Author Archives: Joe

The snow won

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Barron and I drove out to the Boomershoot site today for some more testing of the potassium chlorate. There was a large snow berm blocking the road out to Mecca and the snow was too deep to drive across anyway. We parked at my cousin Dennis’ place, packed up our stuff and started to walk. It is only 789 yards (I wrote an app for that!) but the crust on the snow was weak enough that I broke through about every other step and Barron broke through almost up to his knees with each step.

The wind was coming up and it was starting to snow and I decided (after getting confirmation from Barron) that this wasn’t a good idea. It was going to be a lot of work getting out there and back. So much work that it was bordering stupid to even try. We drove back to Moscow without doing the testing.

I’ll be back in town in two weeks. Maybe the weather will be more cooperative and if not we’ll bring snowshoes and we will win the battle with the snow.

I’m surprised

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The Washington Post, notoriously anti-gun, published a book review written by Mark A. Keefe IV — editor in chief of American Rifleman. The book reviewed is Glock: The Rise of America’s Gunby Paul Barrett. The review was quite positive without even a hint of anti-gun sentiment between the lines.

It is a good book (my review is here). But in the Washington Post?

Wow!

Quote of the day—Miguel

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Dear Lord: Please keep them that stupid until they disappear.

Amen.

Miguel
January 20, 2012
Comment to What That Flushing Sound Is…
[While carefully controlled experiments have failed to demonstrate the efficacy of pray I remain confident the stupidity of the Brady Campaign will continue for quite some time. Whether it will be sufficiently severe in depth and duration to cause them to disappear will require the experiment be run to completion.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alec Rawls

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Gun control laws in the United States originated as a scheme for keeping blacks disarmed. By turning gun rights into privileges, granted at the discretion of local police chiefs and county sheriffs, whites could keep blacks from bearing arms while still in practice maintaining their own rights. The slope turned out to be slippery and, in all but eight states, whites lost their gun rights too. Finally in 1987 people of all races started to reclaim their gun rights through the “shall issue” movement, requiring police chiefs and county sheriffs to issue gun permits to all adult applicants who are not disqualified by history of crime or mental illness.

Alec Rawls
2002
Blacks and Guns
[Another one via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms  by Philip Mulivor.

It’s the dirty little secret of gun control. And it’s just one more thing anti-gun people have in common with the KKK.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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When I read stories like this (via Sebastian) I can’t help but think of the story The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Gun control activists are like the two tailors who keep telling the media and politicians (the Emperor) something that obviously isn’t true. The people have finally stopped the pretense and are now laughing at those still attempting to maintain the pretense.

Quote of the day—Supreme Court of North Carolina

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The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions.

Supreme Court of North Carolina
May 11, 1921
Stave v. Kerner, 181 N.C. 107 S.E. 222
[From Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

Mulivor sent me a free copy which I am enjoying immensely. I will be stealing more quotes from it in the coming weeks.—Joe]

USPSA Range Officer class in Lewiston Idaho

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For people in the Lewiston, Clarkston, Moscow, Pullman area this may be of interest. Others, not so much.

If any Boomershoot staff wish to attend the class Boomershoot will pay the class fee (but not the USPSA membership fee) and provide transportation between Moscow and Lewiston on the days of the class.

If you are interested but don’t have John’s email address send me an email (ROClass@joehuffman.org) and I’ll forward your email on to him.

I’ll be attending the class if that makes any difference to you.

From: John Grimes
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 4:37 PM
Subject: USPSA Range Officer 1 class in Lewiston on March 24 & 25!

Hi folks,

The Lewiston Pistol Club will be hosting a USPSA Ranger Officer 1 training by our own Kevin Imel, the newest instructor for the National Range Officers Institute, on March 24 & 25, 2012 at the LPC Indoor Range (2419 16th Ave., Lewiston, ID). 

Those who complete the RO training will become official USPSA certified Range Officers.  For those who don’t know, ROs are the ones who run each shooter and do all the shouting at our monthly matches (the shouting is my favorite part).  Here are some more details: http://www.uspsa.org/about_NROI_new.php.

You do have to be a USPSA member to become a USPSA Range Officer when the class begins ($40, https://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-join-renew.php). You will be able to join or renew and pay for a USPSA membership on the morning of the class (via a separate check made out to USPSA).  There are some other advantages in joining the USPSA, most importantly, showing the number, variety and integrity of people who shoot.  The magazine’s kind of nice, too.

This is also a great opportunity for seasoned ROs who have let their credentials slide to get right with the Range Gods.  You know who you are.

The class itself is $40 payable by cash or check made out to the Lewiston Pistol Club at the door on March 24th.  The class starts on Saturday at 8:30 AM sharp and runs through about 5 PM.  The Sunday class start time will be set by the instructor and will end in the afternoon, probably before 5. 

All participants will need to bring a rulebook and a notebook for use during the seminar.  You can print your own copy from here: http://www.uspsa.org/rules/2010HandgunRulesProof3web.pdf.

The Sunday class includes some hands on practice running shooters, so you will also need your eyes and ears, firearm and 100 rounds of ammo.  You will not need your own timer for the class, but in practice, most ROs buy them at some point.  We have examples of all three main brands at our monthly matches.

[…]

Questions – send them in.

John Grimes
LPC Action Match Director

Quote of the day—Amanda Fortini

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Guns are (pardon the pun) loaded with so much cultural baggage that you think you know what to expect. You don’t. TV gunshots sound and act no more like real gunshots than construction-paper snowflakes resemble real snowflakes.

My next thought is, I want to do that again! I have an immediate, exhilarated reaction. Partly it’s that what I’ve just done initially frightened me, so there’s a sense of a limit overcome. For many people I know, guns remain unreal—the accessories of fictional characters, or at least of the Other, not you and yours. Yet to fire a gun is to realize you can do it: You can operate one, understand how it works. Shooting gives me a rush that comes from a feeling of (admittedly incomplete) mastery.

Amanda Fortini
January 12, 2012
Should I Buy a Gun? — After falling victim to a string of traumatic crimes, Amanda Fortini considers a controversial means of protection
[Via email from Mitchel at work who said, “If I knew a lady that’s been through as much as she’s been through I WOULD HAVE BOUGHT HER A GUN.”

I would have too.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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We have passed the point, to be honest, where these folks deserve the dignity of being treated like reasonable adults. As they have plainly demonstrated, they are incapable of acting in such a manner.

Sebastian
January 16, 2012
The State of the Debate
[As I have said before, we do not have a common basis to even communicate with these people.

Their “political currency” is the tragedy of their victim “heroes”. Ours is the enabling of self reliance and determination. There is no common ground upon which to compromise or even talk.

There is very little to be gained by engaging them. Point out the absurdities of their claims on our own and public turf then let them fade away into the dustbin of history.—Joe]

They asked for it

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The anti-gun people have expressed rage and claim we misunderstood and mocked them. The video Barron and I made was “the most offensive” of the responses (CSGV link is here). My impression is that this was because people in the video repeatedly said, “Candles don’t stop violence.” The anti-gun people said their candle-light stunt was to remember the victims; not to stop the violence.

But if you remember the Brady Campaign did say, “Imagine stopping a bullet before it kills a child. Impossible? Not with your help! All across America people are coming together to save lives from preventable gun violence. Will you join them, and the Brady Campaign, as we host a nationwide candlelight vigil to honor victims of gun violence?”

Our message, as stated by daughter Kim in the video, was, “Your time would be better spent going to the range and practicing…”

For them to be surprised we would regard their publicity stunt strictly as a remembrance vigil is for them to say they were stupid or incredibly naive. They literally said, “…people are coming together to save lives from preventable gun violence…” But in the words of a famous gun blogger, “Gun control: What you do instead of something.” He, and others, have been saying this for years.

They should have known their claim to be “doing something” would be derided. Barron, Kim, and I just cranked it to 11.

Quote of the day—CanadianGuy

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It sounds like the shape of the weapon works like Viagra for gun owners.

CanadianGuy
January 6, 2012
Comment to RCMP to seize more ‘scary-looking’ guns before registry dies.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Coming soon to a progressive country near you

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As I and many others have pointed out many times progressives have a thing about “education” and “labor” camps.

I pointed out an article to wife Barbara a few minutes ago with this information:

North Korea’s hardline regime is punishing those who did not cry at the death of dictator Kim Jong-il, according to reports.

Sentences of at least six months in labour camps are also apparently being given to those who didn’t go to the organised mourning events, while anyone who criticised the new leader Kim Jong-un is also being punished.

Those who tried to leave the country, or even made a mobile phone call out, were also being disciplined, it has been claimed.

Her first words were similar to my thoughts. I could see that happening here.

Technical problems

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As I mentioned last month and Kevin noted earlier today I have been having some problems with my hosting provider. I finally had the time to call them while the site was down. At first they were looking just at the blog software but I managed to head them off by pointing out that the very simple web app blacklist.joehuffman.org was also down. Confusing them further was that www.joehuffman.org was working just fine.

They finally agreed that something was wrong with the ASP.Net portion of their server and they “created a ticket” for the problem. In the minutes that followed it appeared they temporarily changed some configuration files for diagnostic purposes and then everything came up.

In the most recent contact I had from them they said it should be fixed in 24 to 48 hours. That mean would the problem should be fixed no later than about Tuesday January 17, 15:00 PST. If you see this site is down for more than a minute or two after that send me an email so I can investigate and escalate as needed.

Thanks.

Update: I received two identical email from tech support, 10 minutes apart, saying they “have recycled the Application Pool” and all is well. I’m not entirely convinced this was the problem since the probably has come and gone many times in the last couple of months. Let me know if it appears to have gone down again.

Thanks.

Update2: I’m still having problems. My provider suggested some changes on my end that will take a couple hours. I won’t be able to get to that until at least late tonight. You can hold off on the reports of outages for a couple days.

Thanks.

Quote of the day—Linoge

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I cannot help to see Joan and every other “gun control” supporter like her as being roughly analogous to book burners, especially when viewed in the light of their infatuation with censorship and controlling the message.  Not only do they want us defenseless and easy prey for criminals, they want us quiet, docile, controlled.

Linoge
January 15, 2012
tellin’ riddles in the dark
[There is lots of evidence to support this. Reasoned Discourse, telling us we should just sit back and shut up, and of course the violence and threats of violence from these people.

It’s as Weer’d Beard has said, “Anti-Freedom, not just Anti-gun!”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Both of the big parties — matched set of jackboots that they are — assume they own women’s bodies. They just have differing plans for them.

Roberta X
January 14, 2012
They Both Think They Own Me
[I was just listening to Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One by Thomas Sowell. One of the things he pointed out that it’s the wrong question to ask, “Where did slavery come from?” As near as we can determine slavery has been around (and continues to exist) since before writing was invented. The real question is, “Where did freedom come from?”

With this background it seems likely that the desire to “own” other human is hardwired into some primitive part of most peoples brains. This manifests itself in many different ways.

Some people are more aware of these urges than others and outright claim, “I was born to regulate.” Others have claimed a divine right from the god(s) to rule other people. Even many of those who do not claim ownership or the right to rule others for their personal benefit will insist there be a ruler to take ownership of both them and their neighbors.

It may be that brief twinkle of freedom in history was an aberration and those reaping the benefits of freedom grew too fatigued to support it (see Thomas Paine). I know that at times I feel the fatigue and yearn to have the burden lifted even as I see our freedoms rapidly disappearing.—Joe]

Insanity defense

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As I understand it a person charged with a crime can plead legal insanity if at the time of the crime they lacked the mental capacity to determine that what they were doing was illegal.

I keep wondering if the Joyce Foundation allows a plea of that type with the people who spend their money. Some of the things the anti-gun people have been saying and doing lately is just nuts.

Of course if the parallel to our legal system were to remain true they would still be required to spend time in a mental hospital and that isn’t going to happen. A more likely result is that once the Foundation money runs out they will get jobs in the ATF as gun experts.

Quote of the day—Dennis Henigan

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The fatal shooting of Park Ranger Anderson was a bitter reminder of the human cost of appeasing the gun lobby – the Coburn Amendment passed two years ago legalizing loaded guns in national parks.

Dennis Henigan
January 11, 2012
Thousands Lit Candles Against The Darkness of Gun Violence
[Thirdpower already covered the lie about the numbers so I will ignore the lie in Henigan post title.

Let me get this straight… it was because it was legal to have loaded guns in national parks that Anderson was murdered? If that were true then doesn’t it follow that because it was illegal to have loaded guns at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech that those murders could not have occurred?

As was pointed out to me years ago by Rolf; If crime goes down after some gun law goes into effect the anti-gun people will claim it as proof we need even more strict laws. If the crime rate goes up after the law goes into effect then that is proof, to them, that stricter laws are needed.

As near as I can tell there are no facts that can be presented to anti-gun people like Henigan which will convince them any gun restriction should be repealed.

I must therefore conclude Henigan and his kind have crap for brains.

This is actually a good test to discover whether someone is worth your time to discuss the subject. Ask, “What would it take to change your mind? No matter how improbable, what data would convince you that some law restricting firearms should be repealed?” You will be surprised at how many people say there is nothing that will change their mind.

As you walk away suggest to such people that they look up the definition of “bigot” in the dictionary.—Joe]

Firearms qualification standards

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Ubu52 (in the comments here) found a description of the course of fire for qualification standards at several different gun schools and law enforcement agencies (see also parts 2, 3 and 4).

Frequently the anti-gun people claim the police are “highly trained”. At my next opportunity I’m going to put the Lewiston Pistol Club through as much as the LAPD qualification (Ubu52 is particularly interested in these results) as is practical. It’s not entirely clear what target is being used so some additional effort will have to be given making sure we come close on that.

From looking at the course of fire my guess is that nearly everyone who attends the UPSPA matches can pass the Combat Qualification course of fire with flying colors. The bonus course will be tougher with only a few achieving “Distinguished Expert” level but many will achieve “Marksman” level.

If the results are that even C Class USPSA shooters can pass the LAPD Qualification course (which I believe they can) will that cause the anti-gun people to drop that line of argument against us? I doubt it.

But it will give us another opportunity to demonstrate the facts are not relevant to them.

Will it blend?

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As Ry reported yesterday we verified the KClO3 we currently have in Boomershoot storage has much larger particle size than what we know has worked in the past. I purchased a cheap blender and tested a sample of KClO3 to see if we could reduce the particle size.

I’m happy to report that it appears “blending” it did reduce the particle size significantly. Looking at it under the microscope shows there are still some particles that are larger than the “old stuff” but most of the particles are more like powdered sugar than granulated sugar.

Further evidence that we are on the right track is the dust generated. Even after a minute or two of waiting for the dust to settle in the blender just gently taking the lid off the blender gets a cloud of dust flowing through the air from the blender to the air cleaner:

WP_000435

Another interesting thing is that the volume increased significantly. My guess is that it about occupies about 40% more volume than previously. The container on the left had about 1.5 inches of air above the KClO3 before blending. After blending it would not fit and I had to put some of the material in a different container.

It blends, but will it detonate? We have more tests to run the next time I visit Idaho.

Quote of the day—ColeenMonroe

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Guns are good for one things and one thing only: Murdering.

ColeenMonroe
Tweet on January 9, 2012
[I guess that is why the police, military, body guards, armored car drivers, and my daughter carry guns. That means she either is profoundly ignorant or hasn’t thought things through.

She also says she is a pacifist. That makes her a freeloader.—Joe]