More deer than people

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Because of the gun range I spent quite a bit of time on my land in Idaho this summer. I saw more deer than people. I’m pretty sure it was the same deer multiple times. They came out of the woods at the same place, ate my crops in the same area of the field, and I’m pretty sure I was recognizing some of them.

Here is a picture of one group of seven (click to enlarge and see there are two next to each other at the upper left) about 250 yards away:

IMG_6609

I saw as many as 14 at one time in this same area. Some of them would come as close as about 25 yards away without much fear as long as I didn’t pay much attention to them.

There were also other parts of my field deer visited but this was where I saw them most frequently.

Quote of the day—J. KB

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The Left fights for abortion because abortion is the easiest and lowest hanging fruit of Leftists desire for mass extermination to achieve utopia.

J. KB
September 8, 2021
Why the Left goes all in on Abortion
[This is an interesting hypothesis. I might even be willing to bet that a measurable fraction of leftists falling into this category. But I find it grating to state this in all inclusive terms with such certainty.

I don’t believe J. KB is capable of mind reading or has the raw data to back up this claim. Until data is in and analyzed I will think of it as a hypothesis worthy of testing.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Magus Melanie @MagusMelanie

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Small dick buys guns to feel masculine

Magus Melanie @MagusMelanie
Tweeted on August 13, 2021
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

We have SCOTUS decisions. The best they can bring to the party are childish insults.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hank Archer

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We wouldn’t have to be Fascists if you deplorables would just do as you’re told!

Hank Archer
September 10, 2021
Comment to Quote of the day—Leana S. Wen
[He was summarizing the position of those in support of a vaccine mandate.

It’s funny because it’s (mostly) true. I’m not sure they are self aware enough to “get it”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Julius Ruechel

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What other social engineering goals can be rolled into your annual booster shot in the future once you are permanently bound to these annual jabs and vaccine passports? In an atmosphere of hysteria, it’s a system ripe for abuse by opportunists, ideologues, power hungry totalitarians, and Malthusian social engineers. The snowball doesn’t have to grow by design. Mission creep happens all on its own once Pandora’s Box is opened to coerced vaccinations and conditional rights. The road to Hell is frequently paved by good intentions… and hysteria.

Julius Ruechel
September 2, 2021
The Snake-Oil Salesmen and the COVID-Zero Con: A Classic Bait-And-Switch for a Lifetime of Booster Shots (Immunity as a Service)
[Via email from Rolf.

I’m far more inclined to believe there is “mission creep” without “design” rather than a well executed grand conspiracy. Not that it makes all that much difference except, perhaps, in the penalty phase of their trials.—Joe]

Of course there is Wi-Fi

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Earlier this evening I finished installing and testing the solar powered Wi-Fi for my gun range:

20210910_194335

I’m paying for 6Mpbs/3Mpbs and SpeedTest.net says this is what I’m getting from a server in Seattle at 9:30 PM and two Wi-Fi hops from my router which is a half mile away:

image

I’m pleased with the result.

Quote of the day—Leana S. Wen

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President Biden’s much-hyped new strategy for fighting covid-19 is a tepid half-measure that falls short of the dramatic reset the country needs. The six-pronged strategy announced on Thursday can be summarized as “more of the same” — these are good steps in the right direction, but they’re not enough to get the job done.

…

Biden needs to acknowledge that we have reached the end of the line when it comes to asking individuals to get vaccinated. We’ve tried education, incentives and appealing to people’s patriotic duty. It’s not working. Now is the time for mandates, with the federal government using the full extent of its authority.

Leana S. Wen
September 9, 2021
Biden’s six-step covid strategy does not go far enough to compel vaccinations
[As President Biden said:

This is not about freedom or personal choice.

Actually, it is about freedom and personal choice. And the lack of authority of the executive branch to create law without going through the legislative branch. And the lack of constitutionality authority for the Federal government to force the injection of foreign substances into individuals without consent.

In short, this action is clearly illegal. It violates 18 USC 242 and probably numerous other laws.

Of course, the courts may not see this as clearly as the rest of us.

If the President has this authority then he also has the authority to force the injection of an abortifacient, a birth control drug, implant fertilized eggs, or sterilize those deemed unfit to reproduce (see previous link). We are no longer considered individuals with inalienable rights. We are little different from cattle in their treatment (no pun intended) of us.

For decades I believed the most likely spark to start Civil War II would be something related to guns. I now think the insanity over forced vaccinations could nudge out gun control.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Nick Gillespie

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What kind of simulation are we living in where Mein Kampf is easier to purchase than McElligot’s Pool?

Nick Gillespie
September 7, 2021
Self-Cancellation, Deplatforming, and Censorship
[I hypothesize it is the Dystopian kind.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hank Robar

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You’ve got some people, they’ve got a little authority in a village and they always think they can push it a little further. But I think now people realize that they do have rights. You just gotta stick up for them.

Hank Robar
September 7, 2021
Meet the Property Owner Who Created a Toilet Garden to Protest Local Officials
[My impression is that more and more people are realizing they have rights and that they have to stick up for them.

I just wish we had prosecutors who would prosecute some politicians, but I realize that is extremely unlikely to happen.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Baron Bodissey

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Initially, dictatorship is imposed via the abuse and manipulation of language, its function being to peddle falsehoods. Censorship comes next, and then the denigration and erasure of memories of the past. This process has an established pattern. First, the past is ridiculed. Second, it is demonised and, finally, criminalised.

It is when the first stage is segueing into the second that an open battle of wills begins to emerge between those demanding the reinstatement of their traditional culture, customs, and freedoms and the totalitarian few, gathered together with their imported alien foot soldiers, who are attempting to destroy everything that was and is.

At that point it soon becomes evident that the only viable end game is that one side must completely eliminate the other in order to survive. There is no longer any room, nor necessity, for the so often fatal trap of compromise.

Have no doubts about it: If the situation becomes kinetic, and history suggests this has a probability higher than 0.5, then only the brave, the most determined and ruthless will prevail.

Baron Bodissey
September 5, 2021
Crossing the Rubicon
[Interesting take on the current situation in Britain. I’m not sure Bodissey knows that much more on the topic than anyone else and I wonder how well it applies to the U.S.. But I can see some strong correlations to our situation.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Casey @All_Caps18

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I suppose the guns are how you soothe yourself over your other …shortcomings.

Casey @All_Caps18
Tweeted on September 3, 2021
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

From the thread:

IfArgumentProGun
 Mega @Moogalah

Oh no, it’s the one and only joke anti gunners have. I will now kill myself because of how clever, original, and well thought out it was.

 Ishmael Antony Gatz @PlastikGatz

TheyAreArmedBecauseSmallPenises

Floridian80 @MLJohnson80

WhenGunGrabbersAreOutOfTalkingPoints

Jeremy Lowe @ConfiscateDeez

I cuddle mine at night and read them bedtime stories. I tell my 1911 all about his dad, John Browning. The slide then goes back and forth with happiness until it lowers it’s hammer down for the night and goes to bed. #GunsHaveFeelingsToo (Now that’s how you do something original)

Turbo Encabulator @blath4242

TinyVagina


CrCritical Race Theory is Racist @ESameoutcome

I have never heard of a group of guys that are so obsessed with the sizes of other men’s junk as the anti-gun pervs! Does one need to have an obsession with dicks to be anti-gun, or does being anti-gun cause that obsession?

Skip Bradley Flag of United States EagleCamera @LoneOwlImages

You would think they would be starting to catch on that we have heard the “small penis” insult before and get a clue. But, no, they are pretty much without a clue.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tim Pool @Timcast

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If you ever wonder how Germany got to the point it did look at Australia. Insane authoritarianism, rising identitarianism, and apologists terrified of the state pretending to offer some opposition but defending camps for the ‘unclean’

Tim Pool @Timcast
Tweeted on September 4, 2021
[Via daughter Jaime:

Attach0001

See also here.—Joe]

Poor passwords

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I work in computer security. The following were recently shared in one of the threat intel channels I follow.

Rather lame, but it’s what Hyatt Hotel prohibits as passwords in their network: https://www.hyattconnect.com/files/passwordpolicy/dictionary.txt

This is claimed to be the largest collection of actual passwords ever assembled.

The download link on the web page given by the link above is very scary (if you can even find it). I downloaded the .gz file, decompressed it, and packaged it up as a .zip file here: https://www.joehuffman.org/misc/RockYou2021.zip

Quote of the day—Cam Edwards

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The Third Circuit panel found that not only did the township offer no evidence that its zoning rules are targeted to achieve a public safety benefit without imposing undue restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, but that it neglected to explain why it chose to implement these specific restrictions, and why they did so only in the part of the township that was zoned for “sportsmen’s clubs.” Two other areas of town where “shooting ranges” are allowed to operate don’t have these same types of restrictions in place, but the township can’t explain why center-fire rifle firing should be banned at a sportsmen’s club and not at a shooting range.


Now the case goes back down to the district court for a third time, and hopefully this time around the judge makes the correct decision and finds that the township violated the rights of the gun range owner by arbitrarily imposing these zoning restrictions without being able to offer up any substantive reason for doing so.

Cam Edwards
August 17, 2021
Second Amendment In Gun Range Case

A good start

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There have been over 400,000,000 guns sold in the U.S. since November 1998.

Range construction is complete

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The range proper is complete. I have some grass to plant and a few other niceties to finish up but it is entirely functional now.

20210902_115011
The shooting box is at 15 yards.

20210902_115051
This is from about 35 yards.

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20210901_122610
The pavers protect the washed river rock and drain tile directly underneath from dirt.

I need to get some target stands for USPSA paper and steel targets and a full set of Steel Challenge targets. That probably won’t happen until next year.

Quote of the day—David Frum

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You want to be a protective spouse, a concerned parent, a good citizen, a patriotic American? Save your family and your community from danger by getting rid of your weapons, and especially your handguns. Don’t wait for the law. Do it yourself; do it now. Do it because you just bought your first home, do it because you just got married, do it because you just had the baby you cherish more than anything in this world. The gun you trust against your fears is itself the thing you should fear. The gun is a lie.

As more Americans recognize the lie, they may notice a powerful new possibility. Once emancipated from the false myth of the home-protecting gun, they will find it easier to write laws and adopt policies to stop the criminals and zealots who carry guns into the streets. Win enough elections, and the federal courts will retreat from their sudden gun advocacy—and return to their historic deference to state regulation of firearms.

David Frum
September 1, 2021
How to Persuade Americans to Give Up Their Guns
[Frum needs to review the 2nd Amendment and the Heller decision.

Then he needs to read some books on the risk of not owning firearms and the ethics of restricting firearms ownership. I would like to suggest:

Then, if he is still in the persuasive mood, I’d be glad to introduce him to the power of the word “No.” backed up by 100 million determined gun owners with their own means of persuasion.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Shannon Watts

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Data shows that visible guns makes people more aggressive, so it’s a logical next step to believe that open carry makes it more likely that disagreements will turn into violent conflicts.

Shannon Watts
Founder of Moms Demand Action
September 1, 2021
TEXANS CAN NOW OPENLY CARRY GUNS IN PUBLIC WITHOUT A PERMIT OR TRAINING. POLICE SAY THE NEW LAW MAKES IT HARDER TO DO THEIR JOBS
[Interesting. I wonder what invisible guns make people do.

Watts knows open carry does not make it more likely that disagreements will turn violent. She is planting the idea in a effort to persuade the public it is acceptable to infringe upon the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. And, of course, she completely ignores the existence of the 2nd Amendment.

I would also bet that any data she has indicating “visible guns makes people more aggressive” is the result of cherry picking the data and probably presuming causality and ignoring other factors which account for any change in perceived aggressiveness.

Lies and deception, it is what anti-gun people do.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Michael Greer

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One of the repeated lessons of history is that when Potemkin politics become standard operating procedure in a nation, no matter how powerful and stable that nation might look, it can come apart with astonishing speed once somebody provides the good hard shove just discussed. The sudden implosion of the Kingdom of France in 1789 and the equally abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 are two of the most famous examples, but there have been many others. In every case, what happened was that a government that had stopped solving its nation’s problems, and settled for trying to manage appearances instead, discovered the hard way that governments really do derive their power from the consent of the governed—and that this consent can be withdrawn very suddenly indeed.

John Michael Greer
August 18, 2021
Potemkin Nation
[Via email from a reader after reading yesterday’s post.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Minor range update

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Barb hasn’t had a chance to visit my gun range and made a comment about the size being somewhat small. I parked my car in it and put some targets in the berm for scale so she could get a better idea of the scale:

20210831_103043

She has revised her view of the size.

The tile inside the range and more gravel was installed yesterday and the washed river rock was put over the tile today.

Today I made two trips into town to pick up some concrete pavers to cover the gravel over the tile to prevent the dirt from plugging up the gravel and tile line. As the dirt from the berm starts to cross the paver line I will “rehabilitated” the berm.

The range still needs some more gravel but that should be completed tomorrow. Then it will be done!

I now need to invite Mike B. over. I told him about my project last winter and I promised to invite him over when it was done.

Update: The picture below is from across the road looking up range at the retaining wall for the berm. This is the reason for higher blocks on the left side than the right:

image

Large trucks would be visible from the range if the extra blocks were not present.