into balls. I have a .50 caliber Lyman Trade Rifle flint lock and I can tell you from experience it hits a lot harder than any modern day air gun that’s around today. One thing I do know from my range time is because the barrel is rifled it’s as accurate as any long gun out to around a hundred plus yards.
So far as the .22 LR goes, assassinations by the Israelis are done with the .22 and three quarters of the Russian troops killed by Chechen rebels were dispatched with.22 rifles.
Unfortunately that airguns-for-SHTF article winds up, after introducing a useful topic and including some helpful ideas, falling flat on its own misleading verbiage and ambiguities, and ends up sounding like ad copy for the industry’s biggest vanity, rather than a considered examination of suggestions for the topic. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that all the gun rags seem to put up such articles every now and then, and they all read about the same.
I hate sounding like I’m simply dissing the article or the writer (about whom I know nothing), but I think the topic is worth examining, and I don’t like the idea of a noob running across information that, when pursued, will very likely produce needlessly errant conclusions.
And a few things make me honestly wonder how much this fella actually knows airguns. If I may:
“the fact that air rifles are much smaller, and lighter than full-sized rifles”
um…they’re not. That RWS Diana is indeed a great rifle, but at 45″ overall and 7.5 pounds before glass, that’s pretty full-size-rifle right there. Most breakbarrel springers of the type the author limits himself to are similarly sized. Yes, you can get both smaller and lighter–I go farther with that than most–but you do have to seek ’em out.
“almost anyone can shoot an air rifle, including your kids”
Well, provided your kids can manage the 30-50 pounds of cocking force to cycle this type of action. A good hunting rifle in this design is going to frustrate those without a requisite amount of upper body strength, and as a parent, I do NOT want to put such a design into the hands of a kid who can’t do it properly, such that (s)he improvises and does it with “assistance” that isn’t safe.
“These rifles are generally ‘pump-action’”
Airgunners don’t use the word “pump” when talking about spring piston powerplants. In the airgun world, the word “pump” very specifically implies a pneumatic design, whether it is a single- or multi-pump pneumatic, or a pre-charged pneumatic with an onboard air tank that can be filled with a hand pump.
“get a few spares”
Have you ever tried to remove a mainspring from a spring-piston rifle? We’re not talking about swapping out a 1911 recoil spring here–these springs require serious attention and I wouldn’t want to attempt it without specialized tools. That statement actually made me snort laughter.
“By compressing the spring or canister less, you can easily modulate the amount of power given to the pellet”
Um…no, you cannot do this with a spring-piston powerplant. It’s either compressed or it’s not. You can vary the power with most multi-pump pneumatics, or with pre-charged pneumatics that allow you to adjust the valve, but not with the breakbarrel springers that this article limits itself to. That’s just going to confuse people.
He goes on to recommend the RWS Diana 34, which is indeed an excellent choice in a working springer. Unfortunately he then seems to fixate on “power” in terms of advertised velocity, which is as tiresome a subject among serious airgunners as it is a religion for industry marketing, for whom it’s all about the Eff Pee Ess.
For those who don’t know this, the airgunning world has its own variant of the “magnum mania” that swept the firearm world in the latter half of the twentieth century–and in some ways it’s even worse. Airguns are sold in volume to the credulous on a single velocity number, and (I know you’ll be shocked at this) some manufacturers are thus well known to maximize those numbers by…creative means. Often this takes the form of a specialized pellet of lightweight alloy which does indeed produce the Ludicrous-Speed of the ad copy, but which nobody would ever actually choose for hunting real critters. Real-world pellets…don’t often live up to the hype, and one of the mental hurdles that the new airgunner needs to get over right away, if (s)he wants to really get both value and pleasure out of the exercise, is that you gotta push all that SHINIES! based marketing out of your way.
After all, diabolo pellets are quite literally designed to be high-drag, and they destabilize considerably above the speed of sound. And so the simple solution to all the problems of the 1200+ fps .177 breakbarrel springer (heavy cocking effort, crappy triggers, horrid vibrations, etc.) is simply the 800fps .22, which is more than enough for most airgun hunting. (I agree completely with the premise that an airgun is not a firearm, and you should not try to make it one. It has its own envelope of utility, which is bigger than you might think.)
And this article only discusses breakbarrel springers. Oh, but there are other powerplants, other designs, even other kinds of spring pistons that are not breakbarrels! Again, I think this is worth much discussion (bet you could have guessed that by this point), but by all means let’s have that discussion about more of the elements that matter to the SHTF scenario. This notion of being able to self-support an airgun (rather than being too dependent on firearm consumables such as powder and primers) is interesting, and frankly the different airgun powerplants each have their own advantages there. My own philosophy is currently grounded in the idea that I’d like to have several different powerplants available, so that I’d have the best chance of being able to keep something up and running, depending on exactly what might be available to me in the way of both tools and raw materials.
I still consider myself fairly new to the airgunning world, but I only grow more convinced that it’s worth learning about, and worth taking seriously.
I think the driving while high situation will be resolved the same way alcohol was – some kind of consensus will emerge among policy makers and they will pass a law that is a ‘one size fits all’ blood THC level law for ‘impairment’.
It’s BS, and anybody familiar with having drinks with friends knows that some are stupid with 3 drinks, others unaffected. Everybody’s body chemistry is not the same, so a percentage approach to blood content of anything is by nature too high for some and too low for others. The story already states all of that about the experiment the police did, but it wont stop legislators from passing a percentage based law. Legislators gonna legislate!
This cat doesn’t like air rifles.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/videos/police-called-after-cat-lurking-in-tree-appears-to-be-holding-assault-rifle/fvdnc0yze6bnc-jvzs_uyb9-c8wnqmbi
I agree with david, that policy makers will decide on a “one size fits all” THC level for impairment, and you’re right, it is BS! As with booze, its effects on people vary. In my dad’s era, this was referred to as “holding your booze”, being able to maintain without getting stupid and out of control. One could reach .08% legally intoxicated level drinking a couple of IPAs, but not show any signs of being intoxicated. With the way things are nowadays, if I’m going to drink my preferred adult beverage, which is beer, I either do it at home or amble up to my neighborhood dive bar that I can walk home from. I haven’t tried the “drunk taxi” (Uber and Lyft) yet but have the app on my phone, just in case.
One of the grand upsides of living where I do- there’s always a pub within staggering distance.
Can a conservative conduct an orchestra?
Voting for any politicians is a waste of time. I still think the US is going to collapse and balkanize eventually. I now suspect it’ll happen after I’m dead — or maybe that’s wishful thinking. I hear the California secession movement is picking up steam. I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen, except that there are still some decent folk there.
“Decent folk” can move to another state as soon as it looks like Calipornia really will break off. If not, then they can apply to come here as immigrants after. I know, it’s hard to leave ‘home’ and to find a job somewhere else, especially when jobs are hard to find even where the work is. But life forces us to make choices. Folks can get out while it’s easy, or stay and take their chances with even being permitted to leave. CA government will really need every tax dollar they can squeeze from citizens when they lose fed funds sharing from the rest of us, and they may make if illegal to leave without permission.
“…they may make if illegal to leave without permission.”
And if there were a mass exodus from California (or any State), what could CA do about it – send the FBI to arrest anyone who crossed a border?
Passports, photos, and other ID are bad enough. Do we all become “illegals” because [Jerry Brown or X, fill in the blank] wants to keep our tax money at home? Do we all have to prove that our visit across country was to visit our poor sick mother in Kansas?
They’d better start bringing the military home to make a law like that work, because they’re going to need that many enforcers to cover every traveler in the country.
You may (and I say may) have a right not to get shot as you may (and I say may) have a right to not have your home car, house etc not taken and sold off before you are found guilty of anything.
I would recommend a silenced 22 over air guns any day, probably won’t cost much more if DIY!
It’ll cost a whole lot less if you use some pipe fittings and a small oil filter. Cheaper still is a piece of garden hose you attach with a hose fitting and slice down the sides like a Halloween noise maker.
But, if you can use .22 Short ammo, it’ll bring down anything small enough to be called ‘pot meat’, and makes no more noise than stepping on a dry stick when fired from a long gun. It doesn’t attract attention at all. Unless you’re standing in clear view, most folks glance up, decide it was some animal breaking a stick by stepping on it, and go back to what what they were doing. I’ve hunted small game this way – about a baseball throw away from homes.
The air rifle advantage in ammo cost is huge. You can get several thousand BBs or hundreds of high-end hunting pellets for less than $10, and store them in a much smaller space than even .22 short. (Link to Amazon Claire can fix.)
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Sports-Outdoors-Air-Gun-Pellets/zgbs/sporting-goods/3307770011/?tag=livifree07-20
History: Lewis and Clark both hunted big game and impressed Native Americans with an air rifle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle
And if there were a mass exodus from California (or any State), what could CA do about it
Freeze funds in a California bank, tax the hell out of your home or business real property sale, levy a departure tax on your last state income tax form, allow any employees to sue you for outsourcing jobs, allow any employers to sue you for outsourcing job skills, refuse to release your or your kid’s school records, cancel any professional licenses, immediately cancel your driver’s license and refuse to release your vehicle titles, levy an exit tax on moving vans or rental trucks and enforce inspections of contents…
Thanks for inviting me to “fix” that link, larryarnold.
BTW, I also agree with you on air rifles vs .22s. Nothing wrong with a .22; I still have my brother’s old Cub Scout .22 and it’s great. But the only actual critters I’ve killed I killed with a good German air rifle. I was surprised at its power and precision. And yep, can’t beat the relative price of the ammo, especially these days.
Air rifles and pellet guns for SHTF, not for me thanks. Before any air rifle I would use a good flint lock. A person with a little savvy can make gun powder (if you can stand the smell) and cast lead wheel weights into balls. I have a .50 caliber Lyman Trade Rifle flint lock and I can tell you from experience it hits a lot harder than any modern day air gun that’s around today. One thing I do know from my range time is because the barrel is rifled it’s as accurate as any long gun out to around a hundred plus yards.
So far as the .22 LR goes, assassinations by the Israelis are done with the .22 and three quarters of the Russian troops killed by Chechen rebels were dispatched with.22 rifles.
Unfortunately that airguns-for-SHTF article winds up, after introducing a useful topic and including some helpful ideas, falling flat on its own misleading verbiage and ambiguities, and ends up sounding like ad copy for the industry’s biggest vanity, rather than a considered examination of suggestions for the topic. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that all the gun rags seem to put up such articles every now and then, and they all read about the same.
I hate sounding like I’m simply dissing the article or the writer (about whom I know nothing), but I think the topic is worth examining, and I don’t like the idea of a noob running across information that, when pursued, will very likely produce needlessly errant conclusions.
And a few things make me honestly wonder how much this fella actually knows airguns. If I may:
“the fact that air rifles are much smaller, and lighter than full-sized rifles”
um…they’re not. That RWS Diana is indeed a great rifle, but at 45″ overall and 7.5 pounds before glass, that’s pretty full-size-rifle right there. Most breakbarrel springers of the type the author limits himself to are similarly sized. Yes, you can get both smaller and lighter–I go farther with that than most–but you do have to seek ’em out.
“almost anyone can shoot an air rifle, including your kids”
Well, provided your kids can manage the 30-50 pounds of cocking force to cycle this type of action. A good hunting rifle in this design is going to frustrate those without a requisite amount of upper body strength, and as a parent, I do NOT want to put such a design into the hands of a kid who can’t do it properly, such that (s)he improvises and does it with “assistance” that isn’t safe.
“These rifles are generally ‘pump-action’”
Airgunners don’t use the word “pump” when talking about spring piston powerplants. In the airgun world, the word “pump” very specifically implies a pneumatic design, whether it is a single- or multi-pump pneumatic, or a pre-charged pneumatic with an onboard air tank that can be filled with a hand pump.
“get a few spares”
Have you ever tried to remove a mainspring from a spring-piston rifle? We’re not talking about swapping out a 1911 recoil spring here–these springs require serious attention and I wouldn’t want to attempt it without specialized tools. That statement actually made me snort laughter.
“By compressing the spring or canister less, you can easily modulate the amount of power given to the pellet”
Um…no, you cannot do this with a spring-piston powerplant. It’s either compressed or it’s not. You can vary the power with most multi-pump pneumatics, or with pre-charged pneumatics that allow you to adjust the valve, but not with the breakbarrel springers that this article limits itself to. That’s just going to confuse people.
He goes on to recommend the RWS Diana 34, which is indeed an excellent choice in a working springer. Unfortunately he then seems to fixate on “power” in terms of advertised velocity, which is as tiresome a subject among serious airgunners as it is a religion for industry marketing, for whom it’s all about the Eff Pee Ess.
For those who don’t know this, the airgunning world has its own variant of the “magnum mania” that swept the firearm world in the latter half of the twentieth century–and in some ways it’s even worse. Airguns are sold in volume to the credulous on a single velocity number, and (I know you’ll be shocked at this) some manufacturers are thus well known to maximize those numbers by…creative means. Often this takes the form of a specialized pellet of lightweight alloy which does indeed produce the Ludicrous-Speed of the ad copy, but which nobody would ever actually choose for hunting real critters. Real-world pellets…don’t often live up to the hype, and one of the mental hurdles that the new airgunner needs to get over right away, if (s)he wants to really get both value and pleasure out of the exercise, is that you gotta push all that SHINIES! based marketing out of your way.
After all, diabolo pellets are quite literally designed to be high-drag, and they destabilize considerably above the speed of sound. And so the simple solution to all the problems of the 1200+ fps .177 breakbarrel springer (heavy cocking effort, crappy triggers, horrid vibrations, etc.) is simply the 800fps .22, which is more than enough for most airgun hunting. (I agree completely with the premise that an airgun is not a firearm, and you should not try to make it one. It has its own envelope of utility, which is bigger than you might think.)
And this article only discusses breakbarrel springers. Oh, but there are other powerplants, other designs, even other kinds of spring pistons that are not breakbarrels! Again, I think this is worth much discussion (bet you could have guessed that by this point), but by all means let’s have that discussion about more of the elements that matter to the SHTF scenario. This notion of being able to self-support an airgun (rather than being too dependent on firearm consumables such as powder and primers) is interesting, and frankly the different airgun powerplants each have their own advantages there. My own philosophy is currently grounded in the idea that I’d like to have several different powerplants available, so that I’d have the best chance of being able to keep something up and running, depending on exactly what might be available to me in the way of both tools and raw materials.
I still consider myself fairly new to the airgunning world, but I only grow more convinced that it’s worth learning about, and worth taking seriously.