The View From North Central Idaho

Tam points us to an excellent essay by Marko. Parts of his post reminded me of two quotes (previously posted here and here) from Greg Hamilton (founder and Chief Instructor at Insights):

Some police are advising people to just comply with a mugger/rapists demands in hopes of not getting hurt.  The next time someone does that I'm going up to him and start taking down his pants. When he asks what I doing I'm going to tell him I'm raping him and he should follow his own advice and submit so he doesn't get hurt.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
February 6, 1999

 

Think of the handgun as a behavior modifier.  If someone is threatening you, you can use the handgun to modify their behavior...

This is the universal hand signal for GO AWAY!  (Holds handgun in firing position.)

Ninety times out of a hundred it will work.  If not, then you may have to give them the universal hand signal for LIE DOWN!  (Holds handgun in firing position and repeatedly pulls trigger.)

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
Nov. 19, 1995

From looking that this picture you might think it was my daughter Xenia that Tam was talking about. But that would be wrong.

It's a pleasant fantasy but the people offering these sort of solutions either don't understand the problem or don't want to face reality. From one of our wonderful government laboratories:

Los Alamos Lab developing liquid scanner for airport security

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are developing a new type of scanner that can distinguish liquids blaring out a warning for bad ones, like explosives, while letting through good ones, like water.

...

They will be able to scan bottles as big as a "magnum-sized champaign bottle," Espy said.

"Apparently the whole duty-free thing is suffering, and people can't carry their liquor on airplanes anymore," Espy said. "It's been disruptive to commerce. So, that's one of the benefits of this."

Software upgrades could add new liquids to the device's detection list if any new threats arise, she said.

"The nice thing about this system is it's not tuned to any specific threats," Espy said. "As new materials of concern arise, it can be adapted to detect those."

Even after the scanner is in place we still won't be able to take liquor on airplanes--unless they are going to allow ethanol on board. In which case I need to demonstrate how to make an "explosive" out of ethanol. It would be tough to get a true detonation but in the enclosed space of an airplane cabin it just won't matter whether the speed of propagation is greater than or less than the speed of sound.

And if they stop letting people take liquid hydrocarbons on board I'll demonstrate the same sort of thing is possible with bread flour, powdered sugar, or coffee creamer. And when they ban those let them build a scanner that is sensitive to powdered human hair.

And those ideas are all taking the direct "brute force" approach. There are lots of other, much more subtle, ways to defeat airport "security". TSA is backward for A Security Theater. It's time we considered the alternatives.

My son, a freshman in high school, occasionally sends me e-mail from school, but due to a busy study schedule and extremely slow computers (it's a public school) they are rare.  Today's letter was notable.  Our complete exchange follows:

Yes, my site was down for a while (as was Ry's). Our webhosting provider had to do some unscheduled maintaince.

Civilian semiautomatic assault weapons incorporate all of the functional design features that make assault weapons so deadly. They are arguably more deadly than military versions, because most experts agree that semiautomatic fire is more accurate—and thus more lethal—than automatic fire.

Violence Policy Center
Bullet Hoses
2003
[Who would have thought? They would rather we had fully automatic firearms rather than those deadly semi-auto ones. It would follow they would rather we owned cheap, inaccurate, handguns (aka "Saturday Night Specials"). But that would require they think logically about the issues. People with Mental Problems have difficulty doing that so don't expect it anytime soon.--Joe]

[M]ost of the time our security runs on intuition and not on explicit thought.

Bruce Schneier
October 30, 2007
Security by Letterhead
[It's the same sort of thing with gun control. Intuitively it is appealing and "common sense" that if you can reduce the availability of the tools used by criminals you will reduce crime. We are at a disadvantage because to win the argument we need to get people to explicitly think about the issue. That's seldom easy.--Joe]

If you know what you are doing you can know so much more about people than they would like you to know. For example, it appears Snuffy may have come visiting me this evening. My QOTD by him shows up in the top 10 when doing a Google search for "rev michael pfleger":

Domain Name		comcast.net ? (Network)
IP Address		67.176.196.# (Comcast Cable)
ISP		Comcast Cable
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Illinois City  :  Chicago Lat/Long  :  41.8675, -87.6744 (Map) Distance  :  1,478 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Comcast Install 1.0)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Oct 29 2007 9:37:55 pm
Last Page View		Oct 29 2007 9:39:24 pm
Visit Length		1 minute 29 seconds
Page Views		3
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...ichael pfleger&hl=en
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		rev michael pfleger
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/10/28/QuoteOfTheDayRevMichaelPfleger.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/10/28/QuoteOfTheDayRevMichaelPfleger.aspx
Out Click		With no permit, activists rally at gun shop again http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-gunshoprally_28oct28,1,3704808.story
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Oct 30 2007 12:37:55 am
Visit Number		205,510

As an aside, I left my wallet and checkbook, everything, at a rest stop near Dusty, WA on my way to the West Side.  I didn't know about it until Joe informed me as I was entering the Seattle area.  It turns out that someone from the West Side was driving to Moscow, ID where I work, picked it up, called my place of work, and hand delivered it.  Sort of renews one's faith in Mankind, that does.  That person could have easily relieved me of many thousands of dollars, to say nothing of depriving me of 100% of my ID and other creds.

No, it's not my spud gun (but it has a nearly identical scope). It's Benjamin's rifle that he used to connect with 700 yard boomers. It's a great price for a good gun.

Update: I just got a call from Ben. The rifle is sold. The scope alone was worth the asking price for everything.

...what we actually have before us is a confusion about the nature of rights. The NRA always couches its argument as a defense of our American rights as opposed to governmental control. But it is a reason why highways are engineered as well as they can be. The driver has the right to travel as safely as possible. Citizens of America should have as much of a right to safety from gun violence as possible. But they probably will not understand the issue until the talk takes up more space in our political life.

Stanley Crouch
October 29, 2007
Here's a bold proposal: Let's talk about gun control
[It's possible his first sentence is correct. As for the rest I think the chances are about 75% he is mistaken. The other 25% chance is that he really understands what a right is and is trying to confusion everyone else. Rights are not something granted or created by the government. If something is granted or created by the government then they are more properly called privileges. A right is something that preexists government. The only thing governments can do in regard to rights is protect them or infringe them. I would have made that 95% and 5% but he makes reference to "safety from gun violence". That indicates to me he might actually understand that reducing the availability of firearms doesn't reduce the total violence even if it sometimes does reduce the amount of violence committed with firearms. Further suspicion falls on him because he doesn't distinguish between criminal violence and justified and/or praiseworthy violence. The bottom line is Crouch should successfully answer Just One Question before he writes opinions about restricting the right to keep and bear arms.--Joe]

You may have known UltiMak, CCI, and Speer made their home within a few miles of my Idaho home (UltiMak is nearly within slingshot range). Just a few miles from Boomershoot in Orofino you will find Nightforce. Nearly 300 miles on down the road you will find Gemtech but still in the state of Southern Idaho (it's a north Idaho joke).

It turns out the state of Idaho is actively pursuing gun manufactures:

When it comes to guns, Idaho economic development officials are starting to see green.

The Gem State, eager to attract new jobs and industry, is positioning itself as the best possible home for the nation's 200 small arms manufacturers - companies worth a collective $2 billion per year but unwelcome in many of the states that have long been their home.

It appears that the attraction is mutual.

"Like any smart business, gun manufacturers are looking for places that facilitate low operational costs, such as business taxes, utility costs and a good place for employees to live," said Richard Schelowitz, an analyst for AFC, which monitors the firearms industry.

"But unlike some businesses, this industry is also growing weary of regulations and public perceptions that might make it more difficult - and therefore more costly - to do business."

Almost by accident, Idaho has created a business environment that gives gun makers exactly the tax and regulatory climate they like.

During the past decade, several small gun manufacturers have relocated to Idaho. More may be on the way.

In recent weeks, at least one supplier of parts for internationally known gun manufacturer Armalite visited Southern Idaho to survey potential manufacturing sites.

...

Within the past year, a small company that makes silencers for law enforcement and some federal agencies relocated from Alabama to a nondescript building near Twin Falls. When contacted for this article, the owner of the firm asked that the location of the company - even its name - remain confidential because some of its contracts are classified secret.

Idaho was an attraction, the owner said, because of lower operating costs, favorable taxes and a culture that actively embraces firearm posession as one of the most important civil rights.

...

During the early 1990s, when almost half of the states were discussing bills that would tighten gun control laws. Idaho turned the other way. The state Constitution was amended to specifically protect gun owners and manufacturers from licensing and registration.

While other states tried to follow suit, Idaho went one step further by making itself the only state where firearm sales cannot be subject to any special tax - a hedge against efforts to use of prohibitive taxes to discourage gun ownership.

On the federal level, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, a director of the National Rifle Association, introduced the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects gunmakers from lawsuits filed by people injured in shootings.

Idaho didn't wait for the federal law - it became one of the first states to enact a comparable statute, in 2005.

Traditionally the nickname for Idaho has been the Gem State. I feel a great deal of pride that it may also becoming the Gun State. Let's hope the State motto, Esto Perpetua, is accurate.

Jeff reported on the end result here but I also got an email from our new friends at the apex of the Triangle of Death we met in Reno who helped make it happen:

Based on our discussion at the GBR, I thought this would be of interest to you; an area detailing where NRA's efforts, and the efforts of the bloggers, have produced some movement in the area of BATFE reform.   Please cross post this to your lists so all are aware of our efforts on this front.

Thank you,
Glen
Glen Caroline, Director
NRA-ILA Grassroots Division
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA  22030

www.NRAILA.org
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Based on concerns raised by NRA, the House Appropriations Committee report on the Commerce/Justice/Science appropriations bill (H.R. 3093) includes the following language: 

"The committee has heard reports that [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] has pursued license revocations and denials against firearms dealers based on violations that consist largely of recordkeeping errors of various types that are unlikely to impede tracing investigations or prosecution of individuals who use firearms in crime.  The Committee encourages ATF to consider lesser gradation of sanctions for recordkeeping errors."

This is a continuation of NRA's longstanding efforts to reform the BATFE, and to ensure that any penalties administered by BATFE against FFLs appropriately fit the transgression and that BATFE does not abuse its authority.  Last spring, NRA-ILA secured passage in the U.S. House of H.R. 5092 (http://www.nraila.org//News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?ID=8224 <http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/NewsReleases.aspx?ID=8224> ), a bill that included many reforms to the process by which BATFE punishes violations of federal law and regulations (more information on bill here: http://www.nraila.org//Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=205 <http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=205> ). These reforms would have provided a fairer process for FFLs accused of violations.  Passage of the bill followed on the heels of House hearings (also prompted by NRA's efforts) on BATFE abuses with respect to FFL enforcement and gun show operations. Unfortunately, the Senate failed to consider the bill before adjourning for the year. 

Others in the pro-gun grassroots community have reported on this issue, including Ryan Horsley of Red's Trading Post, and numerous other bloggers.  Working together, it is our hope that we can continue our mutual efforts to reform BATFE once and for all to reduce and eliminate unjust harassment of legitimate gun dealers.

Via Phil we discover there is a species that has recently been pushed to the edge of extinction in the U.S. and Europe. It has come as a bit of a surprise to officials on both continents. They are comparing it to the Giant Panda and the house sparrow:

"When the bamboo forests that the Giant Panda lives in were cut down, the bear became threatened with extinction."

...

"We learned this lesson with the house sparrow. Twenty years ago we thought, 'why bother to get one?' since they're so common," he said.

"Next thing you know, the sparrow was on the threatened species list and they're almost impossible to find in the Netherlands."

Yet despite clear evidence it's because of the reduction in their habitat I haven't seen anything in the news or heard of any proposed legislation to protect this endangered species. I can't imagine it would be difficult for the species to recover and save it for future generations. It would require some enforcement to make sure their habitat was restored but I'm sure millions of people would accept the job of habitat inspector even at minimum wage. I'll bet some people would even pay to have a job like that.

I don't know for certain but I have to wonder if the reason for avoidance of the issue is because it's primarily women that are destroying the necessary old growth vital to the survival of the species. If so, I don't want to hear how women are more caring and how the planet would be better if women were in charge. Of course women, as is typical, will probably blame it on men anyway:

Did the ‘Brazilian’ kill the pubic louse? [section P134]

The drop in pubic lice in women was around 2000 and coincided with the introduction of new trends in pubic hair removal.

Sharp as a Marble has a link to where a prosecutor talks about the D.C. ban on firearms being a good thing because:

The statute was also a mechanism for locking up individuals perceived as violent, but against whom other cases could not be brought for whatever reason.

This sort of thing happens all the time. I know that a certain county sheriff in Idaho broke up a car theft ring and was unable to find anything on the person they thought was the leader of the group other than the unregistered machine gun they found in his home.*

It's just another tool in their toolbox. The same thing with the income tax. The feds sent Al Capone to prison on income tax evasion rather than murder and bootlegging which were almost for certain the more appropriate charges.

I fully understand the temptation and desire for such tools. I'm sure there are many instances where law enforcement and prosecutors are completely and totally convinced the suspect is guilty but the witnesses are too scared to testify, someone messed up preserving the evidence, or some such thing. But having such tools available leads to their wrongful use. Whose perception that an individual is violent can be trusted? The potential for racism alone is reason enough to avoid giving these tools to prosecutors.

Ayn Rand nailed it:

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.

And don't forget Huffman's rule of firearms law:

Firearms law are so complex, victimless, and nonsensical that almost every firearms owner breaks multiple laws without knowing it. A general rule to compute the earned prison time for crimes committed is to multiply the number of years of activity in the shooting sports by five.

A landlord of mine once had a girlfriend that was an interning law student at a Federal prosecutor's office. I mentioned something about the changes in Federal law regarding explosives and how previously manufacture and use within the borders of a single state were outside the domain of the Feds but SEA claimed to change that. I thought that as a law student she would recognize the interstate commerce clause was the basis for the Feds being able to even talk about the regulation of explosives. Intrastate activity is supposedly beyond the reach of the Feds. But she was almost giddy about the changes because the new law would "invalidate tons of legal precedent". As a future Federal prosecutor she had just been given a whole bunch of new tools and she was eager to use them. I dropped the subject.

I regard this abuse of power as one of the most obvious symptoms of a deficiency in our constitution. There is no explicit means for punishment of members of our government who pass or enforce laws that violate the constitution. There is a law that says they can't legally do that in certain cases, 18 USC 242, but who enforces it? Federal prosecutors. But you can't expect them to enforce it upon themselves. It just isn't going to happen. There needs to be a much more general provision enforceable by some other means. The "Second Amendment reset" is just too drastic for the situation at hand.

* The Feds refused to prosecute. I suspect this decision may have been influenced by some previous "history" between Idaho and the Feds. This wasn't too long after Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris were found not-guilty of nearly all the charges against them and there were some instances where several Idaho counties were threatening and/or actually were (Lon Horichi is just one example) prosecuting some Federal employees of various types.

We are not paying money to gather in a peaceful assembly. If they don't want us there, they should vote Riverdale gun-free.

Rev. Michael Pfleger
October 27, 2007
With no permit, activists rally at gun shop again
[How ironic. Invoking the First Amendment while trying to destroy the Second Amendment. As a side note--the articles states the criminal trespass charges against Pfleger and Jackson from last June were dropped this month.--Joe]

Uncle asks, "But, you know, who can’t watch chicks in bikinis firing belt fed machine guns?"

Well, if you must ask... most women probably find that very offensive.

I find it (yeah, I know, I'm weird) a little annoying. Guns and nearly naked women just don't go together for me. These women don't really know what they are doing with the guns. They get so few rounds on target and so many in the dirt that I find it irritating.

I could go for some of the groupies (there are some hints of this phenomena at times) at Boomershoot to show their appreciation after the show but not as a part of it. For some reason the simultaneous combination of sex and guns just leaves me a little bit cold.

That doesn't mean I don't realize there is a fairly large segment of the male (and some female) population that finds the combination very stimulating. I just don't get it on the emotional level and I fear it hurts our cause with the majority of women.

I tried to post this as a comment to Kevin's post but it was automatically rejected with the explanation of having too many links. No matter, I was going to make a post out of it anyway. I'll provide a link to here from Kevin's comment section. I won't object to comments here but please consider whether the comment really should go on Kevin's blog.

Bilgeman wrote:

I ask you...what would you say of the manufacturers of crematoria, the producers of Zyklon-B, and the merchants of barbed wire who actively sought, and jealously protected, their government contracts with the 3^rd Reich?

To a lesser degree businesses that sell to many government entities in the U.S. today are no different. But Barrett rifles and others have refused to do business with certain government organizations because of the laws that infringe on the civil rights of the people.

What I would say to those businesses is that I understand their reluctance to refuse to participate (in part, I was fired from my job because of this). I also read Hitler's Willing Executioners and understand how an entire culture can go "sour" and make it difficult for people/business to stand up to the thugs in power. How many individuals/businesses refuse to sell products that aid in the war on some drugs? Or bite their tongue even though they know the war on people that smoke cigarettes is morally wrong but personally convenient? It’s very difficult to draw a line and say, “This is the limit, I will tolerate this, and beyond that I will cease to be a part of it or even actively fight it.” And it is very, very difficult to find and adhere to the line drawn beyond which you will disobey the law and endure the threat of government violence against you and/or your family. It is because of this that I wrote my essay on Civil Disobedience (see also this effort of mine).

I wrote my essay before I became a NRA certified firearms instructor in personal protection and was only a little surprised we were told to teach the importance of setting a limit and knowing what action you will take if that limit is crossed. This “drawing of the line in the sand” is very, very important. One instructor put it to me this way, “It’s far more important to know when to draw than how fast you can draw.” This lesson is applicable to far more things that most people know. Understanding this could eliminate all the “frog in the boiling water” scenarios. Governments grow out of control because people haven’t set a limit and said, “If these conditions are violated then the system has crashed and it’s time to press the reset button.” In a somewhat obscure way our Bill of Rights is such a line in the sand but the critical second portion of the rule wasn't put in place. That second portion is what action you will take if that limit is crossed. If I could go back in time to the time of the writing of our constitution and influence it's development I would insist provisions for this second portion was just as critical as enumerated powers and guarantees of rights.

This lesson is something I believe should be taught in our schools. And it’s not just because of the personal protection and “out of control government” issues. "Knowing when to hold them and when to fold them” is another way to say the same thing and perhaps enables people to see far more applications of this vital tool. The more widespread the application of this lesson the more likely it will be applied in the more difficult situations.

Draw your lines in the sand early when you have the time and a cool head. Your life or even the lives of millions may depend on it.

The odds of my politicians destroying me depend precisely on whether or not my cabinet is stuffed with guns. It is very hard to impose their will on me by force when I have the means to resist by the same means. Every single totalitarian government and dictator throughout history without exception has only managed to acquire and hold their power by first disarming their subjects. Every. Single. One.

The Armed Canadian
October 23, 2007
#6 - On "Assault Weapons" and Control
[Other than a reference to a U.S. gun control law a link to one of my posts was the only other reference. I am honored--this post, while long, is profound. This blog is so new that the link to my blog didn't show up on my radar. Ry sent me the link and I just now got around to reading the whole post. Thanks Ry and Armed Canadian.--Joe]

I don't read as many blogs as a lot of other people do so I can't say he is the best philosopher on guns and freedom. I can only say he is by far the best philosopher of the bloggers I have read. This post is what made that concept gel for me.

Kevin Baker at the 2007 Gun Blogger Rendezvous--probably thinking about his next post. Larry Weeks from Brownell's is in the foreground.

Once it is understood that gun control does not reduce crime, accidents, or suicide, it is easier to accept the philosophical core of the gun rights movement which states that even if gun control laws actually did reduce crime, they would still not be justified and should be opposed. Defense of oneself and ones family is a sacred right and it may not be discarded in the name of crime control. If rights could be so easily dismissed, then we know we could dramatically reduce crime tomorrow by simply ignoring Constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure and doing away with habeas corpus, and due process. But no amount of crime reduction can justify revoking fundamental rights.

Every gun owner needs to clearly understand these truths and effectively share them with everyone they know or we will continue to see our rights gradually but inevitably turned into privileges.

Jeff Knox
October 10, 2007
Back to Basics
[There is another philosophical principle in his post that important to understand too. A license to carry a concealed weapon converts a right into a privilege and we need to consider the recent progress we have made in concealed carry laws as merely a step on a muddy path. The path may have been the best and perhaps only way to get where we wanted to be but we did get soiled by walking in the mud. We must quickly traverse this path before the mud turns to concrete around our feet.--Joe]

The Supreme Court will consider two petitions growing out of the Second Amendment dispute over a District of Columbia ban on private possession of handguns at its Conference on Nov. 9, according to the Court’s electronic docket on Wednesday.

The two cases are the city’s appeal — District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290) — challenging a D.C. Circuit Court ruling last March striking down the handgun ban under the Second Amendment, and a cross-petition by five city residents — Parker v. District of Columbia (07-335) — seeking to join in the case to add their own legal complaints about the city gun control law.

Because the two sides have framed the Second Amendment question in different ways in their papers in 07-290, it is conceivable that, should the Court grant review, it might choose to rephrase the issue itself.

The earliest that an order on the fate of the two cases would emerge is probably Tuesday, Nov. 13.  The case, if granted, would probably be heard in February or March.

Lyle Denniston
Reporter, SCOTUSblog
Justices to consider gun case Nov. 9
October 24, 2007, 12:04 PM
[Interesting. If the two cases are combined does this mean the decision might be much broader than we have sometimes speculated? If so then even more interesting times are ahead of us no matter which way the ruling goes.--Joe]

Later, I spent several years touring the world, often in places where atrocity had recently been, or still was being, committed. In Central America, I witnessed civil war fought between guerrilla groups intent on imposing totalitarian tyranny on their societies, opposed by armies that didn't scruple to resort to massacre. In Equatorial Guinea, the current dictator was the nephew and henchman of the last dictator, who had killed or driven into exile a third of the population, executing every last person who wore glasses or possessed a page of printed matter for being a disaffected or potentially disaffected intellectual. In Liberia, I visited a church in which more than 600 people had taken refuge and been slaughtered, possibly by the president himself (soon to be videotaped being tortured to death). The outlines of the bodies were still visible on the dried blood on the floor, and the long mound of the mass grave began only a few yards from the entrance. In North Korea I saw the acme of tyranny, millions of people in terrorized, abject obeisance to a personality cult whose object, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, made the Sun King look like the personification of modesty.

Theodore Dalrymple
Autumn 2004
The Frivolity of Evil
[Never forget why we fight to defend our right to keep and bear arms.--Joe]

I managed to drag Barbara to the Gun Blogger Rendezvous this year. It was on the condition that I didn't totally ignore her and I found time to do things with her.

We arrived at Circus Circus very late on Thursday evening and went to bed (to sleep). We had breakfast with the others the next morning then went on a walk while most of the other people went to play poker or various other games. We picked up Sebastian and Rob on our way out the door and went looking for the "River Walk" which Barb assured us would be more interesting than downtown Reno.

Barb, Sebastian, Rob

She was absolutely correct. It was much more "interesting" along the river than it was downtown or in the casino.

After walking for an hour or so we wandered back to Circus Circus in time to clean up and attend the Friday afternoon conference with the Apex of The Triangle of Death (the NRA).

Most everyone was there but I didn't take pictures of everyone and not all of the pictures turned out well.

Uncle made my ears smile with his Tennessee accent.

DirtCrashr and JimmyB

Sebastian

US Citizen (foreground), Uncle (background), and Glen Caroline from the Apex of the Triangle of Death

Rob (his back anyway), Mel and Chris, and Ashley Varner from the Apex of the Triangle of Death

I loved the part where Ashley told of going to television studios to debate some bigot from the Brady Bunch or the VPC and seeing their response when they first lay eyes on her and thinking, "I have to debate you?" For some reason Ashley doesn't fit the stereotypical image the bigots want to paint of the NRA.

Uncle saw me taking pictures and motioned me over. He wanted an ATF picture:

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

After getting our wheelbarrows full of cash and marching orders from the Apex of The Triangle of Death we had a little show and tell.

Uncle talking about the Ko-Tonics 6.8SPC upper

DirtCrashr and his toys

Mr. Completely with Sebastian in the background

After dinner Sebastian borrowed one of my knives and attacked the package of 6.8 SPC ammo. For a while we thought the package was going to win:

But Sebastian finally figured out the secret weapon being used against him--the package had staples which were nearly immune to my knife. He then engaged his superior intellect and defeated the wily package.

There were multiple simultaneous conversations all evening long and I constantly felt like I was missing out on something because I couldn't listen to all of them at once. The conversation continued until after midnight when, as we were headed for our rooms, Sebastian, Mr. Completely, and I witnessed hotel security go irrational on Chris. Another security guard came along and "suggested" the wacko go find something else to do. Thus Chris escaped without having to fill out a bunch of paperwork for leaving someone else's body parts littering the elevator lobby on the third floor.

Except for the last few minutes of the day it was very, very enjoyable.

Someday soon I'll post on the exterior ballistics of Saturday at GBR 2007.

Last week James just had to show me a new XBox 360 game he had been playing. He insisted I play it. It was probably painful for him to watch me. Things that he took for granted, like being able to move in a coordinated manner, were difficult for me. But he did have a point. This is a very cool game. It was more like solving puzzles than what you usually think of as video games. It was rather mind bending in a lot of ways. Imagine you have a tool, sort of like a gun, that can create a portal between any two surfaces you can see no matter how far apart or their orientation to each other. Now what can you do with it? It's a great game.

Spoofing that game concept we have this video:

I stumbled upon a link while (mostly) lurking in the comments of Kevin's post.

I may have read it sometime before. I seem to recall the name of the author, Theodore Dalrymple, and certain passages invoke a vague Deja Vu. If I have read it before and forgotten there is a good reason for it. It is very dark and invokes a mood of hopelessness in me. But it is a brutal reminder of why I fight to preserve the right to keep and bear arms and to oppose socialism in all it's forms. And I thought Uncle had experienced sufficient contact with evil to adequately remind of this.

Read The Frivolity of Evil at the risk of losing your own mental well being. But vigorously insist that people that oppose freedom, who insist on victim disarmament or have even a hint of Marxism in their political leanings read it.

I won't sleep well tonight, but I thank you Ed "What the" Heckman and Theodore Dalrymple.

Fellow blogger here at The View From North Central Idaho, Lyle @ UltiMak, took Thursday off from work to drive to the Seattle area to spend three very long days becoming a NRA (apex of the Triangle of Death) certified firearms instructor. Not only is he a trained killer he is now a certified trainer of killers--to hear what the Brady Bunch and others think of us.

I thought maybe he would mention it after he recovered from his grueling four day weekend (one day of travel then three days of instruction) but since he hasn't I'll at least bring up the topic. Maybe Lyle will elaborate on it later.

He didn't return home back in eastern Washington until well after midnight early Monday morning. You have to admire that level of commitment of time and money. And you know it wasn't so he could teach people how to kill. It was so he could instruct people in Personal Protection.

Via email from Stephanie.

I like the part where the scientists who have supposedly been "paid off" are lamenting about not receiving their wheelbarrows full of cash. It's the same story as us gun bloggers not getting our payoff from the NRA.

It's telling when someone thinks its money that is the reason someone is opposed to a viewpoint. This is a strong indicator the proponent of the viewpoint is a Marxist. Evidence and logic appear to be irrelevant to these types hence they must resort to some other explanation for people to be opposed to them. Money, the root of all evil, must therefore be the reason.

Marxism has killed and impoverished more people than any other political philosophy yet they keep trying. "Global warming" is just one more tool in their bag of tricks to try and destroy capitalism. It may not be the conscious motive for the masses but I'm certain the people at the top know it's nothing more than a scam to propel them to power. It's simply not possible for them to not know the facts if they put any serious effort into researching it.

Dave has a picture of Boomershoot 2007 cleanup. Boomershoot is a difficult thing to capture. The cleanup in particularly tough. The video is good but even ignoring the inability to capture the true dynamic range of the audio there is so much going on that it doesn't capture the visuals all the well either. Dave's picture helps get nonparticipants a little bit closer to understanding what it is like to be there.

Because there's no way in hell the two of you together can take Allen, if you give him the slightest chance.

I'm serious, Russell. Trust me on this, all right? Backshoot him, the second your sights bear, or I promise he will kill you for days. Longer days than you can possibly imagine.

Zudie, a character in Very Bad Deaths, page 175, by Spider Robinson
[It's possible one can imagine taking the law into your own hands. Robinson sets up a situation. In this case a telepath gets knowledge of a brutal murder about to occur. It's a true vigilante justice situation. It's a good story.--Joe]

Uncle is correct in saying "feeling threatened by an empty holster is beyond silly". Bigoted is the word I would use. The same as if people felt threatened by blacks wanting to use the same drinking fountains. Perhaps even more so.

Our analysis of the current stalemate in the national debate over gun control has led the Ed Fund to believe that activists must challenge the idea that guns protect freedom and democracy. We have begun to fuel a debate among academics, journalists, progressive leaders, and the general public over the relationship between guns and the values that define us as Americans. By demonstrating how the "insurrectionist" philosophy of the National Rifle Association has helped to build and sustain the conservative movement, the Ed Fund hopes to drive a wedge between the highly partisan and ideologically extreme leaders of gun rights organizations and moderate gun owners, as well as the non-gun owning public. We believe this strategy will give policy makers the best chance of enacting sound, progressive gun laws at the federal and state level that will ultimately save lives.

Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence
Objectives for Fiscal Year Beginning 01/01/2007
[They are correct about driving wedges but not about saving lives via their wedges. They need to answer Just One Question and reevaluate their objectives.--Joe]

Thoreau said, "That government is best which governs least".

Kevin explains in greater detail.

One of the ways the KKK and Aryan Nations were defeated was by driving them into bankruptcy. It appears we are doing the same thing to the anti-gun organizations.

The following are some numbers from some of the non-profit anti-gun organizations. There are other organizations but these appear to be the largest and oldest. My entire spreadsheet is here (.XLS Office Excel format). I obtained the numbers from the IRS filings I found here. The 1998 numbers were not available for Brady and the VPC. I used 1997 numbers instead. All numbers are in dollars.

Their revenue has been falling and they have reduced expenditures some but the net asset numbers have crashed. This is great news for us and partially explains why the politicians are paying attention to the NRA. The NRA and other pro gun organizations numbers are increasing (analysis some other day).

Total Revenue

Expenses

Net Assets

The Brady assets are 34% that of their peak in 1999.

The VPC and Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence (EFSGV) assests are currently so small it's tough to see them on the graph and most individuals have a greater net worth.

The VPC as of the end of 2005 was down to $98,162 This is 11% of their peak in 2002.

The EFSGV as of the end of 2005 was down to $30,624. This is 8% of their peak in 2003.

We need to keep the pressure on and drive them completely out of business. If we could only use some sort of lawsuit such as what the Southern Law Poverty Center did to some other bigoted organizations. Organized bigots have no place in our society.

A gun range exposes kids to a lot more than just lead dust. It also exposes them to the fascination of shooting guns.

Shooting ranges and rifle clubs have plummeted over the last several decades which used to be a "gateway" for youngsters into target shooting. From there, gun marketers hoped teens would grow into adults and become gun owners and hunters. But now the gun industry and lobby have taken more extreme measures. To rescue its declining gun market the gun lobby is desperately trying to lower the hunting age in several states to lure children into the industry's "gun and hunting culture".

The Gun Guys
October 18, 2007
Gun Range in Middle School Should Close Now, Not Wait Until 2010
[It's interesting he uses the same terminology frequently used to reference recreational drug use. Apparently in his mind firearms and recreational drugs are morally equivalent.--Joe]

Importantly, we need real financial privacy because the goods and information cost money.  When you buy or sell or communicate, money is going to change hands.  If they can track the money, they can track the trade and the communication, and we lose the privacy involved.

John Gilmore
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, March 28, 1991
[Jews in the Attic Test again.--Joe]

It appears there will be a special Boomershoot event November 11th, 2007. This is for the benefit of a U.K. film company doing a documentary. For some background see this blog posting.

If you would like to participate send me an email. I will be charging $50.00 per shooter for this event and everyone can have their own shooting position. Depending on the weather we may not be able to get targets up on the hill and they may all be at the 375 yard tree line. We won’t know until the day of the shoot. But there will be lots of targets including fireballs to help keep us warm.

It’s not for certain yet but I estimate the chances of this happening on this day at about 75%.

While at Gun Blogger Rendezvous 2007 I received some very favorable comments about one of my concealment holsters. I was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt and people had not noticed that I was carrying a STI 2001 Eagle 5.1 (the 5.0 is nearly identical) with a 18 round magazine.

This is the holster.

None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that ... here's the really hard part ... the NRA may have been right. This does not mean that Charlton Heston is the new Rosa Parks or that no restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. But it does appear that gun ownership was made a protected right by the Framers and, while we might not celebrate it, it is time that we recognize it.

Jonathan Turley
12:15 AM/ET, October 04, 2007
A liberal's lament: The NRA might be right after all
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
[We are winning. I hope to have some numbers and graphs ready for posting by tomorrow sometime.--Joe]

If some terrorist gets a bomb through security TSA (A Security Theater) is apparently going to tell them try again because they missed it the first time or three. But since it's coming from that liberal haven (read "logic impaired") of San Francisco it all sort of makes sense:

USA Today revealed that a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) report found screeners at SFO failed to find small bomb parts 20 percent of the time during a recent 12-month test.

SFO spokesperson, Mike McCarron, said the failure rate is unacceptable.

But McCarron said the TSA may have simply made the test too hard.

See also these news items on airport security:

• Report: U.S. screeners not catching bombs
• Airport security 'not where we need to be'
• US baggage control still lacking: report
• TSA: Turbans Don't Have to Be Removed

This last item is of particular interest because the TSA is telling everyone, "Hide your stuff here, we won't look there."

I've been harping on this for a long time and I don't see any evidence to invalidate my conclusions. It's time to consider alternatives to TSA because what we have now is just Security Theater.

Depending on what your definition of a robot is sex with robots is old hat. But what this guy has in mind is a taking it little bit further:

According to Netherlands University student David Levy, robots may become so human-like in the near future that people could fall in love with them, marry them, and have sex with them.

He recently completed his PhD on the subject of human-robot relationships. He stated that “At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once you have a story like “I had sex with a robot and it was great!” appear in a magazine like Cosmo, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”

Existing toys include these (not safe for work):

• http://sybian.com/ (considered by many to be the ultimate toy for women)
• http://vrinnovations.com/ (computer driven toy for men)
• http://www.adameve.com/adult-sex-toys-ch-6.aspx (variety of older technology)

. . . don't I sometimes get called a Nazi?  Yes, name-calling, in which conservatives such as myself are loathe to indulge, is a favorite tactic of the liberals.  I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me.  I don't let it bother me for one simple reason.  No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.

P. J. O'Rourke
Give War a Chance
[He has a good point. And on a more practical note you can probably end the name calling if you use this line.--Joe]

More evidence Dr. Joe's cure for everything (more sex) works.

Mostly this is for the people at Microsoft that read my blog, but I'm sure there is application in other companies.

Here at Microsoft there is a big push during the month of October to sign people up for charitable donations. I think last year employees donated something like 72 million dollars. I'm pretty sure that is before the matching, dollar for dollar, funds from MS are counted. It is claimed MS employees donate more per capita than any other company.

This whole "giving" thing annoys some people. An argument could be made that is, barely, voluntary socialism. I'm not going to make that argument. Instead I think you just have to choose your charities carefully.

And of course there are organizations like JPFO and SAF that will help in our fight against the bigots that want to take away are civil rights but maybe that isn't sufficiently "in your face" to suit you. There are other options.

On Saturday evening at dinner at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous Chuck told us his story of being wounded in Iraq and how Soldier's Angels was such a huge help to him. I was glad I was in position such that nearly no one (I think Barb might have noticed) saw the tears running down my checks as I listened to his story. Barb and I bought $100 worth of raffle tickets but had to sell some of them to someone else because all the tickets were purchased before everyone had a chance to get some. Not only is that a worthy cause but supporting the "baby killers" might be enough to make someone in the Breasts Not Bombs crowd perk up and if you have seen any of the pictures you know that would be a remarkable and worthwhile accomplishment.

But if you want the ultimate slap in the face for the PC crowd you can play out this fantasy of mine--When you are asked to tell your story about why you donate you tell them its because you like to reach out and touch people you wouldn't have otherwise been able to. You don't need to tell them you donate to Snipers Online--unless you really want to. They are already in the Microsoft database, Ry put them there a year or two ago.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

John Adams
[One could make the argument that this is more true today than when Adams said it 200 years ago.--Joe]

There has been a lot of talk (and here) about how the anti-gun bigots got pwned by a section in the microstamping bill that says it won't take effect unless the technology is "available to more than one manufacturer unencumbered by any patent restrictions". Furthermore those people dancing in the streets point out the primary patents won't expire for another 15 years.

I hate to rain on everyone's happy dance but check this out:

Question: Is microstamping a sole-source technology that would create a government-sanctioned monopoly for a single company?

Answer: The patent holder of microstamping technology has announced that a royalty-free license will be provided to every manufacturer in the United States on guns sold in California.

Tell me again who got pwned.

This (see the comments here) isn't the first time someone has said something like this about me (see also this and this post in which I believe I contributed some to his conclusion). I could name off a half dozen people that said something similar. I'm not saying I disagree with them. I just don't get what it is I say or do that causes people to arrive at these conclusions after a brief encounter.

About the only thing I can think of that might have given them this idea was that I explained how easy it was to get a knife through airport security (Sebastian said, "I'm glad you are on our side" after I did this). But then Uncle explained how to get a gun through which is a little more difficult but uses the same principles as I used in my knife example--so I'm not sure why I was singled out as an example.

This might help the "bullets on target" problem I have with machine guns but I still am put off by the cost of feeding such a device. At 1000 yards with my "Spud Gun" (some call it "insanely accurate") will deliver a bullet just as accurately and with as much momentum as I could with this sub gun at 25 yards and with far less chance of receiving return fire.

It is a neat engineering advance in guns though. I applaud them for their ingenuity.

It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong. But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants.

Dr William Gray
October 12, 2007
Gore gets a cold shoulder
[Man is not causing global warming. Policitial correctness, desire for political power, and a hatred of capitialism are the driving forces behind the global warming scare.--Joe]

As we see it, the technology to implement the micro-stamping is flawed, there would be an increase in the potential for civil liability for law enforcement agencies that continue to use handguns which will be placed on the "unsafe" handgun list, there would be an increase in law enforcement training costs due to not being able to reuse spent cartridge casings, the technology could be easily defeated since the stamping is only 25 microns deep and the cost of the technology would be passed on to law enforcement agencies and citizens alike.

The North State Sheriffs'
Bill Analysis, Senate Rules Committee, Third Reading, Bill No: AB 1471
[I'm not sure why the reuse of shell casings would be affected. Any ideas?--Joe]

Gun Blogger Rendezvous 2007 is now over and Barb and I are sitting in the airport waiting to board. I probably averaged about five hours of sleep each night and I haven't had any caffeine for several days now. I'm starting to crash from the prolonged excitement and fun as well as the less than normal amounts of sleep.

I have 299 pictures from the event. I shared most of them with The AnarchAngel, Sebastian, Uncle, The Conservative UAW Guy, and Kevin. Keewee, Mr. Completely and US Citizen took a bunch of pictures too so look around if I don't post enough for you.

Update: Our flight has been delayed a few minutes. You can track our flight back to Seattle in near real time here.

You guys are scary smart.

Larry Weeks
From Brownell's while at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous 2007 referring to us bloggers who were listening to him tell us about their new magazines.
[Yes, there were a lot of very smart people there. Almost intimidatingly smart.--Joe]

I can't get WiFi on my computer so I'm using a cell-phone shared Internet connection. I don't have much time either, otherwise I'd post a bunch of pictures. So I'll defer to others you are faster and better than me on this:

• SayUncle says
• US Citizen says this about the NRA meeting yesterday afternoon and has a bunch of pictures from the trip to the range up.

The trip to the range was great. I brought my Spud Gun this time. So I put a couple rounds in a target at 200 yards just to make sure nothing had changed in the last two years since I had shot it. Pictures of that target will posted later. The "group" (two shots don't mean a lot) was 3/8" of an inch just under an inch left of the bull. I then went to 300, then 600, then spotted for Chris as he started hitting at what the range master said was 953. He spotted for me and I was able to connect on nearly every shoot too. I left it zeroed for that range and numerous other people who had never shot at those distances reached out and touched the metal at nearly 1000 yards.

Later (more about this when I get the pictures ready for posting) I shoot the Ko-tonics 6.8 SPC. Uncle has a red-dot sight on it zeroed for 400 yards and from the bench it was easy to hit the 400 (12 inch?) yard plate nearly every time so I shot a few rounds offhand at the 400 yard target. Much more challenging but I think I hit about 1/3 of the time.

It was a great day at the range!

Time for Barb and I to head to the banquet...

Democracy is that form of government where everyone gets what the majority deserves.

James Dale Davidson

Glen Caroline and Ashley Varner are here and we having a great dialog even if the wheelbarrows of cash didn't show up.

So far the best message coming our direction is they vigorously welcome our input. Pick up the phone, send an email, etc. They don't have enough ears to pick up and filter all the useful information "out there".

There is a lot of talk about internal bickering in the gun community. We need to improve things and there are some good ideas on how to deal with it better.

Update @ 15:35: We are now discussing the NRA support/non-support in the Parker/Heller case.

Update @ 15:41: NRA says, "How do we address the perception problem?" This is regarding the NRA being perceived as pro hunter and abandoning the black rifle crowd. Not to mention the NFA people. In other words the "NRA is Zumbo organization."

Update @ 16:10: Ashley says she likes my blog and loved the pictures from Montana. She agrees the "Gun Porn" with Kim wasn't a problem. The woman that was disturbed by it was disturbed before she saw it. Uncle suggested the NRA get the CMP program funded again and stop destroying the military surplus ammo.

Update @ 16:25: Glen talked about translating talk into action. We need to put links on our sites to congress critter contact information and NRA-ILA newsletters/action alerts.

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the path to truth is often at the same time opened.

Charles Darwin
[Think of how much mileage the bigots get with the erronous studies about a firearm being 43 times more likely to blah, blah, blah... versus some opinion piece in a newpaper.--Joe]

I'm ready to go. Barb and I are leaving on a jet plane for Reno and the Gun Blogger Rendezvous this evening. That's assuming the TSA will allow me, my guns, and ammo on the plane. Alaska Airlines will only allow me to take 50 pounds of ammo [heavy sigh]. That would have been enough for what I want to do except that with all the other stuff I'm taking (Boomershoot give aways, knives, spotting scope, tripod, range bag, magazines, holsters, guns, shot timer, eye and ear protection, laser range finder, binoculars, spare batteries, gun cleaning gear, walkie-talkie, altimeter, wind gauge, thermometer, exterior ballistics calculator, targets, and a clean pair of socks) I started running up against a different weight limit without bringing all the ammo I wanted.

I have enough match rifle ammo and if I decide I want some more pistol ammo I'll buy it in Reno sometime tomorrow.

Update: We made it through security without incident. We are now sitting at our gate waiting to board. Pretty amazing considering all the electronics and cables I had in my computer bag. The holster in the computer bag apparently didn't raise an eyebrow either. And the empty water bottle... I thought for sure they would want to open my backpack to make sure it was actually empty. They were cool with me wearing a shirt with the picture of a gun on it and the Boomershoot coat too. All nice to know. Maybe they are happy with just infringing on one constitutionally guaranteed right at a time.

So far the flight is on time. You can track it in near real time here.

James and I loved the first two seasons of Andromeda. Great characters, stimulating story line, it was wonderful writing and execution.

We got the first DVD of season three and episode after episode we looked at each other in confusion. What the heck was that? The actors were doing their job but the story sucked. We watched five or six episodes and gave up on Monday. It's on to something else.

James read a synopsis of the remaining episodes declared they were all crap and made up his own ending, "Tyr takes over the ship, then conquers and rules the entire universe." Works for me. It's also entirely within character for Tyr. Some quotes to illustrate:

Tyr Anasazi: What would you like, Jaguar?
Charlemagne Bolivar: The usual. Hundreds of grandchildren, utter domination of known space and the pleasure of hearing that all of my enemies have died in terrible, highly improbable accidents that cannot be connected to me. And you?
Tyr Anasazi: [Laughs] The usual.

Tyr Anasazi: I have faith in nothing but this - when the universe collapses and dies. There will be three survivors - Tyr Anasazi, the cockroaches, and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches.

We also need real control of identification. We need the right to be anonymous while exercising all other rights. So that even with our photos, our fingerprints and our DNA profile, they can't link our communication and trade and financial activities to our person.

Now I'm not talking about lack of accountability here, at all. We must be accountable to the people we communicate with. We must be accountable to the people we trade with. And the technology must be built to enforce that. But we must not be accountable to THE PUBLIC for who we talk to, or who we buy and sell from.

John Gilmore
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, March 28,1991
[Another way of saying this is that government control of financial and communication identification fails my Jews in the Attic Test.--Joe]

Over the years I've had numerous queries about bringing a rifle to Boomershoot that shoots the .50 BMG cartridge. I've always told them it wasn't a problem but they had to set up some distance from "normal people" so they wouldn't hurt their neighbors with the muzzle blast. I put these shooters off to one end and it quickly got named "The Ghetto". After I started running out of shooting spaces I explicitly set aside positions with extra wide spacing for the .50 caliber shooters and I called the area by the name given to it by shooters years before, the ".50 Cal Ghetto":

Now via Tam I find there are "affordable" guns that shoot the manly 20mm cartridge. See the bottom of this page for a picture of the 20mm compared to the wimpy .50 BMG cartridge.

I haven't had any requests to bring 20mm rifles to Boomershoot but they are welcome to come. They will be thrown into the same ghetto as the .50 cal guys who will have to just suck it up when they get embarrassed by the size of their tools compared to the newcomers.

I had planned to leave the Seattle area at about 9:00 AM on Thursday and mistakenly made our airplane reservations for 9:00 PM. Hence Barb and I won't be arriving at GBR until nearly midnight. Oh well, I'm sure people will manage to get by without us for a few extra hours.

Kevin will be on his way to GBR in just a few hours.

Apparently having been refuted on the concept that my children grew up in "an awful environment" they have now changed the subject to anonymously attack me on another front (By NephriteAU, 10-10-07).

Whatever.

For reasons that must be confidential for the moment I have now posted a privacy policy for the Boomershoot.org and JoeHuffman.org domains.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein

Most anti-gun bigots have a strong tendency toward socialism and the concept of selfishness as a virtue is beyond the mental grasp of socialists. Hence it should not come as a surprise that the "Gun Guys" should think that if you wish to defend yourself that you are being selfish in a negative fashion. What I am surprised at is that he admits it:

Katz's demands represent the height of selfishness.

Katz is the Oregon teacher with a concealed carry permit that wants to be able to defend herself against her ex-spouse.

This started out to be a comment in response to Lyle then it got a little out of scope. The short background story is that Lyle says gun control advocates are vacuous loons and that if we had our act together would have politically crushed them decades ago.

Lyle, It's a little more complicated than what we would like. Read what Dar Korra'ti has to say to get a feel for just one of the issues involved. Another is, as I like to say, it is irrational to expect people to be rational. For example, people have a very strong tendency to believe what they want to believe regardless of the facts.

Also, many would like to believe that it's possible to create a perfect world--if only someone was given sufficient power/control/money to do it. They don't understand that trade-offs are a part of any engineering task whether it is an automobile, a plane, a computer, or a society you are trying to engineer. Most people accept a certain number of automobile, plane, and computer crashes while realizing, at some level, that with the money, time, and other constraints things are working pretty good and certainly they wouldn't be able to do any better themselves.

But when attempting to engineer a society nearly everyone believes themselves to be an expert and that anything short of perfection is reason to throw some baling wire and duct tape at the perceived deficiency. Then with nothing more than opinion they forge ahead. The rare few that bother to try to put numbers on things and pretend to do an actual engineering analysis almost always only look at one side of the equation. They only look at the potential good that might occur from their changes. They fail to look at the actual and/or potential damage their proposed changes will cause.

Are they "vacuous loons"? Well, yes. But I'm of the opinion that is the present state of the average person and there isn't much we can do about that. And that a form of society/government in which the loons are unable to participate is likely to have serious deficiencies of its own.

Deadly face is no substitute for due process.

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Another Poster Child for the NRA
October 7, 2007 at 22:34:36
[Yeah, it was a typo. But even correcting that it's still a pathetic attempt at rational thought. She gets her facts wrong, she has no idea what the rules and laws are for the use of deadly force, and she reaches irrational conclusions. As Uncle said, "I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much stupid in one place."--Joe]

Via Thumper.

I'll bet that was a real rush. But when someone prone on a few roller skate wheels passes a motorcycle you know it's got to be a case of insufficient mylenation (another example can be found in the third paragraph here). Notice how he bleeds off speed by swerving side-to-side when coming up behind the motorcycle? I'll bet he doesn't have real brakes. It's still awesome:

Rollersuit in the Swiss Alps

Update: A friend of mine owns a roller skating rink. I asked him if he had ever done anything like this. He replied:

Joe, Back in the "GOOD'OL" days when all my knees worked I skated down 3 of the then MAJOR hills in Lewiston which were Fifth St. Grade, Eighth St. Grade and Twenty-first St. Grade, in Clarkston the biggie was Beachview Park Grade, the trouble with it was it ended in a parking lot with curbs a strip of grass, and the Snake River. It's a bitch to swim with roller skates on...............!  I passed a car on the Eighth ST. Grade deal he was doing 25 or 30 and he said I was still accelerating, but  I sure the first thing he did was let off so it seemed faster then he thought. We did clock the Twenty-first St deal and top was about 42 MPH-.......,use REALLY good Bearings

IIRC the way his knees stopped working was when he and his motorcycle parted company while they were both traveling at about 50 MPH. He tried running to avoid getting a road rash. His knees got messed up in addition to receiving numerous other injuries you might expect from a separation of man and machine of this type.

Someone apparently believes they can read my mind from reading part of my blog. And she thinks I have problems:

By Sheryl, 10-07-07
I checked that guys site out, very disturbing. I found the home life thread especially very disturbing. Any grown man that likes to brag about intimate relations with his wife on a public blog has some real personal problems. Using sexual terms to generate more search engine hits in conjunction with posts about his children saddens me. What an awful environment they must have grown up in. It frankly disturbs me even more that such a person has access to assault weapons and explosives.

Such a dark world we live in.

I left the following comment but was told "Akismet thinks your comment is spam, so it will be moderated first."

Sheryl, I regret to inform you that you are unable to read my mind or my motives. The only thing truthful about your comment is that which you shared about yourself--you are disturbed.

Update: Interesting... someone else's comment, again very negative, showed up but my comment and that of Miss C don't. Does the moderator have an agenda?

Put this helmet on and get a connection to your god(s).

There is something very different about this one. It was a police office that went nuts:

A sheriff's deputy shot and killed six young people in the northern Wisconsin town of Crandon before being killed himself after a manhunt, according to media reports on Sunday, quoting police and witnesses.

The Forest County Sheriff's Department said seven people were dead, including the shooter, Tyler Peterson, 20, according to media reports.

Five of the victims ranged in age from 14 to 20, and the age was not available on a sixth, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on its Web site.

Another victim was in critical condition, the newspaper reported.

Peterson, who was accused of storming into his ex-girlfriend's house, was shot by the Crandon SWAT team, the newspaper said. Peterson's former long-time girlfriend was among the dead, it said.

If we are not allowed to have guns then how are we to protect ourselves from the cops with guns that go nuts?

That's mostly snark on my part.

It's a terrible tragedy and it makes me sad to hear of it. It's a small town of about 2000 people. Everyone in that town will know at least one of the victims. Barb and I went to high school in a town of about 3000 (Orofino Idaho). The degree of separation between any two people in a town that small is at most one or two. That whole town will morn.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Mohandas Gandhi
[I thought of this after reading of the tragic shooting of all the people in Wisconsin yesterday. Just because one cop goes nuts and starts shooting innocent people doesn't mean all cops should have their guns taken away from them.--Joe]

I noticed it was a little cold when I came home Friday night and the furnace wasn't putting out warm air even after I turned up the thermostat. In fact there wasn't much air at all coming out even though we have the fan on continuously. Great. Another chore to do this weekend. Scratch the IPSC match on Sunday because Saturday was committed to visiting my parents and doing some construction and the final fall prep for the Taj Mahal.

Last night, hoping I could get the furnace going and have time for other things today I pulled the dirty air filter out, washed it, and put it back in and got decent air flow but there was still no heat.

So today I verified the pilot light (gas furnace) was on and the thermostat was set to "heat" rather than "cool" and the thermostat setting was for several degrees warmer than the room temperature. Still no flames in the burner. I then used a couple of small screw drivers to short across the terminal block for the thermostat, to simulate a thermostat closure, directly on the furnace controller. After a few seconds it was "flame on" with a puff of flame that came back out of the furnace--toward my hands:

Photo by Xenia

My back of my right hand now has stubble on it (the hair on my palm is just fine).

[Side note: Xenia thought it was gross and it took me a while to convince her to take a picture. I don't understand her concept of "gross". She intentionally got a hole punched in her face and a little singed hair is too gross to take a picture of?]

I removed the thermostat from the wall and did a similar trick from there and also got the furnace burner to start working. It must be the thermostat or the connection. I finally examined the batteries to the thermostat and discovered on of them had leaked and corroded the battery contacts. I removed the old batteries, cleaned the contacts, put in fresh batteries, and now the furnace works again. Now I can head back to the Seattle area tonight, then to Reno on Thursday and not worry too much about the Huffman-Scott compound (guarded by Caleb, Kim, and Xenia) freezing while I'm out of town.

Grumble... There are just too many things getting in the way of the things I want to do.

Kim, Caleb, and I went to the Boomershoot site yesterday. We put in a simple stairway from the water pump to the shed where we make and store the explosives for the reactive targets.

When we got back home Xenia asked what we did and I told her we made a stairway. "To where?", she asked. And I told her, "A stairway to heaven."

This captures a couple of different concepts in addition to the song with that title. I always worry some about blowing up myself and others when we are working on the explosives. Hence a literal use of the word heaven if you believe in such things. And also it's a very happy, pleasant place for me--gun, explosives, and the serenity of being out in the middle of the farm with no people or their sounds nearby.

It turns out that for an out-of-hospital "witnessed cardiac arrest" you probably shouldn't do the mouth-to-mouth portion of CPR.

Uncle says see-through frogs are creepy. I say you better get used to it. People are now creating completely new species. Future Shock is here and now.

I read Future Shock in about '75 and my opinion hasn't changed with 30+ years of evidence--Toffler just likes to blather about things no one can or has any need to measure.

Do you think we can gain any traction with the environmentalists who whine about the loss of species if we started creating new species faster than we made old ones extinct? No? I didn't think so either. There's just no making some people happy.

Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper.

Thomas Jefferson
[Apparently problems with the mainstream media are nothing new. One might conclude that the problem will never be solved. Perhaps the best that can be done is to provide alternate outlets exposing the problems. The great thing about the Internet is that the barrier to entry is so low.--Joe]

Update: What Kevin said.

A loaded handgun was found in an airport men's room. 

[Yawn.]

No big surprise. It's an impossible "problem" to solve.

This weekend I'll be doing Boomershoot 2008 prep and other chores but some people will be here (San Francisco--of course):

The latest adult industry "'pr0nnovations" will be on display in San Francisco this weekend at Arse Elektronika, a three-day expo featuring sex machines, brainy talks and weird performances (including the Electric Orifice Orchestra, in which "extravagantly dressed performers use live biofeedback from muscular interior walls of their bodies to create a multimedia interactive show").

De inimico non loquaris sed cogites

Do not wish ill for your enemy ... plan it.

Jack L. Patterson
Baltimore, MD
June 20, 2007
[There are others that have used this as their .sig line but Patterson has used it more than any other that I can find. I have been unable to find the originator. 

I'm thinking of the anti-gun bigots at the moment...--Joe]

I said it would make them squirm. And both the Gun Guys and Josh Sugarman are doing just that.

Kim's last name isn't Huffman but I'll send an email to get that fixed. Check out our pictures with the other People of the Gun.

Ry has four Halo 3 video ads posted. Microsoft puts an amazing amount of money into marketing (and nearly everything they do).

What good would it have been to know the names of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the DC snipers before they were arrested? Palestinian suicide bombers generally have no history of terrorism. The goal is here is to know someone's intentions, and their identity has very little to do with that.

And there are security benefits in having a variety of different ID documents. A single national ID is an exceedingly valuable document, and accordingly there's greater incentive to forge it. There is more security in alert guards paying attention to subtle social cues than bored minimum-wage guards blindly checking IDs.

That's why, when someone asks me to rate the security of a national ID card on a scale of one to 10, I can't give an answer. It doesn't even belong on a scale.

Bruce Schneier
April 1, 2004
A National ID Card Wouldn't Make Us Safer
[See also my web pages on National ID Card Flaws.--Joe]

Xenia made a video of John and her in the park. John is now headed back to the sandbox to guard convoys with his video game.

Good luck and thanks John. Please come back in one piece.

But it's no wonder we are concerned about privacy, because we are all "lawbreakers", We all break the law, but few of us are criminals.  The problem is that simply attracting the attention of the police is enough to put the best of us at risk, because we break the law all the time and it's set up to make that happen!

John Gilmore
March 28,1991
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
[Remember what Ayn Rand said and Huffman's rule of firearms law.--Joe]

Goody Guns by JPFO.

[Heavy sigh] My youngest is in college now so this just wouldn't have the impact it would have 10 or 15 years ago. Maybe it would be a nice gift for some nephews and nieces.

This is the story I heard at Gun Blogger Rendezvous 2006 I most wanted to tell. I'm glad Uncle shared this in public so I could comment on it.

Basically, some people need to be shot. People that claim everyone is just like everyone else and predators just need to be "understood" or some such thing are ignorant. There are evil people that will never change and will be a threat to others as long as they are alive. Read the epiphany a former psychologist (Uncle) had when attempting to counsel one of these animals.

I don't advocate individuals hunting these animals unless you have a license and tag. The premeditate taking of even sub-human life should be carefully considered with the appropriate checks and balances. Defending against an imminent or in progress attack from one of them is another matter. Remember the following four rules and repeatedly apply them until the threat is eliminated or you can no longer acquire a sight picture:

1. Trigger prep
2. Sight alignment
3. Squeeze
4. Follow through

In case you haven't tested it out recently (as in the last day) Microsoft's search engine was just updated and for the first time has search results on par with Google. I know the test methodology for this claim but I'm not sure I'm at liberty to reveal it but I am of the opinion they did a good job measuring this and that the claim is accurate. "On par" is not good enough to win and I expect MS will pull ahead of Google in the near future.

Having an alternative to the anti-gun owner bigots at Google is important and now you don't have to compromise on search results. Now if I can just get the message to the right person to get MS to give us an alternative to AdSense so I can drop the Google ads in the right margin of this blog.

In winning our Independence, and to make certain that it could never happen again, the Founders wrote that the Citizen was to be SUPREME AUTHORITY, and that our authority was to be backed by force, forever. In their living this reality which they knew could occur in any age, any era, any administration, the reality of life today was that liberty must always be backed by citizen force.

John Longenecker
Original Intent--Citizen As Supreme Authority--Liberty -- How American Gun Control Is Adverse To The Public Interest In An Abuse Of Due Process
[There are lots of great quotes in this whitepaper.--Joe]

Syria is shamed and silent.  Iran is freaking out in panic.  Defenseless enemies are fun.

Dr. Jack Wheeler
Silence in Syria, Panic in Iran
September 25, 2007
[Via David.--Joe]

Yesterday we went to the east side of the park and again saw stunning beauty. Here is but one picture of mountains and a glacier:

I also took pictures of some animals. While still in the car we were able to get amazingly close. One of them, with a little coaxing got into the car with me and I took it back to the condo where it spent the night in bed with me. I know it will never be domesticated but even if it is wild it's fun to have in the bedroom. It's the last picture below. I call her Barbara.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

Edward R. Murrow
[Something to keep in mind as the candidates fire up their slogan machines for the next election.--Joe]