Monthly Archives: January 2012

Insanity defense

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As I understand it a person charged with a crime can plead legal insanity if at the time of the crime they lacked the mental capacity to determine that what they were doing was illegal.

I keep wondering if the Joyce Foundation allows a plea of that type with the people who spend their money. Some of the things the anti-gun people have been saying and doing lately is just nuts.

Of course if the parallel to our legal system were to remain true they would still be required to spend time in a mental hospital and that isn’t going to happen. A more likely result is that once the Foundation money runs out they will get jobs in the ATF as gun experts.

Quote of the day—Dennis Henigan

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The fatal shooting of Park Ranger Anderson was a bitter reminder of the human cost of appeasing the gun lobby – the Coburn Amendment passed two years ago legalizing loaded guns in national parks.

Dennis Henigan
January 11, 2012
Thousands Lit Candles Against The Darkness of Gun Violence
[Thirdpower already covered the lie about the numbers so I will ignore the lie in Henigan post title.

Let me get this straight… it was because it was legal to have loaded guns in national parks that Anderson was murdered? If that were true then doesn’t it follow that because it was illegal to have loaded guns at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech that those murders could not have occurred?

As was pointed out to me years ago by Rolf; If crime goes down after some gun law goes into effect the anti-gun people will claim it as proof we need even more strict laws. If the crime rate goes up after the law goes into effect then that is proof, to them, that stricter laws are needed.

As near as I can tell there are no facts that can be presented to anti-gun people like Henigan which will convince them any gun restriction should be repealed.

I must therefore conclude Henigan and his kind have crap for brains.

This is actually a good test to discover whether someone is worth your time to discuss the subject. Ask, “What would it take to change your mind? No matter how improbable, what data would convince you that some law restricting firearms should be repealed?” You will be surprised at how many people say there is nothing that will change their mind.

As you walk away suggest to such people that they look up the definition of “bigot” in the dictionary.—Joe]

Firearms qualification standards

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Ubu52 (in the comments here) found a description of the course of fire for qualification standards at several different gun schools and law enforcement agencies (see also parts 2, 3 and 4).

Frequently the anti-gun people claim the police are “highly trained”. At my next opportunity I’m going to put the Lewiston Pistol Club through as much as the LAPD qualification (Ubu52 is particularly interested in these results) as is practical. It’s not entirely clear what target is being used so some additional effort will have to be given making sure we come close on that.

From looking at the course of fire my guess is that nearly everyone who attends the UPSPA matches can pass the Combat Qualification course of fire with flying colors. The bonus course will be tougher with only a few achieving “Distinguished Expert” level but many will achieve “Marksman” level.

If the results are that even C Class USPSA shooters can pass the LAPD Qualification course (which I believe they can) will that cause the anti-gun people to drop that line of argument against us? I doubt it.

But it will give us another opportunity to demonstrate the facts are not relevant to them.

Will it blend?

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As Ry reported yesterday we verified the KClO3 we currently have in Boomershoot storage has much larger particle size than what we know has worked in the past. I purchased a cheap blender and tested a sample of KClO3 to see if we could reduce the particle size.

I’m happy to report that it appears “blending” it did reduce the particle size significantly. Looking at it under the microscope shows there are still some particles that are larger than the “old stuff” but most of the particles are more like powdered sugar than granulated sugar.

Further evidence that we are on the right track is the dust generated. Even after a minute or two of waiting for the dust to settle in the blender just gently taking the lid off the blender gets a cloud of dust flowing through the air from the blender to the air cleaner:

WP_000435

Another interesting thing is that the volume increased significantly. My guess is that it about occupies about 40% more volume than previously. The container on the left had about 1.5 inches of air above the KClO3 before blending. After blending it would not fit and I had to put some of the material in a different container.

It blends, but will it detonate? We have more tests to run the next time I visit Idaho.

Quote of the day—ColeenMonroe

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Guns are good for one things and one thing only: Murdering.

ColeenMonroe
Tweet on January 9, 2012
[I guess that is why the police, military, body guards, armored car drivers, and my daughter carry guns. That means she either is profoundly ignorant or hasn’t thought things through.

She also says she is a pacifist. That makes her a freeloader.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Joan Peterson

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These folks could have just sat back and shut up.

Joan Peterson
Board member of the Brady Campaign
January 9, 2011
Blog post in response to this video.
[Have the people on her side “just sat back and shut up” when people advocating for the Second Amendment have their public events? Nope. That is when they call the press and lay down on the sidewalk.

This is the attitude of those that demand infringement of your specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms—they would like for you to voluntarily surrender your First Amendment rights as well.—Joe]

Appeal in University of Idaho campus firearm possession case

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Today Aaron Tribble appealed his loss in the University of Idaho campus firearm possession case. The Notice of Appeal is here.

I really want this case to succeed but I worry that Tribble doesn’t have enough experience to do this and will loose due to some error on his part rather than the merits of his case. Such a loss would set a precedent that would be difficult to overcome.

Required reading

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I have read a few books on “The Rape of Nanking”:

I posted a little about them and the event here and here.

What I haven’t said is that when I read those books my mind was racing on how the civilian population could have better defended themselves. If I were able to go back in time and space and take whatever I could carry with me to that city it would be a backpack full of suppressed .22 LR pistols and several thousand rounds of ammo.

There probably would still have been thousands of Chinese who would have been gang raped and murdered but it wouldn’t have been hundreds of thousands and there would have been a lot of Japanese bodies floating down the rivers along with the Chinese.

A Girl and Her Gun posted about a woman from London who was in China when the Japanese invaded. This brought a flood of memories from reading those books. The well, so to speak, was primed so I guess it’s isn’t too surprising that my eyes filled up with tears as I got to the end of her post An Open Letter To The Anti-Gun Folks.

H/T to Say Uncle.

Candle stage scores

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Here are the scores from the concealed carry match with the candles on Sunday:

Name                Points              Time                      Hit Factor
Joe H.                  29                    4.18                         6.9378
Bob N.                 26                    4.73                         5.4968
Roger W.             28                    6.91                        4.0521
Barron B.             26                    6.44                        4.0373
Don W.                14                     4.02                        3.4826
Richard I.            15                     5.35                        2.8037
Jodi H.                   5                     9.19                        0.5441
Erik P.                    0                     7.57                        0.0000
Adam M.                0                     4.06                        0.0000

Many of you already know this but I’ll explain again for those that are new to USPSA matches. The Hit Factor is the number of points scored, minus the penalties (such as misses), divided by the time it took to score those points. Each perfect hit (A-Zone) is worth five points. Less accurate shooting yields few points. This means there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy when trying to maximize your Hit Factor.

As you can see from the scores above I didn’t have the fastest time but because I scored near the maximum number of points (there were six shots so 30 points were the maximum) while still having a decent time I won that stage with the best Hit Factor.

Fellow video conspirator Barron (he has further comments on the scores) had a time near the bottom of the group yet with good hits came in above the middle.

The most important thing to note is that everyone got at least some solid hits on the bad guy and the maximum time used was 9.19 seconds. The Tucson shooter was shooting for about 16 seconds. Had any one of the people above been in a good position to engage him the shooting could have been stopped much sooner.

Quote of the day—Jami Regs

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Nothing like a bunch of beer guzzling, uneducated hillbillies playing with deadly weapons to prove just how ridiculous the 2nd amendment is.

Jami Regs
January 9, 2012
Comment to a post by Coalition to Stop Gun Violence about our video.
[I can’t speak for everyone in the video but I know that daughter Kim has nearly completed her accounting degree, Barron has his BSEE, I have a BSEE and a MSEE, one of our shooting buddies is the chairman of the University Chemistry department, and I don’t even like beer.

There is nothing like an anti-gun person talking about something they know nothing about.—Joe]

Seattle candles

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From the looks of this video there were as many people open carrying as there were with candles at the anti-gun event in Seattle yesterday:

Our USPSA match yesterday in North Central Idaho probably had as many participants (only a fraction of them were in our video) as the Brady Campaign supporters were able to muster in Seattle.

Too Many Victims

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The Brady Campaign, formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc., has created too many victims. We are now pushing them into the dustbin of history.

Today Barron and I with the help of daughter Kim and some members of the Lewiston Pistol Club made the following video as our response to the Brady Campaign’s pathetic attempt at relevance:

Update: An explanation of the stage design is important. The brown target in the distance represents a “bad guy”. The white targets represent innocent people. When scored only hits on the bad guy counted and hits on the innocent were heavily penalized. When the scores have been reported I’ll make anther post. I think I might have won this stage. I had a good time with five A-zone hits, one C-zone hit and no hits on the no-shoot targets.

The instructions to the shooter were:

Start position: Facing up-range holding a candle with both hands. Gun is in a concealed carry state.
Course of fire: Upon signal drop candle, turn, draw, and engage T1 with six rounds. Comstock scoring.

This stage design was to simulate the January 8th 2011 shooting in Tucson. It was this event which the Brady Campaign wanted to bring attention to. This was to stimulate political interest in more gun laws.

Credit for the stage design goes to Bob N. (shown in the video preview above).

Boomerite problems

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Yesterday Barron and I went out to do more tests on our Boomerite mixture and packaging. It failed the last time we tried it and we want to get the problem solved.

We tried both the new packaging and the old from about 20 yards with .223 Wolf hollow points. All were complete duds. There was not even a hint of reactivity.

We were quite perplexed. What could have changed? Thinking that maybe some water had gotten into the old stuff we mixed up a new batch with some fresh ethylene glycol. Still absolutely nothing.

Barron was measuring the KClO3 and reported the powder didn’t seem quite right to him. There was no dust! I had three air cleaners in the shipping container because we knew the KClO3 generated a lot of dust and it wasn’t healthy to breath it. But there was no dust. Something was wrong. Could it have gotten wet? Maybe it could have drawn moisture from the air.

We took a couple of pounds to my parents house and dried it in the kitchen oven. Still no dust when handling it.

We ground some in the mortar and pestle. There was a little bit of dust but I could tell it still wasn’t as fine as what we usually have. Usually it it is so fine you cannot feel any grittiness. With this you could.

The Boomerite we made with the dried and ground KClO3 didn’t go boom with Wolf 60 grain .223 HP’s from Barron’s rifle. I had him try some 50 grain VMAX that I had. With the non-dried (or ground) we got a little bit of detonation but still not normal. With the ground and dried it went boom.

I put some of the KClO3 under the microscope. The crystals are average about 1/3 as large as granulated sugar. It should be much smaller than that.

It turns out there even though I was getting “MIL-SPEC” KClO3 “just like” always before there are various “Classes” within that spec. I strongly suspect we got a different class with this drum of KClO3. That could explain, rather than the plastic deli containers, why we had problems with a lot of the targets at Boomershoot. At the private party we had last summer it didn’t detonate very well either. We used the 50 grain VMAX bullets from fairly close and about 20% did not detonate properly.

Barron has more details on our experiments.

Candles

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The Brady Campaign asked that we light a candle today in memory of the victims. But candles don’t stop violence. Guns in the hands of intended victims do.

I note with a great deal of pleasure that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords attended a candlelight vigil today and apparently did it without mentioning gun control and even the media did not mention the Brady Campaign. That must have really stung them!

My contribution to today will be in a different post when Barron gets the video (coming soon he says) up on YouTube.

Here are some of the candles that were lit in opposition to the Brady Campaign:


From Ryan.


From Maura.


From Wendy.


From North.


From Dan.

Barron and Janelle have a bunch of pictures as well.

Kevin has his up.

Say Uncle is a bit cynical but participates.

Robb uses a gun that was used defensively.

Linoge has quite the collection of links as well as his own pictures and his thoughts on the topic.

Roberta says, “The good guys don’t start fights – but they can end them“.

Tam gives lip service.

Brigid does more than a picture. She gives us history and tells a story.Thirdpower lights a candle for #toomanyvictims.

And credit for the idea goes to Weerd.

Quote of the day—Don Wood

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Candles don’t stop violence.

Don Wood
January 8, 2012
A response to the Brady Campaign on their candle lightings today.
[We incorporated a candle into the concealed carry side match at the USPSA match today.

I had suggested something like, “My name is and this is how I deal with people intent on deadly violence against innocent life.” Or, “The Brady Campaign wants us to light a candle today to help stop violence. But candles don’t stop violence but a handgun might.”

Don was the first shooter and he said, “I’m just going to say, ‘Candles don’t stop violence.'”

That was a great simplification Don. Thanks.

The final video should be up on YouTube soon. Barron was editing it as I drove back to the Seattle area this evening.—Joe]

Quote of the day—President Barack Obama

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We expect to have a full — a fully — or a comprehensive approach to dealing with these issues of border security that will involve supporting Calderón and his efforts in a partnership; also making sure that we are dealing with the flow of drug money and the guns south, because it’s really a two-way situation there. The drugs are coming north; we’re sending funds and guns south — and as a consequence, these cartels have gained extraordinary power.

President Barack Obama
March 11, 2010
The President and the Drug War: Part I
[I find it fascinating how his words, “we’re sending funds and guns south”, can be interpreted completely differently in present day than most people would have interpreted them at the time he said them.—Joe]