Quote of the day—Iain Thomson

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NSA tiger teams follow a six-stage process when attempting to crack a target, he explained. These are reconnaissance, initial exploitation, establish persistence, install tools, move laterally, and then collect, exfiltrate and exploit the data.

During the reconnaissance phase agents examine a network electronically and, in some cases, physically. They work out who the key personnel are, what email accounts matter, how far the network extends, and maintain constant surveillance until they can find a way in.

Iain Thomson
January 28, 2016
NSA’s top hacking boss explains how to protect your network from his attack squads
[Via Bruce Schneier. See also NSA Hacker Chief Explains How to Keep Him Out of Your System.

Most of this process applies to physical as well as information security. Use this information wisely.—Joe]

Charity request

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From the comments here:

Joe, I would not normally solicit help from strangers but this is an extraordinary and dire circumstance. I am a fellow blogger and would like to ask if you would pass a link on for me. If you poke around my site you will see that I am a real person with a real family. I don’t have facebook or anything and any posting of the link or her gofundme page would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,Jim https://eatgrueldog.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/funding-for-shaylyn-2/

The direct links are:

https://www.paypal.me/FundsforShay

Update: Here is a go fund me link if paypal doesn’t work: http://gofundme.com/p5kymvxe

I donated a minute ago.

Quote of the day—Paige‏ @Trunthepaige

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@SnowdenEd @Duck_Hunter7 @orangeblood307 @JoeHuffman Somebody is talking about penises so it must be a gun conversation with anti gun folks.

Paige‏ @Trunthepaige
Tweeted on January 20, 2016
[In a break from the usual Markley’s Law Monday I’m presenting a slightly different view of the theme today.—Joe]

Rounds in the last month

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As I reported earlier this month I needed to load up a bunch of ammo for the InSights Intensive Handgun Skills class February 20-22. I now have all the ammo I need for that and now I need to start getting a little ahead of the game on practice and match ammo. Plus I need to reload a few hundred rounds of low recoil self-defense and practice ammo in .40 S&W for my student.

In the last month I reloaded just under 2200 rounds of .40 S&W. This gives me the following lifetime totals:

223.log: 2027 rounds.
3006.log: 467 rounds.
300WIN.log: 1351 rounds.
40SW.log: 43550 rounds.
9MM.log: 21695 rounds.
Total: 69090 rounds.

I expect by the first of March I will have reloaded over 70K rounds.

Student shooter update

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Remember the student shooter who was having trouble handling the .40 S&W her husband bought her for self defense at home? Remember the light loads I was working on so she could handle the recoil better?

Yesterday she and her husband went to the range with Barb and I. She shot a Ruger SR22* with a suppressor and did great. She shot it without the suppressor and did great. She really liked the Ruger Mark II. And she shot my gun I have had all the problems (also here) with. With about 100 rounds through it yesterday there was only one failure to feed.

Her husband tried the .40 S&W with the two different light loads. The 148 PF (in my gun, probably less in theirs) worked fine. The first round of the 131 PF loads failed to cycle but worked okay after that.

She wanted to shoot the .40 S&W. I had her shoot my gun with the lightest loads. She did fine. No nausea. And her hits stayed on target although they weren’t quit as accurate as when she shot .22s. She tried her gun with the 131 PF loads. She had nothing but failures to extract even when I had her hold the gun more rigid. Moving up to the 148 PF loads fixed the problem although the ejected shell casing just barely popped out of the ejection port. She handled it fine. And I had her shooting at silhouette targets and around corners all without difficulty before our range time was up:

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I sent them home with 100 rounds of the 148 PF practice ammo. And now I’m going to load up some of the self-defense Gold Dot Short Barrel bullets in a similar load for them.

Barb handled the 131 PF loads in my gun just fine too. I might load up a few for her self-defense needs as well.

* The SR22 wouldn’t cycle when using CCI Quiet-22 ammo. But it worked great with Standard Velocity. But wow, was it ever quiet.

CCI_Quiet_Standard

Quote of the day—Claire Wolfe

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We should be using email encryption even for sharing our chocolate chip cookie recipes.

Claire Wolfe
January 30, 2016
Weekend links
[I enthusiastically agree because of this:

Given that the NSA has taps on almost all of the internet’s major trunk routes, the PGP records can be incredibly useful. It’s a simple matter to build a script that can identify one PGP user and then track all their contacts to build a journal of their activities.

Even better is the Mujahedeen Secrets encryption system, which was released by the Global Islamic Media Front to allow Al Qaeda supporters to communicate in private. Weaver said that not only was it even harder to use than PGP, but it was a boon for metadata – since almost anyone using it identified themselves as a potential terrorist.

“It’s brilliant!” enthused Weaver. “Whoever it was at the NSA or GCHQ who invented it give them a big Christmas bonus.”

Given all the tools available to the intelligence agencies there’s really no need for an encryption backdoor, he explained. With the NSA’s toolkit of zero-day exploits, and old-day exploits, it’s much easier to root a target’s computer after identifying them from metadata traffic.

The problem is that encryption is a hassle. Until the hassle factor is significantly reduced it’s not going to happen.—Joe]

Our next fight?

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I don’t like this:

Proponents of President Barack Obama’s executive orders in the area of gun control point to OSHA’s General Duty Clause as a possible basis for a national “no guns at work” policy.

The General Duty Clause requires employers to maintain a safe workplace, including the implementation of policies that may be necessary to further that goal. Proponents argue that this significant increase in workplace violence coupled with the expansion of concealed carry laws would be the basis for this regulatory change. Moreover, because a General Duty Clause already exists within the OSHA statute, there would not be a need for congressional approval.

This would be another chilling effect on our rights. I frequently go to the range at lunch time or after work. And I know a lot of other people go hunting before or after work. And OSHA creating a regulation such as this would have to make exceptions for a many of places of employment. Police stations, security firms, gun manufactures, gun ranges, gun stores, any place which hires armed guards, etc.

I can see it being a valid concern for guns to be prohibited in some places of business (I’m thinking of oil refineries and other places where “high energy events” could be triggered). But it should be up to the business to decide if they have an overriding set of circumstance where firearms are just too high of risk to allow.

This could be our next fight for our right to keep and bear arms.

Skirt Club

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This is interesting:

Attractive, open-minded women are secretly gathering to explore their sexual curiosities…with each other. It’s the epitome of the male fantasy but—sorry fellas—this club is strictly ladies only.

Billing itself as, “An underground community for girls who play with girls,” Skirt Club is quickly catching on. What began as one woman’s passion project to embrace sexual fluidity in the UK has expanded to Sydney, Australia, and Miami, Florida, in two short years.

Now, the club has come to New York City. 

I wonder if I could attend as a member of the media or a researcher…

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day—David E. Petzal

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The forces acting upon the gun industry are Armageddon, for which we are all tooling up, and our Peerless Leader, who has sold more firearms than even Bubba Clinton, and The Horror That Is Hillary, who is lurking in our future like the Wicked Witch of the West.

David E. Petzal
January 25, 2016
SHOT Show 2016, Part I
[Via Caleb who has a much different, but entirely valid, angle on Petzal’s post.

As others have observed, if Obama and his friends want to reduce the number of guns being sold in this country they should resign from politics.—Joe]

Earth Day 2016

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I just realized that Boomershoot 2016 will be at the same time as Earth Day 2016. Which, of course reminds me of something Michael Justice said while participating in Boomershoot 1999, “Celebrate Earth Day by blowing up a small part of it”. You too can participate, sign up here.

And while we are thinking about Earth Day here are some wonderful predictions made on Earth Day 1970:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

I have a prediction of my own about Earth Day 2016. The people who attend Boomershoot and blow up a small part of the earth in Idaho with us will have a great time.

Interesting times

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From here:

As the chart below shows – which is disturbing without any further context – the 40 million ounces of gold open interest and the record low 74 thousand ounces of registered gold imply that as of Monday’s close there was a whopping 542 ounces in potential paper claims to every ounces of physical gold. Call it a 0.2% dilution factor.

ComexGoldRatio

Quote of the day—Richard Feldman

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In 1994 [when President Clinton introduced a ban on assault weapons] I remember being asked ‘Why do you need these guns?’ My response was ‘Well, I never needed them before, but if the government thinks I shouldn’t be able to own them, I guess I want them now’, and I did go out and buy about 15 of them before the ban.

Richard Feldman
January 26, 2016
How has the US gun lobby been so successful?
[Just like I buy and read banned books I also buy and use banned guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Carl Bogus

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There had been only three US Supreme Court cases that dealt with the second amendment. They all held that the second amendment was related to militia service [and] granted a collective right, not an individual right. This was considered pretty settled until the 1960s.

…

They won the war in 2008 in a case called ‘The District of Columbia versus Heller’, when the Supreme Court held for the first time that the second amendment grants an individual right.

The nine justices of the US Supreme Court divided five to four along perfectly ideological lines. The conservatives said it grants an individual right, and the liberals all said, no, it grants a collective right.

Carl Bogus
Professor of Law at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island
January 26, 2016
How has the US gun lobby been so successful?
[Bogus is correct. As a name for this liar that is.

  1. The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, does not grant rights. It protects preexisting rights. Read the words of the Second Amendment. Or read US v Cruikshank, “This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.”
  2. I can only think of two Supreme Court cases directly addressing the Second Amendment before Heller, one being Cruikshank, and the other is United States v. Miller 59 S.Ct. 816(1939). Neither say anything at all about a “collective right”. Miller is sometimes misunderstood to imply something like that but that interpretation is obviously wrong. Read my comments on that here.
  3. The Heller justices were not divided on the issue of an individual versus collective right in regards to the Second Amendment. The four dissenting justices said, The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a “collective right” or an “individual right.”  Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals.

Anti-gun people lie. It’s in their culture. It’s what they have to do to have any hope of making progress in their battle to eliminate our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Greg

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I no longer call it registration, it is a gun confiscation data base.

Greg
January 23, 2016
Comment to Ballot Fight in Maine
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brian Garrett

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Whenever someone tells me to “check my privilege”, I like to respond with “root access confirmed”.

Brian Garrett
January 21, 2016
Comment to Indistinguishable from Reality
[To understand this, and find it absolutely hilarious, it helps to be a computer geek.—Joe]

Speed Steel match results

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Last Saturday, January 23rd, I went to Whidbey Island for the steel match. It was a rainy, dreary, day as I road the ferry to the island but I had rain gear and was dressed warm enough to be comfortable.

WP_20160123_08_37_55_ProAdjusted

The weather wasn’t any better at the range and we put up a canopy to keep things a little drier for our little group of die-hard shooters:

WP_20160123_10_09_27_Pro

I shot my Ruger 22/45 for the iron sighted rimfire division and did okay with it.

With my STI DVC Limited gun I had changed out the sear spring and adjusted it for about 4.75 pounds of trigger pull rather than the 3.5 pounds it came from the factory with which I have never really gotten used to. It worked fine in practice and I was looking forward to using it. It worked fine some times then on other shots it had a much harder trigger pull. The pull was probably something on the order of 10 or 15 pounds. It was sometimes hard enough that my hands shook from pulling the trigger so hard to get it to fire. My times for centerfire pistol sucked.

Name Division Time
Steve Mooney RF-RI-O 47.66
Steve Mooney RF-O 57.63
Joe Huffman RF-I 67.12
Bruce Barchenger CF-I 91.92
Rev Barchenger RF-O 92.36
Joe Huffman CF-I 111.91
Jim Dunlap RF-O 112.08
Scott Bertino CF-I 123.44

67.12 seconds for five stages works out to an average of 3.356 seconds per five shot string. I’m okay with that.

Here are four of the five stages we shot. They started tearing down the fifth stage before I got around to taking a picture:

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Steel challenge match results

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On January 10th I shot a steel challenge match. I took video and have been meaning to edit it and post it on YouTube but I just haven’t got to it. Virtually no one watches (40 to ~100 views each) them anyway. So I’m just going to link to the results and tell you want happened.

The overall, all divisions, results are here. There were 34 participants and I came in 11th in iron sighted rimfire pistol and 13th in iron sighted centerfire pistol. My times for the four stages were 67.80 in rimfire and 76.58 in centerfire.

In the rimfire, iron sighted, pistol category I was 5th out of 11. I was the only shooter in the Limited division but if I had been in the iron sighted pistol division I would have been first. They didn’t get my Senior category into the record, but I would have come in with either gun only behind Jeffery with his open division rifle.

WP_20160110_09_35_11_Pro
Go Fast

WP_20160110_09_35_40_Pro
Go Hawks

WP_20160110_09_36_08_Pro
Beast Mode

WP_20160110_09_36_49_Pro
Focus

I shot my new rimfire gun that I have had all the problems with. It worked fine in practice and on the first stage our squad shot (Go Hawks). Then on the second stage we shot (Focus) it started jamming again. I went back to the Ruger 22/45 for the remainder of the match.

Quote of the day—Frenchpug14‏ @frenchpug14

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@wallsofthecity @Jan202017 great! I don’t care about your need to shore up your masculinity with a prosthetic penis.

Frenchpug14‏ @frenchpug14
Tweeted on October 18, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Quote of the day—W. Kamau Bell

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We could use a President who was, like, “OK. Everybody turn in all your guns tomorrow by 5 p.m. After that, if I catch you with a gun then I’m sending SEAL Team Six to your house with a recent Facebook picture of you and those tanks that shoot fire that we haven’t used since Waco — Ummm — I mean since World War II.”

…

And let me be clear about something else, gun owners. I want President Obama to want to take your guns away. I don’t trust you with your guns. I don’t trust you to fire them safely. I don’t trust you to store them safely. I don’t trust your kids not to find them. I don’t trust you not to get them stolen.

W. Kamau Bell
January 12, 2016
I want Obama to take away your guns
[H/T to The Writer in Black.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Azathoth @ArkhamRealty

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The 20th C Left had to shoot people en masse to get them to obey.

The 21st C Left plans on using dick jokes.

Azathoth ‏@ArkhamRealty
Tweeted on January 13, 2016
[This is only true because it’s the best the Left has available at this time. If they had the power to murder people en masse they would.—Joe]