The DOJ (the ATF is under the DOJ so it could be them) apparently is interested in what their subjects think about new regulations on AN. My blog posting is number six on Google for their query.

I should have mentioned in my previous post that I have several thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate that I plan to make into explosives. The people at the DOJ need something to get their blood pumping on a Monday, right? 

Domain Name		usdoj.gov ? (U.S. Government)
IP Address		149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice)
ISP		US Dept of Justice
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  District of Columbia City  :  Washington Lat/Long  :  38.9097, -77.0231 (Map) Distance  :  2,071 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Jan 7 2008 10:46:36 am
Last Page View		Jan 7 2008 10:46:46 am
Visit Length		10 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...ing ammonium nitrate
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		bush signs law regulating ammonium nitrate
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/12/31/NewAmmoniumNitrateRegulations.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/12/31/NewAmmoniumNitrateRegulations.aspx
Out Click		here http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1680:
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Jan 7 2008 1:46:36 pm
Visit Number		230,817

Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.

Dwight Eisenhower
[My guess is that this year there are only about two or maybe three presidential candidates, none of which are likely to win, that even have a glimmer of this fundamental truth.--Joe]

I just deleted another unpaid Boomershoot 2008 entry when they didn't answer his email or voice mail. I then sent out an email to the Boomershoot announcement list that a position was open.

It lasted 12 minutes again. It must the minimum time it takes the Yahoo groups email list server to deliver the open position notification, someone to enter in their data, and push the button.

I just finished some more tools for my web based management of Boomershoot. This time it was some statistics.

These number will probably change a little by the time of the actual 2008 event. But as it currently stands:

This is actually old news but I read it again here and it pissed me off again.

Fifteen states have closed what gun safety advocates call the "gun show loophole."

[...]

...gun safety advocates using federal statistics showing a significant portion of private gun show sales wind up in criminals' hands.

"Gun safety advocates"?

Since when are people advocating gun safety concerned with firearm sales at gun shows?

Of course they aren't "gun safety advocates" they are gun restriction advocates. They are just trying to redefine themselves, with the help of the media, to be something less offensive. Sort of like a KKK member turning in his white sheets and pillow cases for something with a floral pattern.

Maybe it's just me because I listen to words carefully and take them literally but I hear this sort of thing from salesmen sometimes. They say things that are almost half true and deliberately intended to be misleading. I immediately suspect everything they say and know they cannot be trusted with anything. I resist the urge to punch them out, glare at them, and walk away checking my wallet to make sure they haven't lifted it. Unfortunately with the anti-gun bigots they are selling their bigotry to lawmakers who will use violence against those of us who are the targets of their irrational hatred.

But these bigots have reached their zenith and we are now winning. We just need to keep them on the run and politically exterminate them. Don't let them redefine themselves. Just because their sheets are a floral design rather than white doesn't mean they won't lynch us if they get the chance.

Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

Alexis de Tocqueville
[I find this very odd. It's certainly true today, but I would have thought it was different in his time (the mid 1800's).--Joe]

At 15:56 PST I sent out an email that a position had opened up for Boomershoot 2008. At 16:08 PST, just 12 minutes later, the position was filled.

There are two other positions that might be opening up soon. They haven't paid for them, they haven't been answering their email, and I just left voice mail that had better be answered soon.

Ignore for the moment that the Federal Government does not have Constitutional permission to engage in socialized medicine. Look only at results where it has been tried. Kevin tells us about how it's working out in the U.K.

There are lots of other examples but the first implementation appears to have come from Germany and was a failure as well.

One of the basic problems with socialized medicine is who is spending who's money. As pointed out by Milton and Rose Friedman in Free to Choose there are four different possibilities (from memory):

1. One spends ones own money on themselves.
2. One spends ones own money on someone else.
3. One spends someone else's money on themselves.
4. One spends someone else's money on someone else.

On average, the first case is going to result in the best return on any given dollar spent. The person will optimize the result for the available money.

On average, the last case is going to result in the worst return on any given dollar spent. The person has little incentive to limit the amount of money spent and to get a good result for the money spent.

Socialized medicine most closely matches the last case and results in the least efficient spending of money.

Tell all the Democrat candidates for President to shove their illegal plans where the sun doesn't shine then save on their own health care by getting their colonoscopy for removal of the reams of paper done without sedation.

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.

William F. Buckley
[It's impossible to be truly assertive unless you have some means to back it. When the government usurps your ability to vote you have very few options in asserting yourself except by the force of arms. This is why respect of the 2^nd Amendment is essential for a free society and why any who attempt to infringe it must be vigorously opposed. This applies to all, except Richardson, of the current Democrat candidates for president and some of the Republicans.--Joe]

I just finished listening to Ayaan Hirsi Ali read her book Infidel. All 17 hours and 34 minutes of it. To be listening to her actual voice makes this book all the more powerful and meaningful to me.

The book starts with the following introduction:

One November morning in 2004, Theo van Gogh got up to go to his film production company in Amsterdam. He took out his old black bicycle and headed down a main road. Waiting in a doorway was a Moroccan man with a handgun and two butcher knives. As Theo cycled down the Linnaeusstraat Mohamad Boriar approached. He pulled out his gun and shot Theo several times. Theo fell off his bike and lurched across the road then collapsed. Boriar followed. Theo begged, "Can't we talk about this?" But Boriar shot him four more times. Then he took out one of his butcher knives and sawed into Theo's throat. With the other knife he stabbed a five page letter onto Theo's chest. The letter was addressed to me.

After that powerful opening paragraph she quickly goes back in time to when her grandma was young and works forward in great detail. At times I questioned the purpose of detailing her early and even pre-birth years. What does it matter that her father was imprisoned by a communist dictator in Somalia? Why the details of her mother working as a maid years before Ali was born? Why the stories her grandmother told her? Or the games she played with her sister? But by the time she described, in great detail, what she calls the excision of her sister and her I understood why. Although she doesn't explicitly say it she was "born of good stock". She was the least of her siblings academically. But her strength of will, ability to reason, and courage were of such a level that am in awe of her.

And after escaping to the Netherlands she struggled academically while attending University Leiden. But she obtained her political science degree, became an atheist, and a member of the Dutch Parliament. She worked to liberate Muslim women from the beatings and the domination by men.

How did this come about? How did she successfully escape and so many others, including her sister, fail? She is a very strong person but there other things too. Western culture planted the seeds in her mind, those seeds took root and through some good luck enabled her to cast off her destiny of submission and beatings.

The western culture had a profound influence on her included things such as Nancy Drew books and Harlequin romance novels. Through such simple ordinary things we take for granted she and her sister obtained a glimpse of what they thought was only a fantasy world. But when she saw the streets of a German city for the first time it crystallized into reality.

I want to believe there is way other than military domination to win the war against those in the Muslim world who seek our total destruction. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has given us a road map to do just that.

Here is Submission, the 10 minute movie written by Ali and produced by Theo van Gogh. It resulted in van Gogh's murder, Ali going into hiding for weeks, and the effect to Dutch politics was like a 130 dB klaxon going off next to your bed in the quiet of the night.

Submission Part 1

Submission Part 2

And this is what Fred Thompson has to say about Ali. Go Fred!

Ali is now a Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C. Just today they posted a paper by her, Islam's Silent Moderates.

I will be reading and listening to all of her works from now on.

I would prefer to see a letter to the Attorney General saying, "Anyone involved in enforcement of laws restricting firearms should be prosecuted under 18 USC 242." But that is way, way too much to expect at this time. For the time being this is a decent enough start.

Of course I expect that the ATF response, internally at least, be something along the lines of "Who are you to tell us what to do? You are a mere subject. We are the King's men."

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

Thomas Jefferson
[The results in Iowa reminded me of this.--Joe]

Only those with a vested emotional interest in seeing through on the promise of total gun confiscation continue to hang onto the false hope of gun control. After years of being convinced of the righteousness of their cause they are blinded to reality and have begun to believe their own lies. That is the only way to explain how they can still be pushing their failed agenda.

If it wasn't such a serious issue the determination of anti-gun proponents would border on the laughable. Since their misguided ways have led to untold numbers of people being left at the mercy of armed thugs, it takes all the humor out of their laughable ways.

Still, their determination has brainwashed them to believe in their cause at all costs. I also proves that they are incapable of creating a conspiracy with the anti-gun establishment media. The sad sorry truth is they actually believe this crap.

Gerard Valentino
Buckeye Firearms Association Central Ohio Chair
January 3, 2008
There is No Leftist Anti-Gun Conspiracy - They Really Believe This Crap
[The conspiracy theory model explains a lot but ends up with more questions than answers. I'm with Valentino, as implausible and counter factual as their belief system is I think they actually believe it.--Joe]

Cool. Very cool.

Via Sebastian.

Jason sent me a picture of what his kids left out for Santa and his reindeer:

Yes, some people find it calming to go shooting but that isn't what this post is about. As Sebastian and Conservative Scalawag point out a replica of Malcolm Reynolds pistol from the movie Serenity is available for $150.

Son James and I are big fans of Serenity and the TV series FireFly which it was based on.

There are some very interesting questions brought up by David Levy's book, Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships (see also Programmed for love). Suppose robots get so human like they are practically indistinguishable from humans in their interactions? What if they are anatomically correct enough to have sex with without you being able to easily detect they are not human?

That's thought provoking enough but the really interesting questions are what this means to the concept of marriage fidelity as the technology is taken to the limit:

• If you have sex with such a robot is it "cheating"?
• Does it depend on whether you knew it was a robot or not?
• If it is considered cheating whether you knew it was a robot or not, then is it "cheating" when a person has sex with an "adult toy" of today?
• If it is considered cheating to have sex with the human like robot, but it's not considered cheating to have sex with an adult toy of today's technology then at what point in the sophistication of the technology does it become cheating?
• If it is not considered cheating if it was a robot then what is the basis for making that distinction? Is it just because one comes with a warranty and has parts that are dishwasher safe?
• What if certain parts of the robot are actually from human donors? How many parts need to be human before it's not considered a robot? Or how many artificial replacement parts must a human have before they are considered a robot?
• If it is not considered cheating if it was a robot, you think it is a robot at the time, what happens if you find out later it was not a robot?
• If it is not considered cheating if it was a robot, you think it is a human at the time, what happens if you find out later it was a robot?

Of course all these questions will have to be answered on a case by case basis by the humans and robots involved but my interest is in the basis of how people will make these decisions. I find it all wonderfully entertaining.

Sometimes people call me an idealist.  Well, that is the way I know I am an American.  America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

Woodrow Wilson
[It's interesting to contrast the ideals of this Democrat to the Democrat, and most Republican, politicians of today.--Joe]

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Benjamin Franklin
[I wish everyone could keep this thought close for the entirity of this year and all that follow. Especially when they vote this November.--Joe]

For some reason reading this made me think of present day Bush Derangement Syndrome:

Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a bizarre assassination attempt just 17 days after a disciple of Charles Manson tried to kill Ford, was paroled Monday after 32 years behind bars.

Moore, 77, was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, where she had been serving a life sentence, the Bureau of Prisons said.

[...]

In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions, saying she was blinded by her radical political views and convinced that the government had declared war on the left.

"I was functioning, I think, purely on adrenaline and not thinking clearly. I have often said that I had put blinders on and I was only listening to what I wanted to hear," she said a year ago in an interview with KGO-TV.

[...]

Moore was born Sara Jane Kahn in Charleston, W.Va. She acted in high school plays and dreamed of being a film actress.

In the 1970s, Moore began working for People in Need, a free food program established by millionaire Randolph Hearst in exchange for the return for his daughter Patty, who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974.

Moore soon became involved with radical leftists, ex-convicts and other members of San Francisco's counterculture.

[...]

"I was going to go down anyway," she said in a 1982 interview with the San Jose Mercury News. "If the government was going to kill me, I was going to make some kind of statement."

From my Sitemeter it appears someone is looking for a good time on New Years Eve:

Domain Name		rr.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address		69.76.1.# (Road Runner)
ISP		Road Runner
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Idaho City  :  Coeur D Alene Lat/Long  :  47.6609, -116.8343 (Map) Distance  :  65 miles (local visitor)
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Dec 31 2007 12:47:41 pm
Last Page View		Dec 31 2007 12:47:41 pm
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co... parties north idaho
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		orgy parties north idaho
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/default,month,2005-12.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/default,month,2005-12.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-8:00
Visitor's Time		Dec 31 2007 12:47:41 pm
Visit Number		227,546

Sorry, we won't be having that type of party at our place tonight. It will be spent with our kids, Barb's sister, and her family. And when I say that, keep in mind this is Idaho, not West Virginia or some such place.

We all jump on the ATF etc. when they screw up and use the Brady Bunch talking points. But here is one case where it appears one of the agents got things right:

According to Peter Forcelli, a supervisory special agent with ATF, most of the arms were assault weapons such as AK-47s and AR-15s.

Whether Bentley will face charges for the weapons will be based on such factors as whether the guns were bought before or after Bentley's conviction or if they were stolen, Forcelli said.

"You can own automatic weapons. There are certain things you can do to legally own them," Forcelli said. "We have yet to determine if he's done any of that or not."

ATF laboratory personnel will conduct firing tests on the seized weapons to determine if any are fully automatic.

It is still unclear what Bentley was planning to do with weapons, whether he was a collector or had something else in mind because of his "propensity for violence," Forcelli said.

"There are people who have large collections of weapons that are 100 hundred percent legit," Forcelli said. "We're still determining if these were."

The person in question was serving two years probation for a December 2006 felony endangerment conviction and had 75 guns in a storage locker. Given that it seems to me Special Agent Forcelli was giving the guy every benefit of the doubt. He also correctly reports the guns could be legal under U.S. law.

Thank you agent Forcelli.

I'm still of the opinion that the ATF should not exist but given that it does exist I'm a lot more tolerant of the individuals that work there when they have a clue as to what they are doing. My personal experience with ATF personnel has been good and I'm inclined to believe the bad cases are relatively rare. Should we ever get to the time and place in gun rights activism where we are prosecuting law enforcement personnel for crimes under 18 USC 242 prior behavior should play a significant part in their sentence.

Yesterday my daughters, my son-in-law, and I went out to the Boomershoot site and built a snowman.

It's a 34 43 Mbyte .WMV file. Don't even think about it unless you have a high speed connection.

Crank the volume up. There are some subtle sounds.

Update: I just updated the video. There were some very significant changes. The slow parts were sped up, the interesting parts were slowed down and a lot more detail added.

Some technical details: Five gallons of gasoline, ten pounds of Boomerite, and one shot from an AR-15 chambered in .223.

Update2: One of the reasons to make this video was for America's Funniest Home Videos who requested people make videos of building then destroying a snowmen in "creative" ways. Reading the fine print for the submission I discovered I must take the video off the web when I submit it. I'm giving everyone until Midnight January 2^nd to view it. Then it's coming down. Sorry about that.

Update3: I've removed the link to the video. Send me an email if you want to view a private copy.

Full auto, recoilless, 12 gauge shotgun.

It has 20 and 32 round magazines available. I especially like the new ammo. Does Wal-Mart have the HE rounds in stock yet?

The other full auto that I would be interested in is this one.

Thanks to Joe D. on the Lewiston Pistol Club discussion list for the pointer.

Ry has the details. In case the name isn't familar to you read this.

Last Wednesday Bush signed into law a new restriction on our freedom which does nothing but create another bureaucracy. The Los Angles Times has a pretty good write up on it but the tone is "the Feds should have done more":

Ammonium nitrate regulated -- sort of

The fertilizer can be used in explosives. Some in law enforcement and counter-terrorism wanted much tighter controls than Congress passed.

More than 12 years after Timothy J. McVeigh used ammonium nitrate fertilizer to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building, Congress quietly passed legislation this month to regulate sales of the explosive.

But the Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Act of 2007, part of an appropriations measure signed Wednesday by President Bush, falls far short of the strict law that some in the counter-terrorism community and federal law enforcement were hoping for.

[...]

Outside groups are asking for tougher action. "Congress simply didn't understand what it was doing," said Peter Stockton, senior investigator for one of the groups, the Project on Government Oversight, which is a watchdog on national security issues.

"Maybe they thought doing something was better than nothing."

The text of the actual law is here. Assuming I'm reading the version of the bill that was actually signed there is an exemption for people with an explosives license (me). The biggest impact I see to most readers of this blog is that if you want to buy Target Master Exploding Targets or Tannerite maybe you should do it now. Both of those products use ammonium nitrate as their primary ingredient.

This law also affects farmers in a big way.

Under the new law you will be required to register with "Homeland Security" before you can manufacture, sell, or buy, AN. The seller will be required to maintain records. If anyone violates these new regulations they can be fined up to $50,000 per violation.

There will be regulations implemented which will provide "guidance" on storage and sales which of course will do nothing but harass the innocent. Just like the regulations on firearms do nothing the terrorists that want to do evil will steal their materials or use a strawman. Or if they are suicide bombers they will just go through the registration process and buy it just like legitimate users. It's not that difficult to manufacture either. The chemical formula is NH₄NO₃. The elements to manufacture it can all be obtained from the air. Try regulating those precursor chemicals.

Like Stockton, above, I think they just wanted to "do something". And as I pointed out in my QOTD today even "experts" (I hesitate to call anyone who works for the government an expert on anything other than government) don't think it does anything for security. It's nothing but more security theater for the masses.

The bill really does not guarantee anything for the security of the citizens of the United States.

Bill Albright
December 2007
Ammonium nitrate regulated -- sort of
A Defense Department consultant who spent his career at the ATF.
[Albright is correct in what he says but my impression is that he believes there should be more regulation. More on this stupid law in my next post.--Joe]

Poor guy. Assuming it wasn't stolen, if he had just let me store it everything would have turned out so much better:

Authorities raid barn filled with military-grade explosives

SUFFOLK, Va. - Authorities are questioning an ex-Navy SEAL this evening after a raid that officials say turned up enough military-grade explosives to damage an entire Suffolk neighborhood.

Suffolk fire and rescue spokesman Jim Judkins says police secured a warrant yesterday and raided a barn on Ferry Point Road after receiving a tip.

Police have been joined investigating the barn by FBI and ATF agents, and the Virginia State Police this evening.

The unidentified former SEAL is in custody and is cooperating with authorities.

Judkins didn't specify just how much explosive material was in the barn.

But he says it was enough to do damage to houses about one-third of a mile in any direction.

You can be sure the barn wasn't "filled". Based on the information I have he probably had about 1000 pounds of high explosives. Most explosives are within a factor of two of the density of water so you could put that much explosives in a car that is capable of holding five large men. It wouldn't have filled the barn. I wish I knew where it was on Ferry Point Road. If it was actually greater than 320 feet of the road or 800 feet of inhabited building (halve that if it was in the woods out of sight of the buildings or road) then the distances were acceptable according to ATF regulations. But it doesn't sound like he had an appropriate storage magazine for the materials. [heavy sigh]