Author Archives: Joe

Boomershoot Mecca housekeeping

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When I last saw Boomershoot Mecca, just before the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, there was 3000 pounds of Ammonium Nitrate just inside the door:

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Barron with the Ammonium Nitrate (Barron is on the right).

Nine days ago Ry sent me an email with the picture below, a subject line of “2000 pounds of Tetris” with a message body of, “Was bored.”

RyTetris

Barron, Janelle, and I visited Mecca on Sunday and moved the remaining bags to the rear of the container, put the older Ammonium Nitrate on top and in front of the new, rearranged the tables, and cleaned up in preparation for a private party this weekend:

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The biggest changes were the reorientation of the table with the mixers to be inline with the other tables rather than at right angles and the addition of a measurement table between the chemicals and the mixing table.

We also made a place to put my tent, sleeping bags, and some other bedding Maggie donated “to the cause” when she recently moved.

I also took pictures of the exterior so we could better visualize some repairs and improvements we are considering for next summer:

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Barron tried to tease me about “Cleaning the place up for when my girlfriend comes to visit.” But we would have cleaned things up just the same even without guests coming next weekend.

Seen at a stoplight

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Strapped and frapped on the left side of the window and a zombie family on the right.

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And the car ahead of it has a Mitt Romney sticker on the trunk lid.

It is almost amazing that this was in Bellevue Washington.

Random thought of the day

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I was informed today that the carrot cake I received for my birthday on Sunday does not qualify as desert because it doesn’t have chocolate in it. In fact because of the carrots and raisins it should be considered mostly a vegetable with fruit. That sounds entirely reasonable to me so I’m eating the second half of the cake tonight for supper.

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What I don’t understand is why I gained two pounds after eating most of the first half Sunday and Monday nights.

I want a wheat farm on the moon

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It may be that we can mine the moon for hydrogen and oxygen. And to make it even more interesting is that it appears it is a renewable source. The sun creates the water on the moon:

The moon’s top layer of crushed rock and soil may hold far more water than previously estimated, according to a new study.

Most of that water can trace its origin to protons streaming from the sun, the researchers show, confirming in samples of lunar soil a mechanism for making lunar water that until now largely had been the province of theoretical models.

Getting water could be useful. Getting rocket fuel would be awesome!

The moon has an abundance of solar energy to break the water and/or hydroxyl down into H + O which is a great rocket fuel. The moon could be more than just a staging area for exploring and/or mining the asteroids and/or other planets. It could be a source of supplies.

The next question I want answered, “Is there a plentiful source of nitrogen and carbon available?” These are needed for an earth like atmosphere and as plant nutrients.

If N and C (and a bunch of other nutrients in smaller quantities) are readily available then crops can be grown for food. Once we have wheat farms on the moon we are snuggling distance from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

Quote of the day—Bill Maher

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I’m so tired of hearing about the second amendment and the Constitution. If you love guns just admit it like it’s a vice. It’s like alcohol or drugs or sex addiction or gambling. It’s just a vice. It’s something you like. It’s not good for you or anybody else. You just like it. But stop the bulls–t about the second amendment in the Constitution, because nobody needs a gun that fires 31 rounds.

Bill Maher
January 12, 2011
Bill Maher Heckled by ‘Tonight Show’ Crowd for Saying Conservatives Want to Kill People They Disagree With
[H/T Say Uncle.

Bill, It’s a Bill of Rights, not a Bill of Needs. And you don’t need to be bad mouthing the right to keep and bear arms. How about we just put you in prison for what you just said? Because if you can just dismiss and/or ignore it gives someone else free license to dismiss and/or ignore every other specific enumerated right. Life would be considerably less pleasant if the police could legally beat a confession out of you or you could be compelled into slavery as a eunuch and praying to Mecca five times a day. That endangers everyone. Maher, you are a threat to society and the human race.

But I don’t advocate putting Maher in prison or restricting his right to free speech no matter how stupid and dangerous it is in the long run. Because the danger to society is greater if we punish speech we don’t like as long as it doesn’t cause a clear and imminent danger to innocent people. And so it is with the right to keep and bear arms.

At least Maher admits he doesn’t have any respect for the Constitution. I wish he would have said, “It’s just a piece of paper.” Just to make it crystal clear what he is really saying. He’s saying he doesn’t want our form of government. He wants to live under a government that has no formal limits to it’s power. An all powerful government is just as valid as a government which respects our natural rights. He didn’t say it but you can read between the lines that he doesn’t want you to be able to advocate for the right to keep and bear arms. He is tired of hearing that such a right exists. Well, Mr. Maher, why don’t you move so some place where your natural rights to free speech and to defend yourself are not recognized. I’d like to suggest North Korea. I’m sure you will be much happier there.

And the right to keep and bear arms is a vice? Tell that to the people in the picture of this blog post. Oh, that’s right! They are all dead because they didn’t have any guns to defend themselves with. And a gun that fires 30 or more rounds would have come in really handy when trying to defend those people. Is the right to defend yourself or other innocent people a vice? I think letting your mouth run off without knowing what you are talking about is a vice. A protected vice.—Joe]

Half-truth Henigan has moved on

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A big rat just jumped the sinking ship: Dennis Henigan has left the Brady Campaign.

Something to remember is that Henigan has long known that high gun ownership rates probably do not cause high violent crime rates. He has been working for a cause that, deep down, he has known was lie.

Thank you for leaving Dennis. This is another clock tick closer to my dream.

Perhaps with a few years of work for a different cause the half-truth Henigan label can be retired. For now I’ll just put it on standby.

Markley’s law Monday—video

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It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

As Phil said:

That 3 minutes has the highest concentration of stupid I’ve seen in a video in quite a long time. The female co-host has absolutely no idea of what she is saying. I have more knowledge of how perming solution works than she does about firearms and the laws governing firearms. The male cohost Markley’s himself within just a few sentences.

I love it that they keep doing this sort of thing. It demonstrates they are out of “ammunition” in the fight. They are way beyond bringing a knife to a gun fight like they used to. Now they are just spitting at us.

Quote of the day—Mitt Romney

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I believe the next president could indeed have the opportunity to shape the Court for decades to come, and that’s a key reason why the tens of millions of Americans who support the NRA should support my candidacy. My view of the Constitution is straightforward: Its words have meaning. The founders adopted a written constitution for a reason. They intended to limit the powers of government. The job of a judge is to enforce the Constitution’s restraints on government and, where the Constitution does not speak, to leave the governance of the nation to its elected representatives. I believe in the rule of law, and I will appoint wise, experienced and restrained judges who take seriously their oath to discharge their duties impartially in accordance with our Constitution and our laws—not their personal policy preferences.

Mitt Romney
September 11, 2012
NRA’s Chris Cox Goes One On One With Governor Mitt Romney
[If you can ever really be reassured by something a politician says what Romney says in this interview is about as reassuring to gun owners as you can get.—Joe]

Boomershoot article in GunDigest

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I got a call on Friday from someone wanting to interview me for an article in GunDigest about Boomershoot. Cool!

A couple hours later I received an email with a link to the online article.

A quote from the article:

The concept of Boomershoot is simple. First, you shoot a target. Then the target explodes.

Quote of the day—Galen

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Gideon: I thought you said you never hold a grudge.
Galen: Well, I don’t. I have no surviving enemies… at all.

Galen is a Technomage which is a character in the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade.
[I love this type of humor.—Joe]

Classifier special at Lewiston Pistol Club

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From the Lewiston Pistol Club (Idaho):

Hi all,

We’ll be holding a USPSA classifier special in the top three bays of the BP Memorial Range on Saturday, October 13 from 9 to around 2.  The lower (Cowboy) bay will be available as usual.

The Classifier Special is mostly to the advantage of new USPSA members looking to establish their class (A, B, C, etc.) but is available to anyone who wants to try their skill against well designed, really aggravating pistol stages (lots of no-shoots, small target areas, etc). 

We will shoot five USPSA classifiers over the course of the day.  The classifiers will be chosen to test all three facets of DVC – “Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas” (accuracy, power and speed for those not current on dead languages).  I’ll probably take 200 rounds and bring half home.  Total minimum round count is 64.

In case you’re curious, diagrams for all available classifiers can be seen here: http://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-classifier-list.php

The cost of the special will be $15, all of which goes to the USPSA.  For this event only, re-shooting a classifier will cost $5 per re-shoot. 

Thanks,

John Grimes

LPC Action Director

Barron and I will be there.

Quote of the day—George MacDonald Fraser

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When my views were first published in book form in 2002, I was not surprised that almost all the reviewers were unfavourable. I had expected that my old-fashioned views would get a fairly hostile reception, but the bitterness did astonish me.

I had not realised how offensive the plain truth can be to the politically correct, how enraged they can be by its mere expression, and how deeply they detest the values and standards respected 50 years ago and which dinosaurs like me still believe in, God help us.

George MacDonald Fraser
January 5, 2008
The last testament of Flashman’s creator: How Britain has destroyed itself
H/T Tamara.
[Fraser discovered the same thing pro-rights people have. Liberals appear to be violent by nature.—Joe]

Why are liberals so violent?

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From the comments on BuzzFeed:

Haha. Seriously though, I hope Biden rips off Paul Ryan’s head tonight and shits down his throat. Literally. I mean, that’s just good TV.

Why are liberals so violent?

Oh yeah! Now I remember.

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Sometimes I suspect the TV people of deliberately attempting to inculcate superstition in the viewing public; then I realize they’re quite serious about putting chicken bones through their noses, if less so about the Deep Meaning of it all. That, they leave for the passive, receptive blobs on the other side of the screen and there’s nothing we can do about them.

Roberta X
October 11, 2012
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;
Or
The Superstitions Of Primitives
[While I have some disagreement about there being “nothing we can do about them” she has a valid point about the superstition of people. The older I get the more evidence I see presented that there is little more than a thin veneer of rationality and civilization over a subset of the human population. The rest has no veneer. You don’t even have to watch the idiot box, as Roberta did, to gather the evidence. I haven’t had an actual powered on television set in my home in at least 10, if not 15, years now yet I have the following examples from other sources:

  • A software engineer that is certain witches can animate a corpse sufficiently that it could be made to “hop down the road to another city for burial” such that the family wouldn’t haven’t pay the higher cost for transportation by conventional means.
  • A PhD mathematician who insisted digital computers were not deterministic. She told me it was a proven fact that if you ran the same program on different computers all solving the same problem they would come up with different answers. I was tempted to point out she was a Mac user but decided her problems went much deeper than that.
  • A senior government scientist who proclaimed he could diagnose injuries and illness by looking at the iris of a person.
  • Racism.
  • Communism.
  • Most anti-gun people.

That doesn’t include any of the people I have seen having an animated conversation with a power pole (in the dark ages before cell phones) or an empty seat on the other side of the bus (no cell phone present and the police were eventually called to remove her from the bus).—Joe]

My dream is coming true

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Via Dave Hardy.

In 2010 The Brady Campaign reported they net assets or fund balances of -$768,643. Yes, they had net negative assets of over three quarters of a million dollars.

Their assets have been in the red since 2008 and my guess is 2011 and 2012 have not been any better for them. Total revenues in 2008 were 4.1 million compared to 2.8 million in 2011. They would do better if they went to the gun ranges and picked up just one piece of discarded brass from each gun owner in the country each year.

It’s no wonder the Brady Campaign put Helmke and his $250K/year salary out to pasture.

My dream is coming true.

Quote of the day—Thomas

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When I go into prepper mode (which I occasionally do), some colleague will say, “Oh. I’ll just come to your house.” After I push back the bile, I usually say something tasteful like, “Bring your daughter.”

Thomas
October 9, 2012
Comment to Guest Post: Four Alternative Stores Of Value
[Similar thoughts have come to my mind as well but I had never found the words to express them so well.

If I put a bunch of effort and money into making life possible for myself and my family in an extreme hardship situation and you just assumed you could mooch off of me if you ever needed to then if such circumstance came about you are going to be surprised at the price you pay for a handful of lentils and cup of clean water.—Joe]

Boomershoot video from ESS

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ESS attended Boomershoot 2012 and spent a lot of time recording video. They released another video, Volume 1 (Volume 5 was released earlier for some reason):



See also the ESS blog post about the Boomershoot videos where they say:



Commemorating our adoption by the shooting sports community and as a fun forward-step in working together with civilian as well as military shooters, ESS is proud to announce the release of its new video series, Boomershoot!


Filmed at the near-legendary, totally-incendiary shooting event in northern Idaho, ESS shooter, U.S. National Rifle Team (Palma Division) member, and “30 Cal Gal” Anette Wachter together with friend Shelley Rae (Western Shooting Journal /gun blogger) were among the many in attendance. In this exclusive video series, Annette and Shelley demonstrate their passion for shooting while having an explosive time, and in doing illustrate quite nicely that ESS eye pro fits women as well as it fits men.


Video installments in this series will show high-powered guns in action, exploding targets, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.


ESS makes good stuff. They gave me a couple pair of their glasses and I use them whenever I need eye protection or even sunglasses.


H/T to Barron.

Quote of the day—Kristophr

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Joe is one of the moderates who would give him the choice of being disarmed.

I, on the other hand, would strip him of his right to vote for not meeting his militia duties. And make him get a permit to NOT carry, and put him in a public database to shame him for his moral cowardice.

And make him pay double sales tax to fund the additional police protection he requires.

Kristophr

October 9, 2012

Comment to Quote of the day—JMMII.

[Kristophr is right. I’ve gotten soft in my old age. In the past I have advocated for the Swiss system where you cannot vote unless you periodical qualify on the rifle range. Assuming someone does not point out a constitutionality problem that I have overlooked I have no serious objections to implementing a system such as advocated by Kristophr.

I’m currently reading Lone Star Planet and expect to get some ideas from the book. Perhaps that will help me regain my edge.

Thank you Kristophr for pointing out how soft I am. I’ll try to maintain a sharper edge in the future.—Joe]

The clock is ticking

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This is basically rehashing what I already said on Twitter but there is some new material.

Saturday morning I got a call from son James. It was to tell me that his wife, Kelsey, is pregnant. I was sort of expecting something “soon” when I made this post but didn’t officially know anything.

As I replied to Barron on Twitter, “Now the clock is ticking.” We have about 10, maybe 15, years to make full auto firearms readily accessible and to drive the Brady Campaign into bankruptcy and/or total politically oblivion.

I think it’s doable. Won’t you help make my dream come true? It’s for the children.

Don’t you just hate it

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Yesterday I reported someone to law enforcement in the country where their email originated from. It might have been entirely innocent but an email out of the blue asking about “assessing the effects of an explosive on people (primary blast effects, in particular), property & environment.” sends up all kinds of warning flags for me.

I hate getting those emails even worse than spam.