Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day—Joan Peterson

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These folks could have just sat back and shut up.

Joan Peterson
Board member of the Brady Campaign
January 9, 2011
Blog post in response to this video.
[Have the people on her side “just sat back and shut up” when people advocating for the Second Amendment have their public events? Nope. That is when they call the press and lay down on the sidewalk.

This is the attitude of those that demand infringement of your specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms—they would like for you to voluntarily surrender your First Amendment rights as well.—Joe]

Appeal in University of Idaho campus firearm possession case

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Today Aaron Tribble appealed his loss in the University of Idaho campus firearm possession case. The Notice of Appeal is here.

I really want this case to succeed but I worry that Tribble doesn’t have enough experience to do this and will loose due to some error on his part rather than the merits of his case. Such a loss would set a precedent that would be difficult to overcome.

Nice things said about Boomershoot

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Dave has a bunch of nice things to say, along with some great pictures, about Boomershoot.

Update: Link fixed. Sorry about that.

Nice picture

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I really like the picture Adam Baldwin (“Jayne Cobb” on Firefly) has on his Twitter profile:

Casey_Sniper_4

I would like to think he is practicing for Boomershoot. I think I will invite him.

Required reading

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I have read a few books on “The Rape of Nanking”:

I posted a little about them and the event here and here.

What I haven’t said is that when I read those books my mind was racing on how the civilian population could have better defended themselves. If I were able to go back in time and space and take whatever I could carry with me to that city it would be a backpack full of suppressed .22 LR pistols and several thousand rounds of ammo.

There probably would still have been thousands of Chinese who would have been gang raped and murdered but it wouldn’t have been hundreds of thousands and there would have been a lot of Japanese bodies floating down the rivers along with the Chinese.

A Girl and Her Gun posted about a woman from London who was in China when the Japanese invaded. This brought a flood of memories from reading those books. The well, so to speak, was primed so I guess it’s isn’t too surprising that my eyes filled up with tears as I got to the end of her post An Open Letter To The Anti-Gun Folks.

H/T to Say Uncle.

Candle stage scores

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Here are the scores from the concealed carry match with the candles on Sunday:

Name                Points              Time                      Hit Factor
Joe H.                  29                    4.18                         6.9378
Bob N.                 26                    4.73                         5.4968
Roger W.             28                    6.91                        4.0521
Barron B.             26                    6.44                        4.0373
Don W.                14                     4.02                        3.4826
Richard I.            15                     5.35                        2.8037
Jodi H.                   5                     9.19                        0.5441
Erik P.                    0                     7.57                        0.0000
Adam M.                0                     4.06                        0.0000

Many of you already know this but I’ll explain again for those that are new to USPSA matches. The Hit Factor is the number of points scored, minus the penalties (such as misses), divided by the time it took to score those points. Each perfect hit (A-Zone) is worth five points. Less accurate shooting yields few points. This means there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy when trying to maximize your Hit Factor.

As you can see from the scores above I didn’t have the fastest time but because I scored near the maximum number of points (there were six shots so 30 points were the maximum) while still having a decent time I won that stage with the best Hit Factor.

Fellow video conspirator Barron (he has further comments on the scores) had a time near the bottom of the group yet with good hits came in above the middle.

The most important thing to note is that everyone got at least some solid hits on the bad guy and the maximum time used was 9.19 seconds. The Tucson shooter was shooting for about 16 seconds. Had any one of the people above been in a good position to engage him the shooting could have been stopped much sooner.

Quote of the day—Jami Regs

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Nothing like a bunch of beer guzzling, uneducated hillbillies playing with deadly weapons to prove just how ridiculous the 2nd amendment is.

Jami Regs
January 9, 2012
Comment to a post by Coalition to Stop Gun Violence about our video.
[I can’t speak for everyone in the video but I know that daughter Kim has nearly completed her accounting degree, Barron has his BSEE, I have a BSEE and a MSEE, one of our shooting buddies is the chairman of the University Chemistry department, and I don’t even like beer.

There is nothing like an anti-gun person talking about something they know nothing about.—Joe]

I’m immortalized in a poem!

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The Gun bloggers set in rhyme includes me.

Via Say Uncle.

Seattle candles

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From the looks of this video there were as many people open carrying as there were with candles at the anti-gun event in Seattle yesterday:

Our USPSA match yesterday in North Central Idaho probably had as many participants (only a fraction of them were in our video) as the Brady Campaign supporters were able to muster in Seattle.

Quote of the day—heehee..santorum

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I am afraid that it is another appendages’ petite nature that animates these “little guys”….brains are secondary at best!

heehee..santorum
December 27, 2011
Comment to 2011: A Year In The NRA’s “Insane Paranoid” Conspiracy Theories
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Too Many Victims

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The Brady Campaign, formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc., has created too many victims. We are now pushing them into the dustbin of history.

Today Barron and I with the help of daughter Kim and some members of the Lewiston Pistol Club made the following video as our response to the Brady Campaign’s pathetic attempt at relevance:

Update: An explanation of the stage design is important. The brown target in the distance represents a “bad guy”. The white targets represent innocent people. When scored only hits on the bad guy counted and hits on the innocent were heavily penalized. When the scores have been reported I’ll make anther post. I think I might have won this stage. I had a good time with five A-zone hits, one C-zone hit and no hits on the no-shoot targets.

The instructions to the shooter were:

Start position: Facing up-range holding a candle with both hands. Gun is in a concealed carry state.
Course of fire: Upon signal drop candle, turn, draw, and engage T1 with six rounds. Comstock scoring.

This stage design was to simulate the January 8th 2011 shooting in Tucson. It was this event which the Brady Campaign wanted to bring attention to. This was to stimulate political interest in more gun laws.

Credit for the stage design goes to Bob N. (shown in the video preview above).

Boomerite problems

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Yesterday Barron and I went out to do more tests on our Boomerite mixture and packaging. It failed the last time we tried it and we want to get the problem solved.

We tried both the new packaging and the old from about 20 yards with .223 Wolf hollow points. All were complete duds. There was not even a hint of reactivity.

We were quite perplexed. What could have changed? Thinking that maybe some water had gotten into the old stuff we mixed up a new batch with some fresh ethylene glycol. Still absolutely nothing.

Barron was measuring the KClO3 and reported the powder didn’t seem quite right to him. There was no dust! I had three air cleaners in the shipping container because we knew the KClO3 generated a lot of dust and it wasn’t healthy to breath it. But there was no dust. Something was wrong. Could it have gotten wet? Maybe it could have drawn moisture from the air.

We took a couple of pounds to my parents house and dried it in the kitchen oven. Still no dust when handling it.

We ground some in the mortar and pestle. There was a little bit of dust but I could tell it still wasn’t as fine as what we usually have. Usually it it is so fine you cannot feel any grittiness. With this you could.

The Boomerite we made with the dried and ground KClO3 didn’t go boom with Wolf 60 grain .223 HP’s from Barron’s rifle. I had him try some 50 grain VMAX that I had. With the non-dried (or ground) we got a little bit of detonation but still not normal. With the ground and dried it went boom.

I put some of the KClO3 under the microscope. The crystals are average about 1/3 as large as granulated sugar. It should be much smaller than that.

It turns out there even though I was getting “MIL-SPEC” KClO3 “just like” always before there are various “Classes” within that spec. I strongly suspect we got a different class with this drum of KClO3. That could explain, rather than the plastic deli containers, why we had problems with a lot of the targets at Boomershoot. At the private party we had last summer it didn’t detonate very well either. We used the 50 grain VMAX bullets from fairly close and about 20% did not detonate properly.

Barron has more details on our experiments.

Candles

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The Brady Campaign asked that we light a candle today in memory of the victims. But candles don’t stop violence. Guns in the hands of intended victims do.

I note with a great deal of pleasure that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords attended a candlelight vigil today and apparently did it without mentioning gun control and even the media did not mention the Brady Campaign. That must have really stung them!

My contribution to today will be in a different post when Barron gets the video (coming soon he says) up on YouTube.

Here are some of the candles that were lit in opposition to the Brady Campaign:


From Ryan.


From Maura.


From Wendy.


From North.


From Dan.

Barron and Janelle have a bunch of pictures as well.

Kevin has his up.

Say Uncle is a bit cynical but participates.

Robb uses a gun that was used defensively.

Linoge has quite the collection of links as well as his own pictures and his thoughts on the topic.

Roberta says, “The good guys don’t start fights – but they can end them“.

Tam gives lip service.

Brigid does more than a picture. She gives us history and tells a story.Thirdpower lights a candle for #toomanyvictims.

And credit for the idea goes to Weerd.

Quote of the day—Don Wood

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Candles don’t stop violence.

Don Wood
January 8, 2012
A response to the Brady Campaign on their candle lightings today.
[We incorporated a candle into the concealed carry side match at the USPSA match today.

I had suggested something like, “My name is and this is how I deal with people intent on deadly violence against innocent life.” Or, “The Brady Campaign wants us to light a candle today to help stop violence. But candles don’t stop violence but a handgun might.”

Don was the first shooter and he said, “I’m just going to say, ‘Candles don’t stop violence.'”

That was a great simplification Don. Thanks.

The final video should be up on YouTube soon. Barron was editing it as I drove back to the Seattle area this evening.—Joe]

Quote of the day—President Barack Obama

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We expect to have a full — a fully — or a comprehensive approach to dealing with these issues of border security that will involve supporting Calderón and his efforts in a partnership; also making sure that we are dealing with the flow of drug money and the guns south, because it’s really a two-way situation there. The drugs are coming north; we’re sending funds and guns south — and as a consequence, these cartels have gained extraordinary power.

President Barack Obama
March 11, 2010
The President and the Drug War: Part I
[I find it fascinating how his words, “we’re sending funds and guns south”, can be interpreted completely differently in present day than most people would have interpreted them at the time he said them.—Joe]

Peterson Syndrome example

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We often complain about the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun people wanting more laws for the criminals to ignore. This sometimes takes the form of them expressing a need for another law to prevent criminals from breaking an existing law. When properly presented this subterfuge can be quite effective on those unfamiliar with the deception.

To pull this off, or perhaps even make it believable to the presenter, the plea for making the illegal “illegaller” some “time and space” is usually put between the existing illegal act and the new behavior they would like to make illegal.

It turns out this isn’t always the case.

I was reading the Brady Campaign report Exporting Gun Violence and ran into a sentence that really grabbed me. This sentence is, for all intents and purposes, self-contradictory:

ATF can only stop illegal conduct, and as long as it remains legal to sell unlimited quantities of military-style weapons or sell guns without background checks, the illegal flow of guns will continue.

I can’t read that sentence without an immediate jarring sensation. It’s like being slapped on the head or something. It does not compute and I immediately have to reread it to try and figure it out—and it can’t be figured out. I would almost give them a pass if this had been something said in a verbal debate where your brain isn’t working at full capacity and words sometimes don’t come out quite right. But this was in a lengthy report that was written by “Jonathan Lowy, Daniel Vice, Robyn Steinlauf, Amanda Koulousias, Sarah McLemore and Jordan Zlotoff, with assistance from Mary Boyle.”

If they were engaged in deliberate deception they would have put time and space between the contradictory elements of that sentence. I can only conclude it was not deliberate deception. Their brains have to be wired in some manner that is completely alien to me. They must have some strange mental problem in order to put something like that in a written report.

Light a candle with your gun

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As widely reported the Brady Campaign will be lighting candles on Sunday as their meager effort to remain relevant.

The response of the gun world is to light a candle and show how you can prevent violence. Take a picture and post it on the net. If you don’t have a good net outlet for it send the picture to me (candle@joehuffman.org) or any one of many other gun rights activists offering to do the same.

I keep thinking I should create an image involving Boomerite, gasoline, a rifle, and a highly exothermic reaction instead of an ordinary candle. But I probably won’t have time for that and will have to settle for something much more mundane. Sunday I probably will be attending a USPSA match and I’ll try to get them to incorporate a candle into one of the stages.

And for people that will be in the Seattle area on Sunday it would be nice to have someone take a few pictures of the Washington Ceasefire turnout. Here are the details:

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM – Westlake Plaza, 501 Pine Street
(Downtown) Seattle, Washington 98101
Host: Washington Ceasefire
Note: Take the Union Street exit off I-5 in downtown Seattle and go straight for three blocks and north for one block to Fifth Avenue and Pine Street.

This turns out to be just across the street from where I work. I could view the event from a window in my office if I were in town. Since I won’t be in town I would really like to have information about their turnout from someone who will be here.

Boomerite that didn’t go boom

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Ry posted a video on YouTube of the new shooter shooting our defective boomerite:

I’ll probably be doing more testing tomorrow.

Quote of the day—Josh Sugarmann

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The same industry that has given us armor-piercing `cop-killer’ bullets, plastic handguns, and assault weapons has now added caseless `phantom’ ammo to its litany of assaults on public safety. This is just the latest example of the failure of a system that allows a virtually unregulated industry to develop and market hazardous products without the pre-market scrutiny afforded almost all other products in America.

Josh Sugarmann
Violence Policy Center Executive Director
July 6, 1993
New Technology–Caseless “PHANTOM” Ammo–Could Devastate Police Investigations
[In what universe did almost all products receive “pre-market scrutiny” before being “allowed” to go on sale? Even as far back as 1993 Sugarmann lived in a different America than the rest of us.

The ‘cop-killer’ bullets did not and still don’t exist, the “plastic handguns” could and can be detected by airport metal detectors just fine, and “assault weapons” were and are used less frequently to kill people than fists or feet.

What I find somewhat surprising is that even after decades of being disconnected from reality Sugarmann and his organization still receive enough money to maintain their delusions.—Joe]

Fast and Furious fallout?

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Periodically I trade emails with some people within the ATF. I recently noticed they have a rather strongly worded restriction on the use of the email attached to each message. This restriction is identical regardless of  the person I received it from within the ATF. I admit my sample size is small but it does include people in significantly different geographical area.

The restriction is (bold in the original):

******* NOTICE: This e-mail message and any attached files are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) named above in connection with official business. This communication may contain Sensitive But Unclassified information that may be statutorily or otherwise prohibited from being released without appropriate approval. Any review, use, or dissemination of this e-mail message and any attached file(s) in any form outside of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives or the Department of Justice without express authorization is strictly prohibited.

I didn’t remember it always being that strongly worded so I went looking at previous emails to see if it had changed. It had.

The notice above first appeared on March 29, 2011. A previous email from the same person on March 23, 2010 (the previous year) had this restriction (bold in the original):

******* NOTICE: This electronic transmission is confidential and intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail and destroy this message in its entirety (including all attachments).

So sometime in that year (and six days) between March 2010 and March 2011 the notice changed. My hypothesis is that the leaking of various emails associated with operation Fast and Furious caused a review of the restriction and a rewording which was much more strict.

The question I have (calling all lawyers!) is; Does the restriction have any legal weight in use against me or is it merely a legal bluff? For example, am I at risk for merely revealing the restriction even though I did not reveal the other contents of the emails? What if I were to reveal to the public the gist of one or more email discussions that clearly was not “sensitive information” but might be somewhat embarrassing to the ATF?