Alright… I plan to load up The Unforgiving Sable and hit the road for Tennessee sometime on Wednesday morning. It’s almost exactly 500 miles from here to Knoxville, which means I should get there around dinnertime. I’ll probably spend Thursday checking out Knoxville, then head to Nashville on Friday morning and spend the day there. After that, well, I’ll wing it. Maybe come back home through Kentucky and Indiana.

Any bloggers or readers who want to meet up, comment here or shoot me an email. As I said before, drinks are on me. I’ve already been graciously invited to spend some time on the range at Coal Creek Armory courtesy of Tam, so I know I’ll be stopping in there. I have an itch to try out an MP5.

That’s it for today. I know I’m not writing with my usual wit and charm; my muse had a rough night of it and is stumbling around the house today in dark glasses and a ratty bathrobe. I’m feeling fine, of course, but she is a damn lightweight who needs to get her shit squared away.

Ruger’s 2007 catalog is available for downloading here. Curiously absent: the 450/400 Nitro Express that was announced last August. Typical Ruger…

Does this ever happen to you?

You’re sitting there eating a fried chicken breast for dinner, and as you’re cutting away the meat, your eyes lock on the rib cage and you pause to reflect for a moment.

You think to yourself: right now, I am cutting up and devouring the very flesh of one of my fellow animals, a being that had a mind and was capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, a living thing that meant no harm to anyone, a creature that was raised and ultimately destroyed purely to satisfy my own primal bloodlust.

Does that ever happen to you?

Don’t you just love how the next bite you take is always extra-delicious?

Since pdb has decided that a black layout makes my site “goth,” this week’s Weekend Hotness is the lovely Fairuza Balk.

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli

If you read this page with any regularity, you probably know that I’m an insomniac. I have another fun sleep-related quirk, though: regular episodes of sleep paralysis. That link will take you to the full article on Wikipedia, but I’ll summarize it like this: you wake up completely paralyzed and possibly hallucinating, for maybe a minute or so. It’s really not as great as it sounds.

Last night I ended up sacking out on the couch with The Unforgiving Puppy curled up behind my legs. Around 5:30 I woke up, completely unable to move or scream, and with the distinct impression that someone was trying to smother me with a pillow. It’s a hell of a way to start your day.

Fun fact: sleep paralysis is believed to be the origin of the legends of incubi and succubi, demons that fuck people in their sleep. Unfortunately, I never seem to get any hot demonic lovin’…

“You should never point a loaded gun at anyone. This is not a hard and fast rule, however. A hard and fast rule is that you should never, ever, point an unloaded gun at anyone.” - P.J. O’Rourke

In other news, he hasn’t a snowball’s chance, but he’s the only candidate I’ll support.

This week’s Weekend Hotness is under active development and should be ready for public trials shortly.

Well, Tennessee looks promising enough to warrant a road trip so I can check things out in person. Family commitments will keep me here until at least Monday, but I may head down on Tuesday. Since I-75 takes me directly from my front door to Knoxville, I’ll start there, then head west to check out Nashville. I’ve already been warned by two people to not even bother with Memphis…

If any of the Tennessee gunbloggers are interested in meeting up, drop me a line. Drinks are on me.

As always, any advice, suggestions or other input is much appreciated.

The Brothers Quinn have their photo report on Day 1 of the 2007 SHOT Show posted here.

My opinions:

Coolest item: Kel-Tec’s .308 bullpup prototype

Stupidest item: Charter 2000’s left-handed revolver (You guys might wanna focus on QC over novelty.)

Item Most Resembling a Prop from “Donnie Darko”: the Iron Buck antler mount

Most drool-worthy item: Chopped and channeled Model 97 by Freedom Arms

Worst desecration of a legendary name: S&W’s new “Registered Magnums”

Lamest rip-off item: Hogue’s aluminum handgun grips

Strangest item: Leupold’s new 1x midget scope

Cutest booth babe: Cassandra at Rossi

Skankiest booth babe: Marissa at EAA (EAA dominates this category EVERY YEAR; no one else ever even comes close.)

These things are looking seriously cool…

… And it looks like we’ll be able to buy them.
The prospect of snagging a dirt-cheap knock-around laptop for a couple hundred bucks is really appealing to me. Gotta do something about that user interface, though. I’m sure it’ll be possible to install something like Xfce in its place.

Oh, and I want mine in black. That is all.

Yeah, I don’t even know when the guns will hit the market, and I’m already making plans. But hey, it’s increasingly unusual for me to get excited about a new blaster, so I’m enjoying the anticipation.

First order of business: reduced loads for casual, high-volume pratice. Here’s why: with the help of John Ross’s handy recoil spreadsheet, I calculate the recoil of full-power ammo at 37 ft-lbs, with a velocity of 16.7 fps. The same spreadsheet tells me that a typical .30-06 has recoil energy of about 11 ft-lbs, and a .375 H&H comes in at 29 ft-lbs*. From those numbers and my own experience with a .416 Rigby, I know the recoil will be heavy but tolerable. Still, it’s not something you’d want to use for a leisurely afternoon of plinking.

Since I WILL want to do quite a bit of plinking, reduced loads look like a really good idea. I dug through my back issues of Handloader and turned up a recipe that will drive a 300-grain lead bullet at 1700 fps, while cutting recoil energy to 15 ft-lbs. If I can still do basic algebra, that comes out to a 60% reduction in recoil. Oh, and I can buy appropriate lead bullets for about 12 cents a piece. Not bad at all!

I’m also strongly considering the purchase of this peep sight and this front sight. My eyes just don’t work well with regular iron sights, but a scope would be really out of place on this rifle. By adding a peep and a big bead up front, I should at least be able to see something more than a little blur floating around near a bigger blur.

If any of my readers are headed to SHOT this week, could you please stop by Ruger’s booth and tell them to hurry up already?

* The various recoil calculators on the Intarweb come up with wildly different figures, and I don’t know why; this should be a pretty straightforward calculation. My best guess is that they’re using different velocities for the escaping powder gasses.