If you do a search of blogs for “Brady Campaign” you get progun posts. Nice!
One of my posts is number one with Bing. Say Uncle has a post with the top honors via Google.
No wonder the Bradys think they are fighting the NRA when it’s really reduced to fighting a bunch of guys in their pajamas. Actually, I don’t have any pajamas. I’m wearing a robe at the moment.
Very few persons qualify for the permit issued by a police chief. The only ones who qualify are persons who carry valuables. We refuse all we can.
William B. Hershner
Lancaster Pennsylvania Police Chief
Feb. 23, 1960
Flashback Lancaster
[A woman that carries cash from her shop to the bank may qualify because of the cash. But the woman with a stalking ex-boyfriend doesn’t qualify. I guess human life doesn’t qualify as “valuable”.
Sort of like 50 years ago when there were literacy tests for voting and blacks were ask to read a newspaper aloud then given newspapers written in Chinese. Things are different now. The literacy tests were abolished but the “May Issue” concealed carry laws with nearly impossible to meet requirements to exercise the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms still exist and are abused by small minded law enforcement officers. We’ve made progress but there is still a lot more to be done. And we have people in D.C. working on securing the right to carry being recognized as inalienable (H/T to Jeff). We will get there. It is just taking us a little longer than it did for “people of color”.–Joe]
Open Carry, which last year invited its members to holster up outside President Obama’s speaking sites, said it would not be deterred. Unfortunately, more than two dozen states also have allowed themselves to be bullied by the gun lobby into adopting similarly dangerous law.
New York Times
February 19, 2010
Who Can Relax This Way?
[The ignorance of these bigots is showing. Or else they consider the Founding Fathers of the nation and the individual states to be “the gun lobby” who bullied the states. Open carry has been legal in most states since before there was a United States. And there is good reason to believe the U.S. Supreme court will someday soon find that the right to carry a gun in public is a specific enumerated right protected by the Second Amendment.
Today is Starbucks Appreciation Day. Have a cup of joe with Joe.
If you are like me and don’t like coffee have a cup of hot chocolate and a pastry or buy a gift card for someone else who does like their products.–Joe]
Opponents of gun control spend an inordinate amount of time and energy in pursuit of the “smoking gun” evidence that advocates of gun restrictions really want to ban all guns, or at least all handguns. With respect to handguns, some gun control organizations are quite open about their goal of ending the sale of handguns to the civilian market entirely.
For the gun control advocate seeking to overcome the slippery slope argument, these groups present a problem. They can be effectively cited as evidence that the ultimate goal of gun restrictions is to ban all guns. But the size and influence of these groups pales in comparison to the largest organization advocating stricter guns laws–the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and, before that, as the National Council to Control Handguns. The Brady Campaign does not support banning all guns, or even all handguns, and says so publicly every time it is asked and often when not asked. I know because I have worked in the Brady organization for most of my professional career. Our position on gun banning was explained to me on my first day on the job, and it has remained the same ever since.
Dennis A. Henigan
Lethal Logic, pages 79 and 80.
[We spend too much time search for the “smoking gun”? And they do not support banning handguns? And their position on gun banning has not changed since his first day on the job (in 1989)?
Okay. We can put an end to that right now. Either Henigan forgot about the brief he signed in support of the D.C. ban in D.C. v. Heller or he doesn’t think the brief is public. And he forgot about this document still on the Brady website where it says on page 57:
The Brady Center is supporting the District of Columbia in defending its longstanding handgun ban…
Or as a final alternative, I suppose it’s possible, Henigan is lying.–Joe]
This and this is very good to see.
Not only from the standpoint of being proud to have contributed to the project but this sort of press might positively affect my bonus and salary.
Update: Second link fixed. See also this collection.
Via daughter Xenia.
TSA is really A Security Theater so its just common sense that a four year old on his way to Disney World would get treated like this:
SECURITY officers at a US airport have come under fire for forcing a disabled boy to remove his leg braces and walk through a checkpoint.
Four-year-old Ryan Thomas was flying from Philadelphia to Disney World in Orlando with his parents Bob and Leona when the incident occurred.
At the time Ryan, born 16 weeks prematurely with malformed ankles and low muscle tone in his legs, had only just begun to walk.
His parents wheeled his stroller to the security checkpoint then broke it down and put it on the conveyor belt.
They then walked Ryan through the metal detector. The alarm went off and the screener told them to take off the boy’s braces.
“I told them he can’t walk without them on his own,” Bob Thomas told the Philadelphia News.
“I said this is overkill. He’s 4 years old. I don’t think he’s a terrorist.”
Security also demanded Ryan walk through on his own.
I guess this shows the terrorists how determined we are… or something.
Chet sent me an email to this article about swabbing peoples hands for explosives. They decline to say what sort of explosives they are looking for but I’d be willing to bet they don’t pick up on wheat flour or powdered sugar (which could make great dust explosions on an airplane) so the benefit from this is asymptotically close to zero.
Chet also notes that even the ID requirement is false security since you don’t really need ID to get on the plane.
The Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Richard B. Sanders
Supreme Court of the State of Washington
State of Washington v. Christopher William Sieyes
February 18, 2010
[This probably should be the quote of the year. But I’ll I expect similar words will be used in the Chicago gun case.
Still nothing from the Brady Campaign. They must be off in a corner someplace sobbing, drinking Tequila or contemplating that bottle of whiskey and sleeping pills. I’ll give them another slap by adding another chapter to my review of Lethal Logic tomorrow.–Joe]
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women.
Original version here.
I don’t get it. Are these people completely intoxicated by Communism or something? They are suggesting that Microsoft should give away the Windows Phone 7 Series O/S I’ve been working on for over a year.
They say we should do it to gain market share. Yeah, that makes sense. We would lose money on every item but we would make it up in volume I guess.
I’m open to alternate business models but I’m not seeing a good alternate at this point and they don’t have any plausible suggestions either.
I view this sort of like the Berlin Wall coming down. A friend that visited Berlin a few months after it came down said that 24 x 7 if you were within a 1/4 mile of the wall you could here the “dink, dink, dink” of hammers pounding away at the wall. As you approached you saw hundreds of people of people either with hammers or waiting to pick up one after the person ahead of him or her finished. Everyone was getting a piece of the wall.
In this case Dave Hardy put it as follows:
Defendant was charged with possession of a handgun by a minor. The court, in an extremely thoughtful ruling (citing Joyce Malcolm, Eugene Volokh, William van Alstyne and others) rules that the 14th Amendment due process clause incorporates the right to arms and makes it binding on the States, then remands for a determination as to whether the law passes muster (which was barely briefed). The dissent argues there is no need for remand, because strict scrutiny applies and the law fails that test. The dissent has interesting references to teenager possessing arms, and serving in the military, throughout American history.
The D.C. laws against firearms ownership were struck down and with that crack in the wall more and more of the wall is falling. When McDonald v. Chicago is decided the ground is going to start shaking as that wall of 20,000 oppressive gun laws collapses into a pile of rubble.
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
Joseph Stack
February 18, 2010
Man Angry at IRS Crashes Plane into Office
[I also consider it a bit insane to deliberately kill yourself in the process of getting a different outcome. I can empathize with the desire to take out an IRS building (or 10) but I don’t think this was that great a plan.–Joe]
I’m skeptical there could be this much difference in just one year. I suspect a sample error of some sort unless someone can suggest a good plausible reason for the increase:
Women are having wilder sex than a year ago with 76 percent admitting to using porn and four in five indulging in role play between the sheets, it emerged Wednesday in a new survey.
The English Netmums website survey found that despite three quarters of women having less sex — due to the demands of longer working hours — they are much more adventurous, The Sun reported.
The findings that 76 percent of women use porn is a 10 percent rise on the two-thirds of females who admitted to watching porn with their partners in a survey last year.
The most popular format is online porn, which is watched by 61 percent of couples.
My data set is very limited but I’m sure there has been an increase in the last 15 years.
I think I need to do some more research
I got an email from Dave Hardy:
I just got my ballot issue of the Amer. Rifleman. I’d greatly appreciate if you could mention the candidacy of Carol Bambery, of Michigan, and her webpage at http://www.carolbamberynra.com/. I know you like to quote from her brief in Heller (she filed another in Chicago). There is much to be said for a director who carries twice the committee assignments of the average director, hunts whenever she can, and loves to shoot NFA weapons!
I knew that I had quoted her a few times. I didn’t realize how many until I went looking (10 times).
This, at its simplest, is political hate speech towards the community to which Detective Tuason is duty-bound to protect. It is an abhorrent and vile insight into the mindset of one East Palo Alto’s own detectives regarding on-duty activities. It is chilling to contemplate what could happen if Detective Tuason encountered citizens exercising their fundamental civil rights to openly carry in a lawful manner within the City of East Palo Alto, as one Redwood City man did on January 28th. Like the allegations of comrption that left the East Palo Alto Police Department with a tarnished reputation just a few months ago, this vivid and graphic imagery of police misconduct will be hard to dispel.
Jason Davis
The Law Offices of DAVIS & ASSOCIATES
February 12, 2010
Letter to Ronald L. Davis Chief of Police City of East Palo Alto on behalf of The Calguns Foundation, Inc. This was in response to a detective saying “Sounds like you had someone practicing their 2nd amendment rights last night! Should’ve pulled the AR out and prone them all out! And if one of them made a furtive movement…2 weeks off!!”
[Ahhhh … yes. Reminds me of the kind of stuff we used to hear about happening to blacks in the deep south 50 to 100 years ago.
Gun owners are the ni**ers of the 21st Century.
H/T to Rob for the email pointer. I had seen the original quote but not the response of CGF.–Joe]
We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.
Marshall McLuhan
[Although we can see road behind us with reasonable clarity our ability to discern the cliffs, turns, and rockslides ahead is severely limited. It’s a shame Dr. Ronald L. Mallett’s time machine isn’t up and running.–Joe]
Just a FYI.
My hidden, hardened, underground bunker lost it’s Internet connection yesterday afternoon and I haven’t bother to use alternate methods of checking my email. I did check the comments and add one here on the blog but generally don’t expect anything from me until I restablish normal communcations. This is expected to be sometime this evening after I get off work.
If something urgent comes up give me a call on my cell phone: 208-301-4254.
Update: After wasting about two hours of my life I have an Internet connection at my bunker again. I wish I could bill Comcast for my time.
Kelsey says, “Comcast is a Dick!” James had a longer explaination which is not worth repeating here.
And a word of advice to $@#!%^& people at Comcast from security professional…
Do not insist I turn off my firewall and connect my computer directly to the cable modem!
My inclination after doing this is to wipe the hard disk and reinstall the O/S.
That’s fire and brimstone. This is pure gun geekery, and even for gun geeks its nerdy because it’s about percussion guns of the 1800s. You’ve been warned.
Saturday, Nephew and I tried some heavy loads for the repro 1858 Remington revolver. I’d been using a 28 grain powder charge and a round ball with decent results, but wanted to try something with more pep. Civil War era military loads ranged from very light, to as much powder and lead as could be stuffed in the cylinder. To start, we tried round ball (~140 grains) over a charge of 39 grains of 3F Goex with a greased felt wad in between. That load filled the chambers completely and delivered an average of 925 fps at 10 feet with an extreme spread of 46. Not too bad. The 29 grain charge was yielding a velocity of about 850 fps.
It’s like pulling teeth to find acceptable “conical” bullets (“bullet shaped” as opposed to a round ball) for these “.44” percussion revolvers unless you cast your own, which I don’t. I did find some Buffalo Bullets 180 grain jobs that fit the chambers nicely, and ordered 100 of them to try. Since the bullet takes up more room in the chamber, the most powder I could get in and still seat the bullet below the cylinder face was 30 grains. But, wow. Average velocity was 1047 fps. That’s a tad better than a .40 S&W, and matches the V of a .45 Auto load in the Speer manual for their 185 gr GDHP. Extreme spread was 67, with a standard deviation of 21.
That was with two different people doing the loading. I’m going to guess that with the same person loading all the rounds, the charge weight and ramming pressure would be a little more consistent, and so too the velocity. Groups with this load opened up slightly from last week’s all-ball venture, but not enough to be sure. This time was in direct sunlight, which makes aiming a little more difficult.
The extra pressure it takes to move the heavier bullet, which also has more friction surface against the bore, I will assume ramps up the powder’s burn rate. More velocity with less powder and a heavier bullet. Neat. We’ve found a performance, or efficiency, zone. More pressure equals more heat, equals a faster, more complete burn inside the bore, equals yet more pressure.
This is how guns (and sometimes chemical factories, engines, etc.) blow up– things look great as you increase the pressure and temp a little. The reaction speeds up, a little bit more, things are doing fine, a little bit more and, Boom!. A threshold is reached and a runaway reaction takes place. You shear some bolt lugs, or burst a cylinder, etc. and maybe you go home with slightly fewer or slightly misshapen body parts. That can be embarrassing.
I wasn’t worried about this load in a modern repro made with modern steel. When these revolvers were designed and built originally, metallurgy wasn’t anything like it is today, and even back then they were known to stuff the chambers full on a regular basis. Further, it makes no sense to build a cylinder that will take more powder than it can handle with the commonly used “44-100” bullets of up to 250 grains. That would take more material and make the gun bigger and heavier, for no other reason than to encourage over-pressure loads. I’m also running on some faith that they wouldn’t have done that (though the much longer 1847 .44 Colt “Walker” cylinder was known to occasionally let go). Remember that back then there was only black powder, not the wide spectrum of nitro powders we have now. All they had to control the powder’s burn rate were different granulations of the same mixture (though brand and lot inconsistency would likely have thrown in some degree of uncertainty). With smokeless propellants you can get into a LOT MORE TROUBLE making your own loads.
Here’s Nephew torching off one of the heavy loads. The bullet has been on its way for about a millisecond, as the gun is still in firing position and the hot gas (I mean hot– this is in direct sunlight) has traveled a foot or so out from the muzzle;
Below is the same shot in full recoil a fraction of a second later. Forget about quick follow-up shots. You can’t see the target until the smoke clears. By then you’re re-cocked and ready to go. A side wind would be a big help in this case;
Today’s rapid fire guns wouldn’t be worth as much if they had to run on black powder. For one thing you wouldn’t be able to see squat. It is “interesting” to take a shot, and find that your target has simply disappeared after the smoke has cleared. There’s that moment of uncertainty.
I like the slow, frame-by-frame animations as below. You can see the mechanics of the recoil (though a high speed camera would be nice). You can watch the force wave travel from his wrist, into the arm, the shoulder, and whole torso. Nephew’s grip is fairly relaxed, which isn’t a problem with a medium weight 44 revolver. Some people hate animated gifs on a web page. I’m one of them, but this is for science;
You shouldn’t haul off and max out your charcoal burner just because I did. I’m not saying it’s the thing to do. What I can say is; I still, for the moment, have all my body parts (and gun parts) and all are operating satisfactorily, thank you. I have a load that’s within the range of those used in the 1860s for the Remington New Model Army revolver and 1860 Colt Army, and it matches some of the .45 ACP loads for a ~180 grain bullet.
Now here’s a puzzler. I’ve had barrel leading in modern revolvers and autos firing bare lead, hard-cast or swaged bullets. Using pure, soft lead bullets in the ’58 Remington and ’51 Colts, no leading has been observed, even with these loads that achieve modern handgun KE levels. I don’t know why. Is it the grease? But we’re told in no uncertain terms never to lubricate a modern gun bore, while black powder guns are greased all to hell. Is it the propellant temp? But the KE is the same.
Deep down in the O/S you will find a location application programming interface. Below that you will find code that converts the existence of Wi-Fi and cell tower radio signals into a latitude and longitude. That (and a few other things) has been my job for the last several months.
This is just one small piece of a very large and impressive picture.
As Sean just said a minute ago in an IM, “Wow. You showed me some neat stuff Friday, but I was still impressed by today’s reveal. With this piece of the puzzle, I get a tingling feeling up and down my leg. Like we really might be entering a new golden age for Microsoft.”
[I]t’s always interesting to see provably secure cryptosystems broken.
Bruce Schneier
December 30, 2009
Quantum Cryptography Cracked
[Security can be a very, very difficult problem. It is like a chain in that it is no stronger than the weakest link. This is the reason TSA is A Security Theater. The same can be said about gun control–only several orders of magnitude greater in strength.
Quantum Cryptography is “provably secure” given a set of assumptions. Those assumptions include both known explicit assumptions and implicit assumptions which the prover may or may not be fully aware of. By making those assumptions invalid the proof falls apart.
No one seriously attempts to formally prove gun control provides benefits to society. The well informed anti-gun people frequently don’t even make claims. They just point out all the adverse effects of gun ownership then announce their conclusions that there should be more gun control. This is not science. This is more like a witch doctor chanting around the fire and making pronouncements about the evil spirits.
If someone were attempt make a formal proof about benefits of gun control they would quickly find out that the anti-gun people make many assumptions which are provably false. Typically among these are that guns are “designed to kill” or “all gunshot deaths are illegal/evil/bad”, or a prohibition on guns will work better with firearms than it did with alcohol and recreational drugs. With such assumptions so blatantly false the claims of there being benefits to gun control are laughable.–Joe]
Even though I’m not using the external antenna on the Taj Mahal Wi-Fi access point I still have good service at the far west end of the shooting line. I’m currently showing four out of five bars on my laptop.
As BillH posted a few days ago the Boomershoot site has zero snow. I drove all the way out to the Taj in my car without problems. Last year at this time it was snowshow conditions.