Monthly Archives: May 2014

History of the >10 mag

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Over at the Volokh Conspiracy there is a post about the history of magazines with greater than ten rounds capacity. Very short version: The 9th Circuit court has a case challenging the greater than ten round magazine ban, called Fyock v. Sunnyvale. David Kopel co-authored an amicus brief that gives the history of such things. Many interesting factoids for gun hardware geeks to appreciate, and many things for gun-rights people in general. Many things I knew, many more I didn’t. Worth a read.

It’s another good case to watch.

On sex offender registries

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Interesting:

California’s registry isn’t practical. Amanda Agan, a postdoctoral fellow in economics at Princeton studied sex offender registries at The University of Chicago. She explained her findings to NPR’s On the Media in 2011. She compared multiple studies, across multiple types of registries, including ones like California’s, and found that when the information is public, the pattern of recidivism (which means committing a crime again) was discouraging.

When they were in a public registry there was “a slight increase in how much they recidivated,” although “a slight deterrent effect for first-time offenders. But as the registry size grows, it seems like that recidivism effects swamps the first-time registrant effect. And so, we get kind of an overall increase in sex crimes.” Are you getting this? Sex crimes increased.

Again we find that if the government gets involved in preventive measures they make things worse.

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

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As anyone who has gone through the process to legally obtain a firearm in Massachusetts knows, there is no dearth of existing laws that regulate the sale, purchase and transfer of firearms. The question should be what gun control laws should be repealed, NOT enacted.

NRA-ILA
May 30, 2014
Massachusetts: House Speaker Introduces Sweeping Gun Control Legislation
[Emphasis in the original.

“The question that should be” asked is applicable to all the states as well as the Federal Government.

Of the simple answers the most correct one is, “All of them.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Scott Martelle

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As for handguns, assault-style weapons, etc., let’s have a flat-out ban. Beyond the histrionics of the gun lobby, there is no defensible reason for such weapons to be a part of our culture. They exist for one purpose: to kill.

Scott Martelle
May 28, 2014
You say gun control doesn’t work? Fine. Let’s ban guns altogether.
[H/T to Sebastian.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you no one wants to take your guns. This is from the Los Angles Times’ Opinion Staff.

He dismisses the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms with:

One can hope that the court will someday go further than its recognition that the 2nd Amendment is not an absolute right and determine that rampant gun ownership is a public safety threat. And that Congress will push legislation that recognizes that the heavy societal costs of gun ownership outweigh any 2nd Amendment pretense to the right to own guns.

He dismisses self-defense with:

Impossible to measure because of a lack of trustworthy data.

This is even though his cited source, Paul Barrett, says the lower limit on estimated defensive gun use in the U.S. is about 100,000/year which exceeds the murders by a factor of ten.

It is apparently beyond his ability to accept the realities of the Supreme Court ruling that firearm in common use, and handguns in particular are protected. This is in the ruling he linked to! Then after realizing numbers and simple arithmetic are apparently beyond his grasp we could suggest he look to the “success” of banning things which have far less benefit and probably more harm, such as recreational drugs. How did the prohibition of alcohol work out? And the continuing ban of hardcore recreational drugs? Maybe he would like to extend the bans of those things harmful to other things such as tobacco? How does he think that would turn out? We already have a large black market in cigarettes because of the high taxes on them.

But we shouldn’t bother speculating. He obviously has crap for brains and is incapable of extrapolating past the end of his nose.—Joe]

This could be interesting

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Seattle police are suing the DOJ, The City of Seattle, Seattle Mayor, Seattle Chief of Police, and others about restrictions on their use of force and the right of self-defense protected by the Second Amendment:

When a police officer is confronted with threatening behavior, he or she has the fundamental, individual right of self-defense under the Second Amendment, consistent with every other citizen, to protect himself or herself, and others, from apparent and immediate harm. As the Court has long recognized, the rules that define and determine self-defense are of universal application and are not affected by the character of a person’s employment.

This could be far more interesting than one might first guess. If the courts accept this argument then not only is the right to carry in public by private citizens bolstered but the rights of people to carry while at work is given support as well.

H/T to Dave Workman. See also the Seattle PI article.

Quote of the day—Janey Rountree

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There is no question it will be the smartest, toughest regulation on gun stores in the country. It’s designed to prevent gun trafficking and illegal sales in these stores.

Janey Rountree
Chicago mayor’s deputy chief of staff for public safety
May 28, 2014
Chicago mayor pushes plan requiring all gun sales to be videotaped
[I don’t care what it is “designed to prevent”. I care about results. The city of Chicago could pass a law requiring chastity belts for all women which was “designed to prevent” prostitution and unwanted pregnancy but that doesn’t mean it would achieve the desired goal or be constitutional.

For decades the city banned handguns and yet the cops confiscated about 7,000 guns a year. So how is the plan for videotaping the sales, limiting sales to about 0.5% of the city’s geographic area, and limiting sales to one per month per buyer going to be measurably better than the way gun stores are regulated in the more free states?

If they think it will be so successful then why don’t they place the same restrictions on alcohol and tobacco sales to prevent them from getting in the hands of minors. Or the sales of illegal recreational drugs? Oh, yeah. Those are even more tightly regulated yet any high school dropout can get anything they want within a few minutes, 24/7, from all the “unlicensed” drug dealers.

This law is not “smart”. It’s crap for brains stupid. It’s unconstitutional. And those that voted for it should be prosecuted.—Joe]

Did they think this through?

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I find this scary as well as ironic:

A committee chaired by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff has come up with a three phase plan to “all but do away with cash transactions in Israel”.

This represents a severe failure of the Jews in the Attic Test—by a Jewish nation.

The REAL reason for the extinction

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The problem is obvious. You can have hunters from all periods of human history, and all periods in the future, all hunting dinosaurs. With only a few hunters from a given time paying exorbitant prices for their dinosaur safaris, that still could add up to billions and billions of hunters. Surely you see the problem.

Tam knows, but she’s not letting on.

This Land is Mine

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…or, the Middle East Explained.

Pop quiz – how many of them can you identify with reasonable certainty, or at least recognize that you knew them for sure at one point?

Quote of the day—Lyle

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Anyone who uses the word “profit” as a dirty word should be watched very, very carefully. If they hate the idea of gain through free trade it can only mean that they’re looking to get it through robbery.

Lyle
May 27, 2014
Comment to Quote of the day—reality
[I’ve often had similar thoughts but hadn’t put them into words as well as Lyle did.—Joe]

Quote of the day—reality

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The NRA is primarily in it for money and profit, and have demonstrated that they don’t give a SH about you and your family. They are not protecting your gun rights to have a gun (because no one is trying to ban all guns) – they are protecting THEIR PROFITS. Keep being ignorant and voting with them, and see how far it gets you . . .

reality
May 26, 2014
Comment to Shooter’s rage at women too familiar in America
[“reality” appears to be living in an alternate reality because in my universe the NRA is a nonprofit organization, does a lot to protect our right to keep and bear arms, and there are a lot of people who want to ban all guns.

I wonder what color the sky is in their world.—Joe]

A new Internet connection

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Off and on for a couple years and then starting in during the week between last Christmas and New Years I have spent a LOT of time trying to get a good Internet connection to my brother Doug. I have a good connection at Boomershoot Mecca but Doug and his family are blocked by the woods behind their house from Teakean Butte which is the source of my connection. They have a satellite connection that cost a lot of money, is unreliable, has HORRIBLE ping times, and poor transfer rates.

Mecca is 1.6 miles from our Dad’s house and is blocked by a small hill. Doug’s house is about 75 yards further still. And Dad’s house, a machine shed, and the hill block their view of the Boomershoot site. So we had to find a way around the hill just get it to Dad’s place. From Dad’s place it is a pretty easy hop around the machine shed. But first we needed to get to Dad’s place.

The obvious answer is to put a repeater on the hill between Mecca and Dad’s place. But we don’t own the hill. The nickname we have for the owner is “Wicked Witch of the Boomershoot”. So you can imagine how well such a request might be greeted with. I wouldn’t be surprised if she complained about us transmitting electromagnetic waves over her property—if she knew about it.

Anyway the best we could come up with was putting a repeater on a hill I own 1.7 miles from Dad’s house. Yup. We go further way to get a better signal to Dad’s place.

The ordinary Nanostation2s should work for several miles under ideal conditions. But this isn’t an ideal situation. We are probably actually just out of line of sight. In December I couldn’t get things to quite work unless I chose a different hill which belongs to cousin Alan. We probably could have gotten permission from him but at that location we needed to have two Nanostation2s, one pointed toward Mecca and the other toward Dad’s house.

I ordered a parabolic reflector hi-gain external antenna and came back the end of February. And found to my delight that I had good signal strength with just the Nanostation2s, completely different results that when I had done my tests in December. I still wasn’t able to get a high bandwidth connection but I was pretty sure it was a configuration issue on my part. Doug purchased the equipment he would need to get solar power on my hill to power the Nanostation2 and I planned to come back in a few weeks and do my part with the configuration of the Nanostation2s.

I went back in April and again tried to get a connection. Now the Nanostation2s alone didn’t work. The signal strength was back to what I had in December which was too low to be usable. What is going on? I suspect some differences in the ground conductivity or something. I just don’t know for certain. Again I gave up for the moment.

This weekend with the help of daughter Kim, Jacob, and Jeff I did some Boomershoot cleanup, mounted more solar panels on Boomershoot Mecca, and took down a solar panel that Doug was going to use for the repeater. I then proceeded to do some more signal strength testing.

I put up a twelve dBi antenna (a Nanostation2 has a 10 dBi internal antenna) on my hill attached to a Ubiquiti BulletM2 (the same one I used at Boomershoot with great success) and with the parabolic (24 dBi) antenna on a Nanostation2 at Dad’s place was able to get good signal strength. But for some reason the bandwidth sucked. Probably a configuration issue I guessed.

Doug wanted to avoid mounting anything on the outside of Dad’s house so I moved the parabolic antenna to the BulletM2 on my hill and used the internal 10 dBi antenna on a Nanostation2 at Dad’s place. It should only be a 2 dB loss compared to the 12 dBi antenna we were testing with before.

Signal strength was good but the bandwidth was in the toilet. I’m talking throughput to the Internet on the order of 60 kbs download and 10 kbs upload. It has to be a configuration issue. I spent hours trying all kinds of things with no success.

I finally decided the BulletM2 on my hill had to be the problem. So Monday afternoon I put in a Nanostation2 in place of the BulletM2 driving the parabolic antenna:

WP_20140526_010

It worked. Just this minute I have 2.11 Mbps download and 0.68 Mbps upload from my computer through a WiFi access point in their house, a switch, five Nanostations (remember I needed to hop around the machine shed), the router at Mecca (two miles away via the Nanostation path), and to the outside world.

Tomorrow I bring my Verizon Network Extender to test out in their house. I’ll finally have them connected to the rest of the world in a civilized manner.

Update: Early (6:19) in the morning the connection to the rest of the world was less busy and I got this result:

SpeedTest

Yeah. I’m all thrilled about something that is considered poor service by anybody in a major city but this is out in an area where it’s tough to even get cell service. Only Verizon and Inland Cellular even have a hint of service here. And then it is very spotty and intermittent. You have to travel at 20 miles, as the crow flies, to get service from AT&T or T-Mobile.

Their satellite ISP has an advertised (but never realized) download rate of 1.5 Mbs and upload of 256 kps plus a download data limit of 17 Gbytes per month. Ping times are in the 1.25 second range. If you watch a few movies and do a bit of web browsing you exceed that data limit. This is so much better and they will have a solid Verizon connection in their house in a few hours.

Quote of the day—Brandon Watson

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It seems the hot shots of Come and Take It Austin took umbrage to a SXSW panel about social media and gun control. With toddlers in tow, they marched down Sixth Street last Saturday waving flags and revolvers.

…

Still, those of you who were actually invited to our city’s annual party should know that this isn’t exactly everyday behavior. It is true that Texans do enjoy firepower. It is de rigueur for GOP politicians to be photographed at firing ranges, and even our bright liberal beacon Sen. Wendy Davis supports open-carry laws. But in Austin, most of us are content to keep our phallic symbols in our pants.

Without wading into the larger gun-control debate, these kinds of protests are not about the concept of “liberty” that Infowars slings around like a short-order cook. They are about display and braggadocio.

Brandon Watson
March 12, 2014
No, Armed Protests Are Not Normal in Austin
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to TriggerFinger for the email.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The_One_Pc

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The type of gun control we have now doesn’t work. We need to outright repeal the 2nd Amendment.

The_One_Pc
May 24, 2014
Comment to Sheriff: Gunman killed 3 people at home before going on rampage
[If laws aren’t working then those laws need to be repealed. You don’t double down on something you admit isn’t working.

The drug control laws aren’t working either. What does he advise to remedy that problem?

Or how about the laws against people under 21 drinking alcohol? What does he recommend for that?

Even though the guy has crap for brains, don’t let anyone tell you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mark O’Mara

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Our Constitution is a resilient force, and our Bill of Rights has survived countless modifications and restrictions without the erosion of fundamental freedoms. Our Second Amendment right is no different: It can survive modification and restriction without the fear that it will vanish altogether.

Mark O’Mara
May 2, 2014
I’m a gun owner and I want gun control
[“…without fear that it will vanish altogether”! That’s his criteria for the preservation of a specific enumerated right? So as long as you get permission from the government to checkout your single shot .22 rifle once a month at the gun range and use it under close supervision before checking it back your right to keep and bear arms hasn’t been infringed, right?

Let’s test this concept with some other rights:

  • Your right to freedom of speech hasn’t vanished altogether as long as you are given a “free speech zone” a mile from the nearest person that might be offended.
  • Your right freedom of religion hasn’t vanished altogether as long as you tithe 10% to the one government approved church regardless of which of the other two approved religions you more closely align with.
  • Your right to not have government agents quartered in your home hasn’t vanished altogether as long as you get one day a month without them.
  • Your right to be free from involuntary servitude hasn’t vanished altogether as long as you get one day a week to yourself.

I would like to suggest that O’Mara review the concept of “strict scrutiny” in regards to constitutionally protected rights. But I fear his ability to think rationally has vanished altogether.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bryan Miller

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No law abiding citizen needs 15-round magazines.

In mass shootings, the shooter is overwhelmed at the point he has to re-load. That provides the rest of us opportunities to stop the carnage.

Bryan Miller
Executive director of the anti-violence group Heeding God’s Call.
May 23, 2014
New Jersey gun control bill passes Assembly, heads to governor’s desk
[First off, it’s a Bill of Rights. Not a Bill of Needs.

Second, magazines of 15, 20, and 30 rounds are “in common use” and hence protected under the Heller decisions.

Third,  in mass shootings the shooter should be overwhelmed by incoming lead by about the second or third shot, not the 10th.

Fourth, think about trying to overwhelm this old fart during magazine changes or even during the malfunction clearance:

It’s not going to go well for anyone that tries. The only thing that is stopping someone with even a moderate amount of training is a good guy with a gun or the exhaustion of his ammo supply.

This law is only useful for handicapping those who obey it. Those will overwhelmingly be people protecting innocent lives.

I look forward to the eventual prosecution of Miller and all those who voted for this law which will do nothing but protect criminals.—Joe]