So, anyways, me an’ my buddy Jon-Boy was settin’ on the back porch, havin’ us a few brews, an’ Jon-Boy up an’ sez, “Cooter, you figger them Ree-publicans got a chance to win this year?”

I done shook my head an’ answered, “Don’t rightly know, Jon-Boy. Kindly scary how close that Kerry feller come to winnin’ the last time.”

“Yeah,” sez Jon-Boy, “I bet that there wife o’ Kerry’s is still kickin’ his butt an’ screamin’,

‘Dammit, I coulda bought a real Kennedy!’”

I done took me a pull offa my own long-neck an figgered it was time fer a joke. “So,” I sez, “Day after the last election, John Kerry walks into a bar. Bartender sez, ‘Hey, buddy, why the long face?’”

Wal, I guess it took ol’ Jon-Boy a moment to remember John Kerry’s face, ‘cause he didn’t laugh or nothin’ right off. Then he took him a swig a’ beer, an sez, “Wonder if Barack or Hillary or whoever’s gonna figger out what Kerry done wrong, afore it’s too late fer ‘em.”

I done hadda ask again, “Whassat?”

“Way I figger it, Cooter,” J.B. explained, “them there Democrats spend way too much time doin’ that brie-an’-chablis thang with alla them rich Yuppies. Suppose that jes’ lak in yer joke, Kerry or the next one skips the next wine-tastin’ at somebody’s mansion, and jes’ drops into a good ol’ workin’ man’s bar. Has ‘emselves a Bud, right outa the bottle, an’ talks to some ordinary folks lak us, finds out what we want an’ why we want it and how come us’ns votes the way we do.”

Made sense to me. “Think that’ll help ‘em, Jon-Boy?”

“If they don’t set down, have a Bud, an’ talk to us reg’lar folk, them Democrats gonna be disappointed when they wake up the mornin’ after the election.”

“Howzat?”

Jon-Boy done lifted his brew an’ said, “’Cause when they see the election results, they gonna wake up sadder, Budweiser.”

I was out on the range today with Master shooter Steve Sager, and pistol champ and photographer Gail Pepin, to get some pictures of Savage Model 110-series rifles for the upcoming Backwoods Home story commemorating that popular firearm’s 50^th Anniversary. So it shouldn’t be a total waste, Steve took the opportunity to verify the zero of his Model 10 heavy barrel .308.

All that was handy to use as a bench was an old, weathered picnic table that was ready for the fire pit. Accustomed to shooting from a proper concrete shooting bench, Steve centered himself on the table and proceeded to squeeze three shots into the target 100 yards away. The group measured 0.95” center to center. Minute of angle with the first group out of the gate: the sort of precision we’ve both come to expect from the 110 family of Savage bolt rifles.

As he stood up from the table, Steve commented on how wobbly it was. The table was also sagging enough in the center that he couldn’t get the rear sandbag rest under the stock, so he just put the fore-end on the front bag. For the circumstances, it was damn fine shooting.

My turn was next. Observing the inhospitable conditions Steve had found at the center of the table, I moved to the far end and set up directly over the wooden crossbeam legs. This proved much more solid.Because the end was higher than the center of the sagging table, I was able to align with the target in such a way that I could put the V-shaped rear rest under the toe (lower rear edge) of the stock, and still use the front sandbag so long as I put it atop a plastic cartridge box. With my support hand on the forward bag to help it keep its relationship to the fore-end, I fired my three.

They went into 3/8ths of an inch.

Now, this doesn’t mean I out-shot Steve. Quite the reverse, I think. With the rifle wobbling on the weak mid-section of the old table, Steve had needed much more finesse and timing and trigger control to put three shots under an inch. With the gun in a much more stable position when my turn came, shooting a group twice as tight was actually easier. I’ve shot a lot with Steve, and I’ve come to believe he’s actually the better marksman.

Mas, left, & Steve retrieve the 100-yd target.

Steve takes the usual center bench position, but bench is swaying and wobbling. His left hand tucks butt into right shoulder for best stability under the circumstances, and…

…he still ends up with a sub-one inch group. Ammo is his own handloads, with 147 grain full metal jacket boat-tail bullet. All photos by Gail Pepin.

Mas is on far right edge of bench; X-beam support directly below rifle is more stable. This location also puts him higher, at an angle where he can use additional sandbag under buttstock, while support hand is free to stabilize fore-end against forward sandbag…

…and the result is this 3/8″ group at 100 yards, same Savage Model 10 rifle with Leupold 3-9X scope and same ammo, with 2 bullets in same (larger) hole. Getting the most solid rest makes a world of difference!

I’m writing this in Chicago, one of the locales where Johnny Depp and the rest are filming on location for their upcoming movie about John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. Didn’t catch the filming, but snapped a shot of one of the production company’s camera booms still in place at the intersection of Clark, Sheffield, and Newport, on a block where the architecture was still true to the period, the early 1930s. I was told that with the city’s permission, the film-makers had pulled up modern parking meters, and laid down expensive mats that duplicated cobblestone.

Historian Dary Matera called Dillinger “America’s first celebrity criminal,” a title that Jesse James and Billy the Kid might have taken issue with. Stopping at the Biograph Theater where Dillinger was killed in 1934 (now the remodeled Victory Gardens Theater), I was reminded that this much-feared bandit and his gang tasted the lead of armed citizens who shot back during their depredations.

The Biograph Theater, left, still stands. On a July evening in 1934, John Dillinger was shot and killed at the mouth of the alley seen in right foreground. The restaurant seen in photo occupies space that was a grocery store at the time.

When they robbed a bank in South Bend, Indiana, and shot it out with police, Dillinger, Nelson and the rest of their gang were unscathed by the gunfire of the lawmen. However, a jeweler located near the bank did better. He shot Baby Face Nelson square in the back, but the little bullet from his target .22 handgun was stopped by Nelson’s steel vest, and a burst from Nelson’s submachine gun drove him back into his store. He emerged again and fired a shot that “creased the skull” of Dillinger henchman Homer Van Meter, knocking him so silly that Dillinger had to pull Van Meter out from behind the wheel before the gang could make their getaway.

In another holdup, Dillinger and one of his cohorts were each shot in the shoulder by an elderly judge, from his office window, using what the newspapers of the time called an “antique revolver.” In yet another incident, a fleeing Dillinger colleague was captured at gunpoint by two armed citizens. He pulled a gun on them and opened fire; one of those ordinary citizens, a local farmer, promptly blew the top of the criminal’s head off with a double-barrel 20 gauge shotgun.

It will be interesting to see if any of these classic examples of armed citizens successfully taking on the most desperate, heavily armed criminals of their time (and winning!) will be depicted in the forthcoming movie. I’ve written about them in greater detail in my “Ayoob Files” column in American Handgunner magazine, and if you’re interested, I believe that material may be archived at www.americanhandgunner.com.

Hi, gang, and welcome to an aging Luddite’s first blog, done at the request of my old friend Dave Duffy.

I’m gonna need you to bear with me, here, because I’m totally new at this. On the information superhighway, I’m roadkill. To you, it’s a computer, but to me, it’s a typewriter with a silencer.

With a more informal structure than a newsstand magazine, it seems to this newcomer that a blog can go more into personal feelings. I’ll do that here from time to time, with personal opinions that I don’t foist on people on the printed page.

For instance…

The Presidential Campaign

As you’ll notice in the forthcoming edition of Backwoods Home, it seems to me that the only viable choice for gun owners is going to be McCain. Obama and Clinton both have very strong anti-gun-owner histories.

Obviously, as firearms editor of Backwoods Home, my niche at the magazine is gun issues. I’m becoming more and more of a one-issue voter. It’s not narrow-mindedness: it’s the litmus test factor. None of us can be experts on every important issue from health care to national security to international diplomacy to the economy. But each of us probably knows at least one issue very well. That one issue becomes a litmus test. If the candidate shares our position, it’s one indication that the candidate looks at things the way we do and can more likely be counted upon to carefully and logically weigh the other issues they’ll be taking care of for us. But if the candidate takes a position that goes against logic, common sense, and the Bill of Rights, it’s a warning signal that our vote should be withheld from them.

It’s sad that a nation of more than three hundred million people can’t field a better selection of leaders than what has been put before us in this race. The candidate I would have taken a sabbatical from work to campaign for, isn’t running. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice would have been my candidate: brilliant, self-made, never impeached in any way, and with more hard experience in international statecraft than all the rest of the field combined, she would have been a natural. Interviews have shown her to be a strong supporter of gun owners’ civil rights, a woman who grew up black in America at a time when the adult role models in her family had to arm themselves with guns to protect them all from night riding Klan types.

It’s sad that Barack Obama hasn’t researched this issue sufficiently to realize that gun prohibition laws in this country didn’t proliferate until after the Civil War, when disgruntled white Southerners pushed through carry permit laws designed to keep firearms out of the hands of the newly freed slaves. It is sad that Hillary Clinton didn’t more deeply study another strong First Lady of the Twentieth Century, Eleanor Roosevelt, who always had her Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver with her when she traveled. Mrs. Roosevelt was said to be quite good with it, and practiced constantly. Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, seems to feel that handguns should be reserved for the bodyguards of the rich, famous, and electable.

Looking through the prism of my particular issue as a one-issue voter, John McCain is the only one for whom I can cast my ballot this time around.