Months after the public knew the United States Office of Personnel Management loss of the background investigation records of people who applied for security clearances OPM still hasn’t notified everyone affected. Everyone on my team at work has or at one time had a security clearance and hardly a week goes by without someone asking, “Have you got your OPM letter yet?” Yesterday was one of those days and I told them, “No”, as usual, and further elaborated that I wouldn’t be surprised if they never got a letter to me.
This is because since I had my clearance I have moved five times and no government issued ID has my current address. Nevertheless, yesterday I checked my mail and found my OPM letter (PIN number has been removed):
I suspect they used my address I used for the IRS.
Opposing common-sense gun safety laws either means that someone is too extreme or too much in the pocket of the gun lobby.
Geoff Garin
A pollster for Clinton’s 2008 campaign now with her super PAC, Priorities USA Action
November 6, 2015
Why Hillary Clinton Thinks Gun Control Can Win in 2016
[Via an email from Miles (a frequent commenter here).
As he also said in the email:
Yep, this is what they think of us. And if they’re this delusional, I hope thy keep thinking it.
While it’s clear the Democrats don’t have very strong presidential candidates and they are choosing their issues poorly I currently don’t see a lot of strength in their opposition. So I suspect it will be another one of those elections where many people will vote for the candidate who they think is the least evil.—Joe]
On November 3rd I had surgery on my left shoulder. Over three and half weeks later I still have large bruises and somewhat limited range of motion.
But I had made it to the range a couple of times for practice and my shooting was okay and only occasionally experienced some pain. So Saturday I went to Whidbey Island for the Holmes Harbor Rod and Gun Club steel match.
I tried to take just a little more time before squeezing off the shot but still make the target transitions as quickly as I could. This seemed to work a lot better than if I tried to make everything go fast.
My rimfire results in particular were very good. I cut my total match time by over 10 seconds (this is about a 15% improvement!). This was a total of 56.64 seconds for five stages. Since there are four strings of five shots in each stage this means my average time for each string was 2.83 seconds. And since every stage requires five shots the average time per shot was 0.5664 seconds. I’m constantly amazed this is even possible let alone that I am capable of shooting this fast on targets likes these:
But it’s possible. Here is the video to prove it:
The scores were:
| Class: Rimfire Rifle Open | |
| Name | Match Time |
| Brian Lawson | 37.54 |
| Tony Ceci | 48.39 |
| Brian Lawson | 48.64 |
| Ron Wigger | 50.24 |
| Dan Lavaty | 54.02 |
| Ethan Kimball | 63.90 |
| Class: Rimfire Iron | |
| Name | Match Time |
| Joe Huffman | 56.64 |
| Brian Lawson | 71.27 |
| Scott Bertino | 84.73 |
| Class: Rimfire Open | |
| Name | Match Time |
| Dan Lavaty | 64.03 |
| Jim Dunlap | 88.05 |
| Rev Barchenger | 96.47 |
| Dave Shupe | Mechanical Issues |
| Class: Centerfire Iron | |
| Name | Match Time |
| Joe Huffman | 78.44 |
| Bruce Barchenger | 90.18 |
| Dave Shupe | 124.71 |
| Dennis Bohling | 132.05 |
| Scott Bertino | 140.83 |
| Class: Centerfire Revolver Open | |
| Name | Match Time |
| Chris Ceci | 80.93 |
| Class: Centerfire Revolver Iron | |
| Name | Match Time |
| Ron Wigger | 96.82 |
Hey everybody, that guy you know who is super proud of his guns, ya, he’s impotent. #tinycockclub #bokbok #fuckthenra #gunsense
Bacon @Baconmints
Tweeted on December 23, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via a Tweet from BFD @BigFatDave.—Joe]
Women think it’s not a world for them and I say the hell with that! It absolutely is. I believe if you can drive a car you can handle and shoot a gun.
Dana Loesch
April 18, 2015
Dana Loesch – Truly A Well Armed Woman
[Actually, in many circumstances, you can shoot a gun safely and effectively even when you can’t drive a car.—Joe]
With this enemy, we have to push aside arguments on law, morality and comparisons of security and the rights of the individual. That means to do what they did in World War II to Dresden. They wiped it off the map. That is what has to be done to all the territorial enclaves that ISIS is holding.
Shabtai Shavit
Former chief of Mossad
November 15, 2015
Experts Explain How Global Powers Can Smash ISIS
[Opinions vary. Read the article for other views.—Joe]
You want friendly, head to your local gun show and masturbate with the other gun cum guzzlers.
Aaron Duncan @AaronCDuncan
Tweeted on November 24, 2015
[Via a Tweet from Linoge.
This is what they think of those who exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. Just remember that we have SCOTUS decisions and they have childish insults.—Joe]
What do you fear most? An evil group or an evil person? Read Shirley Jackson’s thoroughly scary story of group insanity, The Lottery. Watch Children of the Corn. Would you rather live in a town where there is a sole vampire terrorizing the population, or be the sole non-zombie in a town that has gone all-zombie? Ask yourself, who scares you more — Hitler or the mindless army he inspired? Would you prefer the tyranny of a dictator or the tyranny of an illiberal democracy, where a mob tramples over individuals? Dictators can be overthrown. Can an evil group culture be as easily displaced?
Venkatesh Rao
November 21, 2009
Morality, Compassion and the Sociopath
[H/T to M.E. via her post The morality of sociopaths, clueless, and losers.
I’ve dealt with sociopaths before and was amazed at how effortlessly they would “win” when you got in their way. The most fundamental assumptions I had about human behavior were completely destroyed as they crushed me. I “follow the rules” and it is difficult for me to imagine other people not doing the same. Sociopaths know the rules far better than you. The rules that you acquired as a small child and “just follow” without thought or even awareness they have thoroughly examined under a light of hyper rationality. They may follow them most of the time but it is with the knowledge that it is to their benefit to do so at that time and place. When it is to their benefit to not follow them they effortlessly break them.
I began following M.E., a diagnosed sociopath, a year or more ago and my burning hate for sociopaths diminished some as read more. After a time I was able to develop a model for their behavior that allowed me see them in a different light. They lack empathy for other people. In a sense you can think of them as totally selfish but to do that would be to continue misunderstanding them in a way that is detrimental to both yourself and them. The short version of my model for them is hyper-rational beings who only care about themselves. They will act to the benefit of others but only if it furthers their own interests.
They examine the rules of society and understand them and use them to their advantage. They have and frequently need and want friends and family. They can be good friends, family, neighbors, and citizens when they want to be. But what you consider fundamental principles of behavior to them is nothing more than a suggested script to be read at the appropriate time. They examine, evaluate, and act with full awareness and no guilt for “going off script” when they need to achieve their goals.
This, perhaps surprisingly, was reassuring to me. It explained to me why there might be a genetic component to sociopathetic behavior. Having a small number of sociopaths in society is almost certainly an advantage to the group. Let me explain.
In The Walking Dead there are many people who avoid doing things that are clearly the rational thing to do and put themselves and a great many other people at extreme risk. You watch the show and you understand the dilemma of the character but you also understand they really need to put a bullet in the head of the zombie that was their child.
The show is make-believe but you have to be extremely well insulated from reality to not realize we have similar situations all around us.
We euthanize our pets when they are in pain and have no hope of recovery. We, in the gun community, think about and train for the use of deadly force to protect innocent life. Yet most, if ever in the position of taking the life of a human, even when clearly saving innocent life, will suffer for a significant period of time, if not their entire life, for doing the right thing. We send our young adults to war to kill and be killed when the alternative is even greater loss to our society.
These are tough choices and we agonize over them before and after making them when “the proper choice of action” is frequently crystal clear and obvious to the sociopath. Having people with this clarity of vision, ability to make these decisions quickly, and implement them without guilt or hesitation, is an advantage to a society.
One of the things that M.E. said in a previous post has almost haunted me. She said, IIRC, she fears mob behavior because it is so unpredictable. She understands individuals because after observing and interacting with them for a very short period of time she knows, with a high degree of certainty, how they will behave. Their behavior probably isn’t rational, but it is predictable. A mob is unpredictable and powerful.
This observation of mobs extrapolates well to a mindless or evil group culture which is destroying the good and the innocent. The sociopaths among us may be able to make tough choices, in direct violation of deeply held principles, and save a good society from the indecision which would result in the total destruction of that which is good.—Joe]
DEA Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg today announced results from the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA), which found that drug overdose deaths are the leading cause of injury death in the United States, ahead of deaths from motor vehicle accidents and firearms.
DEA Public Affairs
November 4, 2015
DEA Releases 2015 Drug Threat Assessment: Heroin and Painkiller Abuse Continue to Concern
[H/T to Ryan McMaken for his post: DEA Releases New Drug Overdose Death Figures: Guns Safer than Prescription Drugs who also says:
If policymakers responded to drunk driving the way they respond to gun violence, we would be forced to endure nationwide bans on fast cars and automobile engines that can exceed speed limits. We would be hearing demands for laws shrinking the overall number of automobiles sold each year. “More cars equal more fatalities! We are awash in cars,” we would be told.
…
But the fact of the matter is that gun violence is simply not a leading cause of death in the US, and those things that are more likely to kill us or our children — such as prescription drugs and alcohol — are approached with caution and demands for a “measured” approach.
It’s like those opposed to gun ownership have an agenda other than public safety. The next time someone says they want to restrict guns ask them, “What’s the real reason you want to do this?”—Joe]
Democrats aren’t doing this because they think it’s the only possible way to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons. We know this because we’ve established that the attorney general already has all the power she needs to indict, arrest, convict, and sentence known, dangerous terrorists. Democrats are doing this because they think it will benefit them politically. In the wake of a massive terrorist attack on free, innocent people in Paris, Washington Democrats have decided that their real enemy isn’t ISIS. Just like Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton declared in a recent debate, their real enemies are Republicans.
And they’ll do whatever they can to defeat these dangerous electoral terrorists…even if it requires the wholesale elimination of the constitutional right to due process.
Sean Davis
Co-founder of The Federalist
November 23, 2015
Sorry Democrats, But There Is No ‘Loophole’ That Allows Terrorists To Legally Buy Guns
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
@Phibear94 Don’t worry about me, go give a hug to those mini dick assault rifle -toting insecure little boys who call emselves men #NRA men.
Superguts™@superguts
Tweeted on October 14, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via a tweet from Huntin/Shootin Nurse @Duck_Hunter7.—Joe]
My brother Scott passed away. From what we know, he was sitting at his computer desk and just fell over.
He was supposed to arrive in Phoenix around midnight last night and when we didn’t hear from him by this morning we started making phone calls.
We were able to get a deputy out to his apartment and have the office open the door. The chain was still latched from the inside but nobody responded. The fire department was called to enter the apartment and they found him there. A detective was brought in and said there was no sign of foul play. Given the family history with heart conditions and his many years of smoking, they’re guessing it was a heart attack. A medical examiner was supposed to do an autopsy on Monday but it sounds like they’re just going to do an “external examination”.
Scott absolutely loved the Boomershoot, and he loved sharing it with me, my wife Rachel, and our nephew Cody. He looked forward to it every year and planned ahead for it. He’d come to Phoenix for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the only other time he’d travel anywhere was the annual trek to Idaho so he could enjoy the event you put on.
I wanted to write and tell you the sad news, but also to thank you. The Boomershoot gave us a few extra days every year to hang out and have a good time together.
Brian Keszler
Email, November 21, 2015
[This is Scott at the Boomershoot staff dinner April 28th, 2011:
Here he is making targets at the Taj Mahal April 28th, 2011:
Here he is cleaning equipment after making targets at Boomershoot Mecca May 2nd, 2014:
Near the tree line May 2nd, 2015 with his brother Brian on the left, sister-in-law Rachel in the middle and Scott on the right. I don’t know the name of the guy wearing camouflage:
Scott has been attending Boomershoot since, I think, 2003. For a few years he would drive to Boomershoot from his home in Fargo North Dakota. Later he got a job in the Washington D.C. area and would drive from Virginia to North Dakota, load up his pickup, and then drive to Boomershoot. Yes, I said DRIVE! That’s about 2500 miles each way.
After a couple years of attending he volunteered to help. I accepted and he was always the first person, after me, to arrive. He brought the 200 foot tape we used to mark the shooting positions each year. He helped make the targets. He helped pound stakes, place targets, and came up with new ideas to make Boomershoot better. Each year he brought the two steel targets we would put on the hillside between 550 and 700 yards from the shooting line. If you hear the clang of a bullet on steel in any of the Boomershoot videos during the main event on Sunday it was almost for certain from one of Scott’s targets being hit.
The last several years he always picked shooting position number 46. This is in the “Main” section just to the left of the berm.
He also left a few comments here on this blog. There are 29 comments by my count. Here are some of the better ones:
Other blog posts that make mention of Scott:
He was 53 years old. That is much too young to die.
Scott will be greatly missed.—Joe]
Our nation has watched as community after community has had to confront the tragedies that occur when weapons designed to kill large numbers of people quickly get into the hands of a dangerous person. No Wisconsin community should ever have to face such a tragedy at the hands of someone armed with a semiautomatic assault weapon.
I can conceive of no legitimate reason that any citizen should need to own or use a semiautomatic assault weapon.
Lisa Subeck
State Representative, Democrat Wisconsin
Media release November 4, 2015.
[H/T to Barron for the email pointer.
I can think of many reasons why citizens should own and use the type of firearms she wishes to ban. And like a fish who doesn’t know what water is Ms. Subeck doesn’t have the imagination to recognized the most obvious reason. That is, the number one reason for owning and becoming skilled in the use of these type of firearms is to defend ourselves against people like her who are contemptuous of basic human rights.
In addition to the general stupidity of her media release her bill demonstrates she is clueless in many dimensions. Here, for example, is her description of the pistols to be banned from the proposed bill:
3. A semiautomatic pistol that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and that has any of the following:
a. A folding, telescoping, or thumbhole stock.
b. A 2nd handgrip or protruding grip that can be held by the nontrigger hand.
c. The capacity to accept an ammunition magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip.
d. A threaded barrel capable of accepting a barrel extender, flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer.
e. A shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel, and that permits the user to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being
burned.
f. A manufactured weight of at least 50 ounces when the pistol is unloaded.
She has crap for brains and should be treated as such.
But the real lesson to remember from this is:
Under the bill, whoever transports, purchases, possesses, or transfers a semiautomatic assault weapon is guilty of a felony and may be fined up to $10,000, sentenced to a term of imprisonment of up to six years, or both.
Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
Everything went black the moment the idiotic CNN talking head used the Paris bloodbath to push for American gun control, and then hand-wring over fears of a unicorn known as the “anti-Muslim backlash.”
John Nolte
November 14, 2015
Why CNN Is Dying: Paris Bloodbath Used to Push Gun Control
[I welcome the efforts to use terrorist attacks such as the incident in Paris for gun control efforts. Rational people only have to think about it for a few seconds before dismissing gun control efforts as idiotic in this context.
As noted by Sebastian there is a surge in people seeking concealed carry license. This is attributed to the Paris attacks. Politicians attempting to make guns harder to get will find their plans do poorly at the polls. Think of this as an intelligence test for politicians. If they say and do stupid things then they get their failed test results at the polls.—Joe]
The beasts of Islam have declared war against all of Western civilization. And there is no appeasing them. The more you give the more they demand.
And unless the EU stands with Israel against the beasts of Islam, the EU will drown in its own blood.
Robert J. Avrech
November 15, 2015
Paris and The Beasts of Islam
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
King County contains Seattle and many of the surrounding cities. So this is in deep blue territory. And yet King Co. Sheriff asks off-duty officers to carry guns, extra mags after Paris attacks:
King County Sheriff John Urquhart has instructed off-duty deputies to carry their sidearm with extra magazines, following the deadly Paris attacks.
The violence in Paris prompted the sheriff to request, via a letter to his deputies, that off-duty officers be armed with their service weapons and extra magazines of ammo should a terrorist attack hit the Puget Sound region.
…
The King County Sheriff’s Office has 700 commissioned officers, according to Urquhart. While off-duty deputies were once required to carry their service weapon wherever they went, that is not the case currently.
You only have to extrapolate a little bit to come to the conclusion that the thousands of private citizens with concealed carry permits in the county would dramatically improve the odds of a Paris like attack running into armed resistance in the first few seconds instead of having free rein for several minutes.
We should not apply any time limits. We should know them all by name. We will search for them everywhere, where ever they are hiding. We will find them in any spot on the planet and punish them.
Vladimir Putin
November 17, 2015
Putin vows payback after confirmation of Egypt plane bomb
[His definition of “punish” will have significant differences from that of our current president. It may well involve removing their entire family line from the gene pool.
The French and the Russians are probably in good agreement on the task at hand. France is asking “European allies” to join them. I expect Israel probably is interesting in cooperating as well. If ISIS follows through on their threat, The American Blood Is Best, and We Will Taste It Soon, then there may be sufficient motivation for our country to “achieve consensus” and put aside our differences with other nations and ally with them to achieve a more “lasting peace” with Islam.
We have the technology to do a much “better” job than we did in the past few hundred years we have been at war with them. If the political will to use it comes about things things will get very ugly.—Joe]
Militant Islamist Wahhibi douchebags want to kill you. Period. Don’t make excuses for them. Don’t try to explain them away. They literally want you to submit or die. This isn’t rocket science. Just ask them. They’ll tell you.
Larry Correia
November 16, 2015
Thoughts on Paris
[This is probably one of the most important points you must understand in this war. This isn’t something you can negotiate with them about. It’s not about some piece of desert which contains oil, forcing capitalism on them, poverty, or some misunderstanding that some “smart diplomacy” can fix. You cannot bargain with them anymore than you can bargain with a psychopath who wants to torture and kill you for his pleasure of watching you suffer and die.
You might get concessions from them that slow their attack some. But their long term goals and nature have not changed since the origin of Islam hundreds of years ago. Our country has fought since Jefferson was president. Reading about their mindset and their attitudes at that time is eerily similar to what I read about them now. I am firmly convinced the only long term options we have are:
The only questions are which option do we chose and if we chose to fight and win how do we do that. I read one post on Facebook by someone I greatly admire which said, in part,
It’s not going away from magical thoughts.
“You can’t kill your way out of this war/to victory”
Really? I guess you’ve never heard of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We killed the fucking shit out of them and they cried uncle and never raised a fist against us again.
In fact, no war has even been won in the history of mankind that was won any way but killing so many of the enemy that HE admitted he was beaten.
It’s not a good option. There are no good options. This is only the best option.
The Islamic people attacking the west have explicitly said:
The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
…
We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling’s, and trading with interest.
…
You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.
…
If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him.
Their religious belief is that non-believers must convert, submit, or die. We must chose the option which they do not offer. That option is that we fight and completely neutralize those who insist the world be Islamic.—Joe]
