First-World Problems...

Well, that's not really a problem. In fact that is just a bit of showing off! I bought a used Ruger Mark III 22/45 Lite, and that's the first target's worth.

Of course the First World Problem came before I went to the range. Field stripping is easy, and cleaning it was a breeze considering it was a used pistol. I expected it to be dirtier than it was. But reassembling was...interesting. Easier than the Mark I that I shot many years ago, but still, I can see why people don't like these pistols. Rumor has it that the newest version, the Mark IV is much easier to strip and reassemble, so there's that.

The second First World Problem was the front sight. It's one of those neat illuminated sights that sort of focus ambient light through a clear, colored tube, but the port in which I was shooting wasn't bright enough for it to glow...the light had burned out so I was left with a dark blob of a front sight.

Had the port been illuminated properly that target would have been a single ragged hole. Besides, my socks were too tight, and there was a fly buzzing around, and....

It really is amazing how marvelously modern guns and so many other things are designed and manufactured, but we still manage to bitch and moan about them. We all use amazing and complex machines every single day, and they mostly work perfectly. It's when they fail that we are shocked and surprised.

Perhaps that's why the modern-day Luddites in the AGW movement and the anti-fossil-fuel nutters are so irritating. We have a glorious life at our fingertips; filled with wondrous machines that make things amazingly comfortable and easy, so we can focus on other more pleasant and important things. But they are dead set on destroying the fruits of 3,000 years of Western culture and science and engineering and mathematics.

I say we don't let them!

posted by CBD at 02:00 PM

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