Monthly Archives: January 2014

Quote of the day—Will Burns

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I think the law can be rewritten to allow residents to determine whether they want these businesses in their neighborhoods.

Will Burns
Member of the Chicago Board of Alderman
January 22, 2014
Chicago Officials Say New Gun Control Law Can Be Crafted
[And do they also think they can also write a law that allows residents to determine whether they want a Jewish/Muslim/Christian place of worship in their neighborhood? These officials need to be interviewed by the police instead of the media. Then they should be prosecuted.—Joe]

What happened to Colin Goddard?

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Colin Goddard, the Brady Campaign expert at getting shot, used to get a lot of media attention. But not anymore. I couldn’t find any connection between Goddard and the Brady Campaign since April 2013.

In fact it appears the Brady Campaign has had a complete regime change. These are all new faces to me since Dan Gross took the job as president.

They don’t have a very large staff and to replace that many people in that short of time means that, essentially, they flushed all their institutional memory. Which I suppose makes sense. It’s a good idea to change a losing strategy. But it’s a better idea to shut down an obsolete business rather than to continue dumping money into it.

A million dollar gun control contest

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When I read this I was really annoyed:

Smart Tech Foundation, a new San Francisco gun violence prevention organization backed by tech investor Ron Conway, will start taking applications on Jan. 28 for a $1 million contest to identify devices for preventing gun-related injuries and deaths.

In particular, Smart Tech is focused on access control technologies that can reliably prevent unauthorized use of guns and ammunition.

…

Smart Tech was founded in 2013 in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre of children and teachers the prior year in Newtown, Conn.

Why didn’t he offer $1 million for ideas to make our children safer? By limiting his acceptable solution set to only those things that place limits on firearms he is showing his prejudice. It rules out things like firearms instruction for teachers and building designs that inhibit mass shootings.

After reading a part of his website I’m slightly less annoyed. It’s not quite as bad as I thought it was, but it still has lots of room for improvement:

SmartTechFoundation

On the gun side of things the solutions being suggested will never be retrofitted on hundreds of millions of existing firearms even if they are found to be feasible in new production guns. And I have my doubts that any biometric solution will be practical, ever. The hurdles to a biometric solution are very high and numerous. And they are all bypassed with 3-D printers and/or someone with access to hand tools in their garage.

On the brain health side of things short of mandatory examinations of a large segment of the population it’s not going to work no matter how accurate your examination is. And that gets into some troubling civil rights territory.

It will be interesting to watch and see what comes out of this. My guess is nothing anywhere nearly worth $1,000,000.

Always learning new things

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Doing things in Real Life ™ is educational. Frustrating, tiring, confusing, and risky, but educational. Case in point: after writing a book comes the part you have much less control over, and a learning curve that you can’t postpone. (Or should have researched better, earlier). Continue reading →

Random thought of the day

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Almost everyone knows that leaving the refrigerator door open in the summer doesn’t, on the whole, make your house cooler. But did you know that in the winter you could use your freezer to make ice, store it in the ice-house for summer use, and make more ice you would be using the refrigerator as a heat pump and warm the house? This would make more efficient use of the electricity for heating than if you used that same electricity to heat your home directly with an electric furnace or baseboard electric heat. Part of the heat comes from the electricity used to run the freezer and the rest of the heat comes from the water you put in the freezer. You remove heat from the water, causing it to freeze, put the heat into the air, which raises the temperature of the air.

Plus, when you use the ice you stored in the winter the next summer you save on your summer electric bill as well.

Yeah, I know. What a geek. That what you get when read the blog of someone who thought their thermodynamics class was fun.

Gumming up the works

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In reference to Obamacare President Obama said:

A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they’ll somehow be sticking it to me.

What advocates for Obamacare and statists in general don’t seem to understand is that you cannot expect anything but people attempting to “gum up the works” under these situations. Anytime there exists a desired product or service and willing buyers those products and services will naturally, without any coercion, be exchanged for money or barter from the buyers.

Government is coercion. It is applying force. The “force of law” is a common phrase for a reason. Laws and government in some circumstances can help. It’s difficult to argue that using the force of government to enforce contracts entered into by willing parties is anything other than “a good thing”.

But on the other end of the spectrum when the force of government is used to require people purchase a product they did not want, supply a product below cost, outlaw products desired by the market, or sell only products wanted by only a few then things are different. In these instances, all present with Obamacare, government itself created obstacles to the free exchange of product and money. No one should expect the majority of people to embrace it. If it was something people wanted then they would have willingly done it before being forced to by the government. If the force of government is required before something will happen then government is “gumming up the works” of what people naturally want to do. And one should not be surprised when people expend effort in attempting to avoid or eliminate the obstacles placed in their path by government.

For Obama to complain that people opposing Obamacare are “gumming up the works” should be a defining example of the classic meaning of chutzpah.

Quote of the day—Don Lemon

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Well, first let’s remove the politics and truthfully talk about gun laws, about gun violence.  After the Newtown shooting President Obama commissioned the Center for Disease Control to research gun violence and offer solutions.  And the study was completed this summer and it just might make you rethink your stance, your view, on the issue.  It did for me.

Don Lemon
September 19, 2013
REALITY CHECK: Let’s Talk About Guns
[You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.*—Joe]

*John 8:32

Gun cartoon of the day

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H/T to Weer’d Beard for the email pointing me to the image here.

ComeAndTakeIt

First, there are a lot of people that want to take our guns. Haven’t they ever heard the phrase “assault weapon ban”? Or how about New York’s SAFE act?

Second, invoking Markley’s Law is an automatic fail in the “discussion”.

Third, advocating for background checks to exercise a specific enumerated right is crazy talk.

Cut lead bar verses round ball

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I’d not heard of cut lead bar being used in lieu of ball. The use of “findings” in a fowling piece or a blunderbuss, sure, but not this. Interesting.

If you can melt lead or a similar metal or alloy (and who can’t?) and pour it into a slot between some boards, you have buckshot for your scattergun, or bullets for your “smooth rifle”.

I wouldn’t try it on the line at Boomershoot though. Well OK I might, but I wouldn’t expect any detonations, much less hits, from 400 yards.

Only a gun

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Does Lorraine Devon Wilke live on planet Nerf where the bats can break Nerf desks and Nerf windows but not a head?

The student in Roswell might have picked up a bat and smashed a few desks, knocked over some chairs or even broken a few bones. He might have trashed a locker, broken a window or spewed graffiti across a wall. But leaving a child critically wounded with a shot to the face? Only a gun can inflict that result.

Only a gun? Wow!

Wilke goes on to say:

It appears we care more about owning guns than saving ourselves from them. We care more about being able to carry them, defend them, shoot them, and justify the damage caused by them. We care so much about all that, wrapped in arguments of outdated constitutional amendments, that we’ve basically agreed, tacitly or otherwise, that we will live in a society where an irate moviegoer can kill someone for texting, an angry child can destroy a classmate out of anger, and a distraught father can end his life out of despair.

I do not want to live in that kind of society. Do you?

“Outdated constitutional amendments”? She has to have the 2nd Amendment as one of those. I wonder what other specific enumerated rights she thinks is outdated? The rights that would inhibit the confiscation of all firearms in the hands of private citizens?

Ms Wilke, if you don’t want to live in a society that respects our preexisting, specific, enumerated, rights then I suggest you to move to a different society. You won’t be taking my guns and my rights from me during my lifetime in this society.

I have to conclude these type of people have crap for brains.

New Product

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It’s the UltiMAK model M15 optic mount for the Yugo/Serbian M92 (A.K.A. PAP) AK pistol.

There have been a lot of requests for this. The first batch went into anodizing today and should be shipping by next week.

As always; yes it’s slightly shorter than the original piston tube. Yes, it’s supposed to be that way. No, that won’t have any effect on carrier cycling whatsoever. Yes, it’s the very best place for a dot sight on your AK. It’s also the right place to mount a pistol scope. No, it doesn’t need to be removed for cleaning.

I won’t get into the issue of the utility of an AK pistol. Several of the guns I own don’t have much real utility in the strict, modern sense (the reproduction 1861 Colt Navy percussion revolver comes to mind). Then again, some people are SBRing the AK pistols, providing a sub-gun-sized, shouldered shooter with a lot more power (and muzzle blast) than a 9 mm or a 45, plus ammo and magazine compatibility with a regular AK carbine.

1939 LA County sheriff’s revolver club

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From an e-mail.

The PC police would of course disapprove of the cigarettes and cigar. OK they’d disapprove of everything.

Also they handle lead with their bare hands at the range, shoot stuff out of other people’s mouths and ears which our litigious society now largely prevents, and they still for some reason thought the human heart was all in the left side of the chest. It appears that the price of their cast lead bullet reloads was a penny per round (presumably with the deposit of your spent brass).

They had someone else to clean your gun for you. That I do not approve– It’s not only elitist, but dumb from the standpoint of being able to understand and monitor the condition your own hardware. You should clean your own gun as an integral part of the craft.

They did have rotary, progressive loading machines.

I understand the desire for efficiency at a range, and of having some kind of standards for evaluating the skills of your deputies, but the highly controlled (and therefore highly limited) nature of the training/practice experience at such a range leaves me somewhat cold. I suppose it makes me something of an outlier, but I think you should to get out and simply “play” at it now and then, making up your own scenarios, picking non-standard targets at un-measured distances and so on. I’ll call this “messin’ around shooting”.

I once had a retired LA cop (which means he should very well know better from more than a little personal experience) tell me that his 45 ACP could “shoot through an engine block”. When I got back into shooting after being a hippie for a while, one of the first things I did, of course, was to try various calibers on an old chainsaw at a friend’s house. A 9 mm Para would break the aluminum fins off the cylinder, a 10 mm would strip the fins down clean, and a 7.62 x 39 would punch through the light aluminum and severely dent or tear the steel parts. There’s no way your 45 is going to “shoot through an engine block”. The messin’ around shooter already knows this from direct experience.

So while the gelatin testers, the organized range shooters and the gun magazine readers are talking about the performance of this or that bullet or load, the hunter who does his own butchering, and the messin’ around shooter, are often scratching their heads laughing at them.

I know people who are far more concerned about keeping the grass at the range looking nice than having year-round access for shooters, and they hate people like me. If it’s your own private club and your dime, fine.

Man; I got a little distracted there, huh?

Quote of the day—Morpho

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I don’t care so much about banning assault rifles as I do about the clip sizes and background checks. These weapons really aren’t the problem. If people want to waste money on these toys, go ahead. They’re fun to shoot for about 1 clip, then boooooooring. They’re a pain to clean and maintain, and the ammo isn’t exactly cheap. But they sure make your wiener feel enhanced, right big boy?

Morpho
February 4, 2013
Comment to Assault Weapons Ban Likely To Die So That Broader Gun Policy Legislation Can Live
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Quote of the day—J. D. Longstreet

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Mr. Obama, through his words, deeds, and declarations has made it clear that he finds our constitution abhorrent.  It is Obama’s propensity for shrugging off the will of the people and the bonds of the constitution on government that have made him the gun salesman of the year.

J. D. Longstreet
January 17, 2014
Beware the Phrase “Sensible Gun Control Laws,” or Why Obama is The Best Gun Salesman In History
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Moving up

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Just an FY:

The Stars Came Back is now at:

#18 15 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military

#26 22 21 Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military

#42 35 34 Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Science Fiction

Which at the moment translates into 164 183 209 units sold, 4 borrowed.

Whoo-hoo!

UPDATE: now at #1918 in Amazon paid Kindle store.

Quote of the day—New Yorkers Against Gun Violence

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The NY SAFE Act included crucial and widely popular provisions like background checks on all gun purchasers, a prohibition on sales of assault rifles with certain characteristics, a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, and other measures.

New Yorkers Against Gun Violence
January 15, 2014
Groups push for more gun control in NY
[“Widely popular” must have a different meaning in the alternate universe in which these people spend most of their time. In the real world a large number of Law Enforcement is Against NY Safe Act. If even law enforcement is vocal about opposing the law then the law is essentially pointless. Who is going to enforce it?

These people have mental problems.—Joe]

FBI, IRS- just another gang?

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After people within the IRS basically admitted they targeted political opponents such as Tea Party groups for harassment, the FBI was finally called in to investigate because the behavior by the “impartial” IRS was so egregious. The head of the investigation, who “just happens” to be an Obama donor, decided there was nothing illegal going on, so they dropped the investigation, filing no charges.

I’m not sure how our decent into Banana Republic corruption and political abuse could happen so fast, unless the rot has been going a lot deeper, longer, than I thought, and it just took the Audacity of Dope to really bring it out in such an obvious way. We can only hope for a monumental backlash come election time. If not… time to start milking the system for all it’s worth, bring it down as fast and hard as possible, so the rebuilding can begin sooner.

Got Plugged

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Whoo-hoo! I got plugged. Er, perhaps I should explain that.

My book, The Stars Came Back, got a plug in the Book Plug Friday over at PJ Lifestyle, part of the Pajamas Media Megaplex. Be interesting to see what effect it has on sales.

So far the book has three reviews – I’d greatly appreciate more from any of you that have read it, particularly if you have written reviews before. Doesn’t have to be magnificent writing (that’s my job), just tell what you liked about it, strengths and quirks, compare it to other better known books or authors you liked. Thanks for your support, now back to our regular gun-news.