Gun control is for sissies.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Beyond Chron April 24‚ 2007
[He is being sarcastic but I like to take the one line seriously. It's this sort of behavior that is conformation that we are winning. He doesn't even attempt to engage in an intellectual debate.--Joe]

Ry has a video of the Cheytac 408. Very impressive gun and cartridge.

The history was interesting to me as well. I did the same sort of thing with my .300 Win mag. I chose a bullet (the Berger 210 grain VLD) then built the gun around it. I also wrote a program for my calculator to do the trajectory calculations. I did not include the rotation of the earth into my program however. At the latitudes and ranges I expected to be shooting the rotation of the earth contributed less than 1 MOA so I figured I would just estimate that in my head if really needed.

Maybe it's just because I'm up way too late and tired but I thought this was funny:

If a healthy sexuality is something you desire, then you have a responsibility to know as much about yourself as possible and a responsibility to freely communicate that information with yourself and your partner. As responsible adults, we encourage you to pull your weight and masturbate.

I finished the Boomershoot 2006 history (at 24+ MBytes it's not for dial-up) video and started burning CD's last night. Other than the video there's not much new from last years CDROM.

I had new signs made for Boomershoot this year. The old ones were hand printed and since it was my printing it was horrid. The new ones are functional and professional.

With the creation of reserved shooting positions we now have the need for markings of each of the individual positions. Ry came up with the idea of how to do it. The sign company wanted $1400 for them. That being OUT OF THE QUESTION I had them sell me the plastic cut to size which cost $50. I then convinced Xenia to apply the $40 worth of vinyl numbers for just $20. $110 versus $1400. The results are good enough for who they are for:

If more gun control doesn’t mitigate crime, then what does it do? Look no further than any authoritarian state or society in history. Look no further than our own Southern backyard under the Jim Crow laws — laws that in many states still had a significant presence only 50 years ago. What was one of the first things these laws did to Southern blacks? They took their guns away. In a society where even the authorities were complacent with lynching and other hate crimes, whom else could a law-abiding citizen turn to for defense against a frequently racist government and society than himself? As in many other instances of the past, gun control was used to oppress people, to remove checks and balances on despicable government policies and, in short, to do what it implies: control.

David Lapidus
April 24, 2007
Gun control unfair to law-abiding citizens
The Badger Herald

All the gun laws in the world wouldn't have stopped a lunatic like Cho Seung-Hui.

Brad Bumsted
April 23, 2007
Extreme Gun Control
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
[This is from an article that implies more gun control would be a good thing. You didn't hear this sort of thing from anti-gun people after Columbine. We have made a lot of progress.--Joe]

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

Lord Acton
[Gun owners are a minority and are severely harassed via registration, regulation, and media attacks that would never be tolerated were they aimed at other minorities of racial, religious, or sexual orientation composition.--Joe]

Another video from my favorite youngest daughter.

You can say that one gun on campus is one too many. But it is and always will be impossible to prevent a determined person with ill intent from smuggling one (or more) onto campus. The best defense against such people is to increase the number of armed good guys so that there is always someone nearby able to respond.

Union Leader
April 18, 2007
Guns on campus: One is one too few

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell's fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell's favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.

Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.

The message is reminiscent of a 1949 poster to mark the launch of Orwell's 1984: 'Big Brother is Watching You'.

This Is London
George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house
March 31, 2007
[Via a chain of links I followed starting with Uncle.--Joe]

19 April 1993 was the first time since the Spanish Inquisition that people have been burned alive for their religious beliefs.

Alec McCol
In Soldier of Fortune referring to the Waco massacre.

George Mason, one of our unsung framers, responding to the question, "I ask, sir, what is a militia?"  Mason answered, "It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."

George Mason

As expected, via the Washington Post:

"Unless we get some leadership from the White House, we're not going to take this kind of political damage bringing up something that would never become law," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), a gun-control advocate.

They are just waiting until after the 2008 election. They want to win the White House first. Then they will go after our guns.

But as yet no substitute has ever been found for cross-examination as a means of separating truth from falsehood, and of reducing exaggerated statements to their true dimensions.

Francis L. Wellman
The Art of Cross-Examination
[I have lots of falsehood and exaggerated statements to wade through in the PNNL case. There is so much of it that there won't be anything of substance left when I'm done with their so-called "evidence". I disposed of probably half of it during my deposition. The rest will tossed in the trash during the course of discovery. It's a very, very "target rich environment".--Joe]