Author Archives: Joe

Pro-gun story disappeared

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There appears to have been an article saying “It is time for Europeans to support the natural right of human beings to protect oneself with a firearm” on a UK newspaper website earlier today. It is no longer available. Here is the screen capture evidence:

DailyMail

Clicking on the link (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2067300/Europeans-guns–It-time-Europeans-support-natural-right-human-beings-protect-oneself-firearm.html?ito=feeds-newsxml) yields, “Sorry. The page you have requested does not exist or is no longer available.” There does not appear to be a cache available for it either.

I can find all other articles by this same author but the one I am interested in doesn’t show up.

I was unable to find his email address or I would have attempted to contact him and find out what happened.

Update: Via some suggestions in the comments I was able to contact Brian Darling. He send me a one URL response, “http://bit.ly/tUExhc”.

I love the line after the title, “Read the column the UK’s Daily Mail pulled for being too dangerous”. I do wish he had elaborated on that a bit more but there are times when you don’t tweak the nose of the one who feeds you.

Quote of the day—Texas Aggie

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For the people who insist on carrying weapons, driving oversized pickups and HumVees to the 7/11, and similar manifestations of psychological problems, it isn’t that they’re paranoid, although that may also be a problem. Their major problem is a real or imagined dysfunction in their capacity to procreate. They may have tried the various “enlarge your penis” advertisements on the internet and none of them gave results, so now they go with an artificial sexual apparatus enhancer.

Texas Aggie
November 24, 2011
Comment to Dear Amy, Should I Let My Holiday Guests Pack Heat?
[Ahhhh yes. It’s the kindergarten kids talking about penises and giggling.

When in the context of gun owners it’s known as Markley’s Law.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Josh Sugarmann

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Give the Treasury Department health and safety authority over the gun industry, and any rational regulator with that authority would ban handguns.

Real gun control will take courage. In the long run, half-measures and compromises only sacrifice lives.

Josh Sugarmann
1999
Seattle and Honolulu shootings more reasons to regulate guns
[This is from the dark days of gun owner rights activism.

Sugarmann goes through regulatory proposals such as licensing, registration, expanding background checks at gun shows and stopping the import of high-capacity magazines. He then concludes a complete ban is the only rational conclusion.

I grudgingly admire Sugarmann for his genius in regards to “assault weapons” and his honesty in saying the endgame must be, always has been, and always will be a complete ban.—Joe]

States rights doesn’t mean they can infringe on the rights of the people

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I realize the ability (and to a certain extent the desire) to get elected is largely uncorrelated with intelligence but the ugly parallels to statements like the following just jump out of the page at me:

While our Constitution guarantees people a right to bear arms, the decision was made to allow states to regulate guns, in order to allow them to develop strategies that meet the individual states’ demographic, economic and lifestyle needs. What works for Florida or Texas may not work for New Jersey and vice versa, and gun control should be the sole provision of the individual states, not the federal government.

Replace “a right to bear arms” with “will not be slaves” and “guns” with “ni**ers”.

Now start heating up the tar and gathering the feathers for New Jersey State Senator Loretta Weinberg.

Freedom Group

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There is an interesting article on the history of Freedom Group here.

To me some of the more interesting stuff was the hints about gun bloggers:

rumors about the Freedom Group — what it is, and who is behind it — have been circulating in the blogosphere. Some gun enthusiasts have claimed that the power behind the company is actually George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire and liberal activist. Mr. Soros, these people have warned, is buying American gun companies so he can dismantle the industry, Second Amendment be damned.

I vaguely remember something being said about that a while back but don’t remember it being anything we really took seriously.

And how about this?

the Freedom Group has ingested so many well-known brands so quickly that some gun owners are uneasy about what it might do next. Two years ago, a Cerberus managing director, George Kollitides, ran for the board of the N.R.A. Despite an endorsement from Remington, and the fact that he was a director of the Freedom Group and Remington, he lost. His campaign didn’t sit well with some gun bloggers, who viewed him as an industry interloper.

I don’t involve myself with the internal politics of the NRA that much. Was this really an issue? Or is the reporter exaggerating things a bit in an attempt to create a more interesting story?

Update: This is an article in the NYT (thanks Thirdpower) as well as the Herald Tribune which I originally linked to. The NYT version has the link to Sebastian and Bitter’s post about George Kollitides run for the NRA board of directors. I have updated the quoted paragraph above with the NYT link to their post.

Quote of the day—Exurban Kevin

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It amuses me to no end that people who faint dead away at the thought of judging someone by their outside appearance have no problem judging the function and intent of an inanimate object by its outside appearance.

Exurban Kevin
November 22, 2011
Comment to SAF/Calguns Suit Against California Assault Weapons Ban
[For some reason it doesn’t amuse me. I’m inclined to call them intolerant, ignorant, bigots.—Joe]

Boomershoot Mecca update

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Barb and I went to Boomershoot Mecca today. I installed a 3/8” U-bolt on the solar panel mount and made a plate to replace the conduit clamps I had used to secure the pole to the top edge of the shipping container. I just didn’t trust the previous configuration. Barb and I raised the pole and secured it in place:

IMG_7558

Then I did some more wiring and tested out the transfer switch (it automatically switches from the external generator to the battery powered inverter):

IMG_7556

I moved some shelves into the proper position and started putting things away.

IMG_7557

But by then Barb was cold and tired and wanted to go home. I had a 1750 Watt heater at her feet with my coat over her lap but it’s getting cold enough that you have to be moving or else be in a warm environment to keep from getting hypothermia.

I still have a little bit more wiring to do such as connecting the 115 VAC battery charger to the generator side of the transfer switch, installing an Anderson Powerpole and securing the cables and flexible conduit to the wall. Then I want to arrange all the boxes, chemicals, mixer, air cleaners and other stuff in prep for Boomershoot 2012.

The solar panel seems to be working well. At one point the charge controller indicated 7.1 amps which is getting close to 100 W (the panel is rated at 130 W under ideal conditions). As we were leaving the sun was lower and the battery was nearing full charge and the amperage dropped down to the four amp range. Still that is far more than enough to run Wi-Fi and a web cam without generator backup.

Quote of the day—Mark Schaffer

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Your facts will not penetrate the rabid gun owners heads. Sad we can’t live in a civilized country with much lower rates of violence all in the name of ‘rights’.

Mark Schaffer
November 24, 2011
Comment to Argument for gun control is flimsy.
[“Rabid gun owners”? The only irrational, nearly foaming at the mouth with lies, people in the gun debate I know of have been on the anti-gun side.

But it’s nice to know what you think of gun owners. After all, we all know what is done with rabid animals.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dennis Henigan

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We haven’t given up hope but our impatience is growing with each passing day.

Dennis Henigan
Acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence,
November 24, 2011
Tough politics for Obama on guns as 2012 election approaches
[Impatience? I would have thought it was desperation. And it’s the shrinking bank balance and public support that has to have him worried.

I long, and work toward, the day when he is worried about being prosecuted under 18 USC 241.—Joe]

Public lands to remain open to recreational shooters

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I find it interesting that the most anti-gun president ever has a strong tendency to run scared from any confrontation with gun owners. The draft regulation to ban shooters from many public lands will apparently be completely dropped (via email from Daniel at work):

The Obama administration says it will not restrict recreational shooting on public lands, reversing a draft policy that had caused an uproar among gun owners and hunters, especially in the West.

In a memo sent Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he would direct his agency to “take no further action to develop or implement” the draft policy, which would have restricted target shooting on some public lands near residential areas.

I wonder if Obama has some plan for implementing this “under the radar”. Or is he just going to maintain as low a profile as possible on gun issues?

No response yet from The Brady Campaign, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, or the Violence Policy Center. Perhaps someone should check on them to make sure they don’t start looking longingly at their bottle of whiskey and bottle of sleeping pills.

Quote of the day—fr8dog

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Many years ago, a young woman lived in Washington DC. Economic circumstances forced her to live in a high crime area & commute to work via metro, as as she couldn’t afford a car. As she walked home one evening she was followed by 2 dirt-bags who attacked her as she unlocked her front door. Over the next few hours she was repeatedly raped, her home ransacked & was beaten so badly her skull was fractured. She spent weeks in the hospital & Many months in rehab. Years later she’s not fully recovered. & never will be. But she’s fit enough to handle a gun which I gave her & now carries it when ever she leaves home. But isn’t this “illegal” in DC you ask? Ask her if she gives a $H1T.

Besides training her to use a gun, I’ve taught her the following:

  1. The 2nd Amd is the only CCW “permit” required. “Permission” NOT required to exercise a RIGHT.
  2. When SECONDS count, police are only MINUTES away.
  3. Better tried by 12 than carried by 6.
  4. My sister will NEVER AGAIN be a victim.

fr8dog
November 21, 2011
Comment to More women are using guns for fun and protection
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

My baby daughter in the icy water

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Daughter Xenia says, “Because I live in Alaska now, I wanted to do an “Alaskan”-centric activity.” She decided to do a “polar plunge” for charity.

I told her I would pay her $100 to NOT jump in the water. I could hear her lip quiver over the telephone as she explained she really wanted to do this. I was also unable to get any traction with Barb on keeping my little girl out of the frigid water.

I have to admit that the image of her in my minds eye is a little out of date:

JoeXeniaXenia2

Since she is currently 23 years old I can’t just send her to her room until she has given the matter more thought and arrived at the same conclusion as her father. Why can’t she borrow my .300 Win Mag and shoot a moose (one walked through her yard a few weeks ago so she could do it from an open window) as her “Alaskan-centric activity”? But as a vegetarian this activity probably doesn’t interest her as much as it would her husband.

I still might be able to get her to wear a Boomershoot shirt when she jumps in.

You can donate here.

Any gun is better than no gun

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It isn’t something to rely on but sometimes even a BB gun is better than no gun at all:

Young said after pleading with the man to stop, the boy hit him in the head with a board. At that point, the man stopped assaulting the woman and ran after the boy.

“The suspect believed that the boy had run out of the house and when that happened the mom locked the door,” he said. “The suspect then tried to gain entry through an open window.”

When Paul Newman, 45, threatened to kill the woman and her son, the boy shot him in the face three to four times with his pump-action BB gun.

It’s interesting how the AP reported the same incident. In the AP story the boy shot him “as he grappled with the woman”. There is no mention of the guy leaving the house and then trying to get in through a window.

Bracing against the wind

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On Sunday Barron and I went to Boomershoot Mecca and mounted the solar panel on the pole and did most of the wiring for the power transfer switch and the solar panel. I was not happy with the mounting of the solar panel to the steel pipe with just two hose clamps. The panel has quite a bit of surface (wind) area, clamps are very thin with holes (weak spots) ready made from the factory. After we had it mounted it was trivial to rotate it on the pole. It just didn’t have enough grip. And if it would rotate that probably meant it could slide down the pole as well. We drove to Orofino for lunch and bought some friction tape at the hardware store. I wasn’t entirely happy with this solution but it was better than what we had.

I ultimately realized what were really needed was a U-bolt in addition to the factory provided clamps. The hardware store was closed by then and so we used the friction tape and cobbled something together that was better than nothing.

Also the conduit clamps I planned to hold the 1” pipe to the side of the shipping container started looking weak to me when I thought about the panel being pushed around in the wind. I installed two but figured four would really be better. It took a lot of time to bore and tap the holes into the corner of the shipping container so I decided the other two could wait until the next time I came out.

It was decided that I would look at the weather forecasts and if there was no high winds I would take care of it on Thursday when Barb and I go to my parents place a couple miles away for Thanksgiving. If there were winds forecast I would get up early Monday morning, buy the parts at the local hardware store, drive out to the site, finish it up, and still be able to get back to Moscow without being excessively late in my “work from home” week at my Seattle job.

The wind forecast looked good and I didn’t even bother to purchase the parts. Then about 9:30 last night I checked my email on my phone and found (in part):

Joe,

Here is a current Wind Advisory for Boomershoot (Lenore, ID) until 8:00am, Wed Nov 23 2011, from your local National Weather Service office.

…

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT
940 PM MST MON NOV 21 2011
OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-
840 PM PST MON NOV 21 2011

…WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TUESDAY TO 8 AM PST WEDNESDAY…

A WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TUESDAY TO 8 AM PST WEDNESDAY.

* IMPACTS/TIMING: SOUTH WINDS WILL BECOME QUITE STRONG AFTER
MIDNIGHT. STRONG SOUTH WINDS WILL CONTINUE INTO WEDNESDAY
MORNING.

* WINDS: SOUTH 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 35 MPH…INCREASING TO
25 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS UP 50 MPH AFTER MIDNIGHT TONIGHT INTO
WEDNESDAY MORNING.

I am already in bed, ready to go to sleep shortly and now I have 50 MPH winds forecast for Boomershoot in about three hours. Even 25 MPH winds would have made it difficult to sleep without taking some action to prevent the loss of the solar panel. I drove out to the site which is normally one hour each way but last night the roads had snow and ice on them. I used a rope to safely lower the pipe and solar panel to the ground and tie it to a couple of railroad ties (thanks Matt!) so it wouldn’t blow around and bang into some nearby rocks:

WP_000352Web

I made it back to bed by a little after 1:00 AM.

My Tweets for the little adventure were (minor grammar errors corrected):

We needed one more bolt to secure the solar panel against high winds.

I could have done it this morning but no winds were in the forecast so I could do it on Thursday when I was going to be there anyway.

A few minutes ago I got a wind warning for Boomershoot. Up to 50 MPH winds starting at 1:00 AM. On my way out to the site.

On site at #Boomershoot Mecca. Not much wind yet. Glad I didn’t try to drive across the field. It was very soft and muddy.

I’m going to take down the mast with the solar panel and Wifi AP. No cell service so this is the last Tweet until I get back home.

#Boomershoot Mecca solar panel is secure and I’m back home and in bed with @BoomershootWife where I belong.

This morning I received another wind warning for Boomershoot:

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT
815 AM MST TUE NOV 22 2011
OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-
715 AM PST TUE NOV 22 2011

…WIND ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 4 AM PST THURSDAY

The winds are going to last until 4 AM Thursday? I’m really, really glad I took it all the way down rather than just tried to lash it together a little better with the rope or paracord. I’ll get the parts tonight and get the panel back up later this week after the winds have died down.

Quote of the day—Josh Horwitz

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The NRA’s greatest lie is its talking point that gun violence prevention laws in America are a “slippery slope” that will eventually lead to total confiscation of privately held firearms. What an absurdity that is today — 43 years after the signing of the 1968 Gun Control Act — as demented individuals like Jared Loughner and Nidal Malik Hasan continue to legally buy guns and carry them in our communities.

The reality is that the slippery slope has been running in the opposite direction the entire time — toward a future where even the most violent and deranged individuals can legally buy guns, legally carry them on the street, and legally bring them into churches, schools, daycare centers, public transportation, government buildings and the rest of our most sensitive public spaces.

Josh Horwitz
Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
The Real Slippery Slope of Gun Laws
November 16, 2011
[The government has NO business trying to prevent “gun violence”. If there isn’t a victim or imminent danger of permanent injury or death to an innocent person or serious property damage then the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms must be given precedence. This point is probably the most important one we should be making. It strikes at the very core of the “The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence” and the nearly all of the arguments of people like Horwitz want to make.

If Horwitz believes that since 1968 “the slippery slope has been running in the opposite direction the entire time” then he has crap for brains, he is lying, or he is so ignorant that he missed out on the following major gun bans (does not include hundreds of increased restrictions, registrations, and lawsuits):

  • 1976: Washington D.C. bans handguns and all other firearms must be rendered inoperable.
  • 1981: Morton Grove Illinois bans the sale, transportation, and ownership of handguns.
  • 1982: Chicago bans new registration of handguns.
  • 1982: Evanston, Illinois bans handguns.
  • 1984: Oak Park Illinois bans handguns.
  • 1986: Sales of new machine guns banned nationwide.
  • 1989: Highland Park Illinois bans handguns.
  • 1989: California bans “assault weapons”.
  • 1991: New Jersey bans “assault weapons”.
  • 1991: New York City bans “assault weapons” and gun registration lists were used by police to go door-to-door to confiscate them.
  • 1992: Chicago bans “assault weapons”.
  • 1993: Connecticut bans “assault weapons”.
  • 1994: Sales of new “Assault weapons” and magazines holding more than 10 rounds are banned nationwide.
  • 2000: New York state bans “assault weapons”.
  • 2004: Massachusetts (Mitt Romney, as governor, signed the bill into law) bans “assault weapons”.
  • 2005: New Orleans sends the police and the National Guard door to door to confiscate all firearms in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

And that doesn’t even include the U.S. politicians who said they were trying to ban firearms in the mid 1990s.

So which is it Josh? Are you ignorant, lying, and/or have crap for brains?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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It’s an insult to be arrested once for violating a law that is so vague and ambiguous that law enforcement officers cannot tell the difference between what is and what is not a legal firearm under this statute but to be arrested and jailed twice for the same offense is an outrage. Brendan Richards’ dilemma is a textbook example of why the California statute should be nullified.

…

This nonsense has to stop and the only way to insure that is to show California’s assault weapon statutes and regulations are unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous. Brendan Richards is not the only citizen faced with this kind of harassment under color of law.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF Executive Vice President
November 21, 2011
SAF FILES CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE OF CALIFORNIA ‘ASSAULT WEAPONS’ LAW
[Go SAF  and CalGuns!

On my return trip from Reno for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous this year I was strongly advised by a lawyer and others from California to not traverse even a small corner of California even if I did not stop and fully complied with FOPA. I was forcefully told that many California police, prosecutors and judges do not recognize FOPA.

My response was, essentially, does this mean that Alabama and Mississippi don’t have to recognize the 13th Amendment or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I was told that the Feds enforced those laws with the National Guard and the states backed off. In the case of FOPA the Feds would look the other way. In other words if I got caught with my everyday carry firearm and magazines, unloaded and locked inaccessible to driver and passengers I could spend weeks in jail and months in and out of the courts because the state of California believes it does not have to comply with Federal law.

It’s time the state of California got it’s nanny state tit wound up tight in a wringer.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Glen Utzman

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People that make tax law must be drunk.

Glen Utzman
Fall Semester 2011
[Via daughter Kimberly who is taking a class from Professor Utzman.

Some of them certainly are drunk in the usual sense but a lot of them are “drunk” on power which is far worse than if it were just alcohol. But I suppose the symptoms in the tax law would be similar in both cases.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tam

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Of course it will sell like gangbusters. This is, after all, a round marketed to people whose knowledge of terminal ballistics is so shaky that they’ve already bought a Taurus Judge for personal protection.

Tam
November 19, 2011
While, yes, it is technically a shotgun…
[I lifted my moratorium (no one else would have a chance if I didn’t put her in a special class) on Tam being my QOTD for this one.

When I first started getting into guns I would spend a lot of time reading magazine articles on terminal ballistics, the latest modern/high-performance/next-generation/whatever ammo. I fired various bullet styles in various weights into milk jugs filled with water. I bought and read various books. The various authors called each other names and said they were sloppy researchers, ignorant, and then got nasty with each other.

My conclusion from all of this was that the bullet MUST penetrate. Expansion is good but not required. The time spent reading and researching was better spent learning and practicing to put another bullet beside the first one in the minimum time possible.

Tam, in her post, nails it. This round only needs to be given a couple of seconds of consideration before totally rejecting it in favor of almost any other round unless you are defending yourself from anemic rabbits three feet away nibbling on your strawberries.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Solomon Friedman

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Responsible citizens do not cease to act responsibly merely due to the presence of tools.

Solomon Friedman
November 15, 2011
Testimony at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (Canada).

[You would think this statement is blindly obvious but beliefs to the contrary have been around for centuries and persist to this today in the form of “gun control”.—Joe]

Lead contaminated tin foil hat?

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This article (also found here) via email from Jon at work claims:

Later Friday evening, this FSB report continues, the vehicle from which the shots were fired from was located by US Secret Service, FBI and local police authorities with the AK-47 laying across the back seat with a warning note saying “Aquí está uno de los nuestros, no la suya necesitan,” roughly translated from its original Spanish meaning… “Here’s one of ours, we don’t need yours.”

The FSB states that the warning note found on the AK-47 was in direct reference to the Obama regimes gun-running efforts (known as Operation Fast and Furious) to arm the dangerous Sinaloa Cartel as it battles to gain supremacy in a Mexican Drug War that has so far cost nearly 40,000 lives.

The article goes on to invoke the CIA and claims the American people are “not being allowed to know”.

Interesting.

I have to wonder if there isn’t some lead in a tin-foil hat that is getting into the bloodstream of the author.