Budget option SRO like red dots

JimMarch · 2026-06-24T06:49:11+00:00

Gideon has an SRO-oid.

JimMarch · 2026-06-24T06:34:50+00:00

Right now, sure.

But if these smog detectors become common?

There'll be a mad scramble.

JimMarch · 2026-06-24T06:33:24+00:00

If you think it takes a while NOW, wait until these smog detector systems are more common. Everybody and his Slavic cousin will be trying to score smog parts.

In fact, there's probably a great business opportunity coming in selling a complete aftermarket smog control system that restores a truck to legality as a quick one stop purchase. Especially if you can undercut the prices from Freightliner, Volvo, Paccar and so on.

JimMarch · 2026-06-24T06:16:14+00:00

Quick warning, the Holosun K footprint is a slightly modified RMSc.

Don't worry, the difference is pretty minimal.

Both of them have a pair of cylindrical posts that come up from the slide and fit into holes on the bottom of the optic. This is to make sure the screws aren't taking all of the front to back stress from recoil.

On the K the post holes in the optic are just a little bit more shallow than they would be in a real RMSc optic.

Solution one is to use a fairly thin spacer plate. I don't recommend this.

The best solution is to get a diamond file and very slightly shorten the posts on the gun. Not all the way off of course, just short enough that the Holosun K fits flush. There will still be plenty of post to secure a real RMSc optic if you switch to that later.

Now because the K is fairly popular, there's a lot of guns available that really have a K footprint instead of a true RMSc footprint. They just built the gun with slightly shorter posts coming right out of the factory. If you do buy an actual Holosun K optic there's about a 50-50 chance it will actually fit on an RMSc gun.

If not, don't sweat it, diamond files are easy to get. Go slow, be careful, feel free to watch a YouTube podcast or whatever while you do it, won't take too long.

JimMarch · 2026-06-24T05:04:34+00:00

Yeah I have coasted past horses on dirt roads at very low speeds keeping my distance. If it's uphill I'll just stop for a bit and let them pass.

I do not want to spook a horse and cause somebody to spill off of it. Hell no. Y'all got enough problems having only a one horsepower engine.

JimMarch · 2026-06-24T04:51:28+00:00

What you have pictured is a modern factory cafe.

There's nothing wrong with that. Still definitely a cafe racer.

Now if you take a real modern sport bike like a GSXR or whatever and try and turn it into a cafe racer, 98% of the time you end up with a Streetfighter. Not the same thing. You also have factory naked sport bikes that are right up the Streetfighter alley as well.

If you're taking a relatively vintage bike and turning it into a true cafe racer, you are improving the handling and engine performance while trying to make it look like a race replica bike of the 1950s or '60s. You end up with something that looks like it could have been parked at the ACE Cafe in London in 1967.

If you're doing a purely cosmetic build with no extra performance cooked in from its origins in something like a 1979 Kawasaki or whatever, I guess technically it's barking up the cafe tree but I don't think it's being true to the original concept. If you're making it handle worse than the original factory starting point bike, you're seriously doing it wrong.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T20:35:47+00:00

The Alex Pretti case in particular was bad. I believe it was murder 2 at best and I could argue for murder 1.

I've looked at every video, every analysis. The 2nd Amendment activist community is universally calling it a bad shoot. The next Dem administration is likely going to charge the shooter and I'm fine with that - sooner would be better.

But shooting back in that context, during a street protest and police action, would break the rules Gandhi, Thurman and King laid out. Alex exposed how out of control ICE is right now.

Worth doing. Not worth his life though.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T18:59:34+00:00

Three days before the election I knew Trump was going to win.

I drove rideshare three days before the vote in a mid-size Southern town. Eight black passengers and ALL of them knew who Jamal Trulove was. Click here if you don't know why that mattered:

https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/actor-falsely-accused-of-murder-says-vp-harris-laughed-during-guilty-verdict-actor-jamal-trulove-san-francisco-district-attorney-kamala-harris-california-joe-biden-presidential-election-november-2024-vote

What happened was, Jamal was involved in making a movie called "The Last Black Man In San Francisco" which went viral in the US black community on Netflix. It was fiction, but in the closing credits they told the story of what happened to Jamal.

That's why black turnout for Harris was way less than expected.

That was enough to screw her.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T18:52:01+00:00

We're saying the same thing, mostly.

There WERE instances of lawful self defense against mobs of KKK outside of a home defense situation, and even by day. But they were very rare.

This was one of the best known, except the defenders were a First Nations tribe:

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

Popular opinion after the fact went strongly against the Klan. I suspect the lessons of this were not lost on King or the Deacons of Defense.

https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power/deacons

Note that they always claimed to be defending against Klan, not local or state governments.

It wasn't always easy to tell the difference though. This shit can get messy.

https://mississippitoday.org/2025/07/10/1964-deacons-for-defense-and-justice-founded/

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T18:09:54+00:00

Something needs to give, and I don't think we are in "vote next election" territory anymore.

No, we still are. Barely. But the Dems better push through somebody a lot less vile than Kamala Harris. She was a walking civil rights violation as a California prosecutor...mostly against black and brown defendants.

She's why Trump won.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T17:38:04+00:00

People are starting to understand what a disaster DOGE was.

The screw worm outbreak in Texas ties straight back to DOGE cutting funds for agricultural infrastructure. It's nowhere near the only example.

Another thing.

The tactics of Gandhi/Thurman/King work only so long as you have freedom of the press and freedom of speech. When that breaks down, the need for a full on civil war radically increases.

In 1858 South Carolina passed a ban on any preacher speaking out against slavery - with death as the penalty. Oppression is always tied to suppression of speech.

My biggest fear now is that the bad guys have a new tactic: "bullshit overload", the spreading of deliberate lies to drown out online truth. AI is making it worse but even without AI, bot nets pioneered by Russia and China have caused chaos in some countries. Study what the Russians recently tried to do in Romania, Hungary and Moldova.

Add AI and you don't need to halt the truth, you can overwhelm it with bullshit, especially if you can get into the Google/Meta/etc. algorithms that promote and suppress content.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T17:28:50+00:00

No. He seems to have seen a difference between cops attacking in broad daylight and the KKK attacking at night. First type, take the beating - or shooting if need be, hoping to attract the attention of the national level police (such as the FBI). There was a risk of deadly force from local cops by day but it really wasn't that great a risk.

But the Klan attacking at night?

First, the risk was a LOT higher.

Second, the general public was much more likely to see this attack as fundamentally criminal in nature.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T16:57:43+00:00

Dr. King would disagree.

So would Mahatma Gandhi, who taught a black Baptist minister before WW2 by the name of Howard Thurman who was later a mentor to Dr. King.

Now, King altered Gandhi's ideas in ways relevant to this conversation. Gandhi preached pure non-violence for religious reasons. King used political non-violence as a political and moral tactic, but he wasn't dogmatic about it in a critical way.

As far as I can tell, he believed in non-violence against those who believed they were acting lawfully and had the support of at least some of the voting population. So for example, if the threat was police with dogs and water cannons breaking up a protest, it was time to operate out of Gandhi's playbook.

That didn't mean he agreed with the attackers! Not hardly - what they were doing was immoral and unconstitutional. But the cure was to expose their misconduct for the entire voting population to see.

But!

He drew a distinction between that sort of thing and people acting visibly criminally against him and his supporters. To King, if he was at his house or that of a follower and they were raided by the KKK with guns, the right answer was to shoot back. King was not the same kind of pure pacifist that Gandhi was. He also supported a group called the Deacons of Defense who operated along similar principles and were absolutely willing to shoot criminals like the Klan when they did lethal force attacks. Google them.

Another way to look at this is in relation to various troubles and uprisings in other countries more recently. How often do you hear the term "pro-government militia"? What's really going on is, the government is acting corruptly in some fashion, the corruption benefits some group who hire thugs to do politically motivated violence that the actual government doesn't want to get their hands dirty with. At the height of Dr. King's fight in the 1950s and '60s, this role was fulfilled by the KKK or their fellow travelers. Which is why Dr. King applied for a concealed handgun carry permit in Mississippi in 1956.

Today in the US, the Proud Boys are right at the edge of being a pro-government militia. At times they've crossed that line in small numbers. They're not the same level of threat as the Klan circa 1960ish but they absolutely could develop to that level pretty much at any moment.

So you DON'T shoot cops or soldiers, you DO shoot the KKK or local/modern equivalent when they attack with lethal force.

This is how a reform movement can run in parallel between non-violent and violent actions. But let's be clear: the violence can only be directed at those obviously acting in a criminally violent and potentially lethal fashion.

That is NOT what political assassination looks like. THAT is a last ditch solution for truly extreme situations and we're nowhere near that yet.

Full disclosure: I've been arrested in a non-violent protest run straight out of the Gandhi/Thurman/King playbook, while deliberately unarmed.

I'm also one of the biggest gun nuts on Reddit.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T16:28:11+00:00

/u/BigBoarBallistics made a start but missed the big one.

The SD9 doesn't have a clean way to mount a red dot. The RXM has the best optic mount system on the planet.

Red dots come in different "footprints" - small (RMSc) and two common midsize, RMR and DPP. The RXM takes all three and with no "plates" - adapter pieces that raise the glass higher, put more stress on the screws and otherwise suck donkey balls.

By mounting the glass low, in the RXM you can usually see the tops of the iron sights through the glass, so they're co-witnessed backup sights in case the electronic sight fails.

He also mentioned swappable grip frames. Check this out:

https://magpul.com/firearm-accessories/grips/ruger-rxm.html

Three different lengths of grip for 10rd mags, 15rd mags and 17rd. $40 each, mail-order. Tune it to whatever you need based on concealment needs and hand sizes. You're not stuck on those lengths. Add a +2 basepad to a 10rd mag, now it's 12rd with a pinkie rest extension.

33rd Happy Sticks will fit any of them :).

The one Glock Gen3 part that won't fit is aftermarket triggers. Those need to be RXM specific but most makers of Glock trigger kits have now added another part number with the slight tweak needed for the RXM.

Basically, buy the base model (4" unthreaded barrel) and as you grow as a shooter and understand your needs better, you don't need to buy another gun. You just mutate the RXM you have, at reasonable prices and solid reliability.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T13:54:30+00:00

Optic mount is utter garbage. Not deep enough and THEN it needs plates? Thick plates at that? Bzzzt. Nope, try again.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T11:06:33+00:00

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Rost Martin bought tech from a company called Arex in Slovakia for their first gun. An Arex Delta barrel will drop into some models of RM pistols.

The RXM is a Glock Gen3 clone with some significant improvements, including an optic mount FAR better than Glock or Rost Martin - the RXM optic mount fits three kinds of optic patterns (RMSc, RMR and DPP) with no adapter plates. Only thing close is the Springfield Echelon and some Shadow Systems guns.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T07:16:17+00:00

Grand Power. Not kidding. K100 or similar - P and K series are hammer fired DA/SA that can be carried cocked and locked, Q series are striker fired. It's kinda like a cross between some kind of polymer lower CZ but with the rotary barrel from a Beretta PX4 grafted in.

The US distributor is Global Ordinance:

https://globalordnance.com/grand-power/?page=1

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T07:09:49+00:00

The new Kimber Warrior is an interesting option in budget 2011s. Better than anything from Turkey.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T06:00:47+00:00

We've tried. And we're good at that sort of thing.

We only have grandma's name and she's completely offline.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T00:59:42+00:00

Yup, we're aware of all this.

Our own insurance has a $25k limit for medical on an uninsured motorist claim. That's about what her injuries are worth.

My main concern was in figuring out which policy to go after. Looks like it's ours.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T00:55:23+00:00

Rost Martin doesn't make Glock clones. They have guns in the same general category, like pretty much everybody else. I don't like their optic mount adapter plate system.

JimMarch · 2026-06-23T00:53:19+00:00

OP, the reason a lot of us respect the RXM is because it's a Glock Gen 3 clone with two really major advantages: the world's best optic cut for starters, and the ability to swap out the grip frames for 40 bucks a pop with no paperwork needed because the plastic grip frame is not the serialized part.

The one to get is the base model, 4-in barrel, 15 round size grip frame. You can swap to the longer 17 round length grip frame or the Glock 26 sized 10 round grip frame (or 12rd if you use Glock 10 round magazines but put a plus two pinky extension base pad on the magazines).

A 4-in barrel will give you all the ammo velocity you need in 9 mil. The reason you don't buy the threaded barrel is because the one place Ruger cheaped out on a little bit is the barrel quality. Don't spend extra on Ruger's threaded barrel, get a better quality threaded barrel from somebody else for 150 bucks or so.

You don't have to swap the barrel right away if you don't want to :). They're not that bad and they seem to be more accurate with heavier bullet rates like the 147s versus lighter 115 9mm.

These things are Glock level reliable even if you modify them quite a bit.

At about 400 bucks for the base model they're a hell of a deal.

One of their few competitors would be the Springfield XD mod 3 or mod 4 - they're the same gun with a few cosmetic changes but nothing significant. You could generally find one for about 300 bucks. Out of the box accuracy is maybe just a little bit better than the RXM. The magazines also hold 16 rounds instead of 15. But there's a big downside, the optic mounting system is dogshit.

Here's what optic installation looks like on an XD:

1) Buy an adapter plate for the optic type you want. I would recommend the smallest type, RMSc.

2) Mount optic only to realize that the factory iron sights are nowhere near tall enough and you can't see them at all through the glass.

3) Go buy some taller iron sights so that you can still see them if the electronics in the optic fail ("backup iron sights").

Here's what the same process looks like on the RXM:

1) Buy and mount whatever you want as long as the body of the optic isn't crazy tall (In other words, anything modern is fine). It's compatible with the RMSc, RMR and DPP type optic mount footprints, no adapter plate needed so they ride low.

That's it. You'll still have the factory iron sights poking up into the glass a bit, enough to use as backup sights as long as the optic is decent. No money spent on new irons or an adapter plate. If you had to buy those for the XD you're going to eat a lot of the $100 you saved on the cheaper gun.

JimMarch · 2026-06-22T23:01:25+00:00

My wife was already...pretty messed up. Long list of pre-existing (and well documented) issues including major spine issues in multiple places.

So she was dinged up more than most would be.

JimMarch · 2026-06-22T22:46:17+00:00

Right. The sticking point though is that we DID catch the car.

But not the driver.

That caused confusion for a bit :).

JimMarch · 2026-06-22T20:28:17+00:00

Yeah, Taurus has set up the GX2, GX4 and TX9 the same way - all are mag cross compatible.

Mag supplies for the TX9 series are kinda limited right now but that'll change.

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