Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day—Charles Krauthammer

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De-escalation begins with a change in mentality. And that change in mentality starts with the symbolic yielding of certain types of weapons. The real steps, like the banning of handguns, will never occur unless this one is taken first, and even then not for decades.

What needs to happen before this change in mentality can occur? What must occur first – and this is where liberals are fighting the gun control issue from the wrong end – is a decrease in crime. So long as crime is ubiquitous, so long as Americans cannot entrust their personal safety to the authorities, they will never agree to disarm. There will be no gun control before there is real crime control.

Charles Krauthammer
April 5, 1996
Disarm the Citizenry. But not yet
Originally in The Washington Post on April 5. The above link is in the Seattle Times from April 8, 1996.
[See also the QOTD’s here, here and here.

While Krauthammer is thinking things through better than most anti-gun people he isn’t thinking far enough ahead. If crime is very low then anti-gun people will have no justification for infringing upon the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. You see a hint of that awareness already with anti-gun people attempting to use suicides as justification to infringe upon our rights.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bill Scher

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There have always been strong poll numbers for specific gun control proposals, and the NRA wins time and time again. Clearly, the polling data is not giving us the full picture.

Bill Scher
May 24, 2017
The Issue Democrats Wish Would Go Away
Can the Democratic Party retake Congress by giving up on gun control? Should it?
[The polling data doesn’t reflect a number of things:

  • Nearly all polls on gun issues have biased questions.
  • The polls don’t measure the passion for voting on the gun issue. Someone might think a gun ban is a good idea but give up on that issue in favor of a promise of lower taxes.
  • A legislator might be inclined to vote for “smart guns” then have it explained that it cannot possibly achieve the claimed benefits.
  • A majority of the public might like the idea of a gun ban and confiscation but the legislators know confiscation cannot work without violation of the 4th Amendment even if there might be a path past the 2nd Amendment.
  • We do not have a system of simple majority rule. There also exist minority rights that is upheld, to a least a certain extent, by the judicial, legislative, and the executive branches of government. Polls do not measure the strength of this type of opposition.

Polls also indicate one of the most popular parts of ObamaCare is the elimination of restrictions regarding preexisting conditions. But things like someone buying insurance while on a stretcher after an auto accident in the emergency room (it used to happen in Washington State) prove the folly of government attempting to change the laws of economics or human nature.

Democrats should just keep on polling … and loosing.—Joe]

Quote of the day—6Gunner

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I’ve worked with and trained with law enforcement officers from all over the world (including British LEO’s), and inevitably we have discussed the realities of criminal violence in our respective jurisdictions and shared our exasperation with just how… misguided… most private citizens are regarding the realities of crime. A lot of people state they “never felt the need” to worry about their own protection or security, and sure, the odds that you’ll ever be accosted – even in the most crime-ridden societies – are relatively low. BUT… even the safest societies still have crime. Even the safest societies still have innocent people who get brutalized and murdered by criminals… and a lot of the victims of violent crime would NOT have been victimized if only they had taken even the most rudimentary steps to protect themselves.

6Gunner
April 27, 2017
Posted to the thread Gun control in the UK
[Self defense is more than just possessing a firearm and knowing when and how to use it. It requires awareness of your surroundings, the nature of people, and criminal methods.—Joe]

Justice delayed is justice denied

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From Gun Background Check System Faces Big Challenges:

In 2015, NICS denied 106,556 background checks. In 3,625 cases, a denial was overturned on appeal. In October 2015, citing manpower shortages, NICS stopped accepting appeals altogether. The FBI didn’t restore the function until February of this year; examiners are still working on appeals submitted almost two years ago.

Classical reference.

Gun cartoon of the day

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For those who have an interest in the facts:

causes-of-death-cartoon

Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

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This supports an hypothesis of mine that most such “social justice” types are themselves exceptionally shallow, narrow-minded bigots.  When something even more blatant than “Friday” comes along, and they are forced to be aware of their own human failings, they over-react, as does the reformed alcoholic or druggie who suddenly “Finds God” and obsesses over religion (versus faith or piety) to the point where it’s apparent it’s merely a substitute addiction.

Once aware of their own failings, their form of denial is to project their shortcomings onto all “normal” people, who obviously feel as they do, about those “non-normal” people they suddenly realize were in fact human beings all along.

Michael Z. Williamson
May 20, 2017
The Failure of the Science Fiction Reader
[“Friday” refers, of course, to Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rockin Out @carsonites

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@Ducks_N_Bucks19 @garageleague66 Um You’re The Coward ‼ Small penis man trying to compensate with Big gun‼LOL …we know who you are

Rockin Out @carsonites
Tweeted on December 21, 2016
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a tweet from American Hunter ‏@Ducks_N_Bucks19.

Also, from the same thread:

@Ducks_N_Bucks19 @garageleague66 hopefully a hunting accident will rid the world of you……..here’s hoping❗

It’s so sad when children aren’t taught manners or critical thinking and are allowed out in public with nothing but insults and violent impulses for social “skills”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Morse

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Cleansing a sickness from our souls doesn’t come easy. It’s gruesome…

John Morse
Colorado Democratic Legislator
March 8, 2013
In the context of advocating for the passage of oppressive gun laws.
[This has been widely, and erroneously, quoted as:

People who own guns are essentially a “sickness on our souls” that must be “cleansed. … Cleansing a sickness from our souls doesn’t come easy. It’s gruesome…”

While that could seen to be a valid interpretation of his intent, that is not what he said. He claims,

“To insinuate that I referred to gun owners as a ‘sickness from our souls’ is obscene,” Morse said Tuesday, according to KDVR. “As a former police officer and a gun owner myself, I believe in the right to bear arms. And as a legislator, I am committed to making our whole society healthier and safer.”

The claim, “I believe in the right to bear arms” does not mean he respects the right. And from the context we know he is admitting that that he is intent on knowingly attempting to violate that right.

While we can’t definitely read his mind the erroneous version of the quote can’t be far from the truth of what he believes.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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The left did not mourn the mass destruction of the moderates. Instead it celebrated the growing purity of the Democrats as a movement of the hard left. It did not notice or care that it was no longer a political force outside a limited number of cities. It anticipated that voters would have no choice but to choose it over the “extremist” Republicans.

It proved to be very, very wrong.

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

Delusions are often functional. In this case they cannot see the truth because it would destroy their entire system of belief. What we have here could be another chapter in the book When Prophecy Fails (my website about this amazing book it is here). As their prophecies fail instead of admitting they were wrong they proselytize more. Converting more people to believe as they do reduces the psychological stress of their discovery that they were wrong. That proselytization has a lower cost than admitting they were wrong.

Read Greenfield’s whole pamphlet. I alternated between seeing it as a nearly unbelievable conspiracy theory and brilliant insight. Perhaps it is both.—Joe]

Knife crime

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If there were no guns then there would be few murders, right? How would people murder others if they didn’t have a gun, right?

Wrong:

A teenage boy has been stabbed to death in an east London high street, becoming the 11th person to die from knife crime on the capital’s streets in just two weeks.

Police and paramedics were scrambled to the High Street in Walthamstow late on Sunday night, where they found the 17-year-old suffering from a serious stab wound.

He was rushed to an east London hospital in critical condition where he died a short while later, Scotland Yard said.

…

The Walthamstow murder also came just hours after hundreds of protestors took to London’s streets for a peace rally on Sunday.

Demonstrators including families of knife murder victims held banners reading “enough is enough” as they marched from Islington to Hackney amid a growing outcry over knife and gun crime.

Scroll down to see the video of their knife crime protest march.

Remember this. Those who want “common sense gun laws” will never be satisfied. If they are successful banning guns they will come after knives, chemical sprays, sticks, and rocks. These people have mental issues.

Just say no and refer them to a mental health expert.

It’s a start, but is it premature?

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From the LA Times:

A coalition including the National Rifle Assn. on Thursday filed a second lawsuit challenging California’s new gun laws, this time arguing a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines is unconstitutional.

NRA attorneys representing the California Rifle and Pistol Assn., the group’s state affiliate, filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Diego, maintaining that the law banning possession of magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition violates the due process and takings clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

…

Last month, the NRA and affiliated groups filed a lawsuit challenging another new law that bans the sale of semiautomatic rifles with bullet buttons that allow, with a tool, the removal and replacement of the magazine.

I want those repressive laws overturned and, in California, it’s not going to happen legislatively. The Federal courts are probably the best hope to get rid of them. But I worry that the courts are not ready to accept the Second Amendment at face value.

I realize the lawsuit filed yesterday is based upon a due process argument but many judges have no problem ignoring such thing BECAUSE GUN!! I would feel better about this if we had a better set of judges on the Supreme Court as well as a lot more depth with originalists in the lower courts.

Sign of the times

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I’m very pleased with this ruling:

The FAA’s drone database hit a major snag this week, courtesy of a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling. The D.C.-based court sided with drone hobbyist John Taylor, who argued that the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t have jurisdiction over what the law classifies as model aircraft.

“Taylor does not think that the FAA had the statutory authority to issue the Registration Rule and require him to register,” Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the statement. “Taylor is right.”

Less regulation is almost always a good thing.

The current administration says it is going to cut regulations across the board. This does not appear to be a result of those efforts but I welcome the elimination of regulations no matter how it comes about.

Unfortunately, it’s only a grain of sand on a beach.

Quote of the day—Lauren Levy

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Even if they’re colorful and super cool, kids shouldn’t be playing with water guns because it normalizes the real thing.

Lauren Levy
May 17, 2017
Why Kids Should Never Play With Water Guns. Period.
[I find it very telling that Ms. Levy is strictly opposed to someone thinking exercising the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms is normal.

In the comments I found this which pretty much sums it up:

More LEFT wing lunacy. These people are not rational. They strip every freedom we have either through non-stop new legislation (California) or through public shaming.

Time for regular common sense people to stand up and say, “F$#@ YOU!!!”

Anthony Prieto

—Joe]

I still think this is cool

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The images below are of the field near Boomershoot Mecca. In the first one you can see Mecca on the hill (the shipping container with trees around it).

I have probably seen this sort of thing a hundred times or more but I still think it is cool.
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Something about the water vapor rising from the field is unusual enough to fascinate me.

Quote of the day—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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Soviet organisation has made possible the creation of armed forces of workers and peasants which are much more closely connected with the working and exploited people than before. If this had not been done it would have been impossible to achieve one of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism—the arming of the workers and the disarming of the bourgeoisie.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
1919 (see here)
The Basic Tasks Of The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat In Russia
[As many people have pointed out, Democrats/Socialists/Communists are not anti-gun. They just don’t want their political opponents to have guns. See also the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars where they disarmed everyone except members of the Russian Communist Party.—Joe]

I suppose the brass is good.

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At Boomershoot this year someone gave me several boxes of assorted .40 S&W ammo (562 rounds) and told me to appraise them and give them credit for Boomershoot 2018. In the collection was this:

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ExtremeShock

$9.00 for five rounds? What does a box of 20 sell for these days without all the fancy packaging? Oh. $62. No thank you.

As an engineer I’m frequently annoyed that crappy products in the hands of the “right” marketing and sales people can be a success. And furthermore that marketing and sales people can get away with outlandish claims. At the face of it this appears to be one of those instances.

A quick Internet search indicates my hunch that the claims exceed the function is correct:

.40 “EXTREME SHOCK” Ammo Gel Test and The Box O’ Truth #23 – ExtremeShock Ammo and the Box O’ Truth.

But my favorite find of the search is a description of how the bullets are made:

They’re, in fact, made up of a special compound derived from Chuck Norris’ beard hair. The hairs are ground into a special powder and mixed into a paste with Jack Bauer’s tears. The paste is then forced into molds of bullets created from the bones of John Wayne. The molds are super heated, then rapidly cooled by the cold stare of Clint Eastwood.
It was on “How it’s Made”…

Well, I suppose the brass is good and I can reload it.

Quote of the day—Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

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The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
March 1850
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League
[Interesting reading.—Joe]

Easy and difficult

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Speed steel shooting has sometimes been called “drag racing with a handgun”. While this is almost always true the stage designer can give you a wide range of challenges. The Holmes Harbor Rod & Gun Club Fun Steel match on March 25th, 2017 was the widest range of difficulty I had ever seen in a single match. One stage only took me 1.52 seconds to shoot. Another took 4.97 seconds. Here’s the video:

Match wise, I won the rimfire iron sight division with an average shot time of 0.6658 seconds per shot. I came in dead last in the centerfire iron sight division (I had problems with my gun again—details in another post).

Here are the final scores:

Brian L.          PCC-O       45.31
Jon S.            RF-O          54.86
Brian L.          RF-RV-O    58.51
Dan L.            RF-O          63.00
Jim D.            RF-RI-O      63.81
Joe H.            RF-I            66.58
Jeremy P.      CF-I            79.85
Craig J.          RF-I            80.29
Jon S.             CF-O          82.44
Thomas A.     CF-O          85.49
MAC                RF-RV-I     93.16
Roy L.              CF-O         95.15
Craig J.           CF-I           101.38
Roy L.              CF-I           101.44
Thomas A.      CF-I           103.21
Scott B.           RF-RV-I      104.78
Roy L.              CF-I            107.51
Thomas A.     CF-S           109.63
Dan L.             CF-LR         117.82
Scott B.          CF-RV-I       118.46
Bret C.            CF-I             127.46
Joe H.            CF-I             132.58
Brendan         RF-I             142.51
Alaska B.       CF-LR          274.21
MAC               CF-RV-I          DNF

Update: Stage pictures.

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The two small plates in the center were not visible to someone of ordinary height. This picture was taken from a viewpoint of approximately 7.5 feet above the ground.
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USPSA match results

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It’s been a several months since I shot in a USPSA match. I practiced a bunch in the previous two weeks but I completely forgot to practice one handed shooting. I remembered this as I was driving to Idaho to work on the weather station but then it was too late to do much about it. I had an extremely busy weekend and I was suffering from a lack of sleep and decided sleep had a higher priority than even a few minutes of dry firing.

Two of the stages had some one-handed shooting and I did okay on them (in fact, I won one of the stages). Overall I felt I did okay but not great (especially the classifier). When I looked at the overall results (Limited Division) I was surprised:

Lewiston Pistol Club USPSA-May 2017 – 2017-05-14


Match Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div PF Category Match Pts Match %
1 Huffman, Joe TY29386 B LTD Maj Senior 339.3213 100.0000 %
2 Meyer, Wade A95272 C LTD Maj 330.5290 97.4089 %
3 Piper, Steve A88114 U LTD Maj Senior 294.2301 86.7114 %
4 Imel, Kevin L2544 B LTD Maj 273.4669 80.5923 %
5 HARRIS, MARK A102929 U LTD Min Senior 262.6431 77.4025 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD Min Military 205.7575 60.6380 %

Wow!

What happened?

It turns out that, as in most of the other matches I have done well in, I get the best results when I don’t try to do my absolute best. Not making really bad mistakes yields better results than having a mixture of awesome and catastrophic stages. This was a mixture of mediocre and good. My fellow competitors had a mix of catastrophic and good:

Six Chickens (03-02)
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Meyer, Wade C LTD 57 0 14.66 3.8881 60.0000 100.00 %
2 Smith, Mark U LTD 50 0 17.00 2.9412 45.3877 75.65 %
3 Imel, Kevin B LTD 50 10 15.25 2.6230 40.4774 67.46 %
4 Huffman, Joe B LTD 49 20 11.72 2.4744 38.1842 63.64 %
5 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 53 20 17.76 1.8581 28.6736 47.79 %
6 Piper, Steve U LTD 42 50 10.15 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 %
May Flower Mayhem
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Piper, Steve U LTD 136 40 18.11 5.3009 160.0000 100.00 %
2 Meyer, Wade C LTD 155 10 30.46 4.7603 143.6828 89.80 %
3 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 160 0 37.94 4.2172 127.2901 79.56 %
4 Huffman, Joe B LTD 146 20 30.60 4.1176 124.2838 77.68 %
5 Imel, Kevin B LTD 152 10 34.60 4.1040 123.8733 77.42 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD 156 10 40.02 3.6482 110.1156 68.82 %
Paper Plates 2
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Piper, Steve U LTD 106 0 15.93 6.6541 115.0000 100.00 %
2 Huffman, Joe B LTD 109 0 19.45 5.6041 96.8533 84.22 %
3 Meyer, Wade C LTD 105 0 20.03 5.2421 90.5970 78.78 %
4 Imel, Kevin B LTD 110 0 21.34 5.1546 89.0848 77.47 %
5 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 113 10 31.93 3.2258 55.7501 48.48 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD 100 20 32.57 2.4562 42.4495 36.91 %
Brave You Are?
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Huffman, Joe B LTD 69 0 19.36 3.5640 80.0000 100.00 %
2 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 54 0 23.80 2.2689 50.9293 63.66 %
3 Meyer, Wade C LTD 70 30 24.77 1.6149 36.2492 45.31 %
4 Imel, Kevin B LTD 57 40 19.05 0.8924 20.0314 25.04 %
5 Piper, Steve U LTD 55 40 17.51 0.8567 19.2301 24.04 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD 48 40 23.01 0.3477 7.8047 9.76 %

I forgot to turn on my camera for the first stage we shot (May Flower Mayhem) but here are the other stages:

Greg Hamilton for Seattle Mayor!

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This is going to be interesting.

See also here.

Via multiple sources and an email from Ry who says, “First time I regret not living in Seattle”.

Who is Greg Hamilton? He is the founder and Chief Instructor InSights Training Center. I’ve known Greg for over 20 years and have 51 QOTDs from him here on this blog.

Update: Video of Greg Hamilton’s Mayoral Announcement.