Monthly Archives: October 2012

Random thought of the day

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Another data point to indicate we are winning the gun owner rights battle is that in the 2000 election George Bush was saying, apparently reluctantly, he would sign a permanent ban on “assault weapons” if it was put on his desk and his opponent, Al Gore, wanted the AWB as well as restrictions and licensing of ordinary handguns.

In this election President Obama, apparently reluctantly, said he would like to see an AWB passed and his opponent, Mitt Romney says he doesn’t want any more restrictions on firearms.

Hence today we have the more repressive candidate for President of the United States taking the position of the least repressive candidate of 12 years ago.

Yes, I can see an analogy being made to dungeon prisoners celebrating their ration of gruel being increased by 10%. But it is a measurable improvement and the trend for the foreseeable future continues to be favorable.

Where is Billy Beck?

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His site has been “suspended”.  Maybe I didn’t get the memo, but I’m instantly worried about him.  He’s not off in Beck’s Gulch is he?

The importance of judges

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Sebastian reported a new gun blog and I poked around some. The author, Nicholas J. Johnson, is a Professor of Law specializing in firearm regulation. I found this post of his fascinating.

The following, in particular, caught my attention:

Both the majority and the dissent acknowledge that the AR-15 is a gun in common use. How they proceed from there is illuminating. The dissent treats common use as a solid liberty-protecting standard. Guns in common use cannot be banned.

For the majority, acknowledging the AR-15 as a gun in common use is just a rhetorical lead-in to the burgeoning two stage standard of review. The court found that the D.C. law did in fact burden a core Second Amendment concern. But at stage two it determined that the ban does not “substantially burden” the right to self-defense (people could still have handguns and many other long guns).

This reasoning is not derived from Heller and it is interesting to speculate what else would pass muster under this approach. Pushed hard, it would seem to allow very broad gun bans as long as some core self-defense guns remained legal.

In Heller it was said that guns “in common use” are protected from prohibition by the 2nd Amendment. But some judges are ignoring that. This is essentially a repeat of what happened in Miller where it was said that to be protected by the 2nd Amendment a gun had to “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Yet many courts ignored that statement and instead substituted a twisted version of the actual wording of the Miller decision and said the individual wanting to own or bear a firearm had to be in a militia.

Mike B., a lawyer friend of mine, once told me engineers make poor lawyers because they believe the law means what the law says and it doesn’t. The law actually means whatever the judges want it to mean. This is another data point supporting that claim. And this is another reason why getting people who follow the law as written as our judges is vital to the preservation of our rights.

Or perhaps expressed better is the comment to the post by Brett Bellmore (Oct 06, 2012 @ 09:13:19):

In the end, there’s no substitute for staffing the judiciary with people who aren’t hostile to this liberty. They have too many ways to destroy liberties they don’t like, to afford enemies there.

Keep that in mind each and every time you vote.

Appeasement versus standing your ground

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The buses that I have taken to and from work are generally, but not always, drama free. But at some of the bus stops I walk by in the Seattle area make me uncomfortable even when I’m fully tooled up for defensive action. That I frequently see small groups of cops hanging out at some of the stops only adds to my concerns about the frequency of drama at these locations.


The Seattle Police department reports some drama at a transit center that occurred Monday evening:



The 31-year-old suspect’s bout of bad behavior all started around 7:45 pm when he began harassing a woman sitting at a bus stop.


When another man at the bus stop tried to get the suspect to leave the woman alone, the suspect turned on the man and started following him through the Transit Center. The suspect then grabbed the man from behind, shoved him, and demanded money. The man then handed his wallet over to the suspect.


A second man saw the suspect robbing the first man, and stepped in to confront the suspect. The suspect then turned on the second man, punching him in the face and kicking him in the leg.


Already on quite a roll, the suspect then began harassing two other women at the transit center, offering them a graphic and unsolicited description of his genitalia.


Apparently appeasement doesn’t work all that well. If you are going to confront someone about their anti-social behavior it would appear you need to be able to stand your ground should the behavior escalate instead of subside.


As somewhat of a side note I find it interesting that I frequently get “a nod” from one or more of the cops at the bus stops. Sort of like an acknowledgement of “I recognize you as one of my kind” or “I recognize you as a good guy, carry on”. At least that is the way I interpret it.


On Monday evening a cop even stopped to chat with me while I was waiting at a bus stop. He asked about my Unorganized Militia Propaganda patch and what my opinion on open carry was. I told him I had a gun blog and that in most cases I regarded open carry as a political statement (the context is Washington State where concealed carry license are very easy to get) and it needed to be handled carefully. In some locations it was very helpful. In others it could be detrimental. He said he was all for people carrying guns and being able to defend themselves.

Shelley Rae: On Target with ESS Boomershoot Vol. 3

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This is the third in the series of ESS Boomershoot videos. At about 1:30 in the video watch the trace from the bullet arc into the boomer for a detonation. Very cool.

From the YouTube page for this video:

Boomershoot: In the high Palouse of northern Idaho for one long weekend in April, the ground heaves with explosions and precision rifle and AR enthusiasts put their aim to the test.

That’s a good description. Perhaps “rumbles with explosions” or “vibrates with explosions” would be better than “heaves” but there is some ground heaving too.

There is also Volume 1 and Volume 2 in the series.

As I have said before ESS makes good stuff. They gave me a couple pair of their glasses and I use them whenever I need eye protection or even sunglasses.

Barron also has some comments on the video.

Quote of the day—Kris R

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Of all the things I have been able to do while in the United States of America, celebrating Halloween by shooting a pumpkin filled with Joe’s special blend is one of the things I will treasure the most.

Kris R
October 23, 2012
Comment to I agree with Joan Peterson.
[It’s nice to have such an event be remembered so fondly.

I wonder if the anti-gun people get reports like that for their events. No, I don’t think so either.—Joe]

You think you’re a gunsmith?

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THIS is a gunsmith.  Watch all of them.  There are a bunch of vids all in a row detailing the handcrafting of an American longrifle.  They hand hammer a barrel around a mandrel and hammer weld it.  Awesome.  No “machine tools” of any kind.  The closest to a machine tool is the barrel drilling jig, which is hand powered and hand fed, using hand-made cutting tools, and having a wooden spiral jig for determining the rifle twist.


Hat tip; castboolits.gunloads.com


We are extremely pampered today by comparison, having rolled bar and seamless tubing of precise alloy to work with.  I once “restored” (though the word is abused in this case) a hand-made, lavishly hand engraved and gold plated trumpet that was made in the very early 20th century– for its original owner, who was over 80 years old at the time.  He had bought it as a kid and played it the whole time.  All of the tubing was wrapped over mandrels and soldered, including the piston valves– every tubular part had a lengthwise seam therefore, and some of the silver solder had corroded out, resulting in leaks.  I had to re-solder some of them, but others were too far gone and I replaced them with extruded, seamless tubing.  The curved tubing was made back then by filling the straight pieces with lead and bending them  by hand over a bending jig, then hammering out any wrinkles.  Now they are bent using an ice composition and then hydro-formed in molds.  Some curved tubular parts are now built up entirely through electrolysis over investment cores.  And they didn’t use a buffing machine back then, but instead hand-burnished every square millimeter of the instrument prior to plating it– you could still see all the tiny facets on that trumpet– one for each stroke of the burnishing tool.  But that all that was still short of the skills used in rifle making in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and I didn’t do any engraving, carving or inletting in my instrument repair career.


An instrument (or rifle) with that sort of craftsmanship today would cost you well in excess of fifteen thousand dollars (you find fine rifles for well over a hundred thousand) though we can get good ones, made by modern methods, for under one thousand.  But no one makes musical instruments like that anymore, so far as I know.


When I first started in musical instrument work, the most expensive saxophone, the Selmer Mark VI, was under a thousand dollars, or right around a thousand, and it was imported from France, but the much simpler concert flute could be found costing several times that much, made in America.  You know why?


Because a flute can be made by hand in a person’s basement, whereas it takes a rather large shop, with a tons of specialized tooling, to make a saxophone, that’s why.  There were exquisite hand-made flutes, but no hand-made saxophones.  You can’t hand build a large-scale integrated microchip in your basement.  It may cost millions to set up for making them but you can buy one for a dollar.

I agree with Joan Peterson

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It’s a rare thing but this time I (partially) agree with Joan Peterson on this issue (H/T to Sebastian). She says, “Don’t carve pumpkins with guns”.

I took two almost new shooters to Idaho this weekend to do a little pumpkin “carving” at the Boomershoot site.

First we prepared some chemicals:

IMG_2968_2012Web

Then we mixed them. Yes, she was a little apprehensive at first. This whole Kitchen Aid mixer making Boomerite is a little “different”. Six weeks ago had you told her she was going to be traveling to Idaho, making explosives to “carve” pumpkins, and shooting a rifle before Halloween she would have said, “No way!”

IMG_2964_2012Web

Here are some sample pictures of the pumpkins being “carved” (thanks to Barron for bringing them to the party):

IMG_3167_2012Web

The picture below was taken a fraction of a second after the picture above. Notice that the pumpkin pieces have slowed and are further from the origin. I wonder what the BC of a pumpkin seed is.
IMG_3168_2012Web
IMG_3244_2012Web
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IMG_3213_2012Web
IMG_3279_2012Web
The picture above almost duplicates a picture Ry took a few years ago. Here is a cropped version of the same picture:
IMG_3279_2112WebCropped
IMG_3307_2012Web

There are hazards to pumpkin “carving” with Boomerite. Max wasn’t really “entertainingly close” by some peoples standards but it was close enough that he sometimes turned away to avoid getting hit in the face with pieces of pumpkin. I was extremely pleased that his finger came off the trigger and he kept the gun pointed in a safe direction:
IMG_3264_2012Web

I’m sure Ms. Peterson will be pleased to know we didn’t use guns as our primary tool for carving the pumpkins. It was just the remote detonator for the explosives. And these new shooters will share their experience and pictures with friends and family which will add to the set of people who recognize modern sporting rifles in common use are not “assault weapons” which should be banned. But instead many of them will desire their own and to share in the fun of the gun and Boomershoot culture. And what does Ms. Peterson and the Brady Campaign have to counter this?

Fish sticks and politics

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I’m trying to clean out the freezer a bit, so the next thing
on the menu for the next few weeks is whatever seems to be on the bottom, back,
or mysteriously wrapped. Last night I pulled out a long package of freezer
paper, and we had cod for dinner tonight. Now, the kids don’t really like fish
(they keep telling us), but they like fish-sticks,
so any time we have fish, regardless of preparation method or species, it’s cut
into fairly regular sized things that could arguably be called “sticks,” and
voila! “Fish-sticks,” we tell them.

Not being inspired particularly by all the words on the
first few recipes I looked at, I did the classic “throw some stuff that seems right
together, and follows the spirit of how to cook that thing.” Beat up two eggs
with some salt and pepper to dredge them in before breading. Dump roughly equal
parts Panko bread crumbs, Progresso garlic seasoned crumbs (finished off both
packages) and corn meal together in a bowl for breading. Put on a frying pan
with a bunch (I’d guess nearly a cup) of left-over French-fry oil, which was
made of roughly equal parts canola oil, peanut oil, and bacon grease, with some
small amount of butter. (They were not really deep fried, but it was definitely
NOT the “minimal fat” version of frying.) Cut the cod fillets into roughly
equal hunks (er, I mean, “sticks”), egged, breaded, fried in hot mixed oil until brown and crispy in
the breading and not quite an easy flake in the meat, flip, fry until brown
& crispy on side #2, and the flake is more white than clear. VERY good. The
bacon grease in the oil really makes a huge difference, and starting with the
fillets only barely thawed (still a bit stiff) meant the outside got a hot
enough to brown without the inside getting overcooked and dry. Fish-sticks. No
matter what’s actually inside, they just need to look a certain way for the kids. In this case, what was inside was every bit as good as they appeared.

So, cooking for kids is sort of like politics.
For a lot of people, what is going on inside, the details, are not important.
Just the outside impressions and appearance is what the decision is based on. I’m
hoping when the kids grow up they really understand that cod, wild sockeye salmon,
halibut, trout, tilapia, farmed Atlantic salmon, and mackerel are really VERY
different fish. I’m also hoping that when they grow up and vote it’s not what
the politician LOOKS like or SOUNDS like that makes a difference, but what the
effects of their POLICIES are and HOW they will be enacted and enforced that is
important. Details matter. As a kid,
I don’t expect them to really know or care that much about the details of their
fish-sticks. As an adult, I DO. I suppose there are some obvious jokes to make
here WRT political parties, but I’ll refrain.

Social and Political Pandering

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…or “Chum in the Water”


Most of us are familiar with the dangers of pandering to dictators bent on world domination, of the Legacy of Neville Chamberlain, and so on.  It’s very simple.  Show the enemy that you’re a chump, that it can control you, and you get pounced.


I think that Mitt Romney is probably a very nice guy, trying to do the right things.  Doing the right things, and getting people to like you, are however very different, often contradictory, goals.


When he decided he needed to hire him some womens (you know, so people couldn’t accuse him of not hiring enough women, because hiring based on a person’s potential value to the company without regard to sex or race, would be….stupid?  Unfair?  It wouldn’t please the communists?) he apparently failed to understand that he was throwing chum in the water.  Condition white.  Sharks cannot resist a little chum.  When the feeding frenzy erupted last week then, no one has any excuse for not having predicted it.  Sharks have a habit of acting like sharks.


HE HAS BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN!!!!  HE HAS BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN!!!!  (“What kind of pervert is this guy!?” they don’t say).  I wonder if he has (GASP) BINDERS FULL OF BLACK PEOPLE TOO!  Oh, the horror– someone trying to hire black people.  RACIST!!!  He wants to put y’all in BINDERS!


No, Grasshopper; don’t pander to insanity.  That way insanity will have nothing on you.  You pander to it and it gets encouraged.  Evil will try to nudge you into doing stupid things.  You’ll want to do them to make it happy, to get along, to take some weight off your shoulders, but it’s always a trick.


So I’m making fun of the evil-crazy, right back, but the important thing is to be able to see it and watch it.  It can’t stand the light of day.

Quote of the day—Ronald Kirchem

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Only people who are inadequate below the waist need guns to make them feel like real men.

RonaldKirchemRonald Kirchem
October 16, 2012
Comment to A new assault weapons ban?
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to Sean Y. for the email!

Apparently Krichem was unable to come up with an intellectually sound response to those that explained why the “assault weapon” ban was bad law so he resorted to a position he was much more comfortable with—the retort of a ten-year old.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barb L.

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Holy crap!

…

That’s insane!

Barb L.
October 20, 2012
[This was in regard to first hand exposure to her first Boomershoot fireball.

I find her choice of words interesting. About 90% of time a persons first response is “Holy s**t!”. Barb, today in another context, told me she almost never uses foul language so I suppose that could account for the somewhat moderated response.

And yes, this is in regard to the event described by Barron. And yes, she was the woman involved who may have affected someone’s judgment.

I will say that I don’t remember all the conversation related by Barron but it’s close enough that it doesn’t matter. And even after the event I didn’t see it as all that big of a deal. But Barron tells the story in such a way that Barb and I were laughing uncontrollably as she tried to read it to me as I was driving back to the Seattle area.

I was concerned about the fire getting into the stubble field but the fire had dramatically slowed down by the time the gasoline had been consumed. And it was the easiest to extinguish of any of the five fireball fires that have needed to be fought. My shoelaces didn’t even get melted this time. Barb did find a piece of melted milk jug stuck in the sole of her shoe and her son Max brought home a “piece of art” that was created by the fireball out of a milk jug remnant.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hobbes_Wayne

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Utopian ideals always lead to dystopian reality.

Hobbes_Wayne
October 17, 2012
Comment to MILLER: Gun owners’ election–Ex-justice urges next Congress and president to restrict the Second Amendment
[I have a problem with absolute statements but I will agree there is a very high correlation between Utopian ideals and dystopian reality. This is particularly true when the use of force is required to implement the Utopian ideals. In these cases the correlation coefficient appears to be asymptotically close to 1.0.—Joe]

American Insurgency?

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First, read the original post and the comments over at Oleg’s place.


There are some interesting comments, well worth reading, but they fail to see the bigger picture, I think.  It took me a while to think of it, though it shouldn’t have done.  I now see it as obvious.


Any widespread insurgency in America is really the kick-starter to global chaos, and for some of our enemies that is actually the plan – take advantage of a weakened and distracted America.  Collapse the system into a new system.  Twelfth Imam and all that rot.


So no.


We had best get our own houses in order, and look at our Progressive (incremental communist) neighbors as part of our country, which absolutely MUST hold together.  “Last great hope for liberty” and “with malice toward none” come to mind.  I hope you have your beliefs and your communication skills well-honed.  You’ll need both, and by the way the latter doesn’t exist without the former – you know it.


Compromise with evil will get us nowhere and open warfare amongst us will get us all destroyed.  That leaves us a very narrow, delicate path then, doesn’t it?  Our enemies know it too.  Interestingly, that applies to your personal life as well as your public life and the global situation.

Quote of the day—Michael Bloomberg

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Gun are a plague and I don’t think education is going to keep guns out of the hands of gang members. The solution is to prevent all people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them.

Let’s get serious, these are people who have guns, and the only reason to carry a gun is to use it. To kill people.

Michael Bloomberg
Mayor New York City
October 17, 2012
Bloomberg Opens Fire On Obama And Romney’s Gun Control “Gibberish”
[“Guns are a plague”? The last time I check gun ownership is a specific enumerated right. One could just as well claim books, newspapers, and religious texts are “a plague”.

He cannot be serious in believing the only reason for carrying guns is to kill people. Is that why his body guards and the police in his city carry them? People legally carry guns to protect innocent life. If Bloomberg cannot comprehend that then he has some serious mental issues.

If Bloomberg views a specific enumerated right as a plague then it would appear to me there are only two legitimate paths to take from here. 1) Bloomberg voluntarily enters a mental institution for treatment of his mental disorder(s); or 2) Federal prosecutors charge him with violation of 18 USC 242. In no way is Bloomberg fit for public office.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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If the ATF couldn’t keep track of 2500 guns it required FFL holders to sell to the drug cartels then it would seem that they would have zero moral authority to penalize FFL holders for losing track of a few firearms in the course of their business.


And the same should apply to the anti-gun organizations. Either they should be supporting investigation into and prosecution of those responsible in the ATF selling guns to the cartels as well as FFLs that lose guns or they should not support legal action against either.


Of course I’m expecting far too much from both the ATF and anti-gun organizations. I’m expecting morality, rationality, and consistency. I doubt they even know what those things are.

Engaging in capitalism warrants death

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The first time, probably about 1970, I read Atlas Shrugged I was fascinated by it. Awesome book. But it was just a piece of fiction to me. In my mind at that time it could not possibly represent anything past, present, and probably not the future as being close to reality.

As I grew less naive, and particularly with the easy access to differing viewpoints via the Internet I realized there really are people out there that hate the economic/political system that enabled the greatest advances in human prosperity, human rights, and living conditions in history. And they don’t just want to “tweak” it a little in some false hope of making it better. They want to kill those that participate in the system. And furthermore they use the fruits of that system to advocate their hate:

@NancyWonderful @Our4thEstate Hanging profiteers should restore confidence, not the other way. Ah, what do I know?

I can’t even make sense of this. Whose confidence could possibly be restored by hanging those that make a profit? The confidence of communists? Don’t they understand that if the rule of law breaks down and “hanging profiteers” has no legal repercussions the “hanging of communists” will almost for certain also be without legal repercussions?

We don’t want to go there. The end result will be very grim.

Quote of the day—David Hardy

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It isn’t often that you see 50 or so felonies committed on a single webpage.

David Hardy
October 17, 2012
Ah, those peaceniks
[I wonder how many of those felonies will even be investigated, let alone prosecuted. My guess is zero.

It only matters if the target is the political left. Violence is considered an appropriate tool of political change when it is used or threatened by the left on their opponents.—Joe]