Author Archives: Lyle

Quote of the day – Dennis Prager

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This might mess up Joe’s auto QOTD super system and crash his server, but here goes;

“I prefer clarity to agreement” – Dennis Prager

I love that quote, and he uses some version of it often on his radio show.  It is in contrast with the usual method of obfuscation for the purpose of recruiting to one’s cause.  Understanding, the prerequisite to true agreement or true disagreement, can only come out of clarity.  It is required for any positive, productive communication in any subject.  I don’t know if Prager has said it as such, but clarity is pure poison to the left.

Pure.

Poison.

As such, our mission is easy, no?  If I had to name one thing, the lack of which is resulting in the most problems in our society, it would be clarity.  Not energy, not oil, not honesty, not contraception, not redistributed money, not even liberty, but clarity, because without it we don’t have any of those other things.  We’re paralyzed.

Think how refreshing it would be to hear true clarity on a regular basis.  “Honesty” could be substituted in many cases, but it’s different from clarity in that some people don’t actually know what they think– Their thinking process has been retarded through obfuscation.  Clarity must some first, then, before honesty (or the lack thereof) can become an issue.  Glen Beck oft repeats a variation on it; “Say what you mean and mean what you say”.

No doublt, if some politician ever reads this, he’ll be asking his campaign advisors how he can best appear to be saying what he means and meaning what he says, ’cause he heard it was popular with those idiots in flyover country.

Pampered Cowards

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Here’s a quote I got today from a customer.  We were going back and fourth regarding the configuration of his rifle and which of the vastly superior UltiMAK optic mounts would fit it.  I paraphrase for clarity;

“…mine is a sporterized one… No scary features– to keep our state politicians’ diapers dry.” (he’s in the PRC)

I’ve eschewed potty jokes of late, as they’re usually not productive.  This one brings up a key point though.  My first thought after reading it was; Who cares, or should ever care, about politicians who would soil themselves at the thought of a well and properly armed citizenry, i.e. who cares what a coward thinks?

This is an open message to all politicians and law enforcement.  If you’re afraid of a citizenry that has its rights fully respected, exercised and protected, you’re either a coward, a criminal or a fool, and in any of those cases you don’t belong in your position.  Your position is for those who respect and love liberty, and have both the courage and the personal wherewithal to protect it.

(Disclaimer; my wife is a public school teacher, so although I preach liberty, and the responsibility of self reliance that comes with it, some of my household income derives from a coercive redistribution racket)

More on the Plausible Threat

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This is in response to Joe’s QOTD here by JFK

JFK’s concept is what I’ve dubbed the “Plausible Threat” influence in human interaction.  Reagan referred to it as “Peace Through Strength”.  My Plausible Threat concept is of the same nature, but is much more broad.

Why does someone do some something he doesn’t want to do, when he is told to do it?  Why does someone avoid doing something he wants do to, when told not to do it?  Often it’s because he sees a plausible threat of some kind looming over him, which will harm him in some way if he doesn’t tow the line.  It applies in all sorts of interactions and life decisions.  In some cases there is a moral factor, wherein a person’s conscience is more prominent in the decision making process.  In other cases it is the plausible threat that tips the scale.  In yet other cases the plausible threat is not enough, and a person or group will act in spite of it, i.e. it’s a gamble wherein the perceived benefits are deemed greater than the perceived threat.  The threat could be anything from minor social tension to global nuclear annihilation.

Our second amendment is, in part, to guarantee a natural right, but also it is to ensure a plausible threat as insurance against growing tyranny. 

We’ve seen on TV shows like Survivor what most people will do for a million dollars.  What would some people or groups of people be willing to do for several trillion dollars, their own army, and the power to substantially control millions of people?  It would take a very plausible threat indeed to dissuade the sort of motivations we’re seeing in that arena, and we have a long way to go before the whole of the people are armed well enough, organized well enough, and act in such a way as to dissuade the sorts of tyranny already in place, and the sorts that we have yet to see.

Sometimes it’s no fun being right

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In comments here, regarding Hollywood’s lack of ideas and their focus on remakes, I predicted a new series of the Three Stooges.  Turns out I was right on time.  They have the movie coming out this month.  I’ll guess that the new series is already in the works.  The Marx Brothers and then Silent flicks to follow, I suppose.

These are the people who accuse us of being “backward” or “simple-minded”.

Liberty is Not on Trial

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Don’t forget it.  This is (partially) in response to the QOTD below.

The argument for liberty is primarily a moral one.  Many people focus on cause and effect.  We could dig into detail after detail, analyzing this and that cause and this and that effect.  In that pursuit, yes, we will find much evidence in favor of liberty.

But liberty is not on trial.  Oh no, Young Grasshopper.  This may be news to most people, but it is the socialist/communist/Fascist (statist) bloc that is on trail.  I hereby accuse it of willfully conspiring to perpetrate envy, hopelessness, fraud, grand larceny, stagnation, decline, anger, hate, conflict, assault, battery, chaos, and mass murder.

It is not up to us to defend liberty as such.  We who support and uphold it are the plaintiffs, see?  Liberty needs no defense in that sense, because it has done nothing wrong.  It needs to be taught, yes, but if any fingers of blame are to be pointed, they should be pointed at the statists, and if any defense need to be mounted, let the accused try to defend their crimes.  Let them point back and leer at us— but always understand that they are the accused and we are (liberty is) the injured party.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that Man, by nature, yearns to be free.  Sure; with our liberty intact, we do vastly better than we ever do without it, but the argument is primarily a moral one.  Right and wrong.  Freedom verses force.  Choice verses coercion.  Good verses evil.  America was founded on that principle.  Isn’t it time we strive to understand, and then to fulfill America’s Promise of Liberty?  For once?

The plaintiff doesn’t walk into the courtroom with a defense attorney at his side.  He may need a good prosecutor, but he doesn’t need a defense.  Republicans of course have never understood it.  A plaintiff or a procesuter who is constantly defending himself, with the perpetrator sitting in judgement, is a blithering fool.

What’s Going On With Gun Sales?

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Via an e-mail from the NRA (Yes; I am part of the “triangle of death” and as a card-carrying member, I get the sooper secret decoder ring and classified e-mails)

What’s up with gun sales?  Americans are rediscovering the fun and utility of gun ownership, that’s what.  People are starting to shrug off the effects of political and social bullying, saying “to heck with all that nonsense – guns are good, I want one and I’m buying one (or three)”.

More on Heavy Boots

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Or is it Moron Heavy Boots?  Ry brought up the “Heavy Boots” phenomenon a while back, but I hadn’t heard of it until he explained it to me and I Googled it.  I was disappointed, but the story didn’t surprise me.  I’ve talked to a lot of people about a lot of things, having been in the service business and in consumer credit, for over 30 years.  Richard P. Feynman wrote about similar experiences he’d had in his teaching career.  It’s sad to realize how many people lack that little bit of curiosity that would lead them quickly to understand some of the basics of their world.

At the music store, I put up a poster-sized photo of the full Earth taken from space.  You’ve all seen it, and some of you will already know when it was taken, based on the history of the mission.  I looked at it a lot, just as a beautiful image that says something about the ingenuity of Man, before I realized that it told us a few other things.  So now I have some questions.  This is my Heavy Boots experiment but it’s on a bit higher level.  These questions are for those who have no idea when the picture was was taken without analyzing the image itself.  Forget the history and the mission, and so on.  It’s a simple question for those who know the basics of our solar system and of Earth’s place in it;
About what time of year was this photo taken?  How can you tell?  Also; About what time of day was it taken?  How do you know?

Here’s another one.  Looking at this image of the moon, assuming you’re facing East.  What time is it?  Why?

One of my older brothers liked to mess with people when we were younger.  When one of his young sisters-in-law asked him what those bumps between the lanes on the freeway were for, he told them they were part of a project for the blind– so blind drivers could tell when they were crossing lanes.  “Really?” came the reply.  He pulled off a lot of that sort of thing, trying to see just how fantastic a story he could tell and still get someone to believe him.  I suppose his behavior could be referred to as a search for Progressive voters.  If you’re ignorant enough, you’ll believe anything if it’s presented just right.  Our coercively-funded schools have that part covered.  They actively discourage learning.

Leno had a bit on his show last night wherein he placed a magician behind the counter at a convenience store.  There were some plastic Easter eggs in a counter display, labeled “Insta-Chick” or some such.  The egg contained a little foam “chick” that would expand in water.  The magician, introducing the new and rare product to the customers “placed one in a cup”, then “poured water over it” and a live chick came out instantly.  People believed it, even after he said they were “engineered in China” such that you could let them dry out again and reanimate them later, and you didn’t need to feed them.  More “Heavy Boots”.  “Vote for me— I’ll give you free health care” or etc. is along the same lines.

I try not to be discouraged.  There are a lot of people who don’t fall for this stuff.  They can tell from looking at a photo of our planet what time it was taken, know that mass exhibits gravity, know that we can’t all get free lunch forever and there’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.

Getting Closer

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It is repeated over and over in regard to hunting.  “Get closer”.

It’s an often misunderstood term.  I once was criticized for telling a guy to get closer.  He hunts on beanfields, or cornfields, that are as flat as flat gets, for as far as the eye can see.  He was quite sarcastic about it.  “Get closer.  Are you kidding?  Ever try to sneak up on a deer?”

Well yes, and it can be done if you’re willing to move slow enough and you’re downwind, but that’s not the point.

No, Young Grasshopper.  Find out where they’re going to be, and get yourself in there beforehand.  See?  You’re not “getting closer” in the real time, active stalking sense necessarily.  You’re allowing your prey to get closer to you.  You know them, you know their habits, their needs, their wants, and their hangouts and that allows you to predict their movements.

The longest shot I’ve taken at a living creature was about 85 yards, and it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been in the middle of 100 square miles of open flat land or in the wooded hills bordering the Palouse.  If you can observe their habits over time, you’re good to go.  Most of my kill shots were in the 15 to 45 yard range, and the closest deer were oblivious right up the moment of impact. (In Joe’s world, “closer” is anything inside 1,000 yards)

If you want to take all this as metaphor, that’s your business.  It applies in many fields anyway.

Velocity

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As kids, we liked to shoot, and one of the things we liked to shoot was cans.  Bottles were cool too, but we mostly did that at the dump since it sprays broken glass all over the place.  One of the first cans I shot was with .22 Shorts (very low power ammunition) from a handgun.  One bullet entered a can at a tangent and spun several times around the inside (“PZzzzzit!”) making the can levitate off the ground a little and leaving raised ridges protruding around the outside of the steel.  Fascinating.  That was in the 1960s.

So of course when I recently got some good performing loads worked up for a 30-30 Winchester carbine model of 1894, I was going to shoot some cans.  It’s the natural order of things.

The two milk cans below (both were filled with water) were shot using the same 170 grain bullet cast from #2 lead alloy, from the same carbine at the same distance.  The only difference was the powder charge.  The can in the first photo was hit at around 1600 feet per second, with the bullet coming in from the left and exiting to the right.  Note that the entry side is blown out much more than the exit (a not uncommon phenomenon when you have a harder outer shell containing a softer, more fluid material).  You can see that the neat little bullet entry hole is split in half.

The can below was hit at around 2000 fps, again with the bullet coming in from the left and exiting to the right.  It’s more like a cherry bomb went off inside it.  The top separated and flew waaaay up into the air.  I never did find it.

Yes it’s a little bit childish, and yes it is a lot of fun.  Though I’ve done this sort of thing hundreds of times and I’ve had this carbine since the mid ’90s, just the other day I found myself chuckling like a ten year old boy with a new toy.  It’s hard to explain.  Several previous outings were for the purpose of recording velocities, accuracy and sight adjustments for various loads.  That may be some fun, but it resembles work too.  This time out, just for shooting, was very different– more like a meditative state of near total concentration and peace.  Would that we could spend most of our lives in that state.

In case you’re wondering; I doubt there was any significant bullet expansion.  The hard cast round nose bullets were not recovered, but at those low velocities (for a rifle) I’d bet they held their shape fairly well.  I plan to try recovering some later, using several water jugs as a trap.  So we’ll see.

Posit

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There essentially are no restrictions on guns or ammunition.  There are several organizations, local, national and worldwide, providing guns and ammunition to minors and to the poor, either for free or at subsidized prices, often without parental consent, even to the point of covering up for criminal use of guns in some cases so as to maximize the number of kids with access to guns.  It is a human right after all.  A right is a right, and that’s that.  If you so much as question it, you are against children and against human rights in general, you backward-minded Neanderthal, redneck ignorant Nazi bastard.  There are gun training programs in most public schools, with free ammunition available if a kid goes to a school counselor to ask for it, saying that his parents are denying him his right to ammunition.

There’s the background.  It is firmly entrenched in our culture, hardly anyone is questioning it, those who do are never taken seriously, and for sure it is not threatened either by this Congress or any foreseeable one.

Then; proposed new federal legislation adds to all of the above by forcing tax payers to pay for free guns and ammunition, for the asking, nationwide.  Anyone objecting to this new bill is accused of wanting to “ban guns”, denying the poorest people and the children their second amendment rights.  If you can’t get it for free, immediately, any time, anywhere, your right to it has thereby been denied, QED, so without this new bill, even with everything in the first paragraph untouched and safe for the future, the second amendment is effectively banned.  Poor, sobbing victim after poor, sobbing victim is paraded in front of the in-depth news show cameras to tell their stories of woe and despair arising from a lack of access to ”affordable” guns and ammunition, and the pundits have nothing but sympathy for them, and the serious understanding that can only come from having had similar experiences of their own.

Now; it is by that same resoning, in that same sort of environment, that Rick Santorum and others are accused of wanting to ban birth control.

Focus, People.  Santorum may be the spawn of Satan for all I know, but neither he nor anyone else of any prominence wants to ban birth control.  This entire issue was manufactured by Democrats to divert attention from the Obama economy and other Obama atrocities because they believe that “social issues” are the Republicans’ weakness and they want to keep the discussion focused there.  Some among us have actually fallen for it even though it’s been used a thousand times before in broad daylight.  Please get a grip.

Now I will point out that when we of the pro liberty mindset want a human right respected (one that‘s actually in the constitution, for example) we don’t demand that certain goodies be given to us as part of a government program at taxpayer’s expense and we don’t demand it be given to kids against their parents wishes.  The proof of whether a “right” is really a right is that a true right never demands anything from anyone else other than non interference.

One of Many Things I’ll Never Quite Understand

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Those who consider themselves iconic conservatives, or Republican leaders, often praise  President Lincoln.  Just reading the Emancipation Proclamation, I see it as a cheap political ploy of Clintonian style (or W. J. Clinton was of the Lincolnian tradition).  It didn’t free a single slave.  Furthermore, the North had slaves all through The War Between the States, and General Grant kept slaves for years after.  Depending on who you listen to, Lincoln was either a brutal tyrant or a brilliant champion of liberty.  I definitely do not see the latter.  This whole issue is clouded in B.S. so thick I can’t see through it.  Where do I turn for the truth?

Mercedes Benz (revisited)

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Janis Lyn Joplin, also known as Pearl, The Queen of Rock and Roll, The Queen of Psychedelic Soul, or The Queen of Rocking The Blues, made some good music, to be sure.  Mercedes Benz though was pure snark against capitalism– the straw man hypocrite, Christian American materialist that her generation thought defined “The (American) System”.  They still think much the same today.  They’re the Obama voters and the Madison protesters.  Their kids are the Occupy movement.

I wrote new words in response to the old tune, as snark against the socialists.  I call it Lifetime Free Ride;

Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride
My friends all have trust funds
An’ it’s hur,tin’ my pride
Tax the productive
Until they die
Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride

Obama
Won’t you give me
My own Occ,u,py crowd
I’m ig’n’r’nt and stupid
But I like bein’ loud
Never worked a day in my lifetime
I’m worth,less an’ proud
Obama
Won’t you give me
My own Occ,u,py crowd

Obama
Won’t you buy me
Uncondi,tio,nal love
I’m countin’ on you, Sir
There’s no one else above
I’ll need you on my side
When push comes to shove
Obama
Won’t you buy me
Uncondi,tio,nal love

(everybody)

Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride
My friends all have trust funds
An’ it’s hur,tin’ my pride
Tax the productive
Until they die
Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride

(That’s it…heh heh heh)

I have a picture of her pointing a finger of blame at the camera (at all of us), mocking us, while she was in the throes of self-destruction.  To me it’s iconic of the left.

Here Come De Judge

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Via Uncle;

I don’t know the whole back story, but I sure liked all the “what ifs”.  Yes; Ronald Reagan, The One, to whom all others must be compared, Ronaldus Magnus, presided over a near doubling of the federal budget, and was all in on the drug war.  I hadn’t previously heard of the things he said about Santorum.  Oh goody.

So how can we fix it?  It’s already been push verses shove for a long time (my neighbor, the political prisoner, gets out of the federal poke in a few months, but his business is totally gone)(I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “You’d better watch what you say…!”).  Ours has just been less violent than, say, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Cultural Revolution.  So far.  I for one would like to keep it that way, but only if it can be going the opposite direction (away from statism and toward liberty).  We’d had far too much of this shit by the time I was born, during the Eisenhower administration.

I suppose then, what we need in a presidential campaign is someone who has a plan to “maintain the revolution, but turn it around the other way and without unnecessary killing”.

I’ll be interested to know where De Judge goes from here.

Coercively Funded Schools

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I’ve been thinking about this for years, but this post of Kevin’s made something gel.

I say we should quit using the term “public school” and start using “coercively funded school”.  My wife is not a public school teacher, she is a coercively funded school teacher.  Why should we use their language when we have our own and ours is more to the point?  It is one thing to say you’re for public schools, or you’re for “Our Children” but it’s another to come right out and say you’re for coercive funding.

Now I would hope, and predict, that most (though not all) church leaders would eschew coercive funding of their church on the grounds that with government funding comes government control (actually, churches are already government subsidized, but that’s a matter for another post).

As I said in comments at Smallest Minority; the purpose of coercively funded schools is to promote coercive funding.  I.e. they’ll promote that which gave them life in the first place, and that which sustains them.  What would be the result, after all, if the coercive schools actively and consistently promoted the American principals of liberty?  They’d be working themselves into extinction of course.  “You’re right” the students would conclude, “freedom, the free market, would be far superior both morally and functionally, in every respect including education.”

No doubt about it; the American founders got it wrong.  Education should have been included with religion and the press in the first amendment, for exactly the same reasons.  As a result of that failure, our coercively funded schools have become indoctrination centers– socialist missions, if you will, churning out useful idiots if not impassioned believers.  For the life of me, I cannot understand why this was not predicted in the 1780s.

After all these years of entrenchment, what is the fix?  So many states have education funding in their constitutions, I believe it will have to come from the states.  Rex Rammell had a good plan for Idaho, but due to an incompetent campaign no one heard of it.  He acknowledged the state constitutional mandate, but would have chopped much of the top off of the coercive education infrastructure and budget.  It is currently extremely top heavy.  Other measures would have opened the doors to more private schools.

These are My People

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Driving home late last night I spotted something in the road that made me do a “Whoa!” so I turned around to clear it off the road.  Pulling off to the side, as my right tires left the pavement I discovered that the saturated Palouse loess had thawed substantially.  Four wheel drive or not, it won’t matter.  Gigantic 4 x 4 farm tractors with six foot diameter wheels get stuck fast in this stuff.  The road bed was steep enough that my pickup just slid sideways and dug in deep.  My front bumper was resting on the gravel.

Zero cellular coverage and it’s 22:30.  Time for a little hike, to where I can acquire the Kamiak Butte tower.  OK, it’s a nice night.  Multiple calls to the house and no answer.  Randomly, as my wife’s phone is ringing, Son came down to get a drink or something and he answered, so I got him to come pick me up.

This morning I walked downtown to the one local auto shop to see if I could get a tow.  Nope.  That person was out of town.  Tried the one market where they know me, to ask if any of them had a heavy 4 x 4.  You know that wall that appears between you and another person when they just don’t want to deal with anything you’re saying?  Yeah.  Tried the city hall, where we all know each other.  There’s that wall again.

Walking toward the house, going through my options, along comes a rusty 1970s Chevy pickup with a winch in the front.  They wave, as is common in a small town, and I hand signal “come over here”.  Inside are two men, eyeing me suspiciously while eating brunch in the truck.  “Is this a four wheel drive?” I ask, as there are no manual locking hubs.
“Yup” comes the answer after a few seconds pause and some eye-balling. 
“Want to make a couple of bucks for about ten minutes work?”

So we talk back and forth as they explain that they’d seen my pickup and said to themselves as they drove by that they’d do it for a hundred bucks, and that you never know if you’re going to break something doing something like that, and so on.  They hem and haw and after a long pause they agree to it, so I squeeze into the short cab and we head off.  Now they’re concerned about what John Law might do if he sees us.  That was odd, but I explained that I’d take any heat, and that it wouldn’t be problem anyway.  I also reassured them that there’d be no hard feelings or anything like that if they decided not to attempt the pull-out after they saw how bad it was.

No problem.  Once they got there and saw that my truck was in fact dug in up to the bumpers, on a steep incline, they took it upon themselves to get it out as a matter of pride.  These are my people.  They forgot all about the 20 dollars they had demanded in advance, and set to it.

There was much discussion, as is the tradition in these situations, about the best way to approach the task– where to connect the winch, where to locate the rescue vehicle, what gears to use, and so on.  Three pulls– two nasty, poppy, pingy ones with the winch (with dirt and rust flying off the cable as it sings soprano) to get my truck out of the hole, and then a long pull with a tow strap off their trailer hitch.  Bingo.  These guys had done this before.  Of course we have to chat for a bit, and then I whip out my wallet only to discover that I didn’t have that twenty I thought I had.  They didn’t seem too worried, and agreed to follow me back into town to the bank.

As I hand them two twenties (I figured they deserved it) and we exchange thanks, they start up their old Chevy–  “Brrr…………….rr….rr….rrrOOOOMMM.”  It barely started, like it was maybe a one in ten proposition at best.  Maybe they can use that forty bucks toward a new battery.  Yes; these are my people.  Thanks, two brothers, from a small town in North Idaho that you wouldn’t even notice as you drive by it except for the road sign, who just happened by in a small town in Eastern Washington.

And the mission was entirely successful, even if it took 12 hours to complete– I got the junk off the roadway, and with some help, got my muddy butt out of there.

Silliness

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Well I guess it’s official, with that PSA during some big sports game or other over the weekend, Clint Eastwood has joined the Occupy movement.  What I don’t understand is the surprise expressed out there.  I never figured Eastwood for a tea partier.  Far from it.

The Catholic Church seems to be standing up to some small part of ObamaCare.  Odd.  As near as I could tell these last several decades, they’ve been on board with most Progressive ideas.  Oops.  I guess they didn’t think it through.  Oh well.  May the backpedaling be strong and long lived.  So if they get a waiver for their religious beliefs, you know what comes next.  That’s right–  Millions of brand new “Jack Catholics”.  “Yeah, Mr. Bureaucrat Doofus, I converted, like three seconds ago, as soon as I learned that I could get a waiver.”  So I guess the next step would be a requirement for some sort of official certification of membership from the church, etc., etc.  Measures, countermeasures.  As always in any statist system, we have, officially, different sets of “rights” for different classes of citizens.

If you want to get Gay Married, forget the lobbying, the sign carrying, the stupid politicians and the dog and pony shows and come to Moscow, Idaho.  I’ll marry the two of you.  My fee is fifty dollars.  Of course I’ll require that each of you sign a legal document, transferring all your future earnings and assets to the other, and likewise with power of attorney.  No double standards here.  If you ever want a divorce, you’ll need a team of lawyers to decide who gets the house, the cars, the fashion design show, the various bank accounts, etc.  You want equality, you can have it.  But that was never what you really wanted, was it?  Right now you have the best of all worlds– you can shack up with no legal or financial consequences, and split up easily and relatively pain free.  With marriage it’s a whole different ball game, kids, and with marriage comes common law marriage too.  But I guess it’s about the money either way you look at it.  Spousal benefits are nice, but there’s always another side to it.  You sure you’ve thought this through?  Depending on what state you live in, how many of your past relationships could have resulted in a separation that would involve lawyers and splitting up of the financial and other assets?  Really?  You want this?  No.  You don’t, but you’ve been led to believe that you do.  Suckers.  Anyway; my offer still stands, if you think you have the guts.  I have no legal authority of course, but it’s about the commitment anyway.  Until death do you part, and we can combine your assets through simple, easy legal means.  If I had my druthers, I’d get the government sanctioning nonsense OUT of my marriage.  My personal life is not their business.  Leave me alone.  I just can’t identify with people who are dying to get the government IN to their private lives.

Problem with Open Carry

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Someone I know carries a Vz. 52 pistol OWB.  It hangs out in the open almost all of the time.  After several days of wet weather, the pistol was rusted.  Oops.  It looked horrific (sorry – no pictures).  Rust on the barrel, between the recoil spring and barrel especially, and rust on the outside where it contacted the holster.  Even some of the cartridges had rust on them from the magazines.  After taking it down, almost to the last pin and the last screw, it cleaned up very well.  Nothing serious this time. I’m sure the piece would have functioned, though metal oxides can be extremely abrasive.  It could get really bad if left in the holster for a longer time.

Be careful out there if you OC.  My pistol is almost always covered at least by a shirt and I’ve never seen signs of rust on it, so I’ve never thought much about it.  I have left a Winchester carbine in the vehicle for weeks at a time, and in very cold weather condensation can get between the metal and the gun case interior, causing rust at all the contact points.  So you have to take extra care.  The Parkerizing on the Colt seems to handle it much better, and the annodizing of course is already a hard metal oxide, but you want to be checking these things.

School Shooting Season

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This time of year our school shooting team gets together, I bring several guns into our local school and teach the kids how best to participate in school shootings.  This year I had 15 boys and girls in class – a pretty good percentage of the total enrollment in our small town high school.

As part of the class, which consists in large part of excerpts from the NRA Basic Home Firearm Safety course, I ask them to state some of the various reasons one might own firearms.  One of the girls chimed in with, “Space alien invasion?!”

I like these kids.  I didn’t bother to point out that their puny, crude, chemically powered kinetic energy weapons would be no match for the phase modulated space-time disrupters of the enemy.

Earlier, I had asked my daughter if she planned to join the trap shooting team this year, but she declined.  After last night’s class, she asked me how it went, and now I get the impression that she is having second thoughts;  “But I can’t shoot well enough.”
“Well, you know I can teach you, and you’ll be as good as most of the others after one day…”
“But now it’s too late.”  Which it is– they need to have already passed their hunter safety class.

So next year I figure she’ll be right in there.  We’ll see.  Several of her friends are already avid participants in mass school shootings (some of the meets involve well over a hundred shooters, from several school districts).  I bet you don’t see those trap meets covered in your local news station sports reports, do you?

ETA; The kids seemed to respond well to the variation; “Keep your booger hook off the bang switch”.  I associate it with Uncle, but I don’t know for sure where it originated.

Laser Guided Bullets

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We had radar proximity fuses in use in AAA rounds during W.W. II, and they of course used vacuum tube technology.  One of the members of our local ham radio club worked on that project in the ’40s.  One of the challenges for his team was developing tubes that could withstand the 10s of thousands of Gs at launch.  Ouch.

Now we have this, via an e-mail from my nephew.  I find it fascinating, funny, and a little disturbing all at the same time.  Ordinary rifles spin a bullet at 2K RPM?  They missed that one by an order of magnitude or two.  A rifle chambered for the 5.56 NATO round for example rotates the bullet at around 300,000 RPM, more or less depending on barrel length, rifling twist and bullet weight.  But as I often say; what’s an order of magnitude (or two) between friends?

It is very telling, if not entirely predictable, how they smear the general public in the article– government = good, whereas regular citizens = dangerous or at least troubling.  They of course have it entirely upside down and backwards in that department.

Standard Deviation = 1

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Never heard of it, though mnaybe y’all are getting it all the time and haven’t told me.  The first time I thought is was a fluke.  20 shots from a G20 pistol with SD of one foot per second.  During the string I thought something was wrong with the chrono, because shot after shot it displayed the same number.  Then there’s the saying; if you test your velocity once, you’ll know it.  If you test it a second time, you’ll never be sure again.  Though I never got any error readings, I discarded the data.

So I went out a second time on Saturday with the same load.  The CED chrono was unwilling to get any readings from the 30-30 loads I really wanted to test.  It’s like that sometimes, even with the IR LED screens.  But it took readings from the slower, bigger 10 mm bullets just fine.  I only measured ten shots this time, so a SD is of little meaning, but the extreme spread was 6.  It might correlate to a SD of 1.  I don’t know about anyone else, and the ammo manufacturers rarely say anything about it, but I’ve thought I was doing pretty well in the past if the SD was 12 or so.

This is a light load for the ten, getting barely under 1100 fps.  More like a 40 S&W.  It’s 9.6 gr. Blue Dot (checked against a check weight) with new Starline cases, 180 XTPs and a CCI 300, just going by the dimensions in the Hornady manual.  Nothing special.  This was my starting load, but it may end up a keeper.  We’ll see.  At the moment it’s my carry load, with 43 rounds on board.

I know – handloaded ammo for self defense, blah blah.  Don’t care.  I can practice a lot more with this stuff because I can afford a lot of it, and practicing with the same load you carry makes sense.  That’s what I’ll tell the lawyers– I can shoot this load more accurately and therefore more safely, etc., because it’s exactly what I use for practice.  I tried some of the hot Double Tap 200 grain FMJ stuff.  It’s affordable for practice, and while I’m sure it’s fine ammo for some guns, my Glock did something with it that it’s never done before.  The fired case would stick in the chamber (that’s what you call a pressure sign, right there) the extractor would strip off over the case head, and a fresh round would feed into the back of the fired case.  Yikes that’s some hot stuff, but no thanks.  Two stoppages or so per magazine is more than a deal killer.  If your 10 mm can cycle it properly, it would make a good deep penetrator though.

The crimp has to be a touch under the case diameter just below the crimp though, whereas I went with “about equal”.  A couple of these XTP handloads (2 of about 150) did fail to lock up all the way – something else that’s never happened with this gun.  I’m sure it’s the crimp, and maybe that I need a new slide spring as this one is the original from the early 1990s and has been cycled umpteen thousand times.  A gentle “forward assist” on the back of the slide was all it took.  Yes; more crimp.