Tom Knapp in Ohio, Aftermath

As I guessed it was indeed well worth the drive to see Tom Knapp. Nearly as impressive as his skill as a shooter was his skill as a showman and salesman. Benelli is very fortunate to have him on their team.

Below is just a small sample of what I saw in the show.

Tom Knapp in Ohio

Tom Knapp the exhibition shooter for Benelli is coming to Ashland, Ohio next weekend for 3 shows at Fin Feather and Fur. I'm told there is no charge.

It should be well worth the drive to see him in person. He was recently featured on the History Channel's Extreme Marksmen and More Extreme Marksmen.

Forgive the hokey music but here's a vid up on youtube of some of his stuff.

Oldie but goodie

Here is a clip telling about Talking to the Police by Professor James Duane. Or more accurately, about why you shouldn't talk to the police. Worth a look, even if you think you'll always be innocent.

Range report

A while ago I posted the story of how my purchase of a rifle scope off ebay went horribly wrong. I did eventually get the scope I wanted from another vendor and got it attached to a shiny new rifle. So I thought I would share my results. Here are the results on my last 2 targets at 100 yard.



These were shot using a Savage Arms Model 12 Varminter Low Profile in .308 Win with an Osprey 6-24x50mm scope off a Harris bench rest bipod on a wooden bench. The ammunition was military surplus 7.62x51 NATO FMJ boat tails made in Lithuania.

Being fairly new to shooting rifles as powerful as a .308 Win, it took me most of my range time to get used to dealing with the recoil. The Savage 2 stage accutrigger system helps a lot, but it can't negate the shooter flinching in anticipation of recoil.

The point of this post is just to say again what many already know... Savage makes extremely accurate rifles. It will be some time until I can use this one to its full potential. I am very impressed with the rifle and the scope. I'm sure there are better scopes in existence, but for the price I think you would have a hard time beating the Osprey.

Memorial Day Fun

A bit of a repeat, but Tannerite never seems to grow old.

Gregory J Knox for President!

Wow, I just got done reading a letter from Gregory Knox, an automotive parts supplier in Ohio, addressed to General Motors. It was a breath of fresh air. It was inspiring, much like Ronald Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" speech. There may still be hope.

I keep hearing on the news that Rush Limbaugh may be "the voice" of the new republican party. This saddens me. If the Republican party is going to survive, if is going to matter, they don't need Rush Limbaugh. They need people like Gregory Knox. We need a party that does not exist to just to oppose the Democrats and protect the rich. We need a party that promotes moral and financial responsibility at all levels and protects all of our personal rights. Allow people to profit from wise and correct choices and to learn from poor ones. Allow every choice to make this country stronger and better.

How did we get into this mess?

Here's a good visualization of the credit crisis.

http://www.crisisofcredit.com/

Or on YouTube in 2 parts:
Part 1
Part 2

The YouTube version seems to load more reliably.

The Forest Grows

CNN has recently reported that with soon-to-be-President Obama's 800 billion dollar stimulus package the total cost of America's economic bailout will likely reach 8 trillion dollars. Using the calculations from my last post that would be 143 square miles of money tree forest.

To put that in perspective, that could be a forest 2 miles wide and more than 70 miles long of dense money trees. You could start out on edge of the forest in the early morning and run until the sun goes down never seeing beyond the forest.

Again, the forest in red:

If money grew on trees...

2008 has been a rough year for the US financial system. Our political leaders have been trying everything they can think of restore our crippled economy. Primarily their efforts have involved the government loaning or giving away lots of money it does not have. Some of the more conservative estimates say the cost of various bailouts is now 1.2 trillion dollars with some saying at high as 7.7 trillion (let's not think about that number). 1.2 trillion is a very big number. It is so big it is hard to wrap the mind around. This got me thinking.

If money grew on trees, how big a forest would be necessary to save us?

Let us assume a money tree is about the size of good sized sugar maple and that each leaf is a 1 dollar bill. Let us also assume that an adult tree has about 200,000 leaves. Figuring that a large tree needs about 10 feet of spacing we can fit 436 large money trees per acre. That's 87.2 million dollars per an acre of money tree forest. So to come up with the 1.2 trillion dollars that have been used too keep our economy afloat so far, the government would need to harvest every leaf from every tree in 13,761 acres or 21.5 square miles of lush money tree forest.

As a visual aid. Imagine our money forest is the red area sitting on top of one of Northeast Ohio's largest parks.



I'll let you draw your own conclusions.