It's happened several times before.  Good alternator, good battery, dead battery.  Over the last two or three days, I noticed my good starter getting slower and slower.  Since vehicles these days, inexplicably, have only a voltage meter, I couldn't tell from my instrumentation whether I had extra drain, a dead battery, or dirty terminals.  You do get a slight clue though, if you watch the voltage closely immediately after start-up.  If everything is working normally, you'll see the voltage start out a bit lower, then creep up to normal running voltage in a few seconds.  My meter was rock solid.  With a current meter, such as was the norm in the 1960s, you'll see the charge or discharge current.  Much more useful in my opinion.  Best would be to have both volts and amps.

The pickup barely started this morning, and at work it didn't start at all.  Like a jerk, only then did I clean the battery terminals.  Still no go, so I got a boost from Dan.  The terminals get corroded and that can sometimes allow current to flow one direction, but not the other (that's a diode, see).  In this case the batt would discharge just fine, but it couldn't get any charge current (hence the full voltage immediately after starting-- the voltage wasn't being pulled down by any charge current).  Eventually you're a walkin', yo.

I went and bought a new battery anyway, because I'll have a use for it either way.  By the time I got back from across town, the old battery was fully charged and snappy as ever, so now I have a new one I can use either in my son's van or my old beat-up T-Bird.  Fun fun fun.  Plus I got a decent charger for the garage, just in case.  If the battery had had only a few less electrons to give up this morning, I'd have been knocking on doors for a boost.  No more.  I have used my ham radio 12V supply to charge a car battery, but it doesn' like that.  The huge current load tends to blow some fairly important components.

Yeah so; if your starter slows down, just a little, clean your terminals before it gets worse.  You may just have solved the whole problem, right there.  You do keep a terminal brush and some tools in your vehicle, right?

Brownells.com

The National Rifle Association has caused more death and injury to Americans then any terrorist group.

James T. Brown
May 1, 2012
Letter: NRA lobby is an assault on U.S.
[If you squint and hold your head just right you might be able to say that he is technically correct. But the path is somewhat tenuous and leads to protective violence rather than criminal violence.

Brown, of course, did not intend his comments to be taken in this manner. Brown should be given all the scorn and ridicule normally given to those that claim teaching of evolution, mixed race marriages, or women being allowed to vote is responsible drought, earthquakes, and the milk cows going dry.—Joe]

Brownells.com

Clayton wants some help:

I have been asked to help write an amicus brief challenging a state discretionary permit issuance. In state after state, as shall-issue laws have worked their way through the legislative process, opponents of shall-issue have repeatedly stated that "blood with run in the streets" "It will be like the Wild West" and similar claims.

Our enemies are one of the best sources for ammunition to be used against them. There own words are riches just waiting to be mined.

The keyword "site:" can be used with both Google and Bing. This restricts your search to just a single domain. Hence the search phrase site:bradycampaign.org "wild west" yields good results (Google yields a few more than Bing but I'm not convinced they are better). site:vpc.org "blood in the streets" is somewhat less interesting.

Brownells.com

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

Gore Vidal
[I normally would find something of this nature funny but with too much truth in it I, as well as the humor, suffers.—Joe]

Brownells.com

I've posted quite a bit about my spud gun.

I ended up with an old target from 2004 in my truck load of stuff I brought back from Idaho last night:

That is a 0.5 inch five-shot group from 100 yards which I shot with factory ammo (300 Win Mag, Black Hills Match which is loaded with a moly coated 190 grain Sierra Match King bullet). That is a typical group at that range. I've had smaller groups at 200 yards but not with as many shots and those aren't typical.

I am very, very pleased with this gun and ammo. I just wish I had more occasions to shoot it. My clock tower just isn't the right place for it at this time.

Brownells.com

Friday night son James and I packed all of Barbara's stuff into a U-Haul truck and I left for Idaho with it. Saturday with help from Jacob and Nancy I unloaded the truck and loaded up a bunch of my stuff in Idaho. Tonight son James, and daughter-in-law Kelsey helped me unload the truck and pack the stuff up the stairs to my clock tower.

The water bed is still nothing but a bunch of pieces of wood:

The reloading bench is inaccessible behind a sea of boxes:

But everything did fit and after I put things on shelves and in closets then go through things and throw away stuff that I haven't touched in 20 years I think I'll have enough room.

I will need some help putting the bed together but other than that it will just take a couple weekends on my own to sort through the stuff.

The toughest part was getting the gun safe up the stairs. It fell once but didn't get scratched because it landed on James' leg. The leg will heal on it's own. Scratched paint requires assistance.

Thanks to everyone that helped.

Brownells.com

I'll bet there was only one person looking in this direction when the fireball went up.

I heart fireballs.

I'm on the right with the bullhorn. Ry is on the left near the fireball.

Brownells.com

Why would anyone, other than law enforcement, need to carry a loaded gun into national parks or wildlife refuges? How many more of these demented decrees from George Bush do we have to endure before his reign ends? Why exactly does he feel the need to accommodate a few insecure individuals who need to carry a loaded gun to compensate for their lack of manhood? Was that perhaps Dick's idea?

Despite the sheer stupidity of this last-minute decision, I'm not too worried.These immature gun fanatics are not the type who would visit and appreciate a national park anyway. They are mostly found in bars where they, in drunken stupor, shoot themselves in the legs.

Margrit Novack
December 13, 2008
Guns in parks shows lack of manhood
[It's another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Brownells.com

C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made.

The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.

Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman, during House consideration of a militia bill (1790)
Quoted in Debates in the House of Representatives: Third Session, December 1790 – March 1791. Ed. William C. diGiacomantonio et al. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996,. 92-93.
Volume 14 of the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, March 4, 1789-March 3, 1791.
[Via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

Update: As pointed out in the comments by Sean the nature of the argument is interesting. The states have the right to be armed just as private citizens do. As, I think it was, Lysander Spooner pointed out a government has no power which was not granted it by the individuals who formed the government. It is therefore a logical impossibility for the state to grant private citizens rights or powers since the state cannot have any rights or powers which the private citizen did not already have.—Joe]

Brownells.com

… Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery.

Alas, they were Democrats, so they cheated.

After the war, Democratic legislatures enacted “Black Codes,” denying black Americans the right of citizenship — such as the rather crucial one of bearing arms — while other Democrats (sometimes the same Democrats) founded the Ku Klux Klan.

For more than a hundred years, Republicans have aggressively supported arming blacks, so they could defend themselves against Democrats.

Ann Coulter
April 23, 2012
Coulter: Gun control and self-defense
[Great article. As is usual for Coulter there is lots of snark.-Joe]

Brownells.com

...she should be suckling an adult if it's supposed to depict The Obama Way.  Well, children, adults-- everyone.  Maybe there should be a long line behind the kid, all carrying signs and complaining/competing over who gets to suckle next.

Brownells.com

Via a SAFTweet.

Liberal Whoopi Goldberg Admits She's a Member of the NRA:

GOLDBERG: But it is also, is it also, John, because those folks are saying, okay, here's what I have in my house. I’m letting–the government says -- I want you–I'm an NRA member, as you probably know or don't know.

…

STOSSEL: You packing now?
HASSELBECK: Maybe?
GOLDBERG: You don't want to find out.

I despise emulation of celebrities but I recognize it probably is hard-wired into the human brain. Therefore this is great news. Not only has she "come out of the closet" as a gun owner and NRA member but she is a black female who comes across as reasonably smart, rational, and likable. This makes it more difficult for the anti-gun people to make their usual claims about gun owners being stupid/ignorant/insurrectionist racist white males.

Brownells.com

When people in Washington say they're going to take away my guns, they better bring theirs if they're going to take mine.

Dave Mustaine
May 8, 2012
MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE On Gun Control, Lineup Changes And Winning Awards
[The people in Washington have no problem sending people with gun to take our guns. Just ask Vicky Weaver and David Koresh… oh, yeah, you can't ask them because they were murdered by the people Washington sent.—Joe]

Brownells.com

How many rounds in the jar?

Guess closer than anyone else and win 400 rounds of .223.

Brownells.com

The District needs to realize that it cannot choose to exempt itself from a fundamental provision of the Bill of Rights.

Emily Miller
March 6, 2012
MILLER: Gun owners win a round: Second Amendment rights advance in District and Maryland
[Unfortunately such a realization seems to require a (figuratively) 2x4 between the eyes. Fortunately we have such a 2x4 with SAF and Alan Gura. It's tragic it took over 30 years to connect for the first time and so many people had, and still have, their rights infringed upon and no public official has ever gone to jail over it.—Joe]

Brownells.com

Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is being filmed and you could be an extra if you help out with their social media efforts:

So, what do you need to do to get on set? You need to get busy...

1. Follow us on Twitter and retweet any of our tweets.
2. Like us on facebook and share any of our posts.

The more you tweet and share, the more chance you have to be cast so, tweet and share early and often.

We’ll be selecting an extra this Friday afternoon and flying the selectee and a guest to LA this coming Monday, May 14th - all expenses paid. Or, most expenses anyway - flight and hotel for two nights.

I'm going to be busy with other things on Monday and I don't really pay much attention to Facebook anyway. I just want to know where I can find Gault's Gulch.

Brownells.com

It wasn’t some industrious Virginian smuggling guns to New York City, it’s people coming from New York to Virginia to get guns by some illegal means. It’s really their problem. They need to keep their criminals and drugs in New York. I’m not giving up my rights because New York can’t control its criminals.

Philip Van Cleave
May 7, 2012
Critics say Va.’s gun laws could encourage trafficking
[This, of course, reminds me of something Tam once said:

Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can't own a gun? I don't care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn't. So piss off.

Van Cleave puts a more politically correct spin on it but still gets the message across.—Joe]

Brownells.com

The Willamette Week is easily impressed (emphasis in the original):

In addition to the relatively small quantity of weed, the feds found an impressive gun collection in Barnes' house.

…

Within the defendant's bedroom agents found a loaded 9mm handgun on the floor, a loaded .410 Taurus revolver on the floor, a loaded double-barrel coach shotgun behind the bedroom door, and loaded .357 caliber pistol in his dresser. In total, agents found 14 various firearms within the residence and garage.

I know a guy who occasionally attends Boomershoot has 59 guns in just one safe.

Brownells.com

Charity Navigator gives the Brady Center an overall score of 44.06 out of 70 with a low to midrange two-star out of four rating.

The NRA Foundation gets a 58.46 out of 70 rating with a high three-star rating.

That settles it. I know which one of those is going to get my money now.

Brownells.com

(My computer stinks  This was posted days ago but never showed up.  I try again)

As a practical matter, I don't see how you can wage war on anything but nouns.  Just sayin'.  Americans fought a war or two against "Britain" which is a noun, thoughbeit a proper noun.  Japanese "imperialism" is a noun, etc.  "Socialism" is a noun too, as is "jihad".

This war-on-nouns stuff started, I figure, with the "War On An Emotion".  That of course being "terror".  I agree that it is pretty silly to initiate a military war against an emotion like terror, among other things, because war itself can be pretty terrifying.  Now if you wanted to wage war against happiness I suppose that would be a little easier.  You may be able to bomb people out of their happiness.

So it comes down to the particular nouns that might be legitimate enemies against which we might legitimately wage war.  More importantly, it comes down to those things that are worth protecting, even with deadly force when necessary.  Those too are nouns.  Life is a noun.  Liberty is a noun.  Property is a noun.  It is far easier to be against something (Critical Theory) than to be for something.  When we consider fighting wars, we need to keep that in mind.  For what are we fighting?

For those who will say "Who is Dennis Prager?" I say that he is the one who said, "I prefer clarity to agreement".

So let's be clear.  Only once that is accomplished can we decide on whether or not we agree.

I've heard that we can't legitimately declare war against jihad (or rather, for liberty - the opposite of jihad)) because jihad isn't a country.  That makes waging war against it a logical impossibility, I guess is what we're being told.  OK.  So they're saying we can only wage war for or against real estate?  An enemy can only take the form of real estate?  See; I can play stupid word games too, and my stupid word games don't help either.

Hint; liberty isn't a country any more than jihad is a country.  It's a concept, and hopefully liberty is a movement.  Jihad is a concept and certainly it is a movement, for caliphate (another concept).  We fight and die for concepts.  Life too, but the concept of liberty is an extension of the protection of life.

Brownells.com

Via Say Uncle we get this annoying news:

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.
 
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
 
The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.
 
"If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding," an industry representative who has reviewed the FBI's draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second industry representative briefed on it.

This is so crap for brains stupid I am surprised the author of the article and the industry representatives didn't fall over laughing at the FBI. Since the "requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded" as long as the number is greater than two they can't enforce such a requirement against small groups of people. And that assumes the criminals were to use service providers in the U.S. that are easy to track down. With overseas and even open Wi-Fi access points so easy to access even finding a group of a criminals who utilized an illegal communication system would be tough.

This is nothing but A Security Theater that invades the privacy of those that pose no threat to the general population and can be used as a tool by unscrupulous politicians and government thugs to embarrass or blackmail their opponents.

Brownells.com

Several years ago when the news of the exploding debt and crashing financial markets was making the headlines son James ask what this would mean. I told him I didn't really know because I had never seen anything like it before and to a large extent we don't have any real history of this sort of thing before. In the depression of the 1930's the government debt wasn't huge to start out with and there was a completely different situation with the banks and lack of insured deposits. This is different.

The one thing I suggested might eventually happen is that governments would have to start laying off people and that many laws and regulations would essentially be ignored because there would not be enough people to enforce them. His response was something along the lines of, "So this is a good thing then." Of course it isn't and wasn't that simple. There can be a lot of bad to go with the good. For example there may not be enough people to enforce the morass of all the millions of regulations but there probably will always be enough thugs to enforce the confiscatory tax rates, nationalization of health care, communications, food, and energy production and distribution.

The worst of the possibilities have not happened yet but a glimmer of the good has started to shine through:

In April the household survey showed that that there were 442,000 fewer people working in government than in March. The household survey has a much smaller sample size than the establishment survey, and so is prone to volatility, but the magnitude of the drop is striking: It marks the largest decline on both an absolute and a percentage basis on record going back to 1948. Moreover, the household survey has consistently showed bigger drops in government employment than the establishment survey has.

But of course it's but a drop in the bucket. According to the article there are about 20.3 million people in the U.S. engaged in government work. I would be happier if there were 19 million fewer than that with most of those being in the military.

Brownells.com

I hear that Oklahoma may replace it's Lethal Injection system (Which is out of drugs) with O'Bama Care as their choice to use in Death Penalty cases.

terryatrae
May 7, 2012
Comment to Anti-gun group downplays ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ death toll
[The amount of truth in this statement is vanishingly small but it's enough to be very funny.—Joe]

Brownells.com

Via eBay.
[It's another Markley’s Law Monday! But this time with a twist.

Next week we go back to our usually scheduled program.—Joe]

Brownells.com

I don't recall this being mentioned on the gun blogs and I did a little bit of searching and didn't find it. It's possible this is very old news but I think I would have noticed.

Recently I was in an antique shop and noticed an article in a newspaper from last February:

Apparently eBay reversed their policy on gun parts, "Actual firearms can't be listed on eBay. However, many parts and accessories for firearms are OK to sell, but only under certain conditions." The actual eBay policy page currently says the following are allowed but restricted to U.S. sales:

• Accessories and parts for guns such as butt plates, cases, cleaning supplies, dies, grips, holsters, molds, racks, pistol grips, scopes, slings, stocks, storage cases, or trigger guards. The listing must include a description of the type of firearm the accessory or part is for and what it's used for. If it doesn't, the listing may be removed.
• Muzzle loader or black powder gun parts or accessories, as long as each item is offered in one listing at a time. (However, having separate listings for items that can be used to build a gun is prohibited.)
• The following gun parts and accessories are allowed on the eBay US site only. The seller must be in the US and offer domestic shipping only:
  • En bloc clips
  • Barrels
  • Bolts
  • Choke tubes
  • Cylinders
  • Firing pins
  • Hammers
  • Magazines with a capacity to accept 10 rounds or less (high-capacity magazines that can accept more than 10 rounds are not allowed)
  • Slides
  • Trigger assemblies

We still don't see "a blister pack of six Glock's at Costco" but it's a step in the right direction.

Brownells.com

I just discovered the next book I'm going to read: Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up.

I'm downloading it from Audible.com as I type…

Some people are speculating that Fast and Furious could be the next "Watergate". But I'm not really convinced it will become that. Sure, it's almost certain what happened was worse than Watergate because of the people who died and that an attack on a fundamental right was involved. But Watergate only became such a big issue because the media cared about it. The media cared about it because it was a Republican president involved in the scandal. In this case it's a Democrat and it was about infringing upon the 2^nd Amendment which the media thinks is a good idea.

Brownells.com