Author Archives: Joe

Don’t be stupid

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Playing with explosives can be a lot of fun. But don’t be stupid.

I don’t know for certain but that what this appears to be:

Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents continue to investigate an explosion in Harrison County on the morning of Aug. 1.

Bryan Byrne, a sergeant with the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, said multiple calls came in to Harrison County Dispatch reporting an explosion that shook houses and rattled windows in the area.

An ATF agent sent to the scene collected evidence from a blast area near Baker Hollow Road. The area where the explosion took place measured about 50 feet in diameter, with trees in the vicinity charred as high as 15 feet.

Kathy Goldman, wife of Harrison County Commissioner James Goldman, told her husband she thought a liquid propane tank had exploded.

The Goldmans live about a quarter of a mile from the site of the blast.

“I wasn’t home, but my wife was. It scared her to death,” James Goldman said. “It was a pretty strong explosion.”

He said an ATF agent from Louisville took a sample of the ground and sent it to Washington to be tested. From what he could tell, Goldman said it appeared to be a homemade bomb made in a plastic five-gallon bucket.

If you are going to be detonating things that make house rattle then get the permission of the land owner and you might want to call the cops yourself, before someone else does. Even if no law was broken or property damaged it wastes a lot of time and money of the cops. If they find out it was you they are going to make your life miserable just because they would rather be eating donuts, writing tickets to increase government revenue, or inspecting the local strip club for touching violations.

When people do stupid stuff some nanny statists will use it as an excuse to attempt preventing people from doing something stupid. And that makes me rather grumpy. You won’t like me if I get too grumpy.

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

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The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.

Milton Friedman
[As we enter another Great Depression keep that in mind. And also keep in mind that FDR and his complete lack of understanding of economics which extended the depression created by the high tariffs under the Hoover administration–who “Long before he entered politics he denounced laissez-faire thinking“.

FDR insisting on extremely high taxes for the rich and frequent changing of the law created great uncertainity for investors. It was the death of FDR and Truman’s friendly attitude to business that finally brought the country out of the depression.

Read New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America for the details.–Joe]

Guns in schools–one year later

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A report on guns on campus after one year.

What? No professors shot for not giving someone the grade they thought they deserved? No shooting demonstrations at the keggers?

Nope. Everything is pretty much the same, including the gun-grabbers still refuse to acknowledge the obvious solution to, and contributing cause of, school shootings:

One year ago, David Thweatt made a decision so controversial and groundbreaking the story about it sped around the world.

The superintendent of the isolated Harrold Independent School District, about 30 miles northwest of here, made history last August when he and his school board decided to allow select teachers and staff members at the 110-student school to carry guns on campus — a first for Texas and the nation.

…

“Would you stick a sign at a school that says, ‘No guns on this property’? Why wouldn’t you? It invites nasty people to come,” he said. “That’s what you’ve done to every public school in the nation. That’s why there were no shootings until Columbine. It’s turned into a dad-gum shoot fest.”

…

When a London reporter asked Thweatt to explain why so many kooks go into schools looking for a body count, Thweatt said he couldn’t explain such a devolution of society, but he did know a simple way to stop it — the same solution he chose for Harrold ISD.

“Good guys with guns — good,” he said. “Bad guys with guns — bad.”

Quote of the day–Sinfonian

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It should come as a surprise to no one that gun permits and applications in Florida are on a record pace, as barrel-strokers with small penises* throughout the state react to an alleged threat that has virtually no chance of happening — and even if it does, they’re not going to immunize themselves by buying now. Wow, talk about stupid …

…

No one is coming to take away your guns. (Even though I personally wouldn’t mind if they did.) And you firearm fellators out there who think that getting your permits now will shield you? Granted, you won’t lose your guns, but a higher tax on ammunition is just going to get you even more. Didn’t think about that one, did ya?

…

All this from a gross misreading of the Second Amendment. It’d be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

——————————————————————————–
* Based on my assumption that the vast majority of gun owners have, um, endowment issues; the size of their gun is inversely proportional to their penis size. I think.

Sinfonian
August 10, 2009
Florida gun nuts: breaking records through paranoia
[My primary objective of quoting this guy is to let you know what the other side thinks of you.

My secondary objective is to demonstrate how wrong he is.

The first thing that comes to mind about this guy is, “Does he think women have infinitely sized guns?” Then I wonder how many penises he has measured and compared to gun sizes. If it were more than one or two my hypothesis would be it was because he was more interested in the penises than in the correlation with gun size. But my leading hypothesis at this time is that he has precisely zero data to support his claims. This is based upon the above collection of data about him. For example:

  1. Buying a gun now, such as a so called “assault weapon” that was been banned from new sale to private citizens the last time Democrats controlled Congress, the Senate, and the White House, does “immunize” said buyers. There is no registration of firearms in most states. Hence after a month or two it becomes very unlikely that a judge is going to issue a search warrant for said gun based entirely on a 4473 because without other confirming evidence the owner could have sold or otherwise disposed of the firearm being sought. So, at that point what can they do to remove the gun from circulation?
  2. In states where registration has been implemented, such as California, New York, and New Jersey, not to mention all the foreign countries with registration, there have been many examples of the government coming to take the guns. And even without registration guns were forcibly confiscated after hurricane Katrina. To say it won’t or can’t happen again, particularly when there are people, such as Sinfonian, advocating it is naive or duplicitous.
  3. The gun rights community has long been aware of and fought against high taxes on ammunition. For example just on my blog alone you can see concerns over it here, here, here, here, and here.
  4. Gross misreading of the Second Amendment? Did he read the Heller decision or just is he just parroting what the Brady Campaign or the Violence Policy Center told him? See also my blog post if you just want a dramatically abridged version of what Scalia said. In other words the highest legal authority in the nation agreed with what us “barrel-strokers with small penises” have been saying about the Second Amendment for decades.

What would be funny if it weren’t so tragic is this guy confuses his imagination with reality.–Joe]

Xenia’s wedding videos

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Daughter Xenia has posted some videos from her wedding.

They brought tears to my eyes.

I’m too old and too married

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If I were 30 years younger and in the market for a mate she sounds very nice:

She likes long walks on the beach, men who aren’t afraid to cry, and puppies.

Her dislikes include feed tray stoppages, tracer flareout of her NVGs and premature fixed-wing strikes scattering her high-value targets.

(Via email from Carl, my first formal firearms instructor).

Quote of the day–Ambrose Bierce

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In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary
[I was reminded of this by what our Speaker of the House recently said:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned the health care debate up a notch Monday, penning a column along with her top deputy that questioned the patriotism of those disrupting town hall meetings to air their complaints. 

–Joe]

$139 fraud lesson

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I delivered over 1700 cardboard boxes and other supplies to the Boomershoot site today. I folded a couple hundred of the boxes and stored them away in crates. Then I visited my parents who live a couple miles away.

They asked how everyone was doing, did son Jamie (he used to be called Jamie rather than James and his grandparents still use that name) like his job okay? How long has he worked at Microsoft now? I told him everything was going fine, Xenia was a little depressed because her new husband is leaving for Iraq very soon. James, Kim, and Lisa (another grandchild) had housewarming party at James’ new home near Seattle. Blah, blah, blah…

As it got late I told them I really had to leave so I could be home in time to eat dinner with Barb who would be getting off work soon. I had stood up, put my hat on and took a step or two toward the door when Dad told me to sit down because he had another story to tell. The following are his exact words as best I can remember them:

I got a call the other day. He said, “Hi Grandpa, this is Jamie. How are you doing?” I said I was doing okay and asked how he was doing.

He asked me if I could keep a secret. I told him I thought I probably could because I had keep a secret or two in my life. He said that he wasn’t doing so well. He was in jail in Ottawa. I asked how that happened. He said that he and a friend had gone to a concert and when they came back over the border they were stopped, searched, and his friend had some marijuana in his backpack. They were both arrested and he needed $2800 to get out of jail.

He asked if I could help him out and I said I thought we probably could. He wanted the money sent via Western Union and he needed it right away. So your mom and I drove to Orofino went to the bank and got the money. But we started thinking that we should have asked a few more questions. “Why didn’t he call you?”, for example. But we went to the Western Union office at the IGA and told them what we wanted to do with the money and told them the story.

The woman there said to be really careful because there are a lot of people trying to commit fraud with Western Union. But we went ahead and sent the money but told them not to give it to anyone at the other end until we did some more checking. They gave us a toll-free number to call to okay the final delivery of the money.

We came back to the house and called the guy in Ottawa that was supposed to pick up the money for Jamie and I asked him, “How tall is Jamie?” He didn’t answer. I asked him some other questions too but he didn’t answer those questions either. He then got upset and asked, “Why are you asking me all these questions? Did you send the money or not?” I told him we didn’t and he hung up the phone.

I called the Western Union number and they sent the money back. I called the Orofino office but they wouldn’t do anything further until we came in and showed them picture ID. We didn’t get back into town until yesterday and they wrote us three checks. The biggest check they can write is $1000 so they wrote us two checks for $1000 and another check for most of the remainder. It still cost us $139 but that wasn’t too bad. It would have been a lot worse if it had been the whole $2800.

You, know if the police had been able to get together on that they could have caught them when they went to pick up the Western Union money. But he said he needed the money within two hours. I told him there wasn’t any way I could get the money that fast. But he wanted it right away.

I asked if they had reported it to the police. He said no. And I said the FBI, if no one else, would be interested because it was Interstate wire fraud. Dad said he would let my brother Doug tell them. I asked if he had told Doug. He said no. Brother Gary was there and he piped up that this was the first time he had heard the story too. He had seen Mom and Dad leave for Orofino the other day but they told him they were going to the Builder’s Supply. They did go there, but that wasn’t the primary reason for the trip into town. They were trying to keep the secret for James.

I think Dad and Mom are a little embarrassed. They are 86 and 84 years old and not thinking quite as quick as they used to. We discussed lots of ways it could have been prevented from going as far as it did. I made sure they had the cell phone numbers for everyone in our family so they could call us directly to check things out. And I told them I didn’t think James had ever been to a concert other than little things in the park and that he had never been to Canada let alone a part of Canada 2000+ miles away.

I’m writing this down so brother Doug can get the story as I heard it as well as getting the details from Dad again. Plus I’m sure my parents aren’t the first people these criminals have tried to scam and if they aren’t stopped and other people get some warning there will be others they are successfully with. This is to help warn others about the scam.

I expect there will be more to the story. There certainly still are a number of questions. Like how did they find out how my parents had a grandson by the name of Jamie? Facebook maybe? Probably something to do with the Internet. Perhaps even my blog (if you guys are reading this you should know I keep all my blog log files and will cooperate fully with law enforcement).

If anything further comes out that I can talk about I’ll let you know.

Update: Mike sent me an email with this link to news that this scam is reasonably well known.

Shiny

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Yesterday afternoon I spent some time cleaning up the garage (not that anyone other than family could tell if they were to take a look at it even now). I sorted all the mixed caliber brass and put a batch of .40 S&W in the case cleaner. I figured I would take it out after supper. I forgot about it and instead of the usual two hours in the Dillion CV-750 it spent about 12 hours.

I now have some very shiny brass.

Update: Kris (in comments) wanted pictures.

See also the .300 Winchester Magnum brass I put in Sunday Morning:

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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In the United States, the agricultural system is heavily industrialized, and relies on inputs such as diesel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and, perhaps most importantly, financing. In the current financial climate, the farmers’ access to financing is not at all assured. This agricultural system is efficient, but only if you regard fossil fuel energy as free. In fact, it is a way to transform fossil fuel energy into food with a bit of help from sunlight, to the tune of 10 calories of fossil fuel energy being embodied in each calorie that is consumed as food. The food distribution system makes heavy use of refrigerated diesel trucks, transporting food over hundreds of miles to resupply supermarkets. The food pipeline is long and thin, and it takes only a couple of days of interruptions for supermarket shelves to be stripped bare. Many people live in places that are not within walking distance of stores, not served by public transportation, and will be cut off from food sources once they are no longer able to drive.

Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[It’s harvest time on the farm. I’m going to visit and drive combine for a while. It’s been a couple years since I did that and it’s time to satisfy that urge again.

The farm visit reminded me of the above quote. We do burn lots of fuel on the farm and of course the fuel consumption is far from over by the time the crop is delivered to the grain elevator in town.–Joe]

Sharing some genes

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I was giving considerable thought to posting something about niece Lisa sharing some genes with me when she made this post. Then today she described attending her first professional baseball game.

That’s pretty much how I feel about them too–only I didn’t think of writing an equation for the amount of fun people are having at a baseball game. But now that she has done it I think it’s a great idea.

I only went to one game which was back in 1972. It was the San Diego Padres against the Saint Louis Cardinal or Boston Red Sox or some such thing. We left after the 13th inning when the score was still 0-0.

Quote of the day–Peter Nickles

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The last place you want to conceal is in the District, with all of these federal buildings. It makes the job of law enforcement damned difficult.

This is a frontal assault on the District’s regulations under the Second Amendment. I don’t think that’s what Justice Scalia had in mind when he talked about self-defense.

Peter Nickles
August 8, 2009
D.C. Attorney General
Lawsuit Seeks Right to Carry Concealed Weapons in the District
[Does this guy think the only place you should be allowed to defend yourself is in your home? If you leave your home you leave the Second Amendment right to self-defense behind?

Sure, it makes it easier for law enforcement to arrest anyone with a gun in public. Just as it makes it easier for them if they arrest any black/white/yellow/red skinned person, Jew (wearing their yellow star), or homosexual (wearing their mandated pink triangle) in public after dark. But that wouldn’t be justice nor should it be tolerated in a free society. But the actions and statements of D.C. politicians make that abundantly clear they aren’t interested in a free society. And that means they need to be slapped down by the courts again.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Scott Bach

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Trying to reduce gun crime by rationing guns to law-abiding citizens is as absurd as trying to reduce drunk driving by rationing cars to non-drinkers.

Scott Bach
President of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs
August 7, 2009
Corzine signs law limiting handgun purchases
[H/T to Jeff.

Straight thinking has never been a strong point of the anti-gun people. This case is just another in a long crooked line of abuses against gun owners.–Joe]

Good to know

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Via Dave Hardy.

The government is not allowed to:

5 US Code §552a(e)(7) commands that any Federal agency

“(7) maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity;”

This wouldn’t protect some blogger making viable threats against a politician (and rightly so). But it could be used to punish someone in the Federal Government (and rightly so) for keeping records of your peaceful opposition to proposed legislation (if that link goes dead here is a saved version of the page from Whitehouse.gov as of August 8, 2009 at 2315 PDT).

Classifier Calculator

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My old link to this was broken so I had to go looking for it and thought I would share.

It’s a Classifer Calculator for USPSA stages. If you know your hit factor [(Points – Penalities)/Time] for shooting a stage then it will compute what percentage of the best shooters in the world your score represents. This percentage is used to calculate your classification. I’m considered a B-class shooter. The percentage ranges and classifications are:

Grand Master 95 to 100%
Master 85 to 94.9%
A  75 to 84.9%
B  60 to 74.9%
C  40 to 59.9%
D  2 to 40%

The USPSA will compute your percentage and post it on their website a week or two after your club sends in the results but if you want to know sooner you can use the Classifier Calculator to get the answer immediately.

Using Caleb’s recent practice result I compute his hit factor at 7.8717 which yields 72.878% in the Limited Division. If he can do this consistently on a number of different stages in competition he is an upper B-class shooter.

Correlation is not causation

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Reputo demonstrates that if someone claims the firearm homicide reductions in the late 90s were influenced by the anti-gun laws passed in ’93 and ’94 then those same laws can be claimed to have reduced the homicides by sharp objects and suffocation.

Nice job!

Do it again! Do it again!

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Alan Gura with the help of the Second Amendment Foundation just filed suit against Washington D.C. again:

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: Contact: Alan Gottlieb (425) 454-7012

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a lawsuit on behalf of three residents of the District of Columbia and a New Hampshire resident, seeking to compel the city to issue carry permits to law-abiding citizens.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Tom Palmer, George Lyon and Amy McVey, all District residents, and Edward Raymond, a New Hampshire resident. SAF and the individual plaintiffs are being represented by attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller case in 2008 that overturned the District’s handgun ban on the grounds that it was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

“Once again,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, “we’re heading back to court because the anti-gun city administration refuses to abide by the law. It is beginning to appear like residents of the District are up against a rogue city government that simply does not want to ease its stranglehold on the most important civil right of all, the right of self-preservation.”

“In most major American cities,” said attorney Gura, “where the right to bear arms is respected, licensed permit holders have proven themselves safe and effective. Washington, D.C. already requires handgun registrants to complete the background checks and training classes required of carry permit holders throughout the country. It is pointless to deny these individuals the right to bear arms.”

SAF previously sued the District over its restrictive handgun registration policies, leading the city to amend those policies. This time, SAF is alleging that the District previously had a city code under which the police chief could issue licenses to carry handguns to individuals, including citizens not residing in the District, though the city did not issue such licenses as a matter of policy for several years. That authority was revoked last December by the Mayor and City Council.

Plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction against the continued ban on carrying handguns by law-abiding citizens for personal protection.

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nations oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Haven, CT; and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers and an amicus brief and fund for the Emerson case holding the Second Amendment as an individual right.

Update: More stories are coming out:

It’s good to know the money Microsoft (matching my gifts dollar for dollar) and I are donating to SAF are being put to work for a good cause–making Sad Pandas in the gun control community.

Graphic by Robb Allen.

Good thing nationwide concealed carry failed

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Apparently Paul Hemke is saying the defeat of the Thune Amendment helped prevent the Pittsburg shooting from being even worse:

Two weeks ago, gun violence prevention organizations helped defeat a bill in Congress that would have allowed this killer to carry his loaded weapon almost anywhere in the country.

Sooo… this killer was prevented from carrying his loaded weapon in other states because concealed carry license aren’t universally recognized, but he wasn’t prevented from murdering and wounding the women in Pittsburg by the laws against murder and assault?

Got it. I’m so glad Helmke told us that because I would have never been able to come to that conclusion on my own.

Anyone but Dow Constantine

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Washington Ceasefire is endorsing Dow Constantine for King County Executive (Seattle area). This means you should vote for anyone but Constantine.

Constantine doesn’t have Washington Ceasefire on the list of organizations endorsing him. This could be because the endorsement is new and/or he doesn’t know about the endorsement. Or it could be that he doesn’t want to advertise that fact. I can’t find any mention of firearms on his website so it could be he realizes the KC Executive doesn’t really have any authority to do anything regarding guns with the state Preemption and he will say whatever he thinks will get votes knowing he can’t really be held responsible if he doesn’t accomplish anything. Sort of like getting an endorsement from the KKK–the politician is probably happy to have the votes but doesn’t really want get caught wearing a pillow case on his head.

A win for knife rights

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This is actually rather old news but I haven’t seen it mentioned on any of the blogs I frequent. KnifeRights.org reports that Customs has backed off on expanding the definition of switchblades:

In a letter to Representative Kurt Schrader (D-OR), Customs has officially backed off their proposed revocations in recognition of the Amendment that was passed by the Senate (see below), at least until the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill is acted upon in Conference Committee.

You can read the letter here, but the key paragraph reads “The amendment would effectively obviate the need for CBP’s proposed revocations and render the current issue moot. Additionally, due to the numerous comments received in response to the proposed revocation, it is unlikely that CBP will take any further action prior to passage of the Appropriations Act.

This is about as close to a victory as we can come at this time. It may not be over until the fat lady sings, and we actually get the Amendment through Conference Committee, but for all practical purposes, we shouldn’t have to worry about Customs reaching into your pockets for your pocket knives anytime soon. Do take note that Customs has included some ambiguous wording in their letter, leaving their options open, no surprise. But, make no mistake, they have gotten the message; don’t mess with our pocket knives!

Of course Liberty is always unfinished business so don’t expect this will be the end of it but it’s good enough for now.