Cutting the hay crop at Boomershoot

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I’ve been whining to Barb about the tall grass when I went to the Boomershoot site about 10 days ago. Daughter Kim, Jacob, and I taught some new shooters (report coming any day now) how to shoot handguns and rifles and we had to drive and walk over the hay crop to get to the berm where we could shoot safely. I hated doing that. The crop belongs to the renter and we were damaging it. When I was growing up on the farm it was considered normal to be putting the hay crop in the barn on the 4th of July. This year the crop hadn’t even been cut. We did have a very late spring so it wasn’t really a surprise. Even though it was a very small percentage (probably like 0.1%) which had some damage I felt bad about it.

Yesterday the renter cut the hay and my webcam got a pretty good picture:

P19071415341110

Quote of the day—Mark in Minnesota @mark_casper_usa

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Dunno …

My (point) is that guns are for those with tiny penises.
And that they’re for people who want to kill w/o any skill.

#AnyIdiotCanShoot

Mark in Minnesota @mark_casper_usa
Tweeted on July 7, 2019
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to less fat Dave‏ @BigFatDave.

Oh, and he blocked me. I find that very telling. His ideas can’t stand up to even the most casual of criticism.—Joe]

Chronograph stage at Area One

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Prior to the Area One match in Bend Oregon I expressed some concerns about making Major Power Factor. It turns out I did just fine:

image

I saw the chrono team weigh the bullet before getting any velocity measurements, 180.2 grains, and knew I was going to be okay. My sample of 20 had a minimum of 178.3, a maximum of 180.7 and a mean of 179.2. I was concerned they might pull a 177 or something. Then, if the velocity was really low for some reason I could be pushing the threshold and perhaps break into Minor Power Factor (< 165). But the velocities were good. Had they pulled a 177 grain bullet and measured the same velocities the power factor would have still been 170.6 and comfortably in Major.

The odds were low of getting a low velocity since my measurements indicated a mean velocity of 978.4 with a standard deviation of 10.6. But still, you never know how the tolerances might stack up against you on any given day. As it is I suspect the chronograph they used would not agree with my chronograph, which is another variable that is difficult to plan for.

The Singularity Is Near

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One might say The Singularity Is Near:

AI Pores Over Old Scientific Papers, Makes Discoveries Overlooked By Humans

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory trained an AI called Word2Vec on scientific papers to see if there was any “latent knowledge” that humans weren’t able to grock on first pass.

The study, published in Nature on July 3, reveals that the algorithm found predictions for potential thermoelectric materials which can convert heat into energy for various heating and cooling applications.

…

“It can read any paper on material science, so can make connections that no scientists could,” said researcher Anubhav Jain. “Sometimes it does what a researcher would do; other times it makes these cross-discipline associations.“

The algorithm was designed to assess the language in 3.3 million abstracts from material sciences, and was able to build a vocabulary of around half-a-million words. Word2Vec used machine learning to analyze relationships between words.

“The way that this Word2vec algorithm works is that you train a neural network model to remove each word and predict what the words next to it will be,” said Jain, adding that “by training a neural network on a word, you get representations of words that can actually confer knowledge.“

…

As one example, researchers fed publications from before 2009 into the algorithm and were able to predict one of the most effective modern-day thermoelectric materials four years before it was actually discovered in 2012.

The technology isn’t restricted to materials science either – as it can be trained on a wide variety of disciplines by retraining it on literature from whichever subject for which one wants to provide a deeper analysis.

“This algorithm is unsupervised and it builds its own connections,” said the study’s lead author, Vahe Tshitoyan, adding “You could use this for things like medical research or drug discovery. The information is out there. We just haven’t made these connections yet because you can’t read every article.”

One could also say, with a similar amount of justification, Skynet smiles.

The Hard Truth, Episode 1: Media Bias #WalkAway

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Brandon Straka has an excellent video that should be shared with people who think the political left occupies the moral high ground:

Here is his YouTube channel where you can find similar material.

What the AR in AR-15 really means

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Some ignorant anti-gun people seem to think the AR in AR-15 means “Assault Rifle”. Some trolls deliberately say that just to get people worked up and to waste their time.

I’d like to definitely set the issue to rest with this post. The AR in AR-15 does not mean “Assault Rifle”.

Here, for present day applications, is the definitive definition of what AR means (given appropriate legal constraints):

AntifaRemover-15

H/T to Phoenix‏ @Phoenix81977532.

Antifa takes a casualty

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A domestic terrorist attacked the holding facility for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a few miles from where I live:

Early Saturday morning, that man, Willem Van Spronsen of Vashon Island, returned to the Northwest Detention Center, the holding facility for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, this time armed with a rifle and incendiary devices, according to Tacoma police.

Police said Van Spronsen tossed lit objects at vehicles and buildings, causing one car fire, and unsuccessfully tried to ignite a propane tank.

Officers were called by an ICE employee who saw the rifle. Soon after they arrived, officers reported “shots fired,” said Tacoma police spokeswoman Loretta Cool, although it is unclear who fired first or if Van Spronsen fired at all. The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office classified his death as a homicide.

The four responding officers all opened fire and then took cover, uninjured. After medical aid arrived, officers found Van Spronsen dead. He had multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s office.

The Puget Sound Anarchists are taking credit:

We Are The Fire That Will Melt ICE – Rest in power, Will Van Spronsen [Olympia WA]

…

Early this morning around 4am our friend and comrade Will Van Spronsen was shot and killed by the Tacoma police. All we know about what lead up to this comes from the cops, who are notoriously corrupt and unreliable sources for such a narrative. The story that we do have is that Will attempted to set fire to several vehicles, outbuildings and a propane tank outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma which houses hundreds of immigrants awaiting hearings or deportations. He successfully set one vehicle on fire and then exchanged gunfire with Tacoma police officers who fatally shot him. He was pronounced dead on the scene. We find his actions inspiring. The vehicles outside the detention facility are used to forcibly remove people from their homes and deport them, often to situations where they will face severe danger or death. Those vehicles being destroyed is only a start of what is needed. We wish the fires Will set had freed all the inmates and razed the entire Northwest Detention Center to the ground. And we miss our friend and wish from the bottom of our hearts that his action had not ended in his death.

Will Van Spronsen was a long-time anarchist, anti-fascist and a kind, loving person.

He left a letter before executing his attack. It sounds like he was deliberately committing suicide by cop (click to enlarge):
Spronson0

Spronson1

This is totally on the backs of the political left. They are the ones fanning the flames.

The police have been arresting some of these thugs. But I expect the violence will continue to increase until arrests, convictions, and the occasional justified homicides have thinned their ranks much further. It’s too bad the leaders of the political left are not taking legal heat but that’s not the way it works. It’s the useful idiots like the yesterday’s terrorist who pay the ultimate price for the political evil of the left.

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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Here in the United States, where we have the Second Amendment as the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, anybody who seriously believes the citizens will line up to just hand over their guns may be too delusional to be president.

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
July 8, 2019
DEM. CANDIDATES SHOULD TAKE LESSON FROM NEW ZEALAND, SAYS CCRKBA
[Mostly correct. It should be expanded to say the equivalent of, “…is too delusional to be elected to any political office.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matthew Larosiere

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You might notice that something seems off about a Democratic state senator sponsoring a bill loosening firearm restrictions, that law speeding through a Democrat-controlled legislature, and then a feverishly anti-gun governor stamping it with approval. The city knew a change in state law to preempt the city gun law, something the anti-gun crowd has consistently fought against, was the only way to strengthen the city’s mootness argument. This is merely a case of the city and state colluding to keep the Court from settling the matter once and for all.

Matthew Larosiere
July 11, 2019
New York City’s Dishonest Attempt to Squelch a Gun-Rights Lawsuit
[Of course they are being dishonest! It’s an essential part of the anti-gun culture.—Joe]

Attempting to pluck another low hanging fruit

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I like this:

Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF) announced the filing of an important amicus brief in the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals in the criminal appeal of U.S.A. v. Raphael Hunt-Irving, which challenges the federal lifetime ban on firearm possession by even non-violent felons. The brief was authored by FPC attorney and Legal Fellow Joseph Greenlee, a Second Amendment expert and historian. A copy of the court filing can be accessed at www.firearmspolicy.org/legal.

This isn’t a really big deal like challenging the laws on suppressors or bans on modern sporting rifles but it is a low hanging fruit that, potentially, can be used to get more precedent established in our favor. After winning a bunch of these battles winning on the big issues will be more likely.

My employer (by matching dollar for dollar my donations) and I are giving FPF money each month.

Quote of the day—Andy Ngo @MrAndyNgo

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But now I recognize, you know, they nearly killed me on the 29th. And I can’t be so naïve as to think that the police will actually be protecting citizens, law abiding citizens, anymore.

…

The provocation to them can be just existing with the wrong ideas. You saw how they, I mean, it’s still surreal to me to see the mainstream response to the Covington boys. Like this visceral hatred for somebody because of the look on their face or the hat they were wearing.

Andy Ngo @MrAndyNgo
July 8, 2019
Antifa Attack, What Is Happening In Portland? | Andy Ngo | Rubin Report

[H/T to William Taylor.

At an hour and 15 minutes it is a bit long but I found myself drawn more and more into it. The first paragraph of the quote above is at about 59:34 in the video. The second paragraph is from about 1:09:15.

As I listened to the first part of the quote above I immediately thought, “He still has a lot of naivety. The police have never been required to protect people. He needs to read Dial 911 and Die.”

 

The second paragraph above hit me the hardest with the word surreal. I’ve read a lot of books about the Holocaust, the mass murders of the the USSR, and the genocides of Rwanda, Uganda, Ottoman Turkey, and many others. And three books on what Japan did in Nanking in 1937 and 1938.

Surreal is how many of the people who lived through those horrific events described it as things became more and more deadly. Those people didn’t think it could happen there. But in hindsight they discovered the signs were all there. With refuge parents from South Vietnam Ngo is far less naïve than most but still he has difficulty believing the facts.

It is easy to extrapolate from our present day situation into a horrible nightmare. Don’t let a normalcy bias pull you in too far. Look at the facts and judge them rationally.—Joe]

The truth is no defense

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John Lott reports in the New York Daily News:

Twitter has locked my account. I can’t post anything or read messages from other users. The reason? In March, I tweeted that the perpetrator of the New Zealand mosque shooting was “a socialist, environmentalist, who hates capitalists & free trade.” I also wrote that the killer believed his attack would “lead to more gun control” in New Zealand and the United States.

What I tweeted was entirely accurate, and Twitter hasn’t bothered to provide me with an explanation for why they locked my account, but they have made clear that it was this tweet that supposedly violated their terms.

Just as in the USSR and so many other authoritarian countries the truth is no defense. You must also adhere to that which is politically correct or suffer the consequences. In the USSR if you didn’t get a bullet to the back of the head it was five to ten years in the Gulag for expressing an uncomfortable truth which questioned the political narrative. It’s exceedingly clear we have people in this country sharing the belief of their authoritarian brethren that silencing political opponents is appropriate.

Fortunately we don’t have a majority of them in positions of political power such that they can enforce bullets to the back of the head or banishment to Siberian Gulags for expressing the truth in public here.

At least not yet.

Remember the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and keep your guns read for use should the situation change.

Quote of the day—Alex of Ammo.com

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As the Pink Pistols motto says, “Armed gays don’t get bashed.” And whilst LGBT people are still victims of violence at a much higher rate than the general public, the community as a whole and notable members of it are beginning to fight back.

From training in self defense and carrying concealed to supporting LGBT-friendly gun stores and shooting ranges, there is a rise in gun-carrying LGBT people who are learning to protect themselves and those they love.

Alex of Ammo.com
Self Defense for LGBT: Self-Protection and Concealed Carry (CCW) for the LGBT Community
[It’s a good post. There was a lot of detailed history of LGBT rights, some of which I didn’t know about. And I thought I was pretty up to speed on that sort of thing. And the self-defense advice was good too, regardless of your sexual orientation.

A lesbian couple I know has been talking about going to the range with me to get some training. I keep saying that they just need to pick a day and time. I suspect it will happen before the summer is over. I wish there were more LGBT people getting on the pro self-defense side of the political aisle. Being a perpetual victim is not healthy for them or society.—Joe]

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

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Even for those who fail to acknowledge that the existence of rights is not subject to public sentiment, making the issue a cornerstone of their campaigns it doesn’t seem to be working. Does that mean that Second Amendment supporters can call an early win? Certainly not. But perhaps we can take some comfort in knowing that gun control may not the slam-dunk that Democratic candidates – and much of the media – believe it to be.

NRA-ILA
July 8, 2019
Recent Poll Shows Gun Control Not as Popular as Some Would Like to Believe
[Gun control isn’t a slam dunk. Claims of “90% of people what background checks” and other outlandish claims are garbage. But it’s popular enough we have to put up some stiff resistance to hold our ground.

Do what you can. Donate money and/or time to pro Second Amendment groups. Come out of the closet as a gun owner. Take a new shooter to the range. Get people interested in the shooting sports. Contact your representatives and politely tell them what you think of restrictions on our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]

Interesting times

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Via a comment from Chet:

You have wonder if this is what it was like in the middle 1930’s for minorities in Nazi Germany. There was a double standard enforced by both society and government when laws and social norms were violated. And people just kept accepting the increasing levels of injustice. They must have thought, “This is crazy! It has to get better soon, right?”

No. It doesn’t have to get better from here. Mass hysteria can go to lengths that are unimaginable to people that haven’t lived through it.

Currently pointing out reality can get you censored, fired from your job, and banished from social media and by your friends. This bad, but not as bad as it can get. At many times and places insistence on reality has resulted in a death sentence.

Quote of the day—Gabriel Suarez

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What were we fleeing that was so horrible? Communism. We weren’t fleeing global warming, or capitalism-created poverty, or any of today’s tear-jerking, media-popular reasons. We were fleeing communism. The same communism that is being played out daily in Venezuela. The same communism that some historically illiterate politicians are embracing. The same communism that the American academic scene has become orgasmic about. The same communism that the black hooded thugs of ANTIFA want to shed blood over. Communism, socialism, or what ever the next deceptive name its given is all the same, a poison to the human spirit that we will refuse to ingest.

What exactly is communism? Before anyone even suggests they know the answer to that, they must set down their experience in the matter. Having an advanced degree from some left-leaning university doesn’t count. Nor does it count if all you did was read a book by some alcoholic writer extolling its virtues. And if the only reason a political group is adopting communist ideals is that communism directly contradicts the American President and what he represents, then that person is not only a traitor to America, but the worst kind of deceiver known to mankind.

Just like only a Holocaust survivor’s words can accurately describe the evil of Hitler’s Nazi machine, the only person that can talk with credibility and authority on the nature and reality of communism is one who has lived it in person firsthand.

Communism stifles the human spirit by denying everyone the opportunity to excel and better themselves. It confiscates what it considers “excess” from those who build things, and keeps it for its own purposes. Communism forces everyone to become servants of the government by nationalizing industry (that means they come and take your business), confiscating wealth (they go to the bank and physically take your money by force), indoctrinate the young through the educational system (they make little communists out of your kids), and require children to inform on their parents. They ration food, water, medicine, and fuel. They regulate religion until they can eliminate it.

And for those who suggest that what is happening is wrong, they have squads of armed communists that will find such people and kill them. Sometimes the murders will be through horrific tortures, or public street executions to send a message. Other times, by simply snatching them up and throwing them in a cell for years without any hope of reprieve.
Those who have lived under communism, and seen its result, feel about it in the same way that Jews feel about Hitler and his Nazi machine. And yet, while nobody is suggesting we give Nazism another shot, some are suggesting that very thing about communism.

…

…to the communists among us, a warning. No matter what you do, think, or accomplish. At some point the answer will be clear from those of us who know what communism is and leads to. Never again. I think you know what that means.

Gabriel Suarez
July 5, 2019
AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA
[H/T to Adam McIntosh.

I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—✳Logan✳ @Loganjefferyals

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Do all #Conservative men have down there and feel it’s necessary to compensate by having the biggest #gun possible? They sure get #Triggered when you point out that the Fore Fathers wouldn’t stand for the current relaxed gun laws in this country.

✳Logan✳ @Loganjefferyals
Tweeted on June 23, 2019
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Logan gets a crap for brains tag as well. There were no federal gun laws until long after the founders were dead.—Joe]

Celebrate diversity

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I’m all about diversity. Let me share a little bit of it with you.

I found this on Gab via Jan Conboy @javelina:

BulletDiversity

My bullet collection is far more diverse than this but I don’t have a good picture of it.

I have this to keep some of the mud out of the hitch on my SUV:

I received this shirt on Friday from Maj Toure @MAJTOURE:

20190707_170935

And from 13 years ago:

4th of July truth

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Via Dana Loesch:

OnlyBecause

Quote of the day—Aesop

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Freedom isn’t free.

We can pointlessly argue “Should be” all we want. If people aren’t willing to kick up a fuss over these kinds of jackassical laws, they’ll lose the rights they don’t defend.

Aesop
July 3, 2019
You Get The Rights You’ll Defend. And No More.
[Truth.

There are some suggestions for dealing with the stupid ammo restrictions that recently went into effect in California. We should be engaged in some creative thinking for dealing with the idiotic laws in other states too.—Joe]