They’re Coming to Grab Your Guns, And That’s A Beautiful Thing

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They’re coming to grab your guns. They’re your friends, family, loved ones. Even strangers will do it, if you let them. Some reporters have been known to do it, too, if you invite them.

With your permission, these people will take your gun, gently, from your hands into theirs. Shoot, they will. Learn, they must.

They will touch your gun all over. And another one. And another one. And other one. So many makes, so many models!

Questions will be asked, probed. They’ll load your gun, but certainly won’t loathe your gun. They’ll ooh, ahh, ogle, and be in awe of your gun(s).

It goes unsaid, but for those who don’t know: you will teach them to keep it pointed in a safe direction.

They might even “borrow” your ammunition. And leave behind the brass.

Though your ammo will be spent, you’ll oftentimes expect no reimbursement.

When the moment, or day, or shooting weekend is over, they’ll express gratitude, then return your tool, graciously.

You’ll clean the instrument, without minding at all.
…

Not only is an armed society a polite society, it’s a gunsharing, caring society.

If you’re a righteous gun owner, you’re essentially part of the gunsharing community. Gunsharing is a voluntary, legal activity in which one person owns and shares their gun(s) with one or more people, whilst providing gun safety teaching, free of charge. This is done out of compassion, because gun owners care about sharing their knowledge, skills, and tools.

After gunsharing, fellow gun users will want to grab your gun. Because it’s so much fun. Safe, too.

Gunsharing is it’s own little sharing economy of sorts.

This post goes out to all the men and women, who, over the years, have allowed me to familiarize myself with their magnificent tools. Thank you. And you. And you. And you.

Readers, what kind of guns have you legally borrowed from other righteous gun owners? I’m bracing myself for a looooong list. Let’s hear it. Tell the gun grabbers just how far – and how safely – one gun goes.

#GunSharingCaring

Oh, look… the hashtag’s registered at Twubs. How nice.

Flash sale on Insights Training

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Essentially all my self-defense training has been from Insights. I highly recommend them. And now is your opportunity to get a significant discount on top notch training:

48 hours of savings on all classes!

It’s a Flash Sale! From 8am Monday the 6th through 8am Wednesday the 8th, use code “FEB2017” to get 15% off all classes.

I put my most of my family through and taken them myself (sometimes multiple times) Pepper Spray Seminar, Unarmed Self Defense, and Defensive Folding Knife. I’ve also taken Handgun Retention & Disarming, General Defensive Handgun, Intensive Handgun Skills, Low Light Handgun Skills, Low Light Handgun Skills, General Defensive Rifle, and Tactical First Aid.

Karma – A dish best served cold

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Or is that mixing to many metaphors?

In 2013 Reid and the senate Democrats killed the filibuster for some sorts of things, like Federal appointments. People on the left raved about how brave it was, how the filibuster was dated, anti-democratic, etc.

Shoe, meet other foot. Two nominally R senators defected from the narrow majority to vote against Trump’s Sec of Ed choice, Betsy DeVoss, to make it a tie vote. The vote could be forced and cast because of the no-longer-applicable filibuster had been removed, so it only required a simple majority to call for a vote. VP Pence cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of DeVoss. In office only few weeks and he’s already breaking ties. First time it’s ever needed to be done in fact. Definitely a term in office that will need lots of popcorn.

Joe, is your brother planning on planting popping corn this next year? I think the market prices for it are likely to rise with this surge in demand, and saying I’m going to go eat pop-lentils gets me some strange looks.

Quote of the day—Scott Adams

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One of the most underrated qualities of Republicans is that they police their own ranks. If you have a problem with a violent Republican racist, call some Republicans. They’ll solve it for you.

But don’t call a Republican if you are simply offended by another person’s opinion. In that situation you want to call some Democrats to ridicule and physically attack the person with the objectionable opinion.

Scott Adams
February 5, 2017
A Thought Experiment About Republicans
[Interesting observation.—Joe]

Stephanie, our new guest blogger

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Although Stephanie Sailor isn’t new to a lot of old-timers in the gun rights movement she hasn’t been all that active on gun blogs. Stephanie’s contribution to Boomershoot in the early 2000’s was a large part of why it became a success. And the things she did to counter the anti-gun people in Chicago just blew me away when I first heard her speak for the Second Amendment Sisters at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Washington D.C. in 2000.

And last summer she made a number of images I posted on this blog. For example:

And now she has requested permission to make some blog posts here. I immediately agreed and gave her an account. Expect to hear from her soon.

See her also at on Gab as S2.

Quote of the day—Mostly me these days @OCPDme

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@shannonrwatts @rpatrickriley @MomsDemand Ooh, what big strong men, with their penis substitutes, intimidating unarmed people. How brave.

Mostly me these days @OCPDme
Tweeted on January 16, 2016
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

If they were intimidated by what they saw perhaps they should get some counseling.—Joe]

Another climate change scandal

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When you really, really want something to be true it’s easy to find evidence and “reasons” which match your desired belief. This may be another case:

Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

…

NOAA’s 2015 ‘Pausebuster’ paper was based on two new temperature sets of data – one containing measurements of temperatures at the planet’s surface on land, the other at the surface of the seas.

Both datasets were flawed. This newspaper has learnt that NOAA has now decided that the sea dataset will have to be replaced and substantially revised just 18 months after it was issued, because it used unreliable methods which overstated the speed of warming. The revised data will show both lower temperatures and a slower rate in the recent warming trend.

The land temperature dataset used by the study was afflicted by devastating bugs in its software that rendered its findings ‘unstable’.

The paper relied on a preliminary, ‘alpha’ version of the data which was never approved or verified.

A final, approved version has still not been issued. None of the data on which the paper was based was properly ‘archived’ – a mandatory requirement meant to ensure that raw data and the software used to process it is accessible to other scientists, so they can verify NOAA results.

…

The sea dataset used by Thomas Karl and his colleagues – known as Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperatures version 4, or ERSSTv4, tripled the warming trend over the sea during the years 2000 to 2014 from just 0.036C per decade – as stated in version 3 – to 0.099C per decade. Individual measurements in some parts of the globe had increased by about 0.1C and this resulted in the dramatic increase of the overall global trend published by the Pausebuster paper. But Dr Bates said this increase in temperatures was achieved by dubious means. Its key error was an upwards ‘adjustment’ of readings from fixed and floating buoys, which are generally reliable, to bring them into line with readings from a much more doubtful source – water taken in by ships. This, Dr Bates explained, has long been known to be questionable: ships are themselves sources of heat, readings will vary from ship to ship, and the depth of water intake will vary according to how heavily a ship is laden – so affecting temperature readings.

Dr Bates said: ‘They had good data from buoys. And they threw it out and “corrected” it by using the bad data from ships. You never change good data to agree with bad, but that’s what they did – so as to make it look as if the sea was warmer.’

ERSSTv4 ‘adjusted’ buoy readings up by 0.12C. It also ignored data from satellites that measure the temperature of the lower atmosphere, which are also considered reliable. Dr Bates said he gave the paper’s co-authors ‘a hard time’ about this, ‘and they never really justified what they were doing.’

Quote of the day—Christiana Figueres

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This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.

Christiana Figueres
Executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change
February 3, 2015
Figueres: First time the world economy is transformed intentionally
[See also: Global Warming is About Destroying Capitalism? and U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare.

They always have to use force don’t they? It’s always about control by whatever ruse they think might work.

Free markets and free minds are just not acceptable to them.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert Spitzer

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A cluster of issues come together with gun rights zealots. They’re predominantly older white males who think the country is falling apart at the seams; they’re suspicious of outsiders, and quick to blame others for issues the country may face. The worldview typical of an NRA member is the same as that of a far-right conservative person. This is the group that has been very important for the Trump coalition.

Robert Spitzer
February 3, 2017
In Trump’s America, Nothing’s Off the Table for the NRA
[You just keep thinking that.

Reality may be a bit different. Barb and I went to the range last weekend and about half of the people there were women.—Joe]

The police will protect you

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Watching a Stefan Molyneux video, he quoted note from a listener referring to gun-free zones and the Berkley riots over Milo:

“Give up your guns, they said. The police will protect you.”

Only if you are one of those that the police / state think are worth protecting.

Sobering thought when there is a transition of power from one party to another, and you realize there is another foot that might wear that jackboot you’d hope would step on the throat of your enemies.

But I bet a lot of leftists still won’t understand.

Quote of the day—lock-him-up

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I think all the psychos need to arm themselves with automatic weapons and masny rounds of ammo and go visit once a week Republic Party politicians and their mothers, wives, and their children and thank them!

lock-him-up
February 2, 2017
Comment to House strikes regulation to keep mentally ill from buying guns
[This is the caliber of people who oppose the right to keep and bear arms. They have difficulty with spelling and grammar, and, if they could arrange it, they would have Republicans killed.—Joe]

Options

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Just had the movie rights to my book optioned. So now we start working to get the casting and promotions done so a good funding page (likely on GoFundMe) can be put together and production monies raised. If we hit the minimum goal, then he buys the movie rights and moves forward with starting to produce it. Because he’s a relatively small operation, and the book is long, the basic goal is to make just a portion of it, and make it well enough that it can act as a “prof of concept’ to raise enough money for more of it. That’s just a small part of the big picture (no pun intended), of course. When the promo trailer (a simple but scene to shoot) is ready I’ll let people know.

Quote of the day—Charles Hugh Smith

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To get anything done in a culture of entrenched interests, one must either have an overwhelming political mandate to dismantle the entire machine–Trump does not–or you need Insiders who know the pressure points of the system and its key players–in effect, Insiders who know how to slip a political stiletto into the kidneys of key players and twist the blade to get done what would otherwise be impossible.

Charles Hugh Smith
January 18, 2017
Why Outsiders Need Insiders To Get Anything Done
[It sounds plausible.

But I’m not entirely sure I understand why the legislature and president couldn’t just say, “The ATF no longer exists. The FBI will enforce any of the laws that need to be enforced. The FBI may hire up to 10% of those newly unemployed people if they pass the normal selection criteria. ATF Office space and equipment will be reallocated, rented and/or sold during the next 60 days.”

Why would there be a burning need for “insiders” in that sort of situation?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mike “Mish” Shedlock

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It’s not easy losing to the most unpopular candidate in history while outspending him nearly 3-1.

I propose Hillary deserves a lifetime achievement award. Her noteworthy performance may never be broken.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
January 18, 2017
Did Fake News Help Trump? New Study Says Ads More Important
[The one big take away I have from the spending reports is that money apparently isn’t as important as it was thought to be.

I like that.—Joe]

I’m good with Judge Gorsuch

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David Hardy found a couple firearms cases with Judge Gorsuch contributions and doesn’t find much to directly indicate how he will rule on 2nd Amendment issues.

But from what I have been able to find out, such as here and here, he is an originalist and textualist. That is what I am looking for in a SCOTUS judge. And he is relatively young and should be around for many years. So, I’m good with Judge Gorsuch.

Now to see if the Republicans can get him past the obstructionist Democrats in the Senate.

Reloading report

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As I reported on the first of this month I enhanced my program which parses and reports on my reloading logs. Not too long after making those changes I made still more changes. In now outputs a section with the yearly and monthly totals for every caliber combined. Here is that section of the report including the 3300 rounds of .40 S&W (minor power factor Blue Bullets for steel matches) I reloaded this month:

Year Total Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
1996: 11274 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10944 141 189
1997: 7585 300 0 40 1210 719 106 0 100 1088 804 1060 2158
1998: 11574 570 258 718 1657 1812 1710 542 20 0 1240 900 2147
1999: 4912 20 964 181 877 718 657 60 0 0 179 653 603
2000: 3690 845 120 142 0 57 1095 400 396 43 521 60 11
2001: 2724 25 300 497 532 15 20 1198 73 0 0 0 64
2002: 898 0 0 0 0 0 0 198 0 200 300 0 200
2003: 649 0 300 302 18 0 0 0 0 0 0 29 0
2004: 1345 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 300 600 445 0
2005: 1059 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 659 400 0 0
2006: 1000 0 0 0 0 400 0 0 0 0 200 400 0
2007: 1136 0 0 0 0 0 0 118 518 300 200 0 0
2008: 2398 0 300 0 0 0 0 900 399 0 200 0 599
2009: 1702 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 102 300 900 400
2010: 1400 0 0 0 0 100 200 700 0 200 0 200 0
2011: 2300 300 0 400 100 0 500 500 200 0 0 0 300
2012: 399 0 200 0 199 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2013: 600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 100 500
2014: 530 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 530
2015: 10005 1699 2696 3064 0 0 0 547 200 400 100 200 1099
2016: 18265 2197 700 1462 837 1899 1999 1000 1500 1216 1957 1500 1998
2017: 3300 3300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Grand Totals 88745 9256 5838 6806 5430 5720 6287 6163 3406 4508 17945 6588 10798

Quote of the day—Roger Kimball

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Now some of this is just adolescent play-acting, even if many of those involved, being professors, are far beyond the chronological limits of adolescence.  Academia has an infantilizing effect. I understand that. Many professors dress and act like adolescents right up to the time they are ready to hand in their tenure and live off their generous pensions. The Peter-Pan aspect of academia is not entirely the professors’ fault.  After all, the points at which the real world intrudes upon academia are so few and so tenuous that academics may be forgiven for some of their hyperbole and inadvertently comic displays of self-importance.  They exist, like kept women of yore, entirely at the pleasure of an affluent society they despise. So in a way it is not surprising that they endeavor to transform their entire campus into a sort of existential boudoir, which is French for “room for pouting in.”

Roger Kimball
January 15, 2017
A Modest Disposal
[Interesting observation.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The Original DB

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Does carrying a pistol make you safer? As a rule, men do not carry pistols for self-defense. Men carry guns around with them because they are the #1 non-pharmaceutical treatment for erectile dysfunction.

The Original DB
April 13, 2016
Comment to Does Carrying A Pistol Make You Safer?
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

We have facts and SCOTUS decisions. They have grade-school insults.—Joe]

Son-in-law in Front Sight magazine

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Last October I posted that my son-in-law came in 13th at the USPSA Open nationals.

The Jan/Feb issue of the USPSA magazine, Front Sight, just arrived and before I had a change to open it daughter Xenia texted me to tell me her husband was in it.

Yup. He sure is:

FrontSightJanFeb2017JohnV

Quote of the day—Winston S. Churchill

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British troops were still fighting hard in the centre of Athens, hemmed in and outnumbered. We were engaged in house-to-house combat with an enemy at least four-fifths of whom were in plain clothes. Unlike many of the Allied newspaper correspondents in Athens, our troops had no difficulty in understanding the issues involved.

Winston S. Churchill
1953
Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War Volume VI)
Page 259
[I find it interesting the press is frequently so out of touch with reality. Ulysses S. Grant made similar observations several decades earlier.

This six volume series on WW II by Churchill is excellent. His perspective is, of course, a bit different from what I learned in history classes and I enjoyed seeing things from his view.—Joe]