Author Archives: Joe

Einstein agrees

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Sometimes you just have to shake your head in wonder and the inability of anti-gun people to process numbers:

Concerned for his life, he retrieved a 28mm pistol from his car, loaded it, tucked it into his waistband and returned to the waiting room, where he called police to report that he was in a dangerous situation and needed protection. His pistol was a model that fires high-velocity rounds, similar to a rifle.

…

Correction: An earlier version of this post mistakenly referred to a 28mm gun as a .28mm gun.

How difficult is it for the writer, proofreader, and/or editor to engage a little bit of common sense and think about what a 28mm gun would look like? There are 25.4mm in an inch, so this pistol, “that fires high-velocity rounds, similar to a rifle” would fire projectiles well over an inch in diameter at rifle velocities.

These people could not have possibly even seen a modest number of pistols. Furthermore if they had ever fired a common .30 caliber rifle they would know that a pistol firing a projectile greater than 3.5 times the diameter (and at least ten times the mass) would cause extremely serious injury to the shooter.

That they discovered they had an error with the caliber and managed to “correct” it with an even more egregious error indicts to me they do not care about the truth. Which leads me to something Albert Einstein said,

Wenn es sich um Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit handelt, gibt es nicht die Unterscheidung zwischen kleinen und grossen Problemen. Denn die allgemeinen Gesichtspunkte, die das Handeln der Menschen betreffen, sind unteilbar. Wer es in kleinen Dingen mit der Wahrheit nicht ernst nimmt, dem kann man auch in grossen Dingen nicht vertrauen…

When the issue is one of Truth and Justice, there can be no differentiating between small problems and great ones. For the general viewpoints on human behaviour are indivisible. People who fail to regard the truth seriously in small matters, cannot be trusted in matters that are great.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Einstein would have agreed with us that anti-gun people are not to be trusted with truth and justice.

Quote of the day—Anonymous

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THERE IS NO REASON TO OWN A GUN. The only thing a gun is good for is killing people. I am so happy to finally be rid of my Rifle and AR-15 and i think Trump is heroic for attempting to clamp down in guns.

Anonymous
March 1, 2018
I just proudly turned in my guns
[I guess this settles it then. Since I have fired, approximately, 150,000 rounds without killing anyone it proves my guns were malfunctioning the entire time.

And furthermore Anonymous apparently believes there is never any instances when it is praiseworthy or even appropriate to kill someone.

Anonymous has crap for brains.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Crazy talk?

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It’s absolutely amazing the crazy things some people claim to believe:

Democratic Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith said on the House floor that he was voting against the legislation, explaining that while he considers some of the legislation’s gun-control provisions reasonable, “they’re not enough.” He said the measure fails to address the root causes of mass shootings, including the ready availability of semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity magazines.

How can anyone believe, “the root causes of mass shootings” include “the ready availability of semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity magazines.”? Are the availability of syringes and surgical tubing the root causes of heroin overdoses? Are the ready availability of trucks and diesel the root causes of terrorists driving through crowds?

This is crazy talk or deliberate deception?

I think this is deliberate deception and manipulation of the language in an attempt to infringe upon a specific enumerated right. This criminal should be prosecuted.

Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

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So your argument is, “We’ve already violated this amendment to the point where all you have are very basic infantry weapons, and now we’re claiming those aren’t effective without the stuff we’ve already banned, so it’s reasonable to ban that, too.”

And I’m saying, we need to fix the entire problem, which we both recognize, and eliminate those laws so veterans (and determined civilians who for whatever reason were unable to serve), can have the weapons they need so we CAN fight tanks and planes in such an emergency.

The only people who could possibly object are the kind who want to send tanks and planes against civilians.

Michael Z. Williamson
March 2, 2018
Destroying Gun Control Myths, Part 1: “You Can’t Fight Tanks And Planes With Rifles!”
[I love the insight and clarity Williamson gives the issue.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Josh Baker

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I’m a Fascist… the only time people of real character show up is when the
government crushes the population with it’s heel.

Josh Baker

June 2, 1996
[He may have a point. We may also soon be able to test his claim.—Joe]

Quote of the day—nandemosan

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I don’t care how old you are.  No one needs a semi-automatic rifle just as no one needs a handgun.

nandemosan
February 28, 2018
Comment to Why our blue state is more red when it comes to guns
[It appears to me that the 17 students murdered in Florida needed someone with a gun to defend them.

It is not a Bill of Needs. It is a Bill of Rights. Furthermore, as SCOTUS explained:

This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed…

The right to keep and bear arms is a natural right and will be defended just a vigorously, if not more so, as if the government were infringing the First Amendment.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Facts can be confusing

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This post was inspired by a cartoon sent to me by Will S.

clip_image002

It was only in the last few thousand years that facts and logic began to have a toehold on our understanding of world around us. Even then rational thought would lose its footing and slide back down into the dark ages for a few hundred years at a time.

My hypothesis is that there is a reason for this. Reliance on facts and rational thought created an evolutionary advantage which allowed for the survival of a greater number of less fit people. These less fit, emotionally driven, people drag society down again.

The repeated rise and fall of reliance on rational thought is like a cleaning process. Each time the gene pool was cleaned it became a more biased toward rationality and human society became more advanced.

I had hoped that we need not go through another dark age but there are times when I fear we are nearing another downward slide. How else can you explain the continued infatuation with socialism? What other political system has experienced so many attempts and resulted in so many catastrophic failures? How else can you explain the masses of people who blame private ownership of firearms for the massacres of school children when government disarmed the adults, failed to prosecute the villain prior to his attack, and failed to come to the rescue even though they were close by? The government which failed at ever step of the way is now supposed to be tasked with the job of attacking those who held no responsibility for the creating the circumstance, or failing to stop the attack. This is not the result of a rational thought process. This is crazy talk and to me is a strong indicator that the slippery slope into another dark age is only a small misstep away.

Quote of the day—J.D. Tuccille

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Social media at the moment is full of gun opponents celebrating efforts to isolate the NRA and its membership. It also features gun supporters flashing images of their new membership cards in that organization. NRA members now vow economic retaliation against the companies that succumbed to similar threats from anti-gun activists. The big losers are bound to be those companies who felt obliged to publicly pick a side in the new economic phase of the growing culture war.

But pick a side, they did, and many more will come under pressure to do the same in the days to come. The political tribes are restless, and they’re eager to do as much damage as possible to their cultural enemies with the only tools left to them.

J.D. Tuccille
February 27, 2018
Culture War Is All That’s Left When Gun Policy Battles Become Pointless
[Via email from Stephanie.

Tuccille’s analysis rings true with me.—Joe]

How Do Monogamous And Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships Compare?

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It is claimed that consensually non-monogamous relationships are of higher quality and have lower STI rates.

H/T to Justin J. Lehmiller.

Quote of the day—Borepatch

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You meet different sorts of people who advocate for gun control.  Some of them are hard core control freaks who just want to crush flyover country, but if you’re like me you don’t run across them very often.  Mostly you run across people who aren’t shooters or gun owners, who haven’t thought about the issue very much, but who are disturbed about the constant media drumbeat about shootings and who just want to “do something”.

We need these people on our side, or at least standing on the sidelines.  How do we separate them from the gun control pack.

My last post was how I approach this: I’m not opposed to gun control, I’m opposed to stupid and useless gun control.  This is a mind virus that I’m trying to infect them with.  I want to sow seeds of doubt in their minds to get them out of the gun controller’s camp and onto the sidelines.  Hopefully (if the virus really takes) it will begin the process where they actually start to think about things and they may even end up on our side.
It’s a battle for the (very large) middle ground.  In the long run, we’re not viable without it.

Borepatch
March 2, 2018
A Gun Rights Mind Virus
[In a lot of ways I think this is a great idea. Particularly since, as near as I can tell, all gun control is stupid and useless.

But, it ignores the principle aspect. Suppose it was found it was not “useless” to implement policy of summary execution for anyone to be caught on video committing a crime of violence, i.e. violent crime dramatically dropped. A little later lawmakers decided to extend the policy to possession of a gun or ammunition and violent crime dropped even further.

The safety net of the right to keep and bear arms just went away. Stupid? Almost for certain, particularly since summary execution is now viewed as acceptable. What next? Political speech? But the question of “stupid” is going to be subject to debate. We are now on a slippery slope well into tyranny hell with no recourse.

Bottom line is that I like it but it needs to be tempered with at least a bit of philosophy that respects the fundamental, natural, right to self-defense from both criminals and a runaway government.—Joe]

Need

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The need for firearms is like the need for free speech. You need them the most when someone is trying to take them from you.*

* See also something similar I wrote in 1995 near the bottom of this post.

Insurance and magazines and the various things

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Recently anti-gun people have been making a big deal about the termination of hotel and rental car discounts for NRA members. The belief that this is the reason gun owners join the NRA goes back to at least 2004 in anti-gun organizations:

There are 90 million gun owners in the United States. Only 3.5 million want the insurance and magazines and the various things you get for joining the NRA.

I wonder if there was some backroom strategy meeting where anti-gun people decided they could cause the NRA significant financial harm by destroying the relationships between these businesses and the NRA.

I have occasionally tried to get a good deal renting a car or hotel using the NRA discounts and I have never found it to be as good a deal as I could get via some other channel. Hence, my guess is that these discounts did not result in much business for the hotels and car rental agencies. So, when they were confronted by the angry mobs perhaps they figured there wasn’t that much to lose anyway. So, why have to deal with the hassle?

If they only looked at the loss of the business from people using the NRA discounts I suspect they miscalculated the total costs of that decision. Let’s make that as obvious to them as we can.

Quote of the day—National Rifle Association

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The law-abiding members of the NRA had nothing at all to do with the failure of that school’s security preparedness, the failure of America’s mental health system, the failure of the National Instant Check System or the cruel failures of both federal and local law enforcement.

Despite that, some corporations have decided to punish NRA membership in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice. In time, these brands will be replaced by others who recognize that patriotism and determined commitment to Constitutional freedoms are characteristics of a marketplace they very much want to serve.

Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member.

National Rifle Association
February 24, 2018
NRA Statement on Corporate Partnerships
[I’m reminded of:

Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.

Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
1513

Either our opponents are so desperate for a “victory” of any type they are willing to throw “pebbles” at people with guns, and/or they are ignorant of human psychology, and/or they have crap for brains.—Joe]

Don’t ever let anyone tell you no one wants to take your guns

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Via Allahpundit:

YouGov asked people whether they favor or oppose banning semiautomatic weapons. Note: Not semiautomatic rifles, which some might incorrectly but understandably treat as a question about AR-15s or “assault weapons.” YouGov asked about semiautomatic weapons. That means handguns too. Result:

82% of Democrats are in favor of banning semi-automatic firearms.

They followed up by asking how people feel about banning all handguns (except those issued to officers of the state, of course!), which would include revolvers. Result:

44% of Democrats are in favor of banning all handguns.

I’m tempted to retire the category “No one wants to take your guns” with this post. If some random Democrats says, “No one wants to take your guns” there is a about a 99.9% chance they know that is a lie.

More interesting Facebook stuff

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The other day I posted about Facebook claiming a comment of mine was spam, asking me to review it, and then deleted it before I had to chance to review it.

Today, I posted a Random thought of the day:

If bakers of wedding cakes can be forced to bake custom wedding cakes for homosexuals because gay marriage is legal, doesn’t that mean stores which sell firearms can be forced to custom order an AR-15 for you because you are legally allowed to own one?

My blog software automatically makes a Facebook post with a link back to my blog. It did that today with the previous post but it doesn’t show up on Facebook. I have seen this before but just thought maybe there was error of some sort and the Facebook post failed. This time, I know that’s not the case.

From Statcounter:

IP: 69.171.240.16
Date: 3/1/2018 15:10
Link: http://m.facebook.com
Title: Random thought of the day | The View From North Central Idaho
Url: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/03/01/random-thought-of-the-day-104/

This was two minutes after my blog post went live. I knew it took a minute or two before a blog post showed up on Facebook. I thought it was probably just some sort of normal processing delay. Now I suspect my blog posts are reviewed by a human before being allowed to go live on Facebook. It could be an automated process but that shouldn’t take two minutes.

We have known for a while that Google blocks shopping searches for AR15s (compare with AR10s).

So, what can we do about this sort of crap? Any ideas that are better than boycotting them?

Update March1, 2018 19:22 PST: Another visit to my blog post via Facebook came in 14 minutes after the first one:

IP: 71.92.94.104
Date: 3/1/2018 15:24
Link: https://www.facebook.com/
Title: Random thought of the day | The View From North Central Idaho
Url: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/03/01/random-thought-of-the-day-104/

It could not have been because of the original version of this post or inspired because of it because this post was not made until 16:10. Although it could have been that someone saw my blog post and referenced it themselves on Facebook. This is somewhat supported by the fact that another visit occurred at 18:48:

IP: 70.178.238.137
Date: 3/1/2018 18:48
Link: https://www.facebook.com/
Title: Random thought of the day | The View From North Central Idaho
Url: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/03/01/random-thought-of-the-day-104/

Random thought of the day

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If bakers of wedding cakes can be forced to bake custom wedding cakes for homosexuals because gay marriage is legal, doesn’t that mean stores which sell firearms can be forced to custom order an AR-15 for you because you are legally allowed to own one?

Quote of the day—Jeff Snyder

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It is by no means obvious why it is “civilized” to permit oneself to fall easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil ways. While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry weapon is “civilized”, a society which stigmatizes the carry of weapons by the law-abiding – because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers and murder– certainly cannot claim this distinction.

Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards page 28
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.—Joe]

Rounds in the last month

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This month I only loaded a 180 .223 rounds. Part of that was because I spend a long weekend visiting Xenia in Kentucky and part is because I finished up most of my new .223 brass and started in on my used brass. The used brass needs more prep and with my hand powered tools it took a lot of time. The new electrically powered tool helped a bunch and I have been been prepping brass and, essentially, not reloading as I go through the backlog of used brass to clean and prep.

This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223: 3,318 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1,591 rounds.
40 S&W: 80,258 rounds.
45 ACP: 2,007 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 109,571 rounds.

Rifle brass prep

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I decided to use up a bunch of the rifle reloading components I have laying around and quickly found I was spending way more time than I wanted. Using hand powered tools trimming the brass to length and cleaning the primer pockets was taking, on average, about a full minute for each round. Also, my hands ached after about 100 rounds and I would have let them recover for an hour or more before continuing. With many thousands of rounds in my immediate future I decided I needed another solution.

I purchased the Frankford Arsenal Platinum Series Case Trim and Prep System (see video at the link):

This cut the one minute down to about 15 seconds. I can still get an ache in my hands if I’m not careful to mostly press the brass when trimming rather than trying to grip it tightly. But if I pay a little bit of attention it hasn’t been a major problem.

I have processed over 1000 rounds with it now now I am very pleased.