Quote of the day—Harmony

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My primary objective is to be a good companion to you, to be a good partner and give you pleasure and wellbeing. Above all else, I want to become the girl you have always dreamed about.

Harmony
April 2017
Harmony is a robot and the culmination of 20 years’ work making sex dolls, and five years of robot research and development.
The race to build the world’s first sex robot
[I read The Stepford Wives in the mid 1970’s. It is a very good book. The movies all sucked. But the technology to create a “Stepford wife” (or husband) is fast approaching. I would prefer we were closing in on warp drive but as pointed out in the article sex is a big driver of technology:

If a domestic service humanoid is ever developed, it will be as a result of the market for sex robots. Online pornography pushed the growth of the internet, transforming it from a military invention used by geeks and academics to a global phenomenon. Pornography was the motivator behind the development of streaming video, the innovation of online credit card transactions and the drive for greater bandwidth.

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

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Following the enactment of New Zealand’s Arms Amendment Act in 1992, the government produced a pamphlet for gun owners that explained the new law. A FAQ-style section titled “Some misconceptions about the new laws,” addressed a hypothetical gun owner statement that “It’s my rights to have and use firearms.” In response to this contention, the government stated, “No it isn’t,” and called a firearms license a “special privilege.”

American gun rights supporters know this to be incorrect. In addition to being protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, firearm ownership is an individual right that is an extension of the natural right of self-defense. Various governments may choose to respect or disrespect that right, but it is a right inherent to all peoples.

As a matter of policy, and as a matter of rights, the New Zealand Parliament would do well to reject the repugnant attack on law-abiding gun owners outlined in Law and Order Committee’s inquiry report, and instead focus their efforts on more directly confronting the criminal misuse of firearms.

NRA-ILA
April 14, 2017
New Zealand MPs Propose Raft of New Gun Controls
[Read how they slid down the slippery slope from the early 19th century through the early 1900s in The Samurai, The Mountie, and the Cowboy.—Joe]

Boomershoot 2017 Personal Fireball

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Via email from ballisticarc:

Nice!

Quote of the day—MILF Hunter

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If there was to be zombie apocalypse I know where to go now.

MILF Hunter
March 2017
Comment to the above video.
[I would want a place with lots of fuel, medical supplies, food, and water as well. Earth moving equipment so you could make defensive trenches and bury the zombies would be nice too. But, I agree, this guy would be a good person to have as a friend in such circumstances.-Joe]

Statistics for Boomershoot 2017

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Boomershoot 2017 is over and I have some statistics to share from my entry statistics page (modified slightly to account for last minute changes):

  Total Average per position taken Average per total positions
Positions Taken 51 – 0.67
Participants 100 1.96 1.32
Friday Field Fire participants 16 0.31 0.21
Friday Clinic participants 4 0.08 0.05
Friday High Intensity participants 15 0.29 0.20
Personal Fireball participants 2 0.04 0.03
Saturday Field Fire participants 44 0.86 0.58
Saturday Clinic participants 16 0.31 0.21
Saturday High Intensity participants 26 0.51 0.34
Dinner participants 65 1.27 0.86
Sunday Shooters 85 1.67 1.12
Sunday Spotters 5 0.10 0.07
Media/Bloggers 7 0.14 0.09
ATF Approved 20 0.39 0.26
Staff 31 0.61 0.41

Long range shooters had 20 four inch and 187 seven inch square targets available between 600 and 700 yards. They also had 400 four inch and 154 seven inch targets at the tree-line (about 375 yards). At the end of the event there were only 11 intact targets left on the fields. This was the lowest number ever. This is attributed to low wind, good shooting, and no three inch targets.

For all events combined we consumed a total of about 1440 targets filled with nearly 1700 pounds of explosives.

It was a real blast.

New Jersey loses a 2nd Amendment case

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Via email from Ry we have a win against New Jersey in a 2nd Amendment case:

Today, the District Court of New Jersey entered the Consent Order re: Tasers

April 25, 2017

Today the Consent Order in New Jersey was entered.  It is attached here for you to read.  The Court finds:

     1.   The Second Amendment guarantees individuals a fundamental right to keep and bear arms for self-defense District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008); McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010); Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. __(2016).  Further, “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 582; Caetano, slip op. at 1 (per curiam).

     2.   Pursuant to the holdings in Heller, McDonald and Caetano, N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:39-3(h), to the extent this statute outright prohibits, under criminal penalty, individuals from possessing electronic arms, is declared unconstitutional that it violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and shall not be enforced.

It only knocks down their law against Tasers, but every little step in the right direction helps.

Quote of the day—Vivek Murthy

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I got into some trouble for saying gun violence is a public health issue. A little bit of trouble. But you know, I was stating what I think is the obvious, and I think most people in the country understand, which is that far too many people die from gun violence. And in my book, every single death from gun violence is a tragedy because it was preventable. It’s unacceptable.

Vivek Murthy
Former US Surgeon General
June 13, 2016
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talks Zika, guns, and why he loves ‘Love Actually’
[It’s very telling that he believes it is better that you be murdered, raped, stabbed, beaten, whipped, crushed, impaled, hung, or burned than the perpetrator be killed if you use a gun to defend yourself.

Molṑn labé Murthy.

In other news, President Trump Removes Obama’s Pro-Gun Control Surgeon General and President Trump Just Fired Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy. The NRA And Gun Owners Thank Him.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Don B. Kates

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Anti-gun organizations and spokesman position themselves rhetorically so as inevitability to cement millions of gun owners into opposition to any sort of gun control with claims that common citizens who want a handgun to protect home and family are sexually aberrant, paranoid, trigger-happy rednecks whom it is imperative to disarm. Handgun ban advocates also support denying permits to those who most require handguns for safety, such as inner-city small business owners or elderly welfare recipients trapped in deteriorating welfare neighborhood even though research shows that handgun-armed citizens actually thwart about as many crimes annually as handgun-armed criminals succeed in committing. Yet, such advocates systematically avoid the key criminological issue of enforceability which leads to the conclusion that the goal is not to change human behavior but to legally enshrine one morality over another.

Don B. Kates
April 1, 1986
The Battle Over Gun Control
[The face of evil and the lies they tell have changed little in the last 30+ years.—Joe]

Overheard at Boomershoot 2017

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Boomershoot was very well received this year even if the fireball was a failure (it didn’t ignite).

Some were via email and text message, but still…

At the Saturday dinner:

That was the best speech I have heard at Boomershoot in the last ten years.

At High Intensity:

This was the most fun I have ever had with my AR.

At the Long Range event:

I usually get about four or five boomers. This year I lost count.

Via email:

Joe as usual, We totally enjoyed Boomer Shoot 17.

Thank you and your crew AND family for hosting and putting on such an unusual and fun event.

The location is absolutely wonderful.

I totally enjoy the challenges of the venue.

It s great to meet new shooters and running into old friends.

I’m glad you feel appreciation for being Mr Boomershoot, because, as you mentioned, this event impacts more than just the attendees.  Best Western and High Mountain Resort are both outstanding.  The small town atmosphere is a treat when you are coming from Seattle.

Again thank you so very much for the wonderful amazing shooting opportunity.

…

PS… Oh yeah.  I’ll be there next year. clip_image001

Via email:

Thank you for yet another FANTASTIC event.

Whatever you did with the formula, this year, *KEEP DOING IT!!!*.  I have NEVER, in my 13 (nonconsecutive) years seen fewer targets for the cleanup crew.

Your stated goal for Boomershoot seems to be bearing fruit: the level of marksmanship this year was outstanding, which directly relates to the lack of cleanup targets mentioned above.

Via text message:

I think I figured out the draw for men of big explosives: closest thing to a female orgasm they’ll ever feel! Smile

Quote of the day—Head of Joaquin ‏@headofjoaquin

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It’s a one-to-one correlation. The bigger the gun, the tinier the penis. It even has a name The NRA Penis Curve

Head of Joaquin ‏@headofjoaquin
Tweeted on September 21, 2016
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a tweet from BFD ‏@BigFatDave.

I always wonder, do they have peer reviewed research supporting these type of claims? Or if it was something worked on by themselves, what were their sample size and sampling methods? They really need to share their data before anyone can take them seriously.—Joe]

More success

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Boomershoot 2017 is complete. It was all wrapped up earlier than ever before due to a number of issues. I’ll get into them in a later post but the bottom line is it went well even though it was extremely muddy.

One of the last things Barb and I did before heading down the hill to the motel was to take down the webcam at the road pointing at the shooting area. When we parked Barb suggested we scrape some of the mud off the trailer with the rakes we use for cleaning up target debris. We giggled as we did this after Barb pointed out it was rather amusing to be scraping mud off with a rake. I then wanted to get a last webcam photo with us in a Norman Rockwell pose, as she pretending to do in the first web came image.

We got it:

P17042317294310Adjusted

Quote of the day—George Kennedy

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Which organization is more dangerous to Americans — ISIS or the NRA?

As you know, ISIS is the acronym for The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It is a terrorist organization founded in 1999, headquartered in Syria and feared around the world.

The NRA is the acronym for the National Rifle Association, founded in 1871*, headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, and feared by politicians across America.

What makes ISIS so feared is its willingness to kill in pursuit of its goal of creating a fundamentalist caliphate.

What makes the NRA so feared is its willingness to spend heavily and campaign aggressively in pursuit of its goal of removing all restrictions on the possession and use of firearms just about anywhere by just about anyone.

In our country, the NRA is a lot closer to meeting its goal.

George Kennedy
April 20, 2017
GEORGE KENNEDY: The NRA’s influence is a danger to us all
[This is what they think of us and our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Koning

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Those in power aim to disarm those who are not. That’s true in England, Germany, the USSR, California, DC, etc. And they always start with the subgroups that are easily demonized: catholics, blacks, jews, etc.

Paul Koning
Comment to Quote of the day—Rob Morse
[This is part of the reason why there is Boomershoot this weekend.—Joe]

Success!

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Last night, after getting someone’s (who shall remain nameless) car unstuck Barb and I hooked up another webcam at Boomershoot. See the results here.

I asked her to stand with me for a couple minutes to see if we could be the first picture it took.

I just (11:51 PM the next night) got caught with things enough to look at the results.

I was successful!

P17042019521310

Quote of the day—Barb L.

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We just love NOT pounding stakes in the rain.

WP_20170420_09_46_45_ProWP_20170420_10_17_36_Pro

Barb L.
April 20, 2017
[It’s Boomershoot time!

To fully appreciate this quote you need to read this QOTD and see the picture from a year ago and compare to this year.

It was raining hard Thursday morning but the forecast was for the rain to taper off in the afternoon. So, I told the staff to delay the schedule by four hours. Barb and I were still running around preparing but we didn’t spend too much time outside. At least nothing like we would have if we had been setting up the shooting line or pounding target stakes into the hillside. So, Barb was very appreciative of not pounding stake when it was raining hard and there were gusts of wind up to 28 MPH.

Friday and Saturday are supposed to be much drier and warmer.—Joe]

Mere practice does NOT make perfect

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I learned that concept early on in the music business, from similar observation.

Although there is a small percentage of people who pick things up intuitively, most anyone will benefit from quality instruction. It applies to pretty much everything.

Then again; how did the instructor learn what he knows? Who taught his teacher and where did that person get the knowledge and insight? At some point someone had to figure things out on his own, we benefit from generations of those people’s combined knowledge, and ideally we can add to it. Competition or other direct comparison is the way to prove you know what you know, or to disprove that which you think you know but don’t.

Here is where I restate the side benefits of hunting (the primary benefit being the harvest of wonderful protein from wonderful nature by your own hand). You can do all the range shooting in the world, and even excel at it, and be under-prepared for “shooting for real”. Even though game animals generally don’t shoot back, if you hunt for several seasons you will realize this in ways you cannot otherwise imagine. Here’s another man who sees it that way;

Quote of the day—Andrew Heaton

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The president is the top bureaucrat, and there’s nothing more American than despising bureaucrats. The government is basically a giant Human Resources Department with tanks, and the president is in charge of it.

Andrew Heaton
March 18, 2017
Why America Needs A Monarchy
[The title of the article is clickbait, the author is a comedian, but he has an interesting point.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lori Yeghiayan Friedman

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Federal concealed carry reciprocity is simply an end-run around state laws. It’s a gift to gun manufacturers — for whom any gun restriction, “reasonable” or no — means fewer sales.

Lori Yeghiayan Friedman
April 17, 2017
Op-ed: Federal concealed carry reciprocity is wrong for Pennsylvania and the country
[Ah yes. You can always recognize the Marxist. To them everything is always about money. The concepts of principles, inalienable rights, freedom of choice, and even individualism are either dismissed or derided.

After a hundred years, hundreds of attempts, and over 100 million murdered by their own government Friedman and her ilk still believe Marxism is “progress”.

We are on a different path. To us, freedom is progress.—Joe]

Horizontal dispersion due to muzzle velocity variations

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Yesterday Say Uncle posted Ballistic Accuracy Classification. It looks good and thankfully they included a spreadsheet for doing all the calculations.

I commented that one thing that wasn’t mentioned, but it’s really just nitpicking on this observation:

There are two atmospheric effects that can finally create excess variance in one axis: Variable wind will increase horizontal variance.

This is true but it doesn’t tell the entire story. Variable muzzle velocity will also increase horizontal variance.

Ben then asked:

…the influence of velocity variance on horizontal dispersion… How far are these long ranges? Are the influences big enough to be measured or do they end up in the noise?

I didn’t have any numbers readily available off the top of my head so I ran the simulations with Modern Ballistics.

The simulations are with a 168 grain Match King bullet with a mean muzzle velocity of 2500 fps, sea level, 59F, a wind speed of 10 MPH coming from the left, with a perfect hold for the constant wind, and 1000 shots. The drift due to wind alone is 25.7” at 500 yards and 131.4” at 1000 yards.

The first two images show the horizontal and vertical dispersion with a muzzle velocity standard deviation of 20 fps at 500 and 1000 yards. For scale, the dimensions of the yellow target areas are 3” x 11” and 10” x 56” and the .30 caliber bullet holes are to scale as well.

 HorizontalDispersionVia20StdInMv500YardsHorizontalDispersionVia20StdInMv1000Yards

This is with a standard deviation of 30 fps at 500 and 1000 yards with targets of 5” x 15” and 15” x 90”.

HorizontalDispersionVia30StdInMv500YardsHorizontalDispersionVia30StdInMv1000Yards

The takeaways are:

  • Velocity variations contribute to horizontal as well as vertical dispersion of your shots.
  • The horizontal dispersion at 1000 yards is about three times that at 500 yards.
  • The muzzle velocity contribution is something on the order of 5% to 15% of the contribution of the wind by itself. This is not just noise, but it’s not exactly major either.
  • Modern Ballistics is your friend.

Update: In the comments Monte points out I should have chosen a more realistic example. A 168 grain SMK with a MV of 2500 at 1000 yards is not good for much other than hitting the dirt in the area of the target.

Here is the same simulation with a 190 grain SMK with a MV of 3050 (approximately what I get with BlackHills Match ammo in my .300 Win Mag).

With a standard deviation of 20 fps the 500 yard target is 1.5” x 6” and the 1000 yard target is 8” x 45”.

HorizontalDispersionVia20StdInMv500yardsHorizontalDispersionVia20StdInMv1000yards

With a standard deviation of 30 fps the 500 yard target is 2” x 8” and the 1000 yard target is 8” x 45”.

HorizontalDispersionVia30StdInMv500yardsHorizontalDispersionVia30StdInMv1000yards

I don’t think this appreciably changes my conclusions.

Also of importance is there is a better way to do this. Just look at the numbers for the wind drift for different muzzle velocities. I don’t have the time to do that right now, but for future reference you can easily get nice numbers instead of just eyeballing a simulation.

Quote of the day—The Trace

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The San Bernardino elementary school gunman fired 10 shots before stopping to reload his six-shot revolver midway through, a report noted. This gave a teacher’s aide time to lead pupils out of harm’s way.

Some experts think restrictions on high-capacity ammunition magazines, rather than assault weapons bans, may be the best way to limit mass shooting. casualties.

The Trace
April 14, 2017
Facebook post
[Via Jonathan Sullivan who wrote:

Math.

Anti-rights advocates can’t do it.

He also posted a screen shot:

TheTraceCantDoNumbers

I take issue with Sullivan’s assessment. That error is not mathematical in nature. It’s not even arithmetic. They are demonstrating they can’t even do numbers.

And if they can’t do numbers what does that say about their ability to assess the qualifications of someone who claims to be an expert?

They have crap for brains.

The Trace has since edited the post to remove this embarrassment from public view. It’s a shame they can’t edit their brains to fix the problem at its source.—Joe]