Amendment II Democrats:

Today, Amendment II Democrats pledges itself to helping take back America from the Republican Party and giving it back to the people. We will settle for nothing less than a Democratic House and Senate in 2006. And, at the same time, there is a golden opportunity for pro-RKBA Democrats to dramatically change firearms policy within the Democratic Party itself from the ground up. All we have to do is join together, stand up on our hind legs, and exercise our First Amendment rights if we want any hope of affecting real change within the party of Jefferson, Kennedy, and F.D. Roosevelt.

Can anyone name a U.S. political party that openly says, "We are opposed to the people having the right to keep and bear arms."? Certainly there are individual politicians that work to subvert it and are openly for gun control. But they don't dare make it a party platform.

We are making progress. We just need to drive the remaining bigots into political extinction. Once the gun issue is under control we can working on the next greatest threat to our freedom. My vote probably would be to set our sights on the war on some drugs or the income tax.

The powers that be took a good run at deep-sixing this report. There's such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do.

Jim Harper
Cato Institute fellow
October 30, 2006
From Feds Leapfrog RFID Privacy Study

Thanks to The Smallest Minority for the pointer.

Boots on the ground

Mandatory viewing for daughter Xenia (her fiancé is in the army and probably will be going to Iraq next spring).

Proof of concept installation.  Yes, its an AK (AK-74 semiauto, but it could be any AK-- The principles are all the same).  Video - Less than 1MB.

OK, cite me for the gratuitous grin.

I used a statement from security researcher Christopher Soghoian for the quote of the day a couple days ago. He said airport security was really "security theater". Even before I had made that post the FBI had raided his home:

Soghoian ... came home Saturday morning to find his door forced open, “a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers — and various other important things.”

It’s not that he’s trying to compromise airport security. It’s that he’s pointing out that airport security already is compromised, or, as his site used to read, “The TSA Emperor Has No Clothes.”

They should have arrested whoever came up with the stupid "security" procedures at the airports for wasting taxpayer money. But that's not the way it works. I'm reminded of something Joe Waldron told me a long time ago about dealing with the police:

Once they have decided they want to talk to you the worst offense you can commit is "contempt of cop".

I remember when "The Pill", as it is called, came out in the 60's. It changed a lot of things. I doubt the male version will have as big of effect but it's still interesting:

Men concerned about contraception may soon be able to use the male equivalent of the Pill, without the potential side-effects of a drug based on altering the balance of sex hormones.

Scientists have developed a chemical contraceptive that temporarily blocks the development of sperm but does not interfere with testosterone levels.

Trials on laboratory animals have shown that the contraceptive effect is reversible and that there are no apparent long-term side-effects. Human trials of the new male contraceptive could begin within the next few years.

The biggest change I predict will be the child support issues that arise when the man thinks his female sex partner is using some sort of birth control when in fact she was careless or even deliberately not using something. The man now has a means to protect himself from unwanted pregnancies of that sort while still preserving his options for a child at a later date.

I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
Up From Liberalism
[I was reminded of this by Kevin's posts here and here. Read the comments too.--Joe]

Barb and I visited the exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. Very interesting. It wasn't overwhelming or awesome. It was more like somber reverence. To actually be looking at documents that were written over 2100 years ago put me in a very somber mood.

From what I could tell there weren't any big revelations in the documents. A lot of them were copies of known works of the existing Bible. Others were rules for "purification" and other standards of behavior for a particular Jewish sect.

It was worth my time and money to see them since it was only a 30 minute drive and $20.00 to get in the door. Knowing what I know now I probably wouldn't travel a 1000 miles and pay hundreds of dollars to see them. But then I'm an atheist and don't consider the documents to be the word of god(s) either.

Update: I forgot to mention the indignity of attending. There was a big sign just before you went in the building but after you had paid for your ticket that said no firearms or knives. It even said mandatory search of bags. I had to find a locker across the way to put my knives and my handgun in. There was no search of my person and I'm pretty sure there were no metal detectors so I probably could have defied the sign and gotten away with it.

But what was the reason? Did they think someone was going to go off the deep end and shoot a 2100 year old scrap of parchment? Oh, I forgot, they don't need a reason.

One of my "hot buttons" is when people choose the wrong measurement for optimization.

I did that with Boomershoot 2005 when I tweaked the explosive mixture such that I got good results with a rim-fire .22. It turned out that the typical center-fire bullets had great difficulty detonating them.

This metric problem was one of my points in this post.

I heard of one software company that gave raises out based on the number of lines of code produced by the software developers. This adversely affected the designs, implementations, and even style of the code produced.

Another well known anti-virus software company paid bonuses for quickly finding solutions to new computer viruses. One enterprising employee became well known for finding figuring them out. Of course he didn't tell management that he had created these same viruses and released them into the wild.

Gun control advocates rejoice and claim they were right when deaths and injuries due to bullet wounds decrease after a restriction on firearms is passed into law. They do that even if violent crime, injuries, and deaths increase. They ignore that many of those deaths and injuries are justifiable or even praiseworthy shootings that stopped criminal attacks.

Another one is that windmill manufactures work toward greater efficiency. In most cases this is the wrong measurement. The only case that this is important is if land space or wind is in short supply. If you have lots of land that can host windmills then the correct metric is cost per kilowatt-hour over the lifetime of the windmill.

Some of the first mass produced solar cells were for use in spacecraft. Area and weight were at a premium and hence efficiency was one of the proper metrics to use in the design. That is not true for the side of the shed I used for mixing and storing explosives over a quarter mile from the nearest usable power line. I have lots of area and I don't care if it takes ten times as much area as the more efficient but twice as expensive solar cells to generate the same power. This is now being realized by the manufactures.

Examine every metric carefully. Think about the unintended consequences. Think about what is really important to the target audience. It can make a huge difference.

Clayton claims that that the recent court rulings on allowing gay marriage, "... is likely to make the legal situation for homosexuals more difficult, not easier." He also predicts that these court rulings will help get Republicans to the polls this election.

I agree with this latter point but disagree with the first. I think gay marriage as well as equal rights for gay is here to stay. It is an idea whose time has come. The worst anti-gay politicians can do is slow down the inevitable. The reason is because there have not been any dire consequences happen that are attributable to acceptance of gays in society. Just as gun owners right to carry weapons for self defense were gradually recognized in state after state without "blood running in the streets" so it is with gays and the recognization of their rights.

It will be scary for some, just as it was with people carrying firearms in public, but eventually the fear will subside and most people will accept it.

The Beltway Snipers have been of more than casual interest to me for numerous reasons. Even before we knew who they were or their motives it was source of concern because of the damage it did to our right to keep and bear arms. I was also asked by a program manager when I worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory if I had any ideas on how to catch them. The labs were getting asked by law enforcement for help. I didn't really have anything other than what was already known. I don't really think short of creating a surveillance society of both video and audio sensors that new technology can offer much help in catching criminals of this nature. But that's getting off my main impetus for this post.

Michelle Malkin points out one of the criminals has confessed to another murder in Arizona.

It's amazing to me how much these criminal got away with before being caught. And then they only got caught after they started leaving notes for the police!

It appears that because their motives are not obvious from the crimes it was extremely difficult to find suspects to examine for evidence. Scary stuff.

According to Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University:

Democrats have run up the white flag. They have evidently concluded that curtailing the right of gun ownership is a nonstarter, especially if they intend to pursue victory in 50 states.

He speaks of "curtailing the right" as if it were a good thing. Would he speak so highly of curtailing the right of free speech? Or curtailing the right of due process? And he calls this running up the white flag? How about reluctantly acknowledging that the public will tolerate few further infringements of their right to gun ownership?

And this point total ignores the reality of those infringements being useless in terms of furthering public safety.

Get a grip on reality man. The Democrats needed a clue-by-four but at least most of them now avoid leading with their chin with their crazy ideas to restrict this particular inalienable right.

Kevin has at long last delivered The Überpost!

I can't really disagree with the essence of what he says but I'm going to play devils advocate for a bit. And I'm certain he already recognizes the problem I am about to point out. He says:

But the ideas of Western civilization in general, and the American philosophy in specific have proven themselves superior.

"Superior" on what scale? How is it that you measure that superiority? By the scale used by Muslims we are arrogant, decadent, and sinful. We drink alcohol. Our women, who are the tools of Satan, are allowed to tempt men with exposed skin in public are allowed to attend schools. We charge interest on the loaning of money. We do not pray to Allah. We tempt the youth of the faithful to desert that which is holy and become sinful. We have succumbed to Satan. Our power is not proof of our superiority. It is proof of the bargain we have made with the Prince of Darkness.

The Germans in the late 30's had a "noble goal" as well--"purification" of the human race. A similar argument could be made of the Japanese in the same time frame.

Who are you to say Western civilization is superior? By what measure and how have you determined that measure is superior?

[End devils advocate mode.]

Other things that come to mind from his post:

In the Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order Huntington said that frequently after one civilization convincingly wins a conflict with another civilization the loser imitates many of the characteristics of the winner. If the loser has a framework for dealing with the loss then there can be peace for a while. In particular the Chinese and the Japanese civilizations have the concept of a hierarchy of power and when the West unequivocally demonstrated greater military and economic power they had a cultural construct for at least a short term (in civilizational time scales) peaceful co-existence with the West being the superior civilization.

Islam does not have as much resiliency in this regard. After their defeats in the first part of the last century they realized they had to learn from the West and adapt what they could to their civilization. But they have no cultural construct of accepting non-Islamic people or institutions as being superior to Islam. If such a thing appears to be true then it is proof that those Muslims were not Islamic enough. It was proof that Allah was punishing them by allowing Satan to rule over them. Hence the demonstrations of the West being of superior power only means they must be even greater adherents to Islam.

They also have no concept of pacifism as a virtue (I am not a pacifist but consider input from those that are a useful balance of ideas in how to deal with conflict). Their greatest religious leader was a warrior and is praised for his warrior acts. The killing of infidels is regarded as not only acceptable or praiseworthy but as necessary acts of profound devotion to their faith.

Paraphrasing Greg Hamilton here: In the eyes of Muslims what Osama Bin Laden has to say about the West is as inherently obvious, once articulated, to them as the superiority of Western civilization is to us.

As to the central question brought up by Kevin I think he misses a concept that can help explain, or at least rationalize, our killing the civilians of cases such as the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In our minds we were not the aggressor--Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was unprovoked. The Japanese, of course, have a different view on this. We believed Germany's aggression would not end with the conquest of Europe and ultimately would be a threat to us if it was not stopped in Europe. The aggressor, in our minds, is the criminal in a conflict. Criminals do not have the same rights as innocents. That combined with the view in both Germany, at that time, and Japan that the concept of individualism was almost if not in fact repugnant. The State (in Germany) and the Emperor (in Japan) were what the individual existed to serve. Hence, we were "playing by their own rules" by killing civilians in our efforts to defeat the Germany state and the Emperor of Japan. And even then it is clear that many had serious qualms about the actions taken. We weren't blind to the hypocrisy of suspending our principles. It was a reluctant pragmatic concession to reality not mapping perfectly to our theory of individual rights. It was an ugly thing, as is all war, but it was the least ugly of the available alternatives.

This last point could be just another way of saying what Kevin offers when he offers this quote from Second Hand Lions on how we justify our violations of others "inalienable" right to life:

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love, true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

Lots of things to think about. Thank you Kevin.

...according to their linguistic constructs they are not gay, according to ours, they are. Same behavior, different categorization based on the framework you start with. The Greek language did not support concepts like straight and gay. Their categories deal with what type of sex you liked to have. In easy terminology an actor vs. receiver of oral, anal or vaginal intercourse. Nothing in their construct included which sex either party was.

So by creating a different framework you can have two people engaging in the same behavior but identifying it completely differently.

Osama Bin Laden has constructed a perfectly logical argument given the start point of the Koran. His arguments have been challenged and found correct by religious law. He has constructed a perfect sales pitch for the market he is trying to capture. It makes sense, and resonates no less in their hearts and minds, than Thomas Paine's and Thomas Jefferson's words resonated in ours. (Not in any way trying to confer moral equivalency)

We started with a framework that made what the founding father have to say as being very powerful. They start in a place that makes what Bin Laden is selling as powerful if not more.

Greg Hamilton
August 8, 2006 7:20 PM
From the email list: insightstraining @ yahoogroups.com

I started reading the Brady Center's "report" titled The NRA: A Criminal’s Best Friend--How the National Rifle Association Has Handcuffed Federal Gun Law Enforcement but had to stop when I got to:

The conversation Friday morning went like this:

She: How is work going?
Me: Pretty good. I'm having to come up to speed on something new again and that is stressful but I'm doing okay.
She: Are silencers legal?
Me: Suppressors are legal to own in Washington State but they are not legal to use in the state. What made you ask that?
She: They sure were random, jumping from topic to topic, last night.
Me [with mouth ajar for a few seconds before answering]: I don't know anyone else like that.

I just received word that Neaderpundit plans to attend Boomershoot 2007. We also have bloggers David from Random Nuclear Strikes and Kirk from Fun Turns to Tragedy each attending for the second time. Lyle who is a part-time blogger here and a principle of UltiMAK will be attending too. Ry of Mindless Bit Spew, of course, and "Leroy Brown" from Periodic Journal of my wanderings will be helping make things happen behind the scenes as well as doing a fair amount of "copper engraving" on Sunday.

Lee Ann Frailey ("Everything's better with a boom") and her husband will be there.  Steve Joachim will be back with his flying anvil (watch the video or the one here).

In the category of "people with celebrity names but aren't really" we have Dave Barry and Kevin Klein attending. There are also an amazing number of people from a gun club at a company that must not be named in western Washington including some moderately high placed manager types.

Boomershoot 2007 is going to have some great people attending. This being the 11th Boomershoot I have put on I should be able to deliver on my end of the deal. About the only thing that can prevent us from having great time is Mother Nature.

I don't want to help terrorists or help bad guys do bad things on airplanes, but what we have now is what we in the industry call 'security theater.' It's made to make you think you're secure without actually making you secure. As a member of the academic research community, I consider this to be a public service.

Christopher Soghoian
October 27, 2006
ABC News
Web Site Lets Anyone Create Fake Boarding Passes
[Yup. Airplane "security" is a joke. We spend the billions because it makes some people feel better. It doesn't make us any safer.--Joe]

"Evil thoughts" from reading this:

Your generous donation and bids on our auction will support the Freedom States Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to "Changing the Way America Things About Guns." 

All proceeds go directly to grassroots organizations working to reduce gun violence.

Our auction items range from exotic vacation getaways to donated items guaranteed to delight and surprise!

I wonder what the reaction would be if I donated a shooting position at Boomershoot 2007 for their auction. I guarantee my donation would "surprise". And I would get a great deal of delight from it if I could see the expression on their face. But since they would get all the surprise and I can't get any of the delight I'll just continue to fantasize about it.

Boomershoot 2007 is now almost three fourths full with 52 of the 70 positions are taken and I have received email from people that say, paraphrased, "A bunch of my buddies and I are going to be there. We just don't know how many yet."

I continue to be amazed. It was the middle of March before Boomershoot 2006 was this full.

Sign up soon or you'll have to wait until Boomershoot 2008.

The sheik that said women without covering are like uncovered meat that the cat eats now says there is other business that needs to be taken care of before he resigns:

After emerging from Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque, Sheik Alhilali was asked by a media pack whether he would quit over a speech in which he said scantily-dressed women invited rape.

"After we clean the world of the White House first," the sheik said.

Supporters of the sheik cheered and applauded loudly at the comments, which were directed firmly at US President George W Bush.

The sheik has previously described Mr Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prime Minister John Howard as the axis of evil.

Don't ever forget that the reason they are opposed to us is not just because of our foreign policy, it's because we are so arrogant that we have "invented our own laws" instead of abiding by the laws of Allah.

Cleaning the world of the White House is just part of their plan for world domination.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

Mark Twain
[Reading this post from Phil at Random Nuclear Strikes reminded me of this quote.--Joe]

It's rare that I copy some one else's blog posting word for word without adding some significant content of my own. But in this case I don't have much to add. Say Uncle has pretty much said all there is to say on the topic and about all I can say is, "Me too." So here goes:

sensible gun laws

sensible gun laws

And, while we’re at it, let’s add:

ban all guns

ban gun ownership

After all, that is their goal. Don’t be fooled.

There are others that want to ban all guns too. And of course these guys don't even try to hide the fact that they want to ban all guns.

To my female readers, just so you know your place:

Muslim leaders, women’s rights advocates and political leaders in Australia today condemned one of the country’s top Islamic clerics for comparing women who don’t wear head scarves to “uncovered meat” who invite rape.

...

In a translation from Arabic by the newspaper, later verified by other media, Hilali was quoted as saying in the sermon: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s?”

“The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred,” he was quoted as saying, referring to the head scarf worn by some Muslim women.

Of course if some "cat" treats one of my daughters like "uncovered meat" there might be some question as to who is going to end up as "uncovered meat" for the cat. And example of daughter Kim in action is here.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.

William O. Douglas
Associate Justice U.S. Supreme Court
April 17, 1939 to November 12, 1975

From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson:

Mass Launcher also Behavior Modification Device and/or Reactive Defensive Tool

Translation: A gun.

Say Uncle pointed out this website by the NRA. I made the mistake of watching the videos just as I'm about to go to bed. That wasn't wise. My adrenalin is running way to high to sleep now.

Remember New Orleans!

While we’re making plans for the holidays, and while we’re listening to political ads about which party will fight the most politically-correct war against the Jihad (no, wait, no one is saying anything about Jihad in Washington.  Its “terror”-- they’re fighting a war against an emotion) the missiles are landing regularly in Israel, and the Israelis are bracing for more violent attacks.

Decades of “peace talks” and “summits” and trading “land for peace” have led us to this point.  They’ve led to an enemy that has increased confidence and increased capabilities.  For this I place the blame squarely on the Left.  I also blame the “Conservatives”, for being too much like the Left.

What we need are warriors, not politicians.  When are we going to learn that our enemies must be defeated before we can “negotiate” peace with them?  They must be thoroughly convinced, beyond all hope, of their total defeat.  Only then will we have any hope of peace.

This is from my friend (I call him a friend, though we’ve never met) a marksmanship instructor in Israel:

Friends:

 

Basically this entire week is considered the Id al-Fitr Moslem Holiday.  Wonderful for those of us living in northern Jerusalem because it would appear that through this morning, there is virtually no rush hour traffic.  Hard for me to believe, but if the horrendous rush-hour traffic jams renew once the holiday is over, then one can conclude the congestion is caused by an unreal number of vehicles coming from the villages and towns north of Jerusalem.

 

The signs of impending conflict are growing.  Everyone is waiting the holiday's end as if it signals the start of the terrorism season - a new, improved terrorist violence with the terrorists possessing new, advanced weapons, huge stockpiles of ammunition and munitions and a year's preparation time well spent.

 

Hamas and the other terror groups want to "Lebanonize" the Gaza Strip.  They are well on their way.  During the last few days Israel has certainly "upgraded" its operations against the terrorists in the Gaza Strip.  There have been some successes, either the terrorists were preoccupied and got sloppy or the IDF got lucky.  Or there is simply so much terrorist preparation and activity going on that it was inevitable an IDF patrol would bump into a terrorist force.

 

It may all be brinkmanship.  There is a lot of talk of a Hamas "preemptive" strike across a wide front, employing everything from West Bank based cells, to barrages of missiles and commando style raids with terrorists emerging "behind the lines" from underground tunnels.  Who knows.

 

Avigdor is now a government minister and deputy prime minister.  The government is going from left to right faster than the Labor party can make excuses for why it remains in the government.   The Chief-of-Staff made a surprise visit at 07:00 yesterday morning to a base on the Golan Heights to "check alertness."  Syrian positions all along the Golan Heights are preparing for an Israeli attack.

 

I probably should start figuring out where I would like to be (and cover as a reporter) if violence renews.  Interesting thought. One which I shall ponder.

 

Have a good day and stay safe,

 

Howard

http://www.miguelcarrasco.net/miguelcarrasco/2006/10/dove_evolution.html

Highly recommended for men.

I can't seem to find which blog pointed me to this video. Sorry. When I figure it out I'll give them credit.

Government: Organized crime with an attitude.

D'Arcy Cain
[Cain is a Canadian but there are very few, if any, present day government for which this quip does not apply.--Joe]

[W]hen a judge goes beyond [his proper function] and reads entirely new values into the Constitution, values the framers and ratifiers did not put there, he deprives the people of their liberty. That liberty, which the Constitution clearly envisions, is the liberty of the people to set their own social agenda through the process of democracy.

Robert Bork
Speech
Congress 1987

When I got home Friday night Xenia had a couple of friends there for the night--Sara and Cortney. I don't know exactly how it came up but Boomershoot was mentioned and Cortney blurted out, "I want to go to Boomershoot! Have you guys been there?"

My response was something like, "What?" Xenia and Sara have been working at Boomershoot since at least 2003. Here is a picture of them there then. Xenia explained that she and Sara help out at Boomershoot and that I am the person who runs Boomershoot. Her eyes got big and I'm not sure she really believed it until we showed her pictures and the KING5 Evening Magazine video. She wanted to know when the next event was and if she could go. It ended up, assuming she gets her parent's permission, she will be working for me at Boomershoot 2007.

Sara has been saying she wanted to go shooting for quite some time. She said she had done just a little bit of pistol shooting before, a .44 Magnum, and it was fun. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. A .44 Magnum? Sara is not a large woman. She's almost tiny.

Anyway I invited the girls to go to the Lewiston Pistol Club's Steel Challenge match today and Sara was the only one that really wanted to go. I brought along a Ruger Mark II (.22 LR) for her while I shot my STI Eagle in .40 S&W. I was very impressed with Sara. She had very few misses. She just nailed those plates. And on one stage she had a string where she hit all five plates in 5.79 seconds. That's an average of 1.158 seconds per plate. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. At the last Boomershoot she nailed a 700 yard boomer on her first shot. And the Fort Lewis sniper instructor coaching her said she had a lot of natural talent and should consider joining a rifle team.

I received the results via email a little bit ago and will put them up on the Lewiston Pistol Club's website tomorrow. I'm proud to tell you that she didn't come in last. She beat one guy on every single stage. Here are some pictures of Sara at the match:

Can you tell she is excited to be there?

Not a perfect stance but pretty good.

She also helped with score keeping.

I did some shooting too and came in number six out of 12 shooters.

And another thing... Half way through the match Sara told me was missing the contact lens from her right eye. It had "broke" the previous week. She shoots right handed and at that point I didn't bother to determine which eye was dominate.

Update: Here are the results.

One-tenth of the people involved in a given endeavor produce at least one-third of the output, and increasing the number of participants merely serves to reduce the average performance.

Norman R. Augustine
From: "Defense Systems Management Review"
[I listened to Atlas Shrugged on my drive this weekend and it reminded me of this quote.--Joe]

Remember there are no rules in war. The side which imposes the most rules on itself loses.  We lost in Vietnam because of self-imposed rules.

Curt Rich
[From a Jeff Cooper Commentary in December 1997--which makes it ominously prophetic.--Joe]

I have posted before about gun control advocates being glamorized in the press. Here is another case:

Edward O. Welles, 85, a former CIA officer who later become the first executive director of the antihandgun organization now known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, died Oct. 11 of brain cancer at his home in Washington.

...

After retiring from the CIA in 1972, Mr. Welles had a varied career as a volunteer, lobbyist, entrepreneur and gun-control advocate. In 1974, he became the first executive director of the National Council to Control Handguns, which consisted of four people at the time.

"The best investment I ever made was placing an ad for $1.36, looking for someone with organizational abilities," said Mark Borinsky, who founded the group and hired Mr. Welles as its unpaid executive director.

Mr. Welles helped raise money and recruited members and executives for the organization, now the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. He was known for his ability to talk with victims of gun violence and to draw them into the group's mission.

Where was the praise for Neal Knox or Jeff Cooper in the main stream press when they died? Knox and Cooper were major players in organizations larger and more influential than Welles. And Welles helped violate the rights of millions of people and bears some responsibile for the deaths of thousands of disarmed victims. Where is the mention of that?

I heard about this segment of Miami Vice years ago from Guy Neill who is a local (Clarkston, WA) USPSA shooter and for several years wrote a IPSC history column in Front Sight magazine. Other than watching Enterprise, Star Gate, and 24 (never again) on DVD with James I can't remember the last time I watched T.V. So I assumed I would never get to see this video. I'm exceedingly pleased to have stumbled across this.

I have background material from Guy on this video. I hope I get this straight. I'll be sending Guy an email and asking for corrections so don't be surprised if there are some tweaks in the next day or so.

The shooter was an IPSC Grandmaster (see the classification system here) and was a consultant on the show. Here he got a bit part as an assassin. For the pistol shooting at the end the director told him, "Don't worry about making it look fast. We'll take care of that when we edit it." Apparently the director had never seen a real shooter draw and shoot. Needless to say they didn't need to do any editing to make it look faster. Another thing Guy said was that the script didn't say what to do with the gun afterward and he didn't realize it until the shooting was over. So what happens is the shooter double taps the other guy looks down, realizes he has a "stove pipe" failure, clears the gun and puts it on the chest of the victim as he walks away. The crew was so slack jawed over the display of speed they just kept filming even though that wasn't part of the scene.

Update: Rather than edit, which would be minor, I'm just including Guy's response verbatim