Monthly Archives: March 2009

Quote of the day–Richard K. Willard

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The District and its supporters also err in extolling the supposed virtues of a world without guns, and condemning the vices of a world without gun regulations. In doing so, they set up a false set of choices. A world without guns is not an option, because hundreds of millions of guns are already in private hands and readily available across either the Virginia or Maryland borders; and even if all handguns in America magically vanished, criminals could still illegally saw off shotguns and rifles to produce concealable weapons that would be more lethal than most handguns. Thus, the District can only hope to dry up the supply of handguns for the law abiding, while criminal access to handguns remains virtually unlimited. It is against this real-world backdrop, and not against that of a utopian gun-free world, that the District’s position must be assessed.


Richard K. Willard
D.C. versus Heller
Brief Amicus Curiae Of The Heartland Institute in support of respondent
[In light of the renewed calls for more gun control after the shootings in Alabama and Germany I thought this was appropriate.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Jim Scoutten

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I’ve always thought there are some events that shouldn’t get National TV coverage.


Jim Scoutten
March 7, 2009
Producer and host of Shooting USA
Boomershoot coverage?
H/T to Ry (via email as well as his blog), followed by Kevin (email and blog), Say Uncle, Robb (email and blog), Phil, and Sebastian.
[I am a little insulted. Boomershoot got positive coverage from Newsweek, KING 5 Evening Magazine (Seattle television show), Outside Magazine, and numerous other media outlets (that list is just a partial listing). If he doesn’t think we are appropriate for national TV coverage he is mistaken. We can and have handled national media before and done quite well.


It just so happens another national TV show is planning to attend this year anyway. I also got a request for permission from a participant doing a video with smaller audience. Boomershoot should be well represented in the media this year. The gun blogger list of participants alone is impressive.


Like I said, I’m a little insulted but Scoutten is missing out more than Boomershoot by his decision.


Thanks for all the support guys but I don’t really think it’s necessary to do a Zumbo on him. He’s not saying Boomershoot should be banned or anything. He just doesn’t think it is something he wants to present to the public.


In his followup comment he says he doesn’t want put anything “on TV that could alarm the anti-gunners”. I disagree. I am of the opinion that alarming them over Boomershoot then making fools of them is the more appropriate tactic (ask me sometime in private how we have baited them but they failed to take the bait). But if he doesn’t want to do that I don’t see a reason to attack him over that judgment call.–Joe]

Another back-door registration scheme

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Sometimes, as with the “one gun a month” schemes, it is a little difficult to see the sneaky way the anti-gun owner bigots try to get universal gun registration. But with this one they only barely lower the profile:



Local Law “A” for 2009 would tightly regulate “in the interests of public safety” all ammunition sold in Albany County. Not just ammo for handguns, which already is closely monitored by state law, but all rifle and shotgun ammunition as well. Hunting and target shooting ammo, basically. Anyone buying rounds or shells, even .22s, would have to show identification, declare the gun and have its serial number registered with the ammo seller. The buyer would have to state his intent of use, and could be refused the purchase. The ammo seller, at the same time, would be required to keep records for 10 years.


Registration of guns and gun owners over the years has cost people billions of dollars (two billion in Canada alone in the last decade or so) and about 100 million innocent lives (in genocides from Africa to the Ukraine). The number of crimes solved through the use of gun and gun owner registries is asymptotically close to zero.


In Canada if you ask the gun grabbers how many crimes the police have solved through the use of the gun registry they will subtly change the subject and say, “The registry is used thousands of times each day.” or some such thing. Yes, the registry get a thousands of hits each day by the police. But it just part of a standard query on a person. That doesn’t mean it provided any useful data. And it certainly doesn’t mean it helped solve a crime. John Lott spoke at the 2000 Gun Rights Policy Conference and told us that in Hawaii the police estimate they spend 50,000 hours per year of police time involved in registration efforts. Most of which is paperwork. Yet when you talk to the police they can’t identify even one crime where this has helped. Guns are virtually never left at that crime scene. It’s not in my notes but I recall Lott telling us that when pressed hard enough Canada can support the claim that there was one crime solved through the use the registry which has been, in one form or another, in use for decades.


So if a gun registration scheme has literally only a one in a million (or less) chance of solving a crime what do you think the real reason the gun grabbers keep pushing for registration? I can only think of four possible reasons:




  1. They are ignorant


  2. They are stupid


  3. They are insane


  4. They want to confiscate the guns

In regard to #1, they have been told again and again. Any ignorance on their part is incredibly willful.


In regards to #2, if they are smart enough to count votes they are smart enough to count crimes solved. It is not because they are that stupid.


In regards to #3, this might be true in some cases. They are so blinded by grief over the loss of a loved one that they are not thinking rationally. But this is not the case for the vast majority of gun grabbers.


In regards to #4, this is the only answer I can come up with that makes any sense. Those that want to register firearms and/or their owners so they can enable the elimination of gun ownership.


Molôn Labé.

Facts? Who cares?

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From a reader submitted editorial:



But in Iowa, when a gun discussion was brought up, it referred to hunting and those scraggly guys wearing the camouflage and driving the rusted Ford pickup. Instead of hearing about which person got shot over the weekend, I was hearing something along the lines of “Boy, I ‘m going to gut that coon I shot on Sunday and hang it up in the garage!”


Great stereotype you got there buddy. Did you learn all about the validity of stereotypes while you were attending Klan orientation?



The Brady Campaign is a U.S. organization that supports both gun control and gun owners’ rights.


Can anyone name just one gun control law the Brady Campaign opposed? Does the KKK support both n****r control and civil rights? How can this person think that is even possible?



If Obama is able to pass stricter gun laws, hunters will suffer and be at an uproar. If Obama doesn’t change anything in regards to gun control, those grieving mothers and communities will be screaming in his ear, asking why he hasn’t done anything about it.


The classic bolt action deer rifle and shotguns used for bird hunting are the furthest down on Obama’s list and as a class of guns are probably the least used in crimes. I don’t expect Obama will even hint at restricting them. Rifle ammo, maybe. But not the firearms.


Such ignorance! Why aren’t they embarrassed to have their words seen or heard in public?

Quote of the day–Ed Pilkington

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Maritime experts were given a rare glimpse of the underlying capabilities of the Chinese navy on Sunday, when crewmen involved in a stand-off with a US surveillance ship in the South China Sea revealed the fleet’s previously hidden firepower.


The exposure came as the American vessel USNS Impeccable was attempting to defend itself against what the Pentagon claimed was co-ordinated harassment and aggression from five Chinese ships. Being unarmed, the Impeccable turned its fire water hoses against two of the Chinese vessels that had come within 50 feet in a threatening posture.


Then, the Pentagon records in the admirably restrained language of international diplomacy, “the Chinese crew members disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet.”


In the annals of great naval battles, the contretemps may not rank alongside Trafalgar or Jutland. But it must be a contender for this year’s award for naked aggression.


Ed Pilkington
March 10, 2009
In New York, The Guardian
Stand-off shows Chinese navy’s secret tactics
[I just hope the sailors on the Impeccable got lots of pictures of all that “previously hidden firepower”. I’m sure there is a market for that somewhere outside of the Pentagon. Maybe some magazines would be interested.–Joe]

Boomershoot site in the snow.

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Ry and I visited the Boomershoot site on Saturday. I checked the power supply and verified the batteries were fully charged and the inverters were working. The Wi-Fi was working just fine too but the last time I was there it wasn’t working so I plan to replace some of the components the next time I go out there.


Ry and I both took pictures of the snow. I had not tried a Photosythn before and I thought this would be kinda neat to try. So I took hundreds of pictures. The first attempt failed and the second attempt is here. I learned quite a bit from the effort and will try some more later on but the result is still pretty interesting.


Ry has his take on the snow.


I think it’s still a little early to tell. We are seven weeks from the event. I needed snow shoes to make it out the Taj Mahal but the deepest snow I could find at the shooting line near the berm was only about 17 inches deep.


We have more snow now at seven week out that last year at six weeks and five weeks out. We also had snow on the ground for the actual event too. After I visit next time we will have a better comparison to previous years.

Quote of the day–Tracy Ambeau Hanson

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Do we really need a gun-fashion police? I just want to be able to exercise my Second Amendment rights without interference from the District government.


Tracy Ambeau Hanson
March 9, 2009
SAF CHALLENGES D.C. HANDGUN BAN SCHEME



[The above picture is from David. See also more on the lawsuit story from David. I find it incredible amusing SAF found a woman of color as the plaintiff in a case about discrimination against a gun that is the wrong color. How much more blatant can the discrimination be before people start realizing the people attempting to infringe our right to keep and bear arms are bigots?


Thank you Ms. Hanson, SAF, and Calguns Foundation.


SAF is getting monthly, tax deductible, donations from my paycheck with matching donations from Microsoft. What are you doing to help?-Joe]

Career change time?

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A fellow gun blogger who said it wasn’t that good a match to his blog sent me this link.



Fortunetelling has always been an inseparable part of the history of mankind. People always wanted to look in their own future and unravel the mystery of the human character. Fortune-tellers use a variety of things for their activities: cards, dice, coins, wax, salt and many other tools.


Sternomancy is a divination practice which involves the reading of markings on the area of the human body from the breast to the belly. This way of fortunetelling can be used to unveil the character of a woman by reading the shape of her breasts. Sternomancy was used in fortunetelling in the 18th century in Spain. Nowadays, sexologists say that the bosom of a woman identifies her character even more than Zodiac signs do.


People usually compare the shape of women’s breasts with fruit, berries and even vegetables.


As I read the opening paragraphs I considered a career change. Fortune telling by examination of women’s breast and nipples? If there’s money to be made then sign me up! But as I read further I discovered there wasn’t any advocacy of physical contact with the subject matter. If it’s only looking then I don’t see it as that big of a gain over the free porn available on the ‘net. And besides I have a suspicion that Barb would frown on my new career choice. I once considered becoming a lawyer and she said she would divorce me if I sank that low. Although I’m pretty sure fortune telling via the examination of women’s breast wouldn’t be ranked as low as being a lawyer I’m pretty sure I’d have to suffer through some icy stares every once in a while.

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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Here is the key insight: you might think that when collapse happens, nothing works. That’s just not the case. The old ways of doing things don’t work any more, the old assumptions are all invalidated, conventional goals and measures of success become irrelevant. But a different set of goals, techniques, and measures of success can be brought to bear immediately, and the sooner the better.


Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[On Saturday my Dad, my brother Doug, Ry, and I were all sitting around talking about the hazards and opportunities our current economic situation. Doug pointed out that five or ten years from now will be able to see all kinds of opportunities that are available to us right now if we only could see them. I don’t think anyone disagreed with him. But none of had any real clues as to what those opportunities are.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Clayton Cramer

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My definition of social justice: those who refuse to work deserve to go hungry.


Clayton Cramer
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/clayton_cramer/
[It seems to me that this definition of social justice will soon becoming the norm.–Joe]

Weird search phrase

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I have no idea what they are expecting to find with “coeurdalene idaho lesbians solar system” but I’m pretty sure they didn’t find it here.




























































































Domain Name   (Unknown) 
IP Address   63.214.229.# (Level 3 Communications)
ISP   Level 3 Communications
Location  

















Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
Lat/Long  :  38, -97 (Map)
Distance  :  1,180 miles
Language   English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinNT
Browser   Internet Explorer 8.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  









Resolution  :  1280 x 800
Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit   Mar 6 2009 8:41:32 am
Last Page View   Mar 6 2009 8:41:32 am
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views   1
Referring URL http://search.live.c…r system&FORM=TOOLBR
Search Engine search.live.com
Search Words coeurdalene idaho lesbians solar system
Visit Entry Page   https://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/10/04/
Visit Exit Page   https://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/10/04/
Out Click    
Time Zone   UTC-8:00
Visitor’s Time   Mar 6 2009 8:41:32 am
Visit Number   452,749

Attention Boomershoot 2009 Gun Bloggers!

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It’s a long story but I deleted the list of Gun Bloggers planning to attend Boomershoot 2009.


I have reconstructed the list as best I could and sent an email to those people. If you are a gun blogger planning to atttend Boomershoot 2009 and did not get an email please let me know and I’ll add you to my list.

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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I’m still a long way from going up a clock tower with a scoped rifle and a sack lunch.


Tamara K.
February 22, 2009
Blah
[I thought this would be appropriate after my frustrations with the ATF yesterday.–Joe]

Softening us up

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I’ve expounded at length about the problems with National ID Cards and how it fails my Jews In The Attic Test. I haven’t heard much about such cards recently. There is the defacto National ID Cards in the form of Real ID but with all the states applying for extensions and some declaring intent to not comply with it I have not been concerned about it.


But could it be that now we have the socialists in power their cohorts in academia are softening us up for a police state with a National ID card? Emphasis is mine in this quote:



This book chapter for “Lessons from the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) – a forthcoming comparative examination of approaches to the regulation of anonymity edited by Ian Kerr – discusses the sources of hostility to National ID Cards in common law countries. It traces that hostility in the United States to a romantic vision of free movement and in England to an equally romantic vision of the ‘rights of Englishmen’.


“Romantic vision of free movement”?


If National ID cards become a reality in this country I’ll be doing a lot more “free movement” of objects at supersonic velocities that will be very unromantic.

We didn’t do it! No one can prove a thing!

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Although Boomershoot has an ATF approved explosive handler in Memphis she didn’t blow up this car with someone in it today.

Substance or Hypocritical Posturing? Which one works for you?

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The following started as my comment at Say Uncle, but I decided it needed its own post.  It’s in response to the now age-old maneuver of calling for more enforcement of existing anti-gun laws rather than passing more, and considering ourselves clever negotiators.  It doesn’t matter who said it recently.  It’s been said for many years;


“…should enforce existing laws rather than propose additional laws they said could infringe on Second Amendment rights.”


Additional laws “could” infringe?  What; existing laws couldn’t infringe on Second Amendment rights?  Not a single one of them?  Next time someone’s house is busted into, guns are confiscated and destroyed, lives are turned upside down over a technical violation when no one has harmed or threatened any other person, you’ll be perfectly OK with that?  It’d be great, so long as no one bothers you with more laws?  You thought Ruby Ridge was cool, and you want more of the same, so long as it’s convenient for you?  You want to keep innocent people in jail over paper-work errors, or over an inch of barrel length or a quarter inch of buttstock?  Would that make you a proud supporter of the second amendment or a sadistic and immoral jackass with anti American tendencies?  You decide.


Lets put this into perspective; “The Justice Department should enforce existing laws against negroes rather than propose additional laws that could infringe on Civil Rights.”


That sounds stupid as all hell, doesn’t it?  How many people would take that as a pro Civil Rights stance and call for more of it?  Yet we have been conditioned over the years to think that’s perfectly acceptable language when discussing second amendment rights.  Any politician says something stupid like that and we think, “Yeah, Baby!  You tell ’em!  That guy’s on OUR side, Man!”


Oh, how far we have fallen.


Would we sit idly by and accept a federal department of alcohol, tobacco, negroes and explosives (BATNE)?  Do you like the juxtaposition there?  Lovely, isn’t it?  Should anyone sit by and accept such a thing as an inevitability, and proudly claim that as a clever, politically “reasonable” stance?


If you reject the idea that gun restrictions equal crime control, and instead believe (as do I) that gun laws are not only counterproductive to their stated goals and an attack on liberty, but unconstitutional, you don’t call for more enforcement of them.  What would be the point in that, unless it’s an unprincipled attempt to appear “reasonable” to people who know nothing of the issue and nothing of the constitution’s history?  For that matter, what law enforcement officer who has taken an oath to the constitution could in good conscience enforce any gun laws against peaceable citizens?


Are we trying to appeal to the sensibilities of idiots at the expense of our credibility, at the expense of the constitution, at the expense of reason, at the expense of public harmony, and at the expense of liberty?  Yeah; that makes us look like geniuses.  Sure it does.  Or cowards.


It’s hypocritical.  It’s McCainian (to perhaps coin a new term).  It’s relying on ignorance for public support.  It’s what Republicans do when they listen to their super-smart advisors.


Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to clean my guns.  And to “fondle” them.  You know, ’cause I have a small penis or something.

Technology and the ATF

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The ATF explosives examiner for Idaho said I could just email the scans of the copies I kept. But after two days of getting neither confirmation or bounced email messages about the “Employee Possessor Questionnaires” (background check paperwork for handling explosives) I was about to call him when he emailed me. He said he hadn’t received any emails from me after the first one. I had actually sent him two emails in that time frame. The first had bounced and I presumed it was because the attachment was too large. So I put the 9 Mbyte .ZIP file on the boomershoot.org website (the .ZIP file has now been deleted and my logs indicate only I had attempted to download it) and sent him a link to that. That email did not bounce.


But I noticed something, the email address he used was different than the one I had originally used to contact him. I originally used @atf.gov and the one he responded with was @usdoj.gov. So I sent the same two emails again. One with the attachment and one with the link. Then a couple hours ago I called him. He hadn’t received anything.


We verified the email addresses. The first one (which, on Tuesday, made it through to him) was wrong. The other, which I had done a “reply to” from his email was the correct one. He would not download a file from a website (“We don’t do that”). Okay, so I’ll try sending a plain text test message from a different email account to his preferred email address. That worked. Okay, now the 9 Mbyte .ZIP file. He’s not sure what a .ZIP file is. He knows about .PDF files. .JPG files? Yeah, kinda.


The 9 Mbyte .ZIP bounced. The message:



The original message was received at Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:15:40 -0800


—– The following addresses had permanent fatal errors —– “somethingelse@usdoj.gov”


—– Transcript of session follows —– .. while talking to mailsc20.usdoj.gov


>>> DATA <<< 550 5.7.0 Maximum Attachment Size (12M) Violation


Yeah, my 9 Mbyte .ZIP file exceeded their maximum attachment size restriction of 12 M.


Maybe this is a test to see if I’m calm enough to be trusted with explosives.


I broke the 9 Mbyte file into five .ZIP files the largest being 1.95 Mbytes and sent them as attachments to five plain text emails from my alternate email address to his second email address.


About 15 minutes later he called back. He had received them but it was going to “take a while” to get them from “picture viewer” to the printer. He would start work on that the first thing in the morning.


Apparently I passed the test.


I’m going out to the Boomershoot site this weekend. I think I need to blow something up.

Quote of the day–Jim Rogers

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I think it’s astonishing, they’re ruining the US economy, they’re ruining the US government, they’re ruining the US central bank and they’re ruining the US dollar.


You are watching something in front of our eyes, very historically, which is basically the destruction of New York as a financial center and the destruction of America as the world’s most powerful country.


Japan’s economic “lost decade” was caused by trying to bail out the banks, and the West risks running out of money if it doesn’t let the bad banks fail now.


Systemic risk is going to be the same in 10 months, 5 years or 10 years if the fundamental problem is not solved.


The idea that you have too much debt, too much borrowing and too much consumption and you’re going to solve that problem with more debt, more consumption and more borrowing? These people are nuts.


Wall Street and the City of London are going to be “disastrous” for years, like in the 1950s and 1960s, and in 30 years, finance will “dry up and wither away” as we are entering a “long period of hard times.”


Power is shifting now from the money shifters, the guys who trade paper and money, to people who produce real goods. What you should do is become a farmer, or start a farming network.


Jim Rogers
March 3, 2009
Jim Rogers: Let AIG Go Bankrupt, Not America
[If true, “real goods” probably involves more than just farm/food products. My guess it will include security, water, shelter, sanitation, communication, and transportation as well. Probably in about that order.–Joe]

Where the Founders Went Wrong

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In pre-revolutionary times, the British government (some say the King, but England has had a Parliament since after the civil war in the middle 1600s) was trying to control religion and the press.  The practice, in some form or another, was ancient by the time of the American Revolution, as we see the Bishop next to the king and queen on a chessboard.  When the U.S. was formed it was therefore fresh in the minds of the Founders that there should be some strict protection of both religious freedom and freedom of speech.


Why?  Why is it so important that government not be in control of religious practices or of the press?  It’s because as we all know, governments invariably grab more and more power for themselves at the expense of liberty.  What better way to help that process along than to control the thinking and the beliefs of the people, and what better way to control the thinking and beliefs of the people than to control religion and the press?


But there is something missing.  If you can’t have control of religion and the press, there is something just as powerful as a means of controlling the minds and beliefs of the people.


Education. (I’ll also include science, which would be seen as a sub set within education until we see the vast amounts of money poured into government research grants and the like)


It’s a pity the Britts weren’t trying to establish political and social indoctrination centers disguised as schools, circa 1770.  In that case our first amendment would have been slightly different;



Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or respecting the establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


As it is, your kids are being taught what to believe, not in a Church Of America and not by a U.S. version of Pravda, but in government schools.


(If the kingdoms of Medieval times had used education as it is being used today, maybe we’d see a “College President” or maybe a “Head of Education”, or perhaps a “Head of the Teachers’ Union” in the same line with the king and queen, the knights, and the rooks on a chessboard)

Democrats–the party of gun control

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Alan Gottlieb via CCRKBA says:



“Once again,” he said, “Democrats are revealing themselves as the party of restrictive gun control. If the citizens of Washington, D.C. have a right to full congressional representation, they also have a right to own the firearm of their choice. For Democrats to argue that one right is more important than another – especially after last year’s Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment – they are engaging in world-class hypocrisy.”


…

“Democrats argue that the right to representation is not related to the right to keep and bear arms,” Gottlieb said, “but that’s nonsense. This country was born because our founders were being taxed without representation, and because British troops tried to disarm the citizens. Those issues are just as equal today as they were 230 years ago, and Democrats on Capitol Hill need to understand that.”


I keep wondering how close we are to the taxes and disarmament thresholds of another country being born. The Democrats may also be the party that creates a revolution.