Monthly Archives: July 2017

Rounds in the last month

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In July I loaded 65 rounds of 30.06 for daughter Kim and 2048 rounds of .40 S&W. Nearly all of the .40 S&W was Montana Gold JHP for practice at the local indoor range. There were also a few other bullet types when I was testing the Fiocchi primers.

This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223: 2,424 rounds.
30.06: 608 rounds.
300 WIN: 1692 rounds.
40 S&W: 72,065 rounds.
9 mm.log: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 98,430 rounds.

Year to date I have loaded 12,712 rounds.

August is going to be a very busy month with things other than reloading keeping me occupied. I also plan to make a bunch more 30.06 rounds, which are much slower than pistol ammo, or I would make the prediction that I would break 100,000 lifetime total rounds loaded sometime in August. Instead, I expect to reach that milestone in September.

ATF on employee possessors of explosives

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I also ran across this in the updated ATF bulletin, Safety and Security Information for Federal Explosives Licensees and Permittees:

Please Note: An employee possessor must be an employee of the licensee or permittee.  Volunteers are not employees.

I need to look into this some more to verify. It sounds as if the ATF doesn’t have a requirement for Boomershoot volunteer staff to do the paperwork to be an “Employee Possessor”.

That would be really nice.

ATF on binary explosives

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I recently received an email from the ATF saying one of their bulletins, Safety and Security Information for Federal Explosives Licensees and Permittees, has been updated. Of particular interest was what they say about binary explosives (such as Tannerite):

ATF would like to remind those who manufacture, distribute, import, use, or store binary explosives of the vital importance of security safeguards for these materials. After a binary explosive is mixed, it is, by definition, an explosive and must be transported, used, and stored as an explosive. Whether the explosive materials are in the process of manufacture, in storage, or in use, we urge everyone to take all necessary measures to safeguard explosive materials and prevent them from falling into the hands of those who may use them in criminal or terrorist acts. We encourage all persons involved with binary explosives to report any suspicious behavior or unusual activity surrounding these materials to ATF and to local law enforcement authorities. Suspicious behavior may include a customer attempting to purchase large quantities of binary explosive materials while knowing little about the product. Unlike regulated explosives materials, ATF does not require persons to report the theft of precursor or binary explosive components. However, we request that everyone voluntarily report any theft or loss of these chemical explosive precursors to the local law enforcement authority and to the USBDC.


Note: A Federal explosives license is required to manufacture (mix) binary explosives for sale, distribution, or your own business use. Also, users of binary explosives must comply with their state and local explosives regulations regarding binary explosives and their use.

Just common sense advice. We can help avoid attempts at oppressive regulation if we watch out for bad guys ourselves.

Quote of the day—Robert Farago

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Gun ownership is an inherently political act. In fact, it’s a transformative political act. The more Americans who own guns, the safer our Constitutional republic will be. Without a shot fired.

Robert Farago
July 20, 2017
The Trace: ‘The NRA’s Campaign of Cultural Warfare is Working’
[Take a new shooter to the range, give them a great experience and save the republic.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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It was silly for Seattle to withhold this information, but we’re pretty certain why the city did it. The council was told that this tax could generate between $300,000 and a half-million dollars, but now it appears the city has collected just over $100,000, which is an embarrassing shortfall.

As a result the city has essentially lost money on this scheme because now they have to pay our attorney fees, plus a small penalty. On top of that, the city has lost tax revenue because one major gun dealer has moved out of the city and another has reported considerable sales losses. That is tax money the city will never realize.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF Executive Vice President
JUDGE FINDS AGAINST SEATTLE IN PRA CASE FILED BY SAF, MAGAZINE EDITOR
[Almost for certain, even without paying SAF lawyer fees, the city of Seattle lost money by creating a tax on guns.

But, it was never really about “revenue to provide broad-based benefits through research and prevention programs”. It was about raising the cost of exercising a specific enumerated right. They succeeded in driving sellers out of the city and encouraging legal buyers to travel out of the city.

They should be prosecuted.—Joe]

ATF inspection

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My ATF license to manufacture high explosives must be renewed every three years. This was one of those years.

I had to take a day of vacation to meet them because they aren’t allowed to work on weekends.*

Barb and I drove to our motel in Pullman on Thursday night with Heidi (the new ATF “investigator”—it used to be “inspector”) scheduled to meet us at our hotel to do the paperwork side of things at 9:00 AM. She didn’t show up then and she didn’t contact me to let me know. I was a little annoyed and that probably showed in my tweets about it.

She showed up about 9:40 and said when she went to checkout of her motel that morning her government issued credit card wouldn’t work. She had to call “the government” to get things straightened out. Okay, that’s a pretty good excuse.

We went through the checklist of things that mostly didn’t apply to me and then lead her out through the back roads of Idaho to the Boomershoot site where she did about a 10 or 15 minute inspection, took pictures, and said everything looked good. She still needed to go through my records to make sure I had never put more than the maximum allowed 18,000 pounds of explosives in the magazine at one time. Considering that I don’t think we have made that much explosives in the last seven years and the magazine is full with about 2,000 pounds I’m pretty sure that her arithmetic is going to give me a passing grade with that. The only thing I didn’t get right was that I was supposed to send them a signed plot map even though it hasn’t changed in years and it’s on the Boomershoot website. I’ll print out a copy, sign it, scan it, and then email it to her and I will have three more years of being blessed by the ATF.

We also talked about our kids some, the farm land around us, what crops are grown there, the Indian Reservation, all about Boomershoot (she thought it sounded awesome), and how beautiful it is in this part of the country. So much better than Florida where it is so flat and even Spokane where she lives now.

One effect of the license renewal is that all the explosive handlers for Boomershoot have to send me new Employee Possessor forms for me to forward on to the ATF. Everyone that was ATF approved is now not approved (except Barb and I who have already taken care of it).

The bottom line is that it is all system go for Boomershoot 2018. Sign up here.

* While chatting with her doing the inspection I found out that Heidi rescheduled her day off from work to next week in response to my requested day to do the inspection. This allowed me do the inspection on the same weekend as Kim’s wedding and saved me nearly 700 miles of driving round-trip to Idaho on different weekends for the inspection and wedding. Thank you Heidi!

Wedding present

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Guess what I gave Kim (daughter, and target production manager for Boomershoot) for her wedding present (she and Jacob are now married):

20170728_081832 (002)
Photo by Barb.

It’s not just any rifle:

WP_20170727_08_32_55_ProWeb

I put a new stock, hunting scope, sling, and a bipod on it, but it’s the same rifle Kim, Jaime, and I took to the Blanchard Blast in 1996 and 1997. The Blanchard Blast was our inspiration for Boomershoot.

I also gave her 150 rounds of 30.06 ammo which was loaded to .308 Winchester velocities. She wants to go hunting and didn’t have a rifle for that. Now she does. And it’s in the same caliber as Jacob’s hunting rifle.

Update: Here is a picture of them shortly after saying “I do.”

IMG_8552

Quote of the day—David Fallick

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Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, claimed that “he’s ‘probably’ the guy who, after the Newtown massacre, killed the bipartisan bill that would’ve required background checks on commercial sales of guns. He had ‘a very big role’ in designing opposition in the Senate.” That’s too bad. I would have preferred a guy who “probably” pushed through legislation so that not one more person since that massacre was ever shot in the United States. Let’s work toward that — keeping everyone safe and preventing any danger of anyone being shot ever again. We need gun control.

David Fallick
July 24, 2017
We need gun control
[If Fallick believes there is legislative action possible such that “not one more person since that massacre was ever shot in the United States” he has to be the all-time winner of the Crap for Brains award.

That is industrial grade stupidity.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Weer’d Beard

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Planting a Mole in the Brady Campaign is like sending a torpedo at a sinking ship.

Weer’d Beard
July 24, 2017
Comment to Brady Campaign is hiring
[I can’t see any advantage to having a mole inside of the Brady Campaign either. They just aren’t effective enough at anything except generating material for us to mock to be a threat.

I could see it being useful to have someone inside who leads them further into self delusion and irrelevancy. It would be amusing for them to spend a ton of money “getting back to their roots” and openly advocate for the things they did when they had the most power in the White House.—Joe]

Education quirk

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Interesting. Short version: PISA is the “Programme for International Student Assessment”, it tests schools/kids from around the world. 65 nations entered. America ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. Ouch. Nations that didn’t enter were mostly places like all of sub-Saharan Africa which routinely score badly on such tests; it’s safe to assume the US did better than Haiti, even if they didn’t take the test.

However… Someone looked at how kids performed in each nation by ethnic backgrounds within a country, and compared them across borders (i.e., compare American Chinese to Chinese in China, American whites to whites in Europe, Mexican-Americans to Mexicans in Mexico, etc). Quote:

Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests.

African-American kids would have outscored the students of any sub-Saharan African country that took the test (none did) and did outperform the only black country to participate,Trinidad and Tobago, by 25 points.

Huh. That means that one (or both) of these two cherished narratives are false:
(a) American schools are abject failures for the amount of money we spend per student, and spending more money will fix the problem, or
(b) There are no real and significant racial /ethnic /cultural differences, and the low academic scores highly correlated with economic achievement of certain groups is the result of white racism, oppression,  discrimination, etc.

You can lead a horse to water… etc., etc.

You can’t have it both ways with this analysis of the data. Personally, I think we should treat all people as individuals, and do what we can with / for them. Move to an ability-based class-placement system for most things rather than age-based.

Quote of the day—Emily Miller‏ @EmilyMiller

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ALL AMERICANS can apply for DC gun carry permit, not just residents. Here’s link, but ignore the good reason part!

Emily Miller‏ @EmilyMiller
Tweeted on July 26, 2017
[Amazing. I started carrying a gun in the mid 1990s and DC not only prohibited carry, it also prohibited handgun possession unless the gun was registered with DC before 1976.

I still see the requirement to be registered and pay money to exercise what is acknowledged to be a specific enumerated right as an infringement of that right but it is a extreme improvement.

We have a lot of people to thank for this change, Alan Gura, CATO Institute, SAF, and the NRA are the most obvious but Emily Miller and her book were also significant contributors.

If you squint just a little you can see constitutional carry in DCs future.*—Joe]

* Yes. I know DC had constitutional carry for a few days three years ago (to the day of Emilly’s tweet) but it did not persist. This may not persist either but this time it is going to last more than a few days.

Sometimes I hate it when life gets exciting

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Friday a hard drive on my home computer went kaput. Not really a huge deal – it was ~8 years old – just a hassle, time, and money spent replacing it, restoring from backups, etc. More a “*sigh*, ‘again?'” sort of thing than an “OMG! I’m SO SCREQWED!!!” sort of moment. Which then, of course, leads to looking at the rest of HDDs I’ve got on various systems to see if any of them need replacements…. yes, of course they do…. more $$, more time, more hassle.

But when a strange car is in the driveway when you get home, labeled “loaner car”, and the conversation metaphorically starts with “well, at least nobody got hurt,” it’s not going to be a great afternoon. Wife and kids were in a minor-ish fender-bender. Technically drivable, at least as far as the dealer. But the crumple-zone crumpled just enough that they are deciding if they should fix it, or total it and give us a check. If they do total it, then as an older Honda the check won’t be anywhere close to getting a newer minivan. So we are looking at pricing out a replacement vehicle that is ~80% likely to be needed.

Anyone have a 6-8 year old minivan in good shape they could part with at a fair price? Seattle area, but can drive if needed. Life keeps happening, I guess. And that’s not addressing the need for a re-shingle job on the 20-YO roof.

Quote of the day—ThatNormalBunny

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Instead of smart people with guns there should be no people with guns

ThatNormalBunny
July 24, 2017
Comment to video How a Hacker Fired a Locked Smart Gun Using Only Magnets | WIRED
[Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take away your guns.—Joe]

It will always be relatively easy

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Sebastian has interesting comments on his site about this video:

See also my blog category of Smart Guns.

People who demand all guns must be “smart” must fall into one or more of the following categories:

  • They are evil and are deliberately attempting to raise the price and restrict the exercise of specific enumerated rights.
  • They have intellectual capacity asymptotically approaching that of a fence post.
  • They believe technology is some sort of magic that can do anything once someone figures out the proper technological incantation. They cannot comprehend there are certain things that are physically, or for all practical purposes, impossible. Engineers/scientists (I have been both) are able to things which is indistinguishable from magic to the general population. This does not mean they do not have very real and impenetrable boundaries they must operate within.

Such people should be politely informed they are wrong, mocked, scorned, and prosecuted. In that order.

Quote of the day—Marchelle Tigner

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It’s important, especially for black women, to learn how to shoot. We need to learn how to defend ourselves.

Marchelle Tigner
July 24, 2017
Black women picking up firearms for self-defense
[The reason given for it being especially important for black women is that black women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence.

This is an AP story and is an extremely important trend:

It’s hard to find definitive statistics on gun ownership, but a study by the Pew Research Center released this month indicated that just 16 percent of “non-white women” identified themselves as gun owners, compared with about 25 percent of white women. Other Pew surveys in recent years have shown a growing acceptance of firearms among African-Americans: In 2012, one found that less than a third of black households viewed gun ownership as positive; three years later, that number had jumped. By then, 59 percent of black families saw owning guns as a necessity.

If the advocates for gun rights get the African-Americans on board we will politically crush the anti-gun advocates.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Con Slobodchikoff

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A lot of people talk to their dogs and share their innermost secrets. With cats I’m not sure what they’d have to say.

A lot of times it might just be ‘you idiot, just feed me and leave me alone’.

Con Slobodchikoff
Professor at Northern Arizona University
July 23, 2017
This new technology may soon be able to translate your pet’s sounds into words
[I laughed and laughed at this. It reminded me of something daughter Xenia said to me once.—Joe]

Brady Campaign is hiring

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I ran across this today and even though I know the Brady Campaign folks live in an alternate reality that only occasionally intersects with ours I was still taken aback:

The mission of the Brady organization and its Million Mom March is to create a safer America by cutting gun deaths in half by 2025.

One might claim they are delusional since more than half of “gun deaths” are suicides and it is extremely unlikely they can come up with idea to reduce those significantly, let alone get it implemented. And most of the murders are by gangs who, as part of their “business”, traffic in banned goods already. For them to get a gun is never going to more difficult than it is for the average high school dropout to get the recreation drug of their choice. Which means they probably can get a gun within an hour, 24×7, any day of the year.

I can’t imagine the management of the Brady Campaign doesn’t already know the goal is completely unfeasible. Hence, they are deliberately lying. It’s nothing new.

Then we have this:

Brady is in search of a National Communications Director to lead its communications strategies to drive the national conversation on gun violence prevention (GVP). This position will oversee all external communications, serve internal clients (development, organizing, legal and policy functions) in their communications needs, respond to media inquiries and develop and lead aggressive and proactive earned media strategies to build awareness of Brady’s work. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to an issue and organization of historic importance and shape the national discourse on reducing gun violence in the United States.

To apply, email cover letter and résumé to search@bradymail.org mentioning “National Communications Director” in the subject line.

Responsibilities:

  • Develop and implement communications strategies for the organization to effectively communicate Brady’s work and message as part of the national dialogue on gun violence prevention.
  • Oversee all external communications on behalf of Brady
  • Respond to media inquiries and develop proactive strategies to increase awareness of Brady’s work in traditional and new/social media outlets.

Qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s degree required; related graduate degree desirable.
  • Experience with, passion for and knowledge of the GVP issue desirable.
  • At least 8 years of direct experience in positions with communications responsibility, with considerable experience as a media relations and strategic communications professional and manager required.
  • Experience in public policy, nonprofit, or advocacy campaigns at the state or federal level desirable.
  • Proven experience managing a comprehensive communications team drafting, editing, and overseeing material production including, but not limited to, press releases, fact sheets, social media posts, and op-eds.
  • Proven ability to guide communications strategy, execution and delivery to raise profile of organization.
  • Ability to synthesize and summarize large amounts of information and to focus quickly on the essence of an issue, as well as to identify, understand, and address different policy perspectives.
  • Strong writing skills and willingness to participate in execution of communications tactics when needed to ensure success of initiatives.
  • Confident in presenting one’s own ideas and diplomatically persuading others as appropriate.
  • Ability to work professionally and collegially within a creative, fast-paced culture that demands excellence and emphasizes teamwork.
  • Demonstrated time and project management skills, including an ability to meet multiple deadlines by maintaining a high level of organization. Ability to set priorities and identify resources.
  • Ability to work independently with limited supervision.
  • Flexible and able to routinely juggle multiple competing priorities and work in teams of both support and senior staff to meet project goals.

Odd. They don’t mention anything about “must be willing to be delusional or adopt a culture of lies and deception and violate Federal law.”

Quote of the day—Christopher Burg

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Some people might claim that the people being robbed aren’t innocent because they’ve been accused of a crime but civil asset forfeiture occurs before somebody has been found guilty of a crime, which is the problem. Under a justice system where one is supposedly innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt there is no justification for stealing an accused individual’s property. So, yes, Jeff Sessions announced that his department is going to be stealing from innocent people and that should have everybody up in arms.

Christopher Burg
July 19, 2017
Jeff Sessions Announces Justice Department Will Increase Theft
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—AWR Hawkins

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The bottom line is that the Left already knows their gun control schemes do not work; criminals and terrorists have proven it. Yet they keep demanding that Americans submit to more and more restrictive gun laws.

Perhaps it is not gun control they are seeking. Maybe they are just seeking control.

AWR Hawkins
July 21, 2017
When Gun Control Fails
[There is one thing gun control is good for. Genocide.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Andrew Mark Miller

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Sadly, liberals don’t care about stopping violent crime.  They care about their own rabid ideology.

One of many examples where liberals are actually hurting the people they think they are protecting with their reckless ideas.

Andrew Mark Miller
July 20, 2017
Gun Control Study: Carry Permits Up 190%, Violent Crime Down 18%
[Perhaps the masses of “useful idiot” progressives think they are “protecting” people. At the top levels they know better. They are in it for the power. Guns and the truth are power. Stalin knew this and knew the masses must not have guns or ideas of their own. The high level progressives know this too. The data is so overwhelming that have to know it. That they say things like “fake but accurate” with complete sincerity and even after getting caught can’t understand why they should get fired or even apologize is proof they care far more about their rabid ideology and power than the truth and what is best for the people in general.—Joe]