Did you see the smiles after connecting with the 650 yard boomer? I am of the opinion Boomershoot is a valid treatment for depression and should be covered by most health insurance.
I seldom purchase ads for Boomershoot because it mostly fills up with repeat participants, word of mouth, and web presence. But I received a call last week from the publisher of Western Shooting Journal and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They offered me a 1/4 page in their 2012 ATLAS (affiliated with NW Sportsman Magazine) at a rate I could afford and put the ad together from info I provided.
Here is the result:
I like it!
In the end, criminals will never pay the tax, law-abiding citizens will rarely pay it, and the county will get little revenue. The only purpose it will serve is to let upstanding gun owners know their local government views them with disdain. The feeling, for good reason, is mutual.
Steve Chapman
October 13, 2012
Taxing bullets criminal: Penalizing the blameless for gun violence
[A case can be made that taxing a specific enumerated right such as firearms and ammunition is illegal just as taxing churches is illegal. This has yet to be challenged in court and I look forward to the discussion. It will be another front the anti-gunners have to fight on and one for which the First Amendment gives us strong guidance. And NFA 34 can be brought into discussion in a manner that has a better chance of success than a direct challenge to machine gun restrictions.—Joe]
Professor Antony Davis says a complete redesign of government is required and that the redesign must begin with determining the proper role of government:
I agree with nearly everything he says except for the claim that a redesign is required.
The original design of 1787 would solve this problem just fine. It also has no chance of being seriously considered in the foreseeable future.
H/T to Tyler Durden.
JPFO has reduced the price of their documentary video Innocents Betrayed. And there is more:
We would like to announce a special offer on this outstanding DVD such that you can now purchase one copy for just $19.95 or two copies for $35.90, postage paid. Along with your order you will also receive bonus items — a copy of the 2A Today for the USA DVD, our award-winning documentary, as well as two Gran’pa Jack booklets — #1 which is “Gun Control” Kills Kids! and #7 – Do Gun Prohibitionists Have a Mental Problem? We’ll also include our “Gun Control is NOT kosher” bumper sticker.
As reported yesterday the Brady Campaign recently lost a long time employee.
Today David Hardy reports a clever challenge to Georgia’s ban on carrying in churches. It now becomes both a First and Second Amendment case. And he also reports that in Springfield Illinois, “a major theme in the election is which candidate is least likely to prosecute someone for unlawful carrying.”
I’ve mentioned this before, but this is further evidence the analogy holds, when the enemy is retreating is the time to press the hardest and you can gain the most ground.
We need to keep up as strong and as fast and broad of attacks as we can while they are weak. They need to be completely overwhelmed and driven into the dustbin of history. We have the potential before us to someday make the anti-gun organizations as weak and irrelevant as the KKK is today.
When I last saw Boomershoot Mecca, just before the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, there was 3000 pounds of Ammonium Nitrate just inside the door:
Barron with the Ammonium Nitrate (Barron is on the right).
Nine days ago Ry sent me an email with the picture below, a subject line of “2000 pounds of Tetris” with a message body of, “Was bored.”
Barron, Janelle, and I visited Mecca on Sunday and moved the remaining bags to the rear of the container, put the older Ammonium Nitrate on top and in front of the new, rearranged the tables, and cleaned up in preparation for a private party this weekend:
The biggest changes were the reorientation of the table with the mixers to be inline with the other tables rather than at right angles and the addition of a measurement table between the chemicals and the mixing table.
We also made a place to put my tent, sleeping bags, and some other bedding Maggie donated “to the cause” when she recently moved.
I also took pictures of the exterior so we could better visualize some repairs and improvements we are considering for next summer:
Barron tried to tease me about “Cleaning the place up for when my girlfriend comes to visit.” But we would have cleaned things up just the same even without guests coming next weekend.
Strapped and frapped on the left side of the window and a zombie family on the right.
And the car ahead of it has a Mitt Romney sticker on the trunk lid.
It is almost amazing that this was in Bellevue Washington.
I was informed today that the carrot cake I received for my birthday on Sunday does not qualify as desert because it doesn’t have chocolate in it. In fact because of the carrots and raisins it should be considered mostly a vegetable with fruit. That sounds entirely reasonable to me so I’m eating the second half of the cake tonight for supper.
What I don’t understand is why I gained two pounds after eating most of the first half Sunday and Monday nights.
It may be that we can mine the moon for hydrogen and oxygen. And to make it even more interesting is that it appears it is a renewable source. The sun creates the water on the moon:
The moon’s top layer of crushed rock and soil may hold far more water than previously estimated, according to a new study.
Most of that water can trace its origin to protons streaming from the sun, the researchers show, confirming in samples of lunar soil a mechanism for making lunar water that until now largely had been the province of theoretical models.
Getting water could be useful. Getting rocket fuel would be awesome!
The moon has an abundance of solar energy to break the water and/or hydroxyl down into H + O which is a great rocket fuel. The moon could be more than just a staging area for exploring and/or mining the asteroids and/or other planets. It could be a source of supplies.
The next question I want answered, “Is there a plentiful source of nitrogen and carbon available?” These are needed for an earth like atmosphere and as plant nutrients.
If N and C (and a bunch of other nutrients in smaller quantities) are readily available then crops can be grown for food. Once we have wheat farms on the moon we are snuggling distance from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
I’m so tired of hearing about the second amendment and the Constitution. If you love guns just admit it like it’s a vice. It’s like alcohol or drugs or sex addiction or gambling. It’s just a vice. It’s something you like. It’s not good for you or anybody else. You just like it. But stop the bulls–t about the second amendment in the Constitution, because nobody needs a gun that fires 31 rounds.
Bill Maher
January 12, 2011
Bill Maher Heckled by ‘Tonight Show’ Crowd for Saying Conservatives Want to Kill People They Disagree With
[H/T Say Uncle.
Bill, It’s a Bill of Rights, not a Bill of Needs. And you don’t need to be bad mouthing the right to keep and bear arms. How about we just put you in prison for what you just said? Because if you can just dismiss and/or ignore it gives someone else free license to dismiss and/or ignore every other specific enumerated right. Life would be considerably less pleasant if the police could legally beat a confession out of you or you could be compelled into slavery as a eunuch and praying to Mecca five times a day. That endangers everyone. Maher, you are a threat to society and the human race.
But I don’t advocate putting Maher in prison or restricting his right to free speech no matter how stupid and dangerous it is in the long run. Because the danger to society is greater if we punish speech we don’t like as long as it doesn’t cause a clear and imminent danger to innocent people. And so it is with the right to keep and bear arms.
At least Maher admits he doesn’t have any respect for the Constitution. I wish he would have said, “It’s just a piece of paper.” Just to make it crystal clear what he is really saying. He’s saying he doesn’t want our form of government. He wants to live under a government that has no formal limits to it’s power. An all powerful government is just as valid as a government which respects our natural rights. He didn’t say it but you can read between the lines that he doesn’t want you to be able to advocate for the right to keep and bear arms. He is tired of hearing that such a right exists. Well, Mr. Maher, why don’t you move so some place where your natural rights to free speech and to defend yourself are not recognized. I’d like to suggest North Korea. I’m sure you will be much happier there.
And the right to keep and bear arms is a vice? Tell that to the people in the picture of this blog post. Oh, that’s right! They are all dead because they didn’t have any guns to defend themselves with. And a gun that fires 30 or more rounds would have come in really handy when trying to defend those people. Is the right to defend yourself or other innocent people a vice? I think letting your mouth run off without knowing what you are talking about is a vice. A protected vice.—Joe]
A big rat just jumped the sinking ship: Dennis Henigan has left the Brady Campaign.
Something to remember is that Henigan has long known that high gun ownership rates probably do not cause high violent crime rates. He has been working for a cause that, deep down, he has known was lie.
Thank you for leaving Dennis. This is another clock tick closer to my dream.
Perhaps with a few years of work for a different cause the half-truth Henigan label can be retired. For now I’ll just put it on standby.
At this
time of year I normally hunt in Klickitat County, WA, for deer. Lots of big black-tail / mule deer, and perhaps the occasional
hybrid. My luck at finding them is usually pretty good, though my luck in
finding ones with respectable racks is utterly pathetic – I can manage to find
a 200 lb + mule deer with ears that stick out further than his barely legal
three point rack, which is only three points by the grace of God and an eye-guard
that is about 1.1 inches long, or one that looks like what you’d expect of a mule
deer that cross-bred with a white-tail, with huge ears and all its tiny little points
coming off of one narrow beam, and the other broken off to about 1/3 size. Oh,
well, meat’s meat.
Drove down Friday, looked thing over. Several does frisking
about, and no more than the normal noise from the property across the way (it’s
mostly 20-acre lots in that area, and some government land, with about a dozen scattered
hunting camps and a handful of year-round residents within a mile or two). Light
rain that day kept the dust down, and made the brush a LOT quieter. Lots of
acorns on the trees, I noticed – very different from last year, when there were
almost no acorns, and more hunters than deer. Parked the RV (AKA a minivan with
a seat out and an army cot in the back), got to sleep early, listening to the rain fall.
Got up, weather looked good, headed down for a spot I picked
the day before, partway down in and overlooking a clear-ish spot across a saddle
in the ridge. It has decent visibility, lots of deer trails through there. I
kick up a couple of does while sneaking down there in the dark. Wait for enough
light. See nothing. I hear shooting up behind me on the ridge. Several single
shots, widely spaced in time – either people are doing pretty well, or they can’t
shoot for squat. No way to know at the moment. I’m not seeing anything, except
a couple of does that are heading away from the shooting west of me. Eventually
I quit waiting and get moving, and slowly hunt around in a big loop to see what
can be scared up. Nadda but a couple of does. Light wind keeps eddying around,
so hunting “upwind” is impossible.
About 90% of the way around the loop I run into an old
friend of mine – he’s in his 80s now, was a gunner on a troop transport in
WWII, but still getting out (new just this year is a handicap hunter sign for
his rig, so he can shoot sitting in the cab, or have one of us younger “companion
hunters” do things for him. He said his
son, a spry lad of only sixty, had gone on a big loop up and around similar to
the path I’d taken, but farther out, across to the far side of a large draw and
down through it. So I figure I can go find a good stand up on this side of the draw and see if he
spooks anything my way. I wander off into the thickets. Lots of low brush, large
patches of ten-foot high Oregon white oak, and lots of old pines blown down
like pick-up-sticks (the remains from after a fire swept through the area about
a decade ago). Easy to hide in, lots of forage, and a cast-iron bitch to get
things out of.
I creep along thorough the brush, keeping eyes and ears
open, picking the occasional acorn and popping it into my pockets, which are by
now bulging with them. I find a decent spot with a clear view across the draw
– the far side is about 450 yards away. Visibility closer isn’t great because
of all the oak stands. I stand up on a fallen log to get a better view. Lots of
acorns in reach from there, too. I watch across the draw, watch closer in, pick
acorns absently. Listen to the chipmunks, magpies, and woodpeckers. Wind swirls
around. Nothing moving but birds and leaves. Pretty, but no sign of hunter
orange coming down the far side of things yet. I take off my pack and drop it quietly
to the ground, still standing on the log. A few more acorn are in reach, and
they end up in my pocket.
Then I hear a noise – just barely loud enough to hear, and I
still can’t remember what sort of noise it was, but it WASN’T any of the things
I’d been listening to all morning. I jerk my head to the right toward that
marginally registering sound, and there, plain as day because I know the exact direction to look, I see the “Y” shape of a
deer staring straight at me, mule-deer ears and nose. Just the head – from the
neck down it was hidden in the heavy brush. Not fifty yards away. With a rack.
A small rack (of course), but it’s got a least one clear fork. I’m standing,
balancing on a log, body one way, and it’s off directly to my right. Well, that’s
kind of awkward.
I figure he must have been there this whole time, so slow motions
shouldn’t spook him. I turn slowly until I can get the rifle up into a good
scoping / shooting position. I look. Damn! Only 3 power on the scope, and I can’t
see if there is an eye-guard! I crank the scope to 9X, and look again. Can’t
quite be sure… then the light falling on him changes ever so slightly, and I
can see it! ONE eye-guard! Given the brush and stuff, I figure I’ve got about a
2” square target to hit, off-hand, standing straight up balancing on a log, at
fifty yards. Can’t move to a more stable position because lower would hide him
totally in the brush. Aim too high, miss. Too low, take his jaw off and he runs
and dies miles away or it gets deflected by heavy brush. Left or right, running
injured or clean miss. Just gotta stand tall and deliver. Sure, no pressure. Aim
carefully, breathe in, breathe out, double check the eye-guard to make sure it’s
long enough, breathe, squeeze. BLAM!
I work the action keeping my eyes on where he was. I see no
movement. I walk up carefully. Motionless on a grassy patch amidst the brush. Right
antler blown away. Brains and blood leaking out through the large hole just
above his right eye. I do a double-take, and I don’t see the eye-guard! ARRRG!
Oh, wait. False alarm – just didn’t see if from that angle. WHEW! I measure the
eye-guard; one and a quarter inches – legally counts as a point (1” minimum). Now
I just have to get him OUT of the deep weeds. He’s down amidst the log-sized
pick-up sticks, and a live weight in the neighborhood of 200 pounds – small enough
to be tender and tasty, big enough to be a pain in the ass hauling him out. Then
I hear a shot from up across the draw. Looks like the other guy I know is now
going to be busy with his own deer for a while, so I’m on my own. I gut him
out, drag him uphill as best I can about a hundred yards to where I think it
might be possible to get a vehicle sort’a close. I flag a nearby tree with
engineer tape, and boogie back to the “RV” to see how well a Honda Odyssey is
at off-roading. Turns out, pretty good, if you are careful. Nothing that Ry
would have flinched at, but it’s mostly my wife’s, not my car, and there are
lots of logs and large volcanic rocks around, so….
Anyway, got the deer whacked up, then double-check the regs just
to make sure I wasn’t missing something – last year there was a Fish-n-Feather
check-point examining all hunters at a choke-point in the road out of the area for
the first few days of the season, so I want to make sure I’m all totally legal.
Hmmm… must transport with proof that it was male, either “naturally attached
penis and testicles” (nope, can’t do that, cut off while gutting) or BOTH
antlers “naturally attached to the head”. AH, shit-meister! I must have spent
two hours looking for that blasted second antler. Finally found it about 45 or
50 feet away in the brush – a small, brown, forking, stick-like-looking antler
hides VERY well in the brush and fallen oak leaves, let me tell you.
Finally, I got everything cleaned up, packed up, and back on
road, and just then the rain started. So it all worked out, in the end, pretty
well.
A few of things of note:
1) There was no
obvious exit wound from the bullet. A 165 gr slug from a 30-06 at 50 yards
still has well north of 2000 ft-lb of energy, and while the skull was
dramatically broken up and brain bits here and there, but the bullet didn’t
seem to have come out the far side, and there no obvious bullet fragments left
in the cranial cavity, which was mostly filled with partially coagulated blood and
bone fragments by the time I examined it more closely. Not clear exactly how all
the energy was expended, or what happened to the bullet; totally exploded and
the fragments fell out with the brain, or ricochet out essentially through the
same hole and all the brain pulping was done by bone fragments, or just what.
File it under “weird terminal ballistics event.” and “bone is STRONG.”
2) It was obvious he was totally dead from the hole and
brains-on-the-ground thing when I got close to him, so I slit his throat to
bleed him out. Squirt, squirt, squirt. His heart was still pumping! Weird.
3) The kids both thought the carcass pieces I brought home
were interesting. The daughter though it was gross, but she couldn’t take her
eyes off it, so it turned into an impromptu biology and physiology lesson, comparing
front and back leg structures, pointing out tendons versus ligaments, ball
joints vs hinge joints, bone vs cartilage, what a whole muscle looks like when
not wrapped in plastic as the market, fat deposits, what a heart and liver REALLY look like, etc.
They also thought the ribs looked awfully fatty, but agreed that they tasted good
broiled with a little salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
3.a) The only things that got left on the scene was a spine,
feet, hunks of fat, guts, and hide. I need to get better at skinning them out
so it’s worth getting tanned.
4) The kids ALSO thought that learning how to prepare the
bag of acorns I brought back sounded like fun, particularly for the 4th
grader, who did a big unit on Native Americans last year in school, many of
whom ate acorns as a significant part of their diet. We’ll also be planting
some of them as a science experiment (Oregon white oak are native to the area).
4.a) Last year, very few acorns, very few deer. Normally,
lots of acorns, lots of deer. File data for future reference; check the acorn
crop in September – no acorns, find another place to hunt.
5) Does seem to spook and run easily. Bucks, especially
older ones, are masters of immobility and camouflage, and don’t want to jump
until you darn near step on them. Means you have to have REALLY good eyes, good
binoculars, or have a couple of guys that are willing to spend a LOT of time
stomping around trying to kick them up.
6) I am amazed, again, at the fact that even though guns are LOUD, especially high-powered rifles, I never remember hearing the shot go off, or the recoil as it applies to my shoulder. I remember watching the target, working the action, basic body position, getting the sight back on target, listening for and hearing sounds immediately after the shot (even quiet sounds), but never the sound of the gunshot itself.
It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
As Phil said:
That 3 minutes has the highest concentration of stupid I’ve seen in a video in quite a long time. The female co-host has absolutely no idea of what she is saying. I have more knowledge of how perming solution works than she does about firearms and the laws governing firearms. The male cohost Markley’s himself within just a few sentences.
I love it that they keep doing this sort of thing. It demonstrates they are out of “ammunition” in the fight. They are way beyond bringing a knife to a gun fight like they used to. Now they are just spitting at us.
I believe the next president could indeed have the opportunity to shape the Court for decades to come, and that’s a key reason why the tens of millions of Americans who support the NRA should support my candidacy. My view of the Constitution is straightforward: Its words have meaning. The founders adopted a written constitution for a reason. They intended to limit the powers of government. The job of a judge is to enforce the Constitution’s restraints on government and, where the Constitution does not speak, to leave the governance of the nation to its elected representatives. I believe in the rule of law, and I will appoint wise, experienced and restrained judges who take seriously their oath to discharge their duties impartially in accordance with our Constitution and our laws—not their personal policy preferences.
Mitt Romney
September 11, 2012
NRA’s Chris Cox Goes One On One With Governor Mitt Romney
[If you can ever really be reassured by something a politician says what Romney says in this interview is about as reassuring to gun owners as you can get.—Joe]
I got a call on Friday from someone wanting to interview me for an article in GunDigest about Boomershoot. Cool!
A couple hours later I received an email with a link to the online article.
A quote from the article:
The concept of Boomershoot is simple. First, you shoot a target. Then the target explodes.
Gideon: I thought you said you never hold a grudge.
Galen: Well, I don’t. I have no surviving enemies… at all.
Galen is a Technomage which is a character in the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade.
[I love this type of humor.—Joe]
From the Lewiston Pistol Club (Idaho):
Hi all,
We’ll be holding a USPSA classifier special in the top three bays of the BP Memorial Range on Saturday, October 13 from 9 to around 2. The lower (Cowboy) bay will be available as usual.
The Classifier Special is mostly to the advantage of new USPSA members looking to establish their class (A, B, C, etc.) but is available to anyone who wants to try their skill against well designed, really aggravating pistol stages (lots of no-shoots, small target areas, etc).
We will shoot five USPSA classifiers over the course of the day. The classifiers will be chosen to test all three facets of DVC – “Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas” (accuracy, power and speed for those not current on dead languages). I’ll probably take 200 rounds and bring half home. Total minimum round count is 64.
In case you’re curious, diagrams for all available classifiers can be seen here: http://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-classifier-list.php
The cost of the special will be $15, all of which goes to the USPSA. For this event only, re-shooting a classifier will cost $5 per re-shoot.
Thanks,
John Grimes
LPC Action Director
Barron and I will be there.
When my views were first published in book form in 2002, I was not surprised that almost all the reviewers were unfavourable. I had expected that my old-fashioned views would get a fairly hostile reception, but the bitterness did astonish me.
I had not realised how offensive the plain truth can be to the politically correct, how enraged they can be by its mere expression, and how deeply they detest the values and standards respected 50 years ago and which dinosaurs like me still believe in, God help us.
George MacDonald Fraser
January 5, 2008
The last testament of Flashman’s creator: How Britain has destroyed itself
H/T Tamara.
[Fraser discovered the same thing pro-rights people have. Liberals appear to be violent by nature.—Joe]
From the comments on BuzzFeed:
Haha. Seriously though, I hope Biden rips off Paul Ryan’s head tonight and shits down his throat. Literally. I mean, that’s just good TV.
Why are liberals so violent?
Oh yeah! Now I remember.
