Author Archives: Joe

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 import 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]

Fiocchi Small Pistol, No Lead, primers

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I do a lot of indoor shooting and the possibility of lead poisoning is something that concerns me. I get a blood test for lead every year and it stays within the “normal” range but when I wasn’t doing much shooting for a couple years it went to almost undetectable levels. Hence, I know I have a lead source in my environment and it’s probably either the indoor range and/or the reloading.

When I saw Powder Valley had no lead, small pistol, primers available I ordered some to test. I didn’t know they were even available to the reloading community. These primers would probably reduce the lead exposure at both the range and when handling the reused brass during reloading.

They are a bit more expensive than the Winchester primers (WSP) I normally use. Before shipping the Winchester WSP primers are $28/1000 (2.8 cents each). The Fiocchi no lead primers are $57/1500 (3.8 cents each). A penny per round difference… hmm. Okay, I would pay that if it significantly reduced the lead I’m getting into my system.

Due to a mixup by Powder Valley I ended up (after a couple of weeks) getting 1500 Fiocchi standard primers as well as 1500 of the no lead primers. They came in a brick of 10 trays of 150 primers per tray:

IMG_8279

They are, ironically, a lead grey color:

IMG_8283

IMG_8285

I made up my indoor loads and ran them over my chronograph:

Bullet
weight		 Powder
weight		 Mean
velocity		 PF SDev ES Min Max
Montana Gold JHP, CFE Pistol, WSP
primers*		 180.22 5.4 921.50 165.87 11.5 38.0 905 943
Montana Gold JHP, CFE Pistol, Fiocchi No Lead
primers		 180.22 5.4 916.67 165.00 16.6 56.0 897 953
Montana Gold JHP, CFE Pistol, Fiocchi standard
primers		 180.22 5.4 879.00 158.22 44.3 139.0 803 942

Hmmm.. The standard deviation and especially the extreme spread are worse with the no lead primers. And the Fiocchi standard primers are terrible! The velocity is lower and the standard deviation and extreme spread is through the roof. I loaded up some more rounds and tested them and got essentially the same results.

With the polymer coated bullets I use outdoors and CFE Pistol powder the results were even worse. The standard deviation went from about 10 fps with WSP to about 18 fps with the Fiocchi no lead primers (I haven’t tested the Fiocchi standard primers with these bullets).

I really don’t want to keep two types of primers around. I want to minimize the number of components types rather than expand them. And if I increase the standard deviation on the match ammo I would need to increase the mean velocity to insure I continue reliably making major PF. Increasing the velocity also means increasing the reloading cost above that of the increased primer cost, and increasing the recoil to solve a “problem” I don’t really have.

I think I’m going to continue using the WSP primers.

** Yes, I know these aren’t reliably making Major Power Factor, I’m increasing the powder charge some based upon this data. This load is just for practice anyway. I have never used them at a match. For USPSA matches I have been using Black Bullets, WSP primers, and ETR7 which has been repeatedly tested to give me a PF of a little over 170 with a SDev of about 9 fps.

The birds

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Every few days I do a quick scan through all the images from the Boomershoot Live web cams. I’ve see quite a few deer (or the same deer many times) a coyote or two, a few birds (most notable this one), insects, etc. But the flock of birds that showed up a few days ago was unusual.

One minute there are none:

P17071519422910

The next minute there is a big flock which stays for a couple minutes:

P17071519433510

P17071519444210

Then they are gone:

P17071519454810

Quote of the day—Karl Denninger

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It is therefore quite-clear that the data has been intentionally tampered with.

Since this has formed the basis for plans to steal literal trillions of dollars and has already resulted in the forced extraction of hundreds of billions in aggregate for motorists and industry this quite-clearly constitutes the largest economic fraud ever perpetrated in the world.

I call for the indictment and prosecution of every person and organization involved, asset-stripping all of them to their literal underwear.

For starters.

Karl Denninger
July 14, 2017
Climate Alarmist Profiteers: Go To Prison
[Emphasis in the original.

Denninger is referring to a new report: On the Validity of NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU Global Average Surface Temperature Data  &  The Validity of EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding. This report is, shall we say, “quite skeptical”, of global temperature data sets which claim to show rising global temperatures.—Joe]

Quote of the day—BlackKokkAsian

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you can still buy car trunk guns in Oakland.  there’s a 10 second waiting period to count the money.

BlackKokkAsian
July 18, 2017
Comment to California struggles to implement new gun-control measures
[The selection is limited and there is no money back guarantee, but sometimes the prices are below the manufactures’ cost of production.—Joe]

Quote of the day—kam

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Without Central Banks this market wouldn’t exist. All the algorithms today are but spin off of linear regression. Boats rising with the tide.

Earnings can be replaced with Central Bank cash/credit, but not over the long run. And that day could be tomorrow, or in 10 years. Who could have thought that easy money would have created so many walking corpses.

kam
June 15, 2017
Comment to What Happens When the Machines Start Selling?
[H/T to Brett.

Who? I’m not sure about “walking corpses” being explicitly predicted but there were many people who thought it was a really bad idea.

The lessons learned in the next few years will be remembered for probably a generation or so before “the new kids on the block” believe they are smarter and/or times are different. The best fix would probably be when the lesson is visible world wide as burned out ruins of cities for governments to be prohibited from trying to “manage the economy”. But I put the odds at 50-50 that will happen on even one continent.—Joe]

Quote of the day—TexasTopCat

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The people pushing this law know that there will be no reduction in criminal violence, it will merely be one more group of people that will be denied civil rights and become unarmed victims of crime.

TexasTopCat
July 16, 2017
Comment to ‘Gun safety’ is not ‘gun control’: Letter to the editor
[The law being discussed is about “extreme risk protection” orders.

The questions I have are:

  1. If these people are so dangerous to themselves and/or others why are they still allowed to drive cars and/or possess a can of gasoline and a book of matches?
  2. Why are they not put in an institution, closely observed, and being treated?

Oh, that’s right. These are gun owners we are talking about. They are a special case. Any plausible, no matter how speculative, rationalization is sufficient justification to infringe upon their rights. And then, once they are no longer gun owners, there is nothing to fear about them.

As TexasTopCat articulates, nearly all the people pushing these laws know the law cannot possibly do what they say it will. It’s just an excuse to forcibly convert people who are more independent than they into a condition of more dependence.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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All the shocked media coverage of the latest acid attacks in London carefully tiptoe around the obvious issue. Acid attacks tend to involve immigrants or the children of immigrants. They’re a horrifying tactic that has been imported to the UK.

Acid attacks are one of those enriching benefits of diversity.

Instead of dealing with the obvious, the proposals push for “Drain cleaner control”. As if you can seriously prevent people from getting their hands on chemicals that don’t go well with the human face. After the triumphs of gun control and knife control, now it’s onward to drain cleaner control.

Acid attacks in London have climbed from 162 in 2012 to 454 last year.

We could talk about immigration. Or we can try to ban drain cleaner.

Daniel Greenfield
July 14, 2017
“Diversity” is Why London has Acid Attacks
[I expected that after gun and knife control they would started demanding either rock or stick control.

I was wrong, but it could still happen. Give them a few years. Intelligence has its limits but stupidity does not appear to have an upper bound.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Vicious Deplorable dollop

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The United States is the safest place in the world, as long as you stay away from democrats.

democrats commit 75% or more of the murders every year.

democrats commit 95% or more of the mass killings every year.

The United States has a democrat problem.

Vicious Deplorable dollop
July 10, 2017
Comment to Gun control works. All the western countries that have gun control have lower murder rates
[The statements of facts are plausible but citations are needed.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dana Loesch

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Only people with a predilection for violence would mistake a condemnation of violence as a ‘call to violence.’

Dana Loesch
July 3, 2017
A gun-control group’s cheery response to the NRA’s ‘dystopian’ recruitment ad
[It’s not a “mistake”. It’s rules #1 (lying) and #3 (projection) in SJWs Always Lie.

In the last few months the political left has caused a million dollars of damage in just Portland alone and openly saying (emphasis added):

We are committed to the idea that people in our community should be able to participate in resisting this bigotry in whatever capacity they find appropriate. For this reason, we have chosen to make the primary focus of the event a rally at a separate location that is adjacent to the Alt Right rally.

We are unapologetic about the reality that fighting fascism at points requires physical militancy.

…we are not opposed to the tactic of property destruction…

In Baltimore, 2015, damages were estimated at nearly $13 million. In Ferguson the costs of the riots were in the tens of millions. And millions more in physical damage.

Then, last month, someone from the political left shot Republican Congressmen at a baseball game.

And the political left has a “cheery response” to Loesch’s “dystopian” video expressing concern about the violent left?

The only reason they are “cheery” is because they are getting away with their criminal behavior.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeffrey C. Dege

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Yes, there are people who are terrified of guns, but that is their problem, not ours.

I’m not suggesting that we be argumentative, but I am suggesting that we shouldn’t hide. Every time we act as if gun ownership is something to be embarrassed about, we help convince the people in the middle that the anti-gunners are right.

Jeffrey C. Dege
Epiphanies and gun rights
[I have some “conversation starters” on my desk at work:

WP_20170710_12_58_42_Pro

When someone asks me what I did over the weekend or a holiday I tell them about the match I participated, the ammo I reloaded, or the preparation work for Boomershoot I did. When friends come to the house to visit I show them my reloading bench. And I take new shooters from work, friends, and family to the range.

Be out, proud, safe, and sane.—Joe]

If you carry don’t provoke

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In several of the self-defense classes I have taken the instructors have told the class that if you carry a gun you will be held to a higher standard of behavior than those who do not carry. And specifically, do not pick a physical fight you are nearly certain you are going to win.*

We now have a real life example playing out of why this can cause you (and the gun rights movement in general) serious problems.

Remember the University of Washington incident involving a speech by former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos (see also my blog post here) on January 20th of this year? The couple who were involved in the shooting are now in trouble because there is evidence they went to the event with, shall we say, “a poor attitude”:

Assault charges filed Monday against a Ravenna couple in connection with the shooting of a protester outside a speech by former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos on Jan. 20 allege they went to the University of Washington campus that night looking for trouble.

Marc and Elizabeth Hokoana had armed themselves — him with pepper-spray and her with a Glock semi-automatic handgun in a holster under her coat — and went to the protest intending to goad demonstrators they knew would be there, King County prosecutors allege. Some witnesses said Marc Hokoana appeared to be intoxicated.

According to the charges, the day before Yiannopoulos was scheduled to talk at Kane Hall, Marc Hokoana had messaged a friend on Facebook, stating, “I can’t wait for tomorrow. I’m going to the milo event and if the snowflakes get out off hand I’m going to wade through their ranks and start cracking skulls.”

His friend asked him if he was “going to carry.”

Hokoana responded, “Nah, I’m going full melee,” but then wrote “Lily … is,” referring to his wife, Elizabeth.

I’m sure Elizabeth Hokoana didn’t help her case when she was interviewed by the police.

H/T to Julie S. for bringing this new information to my attention. She is also a personal friend of Josh Dukes who was shot by Ms. Hokoana.

* I would generalize this to don’t pick physical fights, but there may be some people who have an issue with that and that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

Quote of the day—Baltimore Evening Sun

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It may take years, but make no mistake, the time will come when the United States will adopt laws similar to those in European nations—laws which virtually ban handguns altogether and which place the most stringent restrictions on ownership of any kind of firearm. There is no other answer.

Baltimore Evening Sun
January 4, 1991
Page A8
[Reading the history of the Evening Sun results in enough schadenfreude to cause me to sleep with a smile on my face tonight:

In 1959, the afternoon edition’s circulation was 220,174, compared to 196,675 for the A.M. edition.[18] However, by the 1980s, cultural, technological and economic shifts in America were eating away at afternoon newspapers’ market share, with readers flocking to morning papers or switching to nightly television news broadcasts.[19] In 1992, the afternoon paper’s circulation was 133,800.[20] By mid-1995, The Evening Sun’s readership — 86,360 — had been eclipsed by The Sun — 264,583.[21] The Evening Sun ceased publication on September 15, 1995.

Also:

In the 1990s and 2000s, The Sun began cutting back its foreign coverage. In 1995 and 1996, closed its Tokyo, Mexico City and Berlin bureaus. Two more — Beijing and London — fell victim to cost-cutting in 2005.[7] The final three bureaus — Moscow, Jerusalem, and Johannesburg, South Africa — fell a couple years later.[8] All were closed by 2008, as the Tribune Co. streamlined and downsized the newspaper chain’s foreign reporting. Some material from The Sun’s foreign correspondents is archived at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.[9]

So, it turns out the prediction made by The Evening Sun of the disappearance of gun ownership in the United States more accurately reflects the disappearance of The Evening Sun and it’s sibling paper The Sun.

But the biggest take away from this is that you should never let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]