Barb and I just finished watching Valkyrie. It was a good movie. Barb buried her head in my shoulder for a few scenes but it was interesting and to the best of my knowledge historically accurate.
More historical details and information on numerous other plots to kill Hitler can be found in the book Plotting Hitler’s Death which I highly recommend.
See also this post for more information on the content of this great book.
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Milton Friedman
[As opposed to a government run market where exchanges take place at the point of a gun.–Joe]
I have worked with the mathematics of exterior ballistics for so long that I sometimes forget the general nature of the path of a rifle bullet to it’s target is not mind boggling obvious. I was reminded of this by an email I received today:
Need a answer: I was told that when shot a 30 cal. bullet goes up and makes an arc to the target, when held level. What happens, say at 100 yards.?
This email caused me to have a flashback to when I was in grade-school (yes Kris, firearms had been invented by the time I left grade-school).
When I was about the fourth grade a friend of mind, Verl (yeah, kids had strange names back in those days), insisted that the bullet would rise after it left the barrel of a rifle. I didn’t believe it and asked how long it took before it when into orbit (or some such thing that pointed out the absurdity of his claim). He didn’t know but asked his dad and came back to school and explained it went up for a while then came back down. My knowledge of and ability to articulate the physics of gravity and moving objects was limited and although I was profoundly unsatisfied with this explanation I couldn’t refute his assertion that it was true.
Later I made sense of it and eventually I wrote a computer programs that accurately predicts the path of a bullet as it leaves the muzzle. I am now much more capable of articulating the physics and will now attempt do so.
If you were to go to the range and instead of shooting the bullet you were to drop it from your fingers you would correctly expect the bullet to immediately accelerate toward the center of the earth and pick up speed at the rate of about 32 feet per second for each second it is in the air until it hit something. It doesn’t rise for a while then start falling. If you take a carpenter’s level to the range and line up the bore with the level such that the bore was horizontal and fire the gun the bullet will drop, relative to the horizontal, from the instant it leaves the barrel. It does not rise and then fall. It also does not fall at the same rate as a bullet you dropped from your fingers but that is another, much more complicated issue that is beyond the scope of this post.
Because the bullet immediately starts falling as it leaves the barrel in order for the sights to predict the impact point they are not aligned exactly parallel with the bore. They are aligned such that when you view the target they line up where the bullet will actually hit after bullet has dropped by whatever amount on it’s travel to the target. If the bore is horizontal the sights are pointed slight down. If the sights are horizontal then the bore will be pointed slightly up. In other words there is an angle between the line of sight and the bore of the gun. I call this angle the “Sight Angle”.
As far as I know I am the first to use the phrase “Sight Angle”. I use this to simplify the setting of the scope for long distance shooting. Most long range shooting instructors refer to your gun having a “Zero” that depends on the altitude, temperature, bullet velocity, and ballistic coefficient of the bullet. This is wrong. The gun is constant with respect to the environment. The drop of the bullet changes, not the scope setting.
Knowing the distance to the target and the drop the bullet makes when it goes this distance we can compute the proper angle the barrel should be with the horizontal to hit a target that is the same distance above the ground as the muzzle of the barrel. This angle is the proper angle required to have the gun exactly compensate for the drop of the bullet on it’s way to the target. This angle is not the sight angle because there is another complication–the height of the sight above (almost always but not necessarily) the bore. For a typical scoped rifle the line of sight through the scope is about 1.5 inches above the center of the bore. I call this the sight height. Using some trigonometry the sight height and proper angles can all be number crunched into a single number that you can dial into your scope such that for any give range and bullet drop you can dial your scope to the proper angle and you have precisely compensated for the drop of the bullet such that where you line the sights up that is where the bullet is going to go (minus bullet inaccuracy, wind drift, and shooter error). This “proper angle” is my Sight Angle. If you know what the environment is and you know the angle of the scope (and its height) relative to the bore you will know where the bullet will hit for any given range.
So, the email asked for what happens at 100 yards. Here are the graphs (generated with Modern Ballistics, which I wrote).
First the drop for a bullet fired with the bore of the gun horizontal. This is for a .308 Winchester shooting Federal match 168 grain bullets at “standard conditions” (59 F, sea level). Yes, I know this graph is confusing. It is not the path of the bullet. This is the distance the bullet has dropped as it traverses from the muzzle to the target. The drop increases the further it travels:
By the time the bullet has traveled 100 yards it has dropped nearly 3 inches. If you point the bore up at a slight angle (4.23 Minutes of Angle to be exact) compared to a scope mounted 1.5 inches above the center of the bore, aim the scope at a target 100 yards the bullet will start out 1.5 inches below the line of sight of the scope. Because the barrel is pointed up slightly as the bullet travels forward it will rise as it travels to the target. The distance from the line of sight through the scope to the bullet at any given range is called the height of the bullet at that range. Hence at the muzzle the height is -1.5 inches. And since the proper angle for a 100 yard zero was dialed into the scope the height at 100 yards will be 0.00 inches as seen in this graph:
So, from the viewpoint of the scope the bullet does rise and then fall. Of particular interest is that there are actually two zeros for this scope setting. There is a “Near Zero” at 49.8 yards and there is the normal or “Far Zero” at 100 yards. At what is called the Midrange, 75.1 yards in this case, the bullet is at its maximum height of 0.2 inches above the line of sight.
So that is the path of the bullet for a 100 yard shot.
It is just my opinion but I don’t think shooting at 100 yards is very interesting with a rifle. The errors involved for temperature changes, air pressure, wind drift, and bullet velocity variations just don’t stack up enough to amount to much at that kind of range. For a .30 caliber rifle I don’t find things particularly interesting until we start shooting targets at 500 yards and beyond. I’m not going to get into all the interesting details because 99.9% of the people will find what I think is fascinating as mind bogglingly boring. But here is a hint of 500 yard shooting. A graph of the height of a bullet, again relative to the line of sight of the scope, for the same rifle and cartridge as above but for a 500 yard target:
I know people who don’t understand why anyone would have a gun. They don’t have guns, they didn’t grow up with them, and they assume people who did must be some sort of primitive barbarians.
Tom Palmer
Page 30, Gun Control On Trial by Brian Doherty
[Just like gays in the 80’s Silence = Death. We need to come out of the closet if we want to survive as a free people.–Joe]
Look at their literature. About all they say is ‘guns are bad, they kill children and other living things.’ Look at their website. It clearly posits gun ownership as a social evil. He can say what he wants; I like Dennis, and I’ve never had a negative interaction with anybody with his group, but sorry, that’s a bunch of crap. His dream is dead; the idea of prohibition is dead. They need to tell their constituents to find something else to do with their lives, go be productive members of society, stop attacking our individual rights.
Alan Gura
From Gun Control On Trial, page 114.
[First off I would like to +1 Gura’s experience with the gun grabbers. All of the paid and even volunteer staff of the gun-grabber organizations that I have talked to have been nice people. I believe they were sincere and truly had no wish for anything other than the well-being of innocent people. They may not have been very smart or very well informed but their intentions, however misguided, always seemed to be congruent with mine–the protection of innocent life. They just had a problem with data collection and processing.
But on to my main reason for the quote.
I love the last sentence of Gura’s. Gura was referring to the Brady Campaign (and Dennis Henigan) but it could just as well apply to 98% of our politicians. Especially this year–the year of the coronation of the Light Bringer. It’s going to be rough times ahead for freedom and individual rights. We don’t have enough Alan Gura’s and friendly courts to protect us. If only we could enforce a declaration such as Gura’s.–Joe]
I’m spending New Years Eve reading Gun Control On Trial by Brian Doherty. I previously mentioned a direct reference to me in the book from a quick scan I made. A few minutes ago I found another reference on page 53 which almost for certain is about me (and others) and Boomershoot:
I talked to lots of people in the “pro-gun” community, from those who enjoy detonating explosives with semiautomatic rife fire to dealers in highly regulated states like California.
I find it interesting that I am placed on the extreme end of the spectrum. I suppose it is fitting. And it reminds me of two quotes:
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
And:
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater
Update (23:15): I finished the book a few minutes ago. I found my name in the index too.
Also of possible interest to some is that my friend and Boomershoot promoter Stephanie Sailor was mentioned in the acknowledgments. It was via her encouragement that Doherty contacted me.
I’ll have more on the book tomorrow. And I have a great quote for the first day of the new year from the book.
If you wants to get elected president, you’se got to think up some memoraboble homily so’s school kids can be pestered into memorizin’ it, even if they don’t know what it means.
Walt Kelly
The Pogo Party
[Apparently, with todays public education, the memorization task has been simplified to remembering just two words; “hope” and “change”.–Joe]
Jenny Block is looking for questions to answer for her sex column.
I considered, and still might, submitting some questions. But the obtaining the answers would probably entail graduate level research studies.
ATF Special Agent in Charge Jim Needles explains “Weapons of Choice” for the Mexican drug cartels.
ATF Special Agent in Charge Jim Needles
See also this news story built around the video interview above.
“Weapons of choice” include semi-auto FN FALs (a popular sport and hunting rifle), AK-47’s, and 1911 style handguns. It appears the news reporters also visited a gun shop and took pictures of AR-15’s as well.
The demonization of ordinary firearms for the next “assault weapon” ban is picking up steam with the help of the ATF.
Someone wants to know if a .50 caliber round can penetrate a Mercedes Guard Pullman:
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The answer is yes.
The Mercedes Guard Pullman is built to level B6/B7:
High-Protection vehicles, engineered to the European B4 resistance level, resist large-calibre revolver ammunition and offer particularly good protection against the increasing threat of drug-related and violent street crime.
Highest-Protection vehicles, engineered to resistance level B6/B7, provide effective protection against the threat posed by terrorist attacks. Their armour is designed to resist rifle-launched projectiles from military weapons which have a velocity almost twice that of bullets fired from a revolver. They also offer resistance to shrapnel from hand grenades and explosive charges.
According to this page the resistance levels are as follows:
The 7.62mm x 51 is .308 Winchester equivalent. Which means that even a .300 Win Mag (a common hunting rifle for those people in the Brady Campaign reading this) is not something they designed for. A .50 BMG should be able to punch through as well.
Thanks.
As predicted here the Brady Campaign is suing to stop the implementation of the new rule on carrying in National Parks. Unfortunately we won’t have (vice) President Palin in office next month to direct the Justice Department to arrest and prosecute the offenders.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence sued the Bush administration Tuesday in hopes of stopping a new policy that would allow people to carry concealed, loaded guns in most national parks and wildlife refuges.
…
The lawsuit said members of the Brady Campaign will no longer visit national parks and refuges “out of fear for their personal safety from those who will now be permitted to carry loaded and concealed weapons in such areas.”
If they were consistent they would stay out of states (and even countries) where concealed carry were allowed. I’d would be much happier if they did.
But if they were consistent that might mean they had the capacity to use logic and data for the basis of their actions. And we all know that would be the end of their organization and they would have to get real jobs rather than being professional bigots.
I may not be God. But I tell you what, I’m the closest damn thing to it.
Ellie Nesler
Ellie Nesler, famed for killing accused molester, is dead
[She, essentially, got away with it. I’m not so sure I would have given her the pass she got. Even the most generous of those judging her would have to admit she did at least a couple things wrong. She should have waited for the verdict and she shouldn’t have gotten caught. Gun people will tell you she probably should have used a larger caliber gun. The .25 ACP has a lot of kills but it just isn’t very reliable on man sized predators.–Joe]
She forgot to turn the laser off before she put it back in the case however. I lost a few hours of battery life but it wasn’t that big of a deal.
One has to wonder why someone wants the answer to the search query posed below (“best ammunition for penetrating body armor”).
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It is from within the People Republic of Massachusetts so I can see why it might be a legitimate question.
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
[While I agree it appears to me that most people don’t have the philosophical background and/or brain power to make decisions on their own. Sometimes I wish we could just let Darwin settle the issues.–Joe]
If there is anything in the theory of survival of the fittest, a lot of the people we know must have been overlooked.
Col. William C. Hunter
[I’m a little bit annoyed they canceled the steel match scheduled for today. People should be practicing under adverse conditions as well as when the environment is accommodating. Otherwise they are just enabling themselves to be culled when failure to perform under some hardship means non-survival.
I’d call them a bunch of wimps (actually I already did, but I didn’t mean it) except there wouldn’t be any place to park vehicles. With all the snow on the ground people couldn’t have driven up the road to the parking area.–Joe]
A handgun is a gun that police use, that the military use but ordinary people do not use unless they’re out to kill somebody. There’s no reason to have a handgun.
…
The police should be able to, they see this guy standing in the street and they you know, looking at whatever, they should be able to frisk them and if they have a gun, that gun should be removed and they should go to jail.
Susan Martin
December 26, 2008
A conversation on gun control with Susan Martin, Mario Elia, Karen Ellis-Elia and Sean Daly
[Ignorant of the millions of incidents each year in the U.S. where handguns were used to protect innocent life Ms. Martin imagines a police state as being a better place to live. She lives in Canada where they already have censorship and a (never mind it has failed) gun registry. With those already in place she may get her wish sooner than she thinks. I think she should be careful what she wishes for.–Joe]
Update: They let my comment go through (comments were moderated):
I have a great deal of sympathy for those who have suffered such losses but there is Just One Question (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2004/12/14/just-one-question/) that needs to be asked before advocating more restrictions on firearms. That question is: “Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?”
Until that question can be answered in the affirmative those that advocate for more restrictions on firearms are actually advocating for an unjustified taking of freedom.
Update2: I left another comment (12/30/2008):
I find it very telling that those advocating for more gun control claim it will reduce “gun violence”. This claim is doubtful (the counter example of the U.K. experience is just one reason to doubt it) but furthermore they do not claim it will reduce violent crime. But by carefully choosing their words they lump praiseworthy violence in defense of innocent live in the same category as criminal acts. Those same carefully chosen words also overlook that the total violent crime rate can (and frequently does) increase when people are prevented from using firearms for self defense.
And also telling is the same advocates for gun control repeatedly refuse to answer Just One Question, “Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?”
Because they cannot answer this one question it shows that safety is not the objective of their advocating for increased restrictions on firearms. They have some other agenda which they are not sharing.
In the U.K. they have banned handguns, some long guns, have heavy restrictions on all long guns, and restrictions on knives. There should be no surprise there are now calls for the banning of air guns:
A POLICE chief has backed stricter controls on selling BB guns after a teenager was shot in the eye at close range with one of the replica firearms.
Angry mum Lynn Colley called for a ban on the weapons after her daughter Paige, 14, was left temporarily blind by a ball bearing fired at her face.
I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
Charles De Gaulle
[Okay… but what is the alternative? Anarchy? I just don’t see a better alternative.–Joe]
