AK owned by Say Uncle, scope mount by UltiMAK, modeled by Melody of Anarchangel.

Taken during the Gun Blogger's Rendezvous October 7, 2006 at the Palomino Valley Gun Club.

A firing rate of 15 to 20 percent among soldiers is like having a literacy rate of 15 to 20 percent among proofreaders.  Once those in authority realized the existence and magnitude of the problem, it was only a matter of time until they solved it.

And thus, since World War II, a new era has quietly dawned in modern warfare: an era of psychological warfare -- psychological warfare conducted not upon the enemy, but upon one's own troops.  Propaganda and various other crude forms of psychological enabling have always been present in warfare, but in the second half of this century psychology has had an impact as great as that of technology on the modern battlefield.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
From On Killing -- The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill In War and Society
Page 251

We accuse the leftist, feels-good types of reinforcing each other but now I understand why they do it. Wow! What a rush, what pleasure it is to be talking to all these articulate, smart, gun people who get pissed about the same sort of nonsense from the illogical, arrogant, elitists that want to take our guns away. Do recreational drugs make you feel this good? I wouldn't know. I've never used drugs recreationally.

I only got about four hours of sleep last night and I'm still wired from talking to these guys even though I said goodnight a couple hours ago.

When I finally made it to the hospitality room most everyone was gone to supper. There was just Mr. Completely and two other guys there. I'd met Mr. C. before but didn't recognize the other two. My Boomershoot t-shirt gave me away to them and Mr. C introduced me to Kevin Baker from the The Smallest Minority, and <he who shall remain nameless> from Say Uncle. The two bloggers I most wanted to meet. This is so cool!

A little while later Cam Edwards shows up and is introduced. Now, I know who Cam is. I even recognized him when he walked in. But... I've only glanced at his blog. I was so embarrassed when he said he reads my blog all the time.

I pried myself away from the rest of the group long enough to have dinner (I basically hadn't had breakfast or lunch, just snacking on trail mix since I got on the plane) with Chris and Melody Byrne (Archangel) and a friend (sorry forgot his name) they brought.  Melody and the friend were rather quiet but Chris and I had lots of fun talking about explosives (he played with them a lot while in the military) and about being fired by anti-gun bigots and by Muslims that didn't like his participation with Team Infidel (do a search for "Team Infidel" on this page).

I reluctantly said good night when everyone else started talking about how late it was and drifted off toward the elevators.

Tomorrow we go to the range. I wish I had looked up the range website before I left Idaho. I would have brought a different rifle. They have a 1000 yard range here!

So we were sitting at the table in the hospitality room here at Circus Circus talking about small backup guns and someone mentioned how a visitor to his blog got all bent out of shape because of disparaging remarks about the .25 auto. I went looking with my cell phone web browser for what Jeff Cooper had to say about the .25, which is how I would handle someone defending the .25 as a defensive tool. I found the quotes but the moment had passed. Here they are--better late than never I guess:

We hear of an unfortunate woman who, during an nighttime asthma attack, confused the small handgun she kept under her pillow with an asthma inhaler and proceeded to relieve her symptoms. It was not a fatal mistake, partly because she used a 25 ACP, which everyone knows is not sufficient to clear sinuses.

From John B. Hubbard of Bangor, Maine 
   
Jeff Cooper
Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 2, No. 2
31 January 1994

Our old buddy Gene Harshbarger from Guatemala reports a recent episode with the 25 ACP pistol cartridge. It seems that Gene's cousin was set upon by a trio of car thieves who shot him once almost dead center with that dinky little pistol. The bullet entered at a very flat angle, however, proceeded laterally just inside the pectoral muscle, and exited after about 5 inches of traverse, continuing on into the target's left arm.

The cousin hit the deck and started shooting back, whereupon the assailants split. When he stood up the bullet slid out of his left sleeve and bounced on the pavement. It penetrated the jacket, but not the skin of his left arm.

As we used to teach in the spook business, carry a 25 if it makes you feel good, but do not ever load it. If you load it you may shoot it. If you shoot it you may hit somebody, and if you hit somebody - and he finds out about it - he may be very angry with you.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 4, No. 14
December 1996

In looking for Cooper's advice I also found Ayoobs:

A .25 is a nice thing to have when you're not carrying a gun.

 Massad F. Ayoob
 On the use of .25 caliber handgun.
 In the Gravest Extreme
 End of chapter 14
 ISBN 0-936297-001

NO! I did not bring my chemistry set to Reno with me. This happened before I arrived and I can prove it.

The large brain, like large government, may not be able to do simple things in a simple way.

Donald O. Hebb
[And to extend this even further and more emphatically, government cannot do things that businesses and individuals can. Health care, the food supply, housing, and personal security being just a few obvious cases in point.--Joe]

I'm headed to the SeaTac airport. I'll be in Reno by evening. I'll be seeing some of you for the first time at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary

I've gradually been making improvements to the Boomershoot 2007 online entry form. It should now be sending email when you have all the required fields filled out and you select a position. I had a few problems getting that to work right for certain email addresses so I would appreciate you verfying that you can receive email via the entry form before I enable everything for actual entries. It will show that positions have been taken but ignore that. They will all be reset when it is enabled for actual entries.

I still have some more things to do such as making the confirmation email real, rather than "this is a test...", and setting up the payment options. I'm off to the Gun Blogger Rendezvous tomorrow so I don't know when I will get it completed and will actually be able to start accepting entries but it will be soon.

I have problems with hay fever. Yeah, that was a big issue when I lived on the farm. Especially when my family's religious beliefs (Christian Scientist) strongly discouraged the use of medicines. Some of my kids inherited the problem but Sudafed (years ago) and now Claritin give us the relief we need to be functional in most situations.

Now there is a new solution on the horizon:

Scientists claim six injections of a new vaccine offers years of relief to sufferers of the allergy  
 
A NEW DNA-based allergy vaccine can offer long-lasting relief to hay fever sufferers after just six injections, American scientists have claimed.

Patients receiving the experimental vaccine showed an average 60 per cent reduction in typical allergy symptoms, such as sneezing, runny nose, watering eyes and itching for at least two years, compared with those receiving a placebo.  
 
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, Maryland, believe that a six-injection treatment with the new vaccine, known as AIC, could offer a significant improvement over traditional allergen immunotherapy, which can require several years of weekly or bi-weekly injections.

AIC contains a short piece of DNA known as an “immunostimulatory sequence” that can modify immune system reactions and reduce the typical symptoms of ragweed allergy, more commonly known as hay fever.

The experimental therapy also holds the promise of one day eliminating the need for traditional allergy medicines such as nasal steroids and antihistamines.

Malkin's video on Islamic extremists has been banned and they won't tell her specifically why. So she made another video asking them why. I love the sarcasm at the end:

The Liberal party has no direction. The real challenge for the next leader will obviously be to unite the party and give them some direction other than just to run with whatever the issue of the week is that they think they can make a cheap point out of.

Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
September 16, 2006
$1-billion didn't prevent tragedy
[As near as I can tell the same applies to the Democrats in our country.--Joe]

Phil at Random Nuclear Strikes asks Ken Schram, Seattle liberal talk show host, Just One Question.

He probably won't get an answer, but it might make a few gears grind for a minute or two.

Via David and the Idaho Statesman:

Helen Chenoweth-Hage, an outspoken conservative who served three terms as Idaho’s 1st Congressional District representative, died Monday after being thrown from a vehicle that overturned on an isolated central Nevada highway.

She was traveling toward Tonopah, Nev., at 11:40 a.m. PDT on State Route 376 when the Jeep drifted off the right side of the road, swerved to the left and flipped after the driver overcorrected in steering to the right, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Rocky Gonzalez said.

State Route 376 is the main route between Tonopah and her ranch in Monitor Valley. The crash occurred about 40 miles from her ranch. Tonopah is halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.

The other occupants — daughter-in-law Yelena Hage, 24, and 5-month-old grandson, Bryan Hage — also were ejected but were not seriously injured. Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said it’s still unclear who was driving.

Gonzalez said Chenoweth-Hage, 68, was holding the baby and wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

...

A Republican, Chenoweth-Hage was elected to Congress from Idaho in 1994, serving three terms before stepping down.

She first ran for Congress against incumbent Democrat Larry LaRocco, gaining national attention during fundraisers when she held endangered-salmon bakes, serving canned salmon and ridiculing the listing of Idaho salmon as an endangered species.

During her congressional career, Chenoweth-Hage was a victim of a “salmon pie” attack while at a field hearing on forest health in Missoula, Mont. Randall Mark of Moscow hit her in the head with a “pie” made of rotten canned salmon, forcing the meeting to adjourn for an hour while she cleaned salmon flakes from her hair and jacket.

After the attack, the congresswoman joked, “I would like to say that I find it amusing that they used salmon. I guess salmon must not be endangered anymore.”

Chenoweth-Hage, a colorful lawmaker, said salmon aren’t endangered but that white males are. She also said the Endangered Species Act was unconstitutional, complained about black government helicopters harassing ranchers, said minorities didn’t like northern Idaho because it is too cold and called for disarming federal resource enforcement agents.

The outspoken advocate of smaller government self-imposed a three-term limit and chose not to run in 2000.

She lived in Orofino at the same time Barb and I were going to High School there. Barb's sister Nancy used to babysit for her and her ex-husband Nick Chenoweth. There are stories I could tell, but won't, about her private life.

She did a good job as our Representative in Congress. I'm sorry to hear she is gone.

I sometimes give my wife and her family a bad time about their "different" sense of humor. Here we have Barb's sister Nancy caught in the act, by both Xenia and I, of pushing over an old building in the park last Saturday:

Probably more characteristic of their "different" sense of humor is as it applies to outhouses. I'll explain some other time.

For some reason this quote came to mind when I read the article:

Man, n.: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.  His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary

It's politicians that infest the whole habitable earth, even Canada, but some of them 'get it'--even in Canada:

For the past decade, the previous Liberal government has put all of its eggs in one basket when it comes to preventing gun crime. It invested over $1 billion into a gun registry that never functioned properly and was never proven to have prevented a single crime.

While federal gun registry officials were out chasing down farmers for not registering their .22s, relatively little was being done to attack criminal gun use. The Montreal tragedy, sadly, was the ultimate proof of the gun registry's failure. The preliminary police investigation revealed Kimveer Gill appears to have properly registered all his guns and complied with every other firearm regulation.

The $1 billion wasted on the registry could have been put to much better use in putting more police on the streets, providing better equipment for forensics labs and helping schools and social workers to identify and deal with troubled youths before they become violent.

The Liberal opposition, blind as always to facts, continues to chant that we must keep the registry to prevent future crimes, even though it has failed so abysmally to prevent past ones. The new Conservative government will not repeat the Liberals' mistakes.

...

Shamefully, the Liberals, NDP and the Bloc continue to exploit the grief of families by trying to twist the Montreal tragedy to their own political advantage. The Conservative government is not interested in such rhetoric. We are interested only in doing the right things by taking practical steps to clamp down on gun crime and violent criminals.

Tom Lukiwski
Lukiwski is Conservative MP for Regina Lumsden Lake Centre.
Ottawa

They have a long way to go to undo all the harm done by the restrictions on firearms. An entire nation needs to be educated on self-defense and how to use handguns. Had that $1 Billion (some say $2 Billion) been spent on teaching people to use and carry a handgun the Montreal tragedy would have been stopped much sooner. Think of it this way; when some criminal starts shooting innocent people what is the current response? It's to call the police who, quite correctly, arrive as fast as is practical with their own guns to stop the shooter.

Got that? Good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns from hurting innocent people. Everyone knows that. When the good guys don't have guns they are easily slaughtered by the bad guys with guns.

Therefore the way to reduce the number of innocent people from getting hurt or killed is to make sure there are good guys with guns close by. Therefore we need more good guys to carry guns with them and reduce the time from when a bad guy does something bad until he is stopped by a good guy with a gun. In this country we, by constitutional design, have the ultimate solution--The Right to Keep and Bear Arms. This solution also protects us from when the police, and the government in general, becomes infested with bad guys.

Unfortunately because of the infestation of politicians we have suffered with for the past 70+ years (I'm thinking of NFA '34, but really it's been longer than that) we have a lot of work to do before we restore things to their proper order. At least we are headed in the proper direction on this important issue.

As I obliquely reported the other day my cell phone turned into a pumpkin at midnight on Saturday. It wasn't until lunch time yesterday that I was finally able to get it fixed. It's quite the Cinderella now. Very pretty and nice. I'd like to say more but there are those pesky NDAs...

They say $32K was too much for playing around on second base. But they don't say what they think a fair price would be.

I think they should just let the open market decide.

Both links are via Raymond.

Your claim that "they're only for killing people" is imprecise. A gas chamber or electric chair is designed for killing people, and these devices obviously serve different functions than guns. To be precise, a high-capacity, military-type rifle or handgun is designed for conflict. When I need to protect myself and my freedom, I want the most reliable, most durable, highest-capacity weapon possible. The only thing hunting and target shooting have to do with freedom is that they're good practice.

John Ross
http://www.john-ross.net/mistakes.htm
September 14, 2005

Just stay away. There's no one here but racist, sexist, red-necked, gun-toting, explosives-loving, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthals anyway so you wouldn't like it.

On Sunday Barb and I replaced a Geocache that turned up missing. Things went much better this time than the last time we tried to visit this location. We took some pictures while we were out:

This is what I want you to think of when you think of Idaho:

I think the law is silly, but I am inclined to agree that the State of Texas probably is within it's enumerated powers to pass and enforce such a silly law:

The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether a Texas law making it a crime to promote sex toys shaped like sexual organs is unconstitutional.

An adult bookstore employee in El Paso, Texas, sued the state after his arrest for showing two undercover officers a device shaped like a penis and telling the female officer the device would arouse and gratify her.

The employee, Ignacio Sergio Acosta, says a Texas law outlawing the manufacture, marketing or dissemination of an “obscene device” including those shaped like sex organs is unconstitutional because it prevents individuals from using such devices, violating their right to sexual privacy.

I would be inclined to ridicule every man involved in this from the legislators that voted for it, the police enforcing the law, to the prosecutors presenting the case. It would go something like this, "So, are you afraid your wife won't be interested in you anymore once she gets one of these? Perhaps you should get some lessons on how to be a better lover rather than trying to prevent her from getting a little satisfaction."

Pretty much what I expected. I thought that particular explosive needed some more processing after being mixed and perhaps it does but they just aren't telling us. Also, I would have used something other than a hypodermic needle but other than that there are no surprises here for me:

Scientists tested the ingredients linked to the London plot in the Rio Grande Valley south of Albuquerque, where the canyons and mountains form a perfect explosives testing range. Based on the materials found in Britain, investigators developed a specific theory of the bomb plot, two officials who have been briefed on the inquiry said.

With the seal on a sports drink called Lucozade intact, the plotters apparently intended to remove the drink with a hypodermic needle and replace it with highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide, a syrupy liquid once used as rocket fuel. Another bottle would be filled with a common household substance, which The New York Times agreed not to disclose at the request of Homeland Security officials. After the two were mixed, a detonator hidden in a hollowed-out AA battery would be used to set off the bomb, according to this theory.

What they don't come right out and say is that they can't protect us from bombs being brought or made on-board. As long as I am allowed to walk on-board without body cavity searches, remain conscious, unrestrained, and unobserved for at least a short time there will be a way for me to detonate an explosive on-board. Get used to it and stop spending so much money on useless "security".

I don't think some people believe me when I tell them the hoplophobes frequently appear to believe that guns have free will. Here is more evidence of the truth of my claim:

No one will rise up to defend a man who walks into an Amish school, lines young girls up against a blackboard, ties up their feet, and then kills them before killing himself. But a surprising number of people will inevitably rise up to defend his guns, to call the man guilty but his weapons innocent.

...

There are no simple solutions to this conflict. It is neither possible nor tolerable to secure every school or guard every child. Nor is it possible or politically tolerable to keep tabs on every gun. But in these killings we see an open society threatened by the ubiquity of its weapons, in which one kind of freedom is allowed to trump all others. Most gun owners are respectable, law-abiding citizens. But that is no reason to acquit the guns.

Call the weapons innocent? "Acquit the guns"? Someone should commit these lunatics. They have mental problems.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Justice Louis Brandeis
1928
Olmstead v. US 277 US 479

This is, word for word and in its entirety, the text on a poster that has been displayed in a public school in our area for years:

Violence is Any;
Word
Look
Sign
Act
 that inflicts or threatens to inflict physical or emotional injury or discomfort upon another person's body, feelings, or possessions.

Can anyone make sense of that statement?  Adopting it as policy would be quite another matter:  "Ms. Dimbulb, Johnny gave my pencil a dirty look..."

Send the kid in for anger management counseling.  That'll get him to respect you, I'm sure.

I would point out that approximately 100% of a public school's budget comes as a result of threatening tax payers with acts of violence, but saying that might inflict emotional discomfort and thereby constitute an act of violence.

Someone gets up one day and says, 'I'm gonna kill all the girls.' How do you legislate against that?

Katie True
Pennsylvania House Representative from Lancaster County
October 2, 2006
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Analysis: Gun control forces will be emboldened, face tall task
[The "tall task" is to train and arm the adults in the schools. The only solution which could improve the odds.--Joe]

DOS probably got your dog pregnant and left the milk out a couple times in college. Perhaps Windows 3.11 never paid you back for that $100 it was totally going to spend to get his car fixed but you later found out he spent on whiskey and hookers. Exchange server - I heard what it did, it was in all the papers.

Ry Jones

Xenia's boyfriend just came home on leave from his army training. Xenia has been anxiously awaiting his return after not seen him for months.

After saying, "Hi." The first thing I asked him if he brought any hand grenades back for me. Alas, he says access is restricted. <heavy sigh>

My nephew, Scott Amos, became an Eagle Scout today. We just got back from the ceremony. His name was engraved on a plaque that is kept in the local church. His was the 13th name on the plaque. The first one had the date of 1983. There have been just 13 Eagle Scouts in the town of Potlatch Idaho in the last 23 years.

I was surprised at how big a deal it was. The mayor was there, a city councilman, and our State Representative, Shirley Ringo. He got letters of congratulation from our U.S. Representative Butch Otter, our U.S. Senator Larry Craig, our Governor Jim Risch, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President George Bush.

Congratulations to Scott for acceptance into such an elite group.

Xenia took lots of pictures and I expect I'll be getting one to put up with this post later today.

I don't help people make bombs (exception given to the U.S. Military should they ask but that is exceedingly unlikely). And I don't help idiots make explosives.

A case in point:

From: Andrewball20@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 5:48 AM
To: blog@joehuffman.org
Subject: Comments on: The View From North Central Idaho

i want 2 get some hydrogen peroxide beacause can u send me some and how much will it cost i live in england by the way.

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 6:42 AM
To: 'Andrewball20@aol.com'
Subject: RE: Comments on: The View From North Central Idaho

Have you looked here yet: http://www.boomershoot.org/general/Bombhelp.htm ?

 

In particular this link should be of use to you: http://nobombs.net/brucel/explosivegraphics.html

 

And as near as I can tell you don't live in England. You probably sent this message from NYC and certainly from within the U.S.

 

And furthermore if you can't figure out how to get hydrogen peroxide on your own you are far too stupid to know how to build explosives without hurting some innocent person. I wouldn't worry about you getting a Darwin Award but hurting innocent people I do worry about.

 

-joe-

I may be wrong about him being from NYC. His email appears to have come from a dialup in NYC. His browsing appears to come in from the U.K.

Giving a friend or neighbor a firearm doesn’t help them– it puts them in danger. And re-releasing a firearm into the community instead of destroying it is, as Shaw rightly realizes, asking for trouble.

'Mike' at GunGuys.com
September 29, 2006
Gun Owner Can’t Get Rid of an Unwanted Gun
[One could surmise from this nut case that the gun, a bolt action .22 rifle, was caught in a trap while on the prowl for a victim. He uses language that would be more appropriate for a live rattlesnake than an inanimate object made of metal and wood. Either 'Mike' has mental problems or he is actually on our side and is mocking the anti-gun bigots.--Joe]

From Sean and Wendell.

Sean says, "In the spirit of Boomershoot Adventures..."

Skeet shooting has been replaced.

I'm amazed by his excellent aim shooting the shotgun from the hip and what appears to be without sights with the machine gun.

Now if those cars had been filled with Boomerite...

I've had several requests to blow up cars but people always lost interest when I told them they would have to help clean up the mess.