Quote of the day—P Lance

Men control, not “gun control”. Men are the problem. If all men were women, our violence problem would be reduced by 90%.

P Lance
April 14, 2017
Comment to Hoping for fewer school shootings doesn’t work. More gun control might.
[This is just common sense! What do we need so many men for anyway? One man for every 100 women would be more than enough for human reproduction needs. We have the technology to determine the sex at conception. After the initial messy stage, as a 99% of the men are removed from the planet, society would at long last enter the long sought utopia.

I can be sarcastic too.—Joe]

I’m in a practical shooting match as I type this

Tam has a good funny.

I’ve said before that it would be cool to design an IPSC stage in which there are no “shoot” targets (only “no shoots”). Maybe even, everyone goes home without firing a shot that day, because that’s more “real life” than anything else you could set up.

The most unrealistic thing about a Practical Shooting match, then, is that you go to one knowing for a fact that shots will be fired, and you are thus prepared for it. In real life on the other hand, you never have that advance notice, there are no rules, no scratch lines on the ground, no range Nazis to correct your “mistakes”, no timers, no “walk throughs” prior to shooting your stage, and probably not even any safe places to shoot at all.

In that most realistic sense then, I’m in an IPSC match right now, as I type– I’m carrying a gun and assessing the environment, seeing no immediate threats. I’ve been in this particular “IPSC Match” for over 20 years already and have yet to draw my pistol, much less take a shot. This isn’t merely similar to real life; it IS real life. I only draw and fire my gun when I’ve decided to pause the “IPSC Match” for a while, and find a safe place to shoot.

The range mentality has gotten so insane that I’ve seen multiple gun demonstration videos in which the shooter loads five of six, in a percussion revolver (which is stupid right there if you understand how a percussion revolver differs from a cartridge gun), fiddle farts around trying to lower the hammer on the empty but inadvertently lowers it on a live chamber instead and has to fiddle fart with the gun some more to be sure it’s “safe”, walks five feet to the firing line, confident that he’s “being safe”, and then looks down and shuffles around a bit to make sure his feet are right on the scratch line. Stuff like that.

Don’t even try to talk to me about it. I’m just…not…listening…anymore. I’ve hear it all before anyway. Hell I wrote some of those the rules, literally– I was once the president of a Practical Shooting club.

Go ahead and call me crazy though. I’m accustomed to it, as you may well imagine.

Preparing for Boomershoot

If you are attending Boomershoot this year please prepare for variable weather. It’s only a week away and it was snowing today:

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170414140531_095

Earlier it was foggy:

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170414060115_102

There was also some sun at times:

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170414061633_117

The forecast for next week and during Boomershoot is mixed as well. It’s supposed to be a little warmer and drier than today but don’t count on it. Forecasts more than a couple days ahead tend to be unreliable.

On the bright side, for those people who want practice with “real world” shooting conditions, for several hours today we had sustained winds in the 10 to 20 MPH range with gusts up to 30 MPH.

Quote of the day—Boston Antifa

Gun violence is a disease. The cure is the elimination of firearms from not just the citizens but the fascist police and the military as well.

We are seeking an elimination of all guns and all means of creating new ones. With the collapse of the Trump regime, this may be our one best chance to enact true peace and change on the world. Join us, comrades, and let’s eliminate guns from our lives and world.

ELIMINATE GUNS
ELIMINATE VIOLENCE

Boston Antifa
April 10, 2017
[Parody? Insanity? I’m just not sure.

Whatever.

The bottom line is that you should never let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Stoehr

What’s common about common sense depends on context. In this case, the context is a black man entering a Subway shop in 2016 clearly, openly and legally armed, and sending the place into a panic. The cops were called. They demanded to see his permit. He lawfully refused. And Connecticut’s white liberals lost their minds. It’s just crazy that the law bars cops from asking for a person’s permit. This is common sense! The alternative is insane!

John Stoehr
April 12, 2017
John Stoehr: Gun control, in black and white
[Although Stoehr’s point in his opinion piece is inscrutable to me he does have some good observation.

“Common sense!” That is the cry from the anti-gun people. The only facts that matter are that they can’t tolerate the thought of people keeping and bearing arms. The only logic that matters is that they will be afraid if ordinary people could exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. Can’t you see that it just doesn’t make any sense for people to have these things that are designed to kill? You must be stupid, crazy, or have a small penis if that isn’t obvious to you. Analogies are dismissed because, “That’s completely different.”

I think we are at the point that we can mock them most of the rest of the time and ignore them for the most part as we take more and more of their friends and neighbors to the range. Make the nut case anti-gun people into a smaller and smaller minority and eventually they will go silent or wander around the streets mumbling to themselves and the street lights.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dana Loesch

We the people have had it. We’ve had it with your narratives, your propaganda, your fake news. We’ve had it with your constant protection of your democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life. And we’ve had it with your pretentious, tone-deaf assertion that you are in any way truth or fact-based journalism.

Dana Loesch
April 10, 2017
Taking on the Times
[Now is the time. Let loose the hounds. Hunt them down and destroy them.—Joe]

What is this?

I was looking at the Boomershoot webcam image for this evening and saw things I have no idea what they are.

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170411204128_012

What are those lines? The images just one minute before and after don’t have them. There are several images with strange lines in them:

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170411195933_101IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170411204428_015

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170411210045_031

The camera is in IR mode with an IR illuminator.So that changes things some. I thought maybe it was snow or hail or even raindrops being blown by a strong wind. But the wind never even gusted over 7.6 MPH in that time frame. And I would expect there would similar lines in adjacent frame (admittedly one minute apart). But there aren’t. But the wind was coming from about the correct direction for each of the lines to be following the wind. The temperature ranged from about 48 F to 49 F. Insects are going to be a bit sluggish at that temperature.

There was one similar event on the previous night:

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170410223817_158

Any ideas?

Update: Rain. Shortly after seeing many images similar to the one below the weather station reported a small amount (0.01 inches) of precipitation.

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170412041134_063

Quote of the day—Sarah Clements

We as gun reform activists need to continuously say we support the Second Amendment.

Sarah Clements
July 24, 2016
Millennials Are Less Likely to Support Gun Control Than You’d Think
[She also claims:

Gun control isn’t about taking firearms from people, it’s about making sure the wrong people don’t have access to dangerous weapons through proposals such as increasing background checks, implementing waiting periods after purchasing guns, and a ban on semi-automatic guns…

Ahh… Yes. I understand perfectly. It’s not about taking firearms from people. It’s about a ban on semi-automatic guns. And don’t forget to continuously say, “we support the Second Amendment.”

This is what I understand. Sarah Clements is the face of deception. And, as Doug H. said, “deception is the hallmark of evil”.—Joe]

Boomershoot Live!

Among many other things I did over the weekend I got the weather station and webcam working at the Boomershoot shooting line. I created a web page for it so people can check out the conditions as Boomershoot 2017 approaches. I call the webpage Boomershoot Live! It will also allow people who are not attending to get a once a minute snapshot of the target area and weather.

Here how things looked yesterday morning when I was getting the T-Mobile microcell working:

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170409101544_045

Here is this morning:

IMG_chn0_TIMER_MNG_20170410082952_036

Yeah. The weather at Boomershoot is variable.

The weather station uploads data to Weather Underground about four times a minute. They kept track of the weather history as well as make forecasts.

It’s too far away to make a believable forecast for Boomershoot (April 21, 22, 23) but in another week they will start being plausible.


Update: The webcam dropped offline at 3:00 PM PDT April 10th. I don’t know why. I’m over 300 miles away and won’t be able to check on it until April 20th.

Update 2: The webcam started working again at 6:07 PM PDT April April 10th. This was with a few minutes of when I told Barb I would probably buy a newer and better one and take it with us when we went to Boomershoot. Not that this had anything to do with it starting to work, but I thought it was amusing.

Quote of the day—DaisysMom @Very_Heather

Like you, I don’t have a penis. Unlike you, I haven’t tried to replace it with a stupid gun.

DaisysMom @Very_Heather
Tweeted on January 12, 2016
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Via a tweet from Linoge.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Wayne LaPierre

To every dishonest member of the failing American news media, let me explain why you’ve never been less trusted, less credible, or less respected. For decades you ignored calls from millions of gun owners to just tell the truth. All you had to do was just get the facts right about our guns, and our freedom. But you never even pretended to listen. Instead, you weaponized the First Amendment against the Second. And now the whole country sees you for the mockery we’ve always known. Your claim to the truth is as legitimate as a thief’s. If the fate of individual freedom had rested in your hands, America would have fallen long ago. But Americans put their trust somewhere else, and now in that place stands the most trusted defender of individual freedom in American history. We’re the National Rifle Association of America, and we’re freedom’s safest place.

Wayne LaPierre
NRA Executive Vice President and CEO
April 7, 2017
nra commercials fox news
[I have nothing to add to LaPierre’s message.

But I do have something to say about what the political left says about LaPierre’s video.

As is typical, the political left lies about us. The headline is NRA Readies Next Attack Against The First Amendment.

It’s not an attack on the First Amendment. No one is advocating for the licensing or “universal background  checks” of people who exercise their First Amendment rights. No one is advocating “Common sense speech laws” which discourage the exercising of First Amendment rights. The NRA is not advocating the banning of speech that doesn’t cause the immediate threat of grave injury or death of innocent people. The NRA is not advocating for government restrictions of any type on free speech. The political left is far more likely to advocate for restrictions on speech. The campus speech codes are just one such example. Wearing a NRA t-shirt to school has resulted in the arrest of a 14 year old kid. That is an attack on the First Amendment.

The political left is lying. Again. Still. As always.

Lies and deception. It’s the best they can come up with.—Joe]

To the Taj and back

I delivered a bunch of stakes and some steel targets* to the Boomershoot Taj Mahal today. It snowed nearly all day today. It wasn’t sticking on the ground too bad but the ground was completely saturated in places. There was water standing in a significant part of the field near the tree line. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it all the way to the Taj and back pulling the trailer through the mud.

I made it all the way there but things got a little bit messy:

WP_20170408_15_17_36_Pro

As I got close to where I wanted to park, my vehicle started sliding sideways toward the Taj and I stopped before I made a mess of my vehicle as well as the thin steel shed.

WP_20170408_15_18_07_Pro

I had no problem getting back out. I was a bit surprised at that. I was very concerned about getting the trailer turned around because I planned to pull it another 15 feet forward to get it inline with the vehicle. It was still at a significant angle to the vehicle and I didn’t have much control of direction of travel, let alone orientation, in the greasy mud on the hillside near the Taj.

But I found a different place I could back into to turn around and everything worked out just fine.

I went back to South Road, unhitched the trailer and even made it in to Mecca to deliver the final supplies needed for Boomershoot 2017.

There are still several positions available, Sign up here. It will be a blast!


*These targets belonged to Scott Keszler. He used to bring these to Boomershoot every year from North Dakota. After he died his family gave the targets to Boomershoot. I picked them up at his nephew’s place north of Spokane last night.

Measuring success in one metric

For some things, measuring success is pretty obvious, and the metrics are nicely binary. e.g., “Did the boomer go BOOM after you pulled the trigger?”

In other things the metrics are either much harder to measure, or there are “good” reasons that the people measuring success don’t want a good metric; it would show they are failing miserably. Or, worse, they are no longer needed to “do the job.” Pick just about any political appointee and the example writes itself.

Anyway, the reason I ask is that I am, among other things, a teacher. Yeah, I know, taking one for the team here guys, leave me alone about that, will ‘ya? So in preparing for an upcoming interview, I started to think about what sorts of things I can ask them – that’s always a “fun” place for the interview to go, because it can’t be any trivia you can just read off the school web-site, but it also cannot be something that exposes glaring problems or hypocrisy in their system, because after they uncomfortably give you a non-answer you’ll not be offered a job. So it’s a balancing act.

So this question popped into my head, and I thought I’d bounce it off ya’ll to see what sort of trouble I might get myself into, but also maybe find some good follow-ups. I’ve got what I think it’s a pretty good measure of success, but it would likely open a huge can of zombie attack worms the size of anacondas, which I don’t want to deal with just yet. So, the question is: Continue reading

Quote of the day—John D. Clark

The odor of these was not so much skunk-like as garlicky, the epitome and concentrate of all the back doors of all the bad Greek restaurants in all the world. And finally he surpassed himself with something that had a dimethylamino group attached to a mercaptan sulfur, and whose odor can’t, with all the resources of the English language, even be described. It also drew flies.

John D. Clark
1972
I G N I T I O N !: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
[In addition to the strong propensity for experimental rocket fuels to produce craters, metal debris falling from the sky, and dissolved and/or scrambled body parts many of the fuels also smelled extremely bad. But not all. One left behind the smell of lemons.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Josh Dukes

Me getting shot is a manifestation of Trump’s and Milo’s violent ideology.

I refuse not to recognize these people as people, because I refuse to be like them.

Josh Dukes
April 4, 2017
‘I refuse to be like them’: why the man shot while protesting Milo Yiannopoulos doesn’t want revenge
[This is the guy who was shot at the University of Washington while “protesting” (preventing people from attending) a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos on Inauguration Day. The article is extremely sympathetic to Dukes. For example:

Dukes says that he attempted only to “peacefully de-escalate” conflict.

Then, he was shot.

And:

Both Sasha and Dukes are angry with the Hokoanas, who they believe acted with unjustifiable carelessness by bringing a gun to a protest and allegedly firing into a crowd of people.

I looked around for a bit more information to see what the police investigation came up with in regards to the shooting. It has been widely believed that Marc Hokoana shot Dukes, but it was Marc’s wife, Elizabeth Hokoana, who shot Dukes.

Here is what I found:

Dukes was an early opponent of Yiannopoulos’ appearance at UW and worked to organize resistance among a number of groups. He was “in the crowd of protesters in a physical altercation” when he was shot in the stomach about 8:25 p.m., the affidavit says.

UW detectives, along with a private technician, have been examining videos of the incident from various sources.

Analysis of video appeared to show Marc Hokoana turning away from Dukes while his wife’s arms were in an extended position, the second law-enforcement source said.

Gordon said the video shows Marc Hokoana in a “position of retreating” and Dukes in a “position of advancing.”

Yet, in the comments of the article which strongly suggests it was a legitimate case of self-defense, we have people saying really twisted things like:

I’m just watching the far right blame a shooting victim for his attempted murder.

The warped sense of reality by Dukes I can sort of understand. It is difficult for many people to admit they made a serious mistake. He wants to continue believing he is a good person. But the commenter? This is after Washington State law on self-defense is quoted for everyone’s benefit.

These people may not be a different species, but they seem to be in a different reality.—Joe]

Can you shoot like a 6-year old?

This looks like a fun challenge:

I’m going to see if I can find a place on my property where I can shoot at a water filled milk jug from 1000 yards away. The challenge website is here.

I have my doubts about being able to shoot as well as the 6-year old boy. I’ll be happy if I can shoot like a 15-year old girl:

Quote of the day—Arthur

[Arthur suddenly laughs uproariously]

Gloria: What’s so funny now?

Arthur: Sometimes I just think funny things.

Arthur
1981
Played by Dudley Moore in the movie Arthur.
[Today I was reminded of this by co-worker Josh when he burst into laughter.

Barb does this too, perhaps even more frequently than Josh. And they, unlike Arthur, are not drunk when this happen.

They both spontaneously, without any apparent external input, burst into laughter.

I like that.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lindsey Donovan

The seven Army Values are a part of my moral DNA. Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage are at the heart of who I am today.

These values serve as the backbone to every service member who has served or is still serving in our armed forces, and they deserve better than what our federal lawmakers have given them. Instead of protecting our most vulnerable veterans — men and women with severe mental illness — the House recently passed a bill that made it easier for them to get guns.

Lindsey Donovan
March 29, 2017
Disgraceful gun bill endangers veterans: Army vet
[She wants to “protect them” by making it illegal for them to exercise their right to self defense without due process? Has she forgotten her oath to defend the constitution?

I’m still sometimes amazed at how twisted the minds of these people are. They truly have crap for brains and/or they are incredibly evil.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gatordoug

The gun control movement, like all movements of the Left lie, they have to because the truth is to the Left what holy water is to vampires, but it may be what I call the Cult of Gun Control that dives the deepest into the lying pool.

Keep in mind that the folks pushing these lies know they are lies, so, ask yourself what is their real agenda.

Gatordoug
April 3, 2016
Does any group lie more egregiously than the Cult of Gun Control?
[Hmmm… That last line is almost as if they read my blog.—Joe]

Rounds in the last month

March was a busy month for me. I had hard drives fail on two different computers. The laptop was particularly painful when the Windows Home Server recovery utility didn’t support that hardware. I ultimately recovered everything but it took over a week of my spare time. The other hard drive only took a few hours of my time and lead to a simpler backup method which was nice.

Boomershoot tasks picked up too. There is still some space left if you want to sign up here.

Anyway, I reloaded 525 rounds of .40 S&W and ran many of them over the chronograph. This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223.log: 2,424 rounds.
3006.log: 543 rounds.
300WIN.log: 1692 rounds.
40SW.log: 63,945 rounds.
9MM.log: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 90,245 rounds.