At first glance, the HC3R magazine looks like any other 25-rounder for Ruger 10-22. Flip it over, and the unusual structure suggests uncommon features.
These magazines can be loaded two ways. The first is like any other; the follower is held down and 25 individual cartridges inserted through the feed lips. This method is fairly slow but it works fine.
In my experience, it reliably fed a variety of ammunition profiles while shooting a 10/22.
Once the magazine has been emptied, lock the magazine follower at the bottom of the curved body, then push down on the ribbed release latch near the feed tower to free a 20-shot en block clip.
The molded raceway holds additional ammunition securely and safe from dust on the inside of the magazine.
Insert the loaded clip into the back of the magazine, then unlock the follower and lower it gently. The magazine is now ready for action. This operation can be done with the magazine still in the action.
Loading the clips can be done manually, but you can do it much more quickly by placing 20 cartridges into the clip pocket, then scooping them up with the opening of the clip. The entire process takes a couple of seconds without any risk of deforming the bullets by spring pressure. Fully loaded, an HC3R magazine holds 25 rounds ready to fire, and 20 in close reserve.
Not only is the loading process quite simple, it also provides a fairly affordable and lightweight method for carrying rimfire ammunition. MSRP for the magazine with one clip is $30, and a 5-pack of clips holding 100 rounds total runs $20 — so the total capacity for one magazine and six clips would be 145 rounds.
While the story out of Sutherland Springs is heartbreaking, more astute folks are noting that it could have been worse. After all, when the killer had completed with the carnage inside, he stepped out of the church and into the sights of a man named Stephen Willeford who lived near the First Baptist Church.
Willeford was at home when his daughter came into his bedroom to tell him she heard gunshots at the First Baptist Church nearby.
Willeford, a former NRA instructor, got his rifle out of his safe while his daughter looked outside again. She ran back in and told him she saw a man in black tactical gear shooting up the church.
“I kept hearing the shots, one after another, very rapid shots – just ‘pop pop pop pop’ and I knew every one of those shots represented someone, that it was aimed at someone, that they weren’t just random shots,” Willeford said.”
Willeford loaded his magazine and ran across the street to the church, not even taking the time to put on shoes. When Willeford saw the gunman, he exchanged gunfire.
“He saw me and I saw him,” Willeford said. “I was standing behind a pickup truck for cover.”
“I know I hit him,” Willeford said. “He got into his vehicle, and he fired another couple rounds through his side window. When the window dropped, I fired another round at him again.”
As the gunman sped away, Willeford approached a pickup truck at a stop sign.
“That guy just shot up the Baptist church. We need to stop him,” he said. Together, Willeford and the driver took off in pursuit. As they caught up to the killer’s vehicle, the truck slowed down. It then sped up eventually went off the road, flipping over into a ditch.
Willeford says he yelled out for the shooter to exit the vehicle, but he didn’t.
That’s because the 26-year-old killer had apparently taken his own life.
In the coming days, as we have seen over the hours since news of this tragedy broke, there will be those who will seek to disarm law-abiding citizens. It’s important that we remember that were it not for Stephen Willeford, the tragedy could have been worse. We’ll never know how much worse it could have been because of his bravery.
Those same voices would have disarmed Willeford. Those same voices would disarm the countless people he’s trained to respond similarly to hostile actions as an NRA instructor.
Willeford has said that he isn’t a hero, but that’s a mistake. He’s the epitome of a good guy with a gun, and that alone makes him a hero. We don’t know how many lives were saved because of his courage and decision to take his personal safety into his own hands. Because of that decision, and his willingness to stand for others, the killer was stopped.
There will be those who claim it was irrelevant, that the killer had done his business in the church, but they forget that it seems likely the church itself wasn’t his target. It was the mother-in-law who was a member there.
Who else could have died because this made has family issues?
Thanks to Stephen Willeford, we won’t actually know.
Massachusetts Enacts Bump Fire Stock Ban: Possible Life Imprisonment for Simple Possession
“Massachusetts became the first state to enact a ban on bump stocks following the mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival,” foxnews.com reports. “Republican Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito signed the bill Friday in her capacity as acting governor because Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is on vacation in California.” The bill’s penalties are beyond harsh . . .
“The provision passed by the legislature allows for excessive punishment including life imprisonment,” The Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts (GOAL) warned ahead of Polito’s signature, “with a minimum sentence of 18 months, for the mere possession of these accessories.”
The ban — tucked away in a “mini” appropriations bill — gives Bay Staters 90 days to get rid of their bump fire stocks. Not sell. Eliminate. “The legislation was passed leaving no pathway to legal ownership. It also makes it illegal for owners of these items to legally sell them,” GOAL points out. Fifth Amendment that.
Meanwhile, the bill’s supporters are busy using the immediate aftermath of its passage to trumpet the benefits of banning a device which has been used in precisely no crimes in their state.
Democratic state Rep. David Linsky, one of the first in Massachusetts to call for outlawing the devices, said it would make the state safer while respecting the rights of gun owners.
“I am proud of my colleagues in the Legislature for continuing Massachusetts’ reputation as having among the safest and most effective gun laws in the nation,” he said.
While the Nest would beat it in a beauty contest, this Sensi thermostat has most of the same smart features in a more traditional body, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.
One of the most notable of those smart features is Alexa support; if there’s an Amazon Echo in range, you can change your home’s temperature with nothing but your voice. For a limited time, you can get the Sensi and an Echo Dot for just $108, which is $71 less than buying them separately, and somewhat incredibly, $21 less than buying the thermostat by itself.
Blizzard is taking StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty‘s campaign free to play. As Polygon reports, come November 14th, you’ll have access to the entire narrative and if you already own that, you’ll get the Protoss-themed Heart of the Swarm campaign for free. The other narratives will run you $15 each. Unlike StarCraft II: Starter Edition that included free multiplayer, the adversarial mode that comes in tow here will feature ranked play — not just casual, unranked matches.
It’s a smart move, and free access to ranked multiplayer could be a boon for the StarCraft eSports scene. After all, Dota 2 and League of Legends are both free-to-play (as is Blizzard’s own Heroes of the Storm), and those are doing pretty well for themselves. Valve saw a sizable uptick in players — and money — after making the aging Team Fortress 2 free-to-play, as well.
“Darkness rises, and the Light to meet it.” A new clip for The Last Jedi brings Luke Skywalker back to the ship that started it all, but that’s not the only place we see the Millennium Falcon.
The new clip gives us plenty of new glimpses at the upcoming film, including a few surprises. We get a better look at Snoke’s throne room, as well as Finn joining in the Battle on Crait. And look, the Falcon is there too! The Last Jedi arrives December 15, and tickets are currently on sale.
Ohio State University President Michael Drake is up for his third raise and maximum bonus in as many years on the job, with trustees citing financial performance and a more hands-on role with the Wexner Medical Center following the departure of its CEO.
Trustees will vote Friday on a 2 percent raise, equal to that for faculty and staff, and the maximum 25 percent bonus of $208,000. The raise would bring his base salary to $849,000, up from $800,000 when he started in 2014.
The committee overseeing…
Ohio’s highest-paid state employees overwhelmingly are psychiatrists at the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. The agency that oversees the state’s mental health hospitals touts a Monday-through-Friday work week and competitive pay on its website for job applicants, but psychiatrists can work overtime if they choose. That’s the case for all but one of the top 18 state-employed earners in 2016, who made an average of $99,202 in overtime pay each last year.
Check out the gallery…
The most important thing to remember about caring for a climbing harness is if the construction of the harness fails, your entire safety system can fail. So take care of it. What, exactly, does that entail? Your harness’ biggest enemies are wear-and-tear and chemicals. Regularly inspect your harnesses tie-in points and belay loop, and when you notice fraying on the outside of the webbing, it’s time to buy a new harness. At not much more than $50, investing in a new harness every couple years is more than worth the money when it comes to safety. As for chemicals, don’t toss your harness into the back of a car or a pickup bed where something might have been leaking (e.g., car battery acid or gasoline), or even onto the tarmac in a parking lot. Just keep your harness clean and in a backpack whenever you’re carrying it to and from climbing, and you should be fine.
Stan Against Evil’s first season was enjoyable, but it suffered due to its undeniable similarities to Ash vs. Evil Dead.With Ash’s next season still AWOL, Stan stands alone in the cranky-old-dude-fighting-demons zone—and happily, IFC’s horror comedy has finally found its footing in season two.
I watched all of season two and I won’t spoil anything here, but all of the show’s marketing makes it very clear—as if there was ever any doubt to begin with—that Willard’s Mill Sheriff Evie Barret (Janet Varney) escapes the 17th-century clutches of evil Constable Eccles (Randall Newsome) and returns to the present day, with help from former Sheriff Stan Miller (John C. McGinley). But the cliffhanger resolution doesn’t happen right away, and the rescue plot introduces a couple of big themes for the season: time travel and alternate realities, which the show played with in last season’s time-looping finale; and Stan’s continuing grief over the loss of his wife, Claire (Susan Williams), a demon slayer who stealthily kept her husband safe in a town where every sheriff is marked for death. In learning how to rescue Evie, Stan also discovers a way he can go back in time one year to prevent his wife’s death. (It involves a pair of eyeballs plucked from a wraith… plucked-out eyeballs are another theme this season.)
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But Stan knows its strengths, and wisely devotes most of its energy to ridiculously silly monster-of-the-week episodes, which kick off with amusing glimpses into the horrible history of Willard’s Mill and then offer up mysteries guided by various monsters. This season, they include a were-pony, a demonic baby, and a smarmy game-show host. The show’s real raison d’être, of course, is the delight in watching McGinley’s salty curmudgeon react not just to random supernatural creatures, but to the world around him. Upon entering an abandoned house with mystical powers: “What the hell is this dump? Smells like an armpit’s asshole.” Directed at an old lady using a walker: “What are you looking at, punk?” An observation that only vaguely relates to his desire to visit the past: “This country ain’t been the same since Evel Knievel died.” You get the sense that McGinley and Stan creator Dana Gould have the best time ever creating Stan’s lines. They are hilarious and weird and off-putting in delightful ways, and do a lot to distract you from what appears to be the show’s biggest problem: Stan Against Evil really, really doesn’t want you to focus too much on its greater mythology.
As fans of season one will recall, the show’s whole premise starts with sinister Constable Eccles, whose witch-burning reign of terror back in the 1690s is the reason every sheriff in Willard’s Mill is destined to die a gruesome death. It makes sense—a legacy of supernatural payback aimed at the top cop, launched by witches with 400 years of built-up bad attitudes. But, Stan did a switcheroo late in season one, revealing that Eccles was the only true witch in town, and he was actually burning innocent people (mostly women) “to add to his coven,” and bolstering his eventual plan to open a portal between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
So what’s the real deal with the curse on the sheriffs? I went back and re-watched parts of season one to try and piece it together; the conclusion I came to is that Stan Against Evil doesn’t want you to scratch your head too much about this stuff. It especially doesn’t want you to wonder why a show with such a breakneck pace (season two has eight episodes that run just over 20 minutes each) would introduce such a complicated backstory in the first place, then barely explore it. The show wants you to have a good goddamn time, and on that front, it delivers with great gusto.
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And fortunately, the insane creatures and the zingy one-liners are even enough to distract nitpicky viewers (like me) from being too frustrated. Stan’s other characters get to reveal a few more layers this season—especially Evie, whose status as a divorced single mom gets addressed a lot this season, and not just by Stan the jolly sexist. (When we meet her blowhard ex-husband, Stan takes an immediate liking to him, of course.) We also see some other surprising developments, including Evie’s genuine friendship with Stan’s, ah, uniquely weird daughter Denise (Deborah Baker, Jr.), and Denise’s budding relationship with gravedigger Kevin (Gould). There’s also a new character (played by Denise Boutte) who provides an important link to Claire and her secret life as a supernatural enforcer. It’s still very much all about Stan, but at least most everyone else has things to do other than just react to his antics. There are also some very entertaining guest stars this season, including horror greats Patty McCormack (The Bad Seed herself) and Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator).
Even with all the story strides made in season two—especially the time-and-dimension traveling stuff, a clever way to expand the boundaries of a show that clearly has a pretty teeny budget—there are still a lot of similarities to Ash vs. Evil Dead, a show that has its whole backstory already locked down in a movie trilogy, as well as more money to spend on gallons of stage blood. But if Stan’s acid-tongued antihero is not yet ready to be lifted into the pantheon of horror greats alongside Ash Williams, at least he’s very nearly as fun to watch. And you should watch! Without revealing specifics, season two ends with a hell of a set-up for a potential season three.
Stan Against Evil season two kicks off today, November 1, on IFC.