Monthly Archives: July 2007

Kim, Caleb, and ladybugs

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When Kim was in the Kindergarten we were living in Sandpoint, Idaho. She would take her backpack with ladybug marking on it to school to carry her books and stuff. There was this older boy, a Fourth grader, that made fun of her about the ladybug backpack. The next year we moved to Moscow and Kim didn’t have to deal with him anymore.

Kim graduated from Moscow High School and a year or so later moved to Coeur d’Alene Idaho. Shortly after arriving she was introduced to Caleb by a friend of hers. They talked and talked and discovered they both went to grade school at the same time in Sandpoint. They figured out that it was Caleb who teased Kim about her ladybug backpack. Kim and Caleb were married on Saturday.

For one of our wedding presents we gave them a set of a ladybug suitcase, a ladybug backpack, and a small ladybug backpack. Before the boat upon which the wedding ceremony took place left the dock a ladybug landed near one of the bouquets. I got a picture of it before it flew away:

I’ll be posting some more pictures from the wedding soon. Watch for more ladybug pictures.

Quote of the day–Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser

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The burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra. To bear that burden would be at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that have imposed stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world.

Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser
Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2007.
[The answer to Just One Question is no.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Alan Korwin

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The AP’s apparent love, and frequent use of the word “czar,” is an affront to the entire American public.

A czar is a merciless dictator, not subject to the will of the people, operating ruthlessly in pre-Communist Russia.

The suggestion by the AP and their hopelessly anti-freedom unthinking lapdog followers in the lamestream media, that the U.S. has a drug “czar,” and education “czar,” a fiscal policy “czar,” and numerous other czars has gotten the public and officials to accept the word, without realizing just how brainwashed they have become.

Even if some twisted politician somewhere was the first to apply the word in some unknown circumstance, a proper reporter would say, in effect, “Although politician X called the new bureaucrat a ‘czar,’ the salaried government worker is actually only a mere employee, subject to reprimand, dismissal and the rule of law.”

Alan Korwin
May 18, 2007
Czars Overrunning America
[I recall a time when they were called “public servants“. It perplexes me that somehow they became Czar’s. Was there a servant rebellion that someone forgot to tell me about?–Joe]

Oh, The Horror! Make it Stop!

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The truth is melting my face!

I trust that most of you read Thomas Sowell regularly, but in case you haven’t seen this one…

Too many Americans today are not only unconcerned about what it will take to preserve this country but are busy dismantling the things that make it America.

He brings several points together to make a very good, large one.

The challenge for us the readers is to trick some leftists into reading his column.  Be careful though; it could be regarded by some as cruel and unusual punishment.

An answer for Just One Question

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The question. The answer is no. From the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

[sarcasm] I wonder if the main stream media will report on this? [/sarcasm]

Here is a sample:

There is no social benefit in decreasing the availability of guns if the result is to increase the use of other means of suicide and murder, resulting in more or less the same amount of death. Elementary as this point is, proponents of the more guns equal more death mantra seem oblivious to it. One study asserts that Americans are more likely to be shot to death than people in the world’s other 35 wealthier nations. While this is literally true, it is irrelevant-except, perhaps to people terrified not of death per se but just death by gunshot. A fact that should be of greater concern–but which the study fails to mention–is that per capita murder overall is only half as frequent in the United States as in several other nations where gun murder is rarer, but murder by strangling, stabbing, or beating is much more frequent.

Stupid engineer

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The guy that drove the Jeep into the airport then tried to blow it up wasn’t a medical doctor as was originally reported:

THE terror suspect critically ill in a hospital burns unit is an engineer with the skills to make the explosives used in the Glasgow and London attacks.

It has emerged that Kafeel Ahmed, who allegedly drove the Jeep into a Glasgow Airport terminal last Saturday, is a doctor of engineering, not medicine.

Police believe he may have made the two bombs found in vehicles in London, as well as the one in the foiled Glasgow attack.

Ahmed, 28, who was previously thought to be called Khalid, has a masters degree in aeronautical engineering and a doctorate in computational fluid dynamics, a highly specialised subject in which computers are used to simulate the flow of fluids and gases.

The bombs from London and Glasgow consisted of gas cylinders, petrol and a detonating system using mobile phones.

Aeronautical engineering isn’t normally about making explosives for bombs–although occasionally that is the inadvertent outcome. But still one would think a good engineer would be able to make something work and would also know enough to do some tests. But it could be he didn’t have any practical experience. Schneier called it Terrorist Special Olympics in the UK.

As Ry and I discovered some things that you think would be incredibly easy are not. For example, we spent a couple years, off and on, before we came up with a exploding fireball target that worked. See Project Fireball for both our successes and our failures. And even with all our experiments we occasionally change “some little thing” and we get a failure. As Ry puts it, “We don’t have enough columns on the spreadsheet.” I recently purchased some ammonium nitrate from a new supplier. The old stuff was fertilizer grade material which took us a couple years of tweaking our recipe, containers, and procedures before we got reliable detonations at Boomershoot. The new stuff is explosive grade. We will do extensive tests and probably make some changes before trusting it for an actual event.

I think it’s Hollywood that changes our expectations of both the ease and the effect of explosives. In the recent U.K. cases we can probably thank Hollywood as well as a stupid engineer for the failures of the terrorist bombs.

Understanding the problem–with the mainstream media

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I have been exchanging email with Omie and Geoff over the last few days related to the article in the Daily News they collaborated on. The focus of the article was fully automatic firearms as they related to the recent high profile shooting at the courthouse which resulted in the death of a Moscow police officer and two other innocents. It was the belief for several weeks that one of the firearms was illegally converted from a semi-automatic to a full automatic. About two days after Omie and Geoff’s article came out a different paper, the Lewiston Morning Tribune, reported there were no fully automatic firearms involved in the shooting. I can’t imagine why it took weeks for law enforcement to make that determination but that is a different story.

I sent email to both Omie and Geoff after reading the article in the other paper. They had not been aware of the recent development until I pointed it out to them. I requested their permission to post our email exchanges but they both declined. My latest response to Omie closely relates to some recent posts of Lyle’s and mine and Lyle encouraged me to post my email here. I had been planning to do that but just hadn’t gotten around to it. I’m doing that now in the hopes it will help others in dealing with the bias against gun owners in terms than can be expressed constructively to those with the bias.

The first sentence is in response to Omie’s request not to post her email to me on this blog. The second paragraph can be understood a little better if you know that it was not her intent to have the article be hostile to gun owners of any type. I believe that is true.

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007
To: ‘Omie Drawhorn’
Subject: RE: Hamilton’s gun

 

I understand and will respect that.

 

My impression of the article was as you describe your intent. But things like “More restrictions or better enforcement could be key to questions about weapons” and even the assignment of “fully automatic” firearms allowed me to read additional things (rightly or wrongly) into the editorial mindset of the paper. As my friend Lyle pointed in a blog posting (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/07/04/same-template-different-story/) yesterday the type of weapons is really the wrong focus for a follow-up article. Better would have been what went right, wrong, and what could be done differently in regards to the response and preparation for, what law enforcement calls, an “active shooter”. For example, was Newbill wearing body armor? If so was it inadequate or irrelevant because of the shot placement? Should Hamilton have been in jail for previous crimes but was let out early for some reason? Did the responding officers follow their training for the information they had available to them at the time? If so could there have been better training that would have improved the outcome?

 

If the focus is on the gun then it seems to me someone has a solution in mind before they have a clear statement of the problem (see also this blog posting of mine from this morning: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/07/05/understanding-the-problem/).

 

As an engineer I solve problems. One of the most common errors inexperienced engineers make is they jump to the solution before they have a good statement of the problem. The implied problem statement of the newspaper article was:

 

A criminal had a fully automatic firearm.

 

My statement of the problem would be something like:

 

A criminal with firearms attacked a building with people in it and responding law enforcement officers and private citizens were injured and killed.

 

The solutions problem solvers arrive at for the two different problem statements will be drastically different.

 

Is this making sense to you? I’m getting into “engineer talk” and worry non-engineers won’t see what I view as critical differences.

 

 

-joe-

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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In his article, Westen proudly displays his passport from Bizarroland, a place superficially similar to planet Earth, but where drooling idiots with hearts full of hate run amok absent guidance from their spiritual and intellectual betters in politics and academe.

…

I was waiting for the lizardoids to show up around paragraph seven or so and symbolically rape Gaia while carrying off Al Gore to be a slave on their homeworld, Karlrovia.

Tamara K.
July 5, 2007
*sniff* It’s a thing of beauty.
[And so is Tam’s snark a thing of beauty. I find myself quite pleased at all the attention given to The Gun Guy (Gonzo) email and the book and article by Drew Weston which was the basis of Gonzo’s claim that emotion is what wins gun control arguments–not facts and logic. Here is a quick, perhaps partial, list of the chain of postings Gonzo’s email triggered:

And from looking at my log files I see where Gonzo himself visited to see where I quoted him. The web is a wonderful thing.–Joe]

Understanding the problem.

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As a young engineer one of the most profound things every told to me was by my boss, Ken M.  Ken told me “You need to understand the problem before you can solve it.” This is far more deep a statement than one might first realize. There is a strong tendency for people to advocate solutions rather solve problems. Examples my readers will immediately recognize include:

  • Gun control: The anti-gun bigot push the solution then justify it by claiming will prevent crime. By doing this they “overlook” the possibility that guns in the hands of private citizens might reduce crime. The problem is criminals, not guns.
  • National ID cards: The anti-freedom bigots push this solution claiming requiring ID for nearly every financial transaction, entry/exit from buildings, and checkpoints on streets and roads will make us safer. By doing this they overlook the fact that in the last century governments have killed far more of their own citizens than terrorists and criminals. ID cards and checkpoints have always been a tool of the tyrants. The problem is our safety is more at risk from tyrannical governments than it is from small groups and individuals.

 I don’t believe most people really understand the problem of terrorist attacks. Here is a hint:

With doctors in custody over attempted terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow, British police have now discovered a group of 45 Muslim doctors threatened an attack in the U.S. with car bombs and rocket grenades.

The threat was found in an Internet chat room run by Younis Tsouli, 23, of London, one of three members of a “cyber-terrorist” gang, according to the Daily Telegraph of London.

One message read: “We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America.

“The first target which will be penetrated by nine brothers is the naval base which gives shelter to the ship Kennedy.”

The reference apparently is to the USS John F. Kennedy and its home port, the Mayport Naval Base in Jacksonville, Fla., the Telegraph said.

The message discussed targets at the base, including gasoline tanks and “clubs for naked women.” 

It also referred to using six Chevrolet GT vehicles and three fishing boats to carry out the attacks.

I’d like a response on this from those who say we just need to contain them or that Christian extremists are just as bad.

Same Template, Different Story?

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Reading Joe’s recent post got me thinking.  Every time there’s a shooting, we see reports on the type of firearm used, its features, where it may have been obtained, and what gun laws might “prevent this sort of thing” in the future.  Given that criminals by definition don’t obey gun laws, and that this sort of thing isn’t going to be prevented by more Prohibitions, what sort of reporting might actually benefit the consumers of news reports?  Newsies: I’m asking you to think outside the usual story templates.

News pieces on the firearm models and types used in a particular crime are unhelpful, mostly because they’re useless unless you’re pushing an anti-gun agenda (one exception might be the LA bank robbery, in which police responded to a rifle fight with nothing but pistols and shotguns. There the types of weapons involved were actually relevant to the response tactics) and also because the reporting is typically done by people who know next to nothing about firearms (believe me, Newsies, it shows.  It really, really shows).  I submit that the public could benefit more from reports on exactly what happened from minute to minute, once all the hysteria has died down and the evidence has been evaluated.  Interview police and citizen defense trainers on what responses would be most appropriate, how the police view the role of the armed citizen, and so on.  Then we may be better able to respond to an incident more appropriately, or to stay out of it entirely when needed.

For certain, I think its a bad idea to grab a gun and run head-on toward the sound of gunfire.  Stealth, People.  Also consider the fact that it may be impossible to know friend from foe when there are armed citizens in the same area as armed criminals.  Start a discussion on when to stay out of the way, or, if presented an easy shot on a hostile target, when to take it, where to get the training and equipment, what would the police chief or sheriff’s department would want you to do?  You might let us know where to sign up for a local gun club, range development plan or self-defense course, and so on.  “Public Interest” in other words, could be served by some far more diverse reporting.

Enabler of death and evil

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My previous post, Quote of the Day–The Gun Guys, about anti-gun bigots demanding people use emotion to win arguments and their agenda in legislatures, deserves more attention. His email was inspired by Despite Large Majorities, Democrats Are Chicken on Gun Control by Drew Westen.

Weston claims people are at their most basic and inescapable level not logical. I’ll grant that he is not but nearly everything he says just does not compute with me. I associate him and his viewpoints with death and evil. I associate great emotion with the great evils of the world. Every genocide, the burning of “witches”, the war against us by Islamic extremists, racism, domestic abuse–the list is almost endless. Strong emotions and the exclusion of facts and logic have played a huge role in the killings of millions of innocent people. To endorse emotion as a means of “finding your moral compass” as Weston apparently endorses is flat out wrong.

Reading this article was about as pleasant as shoveling fresh cow manure out of a unventilated barn on a hot day (I’ve actually done this–it’s not for people with weak stomachs). Weston has the gall to claim facts are unimportant. Emotion is what is important and he claims this as a fact. There is no hypocrisy in his world view is there?

I was going to just ignore Weston’s factual errors in regards to gun laws but I can’t. Weston’s tries to convince us with facts and logic that facts and logic aren’t important. But he is so careless with facts that even if we were to overlook his hypocritical argument we just can’t trust him. Each time he erroneously states a “fact” it’s like he just broke out another window on his airplane. His argument is so drafty that no reasonable person could tolerate the ride even if his plane could get off the ground.

Here is a sample of the factual errors:

  • The Brady Act restricted the sale of “assault weapons” — Wrong. It was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act passed in 1994.
  • The Brady Act caused 100,000 felons to loose their right to bear arms — Wrong. Convicted felons had that right infringed in 1968 with GCA68.
  • Hunters have a right to own firearms — The right to own firearms has nothing to do with hunting.
  • The National Rifle Association supports semiautomatics for felons — Wrong.
  • The National Rifle Association supports unrestricted access to automatic weapons — Wrong.
  • There exists some set of firearms “designed for no other purpose than to take another person’s life” — I suppose it’s possible but I’ve never seen or heard of such a gun.

I will grant Weston has a point in that emotion is a “card” politicians can and do play with great effect regardless of the facts and logic of reality. But this is not the way it should be. Emotions should be used by politicians to gain support for that which is true and logical. The “dispassionate mind”, which Weston apparently despises, should be the beginnings of any endeavor which has the luxury of at least a small amount of time devoted to planning. From the basis of what is true and good one can build up a web of logic and reach conclusions that will resonate and create passion. One should not start and end with conclusions and passion. To do that is to invite error into our thinking and that is why I see Weston and his ilk as enablers of death and evil.

Quote of the day–The Gun Guys

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Emotion is what wins arguments, and there is a tremendous amount of emotion among those fighting to reduce gun violence — there always is when someone gets hurt or must go through the tragedies that we experience in this country as a result of gun violence.

…

That is important emotion, and it will do more for the argument for stronger gun laws than any facts or figures ever will.

…

We have to show legislators the human side of this issue, too, and force them to base their own decisions and policies off of that emotion…

The Gun Guys (actually the paid anti-gun, anti-freedom, activist Gonzo)
Email from June 26, 2007
[There you have it. Just what we have been saying for years. The facts don’t really matter. What matters is emotion. They know the facts don’t support their agenda. The number of innocents dead, wounded, raped, and robbed is irrelevant as long as someone feels good about removing the tools of self defense from those victims. And they need to force legislators to base their decisions off of that same sick mindset.–Joe]

OSHA wants to get involved

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From the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) we get this warning:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the government agency charged with assuring the safety and health of America’s workers, is proposing a regulatory rule affecting the manufacturing, transportation and storage of small arms ammunition, primers and smokeless propellants.

As written, the proposed rule would force the closure of nearly all ammunition manufacturers and force the cost of small arms ammunition to skyrocket beyond what the market could bear—essentially collapsing our industry. This is not an exaggeration. The cost to comply with the proposed rule for the ammunition industry, including manufacturer, wholesale distributors and retailers, will be massive and easily exceed $100 million. For example, ammunition and smokeless propellant manufacturers would have to shut down and evacuate a factory when a thunderstorm approached and customers would not be allowed within 50 feet of any ammunition (displayed or otherwise stored) without first being searched for matches or lighters.

There is something you can do to stop this:

Click here for a template letter. If you choose to draft your own letter, the reference line must read as follows:

RE: Docket No. OSHA–2007–0032
Request to Extend Public Comment Period and Request for Hearing on “Significant Regulatory Action” as Defined in Executive Order 12866

Please fax the letter to: 202-693-1648 (include the docket number and Department of Labor/OSHA on the cover sheet and in the reference section of your letter).

Please e-mail the letter by visiting: http://www.regulations.gov and following the submission instructions.

I don’t have the time to read it right now but I wonder if OSHA is proposing something to the effect that I will have to move my reloading bench out to the Taj Mahal or a similar facility. It would be a pain but I could do it. Expect people to set up storage businesses catering to reloaders if such a thing comes about. It’s total BS of course so we need to do our best to stop this now rather than just mitigate the damage once they get such an oppressive regulation in place.

Semi-auto/full-auto what does it matter?

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Last week I took a reporter (Omie) and photographer (Geoff) for the Daily News to the range. Full automatic firearms was the topic. I didn’t have any but I showed them an AR-15 and taught them to shoot it. Omie told me one of the firearms used by Jason Hamilton a few weeks ago was converted from semi-auto to full-auto. I was skeptical but hadn’t really stayed up on the topic. It’s non-trivial to do the conversion and generally you don’t expect losers like Hamilton to have the brain-power and/or strength of will to follow through on something like that.

At least from the editorial standpoint it was pretty clear to me the article was intended to be a hit-piece on owners of machine guns with undercurrents of hostility toward owners of semi-auto firearms. It now turns out both the firearms used by Hamilton were semi-auto. From the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Gun in Moscow shooting was a semiautomatic

July 2, 2007, 11:04 am

MOSCOW — The AK-47 Jason Hamilton used in his May 19-20 shooting spree is semiautomatic, not fully automatic as was earlier reported by officials investigating the case.

Sgt. Ed Westbrook with the Idaho State Police confirmed Monday that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has determined the gun is a semiauto, which fires one bullet with each trigger pull.

Westbrood said he didn’t know how the AK-47 was initially thought to be fully automatic, which would keep firing as long as the trigger is depressed.

Hamilton used that gun and a semiautomatic Springfield M1A rifle to assault the Latah County Courthouse late in the evening on May 19, firing nearly 200 rounds. He killed Moscow police officer Lee Newbill and church caretaker Paul Bauer before killing himself early in the morning of May 20.

Hamilton had also killed his wife at their home east of Moscow before driving to town to start his shooting spree.

I’m wondering if the Daily News will now publish a correction on their article from Saturday. The entire premise of their article was based on a falsehood. I just wish I knew when the ATF released the info on the gun in question. Did the Daily News have access to that prior to publishing the hit-piece? Of course if they did know that it would probably have just changed the focus from a hit piece on full-auto to a hit-piece on semi-auto firearms. But it would have also completely changed my discussion and interaction with Omie and Geoff.

More testing

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It looks like Ry and I have some more testing to do. We just make fireballs when we could make fuel-air explosives. We’ve known about F-A explosives for a long time but it’s a much tougher problem than the fireballs. You need some very good timing on the second explosive charge.

Maybe someday–certainly not for this 4th of July.

Photo ID not needed to fly

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Airport “security” is all “security theater”. It is all for show and doesn’t really make us any safer. But it does make some people feel better. They really should investigate some alternatives but the sheeple would whimper and cry for mommy to protect them or something. And so as part of this show they made a big deal of requiring government issued photo ID before you could fly on a commerical flight. As if that made a difference somehow. Well… they’ve quietly backed off on that requirement:

Turns out there is no requirement that you produce a photo ID when you travel on a commercial airplane.

Originally, the TSA’s Web site stated, “You must present a Boarding Pass and a Photo ID to get to the checkpoint and to your gate.”

The latest TSA Web site language, however, states: “We encourage each adult traveler to keep his/her airline boarding pass and government-issued photo ID available until exiting the security checkpoint [children are not required to show identification]. The absence of proper identification will result in additional screening.”

The TSA spokeswoman confirms: “If a passenger doesn’t have one, like yourself, because it was lost, which does happen, then we do subject them to additional screening.”