About an hour ago, I talked to Barb about the fire. I said that the Los Angeles fire will go down in history as a major event. It will be like the Great Chicago Fire. A memorable point of history. Then I saw this from Matthew Bracken on Gab:
Related and also from Bracken:
Underground bunkers are relatively immune and more easily defended from fires. Just saying…
Interesting… Patented steel alloy cased ammo allows higher pressures:
The technology of a stronger case allowing high pressures without case stretching and primer pocket expansion is very cool. They are pushing the maximum chamber pressure up to 80,000 PSI. This gives them ability to push high BC (0.645) bullets to 3,150 fps. This is a slightly higher BC and 250 fps more than what I can do with .300 Win Mag. And the cases can be reloaded.
I also find it very interesting that suppressors are going mainstream with this ad.
This is the attitude that lost the election. They will not compromise they will not convert they will not be human. They must be defeated – and any chance to bruise or batter them psychologically must be exploited
Keith Olbermann
Posted on X, January 8, 2025
This is the X post Olbermann was replying to:
I know someone who hosted a party to celebrate the death of Rush Limbaugh. I also know someone who told me they would celebrate the death of President Trump.
This is what they think of you. They want you dead.
Try to heal the division, but prepare appropriately.
After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.
…
We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.
Mark Zuckerberg
January 7, 2025
Zuck Finds His Spine
See also Mark Zuckerberg was right to fire Facebook’s rogue fact-checkers:
These changes are wildly positive. It’s also heartening that Zuckerberg seems to understand precisely what had gone wrong, and why: The company made attempts to satisfy both mainstream media institutions and even government agencies, particularly when it came to controversial political topics like COVID-19. What moderators soon discovered is that this is impossible; there is no end to the amount of speech suppression that is desired by censorship-inclined entities. Politicians in both parties dragged Zuckerberg before the U.S. Congress to answer for a vast array of alleged sins—the end of democracy, the abuse of children, tensions with Russia, and more.
What unites legacy media institutions with politically motivated speech hunters in government is growing frustration over their own loss of control with respect to guardrails of acceptable speech. Thanks to social media, these guardrails scarcely exist; by inveighing constantly against Facebook, the old guard hoped to re-install them.
I read a thread someplace. Perhaps it was on X. It seemed that both Democrats and Republicans were throwing “rotten vegetables” at him over this announcement. Those on the political left are saying he is a sellout. He is just doing this to avoid being on the wrong side of Hitler. People on the right were saying they don’t trust him and the change comes much too late.
I am cautiously optimistic. But I won’t give them any significant trust until we are a couple years into a Democrat presidency. I need to see them on good behavior regardless of which direction the political winds are blowing.
Mr. Burlison is also introducing legislation to repeal the 1934 National Firearms Act, which taxes, registers, and restricts gun owners.
Kerry Picket
January 7, 2025
GOP lawmakers introduce legislation to abolish ATF – Washington Times
The headline is concerned with abolishing the ATF. Slinking into view with a single low-key sentence is a WMD against Federal gun laws.
I think it is unlikely to pass on its own this year and or even the foreseeable future. But if Musk and Ramaswamy trim two trillion from the budget via the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), then I could see the ATF and the NFA as part of the eliminated waste.
This would result in my vision of seeing machine gun competitions in high schools by 2032 being realized.
Often it’s perfectly fine to blindly follow rules and guidelines, but sometimes, every once in a while, it can permit atrocities to happen: from cruel conspiracies against that one person in your friend group who’s a little different all the way up the scale to genocidal actions. So it’s absolutely vital to be able to think about the norms we follow, and, from time to time, to break the less useful ones just to make sure we still can. We need to practice non-conformity to make sure we can do it when we need to. It’s always wise to take a minute to think, ‘Do I really agree with this, and could it harm anyone?’ before acting.
Marie Snyder
January 2, 2025
Stand Out: How to Prevent Obeying in Advance – 3 Quarks Daily
Via email from Chris M.
Following this advice is tougher than you think. This behavior extends from seemly insignificant curiosities to the mind boggling horrific.
For example. Turn off all the lights in a room and shine a light through a pin hole in a wall. Ask the group of people in the room to report which direction the light is moving. After discussing it, they will agree the stationary light is moving and the direction of that movement.
We have examples from the other end of the scale as well. Virtually no one in a group will use their shovel to attack their murderers. This is true even if they are knowingly digging their own graves. Everyone else is digging, so the individual conforms to the norm.
Practice being a non-conformist. It may save your life and/or the lives of thousands or even millions of others.
How about this? You can have any gun you’re willing to be shot with.
“Excellent choice, sir. Before I ring it up, just one small formality. Please go and stand in front of that wall…”
Gethsemane Tilset (@djapn)
Tweeted on September 26, 2022
As if guns were designed to be harmless when they hit their target. They really are that stupid. Or they are pushing a mindset intended to make effective self-defense nearly impossible? Nerf and Airsoft guns are all you need, right?
I find it interesting this user still exists on X but has zero followers and has no posts. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that.
Brother Doug is writing a biography about my Grandfather Huffman. Doug asked that I write a little about I remember of him.
Grandpa died in February a few months after I turned seven years old. The things I write about below were all from summers when I was six or fewer years old. Doug is younger than me and just barely remembers him.
This is what I sent Doug a few minutes ago. Perhaps it will be interesting to others as well.
It always was a big event when Grandpa and Grandma Huffman would come to the farm. Early in the summer we would get a letter and/or call from Grandpa and Grandma Huffman telling us when they planned to arrive on the farm. My brothers and I would eagerly await the day. And then on the expected day we would run to check the road whenever we heard a car. Usually, it would be in the mid-afternoon that we would finally see the green Crysler Windsor pulling the camping trailer down the road to the bottom of the driveway, then up the driveway to our house. The car would stop and temporarily park in front of the old house. Mom and Dad would join us kids as we welcomed them and talked before they parked the trailer and unhooked the car.
The trailer’s normal location for the summer was under the trees to the west and a little north of the old garage. We had created a simple septic system for the trailer to connect to and there was a water hydrant supplied by a long above ground semi-flexible black plastic pipe <Doug, this is how I remember it, but I can’ t remember where it was supplied from. Was it via the pipe that went a few inches under the gravel road behind the woodshed?> They had an electricity connection too.
The trailer would spend most of time there. But sometimes they take it to go camping and fishing. Uncle Walt and Aunt Pet would always go with them with their trailer. At least once Harold and Virginia Rhymer (sp?) and brought their trailer went with them too. I don’t remember exactly where but I suspect it was up the Lochsa or Selway Rivers. Usually, our entire family went camping with them. But I know that once I went with them without my family. It was with the Rhymers and the two elder Huffman families. There may have been other times too. I remember fishing using hellgrammites for bait. I would find them under rocks and logs in the river and put them on my hook or lure (the “Super Duper” lure was frequently used) and cast them into the pools of water to attract the rainbow trout. The adults typically would use lures with a different bait and I’m pretty sure Harold almost exclusively used handmade flies. I know Grandpa raised fishing worms in his backyard in Riverside. A wood box filled with dirt and worm food was under one of the orange trees. I think he brought some of those up with him for the fishing trips.
While all the adults slept in beds in the trailers, I recall sleeping in a small tent with a sleeping bag.
One time Grandma made biscuits for breakfast. They came out the most beautiful brown and everyone was eager to eat them. I got mine first, put the required butter and jelly on it, and took a big bite. Someone asked how it tasted. I told everyone it was good. But it wasn’t good. It tasted really bad. As other people took a bit out of their biscuits it became apparent there was something very wrong with the biscuits. I continued to slowly eat my biscuit which I had proclaimed was good until several adults told me I didn’t have to eat it. They would, and did, make something else for our breakfast.
It turned out that Grandpa Huffman put all the baking supplies into containers that would not spill when the trailer was being moved. When he labeled the containers, he mixed up the baking powder and the baking soda. The baking soda is what caused the biscuits to taste so bad.
Grandma and Aunt Pet frequently told that story about me to demonstrate how polite I was by not saying anything bad about Grandma’s food.
Early one morning Aunt Pet took me out into the woods to look for what they called Mountain Tea (research on this last summer revealed it is more frequently called Yerba Buena, clinopodium douglasii, or Oregon tea). We picked the leafy ground hugging vines and took it back to camp and made a hot tea with it. The extra leaves and vines were taken home to dry and put in a container for the next camping trip. I really liked the delicate mint like tea made with the fresh green leaves and vines. But the dried tea was harsh and not something I cared for.
Here is a picture of the “Mountain Tea” I referenced above. The picture is one I used in a blog post last summer.
This has always been about money, greed, and power. To the NRA leaders and the bubbas, military-style weapons in the hands of Americans are power. The power of overkill. The power to disregard others’ safety, including that of school children. The power to wave a big gun around to substitute for other inadequacies.
Carol Lennox
September 20, 2022
There Is No Greater Injustice Than Supporting Gun ‘Rights’ Over Children’s Lives – The Good Men Project
It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday; it is another science denier (see also here)!
There is lots of opportunity to roll your eyes about in the article. My first opportunity was the third sentence:
I’ve spit buckshot out while eating quail my uncle shot.
She attempts to deflect her critics by claiming she grew up in a gun culture and understands us. Unfortunately for her she demonstrates she really doesn’t know the culture at all. The inadequacies are all in her understanding.
See also Being in favor of gun control isn’t the height of morality – Bearing Arms for more comments about this article.
Previous research using seismology found that a large reservoir of magma sat beneath the caldera. However, the recent study, using a method known as magnetotellurics that tracks the electric conductivity of magma, found something different.
“When we used magnetotellurics, we were able to see, actually, there’s not a lot there,” said Ninfa Bennington, lead author on the study and a research geophysicist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. “There are these segregated regions where magma is stored across Yellowstone, instead of having one sort of large reservoir.”
Bennington added that her team learned that the percentage of magma stored in the reservoirs was actually quite low. This means that none of the reservoirs are capable of producing an eruption anytime soon. Their research suggests the northeast region of Yellowstone wouldn’t expect to erupt again for hundreds of thousands of years.
Angeli Gabriel
January 2, 2025
Scientists reveal when a Yellowstone volcano super eruption could happen | Fox Weather
Although I knew it was unlikely, being within the severely impacted zone of a Yellowstone eruption has been an item of concern for me. I have seen the devastation of the Mount St. Helen’s eruption and that was barely a hiccup compared to a Yellowstone supereruption*. Yet the speed of the pyroclastic flow reached speeds of 670 MPH and may have even briefly been supersonic. Imagine the effect of a huge mass of rock, sand, and dirt on the countryside when moving across it at supersonic speeds. The death of all life blast radius of a Yellowstone supereruption would be hundreds of miles. My underground bunker in Idaho would not be a suitable refuge in the face of a such a natural disaster. It is only a little over 300 miles from the probable center of the Yellowstone eruption.
Hence, the projection of the next eruption being hundreds of thousands of years from now allows me some comfort. I can probably expect dealing with such an eruption is someone else’s problem. i can concentrate on the more immediate threats of economic collapse, tyrannical governments, and other man-made disasters.
* Mount Saint Helen’s ash was about 1.3 km3. A Yellowstone supereruption is expected to be over 1,000 km3. See also the comparison of the ash fall boundaries of Mount Saint Helen’s to the Yellowstone supereruptions of the past.
As I witnessed the despair and incomprehension of liberals worldwide after Donald Trump’s victory in November’s U.S. presidential election, I had a sinking feeling that I had been through this before. The moment took me back to 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, signaling the beginning of the end of Soviet Communism and the lifting of the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since the end of World War II. The difference was that the world that collapsed in 1989 was theirs, the Communists’. Now it is ours, the liberals’.
…
Living through such moments in history teaches one many things, but the most important is the sheer speed of change: People can totally alter their views and political identity overnight; what only yesterday was considered unthinkable seems self-evident today. The shift is so profound that people soon find their old assumptions and choices unfathomable.
…
Trump captured the public imagination not because he had a better plan for how to win the war in Ukraine or manage globalization, but because he understood that the world of yesterday could be no more. The United States’ postwar political identity has vanished into the abyss of the ballot box. This Trump administration may succeed or fail on its own terms, but the old world will not return. Even most liberals do not want it back.
Ivan Krastev
January 3, 2025
Why Liberals Struggle to Cope With Epochal Change
I found this very interesting. I’m not sure I agree with it. I’m not even sure I understand it. But it certainly gives me some food for thought.
During the first quick reading, I was seeing the collapse of Marxism as being inevitable. The U.S. version was less deadly than the Soviet version and the collapse less disruptive. The replacement with a freer society is inevitable.
On the second, more careful reading, Krastev sees a darker future for the U.S. This is the part I don’t really buy. But prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future*. So, who really knows?
* Quote Origin: It’s Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future – Quote Investigator®
And to paraphrase James Madison, if judges were angels, nothing further would need be said. But unfortunately, however else it might be described, our court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence can hardly be labeled angelic. Possessed maybe—by a single-minded focus on ensuring that any panel opinions actually enforcing the Second Amendment are quickly reversed. The majority of our court distrusts gun owners and thinks the Second Amendment is a vestigial organ of their living constitution. Those views drive this circuit’s caselaw ignoring the original meaning of the Second Amendment and fully exploiting the discretion inherent in the Supreme Court’s cases to make certain that no government regulation ever fails our laughably “heightened” Second Amendment scrutiny.
…
Until the Supreme Court forces our court to do something different than balance our view of the utility of some firearm product or usage against the government’s claimed harm from its misuse, the Second Amendment will remain essentially an ink blot in this circuit.
Lawrence VanDyke
Ninth Circuit US Circuit Judge
November 30, 2021
DUNCAN V. BONTA No. 19-55376
Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras -> Kostas Moros @MorosKostas -> Google…
SCOTUS needs to exercise force.
Do not shoot guns into the air. Always know your target and what is behind it:
Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras -> BattlecockActual @TheBattlecock
The slim ball politicians in Washington State are continuing their assault on gun owners and dealers with HOUSE BILL 1132 which reads in part:
A new section is added to chapter 9.41 RCW to read as follows:
(1)(a) A dealer may not deliver more than one firearm to a purchaser or transferee within any 30-day period.(b) A dealer may not deliver more than 100 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition or more than 1,000 rounds of any other caliber of ammunition to a purchaser or transferee within any 30-day period.
(2) Subsection (1) of this section does not apply to any of the following:
(a) Any general authority Washington law enforcement agency or limited authority Washington law enforcement agency as those terms are defined in RCW 10.93.020;
(b) Any correctional facility as defined in RCW 72.09.015;
(c) Any private security company as defined in RCW 18.170.010;
(d) Any federal peace officer, general authority Washington peace officer, or limited authority Washington peace officer who as a normal part of the officer’s duties has arrest powers and carries a firearm, as those terms are defined in RCW 10.93.020, and is obtaining firearms or ammunition for law enforcement purposes;
(e) The criminal justice training commission;
(f) Any federal firearms dealer, federal firearms importer, or dealer, as those terms are defined in RCW 9.41.010, who is obtaining firearms or ammunition for resale;
(g) Any person who may, pursuant to RCW 9.41.113(4), claim an exemption from the background check requirements of RCW 9.41.113;
(h) The exchange of a firearm where the dealer sold that firearm to the person seeking the exchange within the 30-day period immediately preceding the date of exchange or replacement;
(i) The return of any firearm to its owner;
(j) The receipt of firearms by a person who acquires possession of the firearms by operation of law upon the death of the former owner who was in legal possession of the firearms, provided the person in possession of the firearms can establish such provenance. Receipt under this subsection is not “distribution” under this chapter;
(k) Any private party transaction where the seller is, at the time of the transaction, required under state law or by court order to relinquish all firearms;
(l) Any private party transaction where the seller is any of the following:
(i) The personal representative of a decedent’s estate who is transferring the firearm to one or more heirs or beneficiaries of the decedent’s estate pursuant to the decedent’s will or the laws of intestate succession;
(ii) The holder of the decedent’s property who is transferring the firearms pursuant to RCW 11.62.010 to the successor of the decedent, as defined in RCW 11.62.005, or the surviving spouse of the decedent pursuant to RCW 11.04.015; or
(iii) The trustee of a trust who is transferring the firearms to one or more trust beneficiaries upon the death of a settlor of the trust; or
(m) Any person who is a licensed collector as defined in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 921 and the regulations issued pursuant thereto, and who has a current certificate of eligibility issued by the department of justice.
(3)(a) Any person who violates this section commits a class 1
civil infraction and shall be assessed a monetary penalty of $500.(b) If a person previously has been found to have violated this section, then the person is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable under chapter 9A.20 RCW for a subsequent violation of this section.
(c) If a person previously has been found to have violated this section two or more times, then the person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor punishable under chapter 9A.20 RCW for each subsequent violation of this section.
Who are they targeting with this law? It is just the dealer. A person purchasing ammo can go to a different seller every other day. They can then purchase 15,000 rounds in a month without running afoul of this proposed law. They can even buy any number of rounds from a friend.
Via email, Rolf proposed a motive for this seeming absurdity:
Depending on the enforcement regs, I think I may see its primary purpose.
It a limitation on FFLs selling you more than X. Not a prohibition on you buying more than X.
That means the DEALER must track by ID all purchases and maintain those records.
If they don’t, then a government informant walks in 29 days apart as part of a sting operation…..
Constant harassment of dealers is the only goal.
This is plausible. But I think it is just as likely that they really are that stupid. The law doesn’t have to make sense. It is just (what they want to be) the law.
If you insist this has to make sense in some way, then Rolf has a decent hypothesis. Think about it this way. Excluding the Las Vegas music festival shooting a few years ago, where over 1,100 rounds were fired, can you name a crime that utilized more than 1,000 rounds? And even in that incident, Purchases from just two dealers would have supplied more than enough ammo.
This makes it crystal clear their goal is not public safety.
These criminal need to be prosecuted. I hope they enjoy their trials.
We don’t make this statement lightly, but the folks over at Giffords and Brady have filed an amicus brief in a matter, challenging all of Maryland’s new sensitive places, that actually argues that the First Amendment and the Second Amendment cannot coexist, and because of that, the 2A will always take a back seat to the 1A.
William Kirk
December 30, 2024
The Most Dangerous Gun Control Argument You Will Ever Read
What other rights must you only exercise one at a time? If you exercise your right to freedom of religion, do you forfeit your Third Amendment rights and you will be required to quarter troops in your house? Or how about, if you insist on a warrant before your house is searched, you then forfeit your “privilege” to a lawyer when being questioned by the police.
I don’t say “privilege” lightly, because this is what they are demanding. The government gets to decide when, where, how, and if you get to exercise a specific enumerated right. Their demands change the exercise of a right into a privilege.
I don’t think the courts will buy this argument. I would like to think the lawyers writing this brief know it too and are doing this just for the money.
I hope they get slapped down with extraordinary harshness.
from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.
John Roberts
Supreme Court Chief Justice
December 31, 2024
Roberts warns against ignoring Supreme Court rulings as tension with Trump looms
One has to wonder if there are specific cases he has in mind when he says this. More importantly, what actions will the court take to enforce their decisions?
“Stupidity” may apply in terms of whether they honestly believe such restrictions will reduce or prevent crime, but rights-hating Democrats know such measures infuriate and frustrate gun owners, which is exactly what they want to do. Were they in elementary school, one might argue, this would be called bullying, because they know they can get away with it.
Dave Workman
December 30, 2024
WA Lump of Coal: Dems File HB 1132 Limiting Gun, Ammo Buys
They have been bullying us for decades. I expect it will get worse before it gets better. It will only get better when they start paying a price. I don’t know when or if that will happen, but I know it should happen.
There are at least two ways this can come about legally. 1), they are prosecuted; or 2), the court assigns a monitor to them. The monitor would report to the judge periodically.
I would like to see the politicians and activists supporting this crap spent time in prison. I’m thinking the sentence length should he double the number of days the offending law was in force.
Needs a bigger dick.
Sara Spector @Miriam2626
Tweeted on December 25, 2023
It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday; it is another science denier (see also here)!
This was in response to this tweet:
What is surprising is this is someone who claims she is a:
Political and Legal pundit. Midland Texas Criminal Defense Attorney.
A lawyer so at loss for words she invokes a childish insult. That is really telling you something about the strength of her position on guns and gun owners.
Of course she was totally ratioed. There were some memes I had not seen before, too.
Via Ron Swanson has had enough @Junglist1776:
Via Toshiro Grendel @ToshiroGrendel:
Via 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎 @DissidentWillie:
Meanwhile, in your panties..
Time is not on our side. As the Eurozone crumbles and American protectionism ramps up, our flimsy state will be crushed like an ant between two great elephants. To see Britain lose itself within America would surely be a tragedy of world-historic proportions. But the alternative – to sink complacently into powerlessness, spurred on by politicians who can hardly define what “nationhood” even means – doesn’t bear thinking about. The politics of self-interest is clearly beyond our miserable band of modern leaders.
Why not jump on to the America First bandwagon and throw in our lot with the winning side? If nothing else, we might get better fast food out of it.
Poppy Coburn
December 26, 2024
It’s time to become the 51st state of the US
Coburn is advocating Great Britain join the U.S.A as our 51st state! That is a new one to me.
That deserves as least a little thought. My initial thought is that I need to be convinced it was a good idea.
Canada would bring a lot of natural resources to the union. The proximity would make productive use relatively easy. The political culture of central Canada could be considered a match. I think this would work to the benefit of both peoples.
As much as I would love to see the introduction of the 2nd Amendment to Great Britain. But other than a decade or so of amusement and plenty of work for firearms instructors and gun manufactures what do they have to offer. We already have decent access to our pick of their human resources. I have worked with numerous software engineers from there. My stepdaughter is going to school there. She was welcomed into a top-notch school for her doctorate in Computer Science. They have some awesome building and history. But we can already visit and partake the joys of that. The politics are painfully to the left of here. Their healthcare sucks. So why buy the cow when you can get the milk for a good price? What am I missing?
One day, in the near future, a global war break out will with every human on the planet participating.
On one side, their banners will proclaim the war cry, “2+2=4”.
On the other side, their rainbow banners will state, “That’s racist!”
Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith)
Tweeted on March 29, 2022
While I think this is overstated to make the point, I do think it has more than a little truth in it. And that is very depressing. It is between the sane and insane. It is war about reality and delusions.