Democracy is a bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.
Oscar Wilde
[My original source claimed it was Wilde but I can’t confirm it. But in any case–this is part of the reason why we have a republic rather than a democracy. But these days one could make the case there isn’t all that much difference between the two.–Joe]
I can’t endorse the bill because it is wasteful and supports an unconstitutional program, but I won’t oppose it because it contains provisions that I consider critically important — things I’ve been writing about for years — correcting the injustices of permanently denying Second Amendment rights, without recourse, to tens of thousands of people. Maybe I’m missing something and maybe I’m wrong, but at this point, I think our energy can be expended in much more productive ways — making sure Tiahrt passes comes to mind.
Jeff Knox
Hard Corps Report
May – June 2007
Volume 4, Issue 3
[Jeff captures my take on it quite well. I wish I had got around to reading it before I posted my own opinion of the Tiahrt amendment.–Joe]
From Canada, Turning Legal Gun Owners Into SOCIAL LEPERS:
Citing concern over the “sinister uses” of guns, University of Toronto officials are closing down their 88-year-old shooting range. No word yet on the fate of the university’s chemistry labs.
More than just one more example of political correctness run amok (which of course it is), I take this gesture as academic ideologues’ invitation to government to follow suit and ban gun sport and gun collecting nationally. Alas, I think the initiative might find broad public support. To many liberal Canadians nowadays, tolerating gun use in any capacity is akin to complicity in Bambi’s mother’s murder, fatalism regarding school massacres and genuflection to American imperialism.
And from the same article it looks like I have a new book to read:
In a recently-published book discussed on these pages last Thursday, Mistakes Were Made:Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson argue that many social and cultural problems spring from humans’ inability to admit when they’re wrong. How right they are. And as further evidence to those adduced in their book, I would cite: the blinkered ideologues who punish responsible gun users for the sins of criminals; police who automatically privilege the idle or fabricated concerns of disaffected women over men’s property and civil rights; and governments who continue to throw good money after bad in perpetuating an institution that fails utterly to deter gun crime, but succeeds magnificently in stigmatizing an identifiable minority of law-abiding citizens as criminals in waiting.
Our future as gun owners doesn’t have to be same as that of Canadian gun owners. Right now we essentially have the bigots at a standstill. We need to keep pushed them and change the attitudes in this country. We have to have the right mindset and turn the anti-gun bigots into the social lepers.
It is late at night and I got a little agitated reading some of the comments at Schneier’s blog post about airplane security. When I’m tired my inhibtions drop and I write things I might not normally. Here’s a duplicate of the rant I left in Schneier’s comments:
Regarding dust explosions…
This is about 8 ounces of flour over an ounce of black powder (the original gun powder): https://www.joehuffman.org/FlashTek/06-FFFFgFlour.mpeg
That is in open air. In an enclosed room of an abandoned house a similar test brought the house down. Sorry, that wasn’t my test and I don’t have any video for it.
Shaped charges made from match heads? I don’t think so. The “detonation” velocity is just too slow. It’s more properly called deflagration than detonation for that type of “explosive”. Shaped charges require MUCH faster propagation rates.
Binary explosives are available here: http://www.tannerite.com/ No background check, no license required, delivered to your door via UPS. Now THAT is something you can make a crude shaped charge with.
The “projectile” (typically a slug of molten copper) from a shaped charge is moving at 6 to 10 kilometers per second. At the pressures generated when it hits a “target” everything is “plastic”. Hardened steel develops a hole just like a high velocity stream from your garden hose nozzle punches a hole in a dirt bank. Penetration for a properly configured 10 (ten) gram shaped charges is about 2 inches of steel. Yes–a shaped charge using less than one half ounce of explosives will penetrate two inches of steel. See Explosives Engineering by Paul W. Cooper, ISBN 0-471-18636-8 page 442. Or do you think the doors to the cockpit are more resistant than two inches of steel?
Do you think someone could not get a half ounce of explosives through TSA security? You could probably successfully hide that in your mouth or arm pit if you didn’t want to use some other body cavity.
Oh, and you know why the explosives detectors work fairly well with plastic explosives? It’s, by international agreement (Montreal, March 1, 1991, Article XIII of the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives — http://www.atf.gov/explarson/fedexplolaw/subpartj.pdf ), that all plastic explosives be “marked” by their manufacture with a chemical that is easily detected. Do you think Iran and others are going to abide by that International Convention if they want to provide some terrorists plastic explosives?
We really should spend the $2 billion/year, or whatever it is, on finding and stopping the bad guys before they arrive at the airport/train-station/shopping-mall/etc. than on pointless screening. The bottom line is that the acronym TSA should be reversed–it really stands for “A Security Theater”.
It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.
Will Rogers