…….

I had meant to write about “The Four Rules work” last night but decided on a different style of article.

After reading about Alec Baldwin killing a person on set, there was an uproar in the gun community. Many of us wanted Alec arrested and treated like we assume we would be treated. Others advocated from “positions of knowledge” to tell us that it was never Alec’s fault, he was just a trained monkey.

Turns out that Alec was more than just a trained monkey in front of the camera. He was also the producer, which meant he was also responsible for the safety culture on set.

What I really wanted to talk about was, “how come this didn’t happen way back when?” They used to make a “western” a week. There were weekly westerns, which often included gun fights. Why didn’t we see or hear about accidents back then?

Even before Jeff Cooper made his four rules famous, there were westerns shot without incident. How come?

Let’s start with A Fistful of Dollars

In this quick draw scene, nobody is in the line of fire for either shooter.  Clint’s gun is pointed to his left as he fans the hammer.  His intended targets are all offscreen.  He is pointing his gun at nothing.  The bad guy is still in the middle of his draw.  It might look like he is muzzling himself, but it is more likely his muzzle is in front of him.  If you look at the background, the only person is behind Clint.  The bad guy can aim at the fountain, and it will still seem like he is aiming at Clint.

Clint has the bad guy at gun point.  But there is nobody where his gun is pointing.

Shooting at Clint.  But nobody is where that gun is pointing.

Moving on to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, we see the same sort of thing.  Even more, while we see the character’s loading guns from time to time, when you look at closeups of the guns you find something interesting.

If you look at the revolver, you should notice that it doesn’t have a loading gate.  That is because this is a cap and ball revolver.  There is no cap on the nipples.  This makes it trivial to verify that the gun cannot fire.

You can see the game being played in these two side by side shots, just before the big gun fight.  The pistol belt has cartridges in it.  All of those cartridges would have been dummy rounds.  Take careful note of the pistol, though.  It is a cap and ball revolver.

The left image is part of the montage of quick cuts between the three actors.  There is no reason for there to even be dummy rounds in that revolver.

The right image is just before he draws.  This is a single cut.  In this image, you can see that his right hand has moved slightly AND there are now caps on the nipples of the revolver.  When Van Cleef draws, he will pull the hammer back and fire the gun.  There will be a soft pop from the cap and a flash.  There may or may not be powder in the chamber.

Regardless, there will be nobody where he is pointing the pistol when he shoots.

In a dozen movies I watched shortly after the Rust shooting, I only saw a couple of scenes where the pistol might have been pointing near a person.  All of those scenes were framed in such a way that it is possible for the gun to have been pointing away from all people.

It is certainly possible to film dangerous looking scenes involving guns without actually putting people at risk.

This “Film Crawl” came about because Alec Baldwin shot and killed his cameraman. I believe that we can all agree that Alec Baldwin is guilty of manslaughter at the very least. Likely murder.

The short of it was that he took a pistol that he might have thought was unloaded, pointed at his cameraman, and pulled the trigger. This resulted in the death of his cameraman and injury to his director.

Now Alec is a trained monkey. He is supposed to hit his mark and say his lines with the right emotion. Ne is not expected to be a firearm guru.

He is expected to know the four safety rules, and to follow them. If he is not following them, there damn well better be no other way to do it, and every safety precaution should be taken.

I have some snap-caps, but not for every caliber. Most of the time I don’t need them, or I use just a case. After learning of the Rust incident, I learned a bit more about safety on set and made up a few dummy rounds for testing feeding or loading issues.

Every dummy round has an expended primer in it or hot glue. There are NO pristine primers. If the primer has no dimple, it is a live round.

Each dummy round has two metal BB’s in it. If you shake the dummy round, you can hear the BB’s rattling around in there.

Finally:

• Treat every firearm as if it is loaded.
• Never point your firearm at something you are not willing to destroy or kill
• Make sure you identify your target and what is beyond it.
• Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.

Even when I KNOW it is a dummy round, I do not point the firearm at anything I’m not willing to destroy, and I treat it as if it has live ammo in it.

I had issues with feeding on one of my Winchester ’94s (post ’64). This meant that I was running the lever and watching how it feed into the chamber. This would cause there to be a round in the chamber with the hammer back, cocked. A mistake could have caused the hammer to drop. Using dummy rounds made this safer.

I was having issues loading rounds into my r92. A couple of dummy rounds let me get things figured out in a safer way.

If I’m working with dummy rounds, there are no live rounds in the area. I can’t say room because often I’m doing work on the dinning room table and there are live rounds and magazines in the dining room.

On the Rust set, they were using the “prop” guns for target practice. All the guns used were real guns. They were not disabled in any fashion. Put a live round in them, pull the trigger, “BANG”. And the crew at least was using them for target practice.

This meant that people were bringing live rounds onto the set. A big NO NO NO.

They were putting live rounds into a prop gun. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!

The production team was rushing the armorer (unconfirmed), which led to a pistol with live rounds being taken by the 2ndassistant, who declared it “cold”. It does not appear that the armorer had checked the weapon to verify it was “cold” and the 2nd assistant didn’t either.

Then Alec took that gun, did not verify it was cold. There is a statement that actors are not allowed to check if the gun they are handed is cold, “for safety reasons”. If Alec had opened the loading gate, rotated the cylinder 7 times, he would have been able to see the unfired primer on at least one of the cartridges loaded.

He didn’t. He pulled the hammer back. Pointed the gun at a person, and pulled the trigger. The gun performed exactly as designed and fired the round.

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Short answer: 2 out of 5 stars.

This is obviously somebodiessomebody’s work of love. Like me, they are more interested in the data than the user interface.

This leads to a user interface that is barely useable.

There are times when you press on a sentence which acts like a button. These are often small with gray text. In other locations, the same text is on a button.

There is an option to “save” all over the place, but what are you saving? How do you get it back?

In the 4DOF calculator, if you select what you think is a cartridge, it will set the ballistics of the bullet, but not velocity.

The default dashboard has a couple of widgets to let you slowly set the range to target and wind conditions. If you want a table instead, you can click at random until you click on the clipboard/grid in the lower-right corner.

This gives you an option to change the interval between data rows and the total distance you want calculated.

If you like the numbers, press “set”. Do not press the “cancel” button. If you press cancel, it will take you back one screen. You need to click set, which will give you the table you are interested in.

This table is the 2 stars above. It uses either the G1 or G7 drag curves, it uses all the variables you provide. There is time of flight, drop in inches, MOA offset and everything else you could want.

It has a “save” feature. I don’t know where it saves the data nor how to access it, nor how to print it.

Even if the features I’m looking for exist, this app is too clunky to use.

I’ll go looking for an online replacement soon.

I’d actually prefer to get gnuplot doing this for me. I have the G1 and G7 curves, it is just a matter of entering the correct formulas.

I’m relatively new to this gun stuff. Before the 2000, I didn’t have money for firearms, and after I bought my first round of firearms, I didn’t have money to purchase guns for a long time.

I was forced by good comments to go do math and then visualize it. Thank you, gnuplot.

In the graph above, the first line is purple and represents the Point of Aim through the scope 1.5 inches above the bore.
The second line, green, is a simple constant acceleration of gravity in an ideal environment. I.e. bull crap. It is there so that I can have a verification stage.
The next line is the results from the Hornady ballistic calculator app. The values input are BC of 0.12, muzzle velocity of 1050, diameter of 0.22inches, weight of 40 grains. These are the numbers from the CCI subsonic 22LR ammunition.

From looking at the constant acceleration and the G1 calculations, you can see there is a difference. The bullet is losing velocity in the G1 graph and drops more than 8 inches at around the 67 yard mark. The constant acceleration has that happening at around 72 yards.

Next, I “zeroed” the rifle/scope combination at 25 yards. This requires that there be an initial upward component to the path of the bullet. I did not do the math correctly to modify the initial horizontal velocity based on stealing some of that for the upward motion.

The orange line is again constant acceleration. The curve is tangent at 25 yards. Depending on initial velocity, this might not be a tangent, but instead pass upwards through the PoA curve. The M193 out of an AR15 platform, zeroed at 25 yards, continues upwards for a significant distance.

The yellow dots are the Hornady G1 calculations with an initial upward velocity added.

What does all of this mean? It means I’m a visual person and should have spent the time graphing this stuff, so I could actually see what I’m doing.

Thank you for the feedback.

I’m getting better.

At issue is learning the easy things, but not understanding them.

Before I put the new scope on the rifle, I was hitting my target(s) at random ranges consistently. I put the new scope on the rifle, zeroed it, was, very, happy with the groups I was getting.

For many reasons, I didn’t have an opportunity to press the trigger for a while. My partner wasn’t here to help with the meat processing, the weather was too yucky to flesh the hide. I just didn’t get a chance.

I did glass a number of targets over the week, but no shots taken.

Then the other day, everything aligned, and I was good to go for a shot. I waited until he presented a beautiful side view, sighted in to put a round through his eye… slowly pressed the trigger, bang. And he took off. Clean miss.

Hmm, what did I do wrong? The next day I had another opportunity. Again I waited for a good presentation, lined up to take him through the eye. Pressed the trigger.

That damn critter didn’t even flinch.

Why was I missing at these ranges. It didn’t make any sense to me.

My mind started working the problem.

The answer came to me, bullet drop!

I was wrong.

Over the distances I was shooing, the time of flight was less than 0.08s. Using that old school math, we find that the distance a bullet drops in a given time is 0.5at^2 a=32ft/s^2. Fumble fingering the calculator, that gives me a drop of 1.5 inches.

Shit. That’s more than enough to miss that rodent’s entire head.

Add to all of this that because the rifle is sighted at a known distance, it is only at that distance and one other where the point of aim and the point of impact are at the same level.

At 25 yards, the point of impact will be either 3.5 or 3 inches below the perfectly parallel to bore scope. I say 3.5 or 3 because I do not remember whether the scope is 2 inches above bore or only 1.5.

This means that to have the point of impact intersect the point of aim at 25 yards, I have to point the scope down 3.0-3.5 inches.

But as we move the target closer or further from the muzzle, the amount of drop changes. This makes a difference. There is also that difference in angles. With the scope pointing down to get the rifle bore to point slightly up, there will be a period of time when the bullet is low compared to the point of aim.

After that time, the bullet will be high, compared to the point of aim.

Then we add even more stupid to the equations.

I got the new scope because I wanted the hash marks on the reticle to help me with figuring offsets.

The scope is lower cost, so it is a second focal plane reticle. This means that the distance between hash marks stays the same regardless of the magnification.

When the manual says that a hash is 1 MOA, they mean it is 1 MOA at 9x, not at 4x, where I keep the scope.

This means I need to know the magnification to use the hash marks to measure with.

I’m going to head back to the range and do some actual measuring. Then I’m going to use a ballistic calculator to have a better idea of wtf I’m doing and where that bullet is going to be relative to point of aim.

If things go well, I might even be able to figure all of this out, without blowing up my brain.

Once all of this is figured out, I get to repeat it with the Marlin in 30-30.

I feel like I am coming to the end of a long journey. Yesterday I managed to get another part of the puzzle working. I might actually be able to finish (hah!) this personal project.

I do not like WordPress. We call it the security breach. If it hasn’t happened today, it will happen tomorrow. So, I’m going to talk about the process.

The goal

To be able to easily insert citations and bibliographies into WordPress articles.

Requirements:

1. It has to be Easy
2. It has to look good in the final results.
3. It has to be easy to create citations

Item One requires a Graphical User Interface. In other words, I need to be able to get to a citation with just a few clicks. It also means that I can’t be clicking on multiple windows or carefully copying, so I can paste links. It really needs to be simple.
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According to my sources, “Dude” is non-gendered, so according to my sources this is not a sexist rant.

I’m an old fart. I do “dude stuff”. I’m no longer shocked when other people can do the same things I can do, but I do have certain expectations, and I’m continuously let down.

“Dude Stuff” is when the boss comes over to you and asks “Can you open this?” and shoves a taped up package at you. You are the dude, so you flick your wrist and a 3.49in blade pops open for you to cut the tape. The boss looks in shock at the “huge knife” and tries to figure out where it came from, so fast.

“Dude Stuff” is your daughter coming to you with a necklace, hopelessly tangled and twisted, knowing that the dude in her life will just fix it. And you do.

“Dude Stuff” is the dishwasher that is getting water flowing back into it from the sink. Knowing that there should be a check valve or something else to keep that from happening. Seeing the water flow into the dishwasher sump when a pot is emptied into the sink, but not when water is just running.

Oh, the discharge hose needs a blight ABOVE the outlet to keep the bad water from flowing downhill into the dishwasher.

“Dude Stuff” is going out to do a safety inspection on the roof rack that your child just installed and instantly seeing that the cross bolts aren’t tightened, looking for why they came from the factory like that, and knowing that the rack needs to be adjusted for size and knowing how to do that.

“Dude Stuff” means you get handed the Fitbit to change the band because they “couldn’t figure out how”.

All of these and 1000s more are “dude stuff”. It is that ability to look at something and know what should be done next. Or to know how to figure it out.

I was speaking with Hagar, and we were talking about the rape statistics in this country. This is something we’ve talked about before.

As I see it, there are three or four different types of rapists out there. The first is the “accidental” rapist. These are the situations where a man and a woman are interacting, and the situation is such that she only decides it was rape the next day. Those situations where she is a little too drunk to consent. It is the situation where she thought she was saying “no” and he didn’t hear “no” but “I’m not on any birth control.” He takes out his condom and thinks it is ok to proceed, while she doesn’t actually say anything, he should have just known.

Hagar inserts the “Yesterday it was ok, today it is rape” situation. Those situations where one of the two had a birthday and turned 18. They do the same thing after his birthday as they were doing before and suddenly, he’s guilty of statutory rape.

The next situation is what I call “One and done.” It is rape. The rapist should be caught and, when found guilty, properly punished. This is a horrific crime and should be treated as such. The difference is that after that one time, the rapist never rapes again. One rapist, one victim.

The final group is what I call “serial rapists”. These are the monsters that have raped somebody, decided they liked it and then rape more. One rapist, multiple victims.

It is my unfounded belief that these serial rapists are what account for the majority of victims.

It is no less horrific if a rapist only has one victim one time, or one victim multiple times, it is a crime for which proper punishment should be given.

These are the monsters that haunt people’s nightmares.

In a bar, a woman is speaking with her friends. A man walks up and quietly asks if he can buy her a drink. She looks him up and down and tells him to get lost. He leaves, rejected.

Shortly after, another man walks up. He’s carrying a drink for her. He hands it to her and talks her up. He doesn’t really take her simple brush-offs. She has a short relationship with him. Maybe as short as the one night.

She gets bitter and posts to social media about how all men are just creeps. How all they are interested in is her body, and she’s never found a man who wasn’t shallow and crass.

She’ll never find a good dude because it is the man who takes “no” for an answer and leaves that is much more likely to be the good man she is looking for rather than the one that held his ground.

The men and women of today are not going through the same dance as 50 years ago. What they are looking for is different from their parents. YOLO is something that happened in the past, but it was the unusual, not a life philosophy.

We aren’t bringing up our children to be able to do “Dude Stuff”. We are lucky if they can tie their own shoes. Not a joke. My grandson is likely to never have to tie his shoes. Even the shoes he has with laces are really Velcro.

Somewhere our society lost something small yet important. How to do “Dude Stuff”.

I think there are about ten different songs I’ve listened to recently that have the same sort of theme. This happens to be one of the older ones.

The other day, I analyzed an Amicus Curia brief by the “Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence”.

Sounds good, but what have they done to actually advance “gun safety”? Their entire shtick is to take guns away from The People.

Compare that to this educational statement:

In states that haven’t gone gun stupid, good things still happen.

Not bad. The Bexar Country Commissioners Court purchased 3,800 portable handgun safes and 1,000 handgun cables for $140,000. The money came from the American Rescue Plan Act.
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There are days when your socks are knocked off. Is it accidental journalisming or is this common place for them?

It is even more confusing when the call sign is “KPQ”. For those that don’t know, radio call signs start with “W” east of the Mississippi and with a “K” to the west. Generally a “K” call sign translates to “Oh My God, they said what!”

Can You Legally Carry A Firearm In Public In Washington?[xCite item=”V2S5Z6X4″ pos=0] I’m cringing already.

Where’s the catch?

Come on, where is the zinger? Where is the slam of conservatives and gun owners? What’s WRONG with you?

That’s the extent of their reporting. Clean, clear, short. The rest of the article is a table of states and the legal state of open and concealed carry in those states. Nothing untoward.

Feel free to give them a click and positive feedback.

A small warning. When a state has open carry but concealed is permitted, shitty cops will sometimes claim that having any part of your arm covered is actually “concealed”. That means that if you are wearing an OWB holster and your shirt tail covers a part of the grip, you could be charged with concealed carry without a permit.

In the same way, but reverse, some cops will claim that if your concealed firearm prints or is observed it is “open carry”. If the stated doesn’t allow open carry you are in for a bad day.
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