Ry reports on Boomershoot 2012 Sunday lunch.
I am a very strong supporter of the second amendment, but there must be some common sense applied here. I can think of nothing worse than people attending an athletic event, living in a dorm, or sitting beside someone in a science class with a firearm strapped to their side or worse, concealed on their person.
Pam Neely
Prosecuting Attorney Berkeley County
County Prosecutor Wants Gun Law
October 25, 2011
[Really? Ms. Neely is smart enough to get through law school and get a job as a Prosecuting Attorney yet she “can think of nothing worse” that someone exercising a specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms? Has she never heard of the Virginia Tech massacre? That is something far worse that happens when people are forbidden from defending themselves.
And simultaneously she claims she is “a very strong supporter of the second amendment”?
Either Neely has crap for brains or she thinks we do.—Joe]
As those who follow my Tweets already know our son James married Kelsey yesterday. Here is the collection of Tweets associated with the event:
Some highlights from others are also worth noting. I took hundreds of pictures and will get some of those up in a few days.
Barb and I are very pleased with James choice in a mate and with the wedding. It was unique and relatively low stress for us. Kim and Xenia’s weddings reflected their personalities and were very nice. James wedding revealed things about Kelsey and her family that were somewhat of a surprised to us.
During the garter flinging exercise as the bride did a bump and grind around the chair James was sitting on the D.J. commented this was the first time he had ever seen the groom sitting and the bride standing, “Where is that garter anyway?” And, “This is like a combination wedding and bachelor party.”
Sister-in-law Nancy commented, “Who would have ever guessed that James would have the wildest wedding of your three kids.” The answer to that is, “No one, ever, ever, EVER would have guessed that.”
As the reception dancing was going full blast I walked over to my brother Doug who was off by himself at the edge of the room and said, “It’s a lot different than any Huffman party, isn’t it?” He replied with, “I was just having similar thoughts myself.”
I have ordered the cardboard boxes for Boomershoot 2012. I stress cardboard because for Boomershoot 2011 we mostly used plastic “deli” boxes. This was, essentially, a disaster. For reasons we are not entirely certain about (probably the additional confinement provided by the extra mass of the cardboard) the cardboard box targets detonated as expected and the plastic ones had a very high percentage of duds.
Next weekend I will deliver the 500 7”x7”, 800 4”x4”, and 900 3”x3” boxes to Mecca (and here) along with the new 130 W solar panel, new tables, and miscellaneous other stuff. I think I have enough reclosable (“Zip Lock”) bags for next year but I have an idea for a new method of sealing the targets which I will do some tests on someday soon. This new method will eliminate the slow process of putting the Boomerite in the plastic bags. The small bags for the 3”x3” and “4×4” targets are a real pain.
Son-in-law Caleb says he will be able (he broke his leg a few weeks ago and hasn’t completely healed yet) to go with me and help do the installation of the solar panel, wiring, and the Wi-Fi.
The last time I visited Mecca (October 15th) I had numerous problems and did not get done nearly as much as I had hoped. Weather and soil is getting to the point where it will be “interesting” to delivery anything that we can’t carry by hand. Fortunately Mecca is much closer to a drivable road during the winter than the Taj. It is only about 140 yards. So even carrying a wood tabletop is doable unless you are on snowshoes or wading through knee deep mud (both of which are possible at certain times of the year).
Your employer doesn’t know the answer. If he knew the answer he wouldn’t need you.
Glen Utzman
Professor at the University of Idaho Accounting Department
[This is an excellent observation for almost any professional job.
Utzman is daughter Kimberly’s professor this semester and she provided me with this quote.—Joe]
The basic requirement to register a handgun is longstanding in American law, accepted for a century in diverse states and cities and now applicable to more than one fourth of the Nation by population. Therefore, we presume the District’s basic registration requirement, D.C. Code § 7-2502.01(a), including the submission of certain information, § 7-2502.03(b), does not impinge upon the right protected by the Second Amendment.
Douglas Howard Ginsburg
United States Court of Appeals
Dick Anthouny Heller, Et. Al. v. District of Columbia, Et. Al. October 4, 2011
[Slavery, segregated restaurants, laws against interracial marriage, and the death penalty for homosexuals was accepted for more than a century in this country. That didn’t make them constitutional. Rights do not become privileges subject to denial because they are repressed in some portion of the nation for some set period of time.
Three fourths of the nation by population do not have their firearms registered and those areas had as low or lower crime rates than the areas that did have their firearms registered. Therefore one must conclude that firearm registration serves little or no benefit to the people. No question would be given to legitimacy of registration for First Amendment rights hence registration to exercise Second Amendment rights must be constitutionally suspect. Thus registration of firearms fails to pass any level of scrutiny.—Joe]
I’m getting bored with gun control advocates these days.
Sebastian
November 2, 2011
The Straw Men Builders
[I understand and empathize some. But this isn’t a game to get tired of and move on to something else more interesting when you get bored. This is a fight for the preservation of a specific enumerated right. We get bored with them because we keep refuting the same tired positions they put forward. That doesn’t mean we should stop.
I propose that we can slack off when at least half of the top 10 search engine results for their names are web pages mocking or explaining how these people are ignorant, evil, or liars we are not done with them. They need to be, figuratively speaking, pounded into the ground.
Here are some stats on our current situation on my proposed goal:
We are getting close on Sugarmann but have a lot of work to do on the others.—Joe]
If Alexa can be believed The Brady Campaign web site has a traffic rank of about 1.1 million. This compares to Say Uncle with a traffic rank of about 283,000.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence comes in almost dead even with the Violence Policy Center web site with ranks of almost 2.9 million.
Even my obscure blog nearly has the traffic of the Brady Campaign with a traffic rank of 1.24 million.
When I, blogging a few hours a week while working a full time job, can generate almost as much traffic as a the Brady Campaign with a full time staff and millions of dollars of income you have to know the general public just isn’t interested in their messages.
Give it up guys. You lost, we won. It’s time to change your names and rejoin civilized society.
Brady Campaign acting President Dennis Henigan says (YouTube video with only 311 views and the comments disabled) the Brady Campaign has a vision of American safe and secure with firearms prohibited from most public places.
It’s nice to have dreams Dennis but it’s just a dream. You long for something that never was and can never be. You might also have visions of American with unicorns, pixie dust, and manna falling from the sky but rational people do not share your delusions.
When self defense is prohibited safety and security are beyond reach.
I’ve long been opposed to the Muslim religion but perhaps I should give it further consideration. As reported here it has some interesting points I had not thought of:
The 115-page pocket-sized guide to Islamic sex was released a week ago by the OWC, which was launched in June.
In its foreword, the book says studies showed women only gave their husbands “10 per cent” of what men desired of their wives’ bodies.
It contains explicit sex details, devotes a chapter to “how sex becomes worship” and even reportedly urges Muslim men in polygamous marriages to have group sex with their wives.
I wonder if the women have to be Muslim too. I suspect getting number one wife Barbara to convert would be “challenging”.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is concerned about states’ rights:
“National concealed carry reciprocity legislation is a terrible idea for public safety and a huge affront to states’ rights,” said CSGV Executive Director Josh Horwitz.
I guess that means we can count on their support for The Firearms Freedom Act, states that wish to ban abortion, and even the reinstituting of slavery should some state desire it.
What these people don’t understand (or more likely just don’t want to acknowledge) is that states’ rights/powers only extend as far as the people rights. There are certain individual rights that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that no state, county, or city may infringe upon. The right to keep and bear arms is one of those rights.
A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence and do incalculable damage to society: that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; that people who have long been exploited in the smaller transactions of daily life come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching; that people come to believe the law – in the larger sense – cannot fulfill its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the public streets.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
Courts: The Chief Justice Speaks Out
U.S. News & World Report (vol. 69, No. 8, Aug. 24, 1970) 68, 71
Address to ABA meeting, Aug. 10, 1970.
[I am of the opinion that the first two conditions have already been met.—Joe]
There are some things that are just completely incomprehensible to me. Maybe someone else can put it this into words I can understand:
The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) unequivocally opposes and condemns all invocations of the Holocaust in political discourse.
Does this sort of prohibition also apply to invocations of the Soviet, Chinese, and Cambodian genocides as well? Or is there something special about the Nazi regime that means it is special? If so, then why? And how does one determine this “specialness” in advance rather than just memorizing some rules someone made up?
Further along that same line I have had numerous people tell me my “Jews in the Attic Test” is “brilliant”, “genius”, “one of the best things you have ever written” and it got me a “Thinking Blogger Award”. But one Jew I pointed it out to told me, “I agree with everything you say here but you must change the name. You don’t realize how offensive that is to Jews.”
What?
I. Just. Don’t. Get. It.
This is the Twenty-First Century, where you can track your gorramed pizza from dough to delivery, and you are telling me that the Great and Almighty Federal Government cannot dig its head out of its own ass long enough to develop something similar for a “product” that costs at least ten times as much as your average pizza order?
Linoge
November 1, 2011
good to know my tax dollars are being wasted
[Linoge is correct as far as he goes. A lot more could be said as well. Linoge hints at it but doesn’t quite come out and say what really should be said. Here are some of the things that come to mind:
—Joe]
I felt a great disturbance in the Anti-Gun force, as if 10, maybe 15 voices suddenly cried out in terror and were basically ignored.
Suddenly I have a desire to visit cheesehead central.
Sean D Sorrentino
November 1, 2011
What a difference a day makes
[H/T to Robb.
I was tempted to say that now Wisconsin recognizes the “bear” part of “keep and bear arms” the streets will be run full with tears instead of blood but Sean is correct. 10 or maybe 15 people just don’t provide that many tears and don’t matter.—Joe]
For the near brain-dead supporters of the TSA that still exist out there I would like them to think about how the TSA could possibly stop a dust explosion such as this one on an airplane in flight. Compare the size and shape of the grain elevator in that picture to an airplane fuselage. Compare the strength of the materials (reinforced concrete versus a thin aluminum skin with window) used in the construction.
A few pounds of powdered sugar, flour, or powdered milk can make enough dust to take out a grain elevator and it is more than enough to take an airplane out of the sky. And just how is the TSA going to scan for that when everyone that has eaten a powdered sugared doughnut since they last changed their clothes is going to test positive?
The TSA is nothing but A Security Theater and only the most ignorant and stupid don’t know and understand that.
Just so you know what they think of civil rights advocates:
Decisions about campus safety should be made by administrators, faculty, and students, not by extremists . . . who contribute nothing to the academic community in the commonwealth,” Andrew Goddard, president of the Virginia Center for Public Safety
I’ll bet there were people who claimed similar things about the presence of blacks on campuses a few decades ago.
There is a rally tomorrow (Tuesday, November 1) at the Old Dominion University’s campus:
A gun rights group that plans a rally this week on Old Dominion University’s campus will have some unwanted company when it gathers Tuesday on Kaufman Mall to push for less restrictive weapons policies.
The group will be confronted by gun control advocates who today said they’ve organized a counterdemonstration at ODU to oppose those who believe concealed permit holders should be allowed to bring firearms into campus buildings.
Both groups will descend on campus Tuesday afternoon to respectively lobby for and against a campus gun policy update proposed by ODU that would ban permit holders from bringing guns into school facilities.
It would play well for our side if, as is usual, the pro-gun side outnumbers the anti-gun side by 10 or 1000 to 1. Just who the “extremists” are should be more apparent by this time tomorrow.
The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder.
Henry C. Wright
April 7, 1837
The Liberator
[Irony alert.
I found this on The Virginia Center for Public Safety (an anti-gun group) web site. Apparently they don’t research or think through the content of their web site any more than they do their policies.
When they advocate for restrictions on firearms ownership they themselves are advocating to “control the will of a fellow being by physical force” via the government.
Furthermore Henry C. Write claimed:
That it is the right and duty of the slaves to resist their masters, and the right and duty of the people of the North to incite them to resistance, and to aid them in it.
Isn’t it better for the people to posses arms and never be slaves than to become slaves and require arms from others to free yourself?
There is a reason no one ever accuses anti-gun people of being too consistent or too smart for their own good.—Joe]
I was scanning through the May 2011 issue of the American Rifleman before I threw it away and read the following (Page 56 in the article Military Marksmanship):
According to the Army standards and training manual, PAM 350-38 (2009 version), a Regular Army light infantryman should fire about 1,200 rounds a year, assuming he participates in everything: basic marksmanship, day-night qualification, unit live-fire exercises, shooting in NBC gear, thermal and infrared (IR) sights, etc. His Guard and Reserve colleague should expend 660 rounds. But interviews show that almost nobody comes remotely close to that figure. Furthermore, for “plain vanilla” soldiers with access to shooting simulators, and who do not use thermal or IR sights, the specified annual expenditure is 490 rounds for active and 294 for Guard and Reserve.
1,200 rounds per year? If I shoot in just one USPA or Steel Challenge match per month I will go through that many rounds in a year. And that doesn’t count the rounds I expend in practice. I have gone though that many rounds in a single day in practice. And “nobody comes remotely close to that figure”? Wow! And I feel I don’t get enough range time in. And we are sending our troops off to war with this level of training?
Those anti-gun people who claim it is a fantasy to believe the gun owners could hold our own against the Federal Government are totally clueless and whistling past the graveyard. We outnumber them, we can outshoot them, and that doesn’t even take into account that most of them would be on our side anyway.