Category Archives: Crap For Brains

People and especially governments do some incredibly stupid stuff. This is about those stupid actions.

Libelous rumors

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It’s amazing what people will say about you and how messed up they get the facts. And it’s amazing what you can discover if you just look through your log files.

A case in point:

A commenter to one of my posts said something that piqued my interest so I went looking for their IP address in my log files. What I found shocked me. The log files lead me to the comments here. The article itself is very factually based as near I could tell. It was the comments that went off the deep end and got libelous:

By Ralph Wiggan, 8-11-07

Any word on if they are going to close down the training facilities Jason Hamilton received instruction at or the sporting store he bought his firearms at. I hope they don’t close down that long ranger sniper explosive shooting course that takes place near Orofino. Jason Hamilton is said to have attended that regularly with his friends.

I don’t keep a list of previous attendees but I think I would recognize a name of someone that attended more than once or twice. I don’t recall Jason Hamilton ever attending Boomershoot. I also just looked and don’t see any email addresses with an obvious connection to his name on the Boomershoot announcement list.

By Steve, 8-11-07
Ralph I think that shooting event you are referring to is called boomershoot. Its run by a guy I think is fairly well know around sandpoint, Idaho and might also have connections to Aryan nations. I heard he runs in Anti circles to throw the ATF off. He has a CD on how to make explosives, encrypt and hide messages and hit targets at long range. I believe it can be downloaded from a couple of P2P sites, but I can’t remember which. He likes to post about hitting the second amendment reset button a lot and shooting Jack Booted thugs. That whole group is being watched pretty close by several watchdogs groups like the southern poverty law center.
Wow! We lived in Sandpoint for about two years. We left Sandpoint in 1992.
If you count attending an anti-Aryan nations meeting where I saw a Reverend Butler and a few cohorts for the first and last time as “connections to Aryan nations” then I guess they got me. I’m not sure what “runs in Anti circles” means and I have been extremely forthcome and open with the ATF. I have an ATF, type 20, license to manufacture high explosives. It is my belief that we are on very good terms.
I have given out a CD to Boomershoot 2005, 2006, and 2007 participants. It includes videos of Boomershoot history, copies of the exterior ballistics program Modern Ballistics, and the recipe for Boomerite to make reactive targets. I do know how to encrypt and hide messages and I do share that technology with people and I have put that on the Boomershoot CD. Microsoft also shares technology for encryption. Encryption is an essential part of a free society. And if things get really bad, as in totalitarian regimes such as China, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, etc., being able to hide your messages, encrypted or not, is also extremely important.
My post where I mention “shooting Jack Booted thugs” is entirely in the context of preventing genocide. You can see it here. Be sure and check out the pictures and see if what “Steve” says is anywhere close to the truth in regards to both Aryan Nations connections and advocating shooting “Jack Booted thugs” in U.S.’s current political environment.
If I actually had “connections” with the Aryan Nations they would be rather strained with my advocacy of gay marriage, my Jews in the Attic Test, being a founding member of the Palouse Pink Pistols, and getting positive press for teaching gays to defend themselves with firearms.
“That whole group is being watched…”? What whole group? Boomershoot is put on for the Lewiston Pistol Club by Ry and I and, for a few days out of the year, some friends and family. If the SPLC wants to watch or even participate they are quite welcome!
By Mike G, 8-12-07

Just because Joe Huffman went to a few of their meetings doesn’t make him a member.

By Ralph Wiggan, 8-12-07

You say Joe Huffman puts on that event and he brags about training people to shoot jack booted thugs! WOW. Sounds like this Jason Hamilton took that advocacy to heart. Given what happened in Moscow I’m surprised there hasn’t been more media attention on that.

If someone thinks Hamilton, while on his murderous rampage, was engaging in activities that I advocated they are living in a fantasy land.
By Steve, 8-13-07

See for yourself:

“If it ever becomes necessary to start shooting tyrants and “jack booted thugs“ in our country I want as many people on my side as possible. And I want them to have the equipment and the skills to be able to hit head and chest sized objects many hundreds of yards away.”

Yup. I said that. And I stand beside that statement. Apparently some people have a reading comprehension problem. I said, “If it ever becomes necessary…“. And if you read the rest of the post, short of mental problems, I don’t think you can avoid understanding my definition of “necessary”. From the post itself, “…it is the prevention of those sort of genocides that is my primary motivation.“
Someone needs to be more careful of the facts and of what they write and it’s not me.

You are a part of the “Triangle of Death”

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Just so you know what they think of you.

According to the Brady bunch if you are part of the NRA you are part of the “Triangle of Death”:

They ignore the fact that firearms are used to save far more innocent lives than to take them, and that thousands of NRA instructors across the country teach self-defense and the protection of innocent life. They ignore the fact that the NRA is not a lobbying group for dealers or manufactures but is primarily an educational, range development, and sporting organization. Even if you focus entirely on NRA-ILA, the actual lobbying arm of the NRA, it’s primarily funded by individual donations not dealer and/or manufacture donations. But the truth isn’t nearly as useful to the Brady Bunch.

And of course even if you were to take their claims about the NRA as true it still doesn’t make sense. If the guns are already “illegal” and/or the dealers are “corrupt” then it’s an enforcement, not legislative, problem. But then, people with mental problems frequently don’t make sense.

More Guns and Fewer Defenders

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We’ve heard the story (via Kim).  We’re now told (by people who apparently have nothing productive to do, unless they happen to be working in market research for a gun company) that we in the U.S. have about 90 guns per 100 people, making this the most heavily armed nation in the world.

Not so fast.  They didn’t say 90 out of 100 people in the U.S. own guns.

In fact, something like half, or less than half, of American households are armed.  The 90:100 figure looks only at guns per capita.  Those who own guns tend to own several, and one person can only operate one gun (or in some cases, two, but mostly as a gimmick) at a time.  Are you more heavily armed if you own 10 guns than if you own one or two?  Not really.

I have a pile of guns, but if I really needed to use a gun for protection, I’d be able to use only one of them, leaving the others stowed in their cases and out of action.  At best I’d have a long-arm in my hands and a side arm on my hip.  At the worst I might be overcome by my assailant while trying to decide which gun to use (Let’s see; do I want the Italian auto-loader, the 870, the AK, or the…)

In Switzerland, most households contain at least one assault rifle, or such is the word on the street (I’m using the term “assault rifle” correctly here, which is an anomaly most in the media would not understand, but just so you know).   If you count the percentage of armed households (a dwelling containing at least one serviceable firearm) rather than the total number of guns per capita, which makes far more sense if we’re considering the armed, quick-response potential of a given population, the Swiss have a more heavily armed society than we Americans.  Only in the case of a sustained need (wherein you might find I would skillfully load all my guns and copious ammo supply into my full-sized, American, V-8 powered, four-wheel-drive pickup, transport them to a predetermined and communicated distribution point, and start handing them out to my neighbors) would the number of guns this individual owns ever be an issue, so long as its more than one or two.  So you can take about 20 guns out of Reuters’ figures, just for me alone.  In my home town though, I would estimate that there are more guns than people (its a very polite, peaceful town) so the number of skilled and determined marksmen, plus the ammo supply, would be the important figure.

But what are we talking about?  Maybe we’re talking about confiscation and don’t know it.  Reuters?

If we’re discussing issues of security related to the fighting readiness of a population as can be learned from history (the actual point of the Reuters article is not stated, but why else talk about how many guns the Joneses have?  Jealous?) we could count the number of legally disarmed Jews in Germany in the 1930s for example, compared to the number of armed Nazis.  Closer to home; we could count the number of unarmed students, combined with the number of unarmed faculty and unarmed staff (disarmed by campus rules) at Virginia Tech compared to the total number of armed assailants on campus that day, and by so doing we might come to a heightened level of actual shared wisdom (Reuters: take note).

Cases of mass death among unarmed populations abound, as is currently being demonstrated in parts of Africa and will yet again be demonstrated in another “gun free zone” in America no doubt, we having failed to learn from reality.  Hence it would seem that China, with only three “estimated” guns per 100 civilians, is ripe for yet another purge.  In Nigeria its 1:100.

This last I found bizarre:

Only about 12 percent of civilian weapons [worldwide] are thought to be registered with authorities.

“Thought to be registered”? Thought by whom?  We don’t know what’s registered?

Exactly why would it matter which guns are registered?  Is a registered gun more useful for self defense, or less so?  Is it more accurate, more powerful or less likely to malfunction?  Is a registered gun more likely to be confiscated by tyrants or less likely to be confiscated by tyrants?

Do criminals and tyrants register their guns, or are their victims’ guns the only guns being registered?  No one at Reuters seems to have a clue.

Just between you and me, I think I hit it up above:  Some people are screaming inside with jealousy and envy toward citizen gun owners, and its tearing them apart.

I’d like to see Reuters do a story on how much freedom people have around the world.  Maybe we’d find some wisdom there.

The public servants who protect us

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As Bruce asked, “Are the police taking stupid pills?”:

Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.

The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday.

The police charging them with a felony is evidence of a serious lack of brain cells but the mayoral spokeswoman probably could be outsmarted by police dog feces.

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

“You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know,” she said. “It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

Quote of the day–Ted Nugent

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Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary! You might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.

Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent Threatens to Kill Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton During Vicious Onstage Rant
Rolling Stone
August 24, 2007
[I find Nugent’s statement only worthy of particular note as a bad example for gun owners. But as pointed out by numerous people in the comments to the article Nugent did not threaten to kill anyone. Yet the headline and “The Gun Guys” claim he did threaten to kill them. I guess it’s just another case of the bigots not caring what the truth is.–Joe]

Ecofascist Defined or “Where does the fascism lie exactly?”

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This is in response to a comment by Frish, from this post.

You must start with an understanding of the word.  You can look it up in history, but Fascism is an appropriate description for the process whereby a group of people attempt to wrest control away from other people by force (specifically of other people’s property) and control it centrally.  The eco movement’s focus on legislation and treaties, rather than free choice, is exactly that.

The term came from Benito Mussolini’s Fascisti in Italy in the 1930s (he ruled from the late ’20s to early ’40s).  Mussolini was a devout communist who had his own plan for bringing about a communist regime.  His vision, his method for arriving at pure communism, was called fascism.

There is a common thread running through today’s eco-movement, regardless of what particular group is involved:  They all are striving for less individual rights, particularly less property rights, and more centralized control, i.e. fascism.  Q.E.D.

We can argue over whether a free market economy, based on the principles of liberty, on one hand, verses a centralized, authoritarian system wherein those in control see humanity as a stain on the face of the Earth on the other hand, is most likely to produce a prosperous, clean, healthy, successful, long-lasting society that would be worth living in.  What we must first agree on is that fascism (now that you know what it means) is almost universally favored by the eco movement in this country.  The use of force (laws) is their primary if not their sole focus.  To the extent that they urge voluntary compliance, I submit, they are preparing their followers and priming the rest of us for future laws forcing compliance.  Once the voluntary bit fails, which it will because there is no possibility of “success”, force becomes necessary, as we’ve seen in places like China, where there have been hideous anti-procreation laws.

As soon as you ecofascists start offering only free-market solutions to the problems you say in your wisdom exist, some of us who believe in freedom just might start taking you seriously.  But then a fascist is a fascist, regardless of the particular cause they’ve latched onto for a given day, so asking a fascist to embrace free-market solutions is a bit like asking Ted Bundy to look after a sorority.  The problem is in the basic world-view, and that has to change first.  Stop hating humanity, seeing freedom as loathsome and frightening, and start respecting humanity, seeing freedom as hope.

On that note I will give you a practical example of what I mean:  The Sierra Club spends enormous resources attempting to get legislation passed– land use restrictions, limits on businesses, etc..  The proper, polite, human rights-friendly, American method to achieve their stated goals (large tracts of land void of humanity, more animal habitats, etc.) to an extent far greater than mere legislation (which can be overturned at the next election cycle) would be to purchase those large tracts of land.  I can’ remember that last time I saw then in a TV ad, trying to raise awareness or money.  Instead they waste their money on lobbying efforts which must by necessity continue on without end if the laws they favor are to remain in force.  By buying land, asking for voluntary conributions, or through a multitude of possible free market offerings, and nothing more, they would be favoring the same things that real Americans are favoring– respect for property rights, and low taxes.  We wouldn’t be correctly referring to them as fascists, but would get along nicely with them as fellow Americans instead.

Bottom line:  You either respect humanity, respect human rights, and want to further a system of liberty, of which capitalism is an inseparable component (and are therefore an American) or you see humanity as a threat, a stain, a bunch of unworthy sinners, etc., and want to keep people from pursuing their dreams by using government as a means of initiating force to bend them to your will (and are therefore a fascist).

 

May we live long and die out

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If you have sometimes suspected that the ecofascists hate humans then you may be pleased to see the evidence to support that hypothesis–The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement:

Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.

“Crowded conditions” are either voluntary or imposed by government action. They are not an inevitable result of our present population.

“Resource shortages” would get worse if there were far fewer people on the planet. This point might not be obvious so I will explain. Imagine you and a few hundred others are marooned on a large isolated island that in addition to the sand, has tillable soil, fresh water, metal ores and, deep underground, oil. How long before you will have tractors and cultivators such that you can raise a surplus of food? How long before you will have electrical power, air conditioning, computers, and cell phones? There are a great many things that are only possible because there is a large enough market to justify the initial investment.

VHEMT apparently lives in a fantasy world.

Update: VHEMT responded on their Yahoo email group confirming my suspicions:

I think this is one of the funniest views of VHEMT I’ve seen so far:

[…snip of my post above…]

I don’t know what “Crap for brains” refers to at the end. It was
placed to the right like a signature.

Les

Apparently he was unable to determine that “Crap for brains” was a topic tag.

Obviously Joe Huffman has never lived off the grid without A/C,
refrigeration or phone service.  I have, and must confess I prefer life
without all the amenities.

Camille

Camille (and Bob) have a Yahoo profile. Occupation: Eco-Smugs.

Does anyone else find it ironic their favorite quote is “The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind. Albert Camus”?

When growing up on the farm there were several years we did not have a phone or A/C. However, we did always have refrigeration. I’ve been camping and backpacking many times without any of the amenities. It’s enjoyable for a few days but I wouldn’t want to live my entire life like that. I find it ironic that Camille is posting on the Internet about her preference for living without “all the amenities”.

Well, his blog is subtitled, “Ramblings of a red-necked,
knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal” so I do think “crap for brains” is a
signature!

😉
Doris

Another person in the group that couldn’t figure out the topic tag “Crap for brains”–confirming the correctness of my categorization.

Quote of the day–Traci Hughs

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If we had less guns on the street, more people would be alive today.

Traci Hughs
August 21, 2007
D.C. police spokeswoman
In Study Of Gun Traffic, Va. Stands Out
[She doesn’t address the issue of whether the homicides she is referring to were felonious, justified, or praiseworthy. She doesn’t address the issue of substitution of other weapons as a means of homicide. She doesn’t address the issue of felonious homicides that are committed without a gun that could have been prevented had the victim possessed a gun. And I’ll bet she can’t answer Just One Question. And I don’t think it is a misunderstanding of the English language that throughout the article author, Alison Klein, refers to firearms being seized by law enforcement as being “recovered”. “Recover” means “to bring back to normal position or condition”.–Joe]

He must think he has ESP

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It’s a frequent complaint of mine when dealing with neurotypicals. Some people believe they know something about which they cannot possible know and most often they get it wrong. Garen Wintemute, director of the violence-prevention research program at the University of California, Davis is no different. In an August 12 article in the Star-Telegram, Gun control back as national issue it is claimed:

In 2005 and 2006, Wintemute attended 28 gun shows in Texas (in Dallas and Houston), Nevada, Florida, Arizona and California — areas where he said guns are acquired and later used in crimes in California. Afterward, he urged lawmakers nationwide to put more restrictions on gun shows.

“I would like to see a policy change that makes direct private-party transfers of guns illegal,” Wintemute said. “And I’d like much more vigorous law enforcement presence at gun shows. I noticed the illegal stuff was conducted right out in the open.

“Bad guys had no concern they might be caught.”

What “illegal stuff” did he observe? Whenever I’ve confronted people about this sort of thing it turns out they confuse what they would like the law to be with what the law really is. They frequently claim they saw “criminals” buying guns–but they can’t explain how they knew they were criminals. As near as I can tell they imagined they were criminals. They thought they just knew from looking at someone. Apparently they believe they have some sort of extra sensory perception I guess.

Wintemute should be asked to explain how he knew who the “bad guys” were. Did they have “FELON” tattooed on their foreheads? Or maybe it was their skin color–were they “bad guys” because their skin was black? Or was it because it was white? Did they have their baseball cap on backward? Or were they wearing camo pants?

I suspect Wintemute is just another anti-gun bigot. I sent the following email a few minutes ago. I’ll let you know if he responds.

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:22 AM
To: ‘gjwintemute@ucdavis.edu’
Subject: A question about your study.

 

In the article Gun control back as a national issue you are quoted as saying “I noticed the illegal stuff was conducted right out in the open. Bad guys had no concern they might be caught.”

 

Could you tell me what sort of “illegal stuff” was conducted? And how did you identify people as being “bad guys”.

 

Thank you.

Quote of the day–Joan Burbick

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The mystique of the Western gun rested on an inflated belief in the individual and the power within reach of an ordinary human being.

[…]

The gun has become a fetish–an emotional response to a changing America, the idea that somehow, the social problems of the U.S. will be solved through private gun ownership and a lot more guns.

Joan Burbick
Professor of English and American Studies at Washington State University
Author of Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy
Quotes found at Guns R Us — Is it time to re-examine the West’s fascination with firearms? in Missoula Independent By: Ray Ring August 16, 2007
[It’s interesting to me that Mr. Ring referred to Ms. Burbick as “Jean Burbick” instead of “Joan Burbick”. Typical of an anti-gun bigot–getting the facts straight don’t seem to matter. Please note that Burbick is engaging in a bit of projection with her claim “the gun has become a fetish”. It’s the anti-gun bigots that believe gun regulation have magical power to protect people. And Burbick also overlooks that the concept of individual power, and even the individual itself, is the one distinguishing difference between Western Civilization and all others. For her to denigrate the concept of individual power and rights is to undermine the very basis of our culture.–Joe]

Not funny

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From the guy that brought us THE WHITETAIL HUNT WITH A MOUNTAIN HOWITZER (my post about it is here) we now have (via ahab at Say Uncle), How to Hunt Feral Cats in Wisconsin with a 12 pound Coehorn Mortar Cannon.

I was okay with the whitetail hunt because the odds of a clean kill were probably better than with a conventional rifle. And while dropping a 2 1/4 pound hard rubber ball on a cats head at terminal velocity is, well, terminal the odds of a head shot from 400 yards away are low. A hit to numerous other body areas is going to result in a crippled cat that might get away before you can put it out of it’s misery.

Doing this sort of crap puts hunters, and gun owners in general, in a bad light. Although I think it would be cool to have a similar toy I do not approve of the activities advocated.

Shudder

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I HATE being shocked. I really, really, hate it. Mild shocks that some people find “interesting” or “entertaining” cause me to question their sanity. Even therapeutic use of electricity puts me in a really grumpy mood. Don’t bother to remind me about having two degrees in electrical engineering. I am in control of electricity. It goes where I want it to and it does what I want it to do. It doesn’t flow through any part of my body unless a doctor or therapist prescribes it.

With that background imagine the response I had when reading this report (found via DrX):

It was obvious that the couple was engaged in sexual relations when they died. The deaths apparently were related to the use of an elaborate apparatus utilizing electrical current for stimulation. A heavy metal rod measuring 22 cm in length and 2.5 cm in diameter was inserted 18 cm into the male’s rectum. A small wire was attached by a rubber band leading to a Variac voltage regulator. There was a metal rod 20 cm long with a rounded tip 1 cm wide tapering to 0.75 cm in the shaft. A metal ring was attached to the exposed end and the male partner’s index finger was touching it. The rod was inserted 18 cm into the female’s rectum with a similar wire attached and leading to the voltage regulator. The regulator was set at 90 volts, but the dial could be turned up to 130 volts. In the room nearby were other stimulation devices, including a La Vida vibrator on a bed table and a Niagara type vibrator found under the bed. On the bed table was also noted a 1-lb. jar of lubricating cream. The couple was last seen alive more than 24 hours before. Third-degree burns were found in the rectum and vagina with perforation of the posterior vagina and anterior rectum in the female victim. In the male victim, third-degree burns were noted on the tip of the left index finger, the rectum, and the penis. The voltage regulator was plugged into a wall socket when the police arrived.

Sex numbers again

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I already explained this but apparently some people didn’t get the memo–Sex survey numbers don’t add up, mathematicians say:

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for the mean number of partners for men to be different from the mean for women in any given population with equal numbers of heterosexual men and women, although the mean, or mathematical average, can differ from the median, the middle point of a range. Surveys typically report the median.

Still, mathematicians should set the record straight, said David Gale, an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of California.

“Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true, for purely logical reasons,” Gale said.

…

Sevgi Aral, who is associate director for science in the division of sexually transmitted disease prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there are several possible explanations, and all are probably operating.

One is that men are going outside the population to find partners, to prostitutes, for example, who are not part of the survey, or are having sex when they travel to other countries.

Another, of course, is that men exaggerate the number of partners they have and women underestimate.

Aral said she could not determine what the true number of sex partners is for men and women. “I would say that men have more partners on average,” she said, “but the difference is not as big as it seems in the numbers we are looking at.”

Gale is still troubled. He said invoking women who are outside the survey population cannot begin to explain a difference of 75 percent in the number of partners, as occurred in the study saying men had seven partners and women four. Something like a prostitute effect, he said, “would be negligible.” The most likely explanation, by far, is that the numbers cannot be trusted.

Ronald Graham, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, San Diego, agreed with Gale. After all, on average, men would have to have three more partners than women, raising the question of where all those extra partners might be.

It’s easy to explain, there is no mystery, other studies have shown the “prostitute effect” is not negligible. Read my previous post for an example that makes it all clear. These guys are professors in California. You shouldn’t expect anything but crap for brains from people like that.

Quote of the day–Steve Swain

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I don’t know of a single incident where CCTV has actually been used to spot, apprehend or detain offenders in the act.

The presence of CCTV is irrelevant for those who want to sacrifice their lives to carry out a terrorist act.

You need to do this piece of theater so that if the terrorists are looking at you, they can see that you’ve got some measures in place.

Steve Swain
August 3, 2007
‘Ring of Steel’ coming to New York
Swain served for years with the London Metropolitan Police and its counter-terror operations and now works for Control Risk, an international security firm.
[Found via Bruce. If you don’t see the folly of the security theater argument send me an email and I’ll explain.–Joe]

Mayor, Mayor, Quite Contraire

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We’re hearing rumors that the Moscow, Idaho Mayor, Nancy Chaney, is plotting to ban guns in “Public Places”.

One’s right to self defense is under attack right here in Idaho.  Do I need to look up the political affiliations of the Mayor?  Does anyone wonder?

AP has it now, so the story is repeated verbatim on several sites.  As anyone could predict, it starts out describing a multiple murder committed using firearms.  The conclusion is always the same:  We must “prevent” further incidents of people breaking the law by passing more laws.  That way, when criminals obey this new law, they won’t be able to break the old ones.

“I think there is probably some nervousness about that, of course.”

Chaney said the shooting at the courthouse made her concerned about how vulnerable people might be at public meetings. She said she was also concerned about armed citizens who might be inclined to “swoop in to protect people” in situations that police should deal with.

“We don’t want to tread on anyone’s Second Amendment rights,” Chaney told the Lewiston Tribune. “We want to find out what is within our legal prerogative.”

She doesn’t want to tread on anyone’s rights, she just wants to ban guns.  Its hard to find anything on this locally, so apparently its being kept pretty hush.

Chaney, Girl, you be trippin’!  People may be “nervous” about a lot of things.  Some people at one time were very nervous about black people wanderin’ all over free and what not, too.  It doesn’t mean they had any right to keep black people out of public places, any more than you have the right to ban self defense.  If you’re too nervous to do your job properly while respecting and appreciating the rights of your neighbors, I’m sure we can find a more level-headed replacement for you.

Another anti-gun blogger

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As Uncle pointed out (and here) we have a new kid on the block. I left a comment in response to his post Happiness is a warm gun. Comments require approval before they show up so I decided to post it here because I expect the probability of anti-gun blogger Bryan Miller approving the comment are no better than 50-50.

My comment:

I find the following data points about Miller very interesting:

  1. He refers to gun rights activists as “boys”.
  2. When people call him on his inaccurate use of the phrase “assault rifle” he says, “It’s just a name.” Yup, it’s just a name. Just like “n****r” is “just a name” for people with dark colored skin.
  3. He questions the mental qualifications of people with a fondness for a particular hobby that he doesn’t share.
  4. He wants to restrict the rights of certain people.

It’s all part of the mindset Miller has. He apparently believes he is better than others, specifically he is better than people that own or want to own guns. It took me a long time to understand anti-gun people like Miller. I grew up in a place with a very homogenous population and hence there was virtually no elitist mentality other than the typical school stuff of the fourth graders looking down on the second graders and the high school seniors looking down on the freshman. It took some long discussions and email with a recovered liberal friend of mine (see here and “Comments from ‘Mike’ at the bottom of this page) and seeing the racist roots of gun control before it finally clicked into place. It’s even more clear to me from the many discussions I have had with these type of people about what they are trying to do. You can ask them just one question and they will dance around the question and even call you stupid for asking the question–but they won’t answer the question. To them it’s perfectly clear that the question doesn’t need to be answered. What they are doing, what they want to accomplish makes perfect sense and needs no justification. The conclusion was finally obvious to me–the anti-gun people are the bigots of the 21st century. It took me a long time to realize this because I didn’t have any real contact with the more typical bigots until a few years ago. The parallels in mindset and thinking processes were astonishing—but that is a topic for an entire blog post, not just a comment on someone else’s blog. I now have Just One Question for Miller:

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

Also, Mr. Miller, when you “explain the Second Amendment” to us, please address the points in this blog posting: An Individual Right. Thank you for providing us with this forum where you show us your true colors and allowing us to show ours.

Quote of the day–Bryan Miller

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These high-sounding lectures from you and your colleagues in the so-called “gun rights” crowd are not even slightly impressive (they are amusing, though). As I’ve written above, society has a duty to mediate between individual privilege (that’s right – privilege – neither you nor any other American has an unfettered “right” to own any weapon he or she wants) and public safety. In this case, the choice is clear. The public safety demands that massively destructive weapons like the Big 50 be prohibited from public purchase. And, you are in a tiny minority if you think Americans, and especially New Jerseyans (who suffered so from 9/11), would rather face the issue AFTER some terrorist knocks over a chlorine plant or similar disaster and hundreds die. Nuff said.

Bryan Miller
July 27, 2007
Put down the ducky — I mean, gun
[Typical elitist mindset–He can’t be bothered to address the points made. Furthermore he is willing to give up, and demand that others give up rights, in the name of “crime prevention”. What a disgusting, revolting, frightening mindset.–Joe]

Some might say it is ironic

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I say, what do you expect? Disarming potential victims is almost never a good idea. As long as predators exist their prey will need to defend themselves. Taking away the tools used for defense is just asking for more victims. That the daughter of a gun control activist gets shot gets two responses from me:

  1. (Outwardly) I’m so sorry, is there anything we can do to help?
  2. (Under my breath) Well, duh! Would you like some firearm training for your family so this is less likely to happen again?

Regarding predators… I’m listening to a book on my iPod Nano now: The Sociopath Next Door. Four percent of the population are sociopaths. Not all are violent, but more than enough are. There is no cure. As long as sociopaths exist in the general population, and probably even if there weren’t, the innocent will need tools to defend themselves. People that argue “economic justice”, “midnight basketball”, or even “two parent families” will make ownership of defensive tools obsolete is exceedingly naive.

What TSA really stands for

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It is late at night and I got a little agitated reading some of the comments at Schneier’s blog post about airplane security. When I’m tired my inhibtions drop and I write things I might not normally. Here’s a duplicate of the rant I left in Schneier’s comments:

Regarding dust explosions…

This is about 8 ounces of flour over an ounce of black powder (the original gun powder): https://www.joehuffman.org/FlashTek/06-FFFFgFlour.mpeg

That is in open air. In an enclosed room of an abandoned house a similar test brought the house down. Sorry, that wasn’t my test and I don’t have any video for it.

Shaped charges made from match heads? I don’t think so. The “detonation” velocity is just too slow. It’s more properly called deflagration than detonation for that type of “explosive”. Shaped charges require MUCH faster propagation rates.

Binary explosives are available here: http://www.tannerite.com/ No background check, no license required, delivered to your door via UPS. Now THAT is something you can make a crude shaped charge with.

The “projectile” (typically a slug of molten copper) from a shaped charge is moving at 6 to 10 kilometers per second. At the pressures generated when it hits a “target” everything is “plastic”. Hardened steel develops a hole just like a high velocity stream from your garden hose nozzle punches a hole in a dirt bank. Penetration for a properly configured 10 (ten) gram shaped charges is about 2 inches of steel. Yes–a shaped charge using less than one half ounce of explosives will penetrate two inches of steel. See Explosives Engineering by Paul W. Cooper, ISBN 0-471-18636-8 page 442. Or do you think the doors to the cockpit are more resistant than two inches of steel?

Do you think someone could not get a half ounce of explosives through TSA security? You could probably successfully hide that in your mouth or arm pit if you didn’t want to use some other body cavity.

Oh, and you know why the explosives detectors work fairly well with plastic explosives? It’s, by international agreement (Montreal, March 1, 1991, Article XIII of the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives — http://www.atf.gov/explarson/fedexplolaw/subpartj.pdf ), that all plastic explosives be “marked” by their manufacture with a chemical that is easily detected. Do you think Iran and others are going to abide by that International Convention if they want to provide some terrorists plastic explosives?

We really should spend the $2 billion/year, or whatever it is, on finding and stopping the bad guys before they arrive at the airport/train-station/shopping-mall/etc. than on pointless screening. The bottom line is that the acronym TSA should be reversed–it really stands for “A Security Theater”.

Quote of the day–Richard Cohen

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The more guns you have, the greater the chance they will be used. But both common sense and the law of averages escape presidential candidates, especially Republicans looking to assert their conservative bona fides. When it comes to gun control, they not only have to be against it but they have to insist — in raging opposition to common sense — that the more guns around, the safer everyone is.

[…]

He is the True Republican — a credit to his party, a threat to us all.

Richard Cohen
July 31, 2007
Thompson on Horseback
[Cohen is referring to Fred Thompson. What Cohen apparently believes is that any gun use is bad. This only demonstrates the mental problems of Cohen because in the same opinion piece he talks about the occasion when he wished he had a gun to protect himself. Cohen also neglects to take into account that during the 20th Century more people were murdered by their own government than were murdered by their fellow citizens–but only in countries with strict gun control. So, indirectly, people like Cohen who advocate strict gun control are a greater threat than those that advocate recognition of our right to keep and bear arms.–Joe]

Update: Uncle and Jeff both commented on this same opinion piece.