STOP THE SHOOTINGS. STOP REPUBLICANS
Saurus
November 5, 2017
Comment to At least 26 dead in South Texas church shooting, officials say
[One has to wonder what color the sky is in this person’s universe. Nearly all mass shooters are either Democrats or have no known political affiliation.
The most likely explanation for the comment is psychological projection.—Joe]
The rate of heat transfer for many thermodynamic problems is directly proportional to the difference in temperature between the heat source and the heat sink. This difference in temperature is frequently referred to as “Delta T”.
Less than three weeks ago Barb and I were in Columbia where, with the humidity, the temperature felt like 114F:
We left there and for four days cruised north through the Caribbean Sea, within a 100 miles of Cuba, to New Orleans. Even in the middle of the night you could stand on our stateroom balcony with little or no clothing and be uncomfortably warm. It was during this time that Barb won Miss Norwegian Pearl by stripping down to her bikini. We were soaking up the heat and humidity before returning home.
Last Friday morning there was snow on the ground. This morning there was more snow and it continues though the afternoon:
Today, with the continuing large delta T and Barb’s surface area to mass ratio approximating infinity, she ran out of heat to give up to the environment. Even with thermostat set at 71F she had to put on multiple layers of clothes, a fluffy sweatshirt, and put the hood up over her head. Her hands still felt like ice cubes:
She now has plans to visit Arizona.
They hate us more than the NRA!
Lara Smith
Spokeswoman for the Liberal Gun Club regarding Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
November 4, 2017
The Loneliness of the Liberal Gun Lover
[Of course. Liberals with guns are considered traitors and/or apostates. Such people are always more hated and punished than the enemy.
Fortunately, Bloomberg and friends don’t yet have the kind of powers governments and authoritarian religions have to punish traitors and apostates. Let’s keep it that way.—Joe]
The gun culture celebrates achievements and those who triumph over those who prey on innocent victims.
The anti-gun culture celebrates victimhood and those who triumph over those whos only “crime” is the desire to be left alone.
My sense of humor may be considered somewhat warped, but I think this is shockingly funny:
I’d like to ban guns. Almost all of them, at least the ones in private hands.
…
We’d be much better off if we abandoned the absurd fetishism around guns that leaves us awash in so much blood and gore. America would simply be safer if we constructed our gun laws like one of our peer countries in Europe or Asia.
Paul Waldman
October 6, 2017
Ban guns
[Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.
Safer? Tell that to the people in the Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin in the early and mid 20th Century. Or the residents of Nanking who survived December 1937 and January of 1938. Or read Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One). And the more astute should only have to read one paragraph of Solzhenitsyn’s.
And once the safety argument has been completely destroyed lets “have a discussion” about the morality of denying people the best available tools to defend themselves and their families.
If they can’t be swayed I think one must conclude they regard all which we consider hazards of infringing the specific enumerate right to keep and bear arms as features, not bugs. Their first principles must include claiming the necessity of a ruling class with absolute power over the ignorant bitter clingers, or in more modern terminology “basket of deplorables”.—Joe]
There is abundant evidence to support this assertion:
Fear the government that fears your gun. pic.twitter.com/URwn5kzfCf
— Kimberly Corban (@Kimberly_Corban) November 3, 2017
Examples abound in books such as The Gulag Archipelago, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, and Hitler’s Willing Executioners. And if that isn’t enough to convince you then research the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Armenian genocide. For an even more general view read Lethal Laws: Gun Control Is the Key to Genocide.
Whenever someone says something to me about “cyber security” being challenging or being a secure job field I give them a 15 second sound bite about how the bad guys are specializing and becoming experts in their field and then selling their services and/or data to someone else. Example, some bad guys specialize in writing exploit code. Others in delivering the code to target machines and extracting user credentials. Others monetizing the credentials. And it so it goes. The dark web is used to, essentially, openly advertise and sell illicit services and products.
It is with that background I present you a with a much more detailed analysis of the costs these “businesses”.
Dissecting the Costs of Cybercriminal Operations:
The cybercriminal underground is quite verticalized, with threat actors specializing in particular areas of expertise. It is this distribution of expertise that contributes to the underground market’s resiliency. Similar to drug cartels, once you remove one threat actor or forum, rivals will immediately take its place. As a result, to kickstart a campaign and move beyond a concept to the final execution and substantial profit, a puzzle game has to be completed first.
…
• A banking trojan license is one of the most expensive elements of a cybercriminal campaign and can be obtained from professional malware developers for $3,000–$5,000.
• Then to intercept banking credentials, web-injects for each target financial institution have to be acquired separately and can cost anywhere between $150–$1,000 per set. In the past year, we’ve seen a significant increase in the cost of web-injects targeting Canadian institutions, offered at the upper-level of the price spectrum, while the cost of malware targeting U.S.-based banks has remained the same.
• To maintain consistent visibility into the entire operation and to control an infected network of computers, bulletproof hosting in one of the unfriendly jurisdictions in China, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe is required. Monthly rental of a web-server in a datacenter favorable to criminal activity will usually cost $150–$200.
• To ensure the consistent payload delivery, and to remain undetected by antivirus products, the executable file must be “cleaned” and obfuscated daily and in the case of a very large-scale operation, several times a day. Such services are available for $20–$50 per single payload obfuscation; however, lower prices can be negotiated for large-volume orders.
• Steady web traffic redirected to the infected resource or email spam campaign are two primary delivery vehicles of malicious payloads. While it’s going to cost $15–$50 to get a thousand unsuspecting people to visit the infected web page, professional spam operators will charge $400 per million of successfully delivered emails.
• Once the malware is successfully planted and banking credentials intercepted, the perpetrator has to work with a chain of mule handlers and money-laundering intermediaries to receive a final pay-off. A money launderer with a stellar reputation and is capable of quick turnaround, will charge a hefty 50-60 percent commission from each payment transferred from a victim’s account. In some cases, an additional 5-10 percent commission might be required to launder the funds and deliver it to the main operator via preferred payment method, such as bitcoin, Web Money, or the Western Union.
• In the case an additional phone confirmation is needed to proceed with a money transfer, it will be facilitated by one of the underground calling services, with prices standing at $10–$15 per each call.
• If an additional document and phone verification are needed to proceed with the money transfer, various supporting vendors are available. A counterfeit driver’s license may be delivered within several hours for $25 while a more sophisticated video selfie will cost $100.
• To minimize the chances of an account holder noticing an unauthorized transaction, to intercept SMS confirmation, or to render an owner’s phone entirely unreachable for the duration of the attack, an email/phone “flooding” can be purchased for $20. However, the cost of a cloned SIM card is significantly more expensive at $150–$300.Aside from funds stolen from compromised bank accounts, persistent access to an extensive network of victims around the world will inevitably generate a significant residual income.
From the Idaho Statesman:
One of the defendants is believed to have picked up Smith as he was hitchhiking in June. Here’s what prosecutors say happened after that, according to the three criminal complaints filed against the suspects:
Vandenberg, Reed and Rabey devised a plan to invite Smith to Vandenberg’s home, and then later to shoot firearms.
Their plan was for Vandenberg to shoot Smith. The trio loaded guns into a vehicle and rode with Smith to an unspecified location. Reed and Rabey watched as Vandenberg deliberately shot Smith at close range in the upper torso and face/head with a .45-caliber pistol.
Reed and Rabey also watched and/or helped Vandenberg remove Smith’s clothing. One or both helped Vandenberg drag the body to a nearby ditch, and then burned Smith’s clothes.
The group planned to commit other criminal acts in the future, including murder, the charging documents allege.
“There were discussions about other offenses. There’s no specific evidence to any other detailed [murder] plot,” Emery told the Statesman on Thursday.
Emery said one of the suspects had possession of Smith’s ID or driver’s license.
“We can’t find that there was any ill will between the deceased and the suspects,” Emery said. “There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason as to the way this went down as it did.”
Hollywood frequently gives you visual clues about the face of evil. Reality may not.
I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.
From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder.
Bret Stephens
October 5, 2017
Repeal the Second Amendment
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.
Even if the Second Amendment were to be repealed, the Supreme Court has already said:
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…
So, the right would still exist even if Stephens could accomplish his desire. And as the repeal date approached you can be sure the preparation for what was to follow would make the previous world’s greatest gun salesmen record look pathetic.
And then Stephens would discover the, probably only, circumstances for which more guns means more murder as some foolish government types attempted to forcibly take those guns from their owners.—Joe]
A while back I made up some .40 S&W loads with “Gold Dot® Short Barrel®” bullets (it appears they have been discontinued) and then did velocity and milk jug penetration tests. I was very pleased with them.
A couple days ago I received an email from Drew Rinella. Here is part of it:
I met you very briefly a couple/few years ago at a Boomer shoot, so it was cool to find your site while researching low velocity results for speer gold dots. I saw that people were giving you shit in the comments about your low velocity 40 s&w gold dot SB loadings. I want to let you know that my terminal performance testing results have so far been great with loading the standard 147 gr 9mm gold dot at a low velocity.
I like the properties of the 147 grain 9mm gold dot bullet but I have always been frustrated by the challenging recoil impulse and inconsistent accuracy with their factory loading at nearly 1000 fps muzzle velocity, so I’ve been experimenting with loading at lower velocities. Despite the fact that they do not yet market a SB version of this bullet, I received an email back from that factory recommending a minimum of 850 fps for consistent expansion.
4.3 grains of Silhouette gave me 885 fps from a Glock 17. This was the most accurate and softest shooting load I tested which gave me the min recommended velocity. With this velocity I get consistent penetration of 4 water filled milk jugs, with the bullet puncturing a small hole into and bouncing off of the 5th jug. Assuming a 1.8x ratio of water to ballistic gel this slightly exceeds the FBI standard of 12″ ballistic gel.
Test #1: 2 layers denim
Penetrated 4 full milk jugs; bullet fully intact with signs of stress on the petals Expansion 0.525″
Weight 147.5 grains
Test #2: 4 layers denim
Penetrated 4 full milk jugs; one petal ripped off and stayed in first milk jug; signs of stress on remaining petals Expansion 0.563″
Weight 143.8 grains
As soon as the kids can drink more milk I’ll be testing with more materials including quilted denim, metal, wood, wallboard, and glass. I hypothesize less expansion and deeper penetration through these barriers based on observations of online video testing of factory loadings with this bullet, which I don’t necessarily consider to be a bad thing.
Silhouette was one of the few powders my thrower was able to throw consistently at these low charge volumes, and gave me a small red fireball with some yellow sparks in low light shooting. CFE Pistol (my favorite powder for nearly everything else) wouldn’t throw consistently. Titegroup accuracy was very poor. AA#2 & 5 were consistent but wouldn’t give me the velocity I wanted without going into +P or +P+ territory.
Hornady XTP 147 grain at low velocity wouldn’t open up and looked like I could reload it and shoot it again. I definitely think Gold Dot is the way to go when downloading self defense rounds.
I figured there had to be other powders which would give the desired velocity so I went looking through all the sources on my book shelf. Here is a complete list of the powders for 9mm, 147 grain bullets, which yield velocities in the range of 850 feet per second.
Powder weight is in grains. Expected velocities are in feet per second. Some of the data is quite old and you should verify it with your own loading manuals or online to make sure the data is current and I have not made a catastrophic typo.
| Powder | C.O.L. | Minimum Load | Velocity | Maximum Load | Velocity |
| HS-6 | 1.100 | 4.3 | 773 | 5.0 | 885 |
| Universal | 1.100 | 3.0 | 803 | 3.3 | 869 |
| Titegroup | 1.100 | 3.2 | 855 | 3.6 | 929 |
| SR 4756 | 1.100 | 3.2 | 800 | 3.8 | 950 |
| WSF | 1.100 | 3.3 | 800 | 4.2 | 950 |
| AA #5 | 1.100 | 3.8 | 800 | 4.6 | 950 |
| Solo 1500 | 1.100 | 3.8 | 800 | 4.6 | 950 |
| HS-6 | 1.100 | 4.4 | 850 | 5.1 | 975 |
| Blue Dot | 1.100 | 4.2 | 800 | 5.5 | 1000 |
| HS-7 | 1.100 | 4.4 | 800 | 5.6 | 950 |
| AA #7 | 1.100 | 5.1 | 800 | 6.6 | 1000 |
| Power Pistol | 1.130 | 4.5 | 872 | 5.0 | 975 |
| 3N37 | 1.130 | 4.4 | 886 | 4.9 | 969 |
| AA #7 | 1.130 | 6.1 | 867 | 6.8 | 961 |
| SR 4756 | 1.130 | 4.2 | 841 | 4.6 | 957 |
| HS-6 | 1.130 | 5.0 | 845 | 5.6 | 956 |
| Unique | 1.130 | 3.8 | 852 | 4.3 | 954 |
| HS-7 | 1.130 | 6.1 | 866 | 6.8 | 953 |
| WSF | 1.130 | 3.6 | 840 | 4.1 | 931 |
| AA #5 | 1.130 | 4.5 | 821 | 5.1 | 931 |
I was out of town (and out of the country most of the time) for almost three weeks last month. That drastically reduced my reloading opportunities. I still managed to load 1015 rounds of .40 S&W. It was all Montana Gold JHPs over 3.9 grains of Bullseye. These are for new shooters at indoor ranges. They are accurate bullets with a minimum powder charge.
This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:
223: 2,424 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1591 rounds.
40 S&W: 77,787 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 104,199 rounds.
Year to date I have loaded 18,582 rounds. I’m still on course to reload about 20,000 rounds this year for a lifetime total of over 105,000 rounds.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
Wendell Phillips
January 28, 1852
Speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
[The link about his speech has some interesting history about the frequent misattribution of the “eternal vigilance…” quote.
Also note they had the same problem with democrats then as we do today.—Joe]
I have no complaint about hunting or target shooting. But “Gun Country” folks often end the conversation there. They try to paint their culture as wholesome, the “real” America. It isn’t. Much of the gun culture is really sick.
user_4429094
October 27, 2017
Comment to Finding common ground on gun control
[This is what they think of you.
Please note that no mention was made of self-defense as being acceptable. There are many people out there who will give you vehement objection to self-defense as a valid reason for firearms ownership.
And they think we are “sick”.—Joe]
From CNN a few minutes ago:
Eight people are dead and about a dozen injured after the driver of a truck drove the wrong way down a well-trafficked bike path, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
“This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror,” he said.
…
The driver then exited the vehicle while displaying imitation firearms and was shot by police, according to the NYPD. The suspect is in police custody and was taken to a hospital for treatment, sources at the NYPD said.
The incident is being investigated as terrorism, according to multiple law enforcement sources. Witnesses reported the suspect was yelling “Allahu Akbar,” according to four law enforcement sources. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is taking over the lead of the investigation.
We don’t have enough information at this time to know if the innocent people had been allowed to exercise their specific right to keep and bear arms things would have turn out any better, but it’s unlikely it could have turned out worse.
Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong — since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so — but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?
Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards pages 18 and 19
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.
If I could get an anti-gun person to read just one book it would be Nation of Cowards: Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control. I’m thinking I should buy a few copies and have them handy to give out.—Joe]
If only the government and its various agencies possess weapons than the Right to Free Speech becomes an empty promise.
We then live in Orwell’s 1984.
That’s why both Hitler and Stalin passed laws that forbade the private ownership of gun.
Robert J. Avrech
October 25, 2017
Jews With and Without Guns
[I once watched a movie where only the police and the military had guns. It was called Schindler’s List (I forget where I stole this line from).
Also, via Nomen Nescio, “As the old Soviet joke went, everybody in the USSR had freedom of speech, but the law never guaranteed freedom after speech.”
And finally, from Joseph Stalin, “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?—Joe]
This is bullshit pic.twitter.com/3nZgju0ati
— Hannah Ⓥ (@hannahtocci) October 27, 2017
Philip Cook (see also here), is no friend of gun owners. But in this article he comes across as in touch with reality:
While criminals typically do not buy their guns at a store, all but a tiny fraction of those in circulation in the United States are first sold at retail by a gun dealer – including the guns that eventually end up in the hands of criminals.
That first retail sale was most likely legal, in that the clerk followed federal and state requirements for documentation, a background check and record-keeping. While there are scofflaw dealers who sometimes make under-the-counter deals, that is by no means the norm.
If a gun ends up in criminal use, it is usually after several more transactions. The average age of guns taken from Chicago gangs is over 11 years.
The gun at that point has been diverted from legal commerce. In this respect, the supply chain for guns is similar to that for other products that have a large legal market but are subject to diversion.
In the case of guns, diversion from licit possession and exchange can occur in a variety of ways: theft, purchase at a gun show by an interstate trafficker, private sales where no questions are asked, straw purchases by girlfriends and so forth.
What appears to be true is that there are few big operators in this domain. The typical trafficker or underground broker is not making a living that way but rather just making a few dollars on the side. The supply chain for guns used in crime bears little relationship to the supply chain for heroin or cocaine and is much more akin to that for cigarettes and beer that are diverted to underage teenagers.
In essence the criminal market for guns is crowd sourced. Which means it is far more challenging for law enforcement to “close the loopholes” than if were were organized criminal organizations. The allocation of scarce resources to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate people who sold a single “crime gun” is far better spent on going after violent criminals instead of those involved in victimless crimes of straw man purchases.
There are about 500,000 violent crimes committed with a gun each year. If the average number of times that an offender commits a robbery or assault with a particular gun is twice, then (assuming patterns of criminal gun use remain constant) the total number of transactions of concern is 250,000 per year.
Actually, no one knows the average number of times a specific gun is used by an offender who uses it at least once. If it is more than twice, then there are even fewer relevant transactions.
That compares with total sales volume by licensed dealers, which is upwards of 20 million per year.
And this doesn’t include private transaction in the used gun market. But it does tell us that nearly 99%, if not far more, of each year’s gun transfers between owners don’t involve violent criminal activity.
Why spend resources on investigation of activities where 99+% of the actions are harmless, and there are no motivated witnesses to the “crime”, when you could spend those same resources investigating known activities which have a 99+% chance of there being a true victim and people motived to cooperate with law enforcement?
Update: See also this post about other aspects of background checks.
Via Robert J. Avrech:
Some of the comments regarding the video are pretty good:
Feminism doesn’t want women to be safe. They tell women to ignore safety tips to avoid rape because it “blames the victim”, discourages women from arming themselves with mace, pepper spray or even a Taser, telling them that it’s men that should be taught to stop rape instead of them being responsible for their own safety.
feminism like liberalism needs victims.
