Author Archives: Joe

Pick on Joshua Horwitz day

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As I reported in my previous post Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence, is now working from home to save money but that didn’t stop him from talking about stuff he didn’t know anything about to the D.C. City Council yesterday:



A gun-control advocate told the D.C. Council’s public safety committee Wednesday that officials should consider adopting a complex method of ballistics tracking to help identify guns used in the city.


“In crime scenes, what we find are cartridges and no guns,” said Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. “Microstamping can provide the link between the gun and cartridge.”


Mr. Horwitz’s comments came during a hearing before the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary regarding gun laws in the District.


Apparently he didn’t realize one or more of the following facts:



  • There are no microstamped guns in production.
  • Requiring guns to be microstamped would indirectly be a ban on guns in D.C.
  • The Supreme Court said complete gun bans are unconstitutional.
  • There are over 200 million guns in the U.S. that are not microstamped and no criminal with room temperature I.Q. would use a microstamped gun. Those with sub room temperature I.Q. will get caught without having a microstamped gun.
  • Microstamping is easily defeated:

But we already knew these guys are clueless about guns and microstamping.


P.S. Some gun bloggers erroneously compared the suggested microstamping to Maryland and New York’s “ballistic fingerprint” programs. These are very different things and cannot be directly compared. See my Microstamping research post for details on the differences.

Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence cut backs

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Joshua Horwitz spins it as a positive thing but they are cutting way back on their office space and people are working from home to save money.


Also notice their web site says there are no job opportunities but they are accepting interns at no pay.


It’s a good first step. When they turn off the phones and the only public presence they have is an aging web site that whines about the “Gun Show Loophole” we can consider them politically dead.

Abortion rights versus gun rights–What media bias?

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As Lyle pointed out the other day some interesting comparisons can be made between the way the left deals with abortion versus guns. Here is another example:



McCain and Obama on the issues


ABORTION


McCain: Opposes abortion rights…
Obama: Favors abortion rights.


GUN CONTROL


McCain: Voted against ban on assault-type weapons but in favor of requiring background checks at gun shows. Voted to shield gun-makers and dealers from civil suits. “I believe the Second Amendment ought to be preserved — which means no gun control.”


Obama: Voted to leave gun-makers and dealers open to suit. Also, as Illinois state lawmaker, supported ban on all forms of semiautomatic weapons and tighter state restrictions generally on firearms.


Notice that even the title puts a positive spin on the repression of gun owners. It’s about “gun control”, not “guns”, not “gun rights”, not “the Second Amendment”, not “gun ownership”. Who wouldn’t be opposed to “uncontrolled guns”? Therefore the opposite of uncontrolled guns, or gun control, must be a good thing.


Compare the handling of guns versus abortion. Obama favors a right. McCain opposes a right.


What media bias?

Quote of the day–Counterintuitive Man

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The revolution will not be televised. It will not be brought to you in three parts by any sponsor, and it will not feature guns taken from cold dead fingers.


Counterintuitive Man
August 4, 2008
Counterintuitive Man says: “You can have my gun when you take it from my cold dead finger,” is a total myth!
[I agree. I think the entire mindset has to be changed before the RKBA has any teeth against a tyrannical government. In essence the attitude must be, “You can have my gun when you reanimate your cold dead fingers.” This changes the equation in two crucial ways: 1) It’s the government thug that is presumed to be dying and 2) It’s the individual that is presumed to be walking away from the engagement.–Joe]

Another NRA ad against Obama

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A retired law enforcement officer explains why voting for Obama is a bad idea.

Quote of the day–George S. Roof

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Any time I hear a politician cite common sense as a modifier in any sentence, I know he’s: 1) implied that I don’t have any; and 2) planning on stealing something from me. Since Pope Innocent II declared that the crossbow was an assault weapon in 1139 A.D., I’m not sure what definition these people are capable of. Vote wisely this November, and remember whose interest the name you select has in mind.


George S. Roof
September 30, 2008
Presidential election could shape future gun laws
[For sometime now “common sense” has been a phrase that immediately gets my fight (mostly) or flight response going but I never took the time to analyze it before. Thank you Mr. Roof.–Joe]

It was Ry’s fault

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He says he is sorry about bringing down Microsoft.com today. He didn’t even have to use any Boomershoot technology.


As people say, his brain is a very powerful CPU but it’s running a buggy operating system.

I wonder if the cops noticed

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Last night the cops visited to try to help resolve an incident when Boyfriend From Hell of the landlady at my underground bunker kicked in her bedroom door. I was at work at the time but Barb was there and called me to let me know what was happening. I left work immediately and told Barb to tell the cops I would be entering through the rear tunnel and that we would stay away from the action going on above ground.


Shortly after I arrived and greeted Barb the landlady knocked on our door and wanted to talk. A couple of cops showed up a minute or two later and stepped into my bunker to offer some advice to the landlady. I was packing with the only thing concealing my STI Eagle and a spare 18 round magazine was my Boomershoot coat. It was much too warm in there and I wanted to remove the coat without alarming the cops. Even wearing the coat probably seemed a little odd and the cops might have guessed I was packing just from that but there was no need to openly display the gun on my hip. In full view of the cops, but hidden underneath my coat, I untucked my Boomershoot golf shirt and used the tail of it to cover up the equipment on my belt and then took off the coat. I draped the coat over the target on the back of a chair from my testing the Gun Blog 45 a few days ago:



About five feet away from the cops, leaning up against a dresser was a rifle case. About eight feet behind the landlady they were talking to were two IPSC targets on the wall I use for dry fire exercises.


I wonder if the cops suspected there were guns nearby? If so, they didn’t give even the slightest hint of noticing. I did find it a little odd that one of them gave me his card and told me his cell phone number was on there–but they didn’t give the landlady a card or even their names.


I find it hard to believe they were so incompetent to not notice and would rather believe they were cool with it. Especially since they said they couldn’t leave her there if she was afraid for her safety (which she said she was) with the boyfriend who can’t currently be evicted. My offers to give her advance rent money on the spot to stay in a hotel or to stay on our couch went over well with the cops and they finally left.


Barb and I took the landlady to a restaurant for some food and she slept on the couch in our room last night. She left my underground bunker this morning without Barb or I talking to her and I can only presume she is working on getting him legally evicted today since she called work last night to take a day of vacation today.


I’d offer to loan her a gun but Boyfriend From Hell manages to keep stealing cell phones and keys from her purse so I don’t know how she would manage to keep a handgun away from him.


More details will be posted as they become available.

Quote of the day–Aldous Huxley

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There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.  Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient and, in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who  do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day  totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors, and school teachers.

 

 ….[such propagandists] accomplish their greatest triumphs, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing.  Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.  By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals.

 

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World, 1946 revised foreword
[In other words, far more important than what the media does say is what they don’t say. For example, on gun control, they don’t tell you no one has been able to answer Just One Question. For example when school funding, health care, or social security is being discussed they don’t tell you 90% of what the Federal Government does is not authorized by the U.S. Constitution.–Joe]

No shots fired

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If you have been following my Twitter account you will know there were five cops here at my Seattle area bunker tonight and that Barb, my landlady, and I escaped to the local Chinese restaurant without any shots being fired. And that the landlady’s boyfriend from hell can’t be evicted yet.


This has been building for a couple years now. I and a lot of other people are hoping she finally manages to stick to her position and actually gets the guy out this time.

Quote of the day–Xenia Huffman-Scott

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Walking to bible study while listening to Disney music. I’m so badass.


Xenia Huffman-Scott
Via Twitter
[That’s my girl.–Joe]

Gun safety–what media bias?

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What news organization would call the KKK and their ilk “public safety groups”? Don’t these groups think of themselves as protecting their white women from being raped or “polluting the race”? They were bigots and most of the press treats them like bigots. Yet we get this crap from a major newspaper, the Washington Post, where the anti-gun organizations are referred to as “gun safety groups” six times in the article. These are organizations that have never taught a single person a gun safety class. Having probably taught millions of people gun safety and with it’s 50,000 instructors it’s the NRA that is the leading gun safety group in this country and probably the world.


And I “love” this comment to the article:



How to spot an NRA member:
-lives anywhere South of DC or West of Pennsylvania, but east of California.
-Especially between Virginia and Texas
-sports mullet
-drives an old beat up pick up truck with bumper sticker that says “keep honking im reloading”
-still lives with mom at age 30
-lives in a trailer
-thinks voting 4 Bush is a good idea because he will make guns easier to obtain
-trash can filled with Bud cans
-wears an old faded out cap with a nascar logo
-reeks of the smell of urine and booze

Quote of the day–Jacob Sullivan

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What will Obama cling to when voters question his commitment to the Second Amendment?


Jacob Sullivan
September 23, 2008
Revenge of the Bitter Gun Owners
[Obama pissed off the wrong people with his “clinging” remark. Gun owners are probably more inclined than any other group to be one issue voters. And what is incredibly telling to me is that Obama could neutralize all the skepticism of his “support for the Second Amendment” by saying he as President would veto any anti-gun legislation that came to his desk. He could easily win the election by continuing his current plan and then repeatedly and convincingly saying that one sentence. But he hasn’t. He wants to cling to the possibility of further restricting our civil rights.–Joe]

Sarah Palin buttons

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Daughter Xenia sent me these links:



I like the last two best:


More evidence of A Security Theater

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An email from Molly H. over a month ago got lost in my in box and I just now found it while procrastinating about something else.


Remember those reinforced doors they put on the airplanes to help prevent hijackers from getting control of the plane? It turns out there aren’t any restrictions on taking lock picks on board. And even if there were restrictions it is trivial to get them past security.


As Molly said, “More proof that TSA is just a security theater…” or as I like to point out the acronym TSA really should be AST for A Security Theater.

Boomershoot maintenance

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As I reported a few weeks ago I did a bunch of earth moving at the Boomershoot range. Last Sunday Kim, Xenia, and I went back to plant grass on the fresh dirt, winterize the Taj Mahal and deliver 800 pounds of decorative concrete blocks to the Taj. Barb’s Jeep was sort of dragging it’s tail as we drove out to the range. We will use the concrete blocks as stepping stones around the Taj to keep the explosive workers out of the mud when it is wet. As a side note on Thursday Barb took her Jeep to be “detailed” which consisted mostly of removing mud and small pieces of concrete from the interior.


I didn’t take my camera but Xenia brought hers and I planned to post some of the pictures she (and I) took of the work we did. Unfortunately the mechanism involved in transferring the pictures from her camera to me failed with the crash of Barb’s desktop computer (it’s complicated, don’t ask because it’s not worth it). I could have worked around it in any number of ways but I had, and have, more important things to do.


I did want to get a post up about the grass planting just so people would know the chances of the area being nothing but mud next spring are less than 100%. Also this gives me an excuse to post a link to Xenia (our artist) pictures from the day. As you can see from the sample below it’s an artist taking the pictures and not her engineer father.



Xenia reflected in the solar panels on the Taj Mahal.

Kevin Baker on hate

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Kevin wraps his mind around why the left, and to a lesser extent the right, has so much hate and shares the result via quotes as is his style.


Very good stuff and I highly recommend it. It explains so much.

The Financial Crisis for Dummies

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The shorter and even simpler version is, “You can’t fool the free market forever even if the politicians think they can. The laws of economics can no more be changed than the laws of physics. Obama and other Democrats were the biggest contributors. Vote for McCain.” Set to music:





H/T to George for the email with the link.


Update: The video was pulled and via Kevin I found the replacement.

Laser on Gun Blog 45

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As I reported earlier I had a dead battery in the Crimson Trace Lasergrips. As Rob pointed out the case is tight enough that if the master switch was left on the grip switch would be activated when the gun was cased.


I installed the new battery and the laser came to life but wasn’t right. It was just like it was when I tried to use it at Summer Camp. It appeared to be hitting the pin for the slide lock and what light hit the target was a blob instead of a laser beam. Further testing indicated the laser lens was either dirty or possibly defective. I tried using an ordinary cotton swab with alcohol but I couldn’t detect any improvement after repeated cleanings.


Say Uncle sent me an email saying he had similar problems with his laser and when he used the swab supplied with the grips rather than ordinary cotton swab it cleaned up and worked correctly. The cotton swab is just too large to deep down to the laser lens. I was able to confirm his results. My laser now works as expected.


I practiced drawing and dry firing with the laser probably a 100 times. I discovered that frequently I don’t have a solid grip on the gun with the middle finger on my strong hand. It isn’t gripping the gun strong enough to turn on the laser. It turns out sometimes my weak hand will push it forward as I wrap my weak hand around my strong hand during the process of gripping the gun. I’m going to modify the process some so I get a better and more consistent grip.


I also used the draw and dry fire exercise to observe the movement of the gun as I put the sights on target and pulled the trigger. One observations instructors in the past had made that I was not pushing straight out to the target but instead was pointed the gun above the target then bringing it down. It appears I have fixed that error in my draw stroke.


These laser grips are proving to be useful even before I have fired a single shot with them.

Quote of the day–Roberta X

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… I don’t see the real world playing out like the last few chapters of Atlas Shrugged. We’re a bit short of Galts and Gulches an’ Midas Mulligan’s been in a Federal pen for a good long while now, accused of “redlining.”


Roberta X
Meanwhile, Back At The Launch
[Atlas Shrugged is a great book but there are lots of deviations from reality. It does have some wonderful points to make but as a plan for restoring our country’s freedom it obviously won’t work. Economic collapse may be required but an organized strike by the truly intellectual to force that just isn’t going to happen.–Joe]