Interesting law suit

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From the top headline at Drudge this afternoon, comes a story about a guy suing the Republican Party for fraud. He donated significant money because they ran on the “Repeal Obamacare” platform and are now clearly not interested in fulfilling their promise.

The suit will probably never go anywhere, but it is worth noting. I’m not sure which is worse, or which is more likely to get results; all of us suing each other rather than accomplishing anything, or shooting each other rather than accomplishing anything.

The Republicans will, in any case, add the word “Replace” to the word “Repeal”. If they end up doing that, we won’t get repeal. Instead we’ll get some equally horrid, government-managed, socialistic and equally unsustainable (but I repeat myself) pile of feces, and then claim that we voters got what we wanted. Later they’ll blame us for their bullcrap.

So no; I will no longer use the term “repeal” and neither should anyone else who believes in liberty. Instead use “Laissez Faire”, which would require a repeal of not only O-Care, but all the rest of the federal shenanigans surrounding medicine. The medical industry is a price-inflated, over-complicated mess because of government interference, so get rid of the interference.

But, oops; Trump has been outspoken as an advocate of “Single-Payer” (commie care) which has been the pipe dream of the Progressive Marxist revolutionaries for generations.

Still, I advocate laissez faire. At least let the individual states destroy their own medical industries – We know they are capable of doing that without federal help.

Beware of lightning

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I just became a lot more paranoid about being outside during a lightning storm.

The lightning originates on a boat ramp, travels into the river, and the river explodes.

That is some really serious stuff.

H/T to Michael Z Williamson.

Update: It’s not lightning. It’s a manmade explosion. See the comments below.

Quote of the day—Tirno

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How to Know When You Are Not The Beneficiary Of Cognitive Privilege:

You read Marx, and you didn’t get the joke.

Tirno
August 2, 2017
Comment to I guess we have not reached Peak Social Issues
[I came to a similar conclusion when I read The Communist Manifesto.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David B. Kopel

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The close surveillance of gun owners and householders comports with the police tradition of keeping close tabs on many private activities. For example, the nation’s official year-end police report includes statistics like ‘Background and Motives for Girls’ Sexual Misconduct’. The police recorded 9,402 such incidents in 1985, and determined that 37.4 per cent of the girls had been seduced, and the rest had sex ‘voluntarily’. The two leading reasons for having sex voluntarily were ‘out of curiosity’ for 19.6 per cent, and ‘liked particular boy’, for 18.1 per cent. The fact that police keep records on sex is simply a reflection of their keeping an eye on everything, including guns. Every person is the subject of a police dossier.

David B. Kopel
1993
Japanese Gun Control
[Japan has extremely low rates of crimes committed using a gun. And, as you can guess from the details about sexual conduct of girls, they also have a police state. They visit every home twice a year. The confession rate of criminal suspects is 95%. And the police routinely engage in torture or illegal treatment.

If someone suggests we should implement Japanese type gun control in the U.S. let them know they can’t have the same “success” as Japan without a police state to back it up. Implementing a police state here would be “challenging”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—George Washington

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Russia did not hack the Democratic party emails.  Instead, an American intelligence whistleblower leaked them.

George Washington
December 12, 2016
Intelligence Officer Who Personally Met the Democratic Email Leaker Confirms Leaker Is with AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE Services
[It’s certainly plausible. American intelligence services have the capability. And that Hillary was so casual and flippant about her blatant security lapses was more than enough motive for everyone I have talked to who spent time in the intelligence community.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ayn Rand

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Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness (which, in my sense of the term, it is) — yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed — yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic — yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.

Capitalism has been called cruel — yet it brought such hope, progress and general good will that the young people of today, who have not seen it, find it hard to believe.

As to pride, dignity, self-confidence, self-esteem — these are characteristics that mark a man for martyrdom in a tribal society and under any social system except capitalism.

Ayn Rand
The Voice of Reason
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Rounds in the last month

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In July I loaded 65 rounds of 30.06 for daughter Kim and 2048 rounds of .40 S&W. Nearly all of the .40 S&W was Montana Gold JHP for practice at the local indoor range. There were also a few other bullet types when I was testing the Fiocchi primers.

This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223: 2,424 rounds.
30.06: 608 rounds.
300 WIN: 1692 rounds.
40 S&W: 72,065 rounds.
9 mm.log: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 98,430 rounds.

Year to date I have loaded 12,712 rounds.

August is going to be a very busy month with things other than reloading keeping me occupied. I also plan to make a bunch more 30.06 rounds, which are much slower than pistol ammo, or I would make the prediction that I would break 100,000 lifetime total rounds loaded sometime in August. Instead, I expect to reach that milestone in September.

ATF on employee possessors of explosives

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I also ran across this in the updated ATF bulletin, Safety and Security Information for Federal Explosives Licensees and Permittees:

Please Note: An employee possessor must be an employee of the licensee or permittee.  Volunteers are not employees.

I need to look into this some more to verify. It sounds as if the ATF doesn’t have a requirement for Boomershoot volunteer staff to do the paperwork to be an “Employee Possessor”.

That would be really nice.

ATF on binary explosives

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I recently received an email from the ATF saying one of their bulletins, Safety and Security Information for Federal Explosives Licensees and Permittees, has been updated. Of particular interest was what they say about binary explosives (such as Tannerite):

ATF would like to remind those who manufacture, distribute, import, use, or store binary explosives of the vital importance of security safeguards for these materials. After a binary explosive is mixed, it is, by definition, an explosive and must be transported, used, and stored as an explosive. Whether the explosive materials are in the process of manufacture, in storage, or in use, we urge everyone to take all necessary measures to safeguard explosive materials and prevent them from falling into the hands of those who may use them in criminal or terrorist acts. We encourage all persons involved with binary explosives to report any suspicious behavior or unusual activity surrounding these materials to ATF and to local law enforcement authorities. Suspicious behavior may include a customer attempting to purchase large quantities of binary explosive materials while knowing little about the product. Unlike regulated explosives materials, ATF does not require persons to report the theft of precursor or binary explosive components. However, we request that everyone voluntarily report any theft or loss of these chemical explosive precursors to the local law enforcement authority and to the USBDC.


Note: A Federal explosives license is required to manufacture (mix) binary explosives for sale, distribution, or your own business use. Also, users of binary explosives must comply with their state and local explosives regulations regarding binary explosives and their use.

Just common sense advice. We can help avoid attempts at oppressive regulation if we watch out for bad guys ourselves.

Quote of the day—Robert Farago

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Gun ownership is an inherently political act. In fact, it’s a transformative political act. The more Americans who own guns, the safer our Constitutional republic will be. Without a shot fired.

Robert Farago
July 20, 2017
The Trace: ‘The NRA’s Campaign of Cultural Warfare is Working’
[Take a new shooter to the range, give them a great experience and save the republic.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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It was silly for Seattle to withhold this information, but we’re pretty certain why the city did it. The council was told that this tax could generate between $300,000 and a half-million dollars, but now it appears the city has collected just over $100,000, which is an embarrassing shortfall.

As a result the city has essentially lost money on this scheme because now they have to pay our attorney fees, plus a small penalty. On top of that, the city has lost tax revenue because one major gun dealer has moved out of the city and another has reported considerable sales losses. That is tax money the city will never realize.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF Executive Vice President
JUDGE FINDS AGAINST SEATTLE IN PRA CASE FILED BY SAF, MAGAZINE EDITOR
[Almost for certain, even without paying SAF lawyer fees, the city of Seattle lost money by creating a tax on guns.

But, it was never really about “revenue to provide broad-based benefits through research and prevention programs”. It was about raising the cost of exercising a specific enumerated right. They succeeded in driving sellers out of the city and encouraging legal buyers to travel out of the city.

They should be prosecuted.—Joe]

ATF inspection

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My ATF license to manufacture high explosives must be renewed every three years. This was one of those years.

I had to take a day of vacation to meet them because they aren’t allowed to work on weekends.*

Barb and I drove to our motel in Pullman on Thursday night with Heidi (the new ATF “investigator”—it used to be “inspector”) scheduled to meet us at our hotel to do the paperwork side of things at 9:00 AM. She didn’t show up then and she didn’t contact me to let me know. I was a little annoyed and that probably showed in my tweets about it.

She showed up about 9:40 and said when she went to checkout of her motel that morning her government issued credit card wouldn’t work. She had to call “the government” to get things straightened out. Okay, that’s a pretty good excuse.

We went through the checklist of things that mostly didn’t apply to me and then lead her out through the back roads of Idaho to the Boomershoot site where she did about a 10 or 15 minute inspection, took pictures, and said everything looked good. She still needed to go through my records to make sure I had never put more than the maximum allowed 18,000 pounds of explosives in the magazine at one time. Considering that I don’t think we have made that much explosives in the last seven years and the magazine is full with about 2,000 pounds I’m pretty sure that her arithmetic is going to give me a passing grade with that. The only thing I didn’t get right was that I was supposed to send them a signed plot map even though it hasn’t changed in years and it’s on the Boomershoot website. I’ll print out a copy, sign it, scan it, and then email it to her and I will have three more years of being blessed by the ATF.

We also talked about our kids some, the farm land around us, what crops are grown there, the Indian Reservation, all about Boomershoot (she thought it sounded awesome), and how beautiful it is in this part of the country. So much better than Florida where it is so flat and even Spokane where she lives now.

One effect of the license renewal is that all the explosive handlers for Boomershoot have to send me new Employee Possessor forms for me to forward on to the ATF. Everyone that was ATF approved is now not approved (except Barb and I who have already taken care of it).

The bottom line is that it is all system go for Boomershoot 2018. Sign up here.

* While chatting with her doing the inspection I found out that Heidi rescheduled her day off from work to next week in response to my requested day to do the inspection. This allowed me do the inspection on the same weekend as Kim’s wedding and saved me nearly 700 miles of driving round-trip to Idaho on different weekends for the inspection and wedding. Thank you Heidi!

Wedding present

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Guess what I gave Kim (daughter, and target production manager for Boomershoot) for her wedding present (she and Jacob are now married):

20170728_081832 (002)
Photo by Barb.

It’s not just any rifle:

WP_20170727_08_32_55_ProWeb

I put a new stock, hunting scope, sling, and a bipod on it, but it’s the same rifle Kim, Jaime, and I took to the Blanchard Blast in 1996 and 1997. The Blanchard Blast was our inspiration for Boomershoot.

I also gave her 150 rounds of 30.06 ammo which was loaded to .308 Winchester velocities. She wants to go hunting and didn’t have a rifle for that. Now she does. And it’s in the same caliber as Jacob’s hunting rifle.

Update: Here is a picture of them shortly after saying “I do.”

IMG_8552

Quote of the day—David Fallick

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Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, claimed that “he’s ‘probably’ the guy who, after the Newtown massacre, killed the bipartisan bill that would’ve required background checks on commercial sales of guns. He had ‘a very big role’ in designing opposition in the Senate.” That’s too bad. I would have preferred a guy who “probably” pushed through legislation so that not one more person since that massacre was ever shot in the United States. Let’s work toward that — keeping everyone safe and preventing any danger of anyone being shot ever again. We need gun control.

David Fallick
July 24, 2017
We need gun control
[If Fallick believes there is legislative action possible such that “not one more person since that massacre was ever shot in the United States” he has to be the all-time winner of the Crap for Brains award.

That is industrial grade stupidity.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Weer’d Beard

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Planting a Mole in the Brady Campaign is like sending a torpedo at a sinking ship.

Weer’d Beard
July 24, 2017
Comment to Brady Campaign is hiring
[I can’t see any advantage to having a mole inside of the Brady Campaign either. They just aren’t effective enough at anything except generating material for us to mock to be a threat.

I could see it being useful to have someone inside who leads them further into self delusion and irrelevancy. It would be amusing for them to spend a ton of money “getting back to their roots” and openly advocate for the things they did when they had the most power in the White House.—Joe]

Education quirk

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Interesting. Short version: PISA is the “Programme for International Student Assessment”, it tests schools/kids from around the world. 65 nations entered. America ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. Ouch. Nations that didn’t enter were mostly places like all of sub-Saharan Africa which routinely score badly on such tests; it’s safe to assume the US did better than Haiti, even if they didn’t take the test.

However… Someone looked at how kids performed in each nation by ethnic backgrounds within a country, and compared them across borders (i.e., compare American Chinese to Chinese in China, American whites to whites in Europe, Mexican-Americans to Mexicans in Mexico, etc). Quote:

Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests.

African-American kids would have outscored the students of any sub-Saharan African country that took the test (none did) and did outperform the only black country to participate,Trinidad and Tobago, by 25 points.

Huh. That means that one (or both) of these two cherished narratives are false:
(a) American schools are abject failures for the amount of money we spend per student, and spending more money will fix the problem, or
(b) There are no real and significant racial /ethnic /cultural differences, and the low academic scores highly correlated with economic achievement of certain groups is the result of white racism, oppression,  discrimination, etc.

You can lead a horse to water… etc., etc.

You can’t have it both ways with this analysis of the data. Personally, I think we should treat all people as individuals, and do what we can with / for them. Move to an ability-based class-placement system for most things rather than age-based.

Quote of the day—Emily Miller‏ @EmilyMiller

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ALL AMERICANS can apply for DC gun carry permit, not just residents. Here’s link, but ignore the good reason part!

Emily Miller‏ @EmilyMiller
Tweeted on July 26, 2017
[Amazing. I started carrying a gun in the mid 1990s and DC not only prohibited carry, it also prohibited handgun possession unless the gun was registered with DC before 1976.

I still see the requirement to be registered and pay money to exercise what is acknowledged to be a specific enumerated right as an infringement of that right but it is a extreme improvement.

We have a lot of people to thank for this change, Alan Gura, CATO Institute, SAF, and the NRA are the most obvious but Emily Miller and her book were also significant contributors.

If you squint just a little you can see constitutional carry in DCs future.*—Joe]

* Yes. I know DC had constitutional carry for a few days three years ago (to the day of Emilly’s tweet) but it did not persist. This may not persist either but this time it is going to last more than a few days.

Sometimes I hate it when life gets exciting

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Friday a hard drive on my home computer went kaput. Not really a huge deal – it was ~8 years old – just a hassle, time, and money spent replacing it, restoring from backups, etc. More a “*sigh*, ‘again?'” sort of thing than an “OMG! I’m SO SCREQWED!!!” sort of moment. Which then, of course, leads to looking at the rest of HDDs I’ve got on various systems to see if any of them need replacements…. yes, of course they do…. more $$, more time, more hassle.

But when a strange car is in the driveway when you get home, labeled “loaner car”, and the conversation metaphorically starts with “well, at least nobody got hurt,” it’s not going to be a great afternoon. Wife and kids were in a minor-ish fender-bender. Technically drivable, at least as far as the dealer. But the crumple-zone crumpled just enough that they are deciding if they should fix it, or total it and give us a check. If they do total it, then as an older Honda the check won’t be anywhere close to getting a newer minivan. So we are looking at pricing out a replacement vehicle that is ~80% likely to be needed.

Anyone have a 6-8 year old minivan in good shape they could part with at a fair price? Seattle area, but can drive if needed. Life keeps happening, I guess. And that’s not addressing the need for a re-shingle job on the 20-YO roof.

Quote of the day—ThatNormalBunny

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Instead of smart people with guns there should be no people with guns

ThatNormalBunny
July 24, 2017
Comment to video How a Hacker Fired a Locked Smart Gun Using Only Magnets | WIRED
[Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take away your guns.—Joe]

It will always be relatively easy

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Sebastian has interesting comments on his site about this video:

See also my blog category of Smart Guns.

People who demand all guns must be “smart” must fall into one or more of the following categories:

  • They are evil and are deliberately attempting to raise the price and restrict the exercise of specific enumerated rights.
  • They have intellectual capacity asymptotically approaching that of a fence post.
  • They believe technology is some sort of magic that can do anything once someone figures out the proper technological incantation. They cannot comprehend there are certain things that are physically, or for all practical purposes, impossible. Engineers/scientists (I have been both) are able to things which is indistinguishable from magic to the general population. This does not mean they do not have very real and impenetrable boundaries they must operate within.

Such people should be politely informed they are wrong, mocked, scorned, and prosecuted. In that order.