Category Archives: Gun Rights

More tests

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The weather isn’t great (cold and cloudy) but it’s better than yesterday.  And I’m out of town for the rest of the week and I really need to get this done so I’m headed to the Boomershoot site in a few minutes.

A few tests need to be done.

  1. Was the latest mix stable over time?  It’s been four days in storage.  Did it get hyper sensitive?  Did it go dead?
  2. If it still detonates with a .22 LR at reasonable ranges I’m putting it out at 700 yards and trying to detonate it with a .223.  The weather report says winds from 0 to 1 MPH so I have a chance.  I put a different scope on my most accurate AR-15 so that shouldn’t be an issue.
  3. Boomer Clays.  I bought a box of clays and several different boxes of high velocity shotgun shells.  I’m going to load up the underside of some clay targets with “Joe’s Special Recipe” and see if they can be detonated at a reasonable range.  Reasonable being far enough away that we don’t get our outer layers of clothes and/or body parts shredded by pieces of clay pigeons.

If the results are interesting enough I’ll post pictures and perhaps video later this week.

Oh, I probably will be blasting a rock at the local gun range on Work Day this coming Sunday.  If you are in the area show up to help make it a better range and then watch me make small rocks out of a big rock and explosives.

See also:

Twenty pounds of HE versus a rock
Rocks and explosives video
Little rocks from big rocks and explosives

IPSC classifier special match

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I’m about to head off to the range for a special IPSC match (they call it “Action Pistol” to be more PC).  I think we are going to have five classifier stages.  I reloaded lots of ammo and have been dry firing quite a bit recently.  I got lots of sleep last night and after a shower and breakfast I’m ready to go.  I may “crash and burn”, but I’m as well prepared as I have been in a long time.

Looter Shooter rifle postal match

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I completed the Distance is your friend class of the Looter Shooter rifle postal match today.  This was inspired by the events following hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  I wasn’t able to conjure up a hurricane here in north central Idaho but we did have rain, wind, and a flood watch:

URGENT – IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED

FLOOD WATCH

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT

224 AM MDT SAT OCT 1 2005

CLEARWATER-LINCOLN-MINERAL-SANDERS-

124 AM PDT SAT OCT 1 2005 /224 AM MDT SAT OCT 1 2005/

…FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON FOR

PORTIONS OF EXTREME WESTERN MONTANA AND NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A FLOOD WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF EXTREME WESTERN MONTANA AND NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO THROUGH 6 PM MDT / 5 PM PDT/ THIS AFTERNOON.

A VIGOROUS UPPER LEVEL SYSTEM…WITH AN ABUNDANT SOURCE OF TROPICAL MOISTURE…WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE OVER THE WATCH AREA THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON. ADDITIONAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF UP TO 2 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE IN THE AFFECTED AREAS. THE OCCASIONALLY HEAVY RAINFALL IS EXPECTED TO CREATE CONDITIONS THAT ARE FAVORABLE FOR THE FLOODING OF SMALL STREAMS AND DEBRIS FLOWS.

THOSE LIVING IN AREAS PRONE TO FLOODING SHOULD BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION SHOULD FLOODING DEVELOP.

These shooting conditions were a contributing factor to me choosing the Quote of the Day for today.

I had planned to shoot it at the Boomershoot site and do at least one set of targets out to 700 yards.  That just didn’t work out.  My schedule is such that I wouldn’t be able to get out there before the results are due.  Instead I went to the Lewiston Pistol Club range where the most distance I could get was 200 yards.

All pictures are clickable to get a higher resolution.  Click on that picture to get a still higher resolution image.

It was wet:

It was muddy:

It was supposed to be shooting from behind cover.  I was peaking over the top of a hill and looking down the road toward the oncoming “looters”:

I shot the match with two different rifles.  One was an AR-15 that I have been having problems with the scope off and on.  I thought it was fixed but it was broken again today.  It’s time to send it in for repair.  The picture above was taken looking over the top of that rifle.  The results are for my .300 Win Mag (picture taken a different day at a different range):

Some of the following targets have a couple .223 holes in them in addition to the .30 caliber holes.  Please ignore those.


100 yards.  20 points 2X (yes, I put an overlay over both holes and they both more than touch the duck)


~125 yards.  19 points.


~150 yards. 20 points.


~180 yards.  20 points 2X.


200 yards.  18 points.

Total: 97/100 4X.

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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If I didn’t participate in any event or join any group unless they did things just like me, I wouldn’t be able to do anything with anyone else.

If you want to be a good shooter, shoot. Shoot all you can, under all circumstances. Shoot every kind of gun in every kind of competition.

Greg Hamilton
11/11/2001
Insights Training Email List

White-tailed prospects

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Yesterday I stumbled across a well worn path where no humans would have a reason to be frequently walking.  It must be a game trail I thought.  Without expecting to find any animals there during the middle of the day I walked along the path for probably only 50 feet before two white-tailed deer burst out from under a tree 30 or 40 feet away, ran down the hill, across the draw, and out of sight over the next hill.  The trail had led me directly to where they were bedded down.  It was right next to a wheat field.  They probably were grain fed, foliage or actually grain, all summer.

On the way home, about five miles from that same location, I saw two more deer.  I suspect I could have harvested one of them with my van had I been willing to trade the van for a few dozen pounds of meat (not a good trade).

Hunting season opens in 10 days.  Prospects look good at this point.

Quote of the day–Samuel Cummings

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Americans may like guns because they were reminiscent of the smell of outdoors, military heroism, the intensity of the hunt or merely because they are fascinated by the finely machined metal parts. Maybe the origin of a gun speaks of history; maybe the gun makes a man’s home seem to him less vulnerable; maybe these feelings are more justified in the country than in the city; but, above all, many of us believe that these feelings are a man’s own business and need not be judged by the Department of the Treasury or the Department of Justice.

Samuel Cummings

Quote of the day–Robert Heinlein

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Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

Lazarus Long
A character in “Time Enough for Love” by Robert Heinlein
[Applicable to those anti-freedom, gun hating people that say “I don’t believe numbers” or “I never trust statistics”.  — Joe]

Almost surprised

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Occasionally I’m surprised at how far the anti-freedom people will take things.  The banning of certain types of clothes took me by surprise.  That Gun Guys (anti-gun website) would suggest there is no such thing as justifiable homicide almost surprises me, but not quite.  In order maintain internal consistency they have to conclude that one life is just as valuable as any other life.  And so we end up with drivel like this:

What exactly is a “justifiable” homicide? Is it OK to kill people sometimes and not others.

And from their newsletter which doesn’t appear to be their website there is this:

For whatever reason, killing another human being, an act made simple and easy by firearms, is an act not lightly taken, and not without consequences.  Though a killing may be considered “legal” by any number of laws, that doesn’t necessarily make it right, and doesn’t mean that we should broaden laws without regard for those consequences.

Anyone that has taken any firearms self-defense class will have been exposed to the downside of using deadly force to defend innocent life.  The taking of a life is serious stuff.  But sometimes it’s the best of the available options.  And when the legal use of deadly force is employed the person on the receiving end of that deadly force made the choices that triggered the use of the deadly force.  It is they that bear the ultimate responsibility for their own injury or death.  For the “Gun Guys” to even hint that there is not a time and a place for the use of deadly force in the defense of innocent life shows how completely disconnected from reality they really are.  The last sentence of their email only seals that forgone conclusion.  I’m not surprised:

Legal or not, like anything else involved with firearms, “justifiable homicides” lead to more violence and pain.

Quote of the day–Eric Engstrom

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If I were mad enough at someone to kill them I wouldn’t use a gun.  They might wink out on me before I wanted them to.  I would want them to know who it was and I would want them to feel the pain.

Eric Engstrom
[Probably said sometime in ’96 or ’97.  I responded by saying “I wouldn’t use a gun either.  I’d use a propane torch and a wire brush.” — Joe]

Quick update

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Last week I ordered some new boxes for possible use as reactive target containers for Boomershoot 2006.  They arrived today.  This year there were some indications the targets were failing to detonate because of they were very thin (some of them were only one inch thick).  The new ones have inside dimensions of 6″ x 6″ x 3″.  I’ll be doing some tests soon.  Perhaps this week sometime.  Or if I get an email from someone that wants to help out I might do the tests on an upcoming weekend if that would work out better for someone.

I spent part of the weekend cleaning out enough of the garage to make a path to my reloading bench and finding enough of my stuff to reload some 40 S&W ammo.  I reloaded about 50 rounds yesterday and 400 today.  There is an IPSC match next Sunday and I needed some ammo.

I’m expecting I will have some bad news to report soon.  I can’t really talk about it until it shows up in the papers.  I’ve been depressed enough lately and this only makes things worse.  I really should go make some explosives and detonate it at both “entertainingly close” and long range just to get me out of my depression.

Quote of the day–Aristotle

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Those who have command of the arms in a country are masters of the state, and have it in their power to make what revolutions they please. [Thus,] there is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.

Aristotle
Quoted by John Trenchard and Walter Moyle
“An Argument showing That a Standing Army is Inconsistent with a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy.”

Quote of the day–Tench Coxe

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As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Tench Coxe
1755–1824

Progress against the bigots

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From a KABA alert:

FEDERAL JUDGE HALTS NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES

BELLEVUE, WA – The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana this afternoon issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA), bringing an end to firearm seizures from citizens living in and around New Orleans.

District Judge Jay Zainey issued the restraining order against all parties named in a lawsuit filed Thursday by SAF and NRA. Defendants in the lawsuit include New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Edwin Compass III.

“This is a great victory, not just for the NRA and SAF, but primarily for law-abiding gun owners everywhere,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “We are proud to have joined forces with the NRA to put an end to what has amounted to a warrantless gun grab by authorities in New Orleans and surrounding jurisdictions.

“Over the past three weeks,” he continued, “residents who had lost virtually everything in the devastation following Hurricane Katrina had also essentially been stripped of something even more precious, their civil rights, and their right of self-defense, because of these gun seizures.

“SAF and NRA had no alternative but to take action,” Gottlieb added. “If these gun confiscations had been allowed to continue without challenge, it would have set a dangerous precedent that would have encouraged authorities in other jurisdictions to believe they also could suspend the civil rights of citizens in the event of some other emergency.

“What must happen now, and quickly,” said Gottlieb, “is for authorities in the New Orleans area to explain how they will return all of those firearms to their rightful owners, and do it promptly. What this ruling affirms is that even in the face of great natural disasters, governments cannot arbitrarily deprive citizens of their rights. Thanks to some great teamwork between SAF and the NRA, this sort of thing will hopefully never happen again.”

PS Click here to make a contribution to help fund this lawsuit.

It’s just a small step.  But it’s certainly a step in the right direction.  From here we need to proceed to get one more more convictions on charges stemming for the violation of laws such as these:

18 USC 241

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

18 USC 242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

It’s a stretch, but if someone lost their life due to these jerks confiscating their firearms then some bigots could be facing the death penalty.

See also:

SAF and the NRA to file suit
SAF needs New Orleans info
Searching for survivors
This is the way it will always happen

See also: Random Nuclear Strikes.

Nation of Riflemen blogger

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We have a blogger up and running full speed over at the Nation of Rifleman.  He calls himself The Gun Guy.  He immediately got added to the blogroll.  This is no relation whatsoever to Gun Guys which is very anti-gun.

See also my post Nation of Riflemen is up now.

Thanks to Analog Kid at Random Nuclear Strikes for the heads up.

Cognitive dissonance obliviousness

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I don’t understand how they can say this without causing their head to explode:

Currie has been a strong advocate for civil liberties and women’s rights in the state legislature. She also has pushed for major reforms in the state’s property tax-reliant funding of public schools. Additionally, she’s been a leading advocate for gun control and an opponent of the death penalty.

[Emphasis added. — Joe]

It makes just as much sense as if the following occurred:

  • NAACP advocated white supremacy
  • ADL advocated children joining Hitler youth groups
  • HRC advocated stronger sodomy laws

Why doesn’t the press laugh them them all the way to the funny farm?

Nation of Riflemen is up now

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For those who are not members or have a bad email address with them.  “Under new management”:

http://www.thenationofriflemen.com

SAF and the NRA to file suit

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From a Keep and Bear Arms alert I just received.  Tomorrow morning they will file suit:

SAF, NRA ASK FEDERAL COURT TO HALT NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES

BATON ROUGE, LA (Sept. 22) – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA) joined with individual gun owners in Louisiana Thursday morning, filing a motion in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana seeking a temporary restraining order to stop authorities in and around the City of New Orleans from seizing firearms from private citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Click here to make a contribution to help fund this lawsuit.

Arbitrary gun seizures, without warrant or probable cause, have been reported during the past three weeks since the Crescent City was devastated by the hurricane. In cases reported to SAF, police refused to give citizens receipts for their seized firearms. Earlier, SAF insisted that police account for all seized firearms, disclose their whereabouts, and explain how they will be returned to their rightful owners. Authorities have not responded.

Gun confiscations have been highly publicized since the New York Times quoted New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III, who said, “Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons,” and ABC News quoted Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley stating, “No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons.”

For example, a San Francisco, CA camera crew from KTVU filmed one incident in which visiting California Highway Patrol officers tackled an elderly woman identified as Patricia Konie, to seize her pistol and forcibly remove her from her home. An ABC news crew accompanying an Oklahoma National Guard unit filmed another incident in which homeowners were handcuffed and disarmed, then released but without their firearms.

“We are delighted to work jointly with the NRA in an effort to bring these outrageous gun seizures to a halt,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “Our inquiries about these confiscations were cavalierly ignored, as were our demands for a public explanation from the police and city officials about why citizens were being unlawfully disarmed, leaving them defenseless against lingering bands of looters and thugs.

“New Orleans officials left us with no recourse,” Gottlieb observed. “It was bad enough that Big Easy residents were victims of the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. That they would be subsequently victimized by their own local government, taking their personal property without warrant, is unconscionable. These illegal gun seizures must be stopped, now.”

Blunt instrument updates

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Today I checked on the status of a couple of the “blunt instruments” I’m using on Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  Since I hadn’t heard back on them for weeks I sort of guessed they had been dropped and I wasn’t going to get anywhere with them.  I was wrong.

The first person I talked to said the issue was still VERY much alive it was just that he had been buried in stuff and was reluctant to share the work load with others.  He has a couple of hard deadlines to meet and couldn’t work on it this minute.  My project had received some attention a couple days ago and would be getting more attention soon.  I felt pretty good about things.  He asked a few more good questions which I gave short answers to and then followed up with detailed email answers.

The second person I talked to said I had gone about things in the wrong manner.  No big deal–the person in the appropriate channel will be contacting me soon.  I got the feeling that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t called back twice to find out the story.  I was very pleased with this.  I was afraid I would just be told to “go away.”  That could still happen but at least I believe I will get a chance to present my findings and have a reasonable chance of convincing them to take action.

One “blunt instrument” should be in there hands by now.  That is the appeal of their denial of my Privacy Act request on all the information they have in their files, email, etc. about the “investigation” they did on me.  I hired a lawyer in D.C. that specializes in FOIA/Privacy Act requests.  They claimed the Privacy Act didn’t apply to them, but both my and the lawyer’s read of the Act is that it specifically says it applies to contractors that perform a government agency function–so “hand it over!”  Nothing back on the appeal yet.

And since PNNL has received the FOIA request I talked about the other day by now I might as well reveal it here.  I asked for:

A list of all Pacific Northwest National Laboratory computer programs that use the FlashTek software library or rely on derivations of the FlashTek software library and/or it’s source code.

A list, complete with contact information, of all PNNL customers and contacts that have copies of those programs.

Most, perhaps all, of these programs will have been produced in the Cyber Security Group at PNNL.  The source code can be easily identified by a copyright notice similar to the following:

/////////////////////////
// Copyright FlashTek
// Joe Huffman
// Joe@joehuffman.org
/////////////////////////

In case the name “FlashTek” doesn’t mean anything to you, that is the name I use for all my private business stuff.  From software to explosives FlashTek is my dba (Doing Business As) name.  To speed up development of several projects at PNNL my coworkers and I used some of my previously developed code. PNNL never bothered to obtain a written license for that and I never bothered to ask for one. The implied threat with the FOIA request is that I will now ask for a license and/or demand they and all their customers stop using my previously developed software. This is a really nasty thing to do and I don’t really want to do it. If they would give me all the information I asked for via the Privacy Act request then I, almost for certain, would not bring up the software license issue.

There is one more “blunt instrument” that I haven’t checked up on.  I’ll just wait a while for that one.

Previous posts:

Blunt instrument number five
Case blown open–maybe
Reconsideration

Bullet Penetration

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The second printing of this book is coming out next month.  For gun geeks this is a great book.  Lots of math and experimental results to back up the theory.  I have a copy of the first printing someplace.  I got it probably 7 or 8 years ago and immediately went out and did some of my own experiments to verify things.  The results looked good.  From the web page:

Bullet Penetration describes the analysis and testing of a model of bullet penetration dynamics; this model  is a significant technical advance over what has been heretofore available.  This penetration model is directly related to understanding the production of an incapacitating wound by the bullet parameters (velocity, weight, shape, diameter).  Incapacitation from wound trauma is a complex subject that has been controversial for many decades, and all aspects of this subject are discussed in detail in Bullet Penetration.  The new results in this book are described in a style and vocabulary that make the basic principles and results understandable to the layman.  This outstanding book should be read by everyone who is critically dependent on handgun bullet performance as well as all those with an interest in any aspect of wound ballistics.

The topics covered in Bullet Penetration include physiological and psychological effects in incapacitation from wound trauma, modeling of bullet penetration, and modeling of bullet expansion.  The realities associated with the desired “one shot stop” and the ignorance and/or fraud in “combat data” claims are discussed in detail.  The primary focus is on handgun ammunition, but the principles and many of the results are also applicable to rifle ammunition.  The book has 303 pages, including 69 pages of bullet photographs and graphs of test results.

Quote of the day–Ann Landers

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No one has the right to destroy another person’s belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers
Nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.
[I would claim than in matters that adversely affect other people one has the obligation to demand empirical evidence.  But so many moonbats agree with Landers philosophy that it is rather depressing at times.  — Joe]