Hmmmmmmm...

So, the losses of the Republicans in 06 and 08 were a solid rejection of the Republican/Bush polices. The huge losses of the Democrats in 2010 were not a rejection of Obama/Democrat policies. The fighting in Wisconsin with all the recalls for the Republican's was a solid rejection of Walker/Republican polices. The Republicans holding on despite millions spent form out of state groups is a ..rejection of Walker/Republican polices and not the Democrats at all.

Goodness if one can't see though the smoke and mirrors this all could be confusing.

More on the AR 15

I'm running a bit behind schedule with updates, classwork and VA Hospital visits and little hellions keep me pretty busy. However I did get a chance to test fire that previously mentioned AR 15. I just dropped a scope on to it from another AR 15 to see how it shot, so I was not doing more than a testing of it. 25 yards, solid bench leadsled rest had five shots all touching each other. 100 yards, and using a bit of Kentucky windage had four shots in a one inch cluster with one called flyer. This was shot with 10 stamped Lake City 55 grain Ball ammo.

My general impressions on it is it is flawless in operation. The Surplus Ammo    upper bolt, bolt carrier, upper receiver and lower receiver are more than acceptable for the task at hand. For those that have not done a lot of this work those parts are -tight- fitting. And putting the upper receiver on my rock river arms lower is even tighter still. And it takes a good covering of lubrication on the bolt and other internals and a few minutes of manually cycling the action to break the parts in properly. However at the range there was not a hitch. I fired 25 rounds though it and everything operated as it should. My one complaint about the parts from Surplus Ammo was the firing pin retaining pin (cotter pin) bent up on me a bit and due to the newness of the whole assembly I found it difficult to put in to position. However an order to Brownells.com had replacements for a few years on hand. It is actually something I would suggest to anyone that has an AR. Replacement bolts? Firing pins? If you have anything made in the last 20 years your wasting money. Get the firing pin retaining pin, a few extractor springs and the extractor retaining pins for a replacement repair kit.

Other impressions are the DPMS basic trigger/lower kit is rough. While it is to be expected with any basic single stage trigger, I will be taking it apart to do a bit of polishing to take up the gritty feel to the trigger. This rifle shows great potential which is not unusual for most AR 15's. Here is a hint, generally speaking unless you really have some slop between the upper and lower receivers the name brand does not matter. So long as the upper and lower are in the specs needed you have all the basics that you should care about. The barrel and trigger are the most important things for a high accuracy rifle.

Because I was asked I will give the approximate price for the items and the retailer I went with for each part.

Midwayusa.com provided the following:

Gas tube roll pin       2.00
DPMS Barrel  200.00
DPMS gas tube   12.00
Model 1 Free float handguard  35.00
Model 1 Buttstock Assembly A2 style   55.00

Shipping approximate on these items    20.00

SurplusAmmo.com parts:
Lower Receiver Parts Kit  (I got mine on sale for 105.00 each, currently 120.00)
Upper Receiver assembly assembled, with Bolt and Bolt Carrier group  170.00 (A steal. More on this later)

Shipping approximate 25.00
Transfer fee for lower 25.00.

Comes up to 649.00 for the approximate cost to build for me. Pricing is a bit closer to 700.00 now. Again this is a very basic heavy barreled rifle. If I make any adjustments it will be a new fire control group, and the addition of buttstock weight to help balance the rifle more. I would also look at a ventilated free float tube if I was planning on this being a prairie dog /high volume shooting rifle. Also a sling swivel in the hand guard would allow the use of normal slings. (Or I could drill and tap it for inclusion of one)

The bottom line is if you want a plain fun plinking rifle its hard to beat the manufactured ones out there by various companies. They will do your three gun shoots, basic pest control, target shooting and anything else just fine. It would be hard to build your own cheaper due to shipping, but you can do it. However if you want to customize something out or do a heavy hunting rig or anything else it is possible to do it cheaper, generally than what others offer. The catch is the investment in to the proper tools to do it. Tools are never cheap but I have been fortunate enough to accumulate everything over the past few years.
I had mentioned the steal of a deal for the upper receiver and bolt assemblies. First of all assembled uppers range from under 100 to 150 depending on the brand. That is just the receiver shell. And you get to pick from several different caliber options. Their lower receiver prices are not bad either, very competitive with anything else you will find. That is once again    http://www.surplusammo.com

Their prices are as competitive with ammunition out there as you will find, stellar service. Fast shipping, but keep in mind for those of us in flyover country and the east cost, this stuff is coming from Washington so shipping transit times are a bit longer than most of us are used to. However give them a look.

Disclaimers:
1. All links posted are property of the respective websites.
2. I have not received any compensation for any of the reviews or links provided, this is strictly my opinion and my opinion alone.
3. I am not legally liable for any damages to anyone's respective firearms or responsible in anyway for someone screwing something up. What I provided was a list of what I did, not how I did it. If in doubt seek a competent gunsmith.
4. If you do not like seeing/reading about/are offended by the graphic depiction of real life firearms and the citizens that use them reach down, clean the sand out of your bits and suck it up and move on. Go find a tree to save.

First build in a long time. AR 15.

Well, I finally went back to do what I did so well in the Army, Work on AR/M4's and M16's.

No, this is not some illegal firearm but it is something I built up from kits. Took a bit longer as not having a perfectly ideal work bench as I would like. Hour and a half on it but all and all not to bad. Wednesday I have a meeting at the range to attend to anyway, so I will be shooting the barrel to proof it and test it out. It is a Surplus Ammo and Arms upper receiver, bolt group and lower receiver. You can find these guys Here. Outstanding service from them once again and the product is very good. The upper receiver was a tight test fit to a Rock River Arms lower, it took a bit of oil to get it to slide in but people pay premiums for tight fitting uppers and lowers as it is. Nothing fancy about the stuff but the prices are great if you want to build yourself a custom AR.  This is what I made up today:

DPMS 20 inch Bull Barrel, DPMS parts on the lower, and a Model 1 buttstock assembly.

Excited to try this out!

Clearing out the back log of thoughts and Items I've promised to get done.

And with that, half of the year is gone in such a quick way that I wonder where it has gone.

I find that no matter how much time I allocate for this or that something else comes up that has to be done. With that I think I may actually have to plan things out in a more articulate manner. Things that have kept me busy?

Gardens. It seems that recovering a garden from a full tilt weed plot last year has left it with a large amount of weeding to be done this year, even with copious amounts of tilling and working. The fact we have had well below normal weather temps and massive amounts of rain further hampers efforts to get out there and keep up with it. Couple that with a bad back that prevents me from doing hours of labor when we actually are not getting inches of rain a minute, well it is what it is. Looking at the massive surge in food prices due to inflation and other related matters (Fuel costs though the roof and anything oil related) I've decided that it would be prudent to have a somewhat self sufficient supply of food. That food, takes a lot of work to put to harvest.
And things show no signs of improving. After all in response to the fuel cost crisis, Obummer gave us thirty million gallons of oil from our strategic oil  reserve. (Note you asshat in the White House, Strategic oil reserve is for war emergencies, not your own personal election emergency) And we have the tax cheat Timmy Geithner saying we need to tax small busineses more to grow govrenment.. (So, Tax cheat in charge of the treasury department giving tax advice.. what could go wrong here. Covered more at PawPaw'sHouse in better ways than I can)... I just think being more self sufficient could be of use.

Shooting.. Goodness It has been a while, and I need to do a update on a CrimsonTrace grip I got for my Sig P229! More on that to follow! I just need to get out more. Period.

The CCW being passed in Wisconsin is huge. And it does inspite of my previous post seem to be a very good one. I just do not hold my breath for law enforcement to not nitpick their way though things. I also feel that for any state having law enforcement lists of who carries and who does not to be a bad thing. I think that anyone that makes a traffic stop that does not think the person could be armed to be a fool. To read that this individual has a permit on their screen only increases the chances for both bad behavior on the account of the police officer, or to just plain get shot by the police.

However recent medical issues with me have forced me to look at the aspect of purchasing a new CCW pistol. For me it never was the weight of a pistol that bothered me, till recently. I find that a 1911 or a Sig P229 to be a lot to carry on the belt concealed. Open carry it is not so bad. I'm not sure why this is. The other aspect I have issues with is ..Well I'm a small framed Male. I weigh 145ish on the top end of my average. It is just plain tough to conceal something that is out of the way, but easily assessable if I need it, all the while finding the proper combination of weapon and holster that does not print if I bend over, crouch or twist, or raise my arms above my head.

While I do have a Glock 27, I find that I have difficulty shooting it. It does shoot well. I just do not seem to do well with it, and it is a thick firearm. I have a Colt Detective Special as well, but it too, is a thicker firearm for where I am likely to carry or position it. That and the bluing seems rather unusually suceptable to rust.

I've been fiddling around with my XD First generation in a holster. It is.. well used and abused for a firearm but is reliable as can be. It however is a bit large and I may have to consider alternate carry positions from where I do.

Other things have been related to school and other hobbies, and of course raising my children.
That bit aside, I'll be in the market for a new CCW pistol it seems. And this one I think will perhaps be the best of everything, on this go around.

Still here.

     Yep, I am indeed alive, just have been the very busy sort of late as usual. I'm also not the sort to put down posts to just post. And truth be told, the blogfather, Jay and a few others that I follow sum up my thoughts exactly on most things.

    Yes, Wisconsin will be getting a Concealed Carry provision finally. I'm saddened that it is not a constitutional carry but I understand that Walker and the other Republicans have their hands full with pulling the states fiances out of the ditch, and fighting costly recall efforts from the Jackass party. It is better than nothing and the silver lining with this is that we will have reciprocal carry rights with many other states.  And Constitutional Carry is still in striking distance.
   
   The part that troubles me is the training requirement. While it is very broad in the set up I just question it in the way that while it is a shall issue state, if it is up to the local police or sheriff are they able to say that the training you have is not enough? Can they Mandate or say your permit application is denied due to insufficient training? It will be interesting to see what in the end is acceptable and what is not.

   And it is about time, though I expect it took so long due to the whole collective bargaining fight we had. While Wisconsin Got most of the press on this all, it seems that multiple other states have done the same thing in the wake of it all with this state. I'm glad that it is finally going forward. I'm not against unions in state or federal levels bargaining  for higher wages or cost of living increases. (Mind you the private sectors seem to lack that entity often times for non union workers) But the simple fact that when asked to chip in to keep their fellow new employees from being laid off, that, that was unacceptable! The fact that if I wanted to be a teacher in this state and had to join a union to do so is also, unacceptable. And the other fact that over 90% of unions political support goes to one party is also, unacceptable. It seems that the unions in this state are already requesting bank routing numbers from their members to get their dues is comical. That will not end well, with the fact that ..well, Giving someone the chance to take money from your account just does not seem to be a great thing. Mistakes happen you know!  At any rate the thing I have observed is that unions will gladly eat their own in the way that yes lay off the newest employee in our union so I can get a raise this year or keep my pension plan! It does not strike me as being a safe thing to be a member of due to that fact alone.

  

Surplus Ammo & Arms

     Just another small retailer out there that has prompt service and fair prices and at least for my transaction exactly what stated. I picked up 500 rounds of LC 10 Headstamp XM193 55 grain 5.56mm ball ammunition. This stuff was neatly boxed, well shipped and the product is what you would expect. No this is not the commercial grade shiny pretty brass. Its got a couple nicks and such, as what surplus ammunition will get out of LC. Its far nicer than a significant quantity of stuff I've fired during my time in the Army. Its LC brass so its quality stuff there. At about 30 cents a round before shipping its also some of the best prices out there. Check them out. Surplus Ammo & Arms

We got him 2.0

Well, for now I'm glad that the Laden is dead.

I'm coming back to life here, but there is a nagging thing about Obama's speech tonight...

While it was perhaps one of his strongest ones to date, where is the fight in it?

What about a warning to anyone else?

For a speech writer to not be so inclined to say..

It took us almost ten years but we are tireless, did not stop, fail to finish the job. WE got him. Let this be a message and a lesson to any out there that would commit such an act(s). We will find you. We will get you.

Oh, sounds somewhat familiar?