The View From North Central Idaho

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke
(1729-97)
Irish philosopher, statesman.

I just got a call from [deleted--for reasons of security].  They are going to do a phone interview with me at 13:00 today.

Update: It seemed to go well for the most part.  The worst of it was I had not used some of the programming language they were interested in such as SmallTalk and Visual Basic and of course they asked why I was leaving my previous job.  I was blunt--“I was fired“.  That was early in the interview and I did well on all the rest of it.

Barb's brother has a son, Jason Scott who is in Iraq now.  He was trained as a tank commander but they are doing patrols in Humvee north of Bagdad.  I'd much rather he was in his tank than a Humvee but you do the job you have to do. 

It's kind of a local-people/human-interest story.  It's nice to hear about him and hear his voice.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Robert Heinlein

There is no such thing as truth either in the moral or in the scientific sense. The needs of the State are the sole determining factor. What may be necessary today need not be so tomorrow. This is not a question of theoretical suppositions, but of practical decision dictated by existing circumstances. Therefore, I may - nay - must - change or repudiate under changed conditions tomorrow what I consider correct today.

Adolph Hitler
Rauschning
The Voice of Destruction, pp. 223
[The discovery of the relevence of this quote to present day politicians and others will be left as an exercise for the reader.]

The American Government is premised on the theory that if the mind of man is to be free, his ideas, his beliefs, his ideology, his philosophy must be placed beyond the reach of government.

William O. Douglas
Associate Justice U.S. Supreme Court
April 17, 1939 to November 12, 1975

They did an “investigation” starting with my web site Boomershoot.org, then this blog and other web sites of mine, asked me a few questions along the way, suspended me without pay effective May 30th, then announced the results of their “investigation” yesterday--”You are being terminated.”  When I asked for the details of what I did wrong or an opportunity to dispute the findings of their “investigation“ I was told, “That discussion wouldn't be productive.“

I turned down a job in Moscow just two weeks ago and now they have hired someone else.

Most annoying.

People are scared of people like you Joe.

Barbara Scott
June 3, 2005
Talking to her husband Joe Huffman regarding his blog.

I got email from Crystal, the ATF investigator, yesterday.  Even though the locks I used on the magazines were approved years ago without “hoods” by a different ATF person there is now some question about that approval.  I could apply for a variance or I just just put the hoods on.  I think I'll go with the hoods.  I suggested that since the magazines are empty now I could just wait until later in the summer when the ground is dry enough to drive out there with a portable welder in the back of the van and Crystal agreed.  I'll send her pictures when the work is done and if she needs to inspect things again she can probably visit without me being there.

My thought is that if there is ever a loss of material and the lock was breached I would be at greater risk if I went the paperwork route rather than the mechanical route.  And besides, it isn't all that much work anyway.

I corresponded some with Kim Griffis at KING5 Evening Magazine who did the Boomershoot story for them (complete video is here).  As of May 19th they had zero negative responses to the story.  And that was despite having numbers that were “very high“.  She speculates it was because people saw what a great shot she was and were too afraid to complain. 

Here is a picture of the cameraman, Kim, her detonated target, me, and Ry:

Picture by Jason

Xenia's comments on it are here.  Xenia got four hits, I was just hit once.  No, I didn't “return fire”.  Colleen didn't intend to hurt anyone and was just trying to do her job.

Xenia got MMR, Tetanus, HEP A, and HEP B shots.  I just got my Tetanus booster.  While nurse Colleen was out of the office I told Xenia that she was going to get it in both arms and both cheeks.  She wasn't too keen on that idea and I wish I had brought my camera in to record her reactions to the various things--she can be so expressive without saying a single word.

Daughter Kim has been working nearly every day but less than full time hours at a local motel as a housekeeper.  Yesterday she interviewed for and accepted a job at a local business that does research via telephone polling. Earlier this week I had introduced her to the people at UltiMak who have problems manufacturing their product fast enough let alone things like answer the phone to take more orders and do what they really enjoy doing--product development.  They called while she was in the middle of the interview and asked her to come over as soon as she could.  It will just be part time at UltiMak for now as she works around her other jobs.  Kim is so mechanically adept and such a good organizer I expect she will be a asset to them in far more ways than they realize.

It won't work, but they live in a fantasy world so what do they care about reality?  The California Senate narrowly passed this piece of nonsense:

A novel proposal to etch identifying serial numbers on handgun ammunition sold in California narrowly passed the Senate yesterday, although supporters conceded the legislation remains a work in progress.

...

A related measure, to require manufacturers to equip some semiautomatic handguns with components that would place an identifying code on spent cartridges, passed the Assembly 41-38 and was sent to the Senate.

The Senate measure is sponsored by Attorney General Bill Lockyer but so far has drawn tepid support from the balance of the state's law enforcement community. It would link purchasers to handgun ammunition through an electronic swipe of a driver license at the point of sale.

Manufacturers say the proposal would force drastic changes to a high-volume, low-margin business. The required modifications to the manufacturing process, the companies warned, would either drive them out of business or send consumer prices skyward.

Sen. Joseph Dunn, a Garden Grove Democrat who introduced the bill for Lockyer, said he is working with law enforcement groups to resolve concerns about how to treat a massive existing inventory, possession of unmarked ammunition in homes and an exemption sought for shooting ranges.

Sen Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside, illustrated the magnitude of the potential ammunition stockpile in the state. He has used about half of a substantial supply his father left when he died in 1981, Morrow said.

"If I plan right, I figure it will get me through the rest of my life," Morrow said.

Morrow and other opponents questioned whether the proposal, which has never been attempted anywhere else, was technologically feasible. Aides to Lockyer said manufacturers place individual serial numbers on many different consumer products.

The Assembly bill, AB 352 by Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, would apply only to future production of easily concealable semiautomatic handguns that have not passed a state safety test.

I haven't done a whole lot of laughing recently but this la-la land statement remedies that condition:

Aides to Lockyer said manufacturers place individual serial numbers on many different consumer products.

How many manufacturers place individual serial numbers on something as small as the eraser on your pencil and have a current manufacturing cost of a penny?

I've commented on this hare-brained scheme before:

• Naive gun control
• More info on bullet serial number scheme
• Update on ammo marking

Lots of people have commented on the news from the UK about the proposed restrictions on pointy knives.  I thought they were already beyond that with the restrictions on clothes.  But I guess the knife job isn't complete yet.  And of course, as pointed out by the Brady Bunch in that same article:

Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports gun control, joked, "Can sharp stick control be far behind?"

To answer Hamm's question, which may not have been that much of a joke, “No.  It can't be far behind.”  The mindset of these people has to be completely changed before things will get better.  As long as they are a nation of cowards and rely on increasing government power to provide decreasing security they will continue to suffer high crime rates and the humiliation of being the laughing stock of the world.

Barb and I both got our bachelor's degrees from the University of Idaho.  My dad and her mom went to the UI.  Barb's sister and my brother got degrees there and our son is attending now.  We currently live walking distance from the campus.  I got this in my weekly news letter from the University of Idaho:

"I'm the Guy They Called Deep Throat" is the title of an article in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine. UI alumnus W. Mark Felt '35 reveals he was the informant to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate Scandal in the early 1970's. Felt served as a top-ranking F.B.I. official at the time. Felt earned a bachelor's degree in letters and science from UI, where he served as president of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and was a member of the debate team, and the Bench and Bar Association. He was inducted into the UI Alumni Hall of Fame in 1972. Felt joined the F.B.I. in 1942 after earning a law degree from George Washington University. The 91-year-old now lives in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Should I be proud or ashamed Felt once attended school here?  I'm not sure I know what to think about Felt's role in Watergate.  Schneier, of course, thinks the security aspects are interesting.  Some think Felt was a 'rat'.  Others think he was a hero.  Sometimes breaking the law (my guess is that Felt broke the law by revealing details of a FBI investigation in progress) is the right thing to do.  It's something I have spent some time thinking about but I'm not sure Felt reached my threshold.

[shrug]

I think it's interesting to know after all these years but overall I'm more inclined to go with Kim du Toit's view.  I have that movie in my collection someplace.  Maybe Barb and I should watch it this weekend to celebrate the revealing of Deep Throat.

I've barely posted anything in the last week or two.  Lots of things I wanted to comment on but just didn't have the motivation.  Things have been a bit rough lately and I just didn't feel like touching the computer.  Externally things aren't any different but I've got a lot of my energy back.  I'll be playing catch up this morning.

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill
The Contest in America
Dissertations and Discussions, vol. 1, p. 26 (1868)

The G8 must take responsibility for weapons that are produced in their countries. We need the G8 to agree to comprehensive controls over all aspects of small arms proliferation -- both the legal and illegal supply... 84 percent of those killed in wars since 1990 have been civilians.

Dianna Melrose of the Oxfam
speaking at a press conference on the G-8 summit.
From an article, "UK Aid Agencies Call on G8 to Control Arms Trade,"
Reuters, 13 May 1998.
From: http://www.prepcom.org/low/pc7/index.html#oxfam as of 01/07/99

[Ms. Melrose fails to realize that when civilians have effective means of protecting themselves there has never been a genocide.  It's when government has a monopoly on small arms that the most civilians are killed.

The link above is dead.  But do a google search for {prepcom small arms}to find similar information on this same topic.  In the late 90's gun ownership rights were under extreme pressure from all directions including international pressure on the U.S.]

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

Lyndon Johnson
Former U.S. President