Category: Opinion

September 28, 2023 – They Did It… Gun Shows Are Dead in Oregon

September 28, 2023 /

The gun range that I belong to hosts two gun shows a year. By many’s account, this is the best show in the state. I really have nothing to do with it so I cannot claim any credit but it does make me feel good that my peeps know how to do it.

So, why has this been the case? It is really about what is not there as much as what is. I’ve of course been to other shows too. There is the snack man, the Beenie Baby collectors, the Pakistani knife dealer etc. Those have been largely missing from this show.

Today, we had all of those and more. Something new to me, there were at least five custom knife makers there. Don’t get me wrong, they did beautiful work and the prices reflected it at $150-300. I respect that a lot and I am sure the craftsmanship is worth the price, but this is a gun show. I have never seen more than one at this show in the past. The reason to go to gun shows in the past were to 1) find deals 2) see and handle things because of vast selection 3) buy guns. I will address these individually.

There are no deals to be had. This really is nothing new since the proliferation of the internet. Anything can be researched at anytime of the day and everyone knows what the price is. What I actually see is instead of a gun show discount, there is more like a gun show premium. I find things to be significantly more expensive at the show then day to day. Think about it, I pay an entry fee and then I pay a higher price than market.

Speaking of selection, I would estimate that this show only had a third of the tables as firearms dealers. I have never seen this, I would estimate that the last show was 2/3 dealers. It seems like there was table after table of junk. When I say junk, I mean that it looked the tables were full of parts that were removed from personal firearms.

I have plenty of firearms so I don’t really need any old gun. In fact, I should probably focus on upgrading rather than adding. But, because of that I am looking for some niche items like a Savage 99 in 300 Savage from the 1950s. If I do end up buying one, I want it to be in original configuration. I want the steel butt plate and the rear sight intact. It is not a rare firearm but the options are extremely limited when there are half the normal number of dealers. Add to that the gun show premium and I am not really interested in the ones I saw.

Last and certainly not least to buy guns. Since the passage of Measure 114, everyone is holding their breath for the results of litigation (which is happening while I type). Background check results are not less than three days. Under federal law, if you are not approved or denied after 72 hours, the dealer can release the firearm to you. That means that you are not walking away from a gun show with a firearm. If you are lucky, the dealer you are purchasing from is reasonably local. In three days (best case scenario) you can drive to the dealer you paid for your firearm and pick it up.

What has happened? To me, I think that all of the uncertainly around what will happen with Measure 114 has driven dealers out. The buying frenzy that resulted consumed inventory, low margin or small dealers folded. Others decided not to release firearms after the 72 hour hold. When the red flag laws were implemented a couple of years ago, private sales disappeared and now dealers have given in.

They won; we should not kid ourselves anyway. To think that law abiding and freedom loving people are going to withstand a barrage against our rights over generations is a fools errand. The ocean wears down rock, it seems improbable and incomprehensible but it happens. Consequently, I say that the gun show is dead. Yes, it is still physically there, but it has terminal cancer and it is only a matter of time before it is gone completely

End Your Programming Routine: Do you know who I don’t meet? I don’t meet the person that says ‘I am not a gun owner, never will be but I understand and support your right to do so’. I am more likely to meet ‘I am a gun owner and I believe that only these guns should be permitted’. They tend to side with the anti-gunners because they are not going to ban their guns (yet). To be honest, the only reason I went in the first place is that I get in for free and I was already in town for trap. When it is time for the spring show, I am not planning on going unless all the factors align again like this one.

September 20, 2023 – Better… For Who?

September 20, 2023 /

This year, my wife has been pushing for attending more sporting events. She has often said that ‘if I had girls, they would be in travelling sports.’ Fortunately for me, we have boys, which ironically are not really into sports at all. I say that because my wife and I are both fans, I just like it to be on in the background rather than spending my time at the events.

As we are nearing the end of September, eventually the good weather is going to run out. That wasn’t so last weekend as we went to the OSU Beaver’s football game with a sunny high of 82 degrees. I haven’t been to a lot of games, but there has been at least two with torrential downpours. I have to say that even winning both of those games, it was pretty miserable. That being said, we already have tickets to the Friday night game against Utah.

We are novices at this. I have been around long enough to know that season tickets are a commitment. Not only are you paying face value for the tickets but also the university wants a $5000 donation. That is pretty much a no go for us. Not only are we taxpayers but it isn’t even our alma mater. So, we are buying tickets on the open market. The university has affiliated with a company called SeatGeek. This is where I become a boomer.

Remember when you had cash and you bought a ticket? The price didn’t really change and you got what was available. I will say that the best part of today’s world is that you can filter by the number of seats that you want, see what options are available and pay anytime of the day. But, that is where the good parts end.

Despite the last game having the cheapest possible ticket prices at $15/each, the best possible weather for football in Oregon, a team worth watching and a projected lopsided victory, the stadium was still about half full by my estimation. It is true that school is not in session until the next home game, but the student section was nearly full. It wasn’t the lack of students that didn’t fill the stadium, I have to believe that it is the complications on how to do it playing a factor.

To be fully transparent, our tickets were not $15 but $30. The next game against Utah in the very same seats are now $70. They say that they are $70 but that is actually before the 50% handling fee which you find out about at check-out. I know that it is peeing into the wind, but SeatGeek is just another account that you have to create login credentials and manage. Such is life.

Once you pay for the tickets, they have to be moved to Google Wallet to be presented at the stadium. In my case as a Apple user, I have to download another app. That is to say that fortunately, I already have a Gmail account. But, searching through the Apple app store, there is no such thing as Google Wallet. It turns out that it is actually named Google Pay.

Before I could send them to my Google account, I had to login on my own computer. It seems like everyone else at this house has done this type of thing before but me. That was fine, but each ticket that you wanted to send to a wallet defaulted to the first user so I sent one ticket to my son in Taiwan first. Fortunately, I was also able to revoke it from the screen and select myself as a user. To verify, even finding them in Google Pay is buried under the menu structure. It is no wonder that people don’t want to mess with this stuff.

End Your Programming Routine: In the old days of general admissions, you might end up with the only seats behind the structural pole (ask me how I know). But it was cash, ticket, entry. This system markets to us that it is better because we can choose our seats any time of day. This also gives them the ability to price games by the market demand and because a third party is involved, the prices become higher because of handling and their margins. Then, you have to deal with the technological hassle. I will struggle through it, but you can’t convince me it is better.

August 31, 2023 – Rich Men North of Richmond

August 31, 2023 /

In case you have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, this song has gone viral. In two weeks, it went to #1 on the Billboard top 100 and Oliver Anthony has ten more songs on the top 100 at the time of writing. YouTube has 46 million views in the last two weeks. Read the comments, people from all over the world are resonating with the lyrics.

Politicians are trying to co-opt it into their own camps. The left is saying that this is the alt-right, hate speech while the right is trying to hitch their wagon to the popularity. What both groups are missing is that they are both the rich men, north of Richmond. They are the cause and the subject of the lyrics.

(lyrics)

I’ve been selling my soul, working all day. Overtime hours, bullshit pay so I can sit out here and waste my life away.

Drag back home and drown my troubles away, its a damn shame. What the worlds gotten to for people like me and people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it not be true, but it is, oh it is.

Living in a new world with an old soul. Rich men north or Richmond Lord knows they want to have total control. Want to know what you think, want to know what you do and they don’t think that you know and I know that you do. But your dollar ain’t shit and its taxed to no end cause the rich men north of Richmond.

Wish politicians look our for miners, not just minors on an island somewhere. Lord, we got folks in the street ain’t got nothing to eat and the obese bilking welfare. God if your 5’3″ and your 300lbs taxes ought not pay for your bags of fudge rounds. Young men are putting themselves six feet underground cause all this damn country does is keep kicking them down.

Lord its a damn shame what the world’s gotten to. People like me and people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it not be true but it is, oh it is.

Living in the new world, with an old soul. Rich men north or Richmond. Lord knows they want to have total control. Want to know what you think, want to know what you do and they don’t think that you know and I know that you do. But your dollar ain’t shit and its taxed to no end cause the rich men north of Richmond.

I’ve been selling my soul, working all day. Overtime hours, bullshit pay.

There are a lot of subtle gems in the lyrics but I think the two are not as straight forward. The first is working class wages and the inflation of the dollar. I don’t see a lot of pride in working hard because you made poorer life decisions and limited your options, but at least you are doing what needs to be done.

That being said, wealth is stolen not just with taxes but also devaluing the dollar with inflation. That tactic is the pyramid scheme to pay off old debt with less valuable new money. While that works for national debt, the real losers are the people earning $30K/year. This is being done by people who make money lending it and collecting it at the same time or the rich men north of Richmond.

The second subtle reference is caring about minors on an island somewhere. This is a nod to Epstein and a class generally above the law. I don’t think the song is saying that they are condoning the behavior but acknowledging that the class exists in the first place.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not going to say much more today. Watch the video and read the lyrics. Think about what is going on in life. Think about what is going on and you decide if this is hate speech or just the life-size mirror being held up on both sides of the dichotomy. The people are speaking, they just need the vehicle to get their voice heard. You go Oliver Anthony.

August 30, 2023 – Gradually, Then Suddenly

August 30, 2023 /

I love this quote from Ernst Hemmingway. It describes major events so succinctly. I promise that this will be the last time that I wax emotionally about my summer of exchange. But first I have to use this quote the way it has impacted my life.

Sunday morning, my wife and I were eating breakfast. We were at the darkest hour of this whole program. My youngest son had just landed in Taiwan in the middle of the night. My older son was on the airplane on his way back home. We had to leave back to the airport in three hours to pick him up.

I think that I dealt with my emotions last week. That is what translated into the last couple of posts. I am now starting to see the bright side of things, not what has changed. Something I rarely do, I was talking about the things that were in the near future to my wife. “I am planning on going to the range on Friday. I want to go on a weeknight ahead of hunting season. The range is bound to be crawling with people on the weekend.”

Usually I wait to see if there is something on the calendar and strike at the last minute. “There is nothing going on tomorrow (or this afternoon), I think I will go to the range.” On top of that, I said that I was planning on going to central Oregon for a weekend of hunting. I might even make it a three day weekend. I am not going to have more than a day or two of PTO now that I have started this new job.

My wife said, “It’s funny. You never talk like this. You never express something that you want to do ahead of time.” She theorized that we haven’t had the luxury of only looking at our own schedule in a long, long time. It’s true. My older son is not nearly as involved in activities and he has his own vehicle if he does choose to do something. I am not saying that we wouldn’t support or watch, but we don’t have to transport and hang around until it is over nor is it in overwhelming quantities.

I turned the oven on to keep the bacon warm. It also tends to really crisp up things as well. I pulled my vegetarian’s skillet out as I do multiple times a week and I realized I do not have to handle this hundreds of times in the next year. I told my wife, I am going to put this skillet away for the next year. All of the sudden our life just became simpler and better.

I support my son’s decisions, including being a vegetarian. But, I didn’t realize the commitment and impact that one decision has on others. It effects how I prep, how I handle ingredients, how I cook and how I store leftovers. It effects what I choose to make for dinner as well as quantities.

For the last five years, every meal has had multiple dimensions. What is my son going to eat? How am I going to make this appeal to both camps? How do I portion this so that it doesn’t contact meat and dirty utensils and serve everything at the same time? To add insult to the situation, many times I take all that care and he schedules something over the top of that. Consequently, all that care I took doesn’t get eaten later in the evening and some vegetarian product is made instead causing more dishes that I wake up to in the morning.

As a parent, I want nothing more than enabling my son to grow up into a empowered adult. I want them to be confident about the decisions that they make; I want them to be able to justify their decisions as thoughtful and considering the upside and downsides of the situation. I think that I am missing something however. I am missing the conscientious part of the equation. How does my decision effect others.

Everyone in the house is acutely aware that he has made a decision to be vegetarian. We all make some sort of accommodations in order to support that decision, some more than others. But, does the vegetarian appreciate the compromises that we have all made to support the decision? Does he know how many times I have to move the skillet out of the oven in a year? Does he know that we check with the event host to let them know that there needs to be a cheese pizza not just one that has the meat picked off?

I started this off with gradually, then suddenly. Supporting a household vegetarian is the same way. All of the sudden it has become an entire way of how I cook and to a larger extent how I live. I want him to play chess and music and participate in sports and Boy Scouts if that is what makes him happy. I didn’t really get that effort was in exchange for my own life force.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not saying that things won’t go back to the way they were before the exchange when he comes back. Again, I support my children. But, it will be under the guise that I understand that I am making a conscious decision to do so. I do hope that this is a growth experience for him and maybe I will share this at some point in the future. For now, we are on a bit of vacation for some of this. At least this is how it feels right now.

August 29, 2023 – Back To Normal… Psyche

August 29, 2023 /

If you are not from the eighties, you may have never heard that phrase before. Middle school is such a great time to make lifelong, meaningless memories. The last week was the second whirlwind of the summer. We spent the last week burning the midnight oil getting my son ready for his trip to Taiwan.

July was all about hosting an exchange student, getting my older son prepared to go, planning a proposal for my anniversary, executing and cleaning up from our party. Fortunately, my younger son is a mixture of ultra responsible and wildly ignorant. It lulls me into a false sense that everything is alright and under control. You just have to look under the surface a little more.

The phrase ‘are you ready?’ was uttered many, many times this year. Me: “Is all the paperwork together for your visa?” My son: “Yes, it is.” Consulate: “This form is missing a signature.” The net result is visa arrived 13 days before departure and that means a $3100 plane ticket. The Rotary keeps insisting that this is their exchange so I did my best to absorb all the punches as they come.

My son had a number of to-dos to get done. What wasn’t planned was a stomach flu. That compressed everything into four remaining days. Also included in those days were Boy Scouts Court of Honor, Oregon State Fair and the final sendoff with his friends. My wife accused me of not using my previous time wisely. I didn’t know that he needed new shoes, shorts, shirts etc. Remember, ‘are you ready?’

My son wanted to get a computer, I think that is pretty appropriate. All summer long Me: “I need some quotes on what you think you want.” My son: “OK, I am busy with (insert activity). I will do it this week.” We found one at Costco but I gave my Costco credit card to my son in Germany, we will have to wait until mom gets back from France. Mom: “The one you want is no longer in stock. What about this one?” Me: “OK, if my son wants that one”.

Literally, the day before he is leaving the computer shows up. I came upstairs from a work break and the opened box was on the table with the still wrapped computer setting on table. I knew that he was at the fair all day, so I plugged it in to make sure there was a full battery charge. But, you don’t just pick up a new laptop and go. There are updates, profile transfers, software installations that need to be done before it is ready to go. Talk about taking it to the wire.

The flight was at 6AM. Rotary said repeatedly be at the airport 3 hours early. For most people that is good advice. But, I travel a lot, including internationally. The only thing that they do differently is check passport and visa at the counter. Otherwise, it is just like any other plane ticket. Part of the reason for planning to get to the airport early is to accommodate for traffic, running late and those types of variables. Nevertheless, we went with the advice.

In order to get to the airport at 3AM, we had to leave the house at 1:30AM. This is the absolute best time to drive through a metropolitan area since traffic is little to none. It was a very short night getting back from the fair and 10:30PM. We powered through as we do but I will say that I crashed at 7PM. That was the longest I could go.

There is my son about to board the plane. You may wonder why there are no faces shown? I have pictures, but in this case, I don’t have permission to show others. He is travelling with another student to Taiwan as well. So, at least there is safety in numbers.

End Your Programming Routine: I did find out that he arrived safely. Also as I am writing, my older son is on the plane back home and we will be picking him up in a few hours. If you listened to the podcast, you would know that there was some emotion in this overall event. I have largely come to terms with that. So, back to normal? Back to the new, normal.

August 16, 2023 – They May Be the Devil But Boy, is Customer Service Good

August 16, 2023 /

We have had two pedestrians hit in the crosswalk in the last couple of months. Both of them were not caught on the doorbell camera. So, we have decided to expand our camera network. I want the doorbell camera to really be focus at someone at the door, not every motion on the street.

We are also trying two different technologies. One is solar and the other is has a hardwired kit. The trick will really be if our wi-fi will be able to reach the location that I want to put the cameras. The solar powered one I put up, the battery died after the first day. I think that it is the wi-fi and not the solar charger, but we will see. I just ordered a wifi extender today. I suppose that I should check the output of the panel as well.

Hanging the camera, I was trying to screw in the wire management clips and I knocked the camera off the mount. It fell about 12 feet into the plants and dirt. I climbed down the ladder picked it up and re-attached it to the hangar. I then went about trying to get the right angle on the camera.

Only, the app said that the camera was offline. I checked and it was connected to the Ring network. This is a wi-fi extender that we had to purchase so that our back door camera would work. If the signal is weak, the battery winds down constantly trying to connect (even when it is connected to power). But, the extender is father away than the wi-fi router so I wanted to change networks. In order to do that, I need to access the camera and hit a button.

No connection. I thought I would take the battery out (re-boot) and again, no connection. I gave up for the day and I did some research online. I couldn’t figure anything out but that they had a technical service number. I decided to give it a try, expecting the worst.

Someone answered on the third ring, not a phone tree or anything. I know a little about support and the first answer (tier 1) is usually all the triage level activities. I was asked if I had a second battery, which I have with the other camera that I have not installed yet. I tried that and no connection. The next thing she did was ask me where I purchased it and whether I wanted to return the camera or have Ring provide a replacement.

They emailed me a return label for the non-functioning camera and I had the replacement in a couple of days. Now, I did not try to hoodwink them or anything like that. I told them that I set it up and it was working until I knocked it off the mount. I wanted them to know that I caused the problem. I could have had a replacement the next day from Amazon. That being said, I did not want this camera ending up in someone else’s hands if there really was something wrong with it. I have little faith that it wouldn’t end up in the ‘warehouse’.

End Your Programming Routine: I suppose that it is a sad state of affairs when things go the way that they are supposed to go but yet pleasantly surprised. I neither like nor trust that all my data is going into Amazon’s cloud. That being said, they sure are making it easy to give it to them.

August 9, 2023 – Americans Really Are Disgusting

August 9, 2023 /

I have spent too much time buying new clothes lately. It wasn’t because I needed them but because my look needed to be right. I am speaking specifically all the activities around my renewal party that we had. For my re-proposal, I was instructed to wear a white flowing shirt with jeans, which I didn’t have. I had to get a new wardrobe to wear to the party as well.

I don’t want to make myself sound better than I am but the truth is I have gotten too fat for much of my current wardrobe. So, the reality is I have been sucking it in for the past year as well as enduring bulging shirt buttons. Getting some new cloths was a opportunity to breath a little (and get fatter). I have probably gained 30 pounds since I started working again. When I was delivering packages for Amazon, I was logging 30,000 steps a day. Now, I am sedentary and I also generally hate exercise. I like a eat and drink too.

So, gaining weight is a me problem. If I really wanted to change that, I could get serious about it and I should before it is too late. I have unfortunately always been a yo-yo person. I am not naturally skinny and I gain weight until I can’t believe where I am at and set about changing that.

But I have also spent too much time in various malls lately. I shudder when I go in. I see a lot of people wasting away their lives looking for things to buy. We colloquially call it shopping. It is not just buying things we don’t need but it is spending money we don’t have which I think is more damaging. What makes me shudder is rampant consumerism for the sake of entertainment.

I do pretty well financially, but I think about the waste and resources that it takes to make things that we buy just to make us feel good about ourselves. With the rash of visibility in homeless, I see piles of trash that just follows their movements. It makes me think that items like clothing are literally disposable. I would say that it is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that it is really valueless.

Recently, I took the whole back of the car to the donation center. Yes, it was clothes my kids outgrew and that I have no fault. But is was also unwanted bedding because the color palette changed, same with the drapery of the whole house. It was many items of clothing for whatever reason. It was decorations that were used a couple of years and now no longer have earned our fancy.

The whole thing just kind of makes me sick. I know that these organizations are cherry picking out of our donations. That means the rest of it just gets thrown away. So while we fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing something good, the net result is still the same, waste.

I suppose that I would be remiss that it is not just home goods or clothing but a lot of our lives. Our cars get too expensive to fix, appliances have dated colors, TVs are not flat enough, curved enough or large enough and don’t have places to plug in more things that aren’t flashy enough. We are so busy looking to buy things that are enough today that we only have enough time to consume things made in factories to save time so we can look to buy more things.

Clearly, we are not all going to be in a position to grow our own olive trees and make our own oil or thresh our own wheat to make flour so that we can bake our daily loaves of bread. But surely chicken fingers and diet soda is not a proper human diet. In fact, it is a diet that actually adds vitamins an minerals to deliver any sort of nutrition at all.

End Your Programming Routine: This probably warrants more work on what should be done to lesson the environmental impact and be good stewards of the land. We live in a modern world with modern convenience. We can eat world cuisine because the ingredients are available. I can purchase an entire set of clothes in 30 minutes instead of waiting days for it to be made, that’s a good thing in my book. Let’s just make wise and future thinking choices.

June 22, 2023 – Is It Really Worth It?

June 22, 2023 /

In today’s world, the cost of ammunition is astronomical compared to three years ago. I have mentioned this before, but I like to pick-up shell casings that people leave behind. Shell casings or brass is one of the four components of reloading and happens to be the single most expensive one.

The downside of range brass is that you really don’t know what you are getting. I have discovered that military brass has a primer crimp that removing adds an extra step. Imported ammunition also tends to have some variation as well. In this find, I have had at least three different casings that I have managed to pull the rim off of the shell holder causing a lot of extra work.

Once the case is stuck in the die, get ready because it is not coming out without some work. Step one is disassemble as much of the die as you can. Good luck because the parts are not separating without force. Then I have to drill out the base for a threaded tap. I tap a hole for a bolt. The bolt goes in against a stack of nuts and washers to eventually pull the stuck casing.

Even once the casing is out, there are still parts possibly stuck in the casing or the die. I have to split the casing to get those parts out or drive a punch through to get remaining parts out.

So much for free. I bent two decapping pins on trying to remove primers. Those are ten dollars a piece. You add all the extra effort for brass prep and it really seams like it is not worth the time and cost.

There may come a day when I do make that decision that it is not worth it. I am hoping that with enough experience that I can feel that something is going to happen before it actually does. Or maybe some day I will recognize headstamps that are more problematic than others. At this point, I recognize some of the ones that are working better and that is a start.

Fortunately, this is only a problem with one rifle caliber that I reload. Most hunting brass is shot on the rifle range and that is much tidier than the private bays of mostly pistol distances. Straight walled pistol cartridges are not a problem but the calibers that I shoot are no where near as common at this time.

End Your Programming Routine: I find reloading a really zen experience. It is part of the reason why I pick-up range brass because I hope that I can get enough to do another batch. That being said, I don’t like damaging or breaking parts and it certainly doesn’t help the bottom line argument. I will power through this batch and get better.

June 20, 2023 – The Rhythm of Summer

June 20, 2023 /

It seems like I never stop whining about not having time to do anything. The reason is choices of course. My choices are erroring on the side of getting stuff done and if you remember I am staining the deck? Well, that is still going on. My weekdays go like this.

  1. Wakeup and go to work.
  2. When work is completed, clean-up the mess in the kitchen and start dinner.
  3. When Dinner is completed, go outside and stain the deck.
  4. Repeat.

It is number three that has me occupied. This was something that I wanted to do last year but I ran out of weather to do it. I figured that I could do this in a couple of weeks, but I am finding that it is taking much more time than I had guessed. One, I have never worked with an oil based deck stain before. Two, I am spending an hour or two a night so not much productivity per session.

Maybe I should enlist my natural labor force (family)? I am going to talk about this in my next podcast but I actually enjoy the solitary labor. I can turn off my brain and just focus on the task at hand. It really seems like my Zen time, I look forward to it. I would love it if they would help but that would deny the summer pool parties and standing tennis practice.

Life is like being in a tide. If you are going with it then you are making double progress but if you are trying to go against it, it is a struggle. The tide is like the school year. There is the schedule when it is in session and the schedule when it is not. While I have traded the tennis matches and award ceremonies for summer jobs and personal activities, one isn’t better than the other, it is just different.

It won’t be long and summer will be over. We are more than halfway through June which means the fourth of July is over the horizon. Then I will have an exchange student for month and then my wife leaves for Europe. By the time she returns, my other son will be leaving for Taiwan. Just looking at my calendar, this is likely the only thing I will get done this year.

By no means am I saying that I am not feeling the pressure. But what I am saying is that I am enjoying my time while I can. I think that is the true rhythm of summer. It is not endless, but making the most of what there is.

End Your Programming Routine: I am cutting this relatively short due to the fact that I have to get back out to the deck. Not really but kind of. As I write this, I am on the way to getting my son to a doctor’s appointment for his Visa application to Taiwan. Despite the fact that I am in Minneapolis this week, all I can think of getting back home to keep working on getting this project finished.

June 15, 2023 – Learn Your Variables

June 15, 2023 /

We all have heard the saying that ‘ignorance is bliss’. There is also a point where you can know enough about something that there is conflicting information. What I am talking about today should not be the case.

As a trap coach, I have literally observed thousands of rounds of ammunition shot in a season. I see different equipment and I see different brands of ammunition used weekly. Traditionally, our team secures an ammunition grant which we provide to the team for practice and games. Each shooter needs to provide their own ammunition for the scored rounds.

As such, the ammunition that we use for practice we have a periodic failure to fire. I am not sure what the problem actually is. But, it has happened with nearly every shooter. We could say that there is some variable with that particular brand that is a problem.

In the great ammunition shortage that we have been in for the last couple of seasons, it has been difficult to consistently obtain shotgun shells. I participated in a bulk buy of some Italian ammunition that my kids have been shooting through. Two of the three shotguns that we have been using have shot it just fine. One was having misfires every three rounds.

This particular shotgun is what I would call my ‘back-up’. It is one that was fitted for my son on his first season as a 8th grader. He shot all fall and some into the spring with no problems. He decided to purchase his own shotgun by the end of the season and so I put it away.

Meanwhile, I bought an adjustable stock for my primary shotgun so that my younger son could shoot in the fall. I only brought out my backup because I was having problems keeping the adjustable stock tight. This is when the problems started happening with the Italian ammunition.

One coach was saying the firing pin spring, so I took it all apart. I saw nothing wrong, but I cleaned and lubricated everything and went to try again. I had the same problem. I watched some videos and again saw nothing wrong. But when I was reading problems on forums, I saw something that caught my eye, an out of tolerance chamber.

For those that don’t know, a chamber belongs to a barrel. I purchased this barrel for my backup shotgun because my shotgun only came with a fixed choke, 18″ barrel. It was not suitable for trap. And, not only that but this was an aftermarket barrel that I only paid $70 new. A factory replacement is $250, nearly the price of a new shotgun.

I surmised that the problem was this ammunition with this barrel. I took it to the range last weekend with the original barrel on it and fired five different brands of ammunition without fail. It is definitely the chamber. It seems to fire fine with certain brands of ammunition but not the stuff that I have cases of. So, now, I am not really sure what I want to do.

Clearly the best resolution would be to get a factory replacement barrel and move on. Do I really need to do this? What if I just stuck to brands of ammunition that worked consistently? And, this is a back-up shotgun, do I even need to do anything? For now, the season is mostly over and I am going to do nothing at the moment.

End Your Programming Routine: The reason that I bring this up is that you need to know the limitations of your equipment. Failures in the trap field are frustrating and embarrassing. Failures when you life is on the line are deadly. I only gained the knowledge that I did by being around a lot of different variables frequently. To solve problems, you have to start eliminating variables in a controlled manner. I feel confident that this shotgun is reliable, just not for trap with the ammunition I have and the barrel that I have.