Category Archives: Boomershoot

Boomershoot is a long range precision rifle event with high explosives as the targets. This is about Boomershoot in general and sometimes just explosives.

Alternate Realities and Bias

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Quote of the Day

Thirteen years ago, I wrote a blog post claiming that if someone in a monogamous relationship offers me sex, it’s not my responsibility to turn them down because they made a foolish promise to someone else. That’s between them, and I don’t think it’s my job to enforce their promises that had nothing to do with me. Predictably, I did not get a lot of support. Even in sex-positive communities, that sort of thing is frowned upon. Polyamorous communities, in particular, engage in a kind of respectability politics where everyone goes out of their way to talk about how great monogamy is and how we’re no threat to it at all, mostly as a bid for acceptance. So it was no surprise when, this morning, I asked the following question on Twitter:

A married couple has both agreed to strict monogamy. Idk why. Wife comes to me and asks me to give her oral sex, and not to tell Husband. I do it (and also encourage her to tell Husband). What I’ve done is:

The choices were very bad, kinda bad, not bad, and good. Over 80% said very or kinda bad. Less than 5% said good. When I’ve discussed this in the past, I’ve argued that people react this way because, even in nonmonogamous communities, we can’t shake the idea that monogamy is sacred. We give it a special privilege in our society, even though I think, for most couples, strict monogamy is outdated and harmful. A lot of people disagree with that as well, and claim that no no no, it’s not that monogamy is important, it’s that any agreements between couples are important, and we should respect and support all of them. I think that’s bullshit, so Last week, I asked Twitter the exact same question, but with one detail changed:

A married couple has both agreed that neither will give to charity. Idk why. Wife comes to me and hands me $1,000 cash, and says please send it to the Against Malaria Foundation, and not to tell Husband. I do it (and also encourage her to tell Husband).

The responses were reversed. Less than 30% said it was bad. 36% said it was actively good, and another 36% said not bad. These results strongly reinforce my view that most people’s discomfort with being, as they say, an “accomplice to cheating,” has little to do with holding all agreements sacred and everything to do with holding monogamy sacred.

Look, I have no problem with your monogamy agreement. Your kink is not my kind and that’s ok. I want you to make whatever agreements you want between yourself and any partners who are into it. But I am not in charge of enforcement. If you have a trad relationship and your wife isn’t supposed to be alone in a room with another man, I’m not going to leave the room if she walks in and strikes up a conversation. If you have a power exchange kink, and your wife isn’t allowed to earn money, I don’t recognize your authority to tell me I can’t hire her as my babysitter. So if your particular brand of power exchange involves giving each other control over your sexuality, that’s great for you! But I, personally, don’t value monogamy. I think it’s a mistake for most couples. And I think it’s a huge mistake to embrace it on a society-wide level. So I’m not going to take responsibility for enforcing an agreement that I don’t have positive feelings about.

If you disagree, that’s great, and I’m happy to talk about it. But I’m guessing your disagreement is about the value of monogamy, not about whether third parties should be expected to enforce relationship agreements in general. So let’s talk about the actual disagreement.

Wes, the Dadliest Catch @wfenza
Posted on X, July 15, 2025

I find this absolutely fascinating!

It points out a bias in people’s thinking that, for people with relatively similar world views, cannot see.

People cannot imagine they have a bias. But biases do exist. They are just blind to them. And it takes something akin to someone from an alternate reality to see them.

I have sort of a back log of alternate reality things I want to post about, and this is a perfect introduction to that. Here is a quick overview of what I have in mind.

For people who have been to Boomershoot, it is an alternate reality to anti-gun people living is a big city. Even most people who live in the city. Out in the middle of nowhere where the nearest stop sign is two miles away and the nearest stop light is 40 miles away there are bunch of people using KitchenAid mixers to create, literally, a ton of explosives. Then a bunch more people all start shooting at hundreds of boxes each filled with explosives.

A typical USPSA or other action shooting match is composed of dozens of people with guns strapped and tons of ammo on their belt running around and shooting at targets at insane speeds. The anti-gun people must have trouble even envisioning this in the abstract. And what are their thoughts on this? Do they imagine anything than these must be terrorists in training? Or perhaps next week’s active shooters?

Once you sort of have your mind around the concept, here is the twist. What can we do with this information?

In the cyber security world, we are constantly taught to beware of biases. What does some unusual network traffic mean? Is it just a year end upload of reports to the parent company? Or is it exfiltration of sensitive financial information to the dark web?

The fresh out of school analyst may have a bias toward hitting the big red button for the klaxon. After being on the job for a few months and being embarrassed a few time by the false alarms they may have a bias toward assuming it just something normal they have seen before.

When accounts payable gets an invoice, their natural instinct is to pay it just like the other thousand invoices they got in the last year. They have a bias toward normalcy.

The bad guys are aware of and exploit biases. The highly skilled good guys also are aware of and take advantage of biases in the bad guy thinking. I will not be giving examples of that.

Similar things happen in the engineering world. Something common place in one domain can be used to solve problems in a different domain because the people in the second domain have been doing things “the way we have always done them.” They cannot see what is blindingly obvious to someone from the first domain.

What about the photon versus wave properties of light? Only knowing one domain, how would you get your mind around the other property?

I have lots and lots of examples. I look forward to sharing them with you. Of course, you will probably end up thinking I’m even weirder and geekier than you already think I am.

For Sale

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There is an empty lot and also a house for sale a little over a mile from Boomershoot. They are both just over 20 acres and have absolutely incredible views.

It would be nice to have Boomershoot friendly people living there.

Boomershoot Bullet Trace Video

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Another Boomershoot video with some decent examples of bullet trace:

My Crimes

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Quote of the Day

You will be charged with the same crime as Socrates. The corruption of the youth.

Brandon K.
May 4th, 2025
At Boomershoot 2025

Part of the motivation for this comment to me was what was happening with his niece. No, I did not have any unsupervised time with her. But the environment I helped create did have a “corrupting” influence on her. She not only helped make the targets, but she was also popping boomers and having a great time. This was pretty awesome to watch. I did not get any pictures of her smile when she hit one. I also missed capturing the scowl when someone else popped the boomer she was working on. But you can get a clue of her intensity here:

But my favorite corrupting of the youth Boomershoot 2025 story is about this 14-year-old first generation American of Persian ancestry:

Can you guess what she is about to do?

Here is a clue. She is about to put on a very, very, happy face.

Watch for it and turn up the volume to hear what she has to say about it:

Yes. I’m corrupting the youth of our country.

Please send more this way: Boomershoot!

It is More than Guns, Steel, and Explosives

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See a very cool video of shooting Boomers through the scope on a windy day: Boomershoot Clinic day #2 – makeitgoboom.

This is from a different day at 636 yards instead of 375 yards:

It appears the targets are significantly thinner near the steel than to the right. I suspect people used the larger steel targets to get their range and windage adjustments. Then they moved to the closest boomers for a more reactive confirmation.

An overall view of what it looks like near the start of the long-distance event:

This is later in the morning when most of the closer targets have released their nitrogen:

Boomershoot is not just all clanging steel, earth shaking, chest thumping explosions, and clouds of smoke. There were a surprising number of children there this year. One eight-year-old learned to shoot a rifle on one day and claimed more boomers than most adults the next. Of course, his instructor was a long-range national champion. Another six-year-old, shooting rifles since he was two, and has a 1,500 -> 2,000-yard shooter for a father. He hit something like seven out of eleven boomers he shot at the 375-yard line.

Then there was this girl:

Boomershoot is for everyone.

What You See as a Spotter at Boomershoot

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What you see is a target rich environment:

It is very cool to have a video of your spotting scope. At least one shooting team had a large video monitor of the spotting scope view.

Escape From the City

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Quote of the Day

Thank you for doing this.

I look forward to Boomershoot every year. This is my opportunity to get out of the city.

Boomershooter
May 2, 2025

This was just someone who came up to me to express his appreciation for Boomershoot. I did not get his name.

Practice for this at Boomershoot

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Via Rolf:

Boomershoot is this coming weekend. If you are there, you will be shooting at 4″ square targets at 375 yards. You can also shoot at 7″ square targets at 700 yards. This is good practice for a golf ball at 300 yards.

If you can’t participate this year, you should know that spectators are welcome.

Make Tyranny at Scale Costly

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Quote of the Day

Remember:

A well-armed people make tyranny at scale significantly more costly.

Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy
Posted on X, February 22, 2025

Related (via 🇺🇸2A Renaissance🇺🇸 @2ARenaissance):

Train and Practice for Close Up Tyranny, Far Away Tyranny, and Lots of Tyranny at Boomershoot 2025. Sign up here.

Here is a sample:

From the Target’s Point of View

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Via email from Rolf:

Very cool!

This is from 711 yards away. This is almost exactly the range to the most distant targets at Boomershoot. Of course, at Boomershoot it is not just a PING. The BOOM makes the earth shake.

We don’t have any Boomershoot target point of view videos. That would be very cool to have.

The next Boomershoot is coming up soon on May 2nd -> 4th. Sign up here.

Microclimates

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These are the weather summaries for the Boomershoot weather station and my weather station about 0.75 miles away at my pistol range (and underground bunker).

Boomershoot:

Pistol range:

Ignore the pressure difference. One is relative and the other is absolute. Also note that the second weather station is at least 50 feet from any man-made thing the generates heat.

Notice that the low temperature for Boomershoot was -13.4. and the low for the pistol range was 4.8 F. That is 18.20 degrees different!

The difference in the average is 3.7 F.

When I purchased the second weather station, I had some people roll their eyes at me. The implication was there is no significant difference between the two locations. Yet, from many years in the area, I suspected the Boomershoot site was colder than the surrounding fields. It just felt colder there.

I was right.

Don’t Capitulate, We Are Winning

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Quote of the Day

I’m convinced that woke strategy is to create more racists by the continual name calling and aggravating of white people.

Then they can point to them and say, “Look at all those racists! We told you they were all racists!”

Don’t capitulate to racism.

Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
Tweeted on March 29, 2022

Good advice.

On a related note…

You know that the Executive Order to remove all DEI in the Federal Government is actually behind private industry, right? Politics follow culture.

That is why it is important to keep improving and expanding our gun culture. Take someone to the range and teach them to shoot. Bring a newbie or even a non-gun person to Boomershoot this year.

Boomershoot Fireball Compilation

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This is a compilation of the Boomershoot fireballs from 2016 to 2024. This includes the failures in 2017 and 2022.

Nice!

Sign up for Boomershoot 2025 (or just show up as a spectator) and experience it firsthand!

Change Our Culture One Person at a Time

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Quote of the Day

Support for stricter gun laws has declined significantly over the years, while the desire for more relaxed laws has grown. In 1990, a substantial 78% of Americans favored stricter gun control, with only 2% wanting more lenient regulations.

By 2010, support for stricter laws had dropped to less than half (44%). However, it rebounded in 2020, rising to 57%.

In 2023, opposition to gun control reached a two-decade high, with 15% of Americans wanting less strict regulations.

Cassandra McBride
December 19, 2024
How Many Americans Want Stricter Gun Laws in 2024? The Decline in Gun Control Support

Via email from Sam J. at Ammo.com.

The support of the courts for the right to keep and bear arms is not enough. We must also change the culture. The trend is in the right direction, but we are far from where we need to be yet. We need a solid majority in opposition.

Here are some ways you can do that:

  • Come out of the closet as a gun owner and Second Amendment advocate.
  • Be active on social media and make sure the comments to anti-gun advocates are politely and factually ratioed.
  • Gun ownership is a civil right. Be a civil rights advocate.
  • Consider shaming those opposed to civil rights.
  • Take a new shooter to the range.
  • Introduce people virtually and/or physically to Boomershoot. The KING5 Evening Magazine video is the most effective introduction to the shooting sports I know of. It is a completely different reality from the world of gun ownership the mainstream media feeds them.
  • Attend town hall type meetings of your politicians and politely confront those who want to infringe upon our rights.

Change our culture one person at a time.

Boomershoot 2025

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Registration for the next Boomershoot, May 2nd -> 4th, is currently open for staff.

Registration opens for Boomershoot 2024 participants on Thursday 12/26/2024 at 6:00 PM Pacific time. Registration opens for everyone on Monday 12/30/2024 at 6:00:00 PM Pacific time.

Boomershoot has been called “The premier Long Distance Precision Rifle Event in the PacNW.”

For people wanting long range rifle training, the Precision Rifle Clinic is offered for two days prior to the main event.

It has received extensive national, regional and local media attention. Examples include:

  • The video from KING5 Evening Magazine was nominated for an Emmy
  • The Outdoor Channel
  • KLEW TV
  • Newsweek
  • Outside Magazine
  • Idaho Magazine
  • the Spokesman Review
  • Lewiston Morning Tribune
  • Chicago Reader
  • The Missoulian

You could watch videos about Boomershoot on YouTube for hours. But all the words, all the pictures, and all the videos cannot do it justice. It has to be experienced in person. People come from all over north America to participate or sometimes just watch. We have had people come all the way from England and, last year, Scotland to participate.

This is a sample of Boomershoot 2024:

Sign up soon to experience this unique and amazing shooting event. Don’t miss out!

Over a ton of explosives. Fun beyond measure.

Grok Answers “What is Boomershoot?”

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I asked Grok, X’s AI chat bot, “What is Boomershoot?” This was its answer:

Boomershoot is an annual high-power rifle shooting event held in North Central Idaho, near Orofino. Here are the key details about Boomershoot:

  • Event Overview: Boomershoot is known for its unique targets which are explosive. Participants engage these targets with long-range precision rifles at distances ranging from 375 to 700 yards.
  • Targets: The targets consist of high explosives, with the closest and smallest being 4-inch square boxes filled with an ammonium nitrate and potassium chlorate-based mixture. Larger targets, used for longer ranges, are 7-inch squares with a stronger explosive charge. When hit by a bullet, these targets explode, providing immediate feedback to the shooter.
  • Event Structure:
    • Main Event: The primary day involves participants shooting at these explosive targets, typically held on a Sunday in late spring. Over a ton of explosives can be mixed and used over the event’s duration.
    • Precision Rifle Clinic: Held on the days before the main event, this clinic offers training with both steel and explosive targets, focusing on precision shooting techniques.
    • High Intensity Events: These are evening events where participants can shoot at closer distances and experience more explosive action, with a limit on participants to manage the quantity of targets.
  • Safety and Regulations: Safety is paramount at Boomershoot. Participants must adhere to strict safety guidelines, including rules on muzzle awareness, loading, and firing only on command. Joe Huffman, the event’s organizer, holds an ATF Type 20 License for manufacturing high explosives, ensuring compliance with federal regulations.
  • Community and Culture: Boomershoot not only serves as a shooting event but also fosters a community of firearms enthusiasts, offering opportunities for camaraderie, learning, and celebration of marksmanship. The event includes social activities like a Saturday night dinner featuring guest speakers, further enhancing its community aspect.
  • Location and Logistics: The venue is near Cavendish, Idaho, with specific directions available on the event’s website. Participants are encouraged to prepare adequately, with advice on equipment like spotting scopes and ammunition.
  • Cancellation History: Boomershoot has faced cancellations or modifications due to external factors like the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the event’s adaptability and focus on participant safety.

Boomershoot has built a reputation over the years for being an exciting and challenging event for those passionate about shooting sports, with a strong emphasis on safety, precision, and community.

This is a great answer.

Interesting Caliber Selections

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A bolt action, multi-barreled, precision rifle, with a ten-round magazine. Very cool.

New Marine Corps sniper rifle is officially operational

The Marine Corps has officially hit full operational capability on its new sniper rifle a year ahead of schedule.

The Corps chose the Mk22 Mod 0 Advanced Sniper Rifle, manufactured by Barrett Firearms, a company widely known for their groundbreaking work in developing the .50 caliber sniper rifle, as a changeable, multi-barrel rifle to replace two existing long rifles and give shooters three caliber options within their main shooting platform.

Those caliber options include the standard 7.62mm, the .300 Norma Magnum and .338 Norma Magnum. The caliber diversity allows shooters to select a munition for specific missions that might require more distance or more penetrating power. The rifle uses a 10-round magazine.

The .338 Norma Magnum cartridge pushes a 300-grain Sierra Matchking out the barrel at 2,700 fps.

The .300 Norma Magnum cartridge achieves a blistering 3,000 fps with a 220-grain bullet.

Those are some interesting calibers for a 15.2-pound rifle. They must deliver some serious kick.

Get more information and clues on how to buy your own here.

I wonder how long it will be before someone brings one to Boomershoot.

Weather Varies Over Even Short Distances

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I recently installed a new weather station near my pistol range in Idaho. Barb gently mocked me about it because it is less than three-quarters of a mile from the Boomershoot weather station. The pistol range is also about 120 feet higher in elevation. I insisted the Boomershoot site has different weather than the pistol range. She just smirked as I tried to explain.

Here is today’s proof.

Boomershoot temperature, humidity and wind:

Pistol range temperature, humidity, and wind:

Huffman’s First Rule of Recreational Explosives Violation

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My first rule of recreational explosives use was violated.

Huffman’s First Rule of Recreational Explosives:

Never put anything between your body and the explosives which may require a surgeon to remove.

Application to Private Arms Builders?

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I am not a lawyer. But it would see this bolsters the case for building your own machine guns, mortar’s, grenades, etc..

Federal court declares federal ban on at-home distilling unconstitutional – Competitive Enterprise Institute (cei.org)

Late last night, after months of litigation, a federal court in Texas decided the federal ban on at-home distillation of beverage spirits is unconstitutional. The district court’s decision is fair; it is correct on the law; and it is historic.

Lawyers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) represent several amateur home-distilling enthusiasts who want to pursue the essentially harmless hobby of at-home distilling of beverage spirits for personal use without the looming threat of legal sanctions. Under federal law, distilling in one’s home or backyard can result in a $10,000 fine and a five-year imprisonment.

The court found that:

  • The federal ban on home distilling exceeds the scope of the federal government’s limited powers.
  • The Constitution’s tax power does not allow the federal government to ban home distilling, largely because the ban does not add money into the federal treasury or protect federal tax revenue.
  • The Constitution’s power to regulate interstate commerce does not allow the federal government to ban home distilling, largely because the ban neither regulates interstate commerce directly nor is it related to any larger regulatory scheme.

I didn’t read the actual ruling but I suspect what the judge said can be applied to almost anything not involved in Interstate commerce. Hence, when applied to homemade grenades at a Boomershoot side event the courts would be inclined to say the Federal government can’t ban them either.