A hammer, a simple tool, is not impersonal. And the more complicated tools and machines get, like guns, the more personal they get. Guns don’t like living beings. Their goal is to eliminate living beings.
David Gerard
Sketches: Set up the guns and the oatmeal
[When my gun safe starts bulging from the guns procreating I’ll believe they have become personal and have goals. Until then I’ll be more inclined to believe that David Gerard has mental problems.–Joe]
Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority and a couple of other guys put in a lot of time trying to talk sense into some bigots over the last couple of days. I just lurked until today. I finally posted my Just One Question–which of course went unanswered.
Then the bigots attacked a gun owner that reported an instance where he felt he was about to be attacked by a couple of young men. He put his hand on his gun and without drawing it faced the young men down. They went away without incident. Then the bigots claimed the incident never occurred or that if it did the young men were just probably “asking if you want to buy a ticket to a school’s charity event.” That pissed me off. My response:
I find it quite interesting that someone that was not a witness to the alleged event concludes the event did not occur without producing any facts of their own or pointing out any inconsistency in the reporting of the event. Apparently they believe they have some sort of ESP that allows them to remotely view the event in the past without knowing the exact location or time of the event. Very impressive…
Or perhaps it’s just another bigoted statement against a gun owner. Dismissing their statements out of hand simply because they reported facts that are uncomfortable to the bigot.
Gun owners are the niggers/gays/Jews/pick-your-minority of the 21st century. What would your reaction be if the some politician demanded you be registered because of the color of your skin, your choice of sexual partners, or your religion? What if you were not allowed to freely associate with others of your kind without reporting it to the government (gun show laws present in some states)? What if you were subject to special investigation and discrimination in your employment if you spoke up about these infringements of your rights outside of work and on your own time? What if there were organizations that were openly advocating your extinction from society despite clear constitutional and statutory protection? What if the courts ignored the constitution and the laws supposedly protecting these minority? What if the bigoted politicians that, by law (check out 18 USC 242), should go to jail are instead regarded as “progressive” and “innovative” and are reelected again and again? What if people said you “are all empty scrotum shriveled dick creeps who need guns to bolster some sad sense of masculinity”?
That’s what it’s like to be a gun owner today. That is why we are so sensitive and why we are so dedicated. It’s because our culture is being threatened with permanent extinction by bigots who don’t care what the facts are. Bigots who can’t answer Just One Question.
It’s a waste of my time. It’s jousting with windmills, so to speak, but it made me feel better.
One of the many murder mystery shows on TV these days recently did an episode wherein an assassin shot his victim through the heart at a mile and a half with a single shot from a super-scary sniper rifle, complete with portable weather station, laser range finder and computer, etc. (sounds a bit like my setup). It reminds me of Henry (nostrilitis) Waxman’s attempt to scare children over the magical capabilities of the .50 BMG cartridge.
Knowing this claimed feat to be beyond ridiculous, and for fun I decided to test it using Joe’s exterior ballistics program. Using all the most generous figures: Caliber .50 BMG (loaded with the slipperiest small arm bullet, with a Ballistic Coefficient of 1.05) which I gave an impressive standard velocity deviation of only 5 feet per second, and an inherent accuracy of 0.5 minutes of angle (super, ultra special, custom ammo) with a wind estimation error of only 2 MPH over that whole mile and a half, and perfect assessment of temperature, humidity and barometric pressure. It turns out that the probability of a hit (any hit) on a 15 inch circle at that distance (2,640 yards) is from 1% to 8% (depending on which 100-shot simulation you go with– i.e. there were 100-shot strings in which only one bullet hit its target) assuming a perfect shooter with nerves of perfect steel, perfect optics and visual conditions that can resolve a 16-inch (a little over ½ MOA) wide target at 2,640 yards.
Using the more common, high powered, long-range 300
On the TV show, the shooter did another amazing trick by timing his shot (from a mile and a half away) to exactly coincide with some blanks fired in a movie set dual. The time of flight for his (assumed) .50 BMG bullet at 2,640 yards is nearly 5 seconds, so the shooter would have to anticipate his victim’s actions with superb accuracy, five seconds in advance. Furthermore, he took the shot from an urban area, where the intense muzzle report from a necessarily very powerful rifle would have gotten the attention of people in a wide radius. The rifle was bolt action, and the ejected cartridge case was depicted as having melted into the outdoor carpet on the balcony that served as the shooting position– also preposterous, as the case sits in the chamber too long to leave it so hot upon ejection (the relatively cool barrel acts as a tremendous heat sink for the thin brass case). Only autoloaders spit out hot cases because they extract the case within milliseconds of firing. Oh and the target, being a human in the process of acting out a mock duel, was moving, making the probability of a hit even less (my simulations were done on a stationary target).
Now some would say, “Hey, its just a TV show. Its entertainment, Dude, lighten up.” I would agree if it were a science fiction series, or fantasy, but this stuff is put forth as serious, hard-hitting drama. To me its like a serious W.W. II drama in which people fly like superman, battle tanks travel at 200 miles an hour, and animals talk. It ceases being entertainment and becomes an insult.
[heavy sigh] Another one. I could not make this stuff up if I spent weeks on it:
From: Robbie [@ hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:28 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: MAKIN A BOMB!!! 😀Hey M8,Sorry To Bother You Like This But Im Lookin For A Recipie To Blow A 5″ Hole In A Concrete Wall. I Was Wondering If You Could Help Me Out? I Live In Great Britian (Scotland #1) And Live Next To A Builders Yard So Materials Wont Be A Great Issue. I Want The Bomb To Go Off While Im There But Back A Bit Obviously. Ive Got Around £20 ($40 or so). It Needs To Be Quiet So I Wont Be Scene And I Want It To Be In A Bottle Or Bag Etc.Cheers M8 If You Can Help.
Rambo Emm 2oo7“Where Ya From Niggah? West Side Niggah!,
Where Ya From Niggah? East Side Niggah!,
Where Ya From Niggah? North Side Niggah!,
Where Ya From Niggah? South Side Niggah!”
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:43 AM
To: Robbie
Subject: RE: MAKIN A BOMB!!! 😀Quiet bombs aren’t something I have any experience with.-joe-
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 12:39 PM
To: new.scotland.yard@met.police.uk
Subject: FW: MAKIN A BOMB!!! 😀I received an email from someone asking for help building a bomb in Scotland. It’s probably nothing to worry about but that’s your decision to make not mine.I have attached an Excel spread sheet with information from my log files for http://www.boomershoot.org. It was this website where he got my email address.I’m not sure but I suspect he came in via two different locations on two different dates. The IP address in his email is the same as that shown in lines 8 through 44 off the spread sheet which are today’s visit. But there is something odd about that. He didn’t click on a link on another web page to visit that web page (http://www.boomershoot.org/general/BombHelp.htm). He went directly to it as if he typed it in or clicked on it in an email. Hence it may be that the earlier visit, as shown in lines 2 through 7 of the spread sheet from the same ISP are related. Those lines show someone did a Google search for “making a bomb”, found my web page, and then made it a “Favorite”.I know Microsoft will also be glad to help with the Hotmail account if that would be useful.Below you will also find the header from the email which might be of potential use. Further below you will see his email and my response.Don’t hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further help.Joe Huffman
Moscow, Idaho USACell: 208-301-4254
From: Ann [ @met.police.uk ]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 4:54 PM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: RE: MAKIN A BOMB!!! 😀Thank you for your e-mail. It has been forwarded to the Anti-Terrorist Branch-Intelligence Unit.E-Mail OfficeNew Scotland Yard
From a letter written by the National Park Service:
“Right to carry” laws do not protect visitors from wildlife. Most weapons carried for protection from wildlife are not adequate for that purpose. Untrained individuals attempting to protect themselves from dangerous animals often exacerbate the situation.
So I guess when a mountain lion is chewing on your head they want you to use just your bare hands or improvise weapons on the spot like sticks and stones. And I presume struggling and screaming won’t exacerbate the situation either. Maybe those National Park bureaucrats are of the type that think just because a proposed solution is “all natural” it’s better.
You ask the hard questions. No softball chit-chat drivel. Get down to brass tacks.
Literally, Diana Sawyer asks Syrian dictator Assad, “Do you have an iPod? What’s on it?“
I could only read part of Kevin’s post. After a couple paragraphs I couldn’t think straight. My mind was running wild with rage. Here’s a taste of what I read:
Witnesses to violent street crime should try to ‘distract’ attackers by honking their car horns or even ‘jumping up and down’. That’s according to Labour’s Police Minister.
The extraordinary remarks by Tony McNulty prompted an immediate, angry response from law and order experts, who described him as ‘irresponsible’.
The standard police advice to people who witness violent behaviour is that they should not get involved and immediately call 999.
But in an interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, Mr McNulty said concerned citizens should ‘try some distractive activities’ instead.
This is in the U.K. and it’s unlikely I would be going there and even more unlikely now. But if someone was attacking someone in my family the only jumping up and down I would do would be on top of the attacker. If that wasn’t “distracting” enough I’d disassemble them as rapidly and as violently as I possibly could. Then I would get myself and my loved ones out of the country as quickly as I could before I had to repeat the process on any of the police that tried to arrest me.
I think some people need to read A Nation of Cowards.
Even though I have never built a bomb (ignore all the people that keep asking me for help building one) I know a little about them. Tam gets the sarcasm right and now I’m going to fill in a few technical details for you clueless types:
If you see something suspicious there are two things that are important; 1) How large is it? 2) What is it’s placement?
Here are the evacuation distances based on the size of a bomb. Those are worst case distances based in part over the concern of broken glass from the windows between you and the bomb and on the buildings above the sidewalks. A few licorice string sized objects properly placed would be more effective in taking out a bridge than a car fully loaded with explosives driving across the top.
If the placement is very near some important structure such as a bridge or fuel tank one should be more suspicious than if it is in the middle of the Safeway parking lot.
Blinking lights on a flat panel attached to non-interesting structures are either not a bomb or evidence of a very stupid bomber. In either case it’s not something to shut down a city’s transportation about. Stupid bombers, with the exception of suicide bombers which aren’t bombers but bomb delivery vehicles, are very rare because Darwin is very severe in his thinning of that herd. I just wish Darwin would thin the herd of stupid politicians as severely.
Sometimes people ask me if maybe I’m a little paranoid with all the guns and training and concern about the loss of our constitutional guaranteed freedoms. I point out that the guarantee isn’t worth the paper it’s written on without a means of enforcement. Which is what the guns and training is about–a last ditch enforcement mechanism. I can see where someone could make a case that I’m being paranoid but I think I can make a pretty good case that there are politicians that really are out to, and have, destroy our freedoms.
But no matter how good a case you make against me it doesn’t compare to this type of stuff:
Huffman Aviation, a front for FBI Division 5 and British Intelligence, have hired two known assassins, Robert Cain and Joe Kelso to put together a team that will target outspoken American citizens.
Of course it gets worse. Huffman Aviation is a stooge company with financial links to Keathing 5 bank dick Senator John McCain and Hillary (noted Republican gay-in-the-closet) Clinton Rodenhurst. Cindy McCain has large financial interests in Huffman Aviation.
P.S. Current CIA operative Harvey Hemmett has testified to Congressional investigations that he was part of the government team along with Israeli Mossad who trained Mohamed Atta at the Venice, Florida flight school…
…
Zionist Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not even an official member of the Israeli government, is blackmailing Bushfraud vis a vis using Bush’s homosexual sex and financial fraud, election fraud, criminal fraud, telling Bush either you do this in Iraq and Iran or else.
…
Sandy Berger not only took NATO nuclear codes but he was involved with a Mossad team in Thailand transferring nuclear triggers and other sensitive nuclear information on NATO with the help of Adnan Khashoggi disguising these uranium and nuclear materials as textiles sending through China to Israel. Treason of the highest proportion.
Financing Sandy Berger was Marc Rich, the Bush-Clinton Crime Syndicate fixer.
Attorney General Gonzales is covering all of this up for the Bush-Clinton Crime Syndicate.
It was then Vice President Al Gore, Jr. who tried to have Marc Rich arrested in 1993 and was prevented from doing so by the Israeli Mossad and the Bush-Clinton Crime Syndicate that then dumped Vince Foster in the park that was working with Ambassador Leo Wanta, former FBI Director William Sessions and General Vernon Walters.
Bush plans to use Azerbaijan air bases to attack Iran possibly as early as this Wednesday…
I think someone forgot to take their meds.
This book, even though I hate the title, addresses one of my hot buttons:
One of the great myths of alternative medicine and the health food industry is that natural things are better than artificial or synthetic things because natural is natural and Mother Nature wouldn’t want to hurt us. Wouldn’t she just? Plants and animals have had many millions of years to evolve ways of protecting themselves against predators and competitors for resources. Humans have had about 100,000 years of hunting and gathering to evolve natural resistance and about 10,000 years of agriculture to breed out the nastiness, and these times are just not long enough to make much difference. We are surrounded by plants and animals which can do us great harm if we are not careful about what we eat, and also by a myriad of fungi which delight in making safe foods unsafe.
People, with great pride, will say something to effect of “It’s all natural” as if that proves the goodness of something. To date my best response to this sort of idiot talk is, “Botulism is all natural too.” But, being idiots, they will insist that even natural poisons are good too because that is how you control insect pests or some such thing. They just don’t get it. If “all natural” poisons exist as well as “all natural” food/drink/shampoo/whatever then there must be a continuum. Hence by saying some food is “all natural” does give us any information about it’s fitness for consumption.
I would like to suggest they have a nice meal of raw mad-cow brains, marinated in a salmonella broth, with rhubarb greens on the side, and washed down with oleander tea. But I’d be afraid they would actually do it and the police would arrest me on some charge like “engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed person”.
It’s like dealing with a pack of five-year-olds who are so developmentally stunted that they will never be able to learn anything every day it’s a repeat of the same old simple lessons: wipe your bottom before you pull your underpants up, not after!
Andrea Harris
Uncomfortably numb
November 26th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Regarding dealing with advocates of “global warming”.
[It could just as well have been said about people in the anti-self-defense movement. Sometimes every single thing they say is wrong and/or can’t possible work. Such as in this case.–Joe]
“Just because something is irrational doesn’t mean you don’t have to believe in it.” This single idea has a complete disregard for truth. It doesn’t matter that the world has been proven round, you can still believe it’s flat if you want to. It doesn’t matter if all evidence shows that people have the same genetic code no matter what their skin color is; you can still believe some are inferior if you want to. What this statement means is that you can believe whatever you want, it doesn’t have to be true. There are no right or wrong answers, everyone’s beliefs are equally valid.
Jaime Huffman
Speech for Comm 101
2001
From https://www.joehuffman.org/misc/LifeChange.htm
As I mentioned earlier today JPFO has a booklet—Do Gun Prohibitionists Have a Mental Problem? Here are some of the mental problems mentioned in the booklet:
The booklet goes on say that pointing out the mental problems to the anti-gun person isn’t going to be very productive. What you need to do is:
There is a lot more material in booklet. Many of the JPFO “Gran’pa Jack” booklets are for giving to anti-gun people. This one probably is better utilized by distributing it to pro-gun people. Although I haven’t done that with this one I have purchased a few hundred of their booklets and let the local sporting goods store give them away. I’ve also given them away at Boomershoot events and local IPSC matches.
Update: See also the more complete version here: Raging Against Self Defense.
Update October 22, 2010: See also Peterson Syndrome.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
I thought the whole idea of “zero-tolerance” was to show that the problem was so serious that intelligence and common sense would not be allowed in the implementation of policy. This serves to give a valuable lesson to students — when something is really serious, you must make sure not to think.
Fritz Sands
4/15/99 2:36 PM
Microsoft Gun Club Public Folder
Regarding zero tolerance gun policies at schools resulting in suspending kids for tiny toy guns.
The California Legislature banned toy guns (probably requires that you register) in public. Okay, they sort of have a rational basis for it. I’m all for letting Darwin take care of the problem but in a Nanny state you can’t expect that. But what really got to me was that some of the legislators reaction to the toys brought into chambers. They were told they were toy guns before they were brought into the chambers but they still were so afraid they moved away.
Before Spitzer began speaking in favor of the measure on the Assembly floor, lawmakers were told he had permission from Democratic and Republican leaders to bring replicas to the chamber. Still, the sight of realistic-looking firearms — an M60 assault weapon and a 9mm handgun replica supplied by the Department of Justice — upset some lawmakers, a few of whom moved away from Spitzer and formally objected.
Is there a way to get these people some psychiatric help? People this sick should be removed from public office.
Yesterday I got a call from Mike, an ATFE agent from Spokane. AGENT, not inspector.
On December 28th of last year I took my cousin Julia on a Boomershoot Adventure at a local gravel pit. As we were finishing up somebody that lived nearby showed up to complain about the explosions. Ry and Lyle tried to talk to him but he wasn’t interested in listening. He finally took down my license plate number and left.
The agent wanted to know what was going on. I asked if he knew that I had a license to manufacture explosives. He said no and I gave him my ATFE type 20 license to manufacture number and told him Sue (an inspector who works on the Spokane office and he knows) is coming down to inspect my new magazine next week and that she could probably give him more background on me if he wanted it. He wanted to know what type of explosives we had and if anyone else had explosives. I said a friend, Ry Jones, helped me mix them on site but we didn’t transport anything like that on the road. He also wanted to know about a “boomer club”. I told him a rough overview of the Boomershoot and directed him to boomershoot.org. He said that the guy seemed pretty determined to try and “do something” and that we might want to find another place to set things off. I suspect the neighbor guy didn’t get any satisfaction from the local sheriff and so he contacted the ATF.
I told him that we talked to the guy but nothing we could say could make him happy. I also said we had talked to the owner of the pit and he didn’t have problem with it. He thanked me for answering his questions and I told him to call me anytime something came up because I didn’t want to cause any problems and wanted to avoid stepping on people’s toes.
I got a call from Barb today. She was pretty upset. The nursing home where her mother, Joy, lives was audited by the state of Idaho and was told they have too high a percentage of patients that have railing on their bed. Barb’s mom was one of the residents that would have their railings removed. Joy has fallen out of bed three times and in one of those falls broke her hip. A railing seems to be more than just a good idea, but the state has some sort of quota system and Joy was going to pay the price. Barb called the state inspector and was told, “You are very hostile. Calm down.” Barb managed to get some of the anger out of her voice but she still expressed her view of what the inspector should do in regards to the stupid regulations. The inspector told her that maybe her mother could have her bed on the floor instead of having a railing. For some reason this helpful suggestion was not received with as much enthusiasm as might have been expected. Another suggestion was that we take her out of the state licensed nursing home. This is actually a rather good suggestion if it wasn’t for the fact that the state takes so much of our money in taxes that we cannot afford private care for her. We could have provided far better care for her if our tax rate was 1/2 of what it currently is.
I explained this is the sort of thing that happens with government “provided” anything. They take our money from us because they know how to spend it better than we do. They then spend it according to the whims of the “central committee” and the central committee in their infinite wisdom will come up with rules such as what we are experiencing in this case. It happens all the time. It’s not just health care, it’s nearly everything the central committee does.
Vote Liberatarian, the party of principle.
Q: How do you determine right from wrong? Truth from falsity?
Do you read it in books? If so, is it the law and science books? Religious books such as the Bible, Koran, Talmud, and other sacred (to some people) writings? Or from listening to some authority figure such as your parents, teachers, government officials or religious leaders? Do you do a poll and see what the majority think is the truth or moral this week/year/decade? How do you know those sources are correct? Didn’t you have to make a determination about their correctness? And if you verified 80, 90, or 99% of some source as being correct, do you think that makes everything from that source correct? Couldn’t it just a well be the trick of someone evil to give you information that is almost correct, except in some critical item?
If you don’t know how to determine right from wrong or truth from falsity, how can you justify voting? Or rearing children? Or even giving your opinion on something. It seems this is a very critical question. Yet, when I ask this question (the short version) of people face to face, they tell me, “Yeah, I know right from wrong.” But when pressured just a little bit, they fall apart. They are completely at a loss to describe a sure-fire method of determining, what seems to me, something that is incredibly important.
A: Other than to say they read it, no one sent me email answering this question. The answer seems very clear to me. George Smith in his book Atheism — the Case Against God said it most succinctly:
… we may indicate three minimum requirements that must be fulfilled before any belief can claim the status of knowledge: (a) a belief must be base on evidence; (b) a belief must be internally consistent (i.e. not self-contradictory); (c) a belief cannot contradict previously validated knowledge with which it is to be integrated. If a belief fails to meet any or all of these criteria, it cannot properly be designated as knowledge.
Question your sources and your authorities on these criteria. These three criteria will never fail you. There may be new data which becomes available and invalidates previous conclusions, but that doesn’t mean that until that new data was available the answer you had was the best approximation to the truth that was available at the time. And you can’t do any better than that.
*This originally appear on a web page of mine. I am moving it here for better visibility and archival.—Joe, November 5, 2010