Monthly Archives: December 2011

A lot can happen in ten years

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It was just a little over ten years ago the news was U.S. Handgun Production Dives 52%:

The American handgun market has dropped off so steeply that some industry experts worry that it may never fully recover.

Observers and critics cite a number of factors for the decline, including tougher rules for buying handguns, the revulsion caused by workplace and school shootings and the possibility that Americans already own all the guns they want.

The handgun business is “a dying industry,” said Cameron Hopkins, editor in chief of American Handgunner magazine.

Combined production for domestic and overseas handgun sales tumbled 52 percent between 1993 and 1999, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Industry experts foresee more rough going in the future for the country’s 50 handgun manufacturers.

Handgun imports also are way down, ATF figures indicate.

Of course a big share of the production “dive” was the boycott of Smith and Wesson the previous year. But still those were dark days for the industry and for gun rights.

We are “riding high” now but in ten years things could change again if we do not keep pushing as fast and as hard as we can in the proper direction. Liberty is always unfinished business.

See also Quote of the day—Tom Diaz from earlier today.

Common Wisdom

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When loading black powder guns, you must always seat the projectile hard against the powder charge, no matter what.  Never, ever, ever leave an air space between powder and bullet, or it could create a pressure spike and blow your gun to smithereens.

When loading smokeless powder, never, ever seat the bullet too deep, even if there’s a huge air space in there (38 Spl comes to mind) or it could create a pressure spike and blow your gun to smithereens.

You should never, ever use smokeless powder in a black powder gun, because it could create a pressure spike and blow your gun to smithereens.

If you’re loading smokeless powder in a metal cartridge case designed for black powder, to be loaded into a gun designed for black powder cartridges, it is not only OK, it is recommended, and universally used both by hand loaders and ammunition manufacturers.  Using black powder in a black powder metal cartridge is a relatively rare, esoteric art. So rare in fact that the loading manuals almost never mention doing it.  It will dirty up your gun, so always use smokeless unless you just want to make some smoke and be a show-off.

Smokeless will blow my percussion revolver to smithereens!  Unless I install a cartridge conversion cylinder, in which case it will be fine with thousands of 45 Colt smokeless loads.

So can I take from all that, assuming it’s all true, that I can safely use smokeless powder in my 1858 Remington percussion revolver, using the percussion cylinder, so long as I observe loading data for, say, the 44 Russian cartridge, and be SURE to leave a sizeable air gap between powder and ball?  Or is something in the above paragraphs not true?  Surely it’s either/or.

Not that I intend to try it, or that I even want to try it, mind you, but to make a point about Common Wisdom.

Justice

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Billy Beck wanted some discussion on the matter of Eric Holder a while back, but I didn’t see much of it.

While I agree with Beck’s sentiment, I question the idea of firing Holder’s ashes from a cannon into Mexico.  It could be seen as an act of hostility toward Mexico, but then I wonder if that would be such a bad thing.

I’d be OK with the extradition of Eric Holder to Mexico (alive or dead) but only after he received justice here in the U.S.  That is both our right and our grave responsibility.

But justice for the pawn is only the beginning, not an end.  It would be a mistake to focus on the lieutenant to such a degree as to forget his commander.

Quote of the day—Jeff Knox

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It infuriates me when I hear “reporting” and editorializing about “the powerful Gun Lobby” and “the intransigent Gun Lobby” and sometimes even “the evil Gun Lobby,” as if we were a handful of rich fat cats in safari shirts sitting in a mahogany-lined room full of leather, stuffed animals, and cigar smoke plotting how to increase our profits by increasing crime. We are the people! We are the 80 to 90 million people in this country who own guns and the tens of millions more who do not own guns, but fully support our right to do so.

Jeff Knox
December 17, 2011
I Am The Gun Lobby
[This excellent rant should become a classic. Please read the whole thing and remind those who refer to the NRA as “the gun lobby” that we are the gun lobby.

H/T Say Uncle.—Joe]

They can’t hold a candle to a gun

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As pointed out by Sebastian Bitter the Brady Campaign had a “big announcement”. While it’s overstating things a bit to say, “Yes, they want you to light a candle. Because candles will stop violence.” it’s not overstating it by very much.

It’s the Brady Campaign’s latest effort to dance in the blood of victims. And it’s a very pathetic effort too.

They literally say, “Imagine stopping a bullet before it kills a child. Impossible? Not with your help! All across America people are coming together to save lives from preventable gun violence. Will you join them, and the Brady Campaign, as we host a nationwide candlelight vigil to honor victims of gun violence?”

“Coming together to save lives” with candles? Saying “No” over the sights of a firearm works much better.

And many of the locations ban the use of real candles!

As pathetic as that is there is even more pathetic information between the lines on their web site.

They list a number of locations where you can join in a “National Candlelight Vigil”. The interesting thing is they only list 28 locations in 15 states. There are no events in many of the cities and states where they claim to have chapters. This includes the supposed chapter in Arizona! This state in particular is significant because the event date, January 8th, was chosen as the anniversary of the shooting of Tucson, Arizona shooting in which Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was severely wounded and six people were killed.

Here are the supposed Brady chapters that are not listed as participating in this “big event”:

If those “chapters” can’t find enough people willing to show up and hold a candle for a few minutes then they don’t have the capacity to accomplish any real task. They are nothing more than specks of ASCII text adrift in the galactic Internet.

As an organization they are in the process of collapsing. This is good but we need to drive them into political extinction, organizational bankruptcy, and then mock, shame, and shun the individuals into the dustbin of history.

This is what happens in places without guns—Case XXV

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Via Barron.

From the U.K. New Jersey (Thanks ubu52, Barron said U.K. and I didn’t read my own copy and paste of the article, sorry about that) where guns are not allowed. Hence two young thugs can beat up on an old homeless guy without fear of meaningful self-defense or someone else defending their innocent victims:

A pair of cruel youths wished a bloody homeless man ‘Merry Christmas’ after brutally beating him and stealing his bicycle near the New Jersey shore.

Police tracked down and arrested 20-year-old Taylor Giresi and his 17-year-old cameraman after the boys posted a video of their crimes in two videos on YouTube.

The footage shows Giresi stalking through the woods in Wall Township, New Jersey, after declaring: ‘About to go beat up this bum.’

DavidIvins

‘About to be a knockout,’ the 17-year-old responds with a laugh, according to an account by the Asbury Park Press.

Quote of the day—Robb Allen

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Filthy cretins. They should be treated with all the respect of a Klansman. Well, I don’t want to insult Klansmen like that. At least with the KKK, they don’t go around trying to tell people they’re actually concerned about the rights of blacks.

Robb Allen
December 20, 2011
Not only do they lie about practically everything
[He’s referring to the Brady Campaign.

I think the problem is that they have lost control of their world. It used to be they could say anything and the press would repeat it far and wide. When it was published in a magazine or even a newspaper the ability of gun owners to respond was delayed by days or even months and the editors could easily suppress those responses or select the weakest response while pretending to be fair. In that world Handgun Control, Inc./The Brady Campaign was in the “drivers seat”. They controlled the message and whatever fantasy they wanted to believe became, in essence, reality.

With the presence of the Internet those days are gone. Reality isn’t optional for them anymore. They are being forced to deal with the facts and with the facts being incompatible with their view of the world they have a crisis on their hands. They could adapt to reality but that isn’t really an option for them. They have far too much invested in their fantasy world.

Imagine you have invested 20 years of your life in the belief in a flat earth or the moon is made of green cheese. You spread your word far and wide and you have been the darling of the media and many politicians all this time. Then astronauts land on the moon take pictures of a round earth and bring back rock samples of the surface. You have two options: 1) Change your beliefs and admit to the world you have been spreading falsehoods for decades; 2) Insist the trip to the moon was a hoax.

The “psychological cost” to admit an error of such magnitude is far greater than believing in a massive hoax. To protect the belief there was a hoax and to prevent followers from deserting the data must be suppressed. With the presence of the Internet that is nearly impossible except within a very small domain. Within the domain of control expect even the slightest deviation from their “true belief” to be dealt with as harshly as possible. It gives them back a small taste of the control of their world which they enjoyed for so long and have now lost. They know what it is like to have control and they yearn for it again.

This is why anti-gun people are so violent. If they had guns or even political power they would be extremely dangerous people. —Joe]

Grains by Volume

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I’ve said before that some things are so simple they can’t be grasped.  “Co witnessing” of iron sights is one of those.

“Grains by volume” is another.  It started when Pyrodex, a black powder substitute, came out.  People were accustomed to using a powder measure, used to charge a rifle or pistol with a consistent, known amount of black powder, back in the day when black powder was just “gun powder” simply because there wasn’t any other kind.  As we do today when reloading metal cartridges, people way back then used a volumetric measure to easily charge a muzzle loader with powder, but of course someone needed an accurate scale to verify that the volume of powder they were dispensing was of the correct mass.  Same thing with metal cartridges.  Verify with a scale, then dispense time and again, easily with that volume so you don’t have to weigh each individual charge.

Same thing was done for hundreds of years in the field when using black powder guns– you pour from a flask into a measure that was pre-determined to hold a certain number of drams, or of grains, of black powder.

Then Pyrodex came along with their “volume equivalent” and few seem to have understood any of it since.  Pyrodex is a substitute for black powder.  It’s chemically different, safer to handle and ship (ostensibly) and doesn’t require the onerous licensing, confiscatory fees and demeaning inspections of premises associated with black powder.  By design, Pyrodex will generate approximately the same results in terms of pressure and projectile velocity as the same volume of black powder.  This makes it super easy to use the old way– you use the same measures that you always used for old fashioned black powder.  Though Pyrodex isn’t nearly as dense, so if you were really meticulous and wanted to know precisely the “volume equivalent” grains of Pyrodex powder you’re using, you’d need to weigh real black powder from your measure.  Dreaming up the “volume equivalent” was their way of making it easy to switch to their new powder.  You didn;y have to think about– just use the same measure, made of brass or deer antler, etc., that your great great grand pappy used in the War of Northern Agression.

Totally, super simple, right?  Use the same volume of Pyrodex you’d use of black powder.  That’s it.  No; shut up– that’s it.

But now it seems we can’t discuss even real black powder and real black powder alone without people (experienced people even) chiming in about “grains by volume” verses “grains by weight”.  That would only come into play if substitute powders were somewhere in the discussion.  Otherwise there’s no difference, which we all knew centuries ago (or would have known, had we been alive centuries ago).

“Sure; you verified your charge by carefully weighing it, but you might be off ’cause you’re using grains by weight instead of grains by volume.”  I actually got a comment like that today, and I’ve seen it many times before.

Now maybe it would be simpler if Pyrodex loads, just like loads made up from dozens to hundreds of very different smokeless powders, were expressed in actual mass instead of “volume equivalents”.  At least I wouldn’t have to explain things when someone tried to tell me that there is something out there called a “grain by volume” of black powder.  Then I have to remember that we actually do have something very similar– the milliliter, which is the volume of one gram of pure water, which is what you get from a cube that is one centimeter on a side IIRC.  Or was it the other way ’round?  Something like that.  I forget the actual starting point but last I heard it had been decided that we’d count a certain number of wavelengths from the emission from a certain energy state jump of a certain isotope of a certain element and call that a meter.  Look it up and count wavelengths (somewhere in the yellowish range of visible light I think) to calibrate your measuring tape, but please don’t talk to me about “grains by volume” unless we’re discussing Pyrodex or other substitute-for-black-powder loads.

Silly Me

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Condition White.  I’d started a batch of pumpkin ale just after All Hallows Eve with the intent of shipping it to family and friends across the Fruited Plain that is this Land of The Free and Home of The Brave.  It took six weeks of doting over this ale– a recipe with a lot more than the usual four ingredients (water, barley, hops and yeast) that I’ve used before and it didn’t behave the same, so it took more fooling around.  It was well worth it because I ended up with what I regard to be a fine and unique product, perfect for a little Christmas indulgence and cheer with family and friends.

I didn’t know you were supposed to lie, so when the guy at UPS asked me if there was alcohol in the packages I went ahead told him the truth.

It turns out you can’t ship alcoholic beverages unless you’re an “authorized shipper”.  Apparently someone is afraid that someone else, somewhere, might enjoy themselves.  For years I thought (correctly) that people were shipping booze right and left all over the place, but now I know they have to lie to do it.  It’s a free country, sure, so all you have to do is lie here, or break the law there, and you can do anything a reasonable person would want to do.  So Prohibition is still very much with us, which I knew.  I knew for example that you couldn’t make a legal business out selling alcohol without The Mob getting its piece of the action.  I just didn’t know it was still quite so much in effect until tonight.  I probably broke the law just by trying to ship this wonderful home brew to loved ones to enrich their Christmas experience, so come and get me.  “Attempting to ship alcohol in violation of federal law such and such, sub section such and such, sub, sub section such and such, apendices B through W49z”.  Add to that “Attempting to ship alcohoil while armed”.  I’ll have the evidence all consumed before you get here, and besides; you’ll never take me alive, coppers!

So to those of you I’d promised pumpkin ale; You’re more than welcome, but you’d better get over here quick if you want some.

Prohibition is actually in full force (more than full if you compare now to the 1920s) when it comes to certain other drugs, and naturally there is a lot of money and power to be had as a result if you happen to be in organized crime (either free-lance or official).

On a similar note; I spent several hours talking with my teenaged daughter yesterday and the subject of Mary Jane (pot – that’s what the cool kids called it in the ’60s) came up.  I had to kick myself because I got side-tracked talking about the relative dangers of this or that chemical indulgence, but it turned out even better that way–  “But none of this is on point” I tolder her.  “The point is that in a free society the government has no authority to tell an emancipated adult what to put in his body and what not to put in his body.  I’ve I allowed myself to be side-tracked here by the ‘relative dangers’ arguments.  Those are entirely bedside the point.”  She understood perfectly and she appreciated the rare and wonderful experience of finally being exposed to clarity on what was previously a matter of cloudiness confusion.

Blog problems.

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Yes. In case you were wondering, my blog was down for several hours today. And it has had problems for a hour or two on other days recently. My hosting provider is apparently having problems. I have been busy with many other things and haven’t had time to look into it.

Sorry about that.

Quote of the day—Diane S. Sykes

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On appeal the City raised but did not dwell on its concern about lead contamination. For good reason: It cannot be taken seriously as a justification for banishing all firing ranges from the city. To raise it at all suggests pretext.

Perhaps the City can muster sufficient evidence to justify banning firing ranges everywhere in the city, though that seems quite unlikely. As the record comes to us at this stage of the proceedings, the firing-range ban is wholly out of proportion to the public interests the City claims it serves. Accordingly, the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claim has a strong likelihood of success on the merits.

…

For the foregoing reasons, we REVERSE the district court’s order denying the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction and REMAND with instructions to enter a preliminary injunction consistent with this opinion.

Diane S. Sykes
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[See also other QOTDs I have posted from this same judgment here, here, here, and here.

The response of the Chicago and Washington D.C. reminds me of the response of politicians in the deep south confronted with civil rights laws telling them they had to treat people with dark colored skin the same as those with white skin. They became very creative in their methods of discrimination and the Federal courts were kept busy for years putting them in their place.

But the courts can only do so much. What has to happen is for these people be shamed and shunned for their persistence in discriminating against people exercising a specific enumerated right. Treat them like the scumbags they are and tell them that to their faces.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Linoge

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The anti-rights cultists’ logic fails: on the one hand, we are supposedly high-strung, hair-trigger murderers just waiting for any and all excuses to “whip out our pieces” and go on a shooting rampage, but on the other hand, “gun control” extremists feel quite comfortable insulting and attacking us on a regular basis.

Linoge
December 12, 2011
Comment to Quote of the day—lonewolfwisconsin.
[Made QOTD at the suggestion of Windy Wilson.

It’s a good point but I’m sort of dulled from the continuous expose to the irrationality of anti-gun people. These people live with one foot into an alternate universe where the potentialities of their active imaginations are just as real, if not more so, than reality itself. I wish there were a way to make it sink in that potentialities are not actualities.

We are constrained to live in the real world. Neither the utopia they try to legislate nor the “gun-owners will start shooing over parking spaces” universe they imagine are supported by the evidence gathered from all the different legislative experiments run in all the states and the Feds in the last several decades.

Being unconstrained by reality is probably good for art but makes for very poor public policy.—Joe]

Defensive knife class: +1

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Caleb does a review of the Insights Training Defensive Folding Knife classes.

I haven’t taken the second class but I took the first one twice. Once by myself and the second time with the rest of my immediate family. I told my kids they couldn’t go out on a date until they took the class.

And for Christmas last year I gave daughter-in-law Kelsey a Spyderco Delica. I toyed with the idea of giving her a gift certificate for the class this year but son James and I need to work on her mindset a little bit more before we go there.

This class, actually all Insights classes that I have taken, is highly recommended.

Quote of the day—edgeninja

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The NRA should be referred to as the Assassin’s Lobby, since their advocacy primarily helps arm terrorists and mass-murde­rers.

edgeninja
December 2, 2011
Comment to Gun Ad Likens Obama To Hitler, Other Dictators.
[It’s good to know what they think of us. This should also be a hint as to what will happen to us if our political power becomes too weak.

Perhaps that explains why the terrorist watch list is so large. They are putting all 4.3 million NRA members on it.—Joe]

Lion Hunt

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The guys at the music store showed this to me.  It’s been up a while, and there are several others.  It’s not like hunting prey animals like deer, in that the deer rarely try, and even if they do they can’t kill you as easily as a lion can kill you.  I don’t know these guys, but someone had very good concentration and clear purpose for a bit;

That’s about as close as it gets I guess.  I didn’t know how to categorize it, so I put it under “Boomershoot” (aim small, miss small) though at Boomershoot we don’t aim at moving targets that are very capable, and determined, to kill us.  I have a very long hunting story I’ll bore you with later, which includes missing some very easy shots that I was, up until that point, convinced I could never miss.  The point being that missing an easy shot didn’t get me or anyone else killed, but only delayed getting meat on the table.

Can Someone Please Explain

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…in short, sweet, straight-forward detail, the “conservative” position on immigration?  I’ve heard vitriolic disagreement and angry attacks toward any policy proposal that even remotely smacks of “amnesty” and I’ve heard demands for building a wall around the country (like that ever works) but I’ve never heard what the attacker actually wants, exactly.

For the record (and I know this is off-subject as it doesn’t answer the question, because I have no idea as to the answer, which is the point of the post after all); In principle, I believe it should be easy to get into this country, and to become a citizen.  The problem as I see it is the socialism – the goodies – people coming here for a share of the loot.  Turn off that loot spigot and the problem, such as it is, evaporates overnight.  “Heal the World – Outlaw Socialism” would be my bumper sticker if I ever got ’round to putting one on my vehicle, which I probably won’t.

Outlawing socialism would include doing away with labor laws, minimum wage being a big one at play here.  The other loot spigot in play was also manufactured by our government– the “War On Drugs” and we all know for certain that Prohibition failed the first time due to human nature, and that human nature dictates that it will fail just as catastrophically every time, which is what we’re seeing every day.  But we can’t separate it from imigration policy.  Because we’re sniveling cowards.

“They’re takin’ Our Jobs!” (Der Derkin’ Er Jerrrbs!”) is an idiotic assertion.  So forget it.  When the Europeans first started coming here in the late 1400s and early 1500s, they took all the jobs from the “Indians” very quickly, so there haven’t been any jobs here since then anyway, right?  I mean, if you figure that the “Der Derkin’ Er Jerrrbs!” argument has any validity whatsoever.  IF people coming here from other places “takes jobs away” then the peak in the number of available jobs in North America would have taken place before Columbus’ voyage (or much earlier – before the migration out of Siberia during the last Ice Age) and as the Euros et al started coming in, the number of jobs available would have been shrinking constantly ever since.  QED.  So there.

Anyhow;  What, exactly, is the “conservative” policy on immigration – the one that won’t get the pundits, the self appointed Representatives of Modern American Conservatism (the RMACs) all pissed off?  I maintain that there is no such thing, which is why I brought it up.

I figure Newt has a four thousand page preliminary proposal, submitted by his Provisional Committee on Immigration Policy Proposal Research Exploratory Studies, complete with thousands of cross-references and cross-cross-references to the cross-references, which means he doesn’t have a clue and is desperate to avoid clues as it would mean standing for something meaningful and concrete which is to be avoided at all cost.

My explanation for the absurdity is that the Republicans believe in the all the negative stereotypes that the Democrats have created for conservatives– racist, sexist, bigoted homophobes….ad infinitum, thumpin’ a Bible and cryin’ ’bout Jeezus! and so the Republicans are trying, like frightened little kids faced with putting out a house fire, to pander to the Saturday Night Live stereotype “conservative”.  They have no idea how to please us stereotype bigot buffoons without getting into trouble.  They’re scared and frustrated, but they know they have to at least pretend to try, because that’s on the list of things to do to get elected.  So it’s a contest to see who can come up with the most plauseablely meaningless proposal that will offend the least people and will never get enforced anyway.  It makes for good theater all ’round I suppose.

We know for certain that outlawing socialism would be among the most frightening prospects ever presented to a Republican.  Right?  The planet being wiped out by an asteroid would be bad, but at least it wouldn’t leave them blinking in the lights in front of a camera babbling like idiots, knowing they’d have to face the criticism for it the next day– they could die right along with the rest of us and that would be much more comfortable as it wouldn’t require any acts of courage or any application of principles.  It would let them entirely off the hook.