Author Archives: Joe

Resistance is futile

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I am in the process of renewing my ATF license to manufacture high explosives. For some reason I can’t find anywhere in the U.S. Constitution where the Federal government has been granted the power to regulate the manufacture and consumption of explosives entirely on my property, entirely within the state of Idaho.

So, in keeping with the current “resist” political theme of the last few months, I’m bravely sending the renewal form to the ATF with a “Freedom Forever” stamp.

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I suspect no one at the ATF will perceive the irony and my resistance will be futile.

USPSA status update

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As I have mentioned before (and here) on the weekend of June 3rd and 4th I took the USPSA Range Officer class. I procrastinated some on the take home test and turned it via email on Saturday June 17th. On Sunday, June 18th I participated in the USPSA match at Marysville Rifle Club. A few minutes before the match started I received an email from the instructor saying I had passed with a 96% and was once again a certified RO. There were lots of ROs on my squad and I didn’t exercise my newly acquired RO powers.

After having some misses in the first two stages I did do well enough in the classifier that I bumped my classification score up to just barely into B class again (60.2098%, B class is 60.0% to 75.0%) after turning in C class classifiers for several years.

When I was shooting matches regularly in the late 90s I had a classification as high as 68.5272% with occasional individual classifier scores above 75%. But I basically stopped shooting for several years. What is interesting to me is that my skill level, according to various drills I have kept records of, is now as high as it ever was but my classifier results are a much lower percentage than they were before.

When I took the Intensive Handgun Skills class in February of 2016 the instructor, Greg Hamilton, commented that USPSA classification levels have dropped about one full class in the last 15 or 20 years due to the increased skill level of the top shooters. Shooters are classified according to what percentage of the best shooters scores they achieve. So if the best shooters improve and you stay the same your classification level will drop.

<Heavy Sigh>

I was hoping to make A class someday but I should have put the effort in 20 years ago when I was younger, quicker, and it was easier. I’m now in a Red Queen’s Race to just hold on to my B class status.

Quote of the day—Redcap ReaverBait‏ @ReaverBait

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Yes, because nothing is more important than your manly phallic symbol and getting to murder someone. No way that could possibly go wrong…

Redcap ReaverBait‏ @ReaverBait
Tweeted on June 16, 2017
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

This is what they think of people who exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

Via a tweet from BFD‏ @BigFatDave.—Joe]

Update: ReaverBait replied on twitter to this blog post. Absolutely amazing! It is a classic response as predicted by SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police in less than 140 characters:

Replying to @JoeHuffman

Yes, you reeaally needed to @ me with your bullshit “waaah I need a gun to feel manly” nonsense. Grow the fuck up.

The three rules of SJWs are:

  1. SJWs always lie.
  2. SJWs always double down.
  3. SJWs always project.

The initial tweet quoted above was a lie. Then in the response she doubled down on the lie and projected her immaturity onto people exercising their specific enumerated rights.

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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The ritual is tribal. A lefty dons the mock wig of the hated enemy and is ritually humiliated for the entertainment of the tribes of Manhattan, Berkeley and Marin County. The foe is destroyed in effigy. The video of his destruction is virally spread with titles such as, “Saturday Night Live Destroys Trump”.

And yet Trump, like all the other viral subjects of destruction, is never destroyed. The tribal ritual lets lefties vent their anger on a totem that, unlike Trump, can actually be destroyed by liberal laughter.

Satire isn’t trying to save the Republic. It isn’t stopping Trump. It’s saving the left.

Daniel Greenfield
May 2017
The War of Two Americas
[Via Robert J. Avrech and email from Paul Koning.

Read the whole thing. I alternated between seeing it as a nearly unbelievable conspiracy theory and brilliant insight. Perhaps it is both.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chelsey Gentry-Tipton

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Watching the congressman crying on live tv abt the trauma they experienced. Y is this so funny tho?

…

The very people that push pro NRA legislation in efforts to pad their pockets with complete disregard for human life. Yeah, having a hard time feeling bad for them.

Chelsey Gentry-Tipton
Nebraska Democratic Party Black Caucus Chair
June, 2017
Via Omaha World-Herald
[This is what they think of you.—Joe]

Overheard at the office

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From the office today:

Greg: A woman asked me to kill a spider. I told her no. It was here first. She told me it was her or the spider.

Josh: The spider is still in his house. It has taken over the bathroom. The entire bathroom is filled with webs and it lives in the skylight.

Greg: I don’t respond well to ultimatums.

This story has been told more than once. Caity’s version is:

Josh: So, Greg was dating a woman. She found a spider in the bathroom and asked that Greg kill it. He said no.  She said, it’s me or the spider.


Greg: Well, the spider was there first.


Josh: Yea, I’ve met the spider. It lives in the skylight.


Greg: I don’t do well with ultimatums.

Brett’s version involves a discussion of the hotness of the woman and the attitude of the spider versus the attitude of woman. It turns out that the woman was “hot” but the attitude of the spider won out overall.

Quote of the day—Michael Tomasky

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Now, the next eight times some right-wing nut goes on a shooting spree, they’ll have “but James Hodgkinson!” at the ready.

So be it. I abhor this shooting, and I abhor all such shootings. And while I would agree that it was a damn good thing that the police were there, I would not agree that that just proves that more people should have guns so that more Hodgkinsons can be stopped before inflicting the maximum damage. Teachers and regular citizens aren’t cops. They don’t do repeated drills on taking down perps, and they shouldn’t.

Michael Tomasky
June 15, 2017
One Left-Wing Gunman Doesn’t Make a Movement
[I found it very telling that he went through a long list of political assassinations. He correctly labeled almost all the assassins as left-wing. He exempts John Wilkes Booth from the left-wing label even though he almost for certain was a Democrat and murdered a Republican. Not one of the assassins listed is “right-wing”, and I can’t think of any of the many mass shooters in our country one could call “right-wing”. In fact they almost all clearly identify as Democrat with some being apolitical.

Tomasky then predicts something about “the next eight times some right-wing nut goes on a shooting spree”… Well, if past performance is an indicator of future results then there will be about 500 left-wing mass shooters before we get eight right-wing shooters. And this doesn’t even get into the leftist governments who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century.

It’s true, teachers and regular citizens aren’t cops. But it is clearly false that we don’t do repeated drills shooting bad guys. There were 90 people doing essentially that at the match I was at last Sunday (I came in 9th out of 24 in my division). And the weekend before there were 26 people doing at the match I participated in (I came in 1st out of 10). Every weekend and many week days there are matches in my area where hundreds of people practice shooting bad guys. Some of us are very, very good at this.

So, why does he claim we shouldn’t be doing this? The only reason I can think of is that he wants us to feel, and be, defenseless against both the left-wing individuals and the left-wing governments.

At one level it amuses me to see someone relate a large body of substantially correct data and then have that person arrive at a conclusion completely at odds with their own data. But on another level it’s a very sad commentary on the irrationality of the ordinary human.—Joe]

Dr. Joe’s Cure boosts brain power

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The study is small and I’m concerned about which is cause and which is effect but one could conclude that Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything boosts brain power:

Having lots of sex when you get older boosts brain power, scientists have discovered, with people who have regular sexual relations scoring better on verbal, visual and spatial perception tests.

A team of researchers from the universities of Oxford and Coventry, U.K., carried out a study on 28 men and 45 women aged between 50 and 83. The participants were asked about their sex lives, including how often, on average, they had had intercourse over the last 12 months. Answers included never, monthly and weekly.

They were also asked questions about their general health and lifestyle, and undertook a test that measured their brain function. This test assessed attention, memory, fluency, language and visual and special abilities. For example, for the verbal test they were asked to name as many animals possible in 60 seconds.

The original paper is Frequent Sexual Activity Predicts Specific Cognitive Abilities in Older Adults.

Posted in Sex

Gun cartoon of the day

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Via email from Oleg Volk we have this:

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It’s a twofer! Markley’s Law and advocating violence against political opponents of the left.

It’s very telling that we have SCOTUS decisions and they have childish insults and advocates for violence.

Quote of the day—Chris Collins

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Capitol Police officers were heroes last week — their bravery and quick thinking probably saved the lives of Rep. Scalise and my other colleagues — but self-defense is my responsibility, too.

As Americans in my district and across the country know well, responsible, legal gun owners have every right to protect themselves, and that applies to members of Congress as well. I’ve worked to make sure these core values, preserved in the Constitution, are upheld. For my own protection, and for the protection of those around me, I’m putting these values into practice. Now, more than ever, I truly believe that the best place to be, during a terrible episode like the one in Alexandria, is next to a good guy with a gun.

Chris Collins
June 19, 2017
I’m a member of Congress. I’m going to start carrying a gun.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

USPSA therapy

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There was a short article in the latest issue of Front Sight, the official USPSA magazine, about this video. It was made for a school project and is well done and might even persuade a few “soft-core” anti-gun people that gun owners aren’t inherently evil:

And their point is?

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From The Washington Post:

The gunman who opened fire on a GOP baseball team in Virginia had a local storage locker with more than 200 rounds of ammunition that he visited daily, including less than an hour before he shot more than 60 times at the team during a morning practice June 14.

I sometimes reload 200 rounds in the morning before I go to work. And then I shoot that many or more at the range at lunch time.

This explains why he got so few solid hits. He didn’t practice enough. But they don’t even suggest anything along those lines.

[sarcasm] I wonder what their intended point is? [/sarcasm]

To me this demonstrates their ignorance and/or maliciousness.

Quote of the day—Justice Anthony Kennedy

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A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” … A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.

Justice Anthony Kennedy
June 19, 2017
MATAL, INTERIM DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE v. TAM
[H/T to Eugene Volokh and Say Uncle.

This should give gun owners protection against having their Second Amendment rights infringed upon because they belong to some extremist group such as the NRA or the Republican party.—Joe]

Maybe it’s not over yet

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Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is back in the news:

The State Department has opened a formal inquiry into whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information while she was the nation’s top diplomat, Fox News has learned. Despite being under investigation, Clinton and her staffers still have security clearances to access sensitive government information.

The department’s investigation aims to determine whether Clinton and her closest aides violated government protocols by using her private server to receive, hold and transmit classified and top-secret government documents. The department declined to say when its inquiry began, but it follows the conclusion of the FBI’s probe into the matter, which did not result in any actions being taken against Clinton or any of her aides.

Depending on the outcome of the current State Department inquiry, Clinton and her aides could have their access to sensitive government documents terminated.

Read Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. Hillary and Bill thought the email scandal was a literally a joke. They couldn’t believe people actually took the violation of the law seriously. Even their closest aides urging them to take it seriously was just ignored. I think they are so accustom to breaking the law, and getting away with it, that they can’t fathom why it was considered an issue.

They should be in jail (at least, a case might be made that the death penalty might be applicable). But it will be at least a minor vindication if they permanently lose their security clearances.

Overheard at the office

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From yesterday:

Joe: Actually, I always thought it would be more fun to be a girl scout.

Caity: Because of the cookies? (She knows about my sweet tooth).

Joe: No. Because of the girls.

Today our building was evacuated for some unknown reason for a few minutes. Via text messages:

Josh: I got coffee, is the building still quarantined?

Joe: Only for you. The rest of us are at our desks.

Brett: Greg decontaminated your workstation. Land mines have been removed. You can come in now.

Quote of the day—Howard Hyde

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The idea that right-leaning citizens, let alone congressmen, should have a right to defend themselves against left-wing antifa thugs, whether on a baseball field, in a mall, in a nightclub, or on a college campus, leaves them cold.

Howard Hyde
June 18, 2017
Gun control for thee, not for me
[One can easily make the case that leftists want gun control because they and their criminal, violent, constituents fear getting shot. Surveys show that criminal prisoners who identify as Democrats outnumber all other political affiliations combined by a factor of more than two to one. Leftist, by their very nature, are the type of people who have few inhibitions about using force against others.

So, it comes as no surprise that Democrats are opposed to people being allowed to carry guns for self defense. They are at risk of, literally, losing voters.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Drunker Uncle @Drunker_Uncle

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micropenises, dude. #arleg #compensate

Drunker Uncle @Drunker_Uncle
Tweeted on March 21, 2017
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kevin Imel

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If you are good enough shooter to shoot a perfect double then you are a good enough shooter to put them a little bit apart.

Kevin Imel
USPSA NROI Range Instructor
June 3, 2017
[This was at the range officer class I was taking a couple weeks ago.

“A double” at a USPSA match is two bullet which created a single hole (which may be oblong in shape). “A perfect double” is two bullets which created a hole which is a perfect circle.

A shooter will get credit for two (or more) shots which are distinguishable but not if they are indistinguishable (a perfect double).—Joe]

Quote of the day—Peter Dreier

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Incidents like the Virginia and San Francisco shootings inevitably lead to a debate over gun control. Here again the media, politicians, and advocacy groups play their scripted roles. The media quote Republicans and conservatives repeating their claims that tougher gun-control laws wouldn’t have prevented the Virginia shooting, because the shooter could have obtained the gun illegally. And, they add, gun control undermines our liberties. 

To provide “balance,” the media quote Democrats and gun-control advocates, repeating their claims that this specific shooting, and the epidemic of mass shootings, would be dramatically reduced if we restricted the sale of guns and ammunition, including sales across state lines, because shooters often obtain guns in states with lax laws and bring them to states with tough laws.

Peter Dreier
June 16, 2017
The Virginia Shooting Isn’t About Bernie. It’s About the Right’s Embrace of Guns.
[I’m more and more convinced that, as Michael Savage says, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder. I haven’t read his book but I took a college class on, and have experienced enough, abnormal psychology to recognize it. In this case it is conclusive because he cannot see that his political beliefs contributed to the bad results. One thing common to all personality disorders is that, in their minds, they didn’t contribute, in any way, to a bad outcome. It is always someone else’s fault.

With that mindset he goes on to describe a delusional world that is nearly unrecognizable to normal people.

This nut job, Dreier, not only gets things wrong, but he gets his “facts”, essentially, backwards. In this case the guns were purchased legally in a state, Illinois, with some of the most strict gun control laws and brought the gun to a state with much more relaxed laws. Although I didn’t quote that portion of the article, he repeatedly claims the gun was an AR-15 (it was actually an SKS). Furthermore, gun sales across state lines are already restricted.

This idiot thinks he knows what his writing about but his story is very nearly wrong in a fractal way. There is no attention given to fundamental principles, he does not address the infringement of specific enumerated rights, his conclusions are wrong, the theme is wrong, the paragraphs are wrong, nearly every sentence is wrong, and some of the words are wrong.

He has crap for brains.—Joe]

New shooter report

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Nearly everyone I work with is a shooter. I have two peers. One was in the army for several years then helped build targets for Boomershoot this year as well as participate. The other has more NFA toys than he is willing to tell me about. My lead is former special forces. My boss is a former cop. His boss, our director, and her husband have helped make the targets for Boomershoot for the last three years as well as participate.

There was one exception. The intern. Caity’s last day as an intern will be next week. After a break she will return as a full time employee in August. She did well as an intern but there was a flaw. She hasn’t done any shooting since she was 10 or 12 years old. And it wasn’t that much.

Today, we set out to fix that flaw.

I started her out with some dry fire and she was rock solid. No jerking the trigger, excellent follow-through, and she picked up the mechanics almost instantly.

I put her on a suppressed .22 pistol with slow fire at about eight feet. She was nailing it with about a 1” group. Okay, 12 feet. The group size increased some but still well within the black of the target. Okay, 20 feet. Still in the black.

Okay, let’s try something else.

I removed the suppressor to reduce the inertia and put the target at about eight feet. I had her starting at low ready and then put one shot on each of the four bull’s-eyes. Her splits were probably 1.5 seconds and she was still nailing the targets. She shot magazine after magazine and kept the shots all in the black with the splits decreasing into the sub one second range:

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Okay.

I got out my powder puff loads for the .40. She couldn’t hold the gun firm enough to get reliable cycling but said the recoil wasn’t a problem so we tried a couple rounds of major power factor. She shot those just fine. No recoil issues. So, I gave her a full magazine.

Start at low ready and put one shot on each target…

Still almost exclusively in the black with the splits again approaching one second:

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Okay. She’s a keeper for our team.