Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.
Ronald Reagan
[A good strategy for the “war” on gun rights as well.
This weekend is my most important “battle” for the year.–Joe]
Category Archives: Boomershoot
A threat to safety and democratic rights
An email from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:
Today, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced that the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act would be pulled from consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives because of the chamber’s inability to stop a National Rifle Association (NRA) amendment that would have effectively gutted the city’s gun laws. “The price was way too high,” said Hoyer, who indicated he made the decision along with D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) applauds Majority Leader Hoyer and Delegate Norton for making this hard decision and for acknowledging that the bill was a threat to D.C. residents’ safety and democratic rights. It is a tragedy that a bill that would have extended voting representation in Congress to American citizens who richly deserve it was undermined by the NRA’s insidious agenda.
A recent decision by a federal judge upheld the District of Columbia’s new gun laws as constitutional and torpedoed the NRA’s claims that these regulations are arbitrary and tyrannical. Nonetheless, the NRA pressed ahead and put their petty, partisan agenda ahead of the civil rights of 600,000 patriotic Americans. Their goal was to drive a wedge between D.C. residents, but in the end we emerged unified and more determined than ever.
CSGV has been committed to obtaining full democracy for the District for 40 years. Our president, Mike Beard, was the first executive director of Self-Determination for D.C., a national coalition that was instrumental in passing the Home Rule Act in 1973. In recent years, we have been proud to advocate for voting representation and political autonomy for District residents.
We would like to thank the many individuals and organizations who stepped forward to protect the principle of self-determination in the District. Among them were the 13 members of the D.C. Council, ROOT (Reaching Out to Others Together), the League of Women Voters, DC for Democracy, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the D.C. Democratic Party, and—most importantly—family members who lost loved ones in the March 30 mass shooting in Southeast Washington.
I find it very telling CSGV calls the repeal of the oppressive D.C. gun laws “a threat to … democratic rights”. I didn’t know we had “democratic rights”. We have civil rights. We have voting rights. But “democratic rights” is something new to me. A quick Bing search indicates it is not a common U.S. phrase. My suspicion is that CSGV knew use of the more common “civil rights” would have yielded laughter and claims of ignorance and/or bigotry. And of course in the next paragraph they overlook the fact that the NRA is very concerned with civil rights. But despite all nine Supreme Court justices agreeing with the NRA that the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutionally protected individual right CSGV is willing to push for the clearly unconstitutionally representative for D.C. in the U.S. Congress. Apparently the U.S. Constitution is irrelevant to their agenda as is safety. If they were concerned with resident safety they would recognize that violence crime is much lower just across the political boundaries on all sides of D.C. where gun laws are more relaxed and that in the last year after D.C.’s fun laws were found unconstitutional violent crime reduced rather than increased as the anti-gun people predicted.
It would seem to me that a rational person would observe that the correlation between restrictive gun laws and high crime is positive in D.C. and that the relaxing of gun laws coincided with reduced violent crime. A rational person would be willing to relax the gun laws even more yet at every turn they fight for more restrictive laws. I can only conclude CSGV does not have rational people or they are not concerned with resident safety as they claim.
I have to smile at them anyway because as they whine about people being allowed restricted access to firearms I’m preparing for over 100 ordinary people to play with guns and explosives for four days. My accomplishments in the next few days will be on television (and has been before and the show was even nominated for an Emmy) and reach thousands of times more people than their pathetic news release.
That explains it
I got a call from a guy in the Seattle area last night asking about Boomershoot.
KING5 Evening Magazine ran their Boomershoot 2005 video again. They put a new introduction on it and called it Blowing off steam at Boomershoot this time.
The guy that called signed up a few minutes later and will be attending on Sunday.
Update: I got another call from the Seattle area from someone else seriously considering attending.
Rivrdog’s ‘Box-Stock’ Rifle Mini-Match
Rivrdog has finalized the rules for the Boomershoot Mini-Match on Friday and Saturday.
He has changed the originally proposed rules such that I won’t be able to game it as I had contemplated.
Boomershoot 2009 video
Barron just put up his Boomershoot 2009 video.
I would attempt to make some snarky comment about procrastination but daughter Xenia is the Queen of Procrastination and she probably inherited that trait from me.
Quote of the day–Barbara Scott
You are in Boomershoot mode. I can sense the energy.
Barbara Scott
April 18, 2010
[Yeah. Boomershoot has been consuming nearly all my cycles and actually Barb is being a more than a little bit generous in saying she can “sense the energy”. I tend to get grumpy with her.–Joe]
Quote of the day–George S. Patton, Jr.
I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
George S. Patton, Jr.
Exhortation to troops, North Africa
[Even if we if only speak figuratively about fighting a culture “war” with the enemies of freedom the same sort of exhortation applies. “Dying” may be an economic “death” of their organizations from lack of donations. Or it may be that we starve them of media coverage because we outnumber them 10 (or 100) to 1 at rallies. But still we win the war by “killing off” their “troops” (supporters).
Think in terms of your activism doing the most damage possible to your opponents rather than sacrifice of yourself.
Also of possible interest is people attending Boomershoot this year will be within a mile or so of one of Patton’s Jeep drivers who served in Europe during WW II. He has a farm nearby and lives just over the hill a little way from the Boomershoot site.–Joe]
Boomershoot 2010 open positions
There have been some more last minute cancelations and we now have six seven open shooting positions for Boomershoot 2010.
- Positions #2 and #4 in .50 Caliber Ghetto are open.
- Position #11 in Lowlands is open.
- Position #33 and #36 in Main are open.
- Positions #47 and #51 (this is the better position if you are going to shoot from the berm) in Berm is open.
There are lots of positions available for both the Friday and Saturday evening High Intensity events.
Sign up here: http://entry.boomershoot.org/
Update: Position 33 just opened up as well.
Boomershoot 2010 update
Boomershoot 2010 shirts, hats, framed prints, underwear, cups, tote bags, mugs, etc. Available here.
Ry has the Boomershoot 2010 schedule available for your cell phone. There are different schedules you can subscribe to such as “Precision Rifle Clinic”, “Staff”, “Main Event”, etc. You phone will be automatically updated (assuming you have a data connection–free on-site Wi-Fi is available if nothing else) if the schedule changes.
Photo of the year?
Linoge claims one of the pictures of private Boomershoot party for Ian is “photo of the year”.
I’m not entirely comfortable with that claim. But it is nice that he did say that.
It was a pretty ordinary day and event in a lot of ways. What of the days when we have 120 shooters connecting with 1 MOA reactive targets out to 700 yards? I think of those pictures as more awe inspiring to me and are probably PSH inspiring to the anti-gun people. And what of the other private parties such as this one with Shobana? (BTW, she is planning on attending another private party soon.) She is from a country that has just as restrictive laws, if not more so, than Canada. And also, the year is young still.
But it’s an opinion thing. Linoge’s opinion is probably just as good as mine in this case.
In any event I have uploaded the original, unedited, high resolution photo for your viewing pleasure here (just shy of 5 Mbytes).
Update: I added the link to his post. Sorry about forgetting that.
Boomershoot 2010 T-shirt image
Via our professional photographer daughter Xenia who took the picture at Boomershoot last year:
Notice the target rich enviornment in the distance? Each of those little white dots is another pound or two of high explosives. The white “smoke” is actually almost all water vapor from the explosions. Yes, we try to make Boomershoot a “green” event. The daffodils? Those were planted by my grandmother and her sisters about 90 years ago.
T-shirts, cups, etc. will be available at Cafepress in a day or three.
Light posting
This will be the fewest posts I have made in a single month since March of 2006.
Things are very very busy at work. I can’t tell you how many nights I have stayed at the office until nearly midnight or worked from home until 02:00 or 03:00, or worked all weekend. I’m watching a build run out of the corner of my eye as I type this.
Next month isn’t looking good either. The pressure will remain high for most of the month and then I will need to do a lot of stuff for Boomershoot. Please believe me that I intend to post more and will do so again. It just might not be until sometime in May.
Private party for Ian
As I have previously reported Ian is an intern at Microsoft from Canada. I took him shooting once and he enjoyed it a great deal.
Last Friday after work he and I left Redmond and headed east to Idaho where we could have some real fun. Idaho is less repressive in a number of ways than Washington. In particular the explosives law are a pain in Washington.
Saturday morning daughter Kim, Ian and I loaded up the van and went to the Boomershoot site. Barron, Janelle, and Ryan were already there when we arrived. We were going to put on a private party for Ian and do a few experiments to test out some ideas for a new target deployment method.
Some of the pictures are below see also the fireball demo pictures here.
Ian about to shoot his first boomer.
This was just after detonation. Notice the streak of something headed to the left in the tree.
Ian preparing for the blast of debris.
Ian realizing he is going to live.
Ian realizing that was fun (debris still falling).
Ian realizing that was really fun (debris still falling).
Ian, Ryan, and Janelle (only her shadow is visible on the far right) do a miniature High Intensity Event.
Ian shooting still more boomers.
Ian seems to like this too.
Ryan brought an old laptop in need of an Idaho Stress Test.
Ryan preparing to initiate the stress test.
The test is complete in a few microseconds.
Ryan was very happy with the test results even if he did have to pick up all the pieces.
Ian, Kim, and I took the scenic route back to Moscow, picked up Barb just as she got off from work and went to VJs BBQ (there was a reason for chosing this particular place) for dinner. They have a Gadsden flag and the Declaration of Independence on the wall if that gives you a hint.
What I wonder is what the anti-freedom people in this country have to offer interns who visit. It’s not like they have anti-gun ranges to go have fun at.
Update: Linoge linked to this post and claimed one of the pictures of Ian above is “Photo of the year“. In the interests of completeness I have uploaded the original, untouched, photo here.
Quote of the day–Joe Huffman
Some forms of therapy are not covered under Obamacare.
Joe Huffman
March 27, 2010
[This is going to be the slogan on the Boomershoot 2010 t-shirts.
Photos by daughter Kim yesterday.
In the last picture, yes, it was raining debris from the explosion.–Joe]
Top twenty
Tamara points out you may have heard of a few of gun bloggers in the list here.
I have met or talked on the phone to most of them.
Some of them will be attending Boomershoot 2010. Boomershoot Media Day is April 22nd this year in case any more bloggers would like to attend. There are currently two open positions and I expect a third will open up soon.
Quote of the day–Davidwhitewolf
For me, Boomershoot’s a bit like sex. You never forget your first sexual experience, and if it was good, you keep trying to approach or exceed that rush every time. Similarly, every shot at a Boomer has the potential to be just as exciting as your first one.
Davidwhitewolf
March 22, 2010
2010 Will Be The Best Boomershoot Yet
[I agree there are some similarities. If you have ever heard my little lecture on the definition of fun you will understand. I (and many other people, but especially Ry) put a lot of thought into making Boomershoot fun.
This weekend we will be doing some alpha testing of a new target deployment system. If it goes well there will be a beta test at Boomershoot 2010 and then perhaps a full roll out for Boomershoot 2011. If you listened to Vicious Circle 42 you’ll have a hint of just how “evil” Ry is.
If things go as planned at the end of April Boomershooters will get to experience the Evil of Ry for themselves.
I just wonder if Davidwhitewolf will think the new Boomers are a big tease or do they actually “put out”.–Joe]
More Boomershoot 2010 positions available.
We have had several positions open up. I will formally make the positions available at 18:00 on Wednesday March 24th. Until then existing participants will be able to trade their current positions for one of the open ones. So the currently open positions may not be available on Wednesday.
You will be able to sign up at http://entry.boomershoot.org/
The positions becoming available are:
In case you have forgotten or didn’t hear, Michael Bane will be attending and filming for his T.V. show on the Outdoor Channel. He will also be the speaker at the dinner on Saturday night.
Update: The positions available now are:
Vicious Circle on Boomershoot
I just finished up participating in a Vicious Circle episode. The supposed topic was Boomershoot. In fact we basically started on Boomershoot and mostly ended up talking about Boomershoot but as it the case with all Vicious Circle podcasts there was a lot of topic drift. Also discussed were:
- The Jews In The Attic Test
- Nationalized health care
- The perfection of Lucy Lawless’s nipples and how to view them
- Yet another way to blow up a plane that the TSA cannot stop
- Total world-wide economic collapse
- The Texas Navy
- Screwdrivers
- Windows Phone 7 Series
- Narcissistic personalties
- Caleb
- How many boxes of .22 ammo it will cost for a virgin after the total world-wide economic collapse
There was also a lot of giggling–particular when I told them that Barb asked me if Alan edited out the naughty words.
And that is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.
Update: It is available now.
Motorcyclist Boomershoot article is online
If you didn’t get a chance or weren’t interested enough to go buy a hardcopy version the online version of Boomershoot! – Fun with Two Forms of Internal Combustion is now available.
Oleg Volk to be at Boomershoot 2010
I got a call from Oleg yesterday. He plans to attend Boomershoot this year.
Of course he wants some pretty girls to take pictures of. It just so happens I know of two who will be there. So we talked about daughters Kim and Xenia.
He will be shooting with Lyle @ UltiMAK in position #74.