An Impressive Shield On A S&W Shield:

I think that 'RED DOT' optical sights are great on a range gun .. no question about it .. they work for folk that like them.

BUT - while it doesn't matter squat what drain-pipe size tube you mount on a competition target or race-gun .. AND if the light goes out of your life while you are next to the range officer - you'll have an opportunity later to get a spare battery out of your gear-bag and replace it eh.

One shooting mate fits "optics" to just about everything that he owns - which goes some way to explain that odd bulge in his track pants - but he does hit very small groups on very small targets way down range while I'm hammering away "open sighted" at a big target card at around 7 meters (twenty-three feet).

Things may be changing: - I just watched this impressive video from Sootch00 ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bk6DT-y2Ik

That 'Shield' sight is very interesting .. almost practical looking .. & so it seems is that 4 inch S&W M&P Shield pistol..

I'd just about consider fitting something as low and compact as that onto my target shooting Glock 19X if the gubbings were available - but this outfit is actually ENGLISH made and their stuff will certainly be a bit pricey down here in godz own.

Warning: While their sights may be the gear .. their SITE is awful slow & I ran out of patience with it twice:  https://www.shieldpsd.com/

.. So sometimes things can get better and there is a little progress:

Marty K.

 House Elves can show good judgement

Up The Arsenal:

The Arsenal Football Club has been in the Highberry & Islington district of North London since 1913 .. but they originated centuries earlier in Woolwich - South of the river (THAMES of course).

Nobody wanted them in North London but there was no affordable space for the team to set up in Battersea or Harringay so there you are .. pushed up north. The football team was founded as DIAL SQUARE in 1886 by munitions workers at Woolwich Royal Arsenal - who'd been there since 1651 when they'd started proving cannon on the Tudor 'Tower Place' land that was used as a domestic rabbit warren.

Raised earthen " Proof Butts" were constructed there and the land was bought and then sold to the Ordnance Board in 1671 by one Sir William Pritchard ..a  thousand cannon and ten thousand cannon balls were moved to the site known as The Warren - saltpetre was refined there for the manufacture of gunpowder up till 1694.

Cannon Balls Stacked At Woolwich Arsenal 1795.

The Brass Cannon Foundry was built 1717 and the completed guns were moved through the DIAL ARCHWAY  into a small courtyard for washing & engraving then shifted to a warehouse for mounting on carriages.

The Royal Brass Foundry Built 1717

After A Previous Foundry At Moorfields Blew Up.

A Woolwich 'One & a Half Pounder' Bronze Cannon.

The Royal Brass Foundry was renamed the Royal Gun Factory in 1865. At it's peak development during the First world War - the arsenal extended over 1,300 acres. 

4.6 inch Bore Woolwich Coehorn Morter

- During WWII the munitions/ordnance factories suffered from extensive blitz bombings. - The Arsenal finally closed as a military establishment in 1994 and has since been massively developed as residential housing & commercial recreational leisure space and museums.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Arsenal

Gatehouse.

Marty K.

Nowhere Near The Arsenal - This Is Highbury for Football.

New NZ Defence Spending:

Defence Minister Ron Mark has announced $18.6 Million is to be spent on land transport vehicles ..

including x43 MPVs Medium Protected Vehicle and a number of Polaris MRZR All Terrain vehicles:

Iveco MPV

Polaris MRZR-4

Both transport types can mount & deploy machine guns and grenade launchers as required .. in a similar manner to those Toyota 4wd.s used throughout various conflict zones.

The Polaris comes with a petrol engine or a diesel powered extended range option as here.

The Defence Capability Plan announced earlier outlined $20 BILLION spending for the next decade.

Marty K.

AMMUNITION PROHIBITIONS & Boycott:

Charles Cunningham BOYCOTT bought a Commission into the British Army for 450 Pounds aged 18 in 1850 and served for a short time in Ireland before "retiring" and becoming a farmer and then later a 'land agent' for absentee landowner Lord Erne in the West of Ireland.

Boycott's (Erne's) tenants came into dispute over rent payments following failed crops in 1880 - and organized a total withdrawal of labor and services against Boycott when he started to evict them - isolating him within the community .. refusing to harvest his crops and stopped the local shops from serving his needs.

Fifty Protestant Orangemen from the North volunteered in an armed military expedition, guarded by a regiment of the 19th Royal Hussars and over 1,000 Royal Irish Constables & traveled by train to harvest some 500 pounds worth of crops at a cost exceeding 10,000 pounds.

Boycott permanently left Mayo and Ireland before Christmas 1880 in a storm of newspaper publicity - no driver could be found to drive his carriage so his family and a local magistrate left for England in an army ambulance .. and his name BOYCOTT was chosen by a Father John O'Malley to replace "OSTRACISM" and became coined as a word to mean "taboo, intimidate, isolate, excommunicate" and to refuse to co-operate.

______________________

Arms (Prohibited Ammunition) Order 2019

This order comes into force on 21 June 2019.

ScheduleAmmunition declared prohibited ammunition

Ammunition		Description
Tracer ammunition		Projectiles containing an element that enables the trajectory of the projectiles to be observed
Enhanced-penetration ammunition		Projectiles that have a steel or tungsten carbide penetrator intended to achieve better penetration
Armour-piercing ammunition		Projectiles intended to penetrate or perforate armour plate and ceramic armours, typically achieved through the use of hardened or specialised core materials
Incendiary ammunition (excluding flares for flare guns)		Projectiles designed to provide an incendiary effect on impact with the target
Explosive ammunition		Projectiles containing a high-explosive charge that detonates on impact with or in close proximity to the target
Multi-purpose ammunition		Armour-piercing incendiary ammunition in which the incendiary compound is replaced by a high-explosive charge to provide a blast, fragmentation, and incendiary effect as well as an armour-piercing effect
Discarding-sabot ammunition (excluding shotgun cartridges)		Small-diameter projectiles designed to pierce armour that are placed into a supporting plug (a sabot) and then pushed down the bore as an assembly; the sabot is stripped off when the assembly leaves the barrel
Multi-projectile ammunition (excluding shotgun ammunition)		Ammunition that has the ability to fire multiple projectiles in a single shot (for example, duplex ammunition)
Chemical or biological carrier ammunition (excluding projectiles for any device designed and intended solely for any medical, surgical, veterinary, scientific, agricultural, industrial, or other similar lawful purpose)		Projectiles that have the ability to carry a chemical or biological agent
Flechettes (excluding projectiles designed and intended solely for any bolt gun, stud gun, humane killer, deer net gun, nail gun, or a pistol that is part of rocket-throwing or line-throwing equipment)		Lightweight, fin-stabilised projectiles, fired from a sabot, with an aerodynamic shape and small frontal area to minimise air resistance

___________________

- So our administration is continuing to add items to the "semi-autos" BAN list.

My guess is that by now most fee paying New Zealand Licensed Firearms users & collectors are now made into criminals.

Marty K.

Military Eugenics - The Potsdam Giants:

I'm unsure where I'm going with this one .. I was looking at 'Baltic amber' - which I rather like ( OK, call me a 'girl's blouse') when I saw mention of Giant Royal Guards being gifted in return for the 'Amber Room'.

In 1675 yet another "Royal" fruit & nutcase was enjoying his privilege & wealth - combined with his man-love - to collect a special body of  tall lads .. "Lange Keris" as his Prussian Regiment of Guards was sometimes called. I don't want to use his name but Frederick William I  did have some military training and did actually manage some improvements in training regimes and equipment. Link:

https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/history-of-war/the-potsdam-giants-how-the-king-of-prussia-bred-an-army-of-super-soldiers/
I suppose - in their defense - the European 'snobs & nobs' & royalty were an inbred and sickly lot (still are) who were supported in their indulgences by equally mendacious, venal & corruptly vicious underlings - hangers-on who would hope to thrive by supporting their masters whims and fetishes (still do).

This Irish-man James Kirkland at nearly 7 foot 2 inches was a favorite in in this impressive-pretty-big-boys-on-display-army .. one of many such press-ganged to parade through Frederick William I's bedroom whenever he was in need. - Fred liked to "drill" and paint his men every day.

There was some advantage for musket men being tall (as opposed to short) for speed at reloading and ramming but selecting above average super long shanks included guys suffering from GIGANTISM who would not necessarily make great fighting men due to skeletal and heart issues.

The British "royal" Guards Regiments used to be selected with a minimum height requirement and received two weeks extra training at parade work and drilling - my Dad volunteered-out into the WWII Commandos "in order to get away from the Irish Guards poofy English Public School Officers."

Personally - the hardest fighting men I've ever known were tough little blokes such as the Gurkhas who'd have presented a smaller target to projectiles and would have kept on going all day.

Prussian Frederick I and all the other royal dynasties - like Queen Victoria's nine kids - were cross-bred with the other European "Greats" - "Terribles" - and likely Mad-monks .. a crazed dynasty of Carlos II, Charles VI, Ferdinand I of Austria, George I, & George III.

 The Romanovs - sadly missed by the Russian serfs - had some of their executed remains identified in recent years by using genetic samples from the Queen Elizabeth II of New Zealand's husband Philip Battenberg-Mountbatten Slesvig-Holsten-Sønderborg-Glücksborg.

Marty K.

GUN FREE ZONE Murders:

I know that "anti-gunners" are mostly kind-hearted & well intended souls who emotionally seek the best for society.

I also understand that emotional beliefs are seldom changed or reversed by FACTS.

While Geology & Science both clearly prove that there is no Hell beneath our feet .. nor any Heavenly Paradise above our heads .. many millions of Judeo-Christian based believers remain steadfast deniers of fact.

The banning and restricting of possession by law abiding citizen of legal firearms is a policy that leads directly to the deaths of defenseless innocent lives.

FULL STOP.

Marty K.

Van Gogh Revolver Sells Well At Auction:

The "Van Gogh" revolver just sold in a Paris Auction fetched 162,500 euros .. that's around $182,00 for a rusted and bent old gun best described as being in "relic condition".

The gun's provenance is somewhat disputed - even if it is the actual pistol involved .. as perhaps he didn’t shoot himself in July 1890, but maybe was shot accidentally during a tussle with 16-year-old René Secrétan, who was spending the summer in the village. - Vincent may have been covering for the young man and his brother .. but certainly it would be an unusual and a very difficult contortion for a revolver suicide to self aim at his own chest area rather than the head.

It is also possible that the famous excised ear may actually have been cut-off by Vincent's artist mate Gauguin in another earlier brawl.

A similar Lefaucheux revolver used by poet Paul Verlaine to try to kill his lover Arthur Rimbaud in 1873 was sold at auction in Paris in 2016, brought 434,500 euros ($708,000) - so this one was cheap .. a queer bunch these artistic types eh.

Not This Fine Example ..

.. But This Rusty Wreck - Sold For 162,500 Euros.

- The price for this unusable old relic is interesting - as our New Zealand Government is currently suggesting they will pay only 25% of the wholesale cost of older worn firearms in their enforced "BUY-BACK SCHEME".

I always thought that Government administrations and their law enforcement departments were meant to be fair, truthful and honest .. apparently not,

Vincent Van Gogh - Painting Sunflowers .. As Painted By Gauguin.

Link to my earlier April story: https://flicense.blogspot.com/2019/04/vincent-van-goghs-7mm-lefaucheux.html

Marty K.