My way overdue survey for Boomershoot 2006 is now available:

http://survey.boomershoot.org/

It doesn't matter if you were there as a shooter, spotter, spectator, or even if you just heard about the event and didn't attend. There is a survey for everyone.

I want feedback of any type. But just because I'm listening doesn't mean I'll change. But I will consider it. And if you want to send an email or give me a call that works too.

I plan to announce the dates and prices for Boomershoot 2007 sometime this weekend. If you have input that might affect that please get it to me before then. But even if you run across this posting in March of 2007 the survey will probably still be up and I'll still be listening.

Thanks for your input.

Saturday I put in a culvert for easier access to the Boomershoot explosives magazine Ry named the Taj Mahal. This will make it easier for Boomershoot helpers (who are ATF approved explosives handlers) to get to the explosives magazine. I had been thinking about it for a while and finally made it happen. It was either that or get snorkel kits for their 4x4s. More pictures are here.

While I was in the neighborhood I talked to our neighbors just across the road from the Boomershoot site. I want to help them get high speed Internet access (currently they are just on dial-up) and then making the entire Boomershoot site a WiFi hot-spot. They seemed quite agreeable to it and I'll probably work on that enhancement early next spring. It depends somewhat on the survey of Boomershooters and potential Boomershooters I'll be doing this week (sometime tonight I'll be posting the survey link here and sending out emails). If no one is interested then I might not bother with the hassle and expense.

Boomershoot--It's not just one weekend a year, it's a year around commitment.

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

Emma Goldman
[I'm not quite that cynical but it does have a grain of truth in it. Think McCain-Feingold.--Joe]

Part of due process is being able to confront your accuser(s). Apparently that isn't part of the law in some cases in the UK and this guy spent five years in jail before they figured out the accuser was a liar:

A father who served five years in jail for sexually assaulting a woman had his conviction quashed yesterday after new evidence suggested his victim was a liar who inflicted her own injuries.

Warren Blackwell, 36, embraced his wife, Tanya, outside the Court of Appeal in London, saying he would always love her for standing by him. But the ordeal made him "a very angry man indeed".

"It took the police and the justice system nine months to convict me of a crime that not only did I not commit, but a crime that never even took place," he said in a statement read by his solicitor.

And not only that she still can't be named:

"It has taken almost seven years to clear my name." The court was told that the woman, who cannot be named, had made strikingly similar claims of other sex attacks, had an ability to lie and a possible propensity to self harm.

...

Mr Justice Tugendhat said that when Parliament passed the law granting lifetime anon-ymity to complainants in sex cases it did not contemplate someone acting as she had.

"There may, in future, be another case in which she makes allegations against another man."

We have a Constitution which was designed to prevent these sort of abuses by government. It's too bad our government doesn't abide by it. But at least it gives us a clear goal in our pursuit of regaining our freedom.

This wouldn't work with me and I can't imagine it working any better with Columbian gang members:

BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept 12 (Reuters) - They are calling it the "crossed legs" strike.

Fretting over crime and violence, girlfriends and wives of gang members in the Colombian city of Pereira have called a ban on sex to persuade their menfolk to give up the gun.

I have some suggestions for Jeff Soyer in regards to his last sentence in this post where he advocates some changes in the hunting regulations:

• There are no bag limits.
• The season is year around as with other varmints.
• There are no restrictions on hunting with various lures, calls, traps, poisons, calibers, spot lights, magazine capacity, rate of fire, or use of sound suppression accessories as long as a reasonable person would conclude that the hunting methodology would normally be expected to result in a humane kill.
• The markings and other means of identification for the various species should be published in the hunting regulations and be regarded as definitive.
• Hunters are required to notify authorities of wounded animals who have escaped as soon as is practical so others can be engaged to track and put down the animal in a humane manner.
• All carcass disposal is the responsibility of the local government body. The government body may do this in any manner it so decides as long as it does not endanger the public health. This may include, as decided by the local government body and local public health officials, the sale of the carcass in whole or in part for any lawful use.
• Hunters are required, if they can do so without endangering themselves or other innocent life, to guard the carcass until the police have arrived to properly strip the carcass of valuables, identify the species, verify it was a legitimate kill, and search for evidence as might be needed in civil or criminal cases.
• Sales of valuables found on carcasses shall be used for the purposes of carcass disposal by the local government body. Except:
  • Valuables identifiable as stolen property shall be returned to their rightful owners or their heirs.
  • Valuables needed as evidence in criminal or civil cases shall be retained as necessary.

When someone tells me "anyplace is fine" when we are trying to decide where to go for a meal I frequently tell them "Sankt Gertruds Kloster". When they ask where it's at and for directions I tell them it's in Copenhagen, Denmark. They then get this confused look on their face (or a frown as in this case). You shouldn't tell me anyplace is fine. If you don't mean what you say or say what you mean I'm likely to expose to you your inability to communicate accurately and amuse myself in the process.

Regardless, my boss and his wife are really into fine restaurants as well as travel. I suggested this unique restaurant in Copenhagen for his benefit. I'm not sure I would travel all the way from the Pacific Northwest just for dinner but if I were spending time in the area anyway I would be sure to go back again.

I was there in ’79 so I’m sure things have changed some. But my impression from the website and a few of the other hits I got looking for it is that it is still a very nice place to visit.

I got a call yesterday from someone I have only seen once in the past six years. He barely introduced himself and immediately went right to the point. He talked so fast that I didn't get quite get all the words. What I did get was that he was in a domestic violence situation, had restraining order against him and had to get his guns out of his house as soon as possible. He had some other possibilities but wondered if I would be able to hold on to them for a couple months until he could get things all straightened out.

I agreed but didn't have secure storage for all of his guns here in the Seattle area. I said I have plenty of room but he would need to buy a cheap gun safe to put them in. He said he would check out his other alternatives and get back to me.

I ended up with his gun safe, filled with his guns, next to my bed, and the keys to it in my pocket. He then told me his story about the incident with his 18 year-old son, about spending the night in jail, and his search for a lawyer.

I gave him a little bit of advice--If this were to turn into the worst case scenario how much money would you be willing to spend to have a better outcome? "A lot", he said after about 1.5 seconds of thought. So I told him, "Then spend that money now on the best lawyer you can get." As painful as it is to hire the best up front hiring a better lawyer than your first pick to go back in time is beyond the means of everyone I know.

Dave, of Ozark Pyrotechnics, and I exchanged several emails in the past few hours and he pointed out something I sort of knew but it hadn't really bubbled up to full awareness. He is planning an explosives shoot next month. The format is a little different than the Boomershoot but the targets are similar. If Missouri is in your "neck of the woods" you should check it out.

Reader, friend, and Boomershooter Sean sent me a link to this article in the Weekly Standard, Return of the Tribes. It's kind of a long article but all very interesting. Near the end is a section on Magic vs. jihad and from there Peters goes on to explain that "magic" is an essential part of dealing with people and how the magic of the forests and jungles in the hands of people that didn't even have the wheel defeated the Muslim jihad that had swept through nearly every other culture the Muslim encountered:

The spread of Islam into Europe and Africa struck very different, but equally potent, barriers in the north and south. In Europe, it could not overcome a rival monotheist faith with its own universalist vision. In West Africa, Islam stopped, roughly five centuries ago, when it left the deserts and grasslands to enter the African forest, that potent domain of magic.

It should excite far more interest than it has that a warrior faith with an unparalleled record of conquest and conversion dead-ended when it reached the realms of illiterate tribes that had not mastered the wheel: In the forests of sub-Saharan Africa, Islam could not conquer, could not convert, and could not convince. On their own turf, local beliefs proved more powerful than a faith that had swept over "civilized" continents.

His thesis is that essentially all people need magic in their lives. In our country we have our own substitutes for it. As Sean rightly surmised this would push a button of mine. Magic???? We don't need to stinking magic! Well... maybe I don't but most people do and failure to take this into account will result in unexpected results when you deal with them.

As Barb points out at times I am frequently bewildered at the unexpected results when I deal with people. Apparently it's not that they are stupid, as I would like to claim, but that they believe in magic. I guess I can buy that. From airplane security to gun control to socialized medicine they all believe in magic not realizing it's nothing but a comforting illusion.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

Ozark Pyrotechnics is now selling binary exploding targets.

Barb and I visited Dave and his family a month ago and I saw a small stock of the targets ready for shipping. We didn't ask for a demo so I can't report on functionality but I fully expect they will work as advertised.

If you test them please send me a report.

From the Seattle PI:

TORONTO -- First, General Motors. Then gun control, followed by George W. Bush. Now rabble-rousing filmmaker Michael Moore has turned his irreverent camera on health care in America.

Socialized medicine will be his inevitable conclusion.

"Michael Moore is a political activist with a track record for sensationalism. He has no intention of being fair and balanced," Johnson said.

Yup.

Here's something you don't see-- a gun ban struck down on constitutional grounds, thoughbeit a state constitution:

"The Utah Supreme Court on Friday struck down a ban on guns at the University of Utah, saying campus officials cannot adopt a policy that runs counter to state law."

Did I read that right?  State institutions cannot enact policies in violation of the constitution?  This is groundbreaking stuff (well, outside the issue of public funding for Maplethorpe or Piss Christ exhibits, et al, being claimed as "free speech" elsewhere).

Here is the pertinent language out of Utah, courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation:

Utah Constitution Article I, Section 6

The individual right of the people to keep and bear arms for security and defense of self, family, others, property, or the state, as well as for other lawful purposes shall not be infringed; but nothing herein shall prevent the Legislature from defining the lawful use of arms.

Take note that security and defense of self, family, others, property, or the state are mentioned as the primary reason why the right to keep and bear arms should be protected.  That blows the whole "Sporting Purposes" test concept all to hell, doesn't it?  But Utah reserves the right to define “lawful use”, like, I guess, not allowing shooting at your local community range at 03:00 for instance, without an effective sound suppressor.  That makes sense.

And "...defense of...property"?  There's an obscure concept.

Now, if we could only get the several states to recognize the U.S. Constitution, it wouldn't matter what any state constitution says about the keeping and bearing of arms (unless I am mistaken, the U.S. Constitution prevents, ostensibly, your home state legislature from banning newspapers, forcing Catholics to wear crucifix arm bands, for example, or reinstating slavery, but maybe someone could correct me on that).

The NRA linked to the story also, but had little to say about it as of this writing.

I was thinking all morning about posting on this subject, then a pen pal in Israel, Howard, a marksmanship instructor for the IDF, sent me an e-mail along the same lines.  I therefore can simply post the exchange I had with him:

From: Howard in Israel
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2006 9:46 AM
To: GPOSUMMARY
Subject: Fw: Headlines and Editorials

Friends:

The other night Israeli TV news reported that a recent survey in the USA determined that a third of all Americans believe that there was US government complicity in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  I find it hard to believe.  I also find it hard to believe that a group of 75 (?) university professors say the evidence of such complicity is undeniable.

If the TV report is correct, all I can do is shake my head in disbelief.

Howard
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To which I replied:

Funny you should mention that.  I was just commenting to my wife this morning that I believed I had identified a parallel between Holocaust deniers and 9/11 deniers.  Yes, it is true that there are a number of Americans, many of them college professors and administrators, who are touting the notion that the twin towers were brought down in a “controlled demolition” and the Pentagon was hit with an American cruise missile.

My hypothesis is that, just as Holocaust deniers are the very ones who agree with the Nazi’s “Final Solution”, so too are the 9/11 deniers the very same people who hate capitalism and especially international free trade.  To put it another way, they agree with the premises of the terrorists, though their rationalizations may be slightly different.

I’m no psychologist, and I cannot begin to explain why those who most agree with the anti-Semitic premises for the Holocaust would be the ones most likely to deny that it happened, or that those who most agree that Western capitalism is the root of all evil in the world would deny that the attack on the World Trade Center was perpetrated by anti-Western, anti-capitalists, but I find this fascinating.

Lyle

------------------------

Update, 9/12/:

Lyle:
"Fascinating" is the politest term used so far.
Howard

------------------------

They just lost another soldier this morning in Gaza.  He isn't joking at all about any of this.

Today, America is fighting a war that is testing our Nation's resolve. We are once again answering history's call with confidence, and we know that freedom will prevail. Our brave men and women in uniform have stepped forward to fight our enemies abroad so that we do not have to face them here at home, and we are grateful for the courageous individuals bringing terrorists to justice around the world.

We are also confronting the extremists in the great ideological struggle of the 21st century. September the 11th made clear that, in the long run, the only way to secure our Nation is to advance liberty and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism. By working together with our friends and allies, we are helping spread the blessings of freedom and laying the foundations of peace for generations to come.

George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
September 7, 2006
Patriot Day 2006

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Isaac Asimov
[One of my pet peeves is that most people, including nearly all the scientists I have worked with, don't distinguish between a theory and a hypothesis. The gun control advocates who do this are particularly irksome to me when they do this.--Joe]

During Wednesday’s drill, a K-9 trooper put the Semtex on the rear bumper of a pickup truck parked in a Massport pool lot. Troopers have so far disassembled a street sweeper in the hope of finding it sucked into the device. Last night it remained as lost as luggage.

O’Ryan Johnson
September 9, 2006
Security breach at Logan — ‘It’s Keystone Kops’
[If I lose explosives, either by misplacement or theft, I have to report it within 24 hours to the ATF. I hope these Troopers have the same paperwork and hassles I would have if I would have done this.--Joe]

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

Henry Ward Beecher
[Which is why we are supposed to have a limited government with enumerated powers.--Joe]

This weekend we borrowed my parents boat to go out on Dworshak Reservoir (pictures here). The air was filled with smoke from the wildfires to the west but we hadn't been boating in a couple years and it was originally planned to take all our kids out and do some water skiing as well as check on a geocache that was reported to be missing. Kim and James ended up not going so it was just Barb, Xenia, and I.

We arrived at my parents house and the boat battery had a charger and my brother's van jumpered to it. My brother showed up and said he had cleaned the points and other minor maintenance that had caused problems with boat before. It wouldn't start until he jumped the battery but it ran fine once he did that. We disconnected the charger and the jumper cables and tried starting it again. It started just fine. Great! We hooked up the pickup to the boat, transferred our gear and took off for the lake.

While Xenia and I put the boat in the lake Barb used the restroom. We were blocking someone about to pull their boat out of the lake so I pushed us off and hopped in the boat expecting to start the boat, hover just off shore until Barb came back, pick her up on the dock then take off. The boat was quickly drifting away from the dock with the help of a breeze when I turned the key and instead of being awarded with the roar of the 140 HP Chevy II engine I heard just "click, click, click" as the solenoid alternately engaged and disengaged without the engine even turning over.

Xenia and I extracted the paddle from underneath the life-jackets and ropes in the side of the boat and I managed to paddled to the tip of a point before we drifted far away from the shore. With Xenia pushing the boat away from the shore every time it came close I pulled it back to dock with the rope tied to the bow. Barb arrived about then and I ran back to the pickup and found jumper cables behind the seat (I had planned to transfer our jumper cables to the pickup with our other gear but had forgotten). We got a jump from the good Samaritan next to us and took off.

I made a big loop out in the open water with the boat at cruising speed while watching the ammeter. The battery was charging at the rate of about 7 amps. Everything appeared normal but I wasn't comfortable yet. I went back to dock, turned the engine off and then restarted the engine. It instantly roared to life. Great! We are set to go. I turned around and we took off upstream to the nearest campsite to have our picnic lunch before going further on upstream to the missing geocache. We had a pleasant lunch and took lots of picture and then I tried to start the engine again. "Click, click, click." Barb asked, "Now what?" "We're dead", I replied. It was a gross exaggeration of course. We were only about three miles from dock and there was a trail alongside the lake if we wanted to walk back and get help. I decided we probably could paddle the boat back if we didn't mind spending the time and there was a good chance we could get a jump from one of the other boaters. I started paddling, first from one side then the other. Then Barb came back and sat on one side and we traded the paddle back and forth. I estimated we were moving at about 1/2 mile per hour. Arrival at dock, even without getting help, would be before dark. Good. I could pull out the GPS and get an accurate number if I wanted and do a better estimate of our ETA but I wanted to wait until we got our rhythm going. Barb suggested we use my Boomershoot cell phone (my usual cell phone has zero service in that area) and see if the sheriff had a boat on the lake and could help us if needed. Inland Cellular (the Boomershoot cell phone provider) claims coverage but it was on the extreme fringe of usability. It took something like five calls to call my brother's wife, tell her the problem, and get her our GPS coordinates. We continued paddling and when a boat went by we stood up and waved the paddle and shouted. The boat went on by without anyone acknowledging us. We padded some more and another boat went by. This one stopped in response to our waving and gave us a jump.

As we were waiting for the battery to get charged enough to start we talked with our benefactors. It was a man, his wife, and a another couple which we surmised were one of their adult kids and their spouse. It turns out the older woman mother was a good friends of Barb's mom and her dad was Barbs biology teacher. The man was a retired soil conservation officer and had spent a lot of time on the farm helping lay out grass waterways and gully plugs. He had even had dinner with my parents at least once. I recognized his name from my parents and brother talking about him.

The engine started, we zoomed back to the dock where the first thing I did was to use the two-way radio (the cellphone signal was still barely registering) in the pickup to contact my sister-in-law and tell her we didn't need the assistence from the sheriff. As we were about to put the boat on the trailer Barb noticed a sheriff's vehicle pulling up to the launch area. Xenia and could handle getting the boat chores she went to see if he was about to go looking for us. It turns out he was and he told Barb that he was disappointed that he didn't get to go out on the lake. He was looking forward to doing a little boating. Apparently his office hadn't gotten the word yet via my sister-in-law.

We went back to the farm, put the boat back in the garage, I gave my sister-in-law and my niece the complete story and then gave her $60.00 and asked her to have my brother get a new battery for the boat. This wasn't the first time we had been stranded on the lake with this boat with battery problems (it was a different battery that time) but I wanted it to be the last. Because the boat is used so infrequently they share the battery with the combine (a grain harvester) which "worked fine all fall".

It wasn't a disaster, just an adventure--another one of those stories you tell when people are telling stories of things gone wrong.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

John F. Kennedy
[Appliciable to freedom activists as well as our fight against Islamic extremists.--Joe]

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Dale Carnegie

I just love it when people attempt to prove their point without addressing your point, supply facts, or even present a logical argument.

Probably my favorite of these techniques is proof by ridicule. I just became aware of someone addressing some of my writings in this manner as in, "Incidentally, this is the stupidest thing i've read so far today." An earlier, even more blatant case is here.

Another methodology that gets high praise from me is proof by vigorous assertion--as in this case.

I would like to ask, "Who do they think they have positively influenced in this manner?" But I know that expecting people to be rational is irrational and that a great many people will think such methods are irrefutable when it allows them to continuing to believe what they want to believe. This is, of course, just a minor variation of Paul Simon's acute observation.

Still, the people in the "undecided" category will have a greater tendency to "vote your way" when presented with such proofs by people that lack sufficient character to admit they were wrong. It can be frustrating but it's not a fruitless exercise if it's a public debate. One-on-one you might as well walk away from it. As Dale Carnegie said, "Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still."

Another applicable Dale Carnegie quote on this topic will be used for the QOD tomorrow.

Osama bin Laden and his fellow jihadis may well have figured out that the only way that they can continue to feel good about their place in the world is by reducing the West to the same level of desperate impoverishment as the Arab world. This also explains the left's alliance with bin Laden almost from the beginning--they also share this resentment that the West isn't desperately poor (but not enough to give up their private jets and Ferraris).

Clayton Cramer
September 3, 2006
A Dark Thought as We Approach The Fifth Anniversary of 9/11

First:  Thank you, Joe, for allowing me to post on your blog.  The trouble is I have this terrible habit of writing whole essays (but I did get freedom, gun rights and sex into a single issue):

Years ago I had a conversation with a man who considered himself a libertarian-- one who had been reading Ayn Rand's definitive work, "Capitalism". He persisted in trying to convince me that "state's rights" might properly involve the right to "allow" slavery if the people of that state so choose. It took some doing before I could get him to admit that just maybe, there can be no right to enslave, because such a "right" involved the blatant violation of rights.

I ran across two examples of this kind of silliness today.  One was in a discussion of self protection rights. A state "shall issue" concealed carry law, it was asserted, would take away "local discretion", or to put it another way, it would deny local governments the "right" to ban the carrying of concealed guns. In another discussion I heard of the practice of removing a girl's clitoris being described as though it were a right, or as a “traditional cultural practice” that certain peoples had a right to exercise.

In both cases, there is desire to define the protection of Liberty (the right to bear arms, or the right to keep your body parts) as “taking away local discretion” as though local “discretion” (to impose force upon individuals) is the same thing as Liberty. Lets apply that position to some other hallmarks of a free society: Nation-wide Emancipation denies "local discretion" regarding the keeping of slaves. The First Amendment takes away "local discretion" regarding the confiscation of computers and printing machines or the forced shut-down of local radio stations, and it takes away "local discretion" to ban Jews from owning land.

I guess we’re not “free” after all if we don’t have "local discretion" to ban or confiscate anything we want, or to cut various body parts off of anyone we want, so long as it gives us the sort of "Culture" we desire for "Our Community" and what about "democracy" after all? (Is anyone else reminded of Jim Jones at this point?)

Such an attitude is rooted in a fairly complete lack of principles and a total ignorance of the U.S. Constitution and history. Government's job, in the uniquely American sense, is to protect us from force and fraud, to ensure our right to life and property, and to ensure our right to peaceable, voluntary association and exchange with others.

That's it. Whether government has "local discretion" or "regional discretion", or "global discretion" to control us, rob us, allow our neighbors to cut pieces off us, or enslave us, the outcome is going to be very much the same—violation, stagnation, decay, and suffering.

Government, properly, has only responsibilities. We as individuals retain all the discretion, and we as individuals, or as collectives, do not have any "right" to initiate force or fraud upon anyone, no matter how wonderful and “Cultured” it might make us feel. Is that so terribly difficult to understand?