Author Archives: Joe

Heavy vampire infestation

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It’s that time of season again—time to go buy surveyors stakes for Boomershoot (see also Vampire season again and Vampire time of year again).

So, after dinner last night we drove over to Lowe’s and bought the stakes. And this time we also bought some lime at the same time to put on the target berm to stabilize all the lead we put into the ground there:

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With the addition of the lime I had an additional line of thought for responding to the anticipated question question from the checkout clerk. Once the vampires are dead we need to get rid of the bodies, right? Lime will help with that.

The clerk didn’t quite bite. “Big project?”, she asked. I wanted a bigger invite than that and just said, “You could say that.” Barb thought it was sufficient and offered, “He usually says, ‘It’s for the vampires.’”. So, I ran with it, “Yes, we have a very heavy infestation of vampires this year and the lime is to dispose of the bodies.” The clerk smiled and murmured something in agreement with the plan. Little did she know the real plan is almost as unbelievable.

Resetting their mind with facts

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Facts can matter to people:

We often see anti-gun people being immune to facts and running completely on emotions and beliefs that have no connection to reality. Here we see something different. Why?

I think When Prophecy Fails (see also my website about the book) gives us the answers. The following conditions are from the book. These are the conditions which must exist to create the condition for a “true believer” to “double down” and try to recruit more believers to their faulty belief system when confronted with disproof of their faulty belief system. All five of these conditions must exist in order for this to happen. Hence, if you can break just one of these conditions they will stop their journey down their delusional path:

  1. A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he behaves.
  2. The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual’s commitment to the belief.
  3. The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
  4. Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
    The first two of these conditions specify the circumstances that will make the belief resistant to change. The third and fourth conditions together, on the other hand, point to factors that would exert powerful pressure on a believer to discard his belief. It is, of course, possible that an individual, even though deeply convinced of a belief, may discard it in the face of unequivocal disconfirmation.  We must therefore, state a fifth condition specifying the circumstances under which the belief will be discarded and those under which it will be maintained with new fervor.
  5. The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence we have specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, we would expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselyte or to persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.

And this gives us the answer on how to change minds. We see it in the video above. They were not within their social support group. They are extremely social animals. We tend to be individualists. Anti-gun people tend to be herd animals. These people require social support. If you can isolate them, even for a very short time, and present facts then they are likely to break from their delusion.

Another thing that was important is these people read the facts out loud. They didn’t just hear someone tell them the facts. Visual is much better than audible. Having them saying the words is even better. That strikes much deeper than them skimming the words and saying they read it. It reaches the visual and auditory areas of their brains as well as the conscious thinking part of their brain (required for the translation from text to spoken words).

This was brilliant.

When your anti-gun friend or relative is separated from other anti-gun people hand them a piece of paper and ask them to read it out loud, “So we can talk about this together.”

The facts used in this video:

  • According to the CDC there were roughly 38,000 gun deaths in the 2016. 2/3 of them were suicides.
  • There are over 300,000,000 guns in the United States.
  • There are over 5x more murders by knives than rifles.
  • The U.S. has the highest gun ownership rate in the world. But ranks 28th in gun murders.
  • That is a rate of about 2.97 deaths per 100,000 people.
  • Handguns are responsible for more than 80% of total mass shootings.
  • Between 1993 and 2003 gun ownership increased by 56% while gun violence decreased by nearly half.
  • Since 1950 nearly all mass public shootings have occurred in gun free zones.
  • From 2013 to 2015 the six states that banned open carry, experienced higher rates of police deaths.
  • 86.4% of 20,000 police chiefs and sheriffs support concealed carry and are overwhelming against further gun control.
  • Those that have concealed carry permits, on average, commit less crime than police.
  • There is a clear correlation between higher firearm ownership and reducing police killings.
  • Switzerland with a population of about eight million and armed with an estimated two million guns in circulation and limited gun regulation Switzerland’s overall gun homicide rate is practically zero.
  • Gun ownership rate does not correlate with the homicide rate.

Principles are vital for the long term. But principles require the thinking part of the brain to be engaged. You cannot have a principled discussion with a mob chanting for your death. This is how you get their mind reset to a point where principles have a chance of reaching them.

Quote of the day—John Paul Stevens

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Demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

…

A constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.

John Paul Stevens
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice
March 27, 2018
John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment
[H/T to Paul Koning.

Although it doesn’t seem to be they are saying it these days, don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Apparently Stevens has forgotten about U S v Cruikshank:

The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.

Oh, and I think he is also unaware there is the small matter of 300 to 600 million firearms currently in circulation, extremely low compliance with existing requirements to register or turn in firearms, over 60% of the police say they will not enforce more restrictive gun laws, and the tens of billions of rounds of ammunition that will have to be “collected” before the guns are confiscated.—Joe]

DON’T DO THAT!!!!

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Even if this is true, unexpected by rational people, and newsworthy DON’T publish this sort of stuff about mass murderers:

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Mass murderer [scum bag] is getting stacks of fan mail and love letters sent to the Broward County jail, along with hundreds of dollars in contributions to his commissary account.

Teenage girls, women and even older men are writing to the Parkland school shooter and sending photographs – some suggestive – tucked inside cute greeting cards and attached to notebook paper with offers of friendship and encouragement. Groupies also are joining Facebook communities to talk about how to help the killer.

The murderer getting attention and fame is a big part of why we have copycats. Yes, we have a First Amendment that protects this publication, but an irresponsible media that publishes even the names of mass shooters bears far more responsibility for copycat murders than the NRA and all gun owner in the U.S. combined.

I have to believe they want more mass shootings. They cannot be that stupid. They cannot have such total crap for brains and still be able to breathe on their own.

New shooter report

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Barb’s son Max, his friend Mikel, and I went to an Airsoft range last Sunday. It was the first time for Mikel and I. I was a little uncomfortable aiming and shooting what looked very much like a real gun at real people. That uncomfortable feeling went away when people started shooting at me. It’s strange how that works. I returned fire and got my share of “kills” and was on the winning side about 70% of the time. It’s not something I would do again on my own, but if someone wanted me to go with them I probably would agree just to be social.

On the way home Mikel asked how the rental Airsoft guns compared to real guns in terms of weight. Max and I told him a little lighter on average and the magazines were much lighter. I followed up with an offer to take him to the range and shoot some real guns if he wanted. He agreed and I was able to get a complete bay to ourselves for Tuesday evening.

I started him out on a .22 pistol with a suppressor. I taught him grip, stance, sight alignment, trigger prep, trigger squeeze, and follow through. Then I had him do dry fire to practice what I had just taught him. Then it was live fire with subsonic ammo. He did well. This is Mikel (with fogged up safety glasses) and his first target after 20 rounds at about five yards:

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Next, no suppressor with high velocity ammo. He continued to do well and we moved the target out to about seven yards. His groups opened up some but they were still inside the rings.

I then at five yards had him shoot five rounds as fast as he could shoot while keeping them inside the rings as he rotating around the four targets while on the shot timer. He continued to keep his cool and keep them within the rings even as he shot faster and faster.

Next I got out a .22 revolver and told him this was the lightest gun I owned. And I put my STI Eagle on the bench and told him that was my heaviest handgun. He compared the two and expressed some surprise.

He fired the revolver single action, then double action, and expressed, both verbally and with his group size, a preference for single action.

Next he did some dry fire with the STI Eagle. To my surprise there was a jerk of the gun when he pulled the trigger on an empty gun. I mentioned this and he said he was anticipating what he expected would happen when it was loaded. Max had told him it would have a lot more recoil. Okay then! We’re going to have fun with this!

I had him dry fire until long past the time the flinch was completely gone. Then I put in a loaded magazine (with very low powered .40 S&W loads) and pretended to put a round in the chamber. “Now, shoot just like with the dry fire”, I told him. There was a click and a big flinch. Gotcha!

I again pretended to put a round in the chamber and reminded him, “Trigger prep, sight alignment, squeeze, follow through. Just like with the empty gun.” No flinch. Again an empty chamber. No flinch. Then a loaded chamber. The bullet went into the bottom of the bullseye at five yards. Again and again he shot. 18 rounds and all near the bottom of the bull into about a 1.5 inch group. Nice. Another 18 rounds in the next target. And again, good shooting. I asked him to remember what his target looked like and I took him to another bay where people were shooting and showed him the targets people were shooting as well as the targets in the garbage cans. Most of them had such a wide pattern there wasn’t even a hint of a group near the rings.

Then I gave him Major Power Factor loads with two of the light loads on the top of the magazine so he could compare the easily. I could hear a significant difference as well as see the increased recoil from the heavier loads. He still kept the rounds on target with only an occasional stray out of the black.

“Okay, now what do you want to do?” I asked. “You can do more handgun shooting of whatever gun you want or you can shoot the AR-15s”, I told him. He was unsure. I then offered to set up multiple targets where he could move and shoot with the handgun. He lit up at this and so we put out five USPSA targets at various distances. I started him about five yards from the closest target, the second to the right at about 10 yards, and the remaining three to the right of that at about 15 yards from his starting position. I told him to start at the low ready, go slow, be safe, put two rounds on each target, move and shoot however he thought would be best to get almost all A-zone hits. He did great on the safety issue and I told him to go a little faster if he wanted. I think he shot the stage four times getting his time down into the 17 second range with reasonable hits most of the time.

Max then shot the stage a few times. Good hits with times in the 15 second range.

They asked if I wanted to shoot it so I shot it two different ways. The first was without moving. Just shooting all the targets from the start position. Something over seven seconds with five A-zone hits and five C-zone hits. The second attempt was while moving and shooting with me ending up about three feet from the last few targets. My time was in the fives with seven A-zone hits and three C-zone hits. They seemed to be impressed.

We cleaned up the range, packed up, washed up, and went outside to talk for a while. I told Mikel the five shots on five targets was practice for steel challenge events and that if he wanted he could shoot that type of match now with his skill set and not be embarrassed. I explained that it is difficult to do extremely well, but it’s easy to “Not suck”. I then told him about a couple flavors of action shooting. I described the problem solving and difficult shooting positions. And to just let me know if he wanted to go shooting again or shoot in a match.

He seemed very enthusiastic and thanked me. In my mind, I was thanking him for giving me an opportunity to bring another person onto our team.

Quote of the day—Magistrate Barry

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I am shocked that you are here. You don’t belong here. I don’t know why the police have pursued it as far as they have.

Magistrate Barry
2014
I faced a 14-year jail sentence for carrying pepper spray
[The same words would be applicable the vast majority of people charged with the violation of gun laws.

H/T to Kris R. who sent me the link via a Facebook message.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rich Burgess

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There may be many different answers to school shootings and other massacres. There may be none. One thing that cannot be argued by rational people is that the answer to these realities cannot consist of advocating more violence against people, whether it be at the hands of deranged lunatics or the government. Disarming individuals has never, and cannot make those individuals safer.

Rich Burgess
President of Connecticut Carry
March 26, 2018
With Regards to the ‘March for our Lives’
Emotional Collectivism Makes You Vulnerable To Those With Bad Intentions
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jean Dupont‏ @laceydupont

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Your gun doesn’t make your dick look bigger. It makes you look like a bigger dick!

MarkleysLaw

Jean Dupont‏ @laceydupont
Tweeted on March 25, 2018
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

They have crude insults and we have SCOTUS decisions.—Joe]

Be careful what you wish for

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If you believe only the police and military should have guns:

GovernmentOnlyGuns

Perhaps you should be more careful what you wish for.

Via Rolf.

Quote of the day—Ken Levy

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The entire reason we have 300+ million guns to defend against is because decades-long efforts to stop this proliferation (mostly by Democrats) have been defeated by public officials (mostly Republicans) insisting that these efforts conflict with the Second Amendment. In this way, the Second Amendment is being used to solve the very problem that it was instrumental in creating.

Ken Levy
March 22, 2018
The (Current) Gun-Control Debate Is Not Really About Gun Control
CrapForBrains

[Apparently Mr. Levy is unaware of a large number of facts that anyone with a firm grasp on reality knows, such as:

Hence, one has to conclude that Mr. Levy has crap for brains and/or is deliberately lying.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle

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A gun guarantees freedom in the same way that a hammer and a chisel guarantee an exquisite sculpture.

Lyle
March 22, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Linda Allderdice
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Ballistic gel tests

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I received an email from Brandon B. of Ammunition To Go about a bunch of ballistic gel tests they recently completed. Nearly 100 different handgun loads were tested. See Self Defense Ammunition Ballistic Test for the overview. There are links there to the individual tests but here are the shortcuts to each of the calibers tested:

There were some interesting results in there. I have a probably 400 hundred rounds of some cheap .40 S&W JHP I bought years ago that I thought might use as carry ammo.

And I did use it as carry for a while. But it sort of bothered me that I didn’t have any data to support it being “high quality”. After a year or so I paid about twice as much per round for other ammo that I knew was used by many law enforcement agencies. I have continued that practice ever since. I don’t always buy the same ammo as the previous time, but I always buy something which has been tested and found to work well with the FBI standardized tests. Yes, the FBI tests have some flaws, but if a cartridge performs well in the FBI tests it isn’t likely to be a failure if I ever need “stopping power” in real life.

So, I looked up the cheap ammo in the test results. It did not do well. I might as well use it for practice, reload the brass, and use the shelf space for something else.

The ammo I have more recently purchased did much better.

Quote of the day—Mark Rosenberg

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We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol—cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly—and banned.

Mark Rosenberg
Director for CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
October 16, 1994
New Tactics Urged in Fight Against Crime
[Tell me why this shouldn’t be treated as a confession of guilt in a violation of 18 USC 241 and/or 18 USC 242.

In more recent news connected to this see What Does The Omnibus Spending Bill Mean for Gun Control? Background Checks and CDC Studies where congress gave the anti-gun people some of what they wanted and didn’t even give gun owners a breadcrumb.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Linda Allderdice

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The best defense against an “abusive government” lies with the rule of law, an independent judiciary and law enforcement, the free press, civil disobedience against injustice, voting by all members of our communities without voter suppression, religious freedom and tolerance, and respect for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all who make their home in our country.

The myth that a gun guarantees freedom has to be shattered once and for all.

Linda Allderdice
Letter to the editor, Los Angles Times
March 21, 2018
[The irony is almost painful.

The Bill of Rights is part of the highest law of the land and Allderdice, apparently wanting to ban guns protected by the Bill of Rights, claims adhering to the rule of law eliminates the need for gun ownership. So, which is it? Does she want to adhere to the rule of law or does she want to ban guns? Also, apparently Allderdice doesn’t recall that the great genocides of Europe in the last century were perform in full compliance with their laws at the time.

I’m tempted to say she has crap for brains, but I have to weigh that speculation against the very real data that public schools don’t teach just how murderous socialist governments can be.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Aesop

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Yeah, because what you really want to do in a society is make 150M gun owners with 600M-1B guns and 1T rounds of ammo for them ostracized pariahs, with nothing to lose, no job, no life, and no prospects, and sit there on top of the shit heap with the other monkeys as Lords of the Flies, with nothing to protect you but an entitled smirk.

Because that will turn out so well for you and the other shitlords.

…

Keep on telling gun owners they’re terrorists, and see what happens when they decide if they’re going to be hanged as a thief, they may as well steal.

Aesop
March 17, 2018
Comment to Robb: When ALL Gun Owners Are Shunned
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rep. Tom Suozzi

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It’s really a matter of putting public pressure on the president. This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts? What would you do? What would we do?

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D)
March 2018
Congressman suggests Second Amendment as means of opposing Trump
[Via email from Lyle who commented (and also suggested this was appropriate):

If nothing else it demonstrates once again that they understand the constitution. They oppose it, not because they fail to understand it, but because they do understand it.

I cannot find fault with this conclusion.—Joe]

Ignorance and/or stupidity?

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Via email from Bill J.:

clip_image001

Does that mean that this liberal wants…

  • Women to be banned from entering schools and college campuses?
  • Women to be banned from any establishment selling alcohol?
  • Women to be banned from polling places on election days?
  • Women to be banned from all government meetings?
  • Women to be banned from all airports?
  • Women to be locked up at all times that they are not in use?
  • Some women to be banned outright, simply because they look too scary?

Hmmmm.

  • Does she also think that guys should be allowed to have more than one?
  • And that you should be able to install a silencer on your woman?

Perhaps this was not well thought out.

Brady’s make another attempt at relevance

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The Brady Center filed a lawsuit today:

Brady Center Files Lawsuit Against Gun Manufacturer and Dealer For Parents of Boy Killed in Unintentional Shooting

Lawsuit Alleges Gun Did Not Include Safety Feature That Would Have Prevented Shooting

The parents of 13-year old J.R. Gustafson brought suit today against Springfield Arms and Saloom Department Store in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. J.R. was killed on March 20, 2016 in an unintentional shooting by a boy who thought the gun was unloaded after the gun’s magazine had been removed. The lawsuit alleges that the gun should have included safety features that would have prevented the shooting, and J.R.’s death.

It appears they are trying to sneak through a clause in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The law gives qualified civil liability to manufacturers or distributors for the criminal acts of a third party. But it’s not clear to me (I am not a lawyer) that it extends to careless, negligent, and/or ignorant actors:

A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘‘qualified civil liability action’’ means a civil action or proceeding or an administrative proceeding brought by any person against a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product, or a trade association, for damages, punitive damages, injunctive or declaratory relief, abatement, restitution, fines, or penalties, or other relief, resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a qualified product by the person or a third party…

Are there any lawyers who want to comment on the viability of this lawsuit?

Quote of the day—David French

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Faced with a generation of defeat in the gun debate, the Left is increasingly turning to one of its favorite weapons in the culture war, stigma. It’s mobilizing its tribe — including progressive corporations, Hollywood, and the mainstream media — to not just make policy arguments but also to shame and insult Americans who disagree. The goal is to make gun ownership culturally toxic.

But shame is weaker than love. Gun owners who’ve experienced a threat possess or carry a weapon because they love their families. Teachers who wish to carry a weapon at school do so because they love the kids under their care. These folks know that their responsible gun ownership makes their communities and families safer.

Why does the Left keep losing the gun debate? Because it’s hard to persuade any man or woman to surrender an unalienable right — especially when exercising that right helps preserve the most vital right of all, the right to live.

David French
March 5, 2018
Why the Left Won’t Win the Gun-Control Debate
[It’s hard to win a debate when you are being shouted down by an angry mob or going into hiding because you and the lives of your children are being threatened.

It may not be long until the “debate” goes non-linear and gun owners will be required to use a much louder voice to get their points heard. It’s too bad the restrictions on suppressors haven’t been lifted yet.—Joe]

Girl on the ferry

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Last weekend Barb and I went over to the peninsula to have dinner with some friends. This involved a ferry crossing and I took a picture of this girl pretending to fly like one of the seagulls floating in the air ahead of the ferry:

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