Gun humor

Via email from Rolf (and Sneedus Feedus):

Garand458Winchester

Various loadings:

Bullet

Muzzle Velocity

Power Factor

300 gr (19 g)
HP

2,606 ft/s
(794 m/s)

782

350 gr (23 g)
RN

2,557 ft/s
(779 m/s)

895

400 gr (26 g)
FN

2,468 ft/s
(752 m/s)

987

500 gr (32 g)
RN

2,192 ft/s
(668 m/s)

1096

For comparison a fairly typical .300 Winchester Magnum load would be a 190 grain bullet with a muzzle velocity of 2900 fps for a Power Factor of 551. Or compare it to a .308 Winchester with a 168 grain bullet at 2650 fps with a PF of 445.

The semi-auto action of the Garand would help a little but I couldn’t see myself shooting that except under duress.

Cinderella story

Via Matthew Bracken @Matt_Bracken:

[Deleted]

I’ve deleted this meme. It was overstating things more than what I think is acceptable.

Yes, it is an acknowledged fact that Kamala Harris was dating Willy Brown in 1994 and 1995 and that he gave her political appointments at or about that time. This probably should have been investigated as nepotism.

But the meme strongly implies her selection as a U.S. V.P. candidate was because of her sleeping with “powerfully connected men”. This is a big stretch with the currently available evidence. Where there relationships with other men which also contributed to her success? I’ve not heard of any. And I’m nearly certain there have been a lot of people looking for that sort of dirt and would have reported it if they had found it.

Certainly the case can be made that her appointments 25 years put her on a path to her current position. But the path is far too long to reasonably say the Willy Brown relationship was a dominate factor in her successful traversal of that path.

A sense of humor

After investigating the domain https://donaldtrump.watch I wondered about https://joebiden.watch. Someone has a sense of humor.

You might not want to visit.* It redirects to https://www.nambla.org/ (North American Man/ Boy Love Association). The Infogalatica page for them is here.


* I didn’t actually visit the site. I used a tool which captured various types of information about the URL as well as a screen shot of the main web page.

Quote of the day—Dan Rather @DanRather

As a fact checker, where do you begin? I am being serious. I really don’t know where one starts.

Dan Rather @DanRather
Tweeted on August 27, 2020
[This should surprise no one. I am more surprised that he admits this.*—Joe]


* To be honest Rather, almost for certain, was speaking in a different context than what I originally took it. But I found it so funny that I had to share it in my preferred context.

Quote of the day—Tony Middleton

David Dyer-Bennet what you’re doing with oxygen is just WRONG.

Tony Middleton
August 29, 2020
Comment on Facebook.
[This was in response to Dyer-Bennet commenting about my blog post where I said one the terrorists killed should be nominated for a Darwin Award:

I’m really squicked by the suggestion that a guy who used what he had, which happened to be a skate board, to try to stop a rapid-mass-murder in progress, was a Darwin Award contender rather than a hero. Putting others before yourself when you’re in a position to try to stop bad shit is, in my view, heroic.

While I think the comment is hilarious, I think suggesting Dyer-Bennet is a waste of oxygen is going a bit too far. Oxygen is abundant. I could see a case being made for water and, of course, food is a slam dunk.—Joe]

Reparations enlightenment

For years when I would hear someone suggest people who descended from slaves in this country should be given reparations for the wrongs done to their ancestors I would almost immediately dismiss the idea. No one alive today has been legally a slave in this country. And no one alive today has legally been a slave owner in this country. So who and why should anyone alive today be responsible for something they didn’t do and who should receive compensation for a wrong they did not suffer?

I recently saw the error of my ways. I reached a state of enlightenment on my own. I am now in partial agreement with those who are demanding reparations for the terrible injustice inflicted upon so many people by legal slavery so many years ago.

With this blog post perhaps I can convince more people to see the light and spread the word of how we can deliver a small measure of belated justice. Please, hear me out on this. It’s important.

As I said in the opening paragraph the problem I initially saw with reparations is that no one alive today was alive when the wrongs occurred. But I now see that the descendants of those who were forcibly brought here would have had a much different life if their ancestors had not been brought here. Therefore if the descendants of people forcibly brought here choose to live their life in the land where their ancestors were taken from then I can see the justice in providing them a one-way ticket to their ancestral homeland on the condition they not return except for occasional visits.

With that part of the issue settled we still have the question of how to pay for this transportation. I think I have that issue figured out too.

It is my belief that there are some descendants of slaves who consider themselves fortunate that they were born in this country and are free citizens here rather than living in the land of their ancestors. Therefore, I propose these people pay the price of a single one-way ticket to a fund to send those who wish to escape this country back to their homeland.

If there are insufficient funds to send everyone desirous of returning then a GoFundMe account should be easily able to make up the difference. I know that I would pay a fair amount to such a fund just to get people to, once and for all time, stop whining about reparations. And I’m sure a lot of other people would too. I don’t think there would be any problems getting sufficient funding to sent all those people back to their homeland.

If, on the other hand, there ends up being an excess of funds in the account the funds should go to the descendants of the slave owners*. The reasoning for this is that the people grateful to be here rather than in their ancestral land owe a debt, which they have never paid for being here. It’s true that the descendants of the slave owners didn’t pay the price of bringing current wrongful residents here, but it makes as much or more sense than the original version of reparations.

There is one more wrinkle that I can see worth ironing out. Many of the descendants of wrongful residents are also descendants of people who voluntarily migrated here. I propose their contribution to the fund or ticket price for their return, whichever they chose, be prorated according to the percentage of DNA they have which traces back to the ancestral homeland of the slaves.

Please share and help heal the wounds of that terrible institution of legal slavery once and for all.


* To the best of my knowledge none of my ancestors were slave owners so I can’t see that I’m furthering my own self-interest here.

Good advice

Via Tamera@tacsgc:

PickUpYourBrass

This is good advice anytime you go to the range and especially when you are shooting on the property of others. Clean up your mess so you can come back next time.

Quote of the day—John B.

A couple of my friends have asked if you could move the event closer to the US-Canada border, so that we could shoot across the border rather than having to cross it ourselves.

John B.
March 20, 2020
[Via email.

I think that’s a really cool idea! It might even be an act of war or something. How much fun would that be?

But, it’s not really practical because the production and storage facilities are not mobile. And finding a suitable location might be tough. Washington State is out because of the onerous laws. Idaho doesn’t have a very long border with Canada. This would make it less likely to have a place I could rent on both sides of the border. Montana might have a place, but I don’t know their explosives laws.

But, if I had the time those are all solvable problems. Unless it really is considered an act of war.—Joe]