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Random notes: July 12, 2026.

Sunday, July 12th, 2026

A catch-all for several things:

Happy 46th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night! I think I may have used this before, but it has been a minute I believe:

Obit watch: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). NYT. WP (archived). Lawrence.

You know, for a movie that is often called one of the worst movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture1…”The Greatest Show On Earth” is actually pretty swell. Is it better than “High Noon”? I don’t know that you can make a head-to-head comparison, but I thought “Show” was much more fun. And sometimes that’s what you want out of a movie: fun. (And I say this as a person with conflicted views about circuses.)

While we were watching it, I mentioned that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had gone out of business in 2017. I went to double-check my dates…and ran into an interesting philosophical question.

While RB&BB closed in 2017, they restarted in 2023 according to Wikipedia. But: the new shows do not have clowns, animals, or a ringmaster.

Which raises the question: if you don’t have animals, clowns, or a ringmaster, are you still Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus? Heck, are you even still a circus at all?

The long version of the Lucille Ball story from IMDB.

We all know that Jimmy Stewart was one of the greats, but he’s brilliant in this. Especially since he spends the entire film in clown makeup, for reasons.

And how many movies can you think of that have a love…pentagon? Brad is in love with Holly, who loves him. But she takes up with The Great Sebastian, who returns her affections (though, honestly, it seems like The Great Sebastian would return the affections of anything female). He also has a past with Angel, who also falls for Brad, but is claimed by the pathologically jealous elephant trainer Klaus. (I wonder if this is patient zero for the evil elephant trainer in fiction. See also.)

This film is listed among The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Moves Ever Made in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson’s book “The Official Razzie® Movie Guide.”

John Wilson should go eat a bowl of something disgusting.

(more…)

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Politics, Sports | 3 Comments »

The holidays come thick and fast this time of year.

Sunday, June 28th, 2026

Happy Gavrilo Princip Day! I hope everyone has, or will shortly, collect their bag limit of archdukes.

(Remember: responsibly harvested, archdukes are a renewable resource.)

Don’t forget to drink a toast to the memory of the late guffaw, originator of the holiday.

(I did go to a gun show yesterday. But I did not see any FN 1910s for sale.)

Also, on a just slightly more serious note: today is Mel Brooks’s 100th birthday.

Mr. Brooks has given me a fair amount of pleasure over the years. I hope somebody gave him a nice urine jacket as a birthday present.

Posted in History | No Comments »

Am I lazy or what? (Random gun crankery.)

Wednesday, June 24th, 2026

I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had one fault—you could not hit anything with it. One of our “conductors” practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief.

–Mark Twain, Roughing It

According to Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate (and a lot of inaccurate) information, the events of Roughing It took place between 1861 and 1867. So it is likely that Twain’s “pitiful little Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter” was something very much like this:

That’s a Smith and Wesson, Model 1, Second Issue.

(more…)

Posted in Guns, History, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 22, 2026.

Monday, June 22nd, 2026

Another one of those “it got busy up in here” obit watches.

James Bradley, author (Flags of Our Fathers).

I haven’t read the book, but the Saturday Movie Group watched the movie. I can’t put it any better than Lawrence did: “I wanted to see a movie about the flag raising, not a movie about a bond drive.”

James Burrows, sitcom guy.

Mark Singer (paywall link: sorry), New Yorker writer. Among his works: the Ricky Jay profle.

Also among his works:

Mr. Singer is also the author of “Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin” (1996), an expanded version of a New Yorker profile of a drug smuggler, murder suspect and media manipulator, that was a finalist for a National Magazine Award; and the collection “Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists and Others” (2004).

Unmentioned in the obit: Brett Kimberlin is the guy who claimed to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle.

However, Singer “decided that [he] had been lied to repeatedly by Kimberlin.” Singer concluded that Kimberlin “was not telling the truth about Quayle.” In print, Singer said he believed Kimberlin had known someone who had claimed to sell marijuana to Quayle and had then appropriated the story as his own.

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve. WP.

Clive Davis, music guy.

Posted in Books, History, Music, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 7, 2026.

Sunday, June 7th, 2026

Bob Packwood, former Senator from Oregon. WP (archived).

He resigned in 1995, before he could get thrown out, due to a sexual harassment scandal.

The case against Mr. Packwood, who had spent nearly half his life in the Senate, unfolded long before the #MeToo movement spurred society to take more seriously allegations of sexual misconduct against high-profile men. An inquiry by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Ethics dragged on for more than three years before the committee recommended unanimously that he be expelled.
That recommendation was based in part on Mr. Packwood’s diary, in which he detailed his predatory behavior, including toward women he supervised. “Twenty-two staff members I made love to,” he boasted, “and probably 75 others I’ve had a passionate relationship with.”

…

Shortly after his re-election to a fifth term, The Washington Post reported that he had made uninvited advances toward 10 women, many of whom were on his staff.
“Several said he was abrupt, grabbing them without warning, kissing them forcefully and persisting until they made clear that they were not interested or had pushed him away,” The Post reported.
Before the article was published, Mr. Packwood denied the allegations and refused to cooperate with The Post. Instead, he gave the newspaper embarrassing information about some of the women’s sexual histories to undermine their credibility.

…

But the Ethics Committee’s investigation continued.
As it expanded to include accusations of corruption, Mr. Packwood stonewalled it with legal challenges. In May 1995, though, the committee issued a damning bill of particulars, saying it had “substantial credible evidence” that Mr. Packwood had committed at least 18 sexual assaults between 1969 and 1990.
It also said that he had tampered with evidence by destroying parts of his diary, an incriminating document replete with scenes out of a bodice-ripper.
“If she didn’t want me to feather her nest, why did she come into the Xerox room?” he wrote at one point. “She knew I was copying stuff in there. I had my jacket off and my sleeves rolled up, revealing the well-defined musculature of my sinewy arms, which were always bulging with desire. I know what she wanted.”

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | No Comments »

Happy anniversary!

Thursday, June 4th, 2026

Today is the 52nd anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night!

If you live in the area around Cleveland or Euclid, Collision Bend is hosting their fifth observance of the event.

I thought about doing a top ten list of my personal “greatest sporting events”, but I have trouble deciding between Ten Cent Beer Night and Disco Demolition Night for second place. (First place is, of course, the Heidi Bowl.)

Also, I have trouble coming up with a list of ten. I’d probably put this one on the list:

mostly for childhood nostalgia. I might add the final game of the Washington Senators in 1971. But then it gets tough.

Posted in History, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 3, 2026.

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026

Col. Bruce Crandall (US Army – ret.), Medal of Honor recipient and big damn hero, passed away on May 31st. He was 93.

Major Bruce Crandall distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism as a Flight Commander in the Republic of Vietnam while serving with Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). On 14 November 1965, his flight of sixteen helicopters was lifting troops for a search and destroy mission from Plei Me, Vietnam, to Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley. On the fourth troop lift, the enemy had Landing Zone X-Ray targeted. As Major Crandall and the first eight helicopters landed to discharge troops on his fifth troop lift, his unarmed helicopter came under such intense enemy fire that the ground commander ordered the second flight of eight aircraft to abort their mission. As Major Crandall flew back to Plei Me, his base of operations, he determined that the ground commander of the besieged infantry battalion desperately needed more ammunition. Major Crandall then decided to adjust his base of operations to Artillery Firebase Falcon in order to shorten the flight distance to deliver ammunition and evacuate wounded soldiers. While medical evacuation was not his mission, he immediately sought volunteers and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, led the two aircraft to Landing Zone X-Ray. Despite the fact that the landing zone was still under relentless enemy fire, Major Crandall landed and proceeded to supervise the loading of seriously wounded soldiers aboard the aircraft. Major Crandall’s voluntary decision to land under the most extreme fire instilled in the other pilots the will and spirit to continue to land their own aircraft, and in the ground forces the realization that they would be resupplied and that friendly wounded would be promptly evacuated. This greatly enhanced morale and the will to fight at a critical time. After his first medical evacuation, Major Crandall continued to fly into and out of the landing zone throughout the day and into the evening. That day he completed a total of 22 flights, most under intense enemy fire, retiring from the battlefield only after all possible service had been rendered to the Infantry battalion. His actions provided critical resupply of ammunition and evacuation of the wounded. Major Crandall’s daring acts of bravery and courage in the face of an overwhelming and determined enemy are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.

On Nov. 14, 1965, Major Crandall was piloting one of several unarmed helicopters ferrying soldiers to a remote part of Ia Drang Valley in South Vietnam for a search-and-destroy mission. On their fifth trip, they came under attack by enemy mortars, rockets and automatic weapons.
The ground commander ordered the helicopters to abort the mission and return to their command post. According to military records, Major Crandall decided without formal orders to organize a mission to return to the combat site after learning that medevac assistance had been suspended.
“The medevac pilots were all great pilots,” he later said. “But they weren’t allowed to land on a landing zone until it was ‘green’ for a period of five minutes” — meaning safe from incoming fire.
In subsequent landings, he and his wingman, Major Ed Freeman, delivered ammunition to soldiers trapped there and evacuated the wounded. They were credited with saving the lives of about 70 injured soldiers.

…

In the wake of the battle, Major Freeman received the Distinguished Flying Cross, and Major Crandall received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor. A group of veterans who had fought alongside both men later called for them to receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest decoration.
In White House ceremonies, President George W. Bush presented the medal to Major Freeman in 2001 and Colonel Crandall (his final rank) in 2007.
“Fourteen times he flew into what they called the valley of death,” Mr. Bush said of Colonel Crandall. “He made those flights knowing that he faced what was later described as an almost unbelievably extreme risk to his life. In the course of the day, Major Crandell had three different choppers. Two were damaged so badly they could not stay in the air. Yet he kept flying until every wounded man had been evacuated.”

Press release from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. According to them, there are 63 living Medal of Honor recipients.

His military decorations include the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, 24 Air Medals, the Vietnam Service Medal, and numerous other awards and commendations.

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | No Comments »

Bagatelle (#144)

Thursday, May 28th, 2026

This made me laugh. By way of Mike the Musicologist:

Posted in Bagatelle, History, Movies | No Comments »

Memorial Day.

Monday, May 25th, 2026

I got nothing. I’ve been busy, occupied with personal issues, and a little under the weather, and didn’t have time to put together a good (or even decent) post.

So instead, I’m going to point you at a documentary that’s about 30 minutes long: “No Greater Love”.

This covers the four Catholic chaplains who received the Medal of Honor, and who I have written about previously:

Fr. Joseph O’Callahan
Fr. Emil Kapaun
Fr. Vincent Capodanno
Fr. Charles Watters

Posted in Heroism, History, Religion | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 19, 2026.

Tuesday, May 19th, 2026

Mark Fuhrman.

This is a couple of days old, but worth noting: G. Robert Blakey.

He did the RICO.

In 1969, he was hired as the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures. It was there that he worked on the RICO law, under Senator John L. McClellan, the Arkansas Democrat who chaired the subcommittee.
The law — Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, for which Senator McClellan was the driving force — says that a person or group of people who commit certain crimes as part of a conspiracy or criminal enterprise can be charged with racketeering. And it allows those hurt by the enterprise to sue for three times their actual damages.
Previously, prosecutors would charge people for committing single crimes like murder, extortion or gambling, or for conspiracy to commit those individual felonies. “Bob took conspiracy law and broadened it to describe a pattern of racketeering that is committed in furtherance of an enterprise,” Ed Stier, a former federal prosecutor in New Jersey, said in an interview.

…

Some critics have argued that the RICO law is too vague, that it is too widely used and that its penalties are sometimes out of proportion to the crimes being prosecuted.
“It is sort of the white-collar equivalent of capital punishment,” Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, told The Los Angeles Times in 1989 after the conviction of a New Jersey investment partnership for engaging in a racketeering conspiracy involving securities fraud.

Posted in California Über Alles, History, Law, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 9, 2026.

Saturday, May 9th, 2026

Philip Caputo, author and Vietnam vet.

The Vietnam War, which cost the lives of at least one million Vietnamese and 58,000 American service members, generated an outpouring of fictional and nonfictional books, by some reckoning more than 3,500 titles.
A few works came to be widely regarded as classics because their authors captured unflinchingly the peculiar mix of boredom and terror in combat, the ambivalence about fighting a war that often seemed pointless and unwinnable, and the disheartening malaise that followed America’s first military defeat.
The standouts include works of fiction, including Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (1990), and nonfiction ones like Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” (1977), Ron Kovic’s “Born on the Fourth of July” (1976) and Mr. Caputo’s “A Rumor of War” (1977), which sold two million copies and was translated into 15 languages.

…

Mr. Caputo wrote in “A Rumor of War” that his book was about “the things men do in war and the things war does to them.” It opens with an account of Mr. Caputo’s enthusiastic enlistment in the Marine Corps as a 24-year-old Midwesterner, driven by a need to prove his courage and manhood, followed by his 16-month tour of duty as a platoon commander and infantry lieutenant.
He vividly recorded the toll on the soldier’s spirit of the punishing heat, dust, malarial mosquitoes, disease-laden water and minimal hygiene. Those physical challenges were augmented by the confusion about what the platoon under his command was supposed to accomplish in its daily patrols — purportedly to secure the perimeter around the Danang airstrip essential to the safe passage of supplies and soldiers.
It was especially difficult to pinpoint an enemy, hidden and shielded as they were by the thick growth of jungle and by their deadly mines and booby traps. The Vietcong — guerrilla fighters supporting the Communist government in Hanoi — were experienced at warfare, and the periodic skirmishes were bloody, costing the lives of men to whom Mr. Caputo had grown close.

…

After troops under his command intentionally shot two civilians suspected of having Vietcong loyalties, Mr. Caputo took responsibility for the killings and wrote that he was “almost court-martialed” in 1966 before the charges of premeditated murder were dropped; Mr. Caputo left the service with an honorable discharge. He told the story as an illustration of how war can warp the moral codes of even ethical men.

Alex Zanardi has passed away at 59.

For those who may not remember, Mr. Zanardi was a prominent and talented racing driver.

On Sept 15, 2001, he entered an Indy-style race near Klettwitz, Germany. Originally called the German 500, it was renamed the American Memorial 500 in honor of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks four days earlier. Zanardi was leading with 13 laps remaining, when he appeared to accelerate too quickly while exiting a pit stop.
He lost control, and his car swerved across a grassy area and onto the track. He spun into the path of an oncoming driver, Alex Tagliani of Canada, who broadsided Zanardi’s car while traveling roughly 200 miles per hour.
Zanardi’s chassis was split in two, and debris scattered across the track. He said in a 2004 appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman” that he was administered last rites with the oil of his car’s engine. He was airlifted by helicopter to a Berlin hospital, and doctors amputated both legs above the knee. Tagliani was not seriously injured.

My understanding is that what the doctors did was less “amputation” and more “cleaning up what was left” and replacing Mr. Zanardi’s blood. His legs were scattered all over the track.

I’ve mentioned this book before, but the first chapter of Stephen Olvey’s Rapid Response: My Inside Story as a Motor Racing Life-saver describes the accident and the medical response. Nobody, ever survives a bilateral traumatic amputation of both legs. The fact that Mr. Zanardi did is a tribute to excellent medical planning, especially by Dr. Olvey, some luck, and Mr. Zanardi’s toughness.

Charming, optimistic and an easygoing storyteller, Zanardi often joked about making himself taller with his prosthetics. In his droll appearance with Letterman, who is co-owner of an IndyCar team, he said that he no longer had to worry about washing his socks, and that he received so much German blood during transfusions in Berlin, he should have been given a German passport.
Then he swiveled his left prosthesis to eye level and placed a drinking cup on the bottom of his shoe.
Some people wondered whether he was scared to drive again, Zanardi told Letterman, but he considered himself less vulnerable than before his accident. “If I break one of my legs, I only need a 4-millimeter screw and I can fix it very rapidly,” he said to laughter from the audience.

…

In May 2003, 20 months after losing his legs, Zanardi returned to the same German speedway and, in a specially adapted car, drove the final 13 laps to symbolically complete the race he didn’t get to finish.

…

He began competing in touring car championships — street cars modified for racing — along with sprint series races. In 2019, he drove the prestigious 24-hour endurance race at Daytona with three teammates, using a modified BMW steering wheel that permitted him to drive without wearing his prosthetics.
“I feel a bit like Jimi Hendrix,” he told The New York Times before the race. “I play with both my hands.”

He also became a competitive hand-cyclist.

In 2011, he won the handcycle division of the New York City Marathon and followed by winning two gold medals and a silver medal at both the 2012 Paralympics in London and the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.
He was credited in 2017 with becoming the first adaptive athlete to break nine hours in an Ironman Triathlon: swimming 2.4 miles with a buoyancy device and without his prosthetics; using a handcycle to bike 112 miles; and completing the 26.2-mile marathon in a racing wheelchair. He finished in 8 hours 58 minutes 59 seconds.

…

Zanardi sustained serious head injuries in a second crash, in 2020, when he collided on his hand bike with a truck during a road relay in Tuscany. He was placed into a medically induced coma and withdrew from public life during a long rehabilitation process.

Posted in Books, Cars, Cycling, History, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 6, 2026.

Wednesday, May 6th, 2026

Screenshot

NYT.

Mr. Turner put together a top-notch crew that helped him win the 1977 America’s Cup races off Newport, R.I. But he did so only after coming close to being thrown out of the races once he had been accepted. “During the Cup eliminations,” Time magazine reported, “he flirted with every girl in sight, crawled pubs with his crew, got tossed out of chic clubs and restaurants for boozy behavior and turned Newport’s blue bloods positively purple.”
The Cup organizers forced Mr. Turner to apologize publicly to one elite club, the Spouting Rock Beach Association, for accosting female members. “I wish to apologize profusely because I certainly did have a couple drinks too many that Saturday night,” Mr. Turner wrote to the club president.
But on winning the Cup, he surrounded himself with young, attractive women and was too drunk to finish a victory speech at a nationally televised news conference.

…

Still crushed by debt, Mr. Turner sought to squeeze profits from his MGM library by colorizing classic black-and-white movies in what turned out to be a misguided attempt to increase their appeal among younger viewers. He was attacked by the press, filmmakers, movie buffs and politicians as a cultural philistine. Stung, he ended up colorizing only a few films, among them the 1941 Humphrey Bogart detective movie “The Maltese Falcon,” before abandoning the plan amid condemnation by many actors and directors, including the filmmakers Billy Wilder and Woody Allen.

…

He wooed [Jane Fonda – DB] — just after her divorce from the liberal activist and California state legislator Tom Hayden — by emphasizing their similarities, including as the children of a suicidal parent (in Ms. Fonda’s case, her mother) and their friendships with icons of the far left, like Mr. Castro. She later wrote in a memoir that she had been dazzled by his charisma, which she likened to “a 3-D stereophonic, Shakespearean-level, sound-and-light show.”
The couple married in 1991 — the third marriage for each — and in subsequent years, Mr. Turner devoted more of his time to environmentalism and global peace, while Ms. Fonda virtually retired from Hollywood to devote herself to Mr. Turner and his new causes.
Their marriage lasted 10 years, with Ms. Fonda saying his insatiable need for other women and her own deepening spirituality, including an embrace of Christianity, were underlying causes.

Posted in Boats, History, Media, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

NRA annual meeting: more collected thoughts.

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026

I added both an “NRA” category (for general NRA things) and a subsidiary “NRAAM” tag for annual meeting coverage. This should make things easier next time I want to print off my NRAAM coverage for a press pass (though they never ask to see that). But that won’t be for a while: the next two annual meetings are in Atlanta and Orlando.

FotB Andrew sent over a link to the HouChron‘s coverage of the meeting (archived).

Oddly, I never made it back to the press room after I picked up my credentials. The last time I went with credentials, the snack and drink offerings in the room were mingey, and I intended to see if they were better this year.

The quality of the tchotchkes seemed off this year. Mostly pens, pins, stickers, and morale patches. And paper. So much paper. Oddly, also, a lot of lip balm. Hogue was giving away those really nice gun mats again, in two different sizes, which I would say was the best giveaway of the show. Buy stuff from Hogue. Second best: lens pens from Holosun. Buy stuff from Holosun. Also, I really like the foam earplugs Aguila hands out: they are cheap and disposable, but they’re also compact enough to slip in a go bag, just in case I get a chance to shoot and didn’t bring my full range bag.

I did buy the Hi-Lux scout scope (previously). I got it at a slight discount as a show special. Rings are on order. (Ruger‘s customer service was incredibly nice and helpful when I called them to ask what rings I needed.)

Note: for most vendors, it is this blog’s policy that we will pay full retail for products, or a “special show price” that’s generally available to everyone at the show. I won’t accept free merchandise from most vendors. Though if SIG wants to send me that .22 Creedmor for review, or Glock wants to send me a gun, or CZ wants me to review those Spitfire inspired CZ 75s, I won’t turn them down.

One of the things that I don’t think gets enough appreciation at NRAAM is the collector’s organizations, which are grouped together (towards the back of the show) in what we like to call the “collector’s ghetto”. These groups put together excellent displays that take a lot of time and effort: if you ever go to an annual meeting, you should make a point of visiting this section. We had a great time hanging out with my friends in the Association, who were also gracious about offering us water and seats when we needed them. I also belong to the Winchester Arms Collectors Association, and they had a nice (but smaller) display. Both of the Ruger collectors associations were there as well, but I didn’t see the Remington collectors.

Wilson Combat wasn’t there, which disappointed me. I’d been holding out until the meeting to buy a copy of Mr. Wilson’s new book. Now I guess I have to mail order it.

One thing that I thought was incredibly neat was the leather gun racks from South Texas Slings. Here’s how it works: you have two leather straps. At the top of each one is a clip that goes on to the support post for your car’s headrest. At the bottom is a metal clip, kind of like a belt clip but a little larger, that clips on to your seat back pocket. (The clip position is adjustable.) You put one strap on each seat (front or rear).

The straps have two adjustable leather loops. Once you’ve got them attached to the seats, you can just slide your long gun in and adjust the loops to fit. Viola! It’s like a pickup truck gun rack, except made out of leather and for your family sedan, and doesn’t obstruct your rear window!

I find this a very clever idea: I missed out on the show special, but I just ordered a set of these for the Honda. (I don’t plan to keep guns in the car, but I do want a better solution for taking long guns to the range.)

One of our party also greatly admired the work of Modern Rugged Leather, and I concur: they make some nice looking gear.

We were walking around and went past the 4D Reamer Rentals booth. Now, I do not need a chamber reamer at all: I would leave this to a professional gunsmith. But a flyer on the table headlined “Ackely Headspace” caught my eye. Turns out, one of the principals of 4D Reamer Rental is the guy who wrote the book on P.O. Ackley (which I’ve read and recommend). So we had a good conversation.

I do think we saw the Bear’s Leg at the Henry booth, but I wasn’t paying much attention. As someone who is into the .45-70, this really does not fill a need for me. But I can absolutely see a backpacker in bear country carrying this, and I would gladly try one if someone offered.

We had very good meals at Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland, and Goode Company Seafood. We had a spectacularly good meal at the Rainbow Lodge. (I’d been to both Goode Seafood and Rainbow Lodge before.) Our other meal was really just snacks and appetizers at the GOA mixer (previously mentioned in this space), because none of us was really hungry. Breakfast was at the hotel (the Wyndham Downtown) and was good but a little pricey.

The nice thing about the hotel was that it was literally across the street from a church. Since the exhibit hall closed at 5 on Sunday (and we left a little before that, having seen everything) I was able to hit the 5:30 PM Mass (or, as a friend of mine calls it, “the desperado’s mass”, because that’s your last chance for the day).

It really is a beautiful church.

I think this pretty much covers everything I wanted to hit from NRAAM. If I think of anything else, I’ll post an update. And I owe everyone a gun book post (actually, more than one), coming soon.

Posted in Admin, Beef, Books, Food, Guns, History, Hoplobibilophilia, NRA, NRAAM, Photography, Religion, Ruger, Smith and Wesson, Winchester | No Comments »

NRA annual meeting: a collection of random photos of varying quality.

Monday, April 20th, 2026

You can’t buy firearms at the NRA annual meeting, so I had to leave the gun.

But: I did take the cannoli.

(Yes, I do realize that was a long way to go for a joke. But the setup was right in front of me, and I had to take advantage of it.)

It is Jerry‘s world. I just live in it.

I thought this was quite interesting. It is a CZ-75, but it is part of a special edition CZ is doing to honor the Czech fighter squadrons that fought alongside the RAF in WWII. The styling is “influenced” by the Spitfire. Below is a photo of the explanation from CZ’s display, which covers it in more detail: click to embiggen, and I hope you can read it.

I have no idea how much they will sell for, but I admit to being mildly tempted.

Edited to add 4/21: CZ’s page on the CZ 75 RAF, with many much better photos.

Staplerfahrer Klaus, call your office, please.

I guess if you need this, you need it.

This commemorative Barrett is actually much more tasteful than I expected. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of the other America 250 commemorative, but there was a huge clot of people in front of it, and I wasn’t about shoving people out of the way.

This didn’t come out as well as I would have liked, but I wanted to immortalize it for “Ohio At War!”.

Total distance walked yesterday: 3.3 miles.

I plan to post more, but I’m going to be busy tonight and tomorrow night. It may be Wednesday before I’m able to do a more comprehensive post. Which will include some gun book blogging. Yes, I got a deal in Houston, though not at the show.

Posted in Guns, History, NRA, NRAAM, Photography, Planes | No Comments »

Noted.

Saturday, April 11th, 2026

Today is the 40th anniversary of the FBI Miami gunfight.

Mike Wood has a good piece up at the RevolverGuy blog. I have heard through the grapevine that he’s working on a book about the incident, but I haven’t confirmed that directly with him. I still recommend Edmundo Mireles’s FBI Miami Firefight: Five Minutes that Changed the Bureau as the best current reference on the subject, followed by Massad Ayoob’s Ayoob Files 1985-2011 collection (which includes multiple columns about the gunfight).

(Previously.)

In other, more cheerful news, DACK Outdoors has shut down and is planning to file for bankruptcy. I never dealt with them, because Mike the Musicologist did, and they tried to screw him over. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Posted in Books, Cops, FBI, Guns, Heroism, History | Comments Closed

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