JAB

Thanks, guys. Thanks - and I'd bet that you could do it. There really isn't a lot of 'know how' involved - just a few, simple tools, some elbow grease and maybe a bit of cussing. I didn't even have a real pattern for this one - I just created a paper pattern based on 'eyeballing' small pics of a few, similar holsters. Paper is pretty cheap - just keep trying until you get something that fits to the gun the way you want, outline that onto the leather, cut the blank and go to it. A little guide hole punching, a little saddle-stitching (a very basic, simple, utilitarian locking stitch and the one I use) then a little wet-molding and burnishing and you are done. Thanks. I have seen pics of a few NAA holster styles that incorporate the pouch but most of those only have room for five rounds. I figured that if I was going to make the holster that way, anyhow, I had might as well make room for two, full reloads. Mostly, I like the idea because I can carry 'regular' rounds in the NAA plus a full reload of 'regular' rounds and a full load of shotshells in the pouch. This will let me change out the ammo in the NAA depending on immediate needs.

This one is for my NAA mini WMR revolver with a 1 5/8 inch barrel. I carry the NAA in my weak side pocket as a weak hand BUG so the holster is 'left-handed'. I decided to make it so that I could carry extra ammo in it. I know that if I had to use it in a 'social situation' there would be no time to reload but I like having the extras onboard for other possibilities. Besides, I figured it doesn't hurt anything to have it. This is the piece of leather with stitching holes and holes for the snaps punched: This is the finished product with the NAA and spare ammo in place: And this is a shot of the holster with the ammo pouch open, the ammo pulled partly out of the pouch to show it better and the NAA beside the holster: I think this one looks pretty decent. It would have looked better if I hadn't had to put the extra leather piece on the front of it. I recently got a new stitch-hole punch and the tines are closer together than those on my old one. I like that because I end up with tighter stitches. The problem is that I haven't used it much, yet and in this case I punched too deeply into the leather in the area of what would be the front of the holster at the base of the pouch. This meant that when I put the stitches in and pulled them tight, the thread cut through the leather in the front (that waxed thread can be some mean stuff - I cut my right index finger on it when pulling the stitches tight.). I had to affix another piece of leather to the front and punch it (less deeply) in order to repair that goof up. That means it could have looked better but I still think it will work very well.

As many others besides me have pointed out, if you prepare for a zombie outbreak then you are pretty well prepared for anything - short or even longer term - that might really happen due to natural disaster, civil unrest, etc. Well, that and, lets face it, zombie stories are just good, somewhat nerdy fun and while most of us probably wouldn't admit it, I think that a lot of gun guys are really nerds (or at least ex-nerds) at heart.

None. Just to throw it out for your consideration, there are those of us who have discovered that we really can't comfortably carry IWB in any position. Honestly, even my NAA mini bugs the crap out of me in an IWB holster. I mention that only because if you can't seem to find a comfortable position you may have to consider that, for you, there isn't one. I think that most folks probably can carry IWB comfortably or at least get used to it enough to tolerate it. My mom and wife both actually prefer IWB to OWB but not me. Luckily for me, I can conceal pretty well carrying OWB.

The problem with pawnshops in my area is that they rarely have truly 'nice' guns but they sure think that they do. Most of the guns I have seen in pawnshops around here would still be overpriced even at half their asking price.

+1. I also hide the license plate # if I post a pic of my car on the 'Net. For me, it isn't so much, "Why?" as "Why not?" If I post a pic of a firearm, being able to read the serial # isn't going to enhance the viewer's perception of the type of firearm, etc. and it takes me about two seconds to blot it out when I am cropping or resizing the pic.

Kind of reminds me of the scene in Mad Max where the BG is cuffed by the ankle to a vehicle that he knows is going to explode. Gibson's character throws the BG a hacksaw and tells him that he'll never be able to saw through the chain on the cuffs quickly enough but, if he is lucky, he might be able to saw through his ankle in time.

Yeah, I caught that he said something about four rounds and four men.

My dad was struck by lightning twice in his lifetime. Not direct strikes but indirect. The first time he was a teenager and had gone to tend to his family's livestock before a storm that was coming in. As he crawled back through the barbed-wire fence, lightning struck the fence a few yards away. He said it literally knocked him off his feet. The second time he was cutting timber (he worked cutting pulpwood at one time in his life) when heat lightning struck a tree he was cutting. Luckily, wood is not that great a conductor of electricity but he still got a good jolt. I don't think that man was afraid of much of anything but lightning made him nervous as all get out - he didn't even like us kids standing too close to a door or window when it was lightning. Another bolt of heat lightning got my paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, one of my cousins and one of my uncles all at the same time. Again, luckily it simply struck a tree they were standing close to but it knocked my uncle and grandfather off of their feet and my grandmother out of the lawn chair she was sitting in. Rare and doesn't happen are two entirely different things. Hell, instances where a person actually has to fire their carried handgun in self defense against a human assailant are also, comparatively, rare - but we still prepare for such possibilities, just in case.

We are certainly in agreement on that! I am glad that we can now carry where alcohol is served being that it seems nearly every mom and pop restaurant in the area has beer as a beverage option on their menus. I am also glad that we can now carry in state and national parks. Truth be told, though, I go to and from work more often than I go out to eat where alcohol is served and a lot more often than I go to state or national parks. Having to be unarmed for the 'journey' five days a week - including if I have to stop somewhere on the way home (most places I would stop are much closer to work than home) - just because of a stupid employer rule is a situation I would like to see changed.

I was glad to find out that the real reason Rick wanted to go back was to get the walkie-talkie so he could warn Morgan and Duane not to go to Atlanta. Leaving Merle to his own devices rather than leaving his family would have just made me think of Rick as more human. Leaving Morgan and Duane to walk right into a zombie-fest when he wouldn't have survived the first couple of days without them, while understandable given the circumstance, would have moved him quite a bit closer to Shane on the jackhole continuum.

I think Shane is a total douche. Before, when I thought that the affair was an ongoing, long term thing I felt as badly toward Lori as Shane but not now. Yes, Lori probably should have grieved longer for her husband who she thought was dead but her behavior can probably be put down to emotional stress and being especially vulnerable from having lost not only (she thought) her husband but also life as she knew it. It would be understandable that she would turn to the one person she thought she could trust, her husband's so-called best friend Shane, for comfort. He used that trust and her vulnerable state - along with a straight-up lie that her husband was dead - to try and simply take over a ready made family. Further, it was obvious that he was pissed that Rick is still alive - almost like, "How dare he be alive and ruin my perfect little setup?" Then, since he realized he wasn't going to be able to just take over Lori's affections once she knew Rick was alive, he tried to continue his attempts at taking over as Carl's dad. I'm guessing that giving those four rounds from his range bag to Rick before he heads back to Atlanta was more Shane's way of easing his conscience than because he really thought it would help Rick all that much.

I noticed the multiple bolts, too. My take was this: Darryl actually said he had been tracking the deer for some time. My thinking is that he already had the squirrels then saw the deer. Being desperate and not seeming to be the type of character who would care that much about whether or not his shot was 'ethical' (I have to admit I might not be, either, in that situation) he took a shot that was closer to the hindquarters than to the heart/lungs. In tracking/following it and maybe even trying to drive it back toward the camp, he had a chance to take another shot or two but still didn't get a clean kill. The deer was weakened by the shots and by trying to get away to the point that the zombie was able to jump it, kill it and begin eating it (the zombie's bite was to the neck/throat area and looked to be the most immediately fatal of all the deer's wounds.) I'm just waiting for someone to get stuck or scratched by one of the bolts that Darryl used on a zombie. For that matter, it might not be the best idea to eat game taken with bolts that are tainted with zombie gore.

Evan Pala might disagree. Susan Cenkus would likely disagree, as well. Ms. Cenkus' daughter, Elora Petrosek, can't disagree because the bear ate her. Of course, the latter was in the Tellico Mountains, not the Smokies but the two aren't that far removed - plus I fish and camp in the Tellico/Citico area, not so much in the Smokies. I agree that such an attack is not likely (although such is certainly far more likely than being abducted by Sasquatch.) That said, I don't carry a handgun for likely attacks from two-legged assailants, either, but for potential attacks. I heard something that I found interesting while camping in one of the camping areas (Big Oak Cove) in Tellico about three years ago. Some folks a couple of spots down from us were not observing good food storage, etc. The authorities stopped by to have a little 'discussion' with them (basically told them to either store their food correctly or get out.) In the course of that discussion, I heard one of the Rangers (is that the right term?) tell these campers that bear attacks are getting worse and that they had already had ten attacks so far that year. I had heard of no attacks that year so either the Ranger was lying to try and put the fear of God (or bear) into those folks or there are a lot more 'minor' attacks than we ever hear about. With my lifestyle, etc. I figure my chances of facing an aggressive bear while trout fishing are probably just a little less than my chances of facing an armed mugger/robber, about on par with my chances of facing an assailant who would keep coming after being shot with even a small caliber handgun and greater than my chances of facing off against multiple attackers who are so determined to see me dead that six shots from something as 'low capacity' as a wheelgun won't be enough to stop them. My chances of being attacked by a bear are probably much greater than my chances of being in a Luby's style massacre. None of these scenarios are very likely but that doesn't stop daily discussion and constant worrying from various members of various gun forums about whether or not they have a big enough caliber, high enough capacity, are carrying enough reloads, etc. to deal with the latter four situations. All that said, I have a six shot Taurus 66 with a four-inch barrel to carry when I am fishing or camping in Tellico. I went with a .357 because - as you say - a bear attack is unlikely and that caliber is otherwise more useful to me than a .44 Magnum (plus I already had a snubbie so chambered so I wasn't adding a new caliber.) I'm gambling that the .357 loaded with Buffalo Bore 180 grain hardcast loads will be 'enough' for black bear medicine - provided I can stop shaking long enough to put the bullet where it needs to go - and probably wouldn't be too shabby for defense against those two-legged attackers, either.

Notice the part I put in bold. It says, "Operated by the adult." Once, again, I take that to mean the adult in question is sitting behind the wheel or is at least in contact with the car.

Thanks. I have only shot it a little at this point but it shot pretty well. Had a few failures to fire but the firing pin seemed to have made pretty good marks on the rims so I think that was mostly ammo related. I tried it with some Thunderbolts, some Winchester bulk stuff, a few Stingers, some Federal Spitfires (the only non-bulk pack ammo that gave me a fail to fire), some Aguila Supermaximums (very smoky and the spend casings were difficult to extract) and a cylinder full of Rem. Golden Bullet shorts (which may well have been the most accurate.) That was mostly to check function, though - I still need to figure out which ammo it likes best. As for 'shiny' H&Rs, the 929 was blued and the 930 was chrome early on and, maybe, switched to nickel later (although I am not sure when the switch took place.) They apparently had a few other chrome or nickel models. According to what I can find about decoding the serial numbers, mine was made in 1967.

My buddy who is EOD and has been in Iraq on several deployments (in the triangle of death at least once) and whose last deployment was to the mountains of Afghanistan just might disagree with that statement. Of course, he had a foul mouth before he joined the Air Force.

My wife and I were going into Oak Ridge from Lenoir City. As we got to the first big intersection in O.R., we saw an Explorer that was headed the other direction lose one of its front tires, wheel and all. Luckily, it happened right at the red light cycle so she (and the traffic behind her) were already slowing down and the cross traffic hadn't started moving, yet. The Explorer pretty much stopped where it was, no one rear-ended it and the tire managed to roll through the intersection without hitting anything. I was coming down the hill that is past the weigh station and just before the Watt Road exit heading west on I40 a couple of years ago. A guy in a large, older sedan (something like an old LTD type car) was driving a little erratically and my instincts told me to hang back a bit. I did so - and a few seconds later he crossed from the far right lane, across the middle lane, across the left lane (I was driving my Mustang so the left lane is where I was - the timing was such that had I not decided to slow down and hold back, my car would have been caught between his car and the concrete barrier) and scraped the driver's side of his car along the concrete barrier enough to send out a decent shower of sparks. Just as the left front tire started climbing the barrier, he jerked the wheel the other direction and managed to recover. When he got back to the center lane and was driving more or less straight, I downshifted the Mustang, hit the gas and put him well into my rearview mirror. On Ray Mears Boulevard, my friends and I once saw an SUV do a flop onto the passenger's side after getting the driver's side tires up onto a curb that was no more than about one inch high. It was only moving about 5mph or so, slowing down to turn left and the flop was almost in slow motion. To this day I can't figure out why that happened other than there were several people in the vehicle and I guess they weren't very well distributed for weight.

My eyes are pretty sensitive to bright sunlight - as in I can often see better just before dusk than at high noon. I also tend to lose sunglasses so I don't want to spend a lot of $$$ on them. My suggestion is to go to Walmart but walk right past the glasses section then walk on past the section where most of their sunglasses are. Instead, head on back to sporting goods and check out the sunglasses in their fishing section. There are different styles. Most all of the fishing sunglasses are polarized (this helps a fisherman see past the reflective surface of the water better.) The ones I have and have had are pretty scratch resistant and many of them are light weight with very comfortable frames. I think I mostly have bought the Strike King brand but they have a couple of different brands at different price points, iirc. I don't think any of them are more than $15 or maybe $20 a pair, though.

Not to start a long sidebar, let's just say that I tend to err on the side of caution and assume that 'operated by' means 'behind the wheel with the vehicle's engine running'. FWIW, that is the interpretation my HCP instructor had, as well (not that HCP instructor opinions are the be and and end all but his wife is a public school teacher who has her HCP and was of the same opinion.) I could, of course, be very wrong. In fact, I would very much like to be wrong on this but don't want to be a test case. I wish we had a more clear cut law or at least an opinion from the state A.G. If your interpretation is correct, though, I guess it still wouldn't make it legal to have the single-barrel shotgun I mentioned in the vehicle. You are right, though - either way doesn't help with employers' rules.

I recently picked up one of these 9 shot .22 revolvers at the gun show put on by Great American Gun and Knife Shows in Morristown. I went because there is a dealer I have bought from at their shows in Maryville whose prices I like. He has separate 'gun show' inventory and usually has firearms that are nothing special - just shooters - for pretty good prices. Those are the type of guns I look for at shows and I hoped he would be in Morristown. He was and I got this little H&R from him for $99 (tax included) plus TICS - so $109 out the door. Maybe not an especially great price but certainly not bad and better than any other DA .22 revolver I have seen, lately. It shoots pretty nice and I think it shined up right purdy, as well: Before FLITZ: After FLITZ: Pre-polishing, the front of the cylinder was so dark that I thought it was finished the same as the front end of the ejector rod - kind of a matte black. Cleaning and polishing revealed that it actually has a bright finish: My only other .22 revolver is a Heritage convertible single-action. Well, there is my NAA mini but I only have the WMR cylinder for it and it is SA, as well. I like the idea of a double-action .22LR just as a handy thing to have as well as for inexpensive practice for shooting double-action revolvers. I don't reload (yet) so plinking with my .357s - even using .38 Special ammo - can get a little more expensive than I would like. I'll still shoot the centerfires some, especially the snubbie as I carry it pretty often, just not nearly as much. I figure that by the time I roll through a single 550 round bulk pack of .22LR as opposed to a comparable amount of .38 or .357 ammo I will have recouped the price of the H&R in ammo cost, alone.

I thought that M38s were a bit more 'scarce' than other models and, therefore, worth a little more? Am I wrong? I haven't even seen many 91/30s for $100 or less, lately.

A bunch of pissed-off Libyans blew mine up. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, blew it up, that's the ticket. Honestly, I've only ever seen one in person once. It was going down the Interstate and looked to be in pretty crappy shape.

A friend of mine who used to work night security at the Knoxville Zoo (I think they were special deputies back then) knew a regular officer who would either spray himself a little or spray a little pepper spray on his fingers and wipe it on his eyelids (can't recall which, exactly) every night before going to bed so that (he believed, at least) he would be 'innoculated' to it in case he ever caught 'splashover' or someone sprayed him. Having had to get sprayed in order to carry it for his job, my buddy was basically like, "More power to him but I ain't doing it." I have even heard that people who eat a lot of hot chiles can develop a bit of immunity to OC spray. Maybe that is why some 'experts' recommend that folks carry spray with some kind of chemical agent (tear gas, etc.) in it, as well. When I worked at the downtown library in Knoxville, the guys who did security there were school division deputies. They told me about an incident at the Weigel's on Summit Hill (just say 'the Weigel's to most people from the area and they know exactly which one you are talking about) where an officer sprayed a person of Hispanic lineage with OC spray. Apparently, it hurt just enough to piss the guy off and he proceeded to take the can of spray away from the officer, hose him down with it (the spray had a much greater effect on the officer than on the perp) then beat the crap out of him.

Technically pretty much any soup or stew that makes use of chile peppers for a major part of the flavor profile or whatever are 'chilis'. That means traditional Hungarian goulash, Mexican pork and hominy soup and others as well as what we typically think of as chili. I like to make different styles depending on my mood. Often I try to go for something different - something that in my mind seems a little more 'south of the border'. In that, I use chicken and pork (traditionally Mexican peasants probably didn't have access to a lot of beef - beef is more TexMex than authentic Mexican, to my understanding.) In that case, I use black beans, fresh cilantro and a few types of fresh chilis. I often add ground clove to the spices I use in that version. The batch I made this past weekend was intended to be more of a version of good, old American chili. I don't think that there is, exactly, a Tennessee style (just go to a local chili cook-off and the variety of types will show you what I mean.) Instead, as with a lot of things, I think we blend influences from other areas. I started with a small bag each of dried pintos and red kidney beans which I soaked the night before. The local grocery store didn't have much in the way of beef or pork stew meat, which I would have preferred, so I went with ground chuck. Two years ago I had a bumper crop of chilis so I smoke dried a variety of peppers from my garden. I have them in zipper seal bags in the freezer. They are still just as fresh as the day I put them in there and I used a few of these in the chili - one type called simply 'red chile' that was smoked/dried over mixed wood, one pecan-smoked serrano, one pecan-smoked anaheim and one true chipotle - a jalapeno smoked over pecan wood (pecan or mesquite are the traditional woods for smoking chipotles.) I also have a few pint sized jars of tomato sauce I made from tomatoes from the garden that I had briefly grilled (to make the skins turn loose and give a nice, smoky taste to the sauce) then made into sauce and pressure canned so some of that went in, too. Throw in cumin (lots of cumin - I love cumin), dried cilantro, onion powder, black pepper, salt (not as much as I would have liked - I'm trying to cut down on sodium) just a dash of coriander, a pinch of cinnamon, - not enough to really taste, just enough to help build the flavor profile - a few cloves of garlic (minced), a large onion (sauteed the onion and garlic with the meat which I browned before adding to the pot), a little bit of cocoa powder (for body), some dried Oregano (had to use Italian as I didn't realize I was out of Mexican Oregano), some canned tomato paste (low sodium - blech, but it's better than skyrocketing blood pressure), about a tablespoon of white vinegar (to bring out the flavors), one fresh, minced cayenne (from the garden), paprika and a little sugar to bring the flavors together and you pretty much have my basic chili. I made fried cornbread to go with it. I haven't yet tried bhut jolokia (ghost chiles) but I did recently buy a sauce with those in it. I'm waiting until I am with a bunch of my chile-head buddies before I open it. I want to try a fresh one at some point. By 'try' I mean slice off a sliver. I eat fresh habaneros a little bit at a time, usually cutting them into six or seven pieces. I know better than to pop a whole one at once, much less the hotter ghost chiles.