Christmas Eve...

Ok. So it's Christmas Eve. And as such, I feel like sharing the events of a Christmas Eve past.

Date: December 24, 1990.
Place: USS Tarawa. Persian Gulf.

You have to understand. We were not happy. It was Christmas Eve, and we were stuck on a Navy tub bobbing around thousands of miles from home. We were packed into berthing areas like sardines. It smelled like ass and feet. Lines for chow ran up, and then back down the length of this large ship. Everyone was miserable.

I was attached to Headquarters Company 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines. We shared a berthing area with a Recon platoon. Let me tell you, those Recon guys are crazy batshit insane. We generally left them alone, and they left us alone. We didn't want any part of their reindeer games.

The mood on the ship had not been pleasant. On multiple previous occasions, we'd had force-on-force fistfights in the ship's large, spacious well-deck. Maybe two weeks prior, I was involved in a brawl which basically boiled down to Golf Company 2/5 versus Headquarters and Fox 2/5. Yeah. That was about 200 guys on one side, versus about 100 on the other. Fighting. Brawling. Blood. Marines like to fight. And we'd been cooped up on that damned ship for too long, and we were starting to fight each other just to combat boredom.

Now, back to Recon. Recon platoon had a little desk in front of their berthing area where they kept some paperwork and such. On this desk, in the holiday spirit, they'd placed an inflatable Santa Claus. Well, at some point after evening chow, Santa Claus was discovered deflated. Deflated by an apparent knife wound. All hell was about to break loose.

Probably an hour after this discovery, an officer appeared in the berthing. He was wearing the telltale scuba-bubble insignia that indicated he was Recon. As he enters the berthing area, one of the Recon guys yells "ATTENTION ON DECK." The Recon lieutenant did NOT put us "at ease" or issue an "as you were." No. This man had something to say.

"GENTLEMEN. SANTA CLAUS HAS BEEN KNIFED. AGGRESSION. WILL. BE. MET. WITH. AGGRESSION!"

Forty guys yell "HOORAH!"

"YOUR HONOR AS MARINES, AS RECON, AS THE ELITE AMONG THE ELITE HAS BEEN ATTACKED. YOU HAVE BEEN ATTACKED UNPROVOKED BY A NUMERICALLY SUPERIOR FORCE. WE HAVE FACED NUMERICALLY SUPERIOR FORCES BEFORE, HAVE WE NOT!?"

"HOORAH!"

"Intelligence reports indicate that Golf Company, two-five has perpetrated this attack, completely unprovoked. Gentlemen, you know what must be done. You know where. You know how. YOU ARE RECON AND YOU WILL AVENGE SANTA CLAUS!"

"HOOOOOOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Within a few minutes they'd assembled and developed a plan of attack. And clonkclonkclonk down the ladder-wells they went with a mighty war-cry. We could hear the sounds of battle below us for a good ten or fifteen minutes. It sounded truly fearsome. Yells. Screams. The sound of limbs and heads hitting steel decks, pipes, racks, bulkheads, and whatever else was around. Eventually, Recon emerged up the ladder-well, clearly victorious. Celebratory "hoorahs" and assorted other motivational terms were commonplace. After a minute or two, one of the NCOs yells "Squad leaders, get me a head count!"

There's some commotion, and shuffling, and general sounds of organization happening. And over these general and familiar sounds, a question begins to get repetitive. "Williams? Where's Williams? You guys seen Williams? Last time I saw him, he had that skinny guy in a headlock beating him with a combat boot... anyone see Williams after that? Williams?"

Uh oh. Recon had an MIA. And we had a front row seat. The Recon NCOs were absolutely flipping out at this point. One of them gave a quick motivational speech. "WE NEVER LEAVE A BROTHER BEHIND. NEVER. WE WILL RESCUE WILLIAMS!" And with another "HOOORAAAAAAAAAAH" and the clonkclonkclonk of boots on the ladder-wells, down they went to recover their MIA marine, captured in the heat of battle by Golf Company.

Unfortunately, they returned empty handed. Dejected. Bloodied and defeated. We could hear the NCOs debating involving the lieutenant. Involving an officer in this sort of thing, particularly an MIA on a friendly ship was NOT going to be pretty. Fortunately, this dilemma was solved for them fifteen minutes later.

The ship's MPs brought Williams back. He was naked. He was glowing green. He had "F-A-G" written in giant block letters on his chest and back. MPs drug him over to Recon's berthing. "This guy belong to you?"

"Yeah, he's ours, what the hell?!"

"You care to tell us why his glowing naked ass was running around on the flight deck during flight ops? The 'exec' is a bit pissed."

I couldn't hear the rest of the conversation. I was knotted up on the floor laughing. But, I caught enough of the story to figure out what happened in general terms. Williams was "captured" by Golf 2/5. They stripped him down and wrote the epithets on his chest and back in permanent marker. They then cut open a dozen glowsticks and dumped the glowing yellow-green liquid all over him. After that, they drug him to one of the hatches that opened on the flight deck, and threw him through it, and then held it closed behind him. After that, a cobra pilot on approach, preparing to land on the deck reported a "glowing naked green guy" hiding behind a parked/tethered CH53 helicopter sitting on the flight deck. From there, the ship's Executive Officer ordered the ship's MPs to detain and question the "glowing naked green guy," and bring him someone's ass on a silver platter.

I don't know about asses on platters, but I know I couldn't breathe for a couple of days because my abs hurt so bad from laughing.

Oh yeah, and Christmas day sucked. It's always going to suck when you're thousands of miles from home, friends, and family.

Handgun Reliability

All the manufacturers make the claim. They all claim that you can trust your life to their pistols. Well, how does that stack up to our experiences? Can their claims be trusted? I decided to find out just how we perceive this reliability. So I conducted a poll on The High Road, which is a very popular firearms forum with many tens of thousands of users and shooters.

I have to provide some caveats for the poll though. It was COMPLETELY unscientific. It's results can't be relied on for much of anything. I asked the same question for each manufacturer and a specific "line" of their pistols. You can see the raw results of the poll below. You'll have to click it to view it properly.



Now, these results can be misleading unless you understand the questions, and the way I framed them. The questions asked are EXACTLY as you see them in the results graphic above. What is NOT mentioned, is that I did not define "serious reliability issues." So the respondents are using their own definition to formulate their response. Also, there's no accounting for "break in" or other factors which may or may not have been a factor in a respondent's decision on which box to check.



I decided to sort the data, and put together a graphic displaying percentage results per shooter. For each line, I totaled the number of respondents which claim to have either had no problems, or serious problems, and then derived a percentage. For example, we had 50 respondents claim to have Sig P series. Five of them claimed to have had serious reliability issues with them.

Again, there are controls missing which may skew perception. We do not know if those five people claiming to have had "serious reliability issues" owned ONE Sig, or FIFTY Sigs. Obviously, someone who's owned fifty Sigs, will have a much higher likelihood of owning at least ONE which had a reliability problem. So we cannot tie these results to the reliability rates of the guns. I repeat... THIS DATA LOGICALLY CANNOT BE TIED TO THE RELIABILITY RATES OF THE FIREARMS. It can only serve as an unscientific indicator of the shooter's experience. How many guns with which he has experience, is not known nor displayed. Once again, you'll have to click it to view it properly.

I don't know about you, but this is a bit frightening to me. Sig Sauer's marketing slogan is "To Hell and Back Reliability." Yet one in ten Sig shooting respondents claim to have had "Serious Reliability Issues." And my god, look at Kimber.

I'm not advocating that you make purchasing decisions based on this information. In fact, I highly discourage you from doing so. This poll was unscientific, it's data collection method had no controls. There was no entity verification. There was no verification that a respondent had even ever SHOT the firearms about which he responded.

But if nothing else, it's an interesting look into perception and reliability.

And a cartridge in a bare tree...

When I first said it, it made my ten year old groan. Then I actually did it. Then I took a photograph of it. I'm sure one day this will all come up in a certification hearing. Though, I suppose my family could provide plenty of ... ammo ... for the courts in the event they ever decide to officially question my sanity.


Then there's the tree. Ok, yeah, we went "Griswald." Why does the tree always look so much smaller out in the field than it does when you get it in the house? So yeah, our tree bends over at the ceiling because it's too tall. Or maybe the ceiling's too low. Either way, I find it hilarious.

Then there's the Christmas Tire. Yes, you read that right. Christmas Tire. This could probably find its way into Jeff Foxworthy's act. But you need some background for the Christmas Tire. I'm a scrooge. A grinch. HUMBUG. Now, my wife is quite the opposite. She's all about the Christmas spirit and all of the nonesense that goes with it. It drives her nuts that I'm not. But she's a creative girl. She asked me one day, "hey, the solstice is on the 21st, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, after the 21st, the days start getting longer, right?"

"Uh, yeah"

"So if I took one of your race tires and made a wreath out of it, would you celebrate the season, because it signals the slide towards riding season?"



She kind of had me. I had to concede and be less grinchy.

Brass

Big heaping piles of it. Pictured (via horrible cell phone camera) is a large box, overflowing with 9mm brass. I've been decapping and resizing it to prepare it for reloading. I bet there are five thousand casing there. I have yet to trim and tumble them. Man am I going to have one huge freakin' pile of 9mm ammo when I'm done with that lot.

Button Buck.

I got a little button buck yesterday. That's not interesting. I don't think that deer hunting is particularly interesting at all. For me, hunting's about putting marksmanship skills to practical use. And here in WV (at least in this area) it's a rare shot on a deer beyond a couple of hundred yards. The VAST majority of shots on deer around here will likely be closer to 50 yards. I think missing a deer with a slingshot at 50 yards would be inexcusable marksmanship. I've never missed a deer. I've never needed more than one shot on a deer. But the longest shot I've ever had was maybe, 85 yards. That particular shot did actually require a degree of marksmanship because of the angles. It allowed me about a four inch target to make a clean kill. I hit exactly where I was aiming. But I digress...

Shooting a button buck at 65 yards (my shot yesterday) isn't really any display of marksmanship at all. So, that's not the interesting part to me, even if the bullet actually did pass directly through the deer's heart. Yeah, ok, it was a decent, if not easy shot. But what IS interesting to me, is that I recovered the bullet when field dressing the deer. It was a 150gr soft-point. When recovered, it weighed 79.5 grains. More than half that bullet's mass was just gone. Wonder where it went? The bullet opened up like a flower. It did exactly what it was designed to do, how it was designed to do it. But where'd the mass of that bullet go? Interesting. And I have no answer.

"You a cop?"

So I'm a professional geek. And I have this t-shirt. It's all black, and says simply RTFM in block white letters. It's an industry acronym I'm sure some of you have heard. It stands for Read The F###### Manual. It's a standard response for that annoying user that's asked you the same question five times over the past four days which is plainly answered in page one, paragraph one of the manual.

My laundry cycle has just worked out several times over the past few months such that I happen to wear this RTFM t-shirt on range day. I assure you, it was not a conscious choice.

I do a lot of draw-fire speed drills when I'm shooting pistols at the range. I generally hit my target, and do it reasonably fast. My split times aren't anywhere near competitive, but I'm not exactly slow. I also practice firing from retention a lot at very close range - 3 yards or so. Around here, not many people shoot like that, so it tends to attract some attention. I've found that ringing a 12" steel plate @200 with irons on an AR does too, even though it's nuthin' special. But I digress...

The past three range trips where I've worn that RTFM shirt and shot pistols, people have approached me to make smalltalk. You know the deal. "Whacha shootin? I have a $some_pistol, and it's a real good shooter. Hey, what's the deal with that crazy fast thing you're doing with the target all close?" Et cetera. I'm always polite. I take the time to explain the tactical merits of shooting from retention up close. I enjoy talking about their guns more than I enjoy talking about my own. I know my own guns. Theirs I may know nothing about. I digress again...

Anyway, the question's asked every single time. "You a cop?" Sometimes, it's in the form of a statement. "You must be a cop." My response to this is always the same, and I have to admit, I get a little mental chuckle out of it.

"Nope."

*uncomfortable silence*

I'm CERTAIN they think I'm lying and are wondering why.

But it just dawned on me. Every single time I'm wearing that shirt, during the uncomfortable silence following "nope," they're STARING INTENTLY at the letters RTFM on my t-shirt. And... I just started cracking up for no apparent reason a few minutes ago, completely confusing my wife. They're staring at RTFM trying to figure out what agency RTFM is.