Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader re-upped yesterday. Re-upped what you might ask? Re-upped his membership in the NRA. He’s now good for another 5 years. One of these days he’ll go and become a Life Member. But now is not the time.

Yes. Your Maximum Leader is a very proud NRA member. Indeed, your Maximum Leader believes that the NRA is one of just a handful of organizations that really care about the protection and expansion of individual liberty. It is a fine organization.

He celebrated this glorious event by going out to the range and blowing through a box of 9mm ammo. 9mm what you might ask? Well, your Maximum Leader owns a little 9mm Makarov pistol. Not a Chinese one. (Heaven forfend!) Not a Russian one either. (Although a Russian one would have been okay.) No. His is an East German model. Your Maximum Leader would be happy to photograph is pistol, but he forgot. So if you need some sort of visual aid, here you go.

Your Maximum Leader loves that little underpowered pistol. It is the only semi-automatic pistol he owns. It is likely going to be one of two semi-automatic pistols he owns. (The other being a nice Colt 1911 model. Which he will buy. Someday.)

When your Maximum Leader purchased his Makarov, it came in a box with lots of papers. He eventually found someone who read/spoke more than conversational German and discovered that his pistol had actually been issued to an East German Stasi officer. It was issued to him new in 1960-something and remained in his posession until his retirement in 1980-something. So the pistol has a little bit of (tolalitarian oppressive) history to it.

On the whole, your Maximum Leader is a revolver man. He owns a few. He owns a British Webley revolver from WWII. (38 cal - not .455.) He would like to acquire a .455 Webley at some point. He also owned a S&W .357 for a while. But eventually he sold it to a friend. His favourite revolver is his .45 Vaquero. Damn, does your Maximum Leader love that gun. It feels right in his hand. It looks good. It shoots wonderfully. It is easy to care for. It is everything you look for in a handgun.

Alas, the cylinder doesn’t seem to rotate as cleanly as it has for years. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe it is due to wear. He’s looked over the gun and can’t see anything wrong with it. So, he is going to pack it up and send it up to the good people at Ruger to take a look at it. Your Maximum Leader, while competent at basic gun care, is not a gunsmith. So he doesn’t care to go screwing around with his guns and possibly do something stupid to mess it up or render it unsafe.

Anyway… The trip to the range was fun. It felt good to shoot up the paper targets and smell a little powder in the air. But the outing did demonstrate to your Maximum Leader that he needs to go to the range more often. He wasn’t as good a shot as he once was. Practice is needed. Perhaps your Maximum Leader will resolve to go to the range regularly. (Since he does it very irregularly now.) It would be a good thing to do.

Carry on.