The View From North Central Idaho

I unpacked all the boxes I received from PNNL the other day.  Almost everything appears to be there. They even returned an almost empty shampoo bottle and an empty baby food jar that once upon a time had some change in it.  The first box I opened had the following items in it which I figured would be a high priority item to retain "for evidence" or something.  A 100 yard target and a 500 yard target:

Click here for a high resolution version.

500 yard target.  Click here for a high resolution version.

100 yard target.  Click here for a high resolution version.

The second box I opened had the items I most wanted right away--my Boomershoot hat and HP-48 calculator.  And shortly thereafter I found my collection of books on improvised explosives such as Ragnar's Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives which I also thought might be something they would want to hold on to. 

It's possible there is something I have forgotten about but right now the only thing I didn't find was some paperwork for applying to Oregon for a Concealed Carry License.  That was in the filing cabinet they claimed they didn't have a key for.  If I don't get it it's not a big deal.  I think I have copies here anyway.

Now I have several garbage sacks filled with Styrofoam peanuts to give to UltiMAK.

This guy is pushing the envelope in main stream media:

Thomas Jefferson clearly stated that when government becomes oppressive, the people have the right to throw it off and establish a new government of their choosing. I am beginning to think it is time for us to start throwing.

He expresses a little bit of fear at being so outspoken too:

About the only freedom we have left is that of the press, and I would not be surprised to hear that I am no longer allowed to speak my mind in this column.

Yup.  I could see that happening.

And what caused him to be so outspoken?  No surprise here either:

...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Amendment Five, U.S. Constitution.
Why is it that the more powerful you become the less ability you have to read clear and precise language? The Fifth Amendment states clearly that private property can only be taken for public use, and that such property must be paid for at a fair rate. How then did five U.S. Supreme Court justices decide that it was legal for the city of New London, Connecticut to force five landowners off their property so it can be given to a giant corporation? The city has no plans to use this property for highways, schools, jails or any other public use.

I think Nicolo Machiavelli may have it right.

Scott Davis (Davis Productions) has finished the Boomershoot 2005 video.  Someone in my house must have picked it up and didn't bother to tell me it was here.  I had seen the case sitting around for a week or two but didn't look close enough to see the title.  Barb and I watched it last night.  Very nice.  :-D

It not as heavy on the interviews as last year but does have interviews with Chuck Hurst, Jack du Toit (Son&Heir of Kim du Toit), and Sara Young.  There may be some others but I forget right now.  There is also video of the fireball opening, the bowling ball motar, and the anvil shoot.  Kirk's rifle was featured prominately (as he noted in this blog posting).  There is video of Ry and I being rather animated at one of the shooters meetings.  Thankfully our blatherings were muted and music was overlayed.

I'm nearly certain you can still get a copy by contacting Scott.

My brother found another picture of his daughter at West Point.  She is in the foreground just right of center.

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.

Mohandas Gandhi

One of the first geocaches in the Moscow (Idaho) area was this one which I placed March 11, 2001.  A fire on September 8, 2001 destroyed it.  I replaced it on April 4, 2002.  Then the location went under new managment and no trespassing signs were put up (unrelated to geocaching).  Barb and I moved it a few months ago but I just now got around to getting good coordinates, a picture, and reactivating it.  It used to be called "Stumpy" but I renamed it "Rocky" in the new location.  Here are current pictures of the cache:

In the ammo can under the rock.

"Rocky" from a few feet away.

The UltiMAK office is just a few hundred yards away from my house and I have been hanging out there some recently.  They asked me if I would like to test out a prototype scope mount for them.  They supplied the gun and the ammo I just needed to supply the trigger time.  Yesterday, after taking care of my license to manufacture explosives renewal, I went to the range.  Below are some sample pictures--see the rest here.

A new alloy was being tested on the scope mount. No anodizing on the prototype, just the bare aluminum.

The view from 106 yards away.

About three fourths of the way through the tests the target stand on the right blew over and I took a picture of the targets before I continued.

I was shooting the targets in a quasi-random order. For each five shot magazine I would put at least one bullet on each target before shooting a target a second time. Each shot took, on the average, about one second from 106 yards away.  Each magazine change took about seven seconds.  I went through about 450 rounds nearly as fast as I could reload the magazines and get the gun back on target between shots and magazine changes.

The end result was the prototype worked fine.  It got very hot though.  Even the scope got hot enough that I couldn't keep my hand on it.  Lyle, at UltiMAK, told me that there have been times during their tests they got the scope hot enough that rain drops boiled when they hit it.  Of course these are intended to be torture tests rather than reality testing.

Yeah, I think it's a gun day.

Greg Hamilton
Insights Chief Self Defense Instructor
February 6, 1999
Explaining that sometimes you just have to accept the fact that unarmed self-defense doesn't cut it in all situations. Eg., you've been trying all your de-escalation techniques for avoiding a fight, but you find that you're faced with disparity of force.

I got an email from Crystal yesterday.  It said, in part:

Did you send your renewal paperwork in? Maybe it hasn't been input yet, but licensing data this morning shows July 1, 2005 as expiration and doesn't indicate a pending renewal. Licensing goes by received date, not postmarked date.

Ouch!  I was thinking it was July 29th, not the 1st.  I sent a reply back thanking her and started hustling: Fingerprints, special photo, lots of forms to fill out, create a map of the water flow near the manufacturing site.  This morning I still had a question and called her.  She had a great answer and said she would call the recipent of my paperwork to let her know it was coming and that Crystal had signed off on things in May.  Crystal called a few minutes later saying things were fine and send it to a different address, directly to the person reviewing the material.  I got it into the FedEx box a few minutes ago.

Note to all the people who filled out the Employee Possessor Questionnaire for the next Boomershoot: Those questionnaires went in with my renewal.  Thanks everyone.

I received my personal belongs from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory yesterday.  I haven't opened everything up yet--I've been way to busy with other stuff.  But it's clear they really don't like me.

In addition to taking three weeks to ship me my stuff they overloaded two of the boxes and they were falling apart on receipt.  Add in they didn't send me my performance reviews (and some other favorable material) it's pretty obvious they don't want me to be having any happy days anytime soon.

One more post then I'm going off to the range soon to put some holes in some cardboad of my own.

See also:

I was fired yesterday
Update on being fired
Termination report delayed
What did I expect?
No performance reviews

Update: It doesn't appear anything was damaged by the poor packing.

Sure, it's a commentary but I don't see any opposing commentary and it's in the Los Angles Times.  That's a very big paper in a liberal city/state.

The Big Lie of the Assault Weapons Ban

This wasn't supposed to happen. When the federal assault weapons ban ended on Sept. 13, 2004, gun crimes and police killings were predicted to surge. Instead, they have declined.

For a decade, the ban was a cornerstone of the gun control movement. Sarah Brady, one of the nation's leading gun control advocates, warned that "our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis." Life without the ban would mean rampant murder and bloodshed.

...

For gun control advocates, even a meaningless ban counts. These are the same folks who have never been bashful about scare tactics, predicting doom and gloom when they don't get what they want. They hysterically claimed that blood would flow in the streets after states passed right-to-carry laws letting citizens carry concealed handguns, but that never occurred. Thirty-seven states now have right-to-carry laws — and no one is seriously talking about rescinding them or citing statistics about the laws causing crime.

Gun controllers' fears that the end of the assault weapons ban would mean the sky would fall were simply not true. How much longer can the media take such hysteria seriously when it is so at odds with the facts?

PHXnews.com has this for our viewing pleasure:

When police chiefs and sheriffs are allowed to respond to poll questions anonymously, the politics may be removed from their answers.

...

Gun Control: With regard to private citizens owning firearms for sport or self-defense, 93.6 percent of the respondents supported civilian gun-ownership rights. Ninety-six percent of the police chiefs and sheriffs believe criminals obtain firearms from illegal sources and 92.2 percent revealed they hadn't arrested anyone for violation of the so-called "waiting period" laws. When asked if citizens concealed-weapons permits would reduce violent crime, 63.1 percent said yes.

Banning guns to prevent crime is like banning cosmetics to prevent prostitution.

Joe Huffman
May 9, 1997

Amy flew to Newark Sunday and called us after she reached the hotel in
Newark.  We haven't heard from her directly since, but we did find her
picture on the internet, so we know she made it to West Point.

In the following link: http://www.usma.edu/Class/2009/R-Day/RDay05.htm

click on image #145.  Amy is the one with the messy hair.  Judging from
the other pictures, they have been standing in lines all day, so she
doesn't look real happy, but at least we know she is okay.

Doug

Friday night Barb and I left Moscow to bring Ry back to Moscow from the Seattle area.  His van died and he wanted his Jeep to replace it.  We arrived about 00:30 Saturday.  Ry and I talked to 03:45 or so.  Ry told me his story of getting fired once for taking a bunch of people to the range to go shooting.  For a week afterward everyone talked about the trip to the range and how great it was--except for one gun-hating bigot who made a complaint to HR about Ry creating a "hostile work environment."  Since Ry was on contract and not an actual employee they told him the his contract wouldn't be renewed because of the complaint.  Anyone else have similar stories to tell?  I'm thinking of collecting them and putting together a magazine article...

Barb and I got up about 9:00 and found a park to take a walk in.  We picked up Ry, went to Dixie's Barbeque for lunch.  Barb "Met the Man" and was not pleased.  That was the first hot sauce she has ever tasted that she didn't like.  We headed back to Moscow about 14:00 or so.  Ry took this picture and made the post from the back seat as we were driving up the mountain toward Snoqualmie pass.

We arrived back in Moscow about 20:00 or so.  I dropped off Barb at home and Ry and I took daughter Kim's ATM car (a car you pay no more than your withdrawal limit from your ATM machine) back to where she bought it on Friday.  Ry drove behind me and said it was like behind behind a skywriting plane at an air-show or maybe a fumigation machine.  The car ran fairly well when we bought it on Thursday but it basically was disintegrating before our eyes on Friday.

I took Ry to his place and with a surprising small amount of work got his Jeep to start after a year of sitting in one spot.  There was still lots of work to be done on it and he needed to replace a hard drive on the computer we use for all our websites and email.  He came back to my place and it took us (him mostly) four hours to get the data moved over and everything up and running again.

I took Ry home, came home, and crawled into bed beside Barb at 02:08.

At 9:02:56 Kim called waiting to get another car.  By 11:15 she was driving her “new” car.  It cost 4.5 X what the first one did but maybe it will last more than a day this time.

I stopped by Ry's place on the way back and woke him up at 11:25.  At about 14:00 Ry stopped by our house on his way out of town to drop off the jumper cables he had borrowed.  He said his van drives like a race car compared to the Jeep (the steering “floats”).  It used to almost be able to make it to Pullman from his place (less than 15 miles) without overheating too seriously.  I helped him fill up two five gallon cans of water to replenish his Jeep on the drive back to the Seattle area.  His trip to Seattle is likely to be 'interesting'.  He is about 2 hours into his adventure now.

Good luck Ry!

Update: He picked up some onions in Royal City for Dixie's, through Ellensburg, and at last report reached Issaquah.  He really should be home by now.

Most of the great evils that man has inflicted on man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

Bertrand Russell

When evil wins in the world, it is only by the default of the good.  That is why one man of reason and moral stature is more important, actually and potentially, than a million fools.

Ayn Rand

I looked through every single page of the “personnel file” PNNL sent me.  No performance reviews to be found.  So they don't want me to be able to show the good stuff about my time there to anyone?  What else could be the motivation?

They did apologize for not sending my personal belongings in a timely fashion.  They said it was because they couldn't find the key to a filing cabinet and they were “awaiting a locksmith“ (for three weeks?).  I gave the key to my boss when they suspended me and told him what it was for.  And I told him that inside the filing cabinet are keys to “everything else“ which includes some computers and cupboards.  [heavy sigh]  I guess I shouldn't expect competence from them.

I was sent a travel report to sign so I can get $175 back in out of pocket expenses for the trip I took to Albuquerque back in April.  I was thinking I might have to complain about that.  But they caught it on their own--after three weeks.

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse.

...

It makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain. And when neither their property nor honour is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways.

Nicolo Machiavelli
The Prince
[In response to the Supreme Court Opinion from yesterday.  Joe]

I received a FedEx package from PNNL today.  It purported to contain my personnel file.  But neither Barb nor I could find any of my performance reviews in it.  The one thing I really wanted.  I'll look again tomorrow when I have some more time.  Barb said, “So what did you expect?  Did you really think they would give you what you wanted?“ 

As far as the policy and procedures manual they said one doesn't really exist.  It's on line and “access is limited“.  How convenient.  They say, “You didn't follow the rules.  You're fired.“  I ask, “What were the rules?“  They answer, “We aren't telling.“

I had a very, very busy day today.  Daughter Kim was having a convergence of crisis's and I spent nearly the entire day helping with her problems.  Things are mostly under control now.  She really needs to find better friends.

I did not expect this.  I can barely believe it.  This is just so incredibly wrong.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a city can take a person's home as part of a private development project aimed at boosting tax revenues and revitalizing a local economy, a decision that could have nationwide impact.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court upheld a ruling that New London, Connecticut, can seize the homes and businesses owned by seven families for a private development project that will complement a nearby research facility by the Pfizer Inc. drug company.

Guns rank second in importance only to the Constitution itself.  They are our Liberty Teeth.

George Washington

This posting at The Beagle Express about some activities at the TSA included this quote:

The federal agency in charge of aviation security collected extensive personal information about airline passengers even though Congress forbade it and officials said they wouldn't do it, . . .

So what else is new?  The FBI used 'Brady' records that were supposed to have been destroyed for tracking down 'suspected terrorists' who had purchased guns until Ashcroft put a stop to it.  And of course there were politicians and anti-gun bigots that screamed 'bloody-murder' at Ashcroft's action.

And on a more personal note I remember a conversation I had with a couple people where one person was pretty clearly breaking a law (a stupid law, but nevertheless a Federal law) as part of doing his job for a government contract.  He was concerned about doing this.  Before writing up a report where it might get noticed by someone that cared he wanted a company lawyer to review things to make sure he wasn't going to get in trouble or that the company would take the fall rather than him personally.  A co-worker got more than a little bit annoyed at this position eventually saying, “See this badge?  This means the law doesn't apply to us.  The people that enforce these laws are the same people that want this work done.”  I was fairly balanced in the discussion prior to that.  Both people had valid points and I helped explore those positions but when “...the law doesn't apply to us.” came up the issue was settled as far as I was concerned.  Unless there was an exemption in the law for our activities I was the opinion my co-worker needed to be absolutely certain he would not be personally at risk if it ever became an issue.  The co-worker at risk left the company not too long after that and I never found out what happened with his project.

The point is government cannot be trusted to follow it's own laws and regulations.  Typically there is no penalty for them if they fail to abide by the rules.  And if there is a penalty who is going to enforce the penalty?  If it's against the rules but there aren't any 'teeth' in the law people will generally ignore it.  That is why we have, as a last resort, the Second Amendment.  As George Washington (I'll make this the quote of the day tomorrow) said:

Guns rank second in importance only to the Constitution itself.  They are our Liberty Teeth.

From the Philadelphia Daily News.  And still the reports are that airport security hasn't improved (see also this):

SHE STARTED out very innocently, feeling the small of my back, and then ran her palms over my shoulder blades and neck, then journeyed down my spine, making small talk about the hot weather and the uniqueness of my watch.

Telling me to remove my shoes and belt, her fingers methodically worked over my lower lumbar region, cupping the cheeks of my rump and slowly tracing my thighs and knees. The back of my knees is the most ticklish part of my body, and I bit my lip and swung my arm at her to stop, due to a full bladder.

She quickly ordered me to stare ahead and keep my hands at my side as she signaled that she did not need further restraints on me. I felt her wrists taunt my inner leg and calves and prayed she wouldn't feel my cardinal sin: not shaving my legs.

She grabbed my waist, and with her palms, traveled around my torso and pressed against my stomach. She traced the circumference of my breasts and squeezed one so hard that if I did have silicone or a baggie of cocaine stashed in there, it surely would have popped. She then ran her hands down my sides so tight she knew I had $1.74 in change in one pocket and a stick of Double Mint in the other.

No, I was not getting a really risque massage, nor was I trying out for the Ellen DeGeneres/Rosie O'Donnell team, I was the lucky recipient of being randomly screened at Philadelphia International Airport.

But the Transportation Security agent went places on me that I believe only my husband will go on our wedding night (me being a devout good Catholic girl, wink, wink) or my gynecologist. After this heavy petting session, all in the name of national security, I felt like I needed a cigarette, but they confiscated all lighters.

So after getting to third base with me, the agent hit a home run with the friend I was traveling with because she was wearing a dress. She got lucky with the security wand that poked and prodded under the dress. My friend was even told to stand with her legs apart and do lunges as the security wand got a bird's-eye view of the female reproductive system.

Even ignoring the 4th Amendment issues it's time to rethink the problem.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

Some Democrats in eastern Oregon want a pro-gun platform for the state party.

Saying they're tired of the gun control issue costing them defections to the GOP, Baker County Democrats voted last week to approve a platform resolution in support of gun ownership that they hope the state party will add to its platform.

The adoption came after a spirited debate over the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Chuck Butcher of Baker City, who crafted the county party's resolution, said he will personally deliver it to the state party platform committee when it meets June 25 at West Linn. 

The local resolution states, in part, "The Democratic Party of Oregon resolves as follows: To recognize and support the right to keep and bear arms in Section 207 of the Oregon State Constitution and the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as an individual right not granted by the government but rather guaranteed by the government.

"In recognition of the tremendous personal responsibility engendered by the right to keep and bear arms, the Democratic Party of Oregon further advocates severe penalties and their enforcement for criminal use or misuse of this right."

Butcher said he wanted to submit "a clear resolution without a lot of hedging, and frame it in language that could pass overwhelmingly, if the argument is presented correctly."

They got the part about it being a right recognized rather than granted.  I give them extra credit for that!  But I suspect their chances of getting that, as written, adopted at the state level is asymptotically close to zero.  It's just not going to happen.  If they weasel word it a WHOLE bunch then maybe 50-50.

Thanks for trying guys.  I know you are on our side and you have to fight the battle but you are going to lose at least the first few rounds.  Keep at it.

Last winter, when federal transportation security officials began discussing a ban on cigarette lighters in airline cabins, they warned that the lighters might slip past their screening equipment. Some airport managers were skeptical for the same reason.

Turns out they were right, at least if the recent experience of a handful of Twin Cities air travelers is any indication.

A dozen times in the past several weeks, those passengers sailed past airport screeners with at least one lighter in their carry-on bags.

...

"They really can be somewhat dangerous on a plane," said Roth, a former Secret Service agent. "But the ban [also] is like a no-parking sign -- if you find a lighter, it gives you an opening to look for something else that isn't supposed to be in the luggage."

One of the strongest congressional advocates for the lighter ban was Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who cited shoe bomber Richard Reid's attempt in December 2002 to blow up a plane using matches.

If Reid had used a lighter, "the FBI said he would have blown up -- the shoe bomber would have blown up the airplane," Dorgan said during a Feb. 15 hearing.

Dorgan spokesman Barry Piatt said his boss "is keeping his eye on" the lighter ban but has indicated no dissatisfaction about its comprehensiveness.

"Nothing works 100 percent," Piatt said. "That doesn't mean things aren't significantly improved. I think he wants to allow them time to work this. I don't think anyone expected perfection in the first couple of months."

'Improved'?  Yeah, right.  They only lighters they are finding are the lighters people forgot about.  Anyone with a room temperature I.Q. can hide one such the screeners won't find it.  Hence they are taking lighters from people that had no plans to do anything wrong with them.  The only 'benefit' to this policy is making some candidates for mental help feel better--and that especially applies to Sen. Dorgan.

As for Roth--Ayn Rand has him pegged.

It didn't make sense!  That's how I knew it had to be true.

Paul Smith
On a law regarding ammunition.
May 11, 1999
[This logic applies to many government and bureaucracy laws, regulations, and rules.  See, for example, this one from yesterday.]

Families celebrate Fathers Day at machine gun shoot-out

Everyone has their own way to celebrate Father's Day, but some families went out of their way to break tradition.

Close to 2,000 people made their way to the Mustang gun range to show their love by firing automatic weapons.

Under Nevada's open gun laws, it is legal to shoot machine guns. And fathers, sons, and shooting enthusiasts in general, had an opportunity to shoot fully automatic weapons like AK-47s, M-60's, and Uzi's.

While it may not be a traditional Fathers Day event, for Matt and Andy Polehman it was all about being together on this special day. "My dad and I have this saying, it doesn't matter what we do as long as we do it together."

If you missed Sunday's shoot, don't worry, the range will host another one this October.

Thanks for the pointer to this reporting from “The Gun Guys”--who had this to say about the article:

Nothing Says "I Love You" Quite Like A Machine Gun Shoot Out.  Gun Lovers Won't Rest Until They Can Do This In Their Suburban Backyards.

And I say, “And your point is?”  Admittedly, if you are going to do this in your suburban backyard you should do it in a tunnel or have a particular good backstop and shooting area that makes it impossible for a bullet to leave the range.  And the use of suppressors might be required, but other than that--what's your point?

Schneier calls it surreal.  I say it's typical of government regulations:

the FAA regulation that requires soldiers — all of whom were armed with an arsenal of assault rifles, shotguns and pistols — to surrender pocket knives, nose hair scissors and cigarette lighters.

My quote of the day for tomorrow will be applicable.

Update: The applicable quote of the day.

Last Thursday I posted about new explosive detection machines costing $3 Million each.  Here is an article saying they cost only $130K to $150K each.  A much more reasonable price to pay.  I don't know which is correct but it really doesn't matter all that much because the most interesting portion of the article is this:

Sniffers are proving to be very sensitive, said Deirdre O'Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the TSA, sometimes indicating ``hits'' for persons who might have had contact with substances such as fertilizers, which can be used to make explosives.

So far, she said, sniffers haven't uncovered anyone of interest or suspicion to law enforcement officials. Still, terrorists have lots of weapons that worry the air travel industry and law enforcement agencies. Shoulder-mounted rockets, for example.

This is the problem... The number of false positives far exceeds the number of valid detections and will always be the case.  If the alarm threshold is adjusted such that a reasonable number of false positives are experienced (say 1%) then a well scrubbed explosive device will pass.  If the threshold is set such that nearly any amount of care in explosive device preparation will be caught then the majority of innocent people will be subject to additional searches.  Because of the high cost (time of the screeners as well as the complaints of the innocent) and predominance of hits being false positives (100% so far) the threshold will be adjusted such that the well scrubbed device will pass without detection.  And this scenario doesn't even include active opponents working against the machines in the days to weeks ahead of the attempt to get an explosive device past the machines.

Hence the explosive detection machines do nothing but provide comfort for those with mental problems (denial in this case) and actually make things less secure because that same money could have been spent on effective security.

Saturday Barb and I drove Xenia and “Snow White” out past Elk River to the “largest tree in North America east of the Sierra-Cascade divide“ (according to the sign beside the tree).  There Xenia did a photo shoot for a photography contest.  I like #8, duplicated below, the best.

Self-interest has no place in society.

Sandy Cuney
Handgun Control Incorporated
May 6, 1994

One thousand letters a day did not represent what the First District wanted.

Congressperson Maria Cantwell
July 16, 1994
Washington State First District
Town Hall Meeting
North Kirkland Community Center
She was responding to a question about why, when most of the 1000 letters, phone calls, and faxes her office was receiving each day about the Brady Bill were opposed to it, she voted for it.

I got tagged by reasonablenut who in tagging me said , “Joe of Boomershoot fame, just because I'm dying to know what kind of shit that guy reads”.

Hmmm... Okay.  I'm not sure it's all that interesting but here it is:

1. Total Number of Books I Own.  [groan]  The book shelf behind me is full.  The bookshelf to my left is full and overflowing.  The bookshelf were I used to work is full (they still haven't sent these books to me).  There are boxes in the garage with books in them.  There are books in boxes in my van which I brought back from Richland a few days ago.  There is a stack of books on the nightstand next to our bed.  I have no idea.  Hundreds?  Maybe a thousand?

2. Last Book I Bought.  It's been a while because I'm so far behind on my book reading.  I think it was a big pile at a used book store.  It included several books on explosives including a couple on detonation theory and practice (which are at my old office at PNNL), American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us,  Dresden : Tuesday, February 13, 1945,  Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, and probably some others which I forget at the moment.

3. Last Book I Read. The last couple books I completed were probably some on explosives detonation.  I'm currently in the middle of That's Not What I Meant! (a book on how conversational style makes or breaks relationships),  Emotional Intelligence : Why It Can Matter More Than IQ and the germs book from above.

 4. 5 Books That Meant a Lot to Me.  How about seven?  In no particular order: Stranger in a Strange Land, Atlas Shrugged (this is my son's favorite book), Atheism the Case Against God, Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny,  Death by "Gun Control", The Rape of Nanking, and Unintended Consequences.

 5. Tag 5 People.  Musings of the Commando Kumquat, Silens Refero Lamentari, Periodic Journal of my wanderings, and Mindless Bit Spew. Yeah, I'm wimping out with only four.

Those who would expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Thomas Paine

They just don't and won't stop.  Here's another one:

For at least 25 years, the Federal Aviation Administration failed one test after another when it came to airport security. Undercover agents walked through airport checkpoints toting machine guns on their backs and bombs stashed in their carry-on luggage. Agents easily breached security precautions, breezing past locked doors to enter empty planes, mingling behind the scenes with ground crews.

...

"The facts remain the facts," says Steve Elson, a former undercover FAA security officer who tried to warn the agency it was on the edge of disaster. "It is still child's play to knock down 50 airplanes in a few hours' span with near 100 percent chance of success, and probably quite easy to fly a plane into the White House or Congress."

I contend it's simply not possible to make airplanes any safer with the current approach.  We need to completely rethink the problem from a clean slate, do some simulations, and reimplement our security based on solid science rather than pandering to the mental disorders and power cravings of a few people.

I'd been noticing for some time that Join Together seemed to be less and less on top of things compared to just a couple years ago.  About November or December I was thinking of doing a comparison of the number of new postings per day compared to previous months and years.  I never got around to it.  Then in May sometime I saw they were shutting down.  May was a very busy time for me and I never got around to posting about it.  I went to visit today for the first time in a long time and found this:

THIS IS AN ARCHIVE WEBSITE

This site was last updated May 27, 2005. Although Join Together's gun violence project has ended, we encourage those interested in the issue to visit the action center and national directory to locate national, state and local organizations working on this important issue. Former subscribers to Join Together's email news service on gun violence prevention may be interested in similar services from the Freedom States Alliance.

In a way I'm going to miss them.  They were a good source of “barking moonbat” quotes and you could also get a feel for the next direction the anti-gun crowd was headed.  But on the other hand it's “another one bites the dust”--which is a very good thing and I'm pleased. 

I've blogged about so called “The Freedom States Alliance” before.  Although it's a little hard to tell my impression is there are only a couple people (perhaps just one) actively running it.  And it's just not the same as JTO.  JTO was actually pretty professional about everything.  Their opinion pieces were a bit (okay--more than a bit) loopy, and they were very selective in their reporting of facts but I could basically respect them.  The so called “Freedom State Alliance” group of websites gives me the impression of someone several Fruit Loops short of a full bowl.  Someone right on the edge of howling at the moon.  Someone screaming right alongside that Dean guy.  [shrug]  Web sites are cheap and they don't test for sanity, nor should they, when someone registers a domain.  And if the anti-freedom crowd wants to represented by lunatics then I sure don't want to discourage them.  Go for it Gun Guys!

I was going to release my report on the investigation which lead to my recent termination at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) but a friend suggested it might be to my advantage to wait.  They had some very good points so I am holding off for a while.  Also the report isn't really complete without my personnel file.  I have requested that and will include it before I release the report.  All of you who have the URL to the current report please continue to keep it private, hold off on the letters to your congress critters, the press releases, etc.  The end result will be better for everyone if things are done correctly.  That will take some more time.  How much time is an interesting question...

It turns out although it's been two weeks since I was terminated they still haven't sent my personal belongings from my old office.  One has to wonder what the reason for that is.  Is it because it just isn't very high on their list of priorities?  They are very short on office space so it's not like they don't have at least some motivation to clear it out.  One amusing possibility which crossed my mind is that they fear it is booby-trapped (it's not--or at least not that I know of).  The only thing I really want out of there right away is my Boomershoot hat and even that isn't that big of a deal.

Another thing I requested in my letter to PNNL was a copy of the policy and procedures manual.  Someone recently paraphrased Ayn Rand's famous quote and told me they viewed PNNL's policies in the same light--something to be enforced as desired to crack down on people they wanted to get rid of.  I don't remember it being quite that bad although I remember discussing things with others that just didn't make sense, things that you couldn't really avoid doing if you wanted to do your job in an effective manner.  I'll have to wait and see if they will even send it to me.  It is my understanding they are required to send me my personnel file but I'm not so sure about the policies and procedures manual.  And in any case there may not be any requirement on how long they wait before they send anything to me.  If my personal belongings are any indication it could be weeks.

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.  One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Ayn Rand
From the book Atlas Shrugged

TSA has installed some new explosive detection equipment to screen passengers:

The federal Transportation Security Administration has finished a pilot program, which started in June 2004, by installing explosives detectors for passengers in 14 cities. By the end of September, 44 detectors will be installed in 10 additional airports, including Pittsburgh, the TSA said.

...

The explosives detector looks like a doorframe, like the metal detectors now used at the airport checkpoint. Passengers will stand still for a few seconds while the detector releases several puffs of air.

The detector collects and analyzes the air for traces of explosives, according to TSA. A computerized voice will tell passengers when they can step out of the doorway, said Ann Davis, regional TSA spokeswoman.

The machine, which costs more than $3 million, is an added layer of security, not a replacement for any existing security measures, Davis said.

The pilot program gave the TSA the opportunity to fine-tune the machine's operations, "and it certainly helped improve customer service by reducing the number of individuals selected for pat-down procedures," Davis said.

Currently, the only way to check passengers for explosives in Pittsburgh is through pat-downs and random searches, Snell said.

"The machine is also very sophisticated and sensitive, and can detect even the smallest trace element of explosives," Davis said.

That means heart patients who take nitroglycerin, which is one of the prohibited chemicals, could set off the alarm, Snell said. They might smooth the checkpoint process by carrying the medication in the prescription bottle or have a prescription with them, though they probably would be sent to secondary pat-down procedures.

 Cities in the pilot program were Baltimore, Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York (Kennedy), Phoenix, San Francisco, San Diego, Tampa, Jacksonville, Fla.; Gulfport, Miss.; Providence, R.I.; and Rochester, N.Y.

Those to be added along with Pittsburgh are Dallas/Fort Worth, Washington, D.C. (Dulles and Reagan National), Charlotte, N.C.; Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, Fla.; Newark, N.J., New York (LaGuardia) and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

$3 Million for each machine???  My guess is the machines will either generate far, far too many false positives or else not detect explosives carried by someone that put reasonable effort into sealing them up.  There is simply far too much overlap in the residue between someone walking through a recently fertilized lawn, an gravel pit, or construction site or other innocent activity and someone who purposely hid explosives on themselves.  I believe that money is being completely wasted.  Well, perhaps not totally wasted--it will make people with certain types of mental problems feel better.

My view is that there is only so much pain that can exist in the 'bubble' around me.  If I'm feeling pain then the way to get rid of it is to give it back to the person that gave it to me.  That's what makes me feel better.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
February 5, 1997

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

John Philpot Curran
The Right of Election of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, speech,
10 July 1790, Dublin

[The quote “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.“ is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson but in some circles is in question.  The previous one by Curran is fairly certain to be correctly attributed and is more complete in “my book“. -- Joe]

Anne Applebaum almost gets it right.  Right up to the very end when she should be concluding the obvious (“security screening” probably cannot ever be made to work successfully and should be abandoned) she wimps out and doesn't face the facts she herself put forward.  But it's close enough to get people thinking.  Here's a taste of the good stuff:

...outside inspectors have found, over and over again, that federal screeners perform no better than the private screeners they replaced. Since they inspect only passengers and baggage, not the airport and its perimeter, they haven't eliminated the need for other forms of law enforcement either. And even when they are doing their rather narrow job correctly, their impact is dubious.

...this mass ceremonial sacrifice of toenail clippers on the altar of security comes at an extraordinarily high price. The annual budget of the federal Transportation Security Administration hovers around $5.5 billion -- just about the same price as the entire FBI -- a figure that doesn't include the cost of wasted time. De Rugy reckons that if 624 million passengers each spend two hours every year waiting in line, the annual loss to the economy comes to $32 billion.

...

But, then, this isn't a country that has ever been good at risk analysis. If it were, we would never have invented the TSA at all. Instead, we would have taken that $5.5 billion, doubled the FBI's budget, and set up a questioning system that identifies potentially suspicious passengers, as the Israelis do.

BINGO!!!

...

I conclude that we don't actually want value for money. No, we want every passenger to have the chance to recite that I-packed-these-bags-myself mantra to a uniformed official before boarding an airplane. Magic words, it seems, are what make Americans feel really safe.

Yup.  You got that right.

See also my web pages on this topic.

As I mentioned earlier today JPFO has a booklet--Do Gun Prohibitionists Have a Mental Problem?  Here are some of the mental problems mentioned in the booklet:

1. Projection--A person cannot accept their own feelings because they are bad, wrong, or forbidden so they project them onto others.  A typical anti-gun person that uses this mechanism might have feelings of unconscious rage toward gun owners, project them onto the gun owners, then have a conscious fear of gun owners.
2. Denial--A person refuses to accept reality because that reality is too emotionally painful.  A typical anti-gun person that uses this mechanism might believe that the police are all anyone really needs to protect them from attack by criminals or that a tyrannical government could never happen here.
3. Reaction formation--A person turns an unacceptable feeling or desire into its complete opposite.  A typical anti-gun person that uses this mechanism might have a murderous rage toward his fellow humans and then claim to be a pacifist and believe they are “superior” to “less civilized” people who engage in “violent behavior” such as hunting or target shooting.

The booklet goes on say that pointing out the mental problems to the anti-gun person isn't going to be very productive.  What you need to do is:

1. Make the person feel safe, then provide experiences and information to help him understand the positive aspects of gun ownership.
2. Be gentle.  Defense mechanism protect people from feelings they cannot handle.  If you take that protection away, you can cause serious psychological harm.  And because defense mechanisms operate unconsciously, it won't do any good to point out to the anti-gun person that he or she is using a defense mechanism.
3. Use the mirror technique.  Feed back what the anti-gun person is telling you, in a neutral inquisitive way.  If someone says that people shouldn't own guns because they don't want to be killed if their neighbor had a bad day, you might respond, “So you fear if your neighbors had guns, they would use them to murder you.  What makes you think that?“  It's important to ask “open-ended“ questions that require an answer other than “yes“ or “no“.  Such questions require he anti-gun person to actually think about what he is saying.
4. Don't try to “win“ the argument.  If you are arrogant, hurtful or rude to the anti-gun person, you will only convince him that gun owners are arrogant, hurtful and rude people--who shouldn't be trusted with guns.
5. Respond sympathetically to the plight of the anti-gun person.  If they believe they are surrounded by people that want to kill them and their family if only those people had a gun and they could do nothing but wait for the inevitable they lead a terrified life.  Invoke your own compassion for their situation.
6. Provide corrective experiences.  Corrective experiences are experiences that allow a person to learn that his ideas about gun owners and guns are incorrect in a safe and non-threatening way.

There is a lot more material in booklet.  Many of the JPFO “Gran'pa Jack” booklets are for giving to anti-gun people.  This one has probably is better utilized by distributing it to pro-gun people.  Although I haven't done that with this one I have purchased a few hundred of their booklets and let the local sporting goods store give them away.  I've also given them away at Boomershoot events and local IPSC matches.

Update: See also the more complete version here: Raging Against Self Defense.

Update October 22, 2010: See also Peterson Syndrome.

Maryland just initiated a state program to license retired police officers to carry concealed handguns, making Maryland one of the first states to implement new federal laws expanding gun rights for retired and off-duty officers.  Idaho (YEAH!) and Arizona were ahead of them as might be expected.  The governor, Robert Ehrlich, was a supporter of the change and said this:

 "This is good public policy that will make a safer state, which is why I am very proud Maryland has led."

But a barking moonbat gun control advocate had this to say:

     Leah Barrett, executive director of the gun-control group CeaseFire Maryland Inc., said allowing officers to carry a gun anywhere at any time is "essentially dangerous."
    "We have too many guns in this country and too many people carrying them," she said. "Accidents happen."

While cleaning out my room in Richland yesterday (I'm all moved back to Idaho now) I found my copy of the JPFO booklet Do Gun Prohibitionists Have a Mental Problem?  Of course Ms. Barrett is a walking, talking example of a mental problem but I'll post a few items from the booklet later today to help you identify the specific problems you see in these fruitcakes.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.

Dwight Eisenhower

From Schneier's blog I found a link to a lock for your pint of Ben & Jerry's.  Interesting enough for a blog posting all on it's own.  But what I found even more interesting/amusing at the site was this sketch:

No one can tell me that I can and should use deadly force.

Edward Wenger
FBI sharpshooter testifying before congress in regards to the death of Vickie Weaver by FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi.
Sept 14, 1995
[Horiuchi's rules of engagement orders were "... can and should use deadly force against any armed adult..."  Even if a surrender order had not been given. 

Things to remember about the Weaver incident:

1. It occurred during the presidency of George H. Bush before Clinton was elected.
2. Horiuchi was a sniper who 'saw action' at Waco under the Clinton adminstration.
3. 'Management' at Ruby Ridge (Weaver) gave illegal orders but neither they nor the people who followed those orders were given signficant punishment.
4. Some of the same 'management' was at Waco.
5. Neither political party has a monopoly on illegal and immoral acts and the people willing to execute those acts follow orders of anyone willing to give them.

-Joe Huffman-]

Both political parties want to enslave the people.  The difference is that one is working toward the Nazi model and the other is working towards the Chinese model.

Greg Hamilton
10/27/2000
At his Halloween party.

I'm shocked!  Is freedom making a comeback in Canada?  Does this mean we might not have to liberate them after we get done with the Mid-East?  I know--I'm getting way ahead of things here.  They still officially have their gun registration scheme and they haven't actually reversed their downward spiral into the abyss of the most failed political system of all time, but they did have an important court ruling that may cause some serious ripples in the fabric of the 'reality' of socialists in both Canada and this country.  The socialists know it and even say it out loud.  Here's the story:

In the decision of Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General) that was handed down on Thursday by the Supreme Court of Canada, the court found that Quebec laws that prohibit the purchase of insurance to cover private medical treatment violated the Quebec Charter and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The majority of the court found that waiting times in the public system violated the Quebec Charter of Rights. While it was not necessary to decide, three of the justices found that the Quebec law violates section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights that guarantees the right to life, liberty and security of the person. The court held that delays in the public health system led to prolonged pain and suffering, deteriorating medical conditions and in some cases, death. In coming to this conclusion in what will inevitably be to the dismay of those on the political left, the Supreme Court followed its 1998 decision in R. v. Morgentaler that held that delays encountered by women seeking abortions breached section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The interesting aspect of the Chaoulli decision, and the one that most deviated from what politicians of all political parties have been spewing for years was the finding that this breach of a charter right was not reasonable. The court found that while the preservation of a publicly funded health care system was a substantive and legitimate government objective, the outright ban on private health care insurance had no rational connection to saving the public system and went further than was necessary to meet that objective. In the majority’s opinion, the government of Quebec failed to show that allowing Quebeckers to purchase insurance for private health care would destroy Canada’s public health care system. In reaching this conclusion the court examined other countries in the OECD such as Sweden and the U.K. that have strong public health care systems despite allowing private parallel health care services.

This finding is at odds with what the politicians have been saying for years; that not only will allowing private medical services destroy our health care system; it will destroy Canada as we know it. The entire fabric of our society will disappear. We are constantly being told that our health care system is what defines us as a country. Allow someone to actually pay for what is now a public service and we will be no different than the United States.

From The Salt Lake Tribune:

 A state legislator is setting up free concealed weapon classes for policy-makers and their families this summer, while at the same time formulating a proposal to make it easier for Utahns to secretly carry a firearm.
    Clearfield Republican Rep. Curtis Oda says the sessions are aimed at educating lawmakers and debunking gun-control advocates' criticism of Utah's gun laws.
    The first two students were Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert. Since then, 12 legislators and eight other elected officials have taken the free gun-handling classes. And Oda has another 25 legislators interested, with the next class scheduled for July.

The reporter is biased (notice the use of the word “secretly“ instead of the more common “concealed“ and the picture of the legislator is terrible) against gun ownership but still our side is on the offensive and making progress.  And of course it's always pleasant to hear the other side whine:

    Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah board member Maura Carabello calls Oda's classes "exposure lobbying" that gets around Utah's lobbyist disclosure laws but still persuades lawmakers to be sympathetic to his cause.
    "I object to this being framed as merely educational, with no larger political intent," Carabello said. "This is not government responding to the public. This is a special interest trying to affect lawmakers."

...

     But Carabello says the free classes don't pass the proverbial "smell test." Oda's classes, she says, are a subtle form of lobbying for looser laws - something Utah doesn't need.

I know the business community considers us a bunch of vultures who just got done with one corpse and are looking for another, but the truth is that tobacco had to pay in no small measure because of what we did.

Robert Kerrigan
Referring to plans concerning legal action against gun makers.
From http://www1.jointogether.org/gv/wire/news/reader.jtml?Object_ID=256867
As of 1/5/98

Since my posting nearly a week ago there has been speculation I was fired because of my blog or it's content.  Technically I'm sure that is not true or at least it is a very small component of the official internal record.  The blog was used to find sufficient cause to investigate other things.  At least one item was ultimately found, which I knew was wrong when I did it and admitted to it when asked about it, which was sufficient cause according to company policy to terminate my employment .  That item was allowing my wife and daughter to browse the web using the company laptop.  I suspect there were other things which they believed to be wrong, but in fact were not, which were also used to justify their actions.  I probably will never know because they did not and probably will not ever allow those items to be examined and refuted.  But it doesn't matter because it only takes one step “over the line“.

A full report from my viewpoint, about what happened, the lessons learned, and how you can protect yourself will probably be released sometime next week.  Please keep your speculation to a minimum until then.

The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson Papers
334 (C.J.Boyd, Ed., 1950)

Perhaps the most accurate conclusion one can reach with any confidence is that the core meaning of the Second Amendment is a populist / republican / federalism one: Its central object is to arm 'We the People' so that ordinary citizens can participate in the collective defense of their community and their state. But it does so not through directly protecting a right on the part of states or other collectivities, assertable by them against the federal government, to arm the populace as they see fit. Rather the amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification consistent with the authority of the states to organize their own militias. That assurance in turn is provided through recognizing a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes -- not a right to hunt for game, quite clearly, and certainly not a right to employ firearms to commit aggressive acts against other persons -- a right that directly limits action by Congress or by the Executive Branch and may well, in addition, be among the privileges or immunities of United States citizens protected by §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment against state or local government action.

Laurence Tribe
American Constitutional Law
From The Smallest Minority

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.

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.

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