I apologize for being kind of in and out on the blog lately. In the eight weeks of June and July, I was on the road for six. Internet, etc. was not always accessible.

It was fun, though, to read some headlines on the ground where the news was taking place. I was driving through Virginia and DC when the Washington Post front page headlined the story of the city’s resistance to the Supreme Court itself. Sure enough, when Dick Heller, the eponymous plaintiff in the landmark Heller v. DC SCOTUS decision went to register his Colt Government Model .45 pistol, he was turned down. Even though he had only seven-shot magazines for it, the District told him it was unacceptable. Don’t you know, they have a separate law in the city banning as “assault weapons” any firearm that can possibly take a larger than twelve-round magazine. They lump them in with prohibited “machine guns.”

Will Dick Heller take them to court again over this? Well, do bears go potty in the woods? And do winos do the same on the streets of the District, for that matter?

The aftershocks of Heller are even more amusing in the Chicago area, where Mayor Daley (aka King Richard the Second) is not handling it well and promises to fight. Uh, yeah. The vehemently anti-gun Chicago Tribune first responded to the Heller decision with the editorial suggestion that the Second Amendment be repealed. Shortly thereafter, the Trib’s editorial board apparently got smacked with the clue bat and publicly suggested that it would be unwise for the mayor to whiz away millions of taxpayers dollars fighting an unbeatable reality.

Chicago, like DC, banned handgun possession long ago within the city limits. There isn’t even a firearms retailer in the city proper, though a ring of fine gun shops surrounds Chicago in the suburbs. The satellite community of Morton Grove became notorious as the first municipality to ban handgun possession. It was followed by Wilmette, Winnetka, Oak Park, and Evanston.

Morton Grove has given up and surrendered the ordnance. Ditto, I’m told, Wilmette. Didn’t want to explain to the voters why they urinated away millions of dollars fighting the law. I’m reasonably well connected in Chicagoland for someone who doesn’t live there, and my sources tell me that while Oak Park wants to fight, Winnetka will probably cave. Evanston has reportedly been asked by the Brady Center to wait to throw in the towel until they’ve looked at the anti-gunners’ “alternate” legal proposal that they’re feverishly drawing up now.

It’s good to have the enemies of our rights on the defensive for a change. Morton Grove is where they used to manufacture those hideously kitschy plastic pink flamingoes. A few years ago, SWAT Magazine did a hilarious spoof on “Hunting the Morton Grove Pink Flamingo.” If I can lure one of those plastic pink posers onto my range, maybe I can shoot it with one of my Colt .45 auto pistols, in tribute to Dick Heller and the SCOTUS approved demise of a pathetic exercise in politically correct stupidity.

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All this cyber-stuff is scary to old people like me. I could be perfectly comfortable with a ’55 Chevy, a dial telephone, a typewriter, and some postage stamps. (And a good revolver, bolt action rifle, and double barrel shotgun, I suppose.)

If someone had told me a couple of years ago, “Hey, Mas, let’s go podcasting,” I would have been dumbfounded. My reply would probably have been, “Uh, pods? Dude, whales travel in pods. You think you’ve got tackle big enough to go casting for them?”

Time goes by fast. Now I’m on a podcast, and I wanted to share it with you folks. It was founded by Jon and Terri Strayer, rural-dwelling shooting champs who just opened a small gun shop and are in the process of building a big one, called Pro Arms. The producer is Gail Pepin, who has held the Florida/Georgia Regional Woman’s Championship in IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Shooting) since 2005. The host is Steve Denney, a retired public safety professional whose experience includes police supervision and SWAT. Also on board are gun writer/outdoor writer Chris Christian, Class III firearms dealer Herman Gunter III, retired NYPD street cop Mike Larney, me, and assorted guest experts. We do it in a round-table format, with inserted interviews with industry firearms professionals.

So far, it’s been a ball. We may not all take the same positions, but we’ve found we can “disagree without being disagreeable.” The topics tend less toward hunting than subjects such as why we’re armed; how to legally, comfortably, discreetly and competently carry a gun, whether male or female; the inside skinny on IDPA competition shooting (we have two of the seven five-gun Masters of the sport on board); and straight up, no BS gun tests. Downloadable now (or soon, when editing is complete), we have some Ruger and Smith & Wesson no-holds-barred reviews “in the can.” Guest lecturers include top instructors, and among those I’m happy to say are some of the best female instructors in the country, such as Gila Hayes of Firearms Academy of Seattle, Kathy Jackson of the outstanding Cornered Cat website, and Vicki Farnam.

You can take the Pro Arms Podcast for a test drive on your computer or download it to your MP3 player, at http://proarms.podbean.com. For more good info, check out the Gun Rights Radio Network at http://gunrightsradio.com. This will link you to some great folks whose podcast topics range from Second Amendment civil rights advocacy to self-defense issues to pure gun fun. They also have a forum for good folks who appreciate freedom and fine firearms alike.

I hope you enjoy it all as much as we do. It’s so much fun, I’m thinking of doing a podcast of my own. If I make it snide and snarky, maybe I can call it…a sarcast.

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A while back, I posted about “grail guns,” items collectors have a particular yen for. Mine was the full-size Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver in the iconic 3.5” barrel configuration. We got lots of good, nostalgic comments from readers about their particular “grails.”

Well, after a lot of false starts, I can quote Hagar the Horrible and happily say, “I got mine!” I just had one of those landmark birthdays with a “0” at the end, and my sweetie and some friends chipped in and got me one from an Internet gun auction source.

Marked with a little bit of honest wear that just gives it more character, this sculpture of finely finished blue steel and well-worn checkered walnut is a five-screw (read: “Old World detail and craftsmanship) revolver whose serial number indicates it was produced in late 1954 or early 1955. In the name of production economy, Smith & Wesson eliminated the upper sideplate screw about a year after this one left the factory, and decided it could do without the one in front of the trigger guard circa 1961-62. Smith & Wesson introduced this gun and its cartridge in 1935, calling both simply “.357 Magnum.” Along about 1957, S&W went with numeric model designations, dubbing this one the Model 27. Thus, earlier specimens such as this one are known to collectors as “pre-27s.”

This one is as tight and functional as the day it left the factory. This deluxe series was always famous for its smooth action, but this one is particularly slick and light of pull, in both double action and single action modes.

As I sit here fondling this long awaited masterpiece of the gunmaker’s art, my significant other sighs and mutters, “Men…they’re so easily satisfied.”

I don’t understand why she says it as if it was a bad thing…

Below, the “birthday gun,” a pre-Model 27 with 3 .5″ barrel. Gorgeous finish has wear that “shows character.”

“5th screw,” below rear sight on sideplate, and “4th screw,” at front of trigger guard, have long been gone from modern Smith & Wessons.

The barrel configuration of this particular model is unique and distinctive.

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