Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day—Josh Sugarmann

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Members of Congress are now the latest victims held hostage by America’s gun culture. Congress should act immediately to reinstate an effective ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines and move quickly to pass an effective assault weapons ban.

Josh Sugarmann
January 8, 2011
Congress Must Rein in Gun Industry in Response to Giffords Assassination Attempt
[Had the attacker been thinking clearly (there are strong hints of mental illness) there are more effective ways to kill that many people in close proximity if you don’t have good firearms skills. Use a bucket of gasoline and a cigarette lighter. What would Sugarmann and friends say then? It wouldn’t be “Ban gasoline!” or “Ban cigarette lighters!”

But it really doesn’t matter what Sugarmann says in regards to gun control and particularly in regards to “assault weapons”. Even if the courts haven’t explicitly said that the types of guns specified in the 1994 Federal “Assault Weapon” are now Constitutionally protected via being in “common use.” And that is so ironic because it was because of the ban that they became so popular.

What does matter in regards to the future of gun control in the immediate future is what Rep. Gabrielle Giffords says when she recovers. If she comes out of this exceedingly anti-gun we will be fighting legislative battles for at least several months if not years. If she says guns are not the issue the individual bears the responsibility then the gun control crowd will have their flame almost completely extinguished.—Joe]

Choke

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Last Sunday I participated in the USPSA match put on by the Lewiston Pistol Club.

On stage 1 my practice with one handed shooting paid off and I had both the best time and the best hits. This gave me a 12 point lead over Master Class shooter Adam.

On stage 2 I saw a way I could use my height to good advantage and shoot the stage in a way the enabled me to avoid stopping at one of the expected shooting positions. This saved me a couple of seconds from what my time would have been and gave me nearly a full second advantage over Adam. He had better hits than I did but he was only up by a little over two points. This left me a little over 10 points in the lead for the match.

On stage 4 (which was shot before stage 3) I shot fairly well, Adam had a few difficulties and didn’t shoot as well as he usually does but better than I did. We had identical hits but he had a better time and he cut my lead to just under 4.2 points.

On stage 3, the classifier, Adam had a malfunction then a miss. His time was poor and with the penalties and the poor hits all I had to do was “not mess up” to win the match. It has been years since I have won a USPSA match. I tried not to think about it but that phrase, “don’t mess up” keep running through my mind.

The stage required shooting five rounds on a target, performing a mandatory reload, then engaging a second target with five rounds. It was very close range. Only six feet away from one target and 10 feet away from the other target. No sights required at this range. Just point the gun and pull the trigger as fast as you can. I’m pretty good at pulling the trigger fast. Going through some of my eyeglasses cam footage I found the slide is sometimes only in the forward/in-battery position for a single frame. In terms of rate of fire I’m pushed the limit of what the gun is capable of achieving (I may actually exceed it at times I need to be wearing my special glasses when I have problems going really fast to diagnose the problem).

My draw was okay, not nearly as good as Adam who was drawing and firing his first shot in the 0.9 range that day, but it didn’t need to be. My splits were fast. All were under 0.15 and some were as fast as 0.12. I had all ‘A’ hits on the first five shots. My reload was slower than I liked but it didn’t matter that much. All I had to do was “not mess up”. I started shooting again on the same target. Again my shots were all ‘A’ hits and very fast. I had fired four shots before I realized I was shooting at the wrong target. I yelled “Dammit!” and put the last round on the correct target. I had messed up—big time. With all the penalties I zeroed the stage. It turns out I only needed 60.2 stage points out of the 100 possible to win the match and I got 0 which gave me a third place finish for the match.

Heavy sigh.

I’m attending another USPSA match tomorrow at the Paul Bunyan Rifle and Sportsman’s Club. I’m going to practice at Wade’s today and I’m going to try shooting with a clear mind rather than “don’t mess up” flooding the neurons.

Gun cartoon of the day

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The more accurate answer to the question is, “Respect for fundamental rights.” But that’s a topic the liberals want to repress.

Quote of the day—American Mercenary

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Joan, you are on the board of directors for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership. You really need to start getting your facts straight before you marginalize even more Americans. Because, you DON’T have the public on your side, the NRA doesn’t issue us talking points, and your organization is in the hole for the exact amount of your President’s salary.

American Mercenary
January 7, 2010
Dumb but motivated
[Although at a cursor glance it appears she is (extraordinarily) dumb I beg to disagree. She is the defining case of Peterson Syndrome. Other than that AM has her pegged correctly.

But if it were something I could do without feeling ethically soiled I would encourage her to continue doing exactly what she is doing.—Joe]

Quote of the day—jdberger

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There are no Marquess of Queensbury rules in this fight.

All is fair.

Our objective is the complete and utter destruction of the Brady Campaign or, at the very least, total marginalization. Let them mutter with the Klan, TacMars people and the Flat Earthers.

They need to be nullified as a political force, forever.

jdberger
January 7, 2010
Comment in the thread “Brady Campaign Seeks Field Organizer”.
[This is overstated just a little bit. Stepping outside the law would be a bad thing but the goal is right on.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Winston Churchill

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I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified, thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.

Winston Churchill
[Currently my main purpose outside family life is the destruction of gun regulations and my life is much simplified. I may not find much else in common with homosexuals, homophobes, or Christian Fundamentalists but I embrace their efforts to defeat gun control in the courts, the legislature, and our culture. To do otherwise would be to weaken our position and perhaps even enable the defeat our cause.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barbara Scott

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Is he gay?

Barbara Scott
December 4, 2010
In response to Robert Fargo saying I was “devilishly handsome”.
[I think the answer is probably no. But there are some guys out there that publically say the have “a man crush” on me. And Barb claims I have groupies of both genders.

Somewhat related is the story of the woman that offered me sex for a position at Boomershoot for her husband. What is interesting is that Barb sort of predicted it before it happened. Spoiler alert,, in part because I haven’t told Barb the story yet—she ended up acquiring the position just like everyone else and paying for the position with a credit card.—Joe]

Boomershoot 2011 status and stats

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As I posted before registration for Boomershoot 2011 was opened up for staff and 2010 participants earlier this week. Just before it was opened up for everyone at 6:00 PM Pacific time the event was 75% full.

Three fourths of 2010 participants plan to come back for the 2011 event. Wow!

At 6:00 PM registration opened to everyone and I expected it would be full within a few minutes. I was wrong. As of 9:45 PM there are still 11 positions available. So if you thought had no chance you were wrong. Please go ahead and sign up.

Here are the current registration stats (they are available, live, here):

  Total Average per position taken Average per total positions
Positions Taken 65 – 0.86
Participants 106 1.63 1.39
Shooters 100 1.54 1.32
Spotters 6 0.09 0.08
Friday High Intensity participants 24 0.37 0.32
Saturday High Intensity participants 26 0.40 0.34
Dinner participants 53 0.82 0.70
Media/Bloggers 12 0.18 0.16
ATF Approved 13 0.20 0.17

There are a total of 76 positions available and 50 positions for each of the high intensity events. So, as you can see, there is still room for more people. There is also the Precision Rifle Clinic which probably still has openings.

One of the things I noticed in previous events was that in the early days there were an average of nearly two people per available position (three is the max allowed). In the last few years it dropped to about 1.5. This year I decided to raise the price for a single person entry. There were two reasons for this. One, I wanted more people to be able to attend. I’m pushing against some hard limits on the number of shooting positions and the only way to get more people in is to pack them tighter. And two, my gross sales dropped with the expenses remaining essentially constant. I felt guilty about raising the price so I dropped the price for the second and third shooters such that if there were two or more shooters the total price would be the same as before. But, so far, it doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference. 1.5 increased to 1.63 is probably just barely significant. Oh, well. It’s not that important.

I also find it interesting how many bloggers are attending. And the number above doesn’t include daughter Xenia and I.

But what really makes me smile is it is hundreds of miles from the nearest major airport with the nearest stop light nearly 40 miles away. Yet, almost for certain, Boomershoot has a bigger turn out that any Brady Campaign event.

Quote of the day—Horace Walpole

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Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.

Horace Walpole
[I have this quote as being from Racine. Others credit Jean de La Bruyère. But most source credit Walpole. Yet, I cannot find it in a search that is supposedly all of his works.

In any case this reminds me of certain anti-gun people. And the real tragedy is that when they get enough power they force their feeling based belief system on those that think.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chris

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Joan may be living in the world of Jim Crow — it is an essential part of her worldview, I suppose, due to the need to keep guns away from “those people”.

Chris
January 2, 2011
Quote of the Day
[Chris is of course referring to Joan Peterson, member of the board of directors of the Brady Campaign.—Joe]

What they said

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I’ve been as busy as a cat on a hot tin roof yesterday and today.


Yesterday Ry, Barron, and I went out to the Boomershoot site to do some tests. We got back into town and had lunch about 2:30. Barron came back to my place to wait for his wife, Janelle, to pick him up. They stayed until almost 11:30 as we discussed Boomershoot, all the worlds problems and how to solved them (the answers are “glitter”, “guns”, and “explosives”).


Today I went to an USPSA match and then scrambled with the Boomershoot 2010 participants having minor problems signing up for Boomershoot 2011. Some people take sign up very seriously.


Anyway, I have not had time to report on the test results from yesterday beyond a short Tweet.


Barron did a great job reporting with pictures and video.


Ry also has pictures.


Tomorrow is also very, very busy for me. So rather than report on things I’ll just say, “What they said.”

Shooting Gallery with Boomershoot

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(Outdoor Channel) with Michael Bane will have their Boomershoot show January 4th and 6th at 3:00 AM ET and January 5th, 3:30 PM, 7:00 PM, and 9:00 PM ET. This was with the video they took last April at Boomershoot 2010.

I don’t have cable and if someone would be able to record that and get it to me I would very much appreciate it.

I’ve asked about 100 people to do this already so before you send me a 1 GByte email or put the effort into burning a DVD check with me to make sure it’s not already taken care of.

Last night I told daughter Kim, “You are going to be on national television this week.”

She glared at me.

I continued, “He spend a lot of time talking to you.”

“Did we get a copy to review first?”

“Nope.”

The glare hardened.

I think it will turn out okay. But I’m glad I’m going to be 300 miles away when it shows.

Update: Trailer for the show is here. Or below:

Quote of the day—Albert Einstein

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The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift towards unparalled catastrophe.

Albert Einstein
[I sometimes give a little more than a passing thought to Boomershoot with nukes. But then I think of this quote.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ry Jones

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What’s the BC for a snowflake?

Ry Jones
January 1, 2011
[“BC” stands for Ballistic Coefficient. This is a measure of how much air resistance the a bullet has when it travels through the air.

We were on our way to the Boomershoot site and discussing the various tests we wanted to do. I said that someday I wanted to test explosives as a snow drift removal tool. Ry didn’t think it would work very well because the snow wouldn’t go very far. I wasn’t convinced. Above was his response.

Below was my response:

IMG_5074Web2011

–Joe]

Why we oppose reporting multiple sales

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I’ve recently read some people who wonder what the problem is with the reporting of multiple sales of gun (most recently in the news is talk about long guns–which is illegal).

It’s the same problem as with “one gun a month” and other schemes. The only way this can be enforced is if there is gun registration. Sure, an individual retailing could keep records of their customers and do a search for the last 5/30 days. Even looking past the chilling effect of having a time limit before you were enabled to exercise your specific enumerate right to keep and bear arms the problem to effectively enforce such a limit there would have to be a central list of the last time everyone purchased a gun to prevent someone from going to the gun store across the street, state, or country (yes, dual residents can purchase guns in two or states) to purchase another one before the “proper” time had expired.

Gun registration (and probably gun owner) registration is unlikely to pass muster in the courts and it certainly won’t pass muster with a very large percentage of the gun owning population. Just look at what happened in Canada with their gun registration—Then crank the dial on that reaction to about “12”.

Where Great Britain used to be

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Same planet different world, mass insanity, or Peterson Syndrome gone airborne?

From the Gun Control Network Children licenced to carry guns on our streets:

We call for children currently licenced to hold any firearms to be immediately jailed for a minimum of 10 years. This will act as a deterent to anyone who wishes to commit murder.

Actually, it’s just sarcasm. But it’s not that far off from some of the real anti-gun advocate positions.

They also advocate the banning of the organization Arm Britain.com (see the top left corner of their blog page). “Reasoned discourse” backed up by the force of government!

Boomershoot 2011 registration schedule

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Assuming no more flaws appear in the registration software the schedule for registration is as follows:

Registration opens for staff 12/31/2010 7:00:00 AM Pacific Time.
Registration opens for previous year participants 1/2/2011 6:00:00 PM Pacific Time.
Registration opens for everyone 1/4/2011 6:00:00 PM Pacific Time.

Go to http://entry.boomershoot.org/ to sign up.

Update: Boomershoot weekend is April 29th through May 1st. This is a known conflict with the NRA convention. Sorry about that. I had conflicts on my end for other dates.

Quote of the day—Tamara K

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Massive amounts of high explosives, like little girls and butterflies, need no excuse.

Tamara K
June 11, 2010
Mother of all leaks…
[The registration schedule for Boomershoot 2011 will be announced shortly.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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It strikes me as “interesting” that people don’t make a big deal of their spouse bringing a stray animal home, cleaning it up and allowing it to share their bed with them—as long as the animal is of a different species.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day—ciggy

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Great, so now all of the insecure, paranoid folk with inferiority complexes can live out their fantasies of carrying a lethal weapon around for no particular reason, endangering the rest of the population.

ciggy
December 30, 2010
Comment to Gun law changes coming.
This is in regard to Iowa becoming a “Shall Issue” state on Monday.
[This may come as a surprise to “ciggy” but n***ers are allowed eat at the same restaurants and use the same water fountains as white folk too. It turns out that doesn’t “endanger the rest of the population” either.

Ignorance and bigotry is not a valid excuse to deny people their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]