First and last shoot of the year

I've been wanting to go to more Cowboy Action Shooting events but life has not allowed me that. Not one thing in particular but a conspiracy of things that all seem to congregate around the weekends that these events happen. One thing I should do to counter this is to go to events further afield. The events at Logan's Ferry are the closest, half an hour away, and so are my primary event, but there are also events at River Junction. Many of the same people at Logan's Ferry show up there as well so it would be like I was a stranger. That's in Donegal and an hour away. Beaver Valley Bushwackers is also an hour away.

That's for the future.

In the recent past, I had intended to finally get to the October shoot but again, life reared up. Saturday was the one day that I otherwise had available to meet with my Realtor and look at a few houses. I compromised in that I would go to the shoot in the morning and leave at the lunch break so that I could look at houses in the afternoon.

After the 4th stage, someone found a screw on the unloading table. Specifically, a Base Pin Latch Screw which is a springloaded part that holds the Base Pin, on which the cylinder rotates, in place. Everyone with a Single Action Army-style gun, including myself, checked their guns. I didn't see anything wrong with either of my pistols and so we just assumed that it had been left there from the previous group.

After the 4th stage shooting, though, I saw that the screw had been mine because the other half of the assembly had fallen out onto the unloading table while I was clearing my empty brass. I hadn't seen it when I checked because I assumed that the entire pin would have fallen out. I saw the one side of the gun with the one screw, not the other side that was missing.

I had both pieces but was missing the spring. I looked around but was unable to find it. Functionally, I could have put the two pieces together without the spring and the gun would hold together as well as without it (the spring is to make disassembly easier, not a safety issue) but it was pretty much time for me to go look at houses.

Many of the other shooters offered up an opportunity to use one of their guns in the next stage but it was pretty much time for me to go. It was suggested that I have someone run me through the next stage while everyone else had their lunch, which could be completed fairly quickly and get me a complete day on my score card but, again, it was pretty much time for me to go.

In 2013, I lost one of the screws off of the SAA replica airsoft gun I had at a convention. I went online to Brownell's and ordered a replacement, a real gun part that fit the “toy” gun perfectly. This time, I went back to Brownell's and ordered three because it seems a part prone to self-disassembly and I don't want to be caught without one the next time.

Banned

After replacing the base pin latch screw on my Single Action Army and cleaning my guns, I found myself on the Internet (again) and came across a meme on the official Single Action Shooting Society facebook page.



“Liberals say, “If confiscating all guns saves just ONE life, it's worth it.” Well then, if deporting all illegals saves just ONE life, wouldn't that be worth it??”

There would be a lot to unpack in that, as it is chock full of fallacies, but I decided to point out the first one that came to my mind: Strawman. “Liberals” don't say. Some liberals may say but not many and not those in a position to make policy. Most have been talking about background checks (something the NRA used to be for) and, yes, a few have been talking about bans on so-called assault weapons.

That pointing out of the logical fallacy got me banned from the page immediately with the Admin saying (before he cut off my ability to reply) “Here we have a liberal posing to be actually interested in guns.”

There is, of course, a certain irony in having someone accuse me of merely pretending to like guns when I had just finished cleaning my guns from a competition and the smell of Hoppes No.9 still permeated my apartment.

I hate, HATE having to think about this kind of shit every time I go to the range, every time I go to a cowboy action shooting competition, every time I walk into a gun shop. These are not my people. It pretty much never was. The gun culture has always been conservative, which means almost by definition that it had more than its share of racists, bigots, sexists, neo-Confederates, jingoists, Klansmen and Nazis. (Don't think I didn't notice the Stars and Bars in your profile picture, Erik.)

Mostly they have kept to the shadows because open racism was, at least for a while, not accepted in polite society. Those days seem to be gone now, and they can vomit up their sociopathy in the open. And if they are not the actual people running the Single Action Shooting Society, they are enabled and apologized for by the leadership.

Oh, and the place from which he shared his meme, Trump Country USA, is comprised of nothing but memes. They're just a meme factory. That gives it more than even odds that these memes are coming straight out of Petrograd, designed by Russian propagandists. Congratulations, patriot, you've been duped into a being a tool of Vladimir Putin.

Is this what is to become of my shooting sport? So far, the places I actually shoot have not devolved to this, although that may be moderated by people standing around with loaded weapons on their hips.

An armed society is a polite society. That is, until some asshat decides that his ideology is more important than your liberal life.