The View From North Central Idaho

Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.

The View From North Central Idaho

Didn’t he get the memo?

Going back as least until the 1960’s it has been common knowledge that you could always tell who the FBI informants were because they were the ones in any group encouraging people to illegally blow something up.

Apparently this guy didn’t get the memo and is going to be spending many years in prison because he is stupid as well as want-to-be terrorist:

The man accused of plotting to use model airplanes loaded with explosives to attack the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol agreed Tuesday to a plea deal.

Rezwan Ferdaus, a 26-year-old from Ashland, Massachusetts, will plead guilty to two of the six charges against him and faces 17 years in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release, according to a statement from the Justice Department.

Ferdaus, a U.S. citizen, will plead guilty to attempting to damage and destroy a federal building by means of an explosive and attempting to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda for attacks on U.S. troops overseas, authorities said.

Quote of the day—Steven Den Beste

Way back in the depths of time, Greek philosophers ended up with two basic and incompatible ways of looking at the universe. One way was materialism, which says that there is a material universe which behaves in a consistent way, and if you study it you can learn the way it works.

That’s the world view of engineers and scientists — and businessmen, for that matter. It’s the world view of people who understand and use mathematics, and statistics. It is a place where cause leads to effect. It’s the place that game theory studies. It isn’t necessarily inherently atheistic; a lot of religious people live in the materialist world.

But there are people who don’t. A different epistemological view is teleology, which says that the universe is an ideal place. More or less, it exists so that we humans can live in it. And human thought is a fundamental force in the universe. Teleology says that if a mental model is esthetically pleasing then it must be true. Teleology implies that if you truly believe in something, it’ll happen.

Steven Den Beste
December 6, 2009
Government by Wishful Thinking
[H/T to wfgodbold in the comment to A process failure.

As I have said before (and here, here, and here) our opponents have a “currency” which is emotionally based. I find the dealings in this currency perplexing and frequently repugnant. But what is scary to me is the number of people that advocate this currency, deal in this currency, and hold great political power.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sensible Educated Person

Apart from obvious psychological issues and inability to use proper grammar, you represent the paranoid fringe of our society. Disparaging those who disagree with your right wing opinions only reinforces your image as an ignorant conspiracy theorist who compensates for his inadequate sexual equipment with lots and lots of guns.

Sensible Educated Person
June 29, 2012
Comment on That didn’t work for G. Gordon Liddy.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

This was directed at me. My response is in the comments.—Joe]

More on ‘Gunsmiths’

This happens a lot.  A customer calls about a problem, and it’s the customer’s gunsmith who says “X” yet the “gunsmith” is totally wrong.  The “gunsmith” is the source of the problem, or the source of the misunderstanding of the problem.  Yesterday, a rep from Big Household Word High-End Optics Company came in with a Yugo M70.  The wooden buttstock’s comb was too high for him, plus he had a Galil missing a detent ball for the rear sight.


Solid wooden stock with a bolt through the middle.  So shave down the comb.  Fit and try.  Ten minutes, plus some finish sanding and some linseed oil.  Nope.  “Gunsmith” decided it would be a better idea to bubba some lump of weld under the rear sight leaf, to raise the sight instead, thus negating the elevation slide function entirely, and crank up the front to match.


“Gunsmith told him that a detent ball for the Galil was “hard to find”.  It took google less than a second to find several sources of loose steel balls, and yet you don’t need a ball per se.  It could be a short piece of rod.  All it really needs to do is fit in the hole with the spring and be sort of roundish on one end.


I asked the rep; “What kind of a ‘gunsmith’ is this guy?”  And this is the answer I get every time;


“Oh but he’s a really great guy.  Really a great guy.  Old School.  He’s been at it for decades and really knows his stuff..”  I have gotten that answer from a lot of people.  That very same answer.  In that very same kind of ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing’ situation.


I’ve taken to using Tam’s definition of a gunsmith– one who can take an amorphous lump of steel and turn it into a fine firearm.  Give the average farmer or junior high school shop teacher around here a bent, rusty nail, a hack saw, an old bastard file and a power drill, and he can make you a new detent pin for your Galil rear sight, without ever having heard of a Galil.  Actually he could make do with just the file, the saw and the nail, and his bare hands, but that take a little longer.  Same deal for adjusting the comb height, but you only need the file (or a pocket knife) and a chunk of sandpaper.  But an “experienced gunsmith” was out of his element.  It’s gotten so every time I hear the infamous words, “My gunsmith says…” I start rolling my eyes.  I know there are good ones out there (some really, really good ones) but no one calls me or comes in with a problem if they have a really good gunsmith, do they?  So my sample is heavily weighted.  Or so I hope.


A big takeaway here is that a nice personality, I suppose, can overcome the greatest depths of incompetence, and keep you in business.

This is for Bill Whittle

And also for everyone else.  I don’t get paid to do this.  The time spent is all cost, so I don’t spend much time editing.  I wanted to take this piece, or rant, of mine and really polish it, using historical links and references, but too bad– here it is.  It’s verbatim off of a members only section on gunrightsmedia.org, from a thread on medical pot and guns.  I bring Bill Whittle’s name into this post because he has, as I’ve been describing on numerous blogs, fully embraced, with relish, the left’s “guns cause harm” meme.  All the best intentions will be for naught unless we think clearly, following the truth where ever it leads.  Well here it is;



There is a direct and inseparable link between Prohibition and gun restriction. Note Operation Fast and Furious.

The authoritarians learned a great lesson from alcohol prohibition. They learned that huge amounts of power and money were transferred to authoritarians, both inside of government and outside of government (tyrants and gangsters) as a direct result of prohibition.

The first time; Americans understood that it would require a constitutional amendment, because the government is not authorized by the constitution to tell us what we may or may not consume. When Prohibition was modified (it was never ended) with another amendment to the constitution, the feds that were employed to smash down doors and brutalize people over alcohol were given another job, the very next month. Prohibition was modified in December of 1933 and the NFA went into effect in January of 1934. The former Prohibition enforcers, who were accustomed to stealing alcohol for their own use and profit could now smash down doors and brutalize people to enforce the brand new National Firearms Act,. Stealing guns and using them for their own use and profit, and making deals with gangs as before.

Just as Prohibition created a newly vitalized and powerful organized crime culture, which of course availed itself of the best weapons, so too did it give FDR an excuse to circumvent the second amendment. He pushed for and got the NFA as a backdoor to gun restriction, making the case that all this gun violence is just too much—something must be done. “Why; it’s not a ban– it’s a tax!” The shiny new ATF was originally a part of Treasury. See?

Create a situation of violence and gangsterism (Prohibition) then swoop in and “fix” it with more even authoritarianism. Works like a charm, every time it’s tried.

The authoritarians have since come up with ways to fool us into accepting federal drug laws, this time without a constitutional amendment. So now we’re right back to the 1920s, but the constitution took a hit in the process. Drug money instead of alcohol money, drug gangs paying off law enforcement instead of Al Capone buying cops– drug enforcement excuses for more power and money instead of alcohol as an excuse for more money and power. The equation is exactly the same, only this time it’s far worse. They’ve beat down former constitutional limits, this time it’s far longer lived, it’s still growing, and it’s growing right along with outrageous actions of feds working directly with Mexican drug gangs (Fast & Furious). Meet your new masters– the big, happy family of gangsters, corrupt government officials, corrupt police, corrupt foreign governments controlled by gangs, some of the worst enemies of America, the BATFE which was recently made part of the Justice Department (not even any more pretense of being a tax authority) and whole new agencies with guns, lots of funding, and protection from the President when they get caught with their pants down, all circle-jerking together, and weakening America at every stage.

Meanwhile; the Republicans are still busy, frantically trying to decide on what they should pretend to believe during the next election. You Suckers!


Now was that so hard?  I don’t believe I blamed guns for anything, or said that guns were “responsible”, I acknowledged the existence of the constitution, acknowledged the fact that corruption exists at all levels (though it’s unpopular to even think that cops can be corrupt) I blamed gangsters for their gangster crime, I didn’t use the term “assault weapon” which was fabricated by the anti-gun media and the Clinton administration, I didn’t confuse an assault rifle with a semi auto carbine, and I laid out a brief history of drugs and guns, showing that they have been inseparable since the 1930s, when FDR linked them and made up the BATF as a faux “tax” authority.  This is all one, continuing story, see, on-going for generations– we’re just caught up in it.  It’s louder now, our government is every bit as corrupt as during the 1920s and ’30s if not more so, and it’s bigger and more powerful, but as of this morning we’re still not connecting all the dots.  Now I have to go pick up my kid.


ETA; Here’s the Whittle piece.  Listen to the actual words.

What, indeed, my friend

A lot of people are thinking the same thing.


But let’s not be too coy about it.  What if Al Capone actually condoned illegal activities in Chicago?  Gosh; that would be shocking, wouldn’t it?  Oh but that would mean…. No; it’s too much to contemplate.


And again, because it isn’t sinking in.  At all;
Saying that the guns were “allowed” into Mexico is a bit like saying that the Reichstag building was “allowed” to burn.  Why; they just stood by and let it happen.  That’s it– there were all these petty arsonists all over the place, setting fires all the time, so all that happened was someone (we don’t know who) turned off the pumper truck.


No, you fools; Obama and Holder longed, they desired, they were frustrated, so they planned, they plotted, they bought the gasoline, they bought the matches, and they lit the fire.  THEN they “allowed” it to burn, see?  You still don’t really know what we’re dealing with?  Do I need to slap someone upside the head?  Can you read the ten-foot high letters on the wall in front of you?  No?  Well then take a few steps back and look again!

Mass vehicular assault

From Lima Ohio:

Around 30 people were hurt, some seriously, when a woman drove her car into a street party in Lima, Ohio, Friday night.

“It was unreal. There were bodies, and shoes and jewelry,” The Lima News reported Amee Truesdale as saying. “They took many, many people to the hospital, and two or three of them looked seriously hurt … I saw men pick up that car and move out a gentleman that was pinned underneath.”

The driver, who reportedly had a dog with her, was parked five feet from the town’s main square when she accelerated rapidly, a police spokesman told NBC News.

Following this violent act will the Violence Policy Center follow up with media releases about the driver of the car having a drivers license despite a history of mental illness? Will the Brady Campaign be asking how the driver gained possession of the car? Will the CSGV demand that only the police and government officials be allowed to posses assault vehicles?

I can tell you the answers right now. No, no, and no. Those organizations are composed of people who have mental defects and cannot understand that both cars and guns are inanimate objects which have no volition of their own. They still adhere to the ancient belief that objects not people should be punished.

And this is why those organizations should be, and are being, left in the dustbin of history.

Quote of the day—Timothy A Campbell

Just make gun ownership punishable by death and we won’t need any more prisons or court systems. We will all be free.

Timothy A Campbell
June 12, 2012
On Twitter via a Linoge retweet.
[Not even a court system to judge those accused of gun ownership?

Why are anti-gun people so violent?

Campbell uses that word “free”. I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.—Joe]

Jobs Jobs Jobs (and Governor Butch Otter)

Just in case you’re confused on the subject (and I know that millions of people are); the purpose of a business is not to “provide jobs”.  Not ever.  Don’t even think about it.  Stop talking about it.


The Republican Governor of the State of South Idaho is one of those who are deeply confused.  He instated his “Hire One” program to nudge us into hiring people.  We’re supposed to go to some government web site and see if we “qualify”.  (Ooh!  Do I “Qualify?  Maybe I’m “special”)  Maybe that’s the “jobs program” right there— more state workers to manage the web sites and the “jobs” program implementation, whether or not anyone applies.  To hell with that, Governor Otter.  My business is not a stupid Butch Otter, State Government “jobs” program.


If we really need more help, we (without holding your hand and without being threatened) will hire someone.  That is, unless taxes, requirements, energy prices inflated due to restrictions, red tape and more restrictions get in the way, and unless you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong and use the coercive power of government to favor some businesses or industries at the expense of others– then we’d be expected to come crawling to you for some of that favoritism that only communists and mobsters have the power to dole out to their supporters.  I’ll die first.  I want nothing to do with you.  I have work to do.  You and your fellow communists at all levels are in the way.  Just get the hell out of the way.  Understand?  No; I’m sure you don’t.  You have “interests” to pander to.  You’re a coward at best, and we have no use for cowards.


You’d rather have a government “jobs program” so you can take credit for that which I accomplish in spite of your interference and confiscation.  Have you ever considered a “liberty program” instead of a “jobs program”?  No; I’m sure you haven’t.  Too novel.  It takes too much imagination for some people.  Communist scum don’t think that way, see.  They think instead of how they can meddle, how they can take credit for other people’s work, and live as parasites off of other people’s honest work.


The purpose of business, Little Grasshopper, is to create goods and services, sell them at competitive prices, and thereby make a profit.  See– jobs don’t even figure into it, except that in order to provide our goods and services at competitive prices, we NEED to hire as few people as possible to get it done right.  Otherwise our expenses are too high and we fail.  Get it?  No; I’m sure you don’t.  If you got it, you wouldn’t be talking about “Jobs” AT ALL.  Jobs are what happen naturally when you leave people alone, you ignorant, pathetic, self-serving heap of RINO shit.  Only communists talk about “jobs” in the context of government action.


The rest of us talk about liberty, because we want you off our backs so we can produce, sell, buy, exercise ownership of what we make, and live in peace.  Get it?  No; I’m sure you don’t.  Your actions and your language betray you, Fool.  You don’t belong here— not in the Republican Party and not in America.


We’ll make it real simple;  People either a) work, because they’re free, or they b) don’t work because they’re not free (government’s paying them not to work or the government’s in the way).  “Government jobs program” is therefore something of a contradiction in terms, and the mere fact that we have a Department of Labor is an affront to America.

Quote of the day—David E. Petzal

In order to keep his rifle, the owner of the M-1 took it to a gunsmith who milled off the bayonet lug and then sent a letter, along with a copy of his FFL, to the License Division, Rifle & Shotgun Section, stating that the work had been done. Amputating the bayonet lug has, of course, destroyed any value the rifle had as a collector’s piece, and the owner will not, of course, be compensated.

And if you listened very carefully, you could hear “reasonable” and “sense” shrieking as they thrashed in their death struggles.

David E. Petzal
June 8, 2012
NY Gun Control: The Mad Hatter Would Understand
[I have nothing to add but my tears of anger and frustration.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rym Ghazal

I remember the time I was in Iraq, and the family I was staying with insisted that I carry some form of weapon as “defence” and protection. Even their grandmother carried a small hand gun in her purse whenever she went out.

I vehemently refused. I hate the feel and the smell, indeed everything, about objects that kill and cause harm.

Rym Ghazal 
June 7, 2012
No gun control plus idle youth equals recipe for trouble
[I wonder if she has the same hatred for guns used by the police. And does the same hatred extend to knives, clubs, rocks, feet, fists, hands, teeth, cars, scissors, rope, electricity, tobacco, alcohol, water, dogs, fire, snakes, spiders, bacteria, and viruses?

She must spend most of her time hating. Perhaps she should see a counselor about that. Such extreme hoplophobia can’t be good for one’s long term mental or physical health.—Joe]

Seriously scary stuff

While Bloomberg’s retarded proposal to limit the size of soft drink containers is getting a lot of attention I don’t think most people really understand how serious the problem is. I’ve had conversations with a few people who were admitted Marxist and many others who merely claimed they were Liberals or Progressives. One of the things they all had in common was their extremely simple view of the world while simultaneously proclaimed they were smarter than others and that gave them the authority to force others to live as they demanded. Any mention of individual freedom was immediately shot down because “People don’t do what is best for themselves or society.”


One of the admitted Marxists proclaimed, “I’m a firm believer in the good of society over the good of the individual.” In his world view the individual just doesn’t matter. Government must do what is best for the good of society and if the individual sometimes doesn’t get what they want or gets hurt that is just too bad. Pointing out I could find nothing different in that justification versus that used by those who murdered innocent civilians in 10s of millions in the last century yielded comments to the effect of “They made some horrible mistakes. We just need the right people in charge.” Of course he believed he was one of the right people.


Just as Bloomberg apparently cannot think one step ahead to how easily his proposed restriction on “high capacity” soft drink containers would be defeated these people cannot envision what follows next from their every proposed attempt at restricting individual liberty and the free market. In one of the recent books of Thomas Sowell that I listened to he related the story of when he was a economics student and was enamored with some idea that would “force people to do the right thing”. He proudly presented it to his instructor who asked, “And then what happens?” Sowell initially was perplexed. Why of course, the desired outcome would happen. There was a law or regulation that required people to do the right thing. The instructor pushed him to think it through from an economics point of view. And Sewell thought it through and gave the answer that only slightly diminished his enthusiasm for the idea. The instructor again pushed, “And then what happens?” Again Sowell answered and his enthusiasm damped just a bit more. As the instructor pushed him again and again Sowell walked through the rippling effects of the simple one law and it was not long before he realized that not only was the effect of the law far less simple than what he thought but it would not result in his desired outcome. Everyone touched by the “one simple law” would pay a price with no one, except perhaps the bureaucrats and the politicians, receiving a net benefit.


The typical gun controller cannot conceive of why registration of firearms would not make society safer. Unintended consequences escape their grasp all the while they proclaim themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to us. It’s all just “common sense” to them. They vehemently insist there are, literally, easy answers to some difficult problems that involve the constitution, criminology, psychology, and practicality of implementation. I sometimes believe those that insist that if someone had not had a concealed carry permit they wouldn’t have committed multiple murders must be suffering from some kind of insanity. If one is willing to break the law against murder why would they obey the law against carrying a concealed firearm or even ownership of a firearm? Why is it so incredibly difficult for them to think even one step ahead?


I struggle with how to get what I think are extremely simple concepts across to these people. Even everyday things Liberals/Progressives claim to be experts on they are profoundly ignorant and/or stupid on. One Liberal I know went on about how because something was “natural” it was “so much better for you”. I asked what the definition of “natural” was. Was this opposed to “super-natural”? This is about the only thing that even comes close in my mind. She said, “No. Natural is something that is not man-made.” “So”, I queried, “Does that mean the lemonade you are drinking is not natural? At the bare minimum a man or woman had to squeeze the juice from the lemon and mix it with water.” The response was, “If you ask that then you are just stupid.”


This liberal can’t even present a defendable definition of a word that she uses in probably 25% of her conversations with me and she calls me stupid? How do you get through to someone like that?


Sowell’s instructor had an advantage we don’t. He or she had a very bright student with a grasp of economic theory and the student was in a subordinate position. Liberals/Progressives will not tolerate being in a subordinate position. They believe they are superior to non-liberals and any challenge to that world view is met with an attack. And if the verbal attack isn’t sufficient to “win” their argument they are more than willing, as Bloomberg is demonstrating, to use force to get our compliance.


People with the intellectually power and problem domain knowledge of a 2nd grader are demanding they be put in charge of essentially everything with guns to back up their decisions. This is some seriously scary stuff.

Quote of the day—Reflections of a shallow pond

I’m not proposing to rid society of all firearms. But how about if we start with the handguns?

Reflections of a shallow pond
June 1, 2012
Slaughter in Seattle: Why Gun Control is Out of Control.
[Yeah. A good first start. I got it.

Mr. Shallow Pond needs to spend a little time thinking on this. I would like to suggest he investigate the time when this country tried to rid society of “demon rum”. And what cave has he been hiding in such that he has Internet access and hasn’t heard of the war on (some) drugs? Does he think efforts to “rid society” of handguns as a start is going to turn out any better? As a final lesson, in more ways than one, I would like to suggest Mr. Shallow Pond look up the phrase molṑn labé.

I especially “like” how he doesn’t propose a plan for how to get around the Constitutional issues. My guess is that like most people demanding the government “do something” the Bill of Rights and enumerated powers is totally irrelevant to them.

For some reason I keep thinking it’s a mind not a pond that we are seeing the reflections of here.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Carson

Why is supporting the Bill of Rights a good thing?


David Carson
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Comment to The VA Tells the Truth About Guns. The NRA Can’t Handle It.
[It’s nice for our opposition to explicitly say what we already knew about them. They either cannot or will not respect the rights of others. They not only see no need to put limits on government but actively oppose and ignore limits on government.


In answer to Carson’s question, “Just because“.—Joe]

I like it, but…

she should be suckling an adult if it’s supposed to depict The Obama Way.  Well, children, adults– everyone.  Maybe there should be a long line behind the kid, all carrying signs and complaining/competing over who gets to suckle next.

“Impressive” gun collection?

The Willamette Week is easily impressed (emphasis in the original):

In addition to the relatively small quantity of weed, the feds found an impressive gun collection in Barnes’ house.

Within the defendant’s bedroom agents found a loaded 9mm handgun on the floor, a loaded .410 Taurus revolver on the floor, a loaded double-barrel coach shotgun behind the bedroom door, and loaded .357 caliber pistol in his dresser. In total, agents found 14 various firearms within the residence and garage.

I know a guy who occasionally attends Boomershoot has 59 guns in just one safe.

Security theater on the Internet

Via Say Uncle we get this annoying news:

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.
 
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
 
The FBI general counsel’s office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.
 
“If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding,” an industry representative who has reviewed the FBI’s draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second industry representative briefed on it.

This is so crap for brains stupid I am surprised the author of the article and the industry representatives didn’t fall over laughing at the FBI. Since the “requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded” as long as the number is greater than two they can’t enforce such a requirement against small groups of people. And that assumes the criminals were to use service providers in the U.S. that are easy to track down. With overseas and even open Wi-Fi access points so easy to access even finding a group of a criminals who utilized an illegal communication system would be tough.

This is nothing but A Security Theater that invades the privacy of those that pose no threat to the general population and can be used as a tool by unscrupulous politicians and government thugs to embarrass or blackmail their opponents.

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

The Brady Campaign’s willingness to argue seriously that a would-be assassin would buy or rent an apartment overlooking his intended target’s travel route, then register his intended murder weapon, speaks volumes for the group’s view of the world.

NRA-ILA
In D.C., Baby Steps Toward Gun Law Sanity
March 2, 2012
[That is, their connection to reality is exceedingly tenuous.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Julie Was Here

I don’t think there should be a waiting period for abortion care. Waiting periods for guns allow time for back-ground checks, and allow for a “cool-off”period, as no one should purchase weapons designed specifically to kill just on an angry whim.

But the purpose of waiting periods for abortion care is to make abortion harder to get, abortion being something very time-sensitive in a way that gun purchases aren’t.

Julie Was Here
April 30, 2012
Comment to Gun Control. Let’s Be Reasonable Adults
[Wow! Only if I were trying to mock someone would I say such a thing and pretend not to see the parallels that are so blindingly obvious.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cynicism

I despise guns; they have a single aim, to inflict massive damage upon its target. By its very nature, guns in the public are completely antithetical to peace, and should be cast out by all sane people. It should only be used by the enforcers of the law.

Cynicism
May 3, 2012
Guns And Gun Control
[I find the mind of anti-gun people “interesting”. Statements of facts apparently do not need to be based on reality. See the first sentence as an example. And adjoining sentences need not be in agreement with each other. See the last two sentences as an example—unless they are of the opinion that “the law” is also antithetical to peace.

If rational thought is present at all in the majority of humans it is but a thin, easy ruptured, veneer over a core of incoherent impulses. And as pointed out over a decade ago by son James some high school teachers actively promote the removal of this veneer.

I, and you should as well, fear for our future. These people not only vote they run our government institutions and command great power.—Joe]