Gun control supporters would like nothing more than for gun owners to think that resistance to the anti-gunners bottomless pocketbooks is futile. But, we know that no matter how much money the anti-gunners spend, they can’t buy our freedom, because it’s not for sale. Let the anti-gun billionaires know that by Voting Freedom First on November 4.
NRA-ILA
September 12, 2014
Harvard: Millions of Dollars More For Gun Control
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
A Form 1 came back approved for a new Machine Gun. Jaqufrost was quickly contacted by the ATF saying he has to send back the stamp.
This thing is growing legs and will probably go to court. Stand by, because we will surely need contributions to a legal fund if it goes to court.
All things considered, this looks like a realistic opportunity at taking back out rights to Machine Guns. If this fight starts moving forward, it’s going to tale a monumental amount of commitment to see it through. Hold fast, everyone. We’re going to need all hands on deck for this one.
orpheus762x51
September 10, 2014
ATF ruling may have opened door to new machine guns–Pg9 Form 1 APPROVED Pg18 ATF call audio
[Background material is here.
Audio of the ATF phone call:
Interesting. Very interesting!—Joe]
I visit family in Idaho about once month. Something that I frequently notice is the huge difference between being on the farm in Idaho and working in a high rise office building in Seattle. I am sometimes driving truck, combine, or a bulldozer in Idaho one day and looking out over the Puget Sound from behind my computer in a skyscraper the next.
There are other profound differences as well.
Here are my daughter Kim and Jacob at their home in Idaho. I took this picture on Saturday:
The sign isn’t anything particularly special. It is sold at Michaels, a national chain store for arts and crafts, where Kim works as she finishes her accounting degree at the University of Idaho. Yet the odds of seeing a sign like that in the Seattle area are asymptotically close to zero.
I imagine this sign would put people of the anti-gun crowd into an apoplectic state. It appears to me that the concept of property rights and being able and willing to defend those property rights is alien to them. They might give lip service to the concept of diversity and tolerance of other cultures but they make it very clear by their actions they are actively attempting to destroy certain cultures. They want to destroy one of my cultures.
In preparation for the delivery of the 5000 pounds of fun this last weekend I, as Barb expressed it, rearranged some dirt and rocks around Boomershoot Mecca.
Here are the before and after panoramas:
It’s a little difficult to judge what was really done because in the first picture there are a lot of tall weeds blocking the view of the dirt and rocks.
Here are some pictures of one of the new piles of rocks to give you a clue:
I am a little concerned that I might have created conditions for some major snow drifts near the door to the shipping container. Drifts have formed before but they weren’t large and were of little concern. If the weather conditions are just right I can see the wind now dumping major amounts of snow in front of the door.
Most of the rocks were moved with the bulldozer but hundreds of the smaller ones were moved by hand. I was unable to smooth the dirt out with the rocks embedded in the soil. The really large rocks I could move with the dozer. But baseball sized to almost basketball sized rocks were tough. They would lift the blade if I didn’t apply downward pressure. And if I applied enough pressure to move the rocks I would move large amounts of dirt at the same time. I spent a couple hours moving them by hand and then smoothed the ground with the dozer.
The end result was a lot more area for vehicles to maneuver and park on the east end of the shipping container:
There is a much nicer path from the parking area on the north size of the hilltop to the shipping container now:
It used to be weeds and a maze of rocks to navigate.
The stack of half-length railroad ties is to block some of the sound of the generator. I used to have the generator on the south side of the container but when I was planning these improvements Ry suggested I make a spot on the north side because the power connector was on the north side and for the same power cord length I could get the generator further away.
I came up with and tested a new equipment wash station:
The bag of water is a three gallon solar shower. After about two or three hours in the summer sun it has enough hot water to give at least two people a decent shower. It also does a nice job of delivering hot water for washing the chemicals off of the mixing equipment. The barrel top works as a shallow sink. This is so much better than bending over some railroad ties on a rocky hillside and washing in cold water. The hot water will dissolve the chemicals much better as well as being more comfortable.
I also finally got the eight foot long grounding rod to what I consider the final depth:
I’ve been pounding on this rod when I visit for years.
I also leveled a much larger area for tents and sleeping bags on the very top under the trees. It’s hard to tell from the pictures. The lighting was so high contrast that you can’t really see how level and smooth the area is but it’s really nice when you see it in person even if it looks like crap in the picture:
Later this fall or early next spring I’ll plant all the bare dirt to grass with the possible exception of some of the area directly in front of the shipping container doors. I’ll put gravel there if I get the chance.
It’s time for gun-control supporters to come to grips with the fact that the amendment actually means something in contemporary society. For which reason, I hereby advance a modest proposal: Let’s repeal the damned thing.
Benjamin Wittes
March 19, 2007
Ditch the Second Amendment
[“Modest proposal”? I wonder what a “radical proposal” might be. Ownership of a handgun means an obligatory conviction for terrorism? We know what that leads to. But, in his world view, that might be a feature rather than bug.
He does recognize that repealing the Second Amendment is not currently politically feasible. What I don’t think he realizes is that even without a Second Amendment it would be “problematic” to enforce the gun bans and confiscations that he envisions would follow. Somehow the lessons of prohibition and the “war on drugs” are beyond his imagination.
But probably the most important takeaway from Wittes’ opinion piece is that you should never let someone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
I recently really, really needed to get someone’s phone number quickly. I ended up paying a few dollars for one of those websites that offer detailed information on people. I got the phone number and “unlimited” use of the service for a month. So I asked for information on myself and a few other people of interest.
To the best of my knowledge most of the information was accurate. But there was one item that was really, really wrong.
According to this one service I am a ATF agent.
Regarding the “packing” of courts (with judges sympathetic to one’s cause), which has been in the news recently; our U.S. constitution, very specifically and strenuously, demands “court packing”. It demands that ALL judges, justices, politicians and law enforcement be committed to the American Founding Principles. It is designed specifically to be as“Unfair” as possible.
When we’re talking about “court packing” then, we must be very specific. Are we talking about packing the courts with people unwaveringly dedicated to liberty, or are we talking about packing courts with people who are open to the idea of coercion?
Historically, this country was already “done in” in that regard by the end of the Woodrow Wilson administration. By 1945 the destruction of America was generally embraced. By 1970 there was so little America left that hardly anyone remembered the difference. So this has been a long time coming, which is what Progressivism is all about.
*Poking fun at Joe’s recurring “Random thought of the day” post title (if one may have random thoughts, surely one might, potentially, on occasion, have organized ones).
As I said yesterday I was at the Boomershoot site this last weekend.
The main objective was to take delivery on ammonium nitrate for future Boomershoots. Last time (see also here) I ordered 3000 pounds of AN and they brought a semi-truck and trailer. It was difficult to get it into a position close to the entrance of my shipping container production facility. So in the two days before the delivery I rearranged the dirt and rocks in front of the facility to make it easier to get into position.
This time I ordered two thirds more and they put it in something resembling a horse trailer pulled by a large pickup instead of the larger semi. Oh well, I like the changes I made and it was still easier for them than it would have been had I not moved the dirt and rocks.
At first we put down some rollers to unload the material. I’m sorry for the atrocious picture. The lens of my cell phone camera was dirty and I didn’t want to waste time cleaning it to get a good picture when the delivery guy was waiting on me:
After maybe five bags with me carrying them 30+ feet to the rear of the shipping container and the delivery guy mostly waiting for my return he put the rollers away and moved the pallet to the rear of the trailer. Then we both pulled the 50 pound bags off the back of the trailer and carried them to the far end of the container and stacked them.
From the time he was backing the trailer up to the container until they were all neatly stacked at the opposite end of the container was only 28 minutes.
I did a lot of puttering around after he left. I removed bunch of old cardboard boxes for disposal at a recycling center. I had moved a lot of things out of the way to have a clear path to the rear and I put those back where I wanted them. I put the AN from two years ago on top of the latest delivery. An interesting thing I noted when I did this was that the date on the new bags AN was September 4, 2014 and the date on the old bags was September 4, 2012.
I tucked the tarp in around the AN and put a plastic sheet over the top to keep the condensation and occasional snow (that sometimes blows in through the ceiling vent) off the chemicals:
The ceiling of the container is not really sloped. It’s just the distortion from the wide angle lens on the phone camera.
We now have 5000+ pounds of fun ready for use in Boomerite at Boomershoots 2015, 2016, and beyond.
Recently in Atlanta, a stripper was followed home by two guys. When they started to attack her, she pulled a gun. They ran. So why don’t these stories make headlines? Because they don’t fit the left’s narrative on guns. They don’t even ask the questions we want to know — like just where does a stripper carry a gun?
Ron Hart
September 7, 2014
HART: Gun control debate re-emerges
[Of course it’s a rhetorical question. I don’t have firsthand knowledge but I think it is a safe bet strippers rarely go home without putting on their clothes.
But if you really want to give it some thought nudists have a similar problem. It’s really not that hard of a problem to solve. Fanny packs and purses work well enough even if the draw is slower than with a belt holster.—Joe]
I did a bunch of dozer work at Boomershoot Mecca this weekend. It was very dirty work. The ground was very dry and it turned to powder as soon as I broke it up with the blade. I got really dirty:
I wore gloves and my hand was clean by comparison:
I have a solar heated shower at Mecca so I dusted off my clothes and rinsed off my head, arms and hands before I got in my car and left for the day.
But what I didn’t have there was my gun cleaning supplies.
It probably is functional for at least as many shots as would be needed in a self-defense situation. But I’m sure the wear rate would be dramatically increased with the oil being soaked up by the dust. And the odds of a malfunction have to be much higher than normal.
It’s ultrasonic bath time for my STI.
For too long, most members of the legal academy have treated the Second Amendment as the equivalent of an embarrassing relative, whose mention brings a quick change of subject to other, more respectable, family members. That will no longer do. It is time for the Second Amendment to enter full scale into the consciousness of the legal academy.
Sandford Levison
The Embarrassing Second Amendment
Yale Law Journal 99.3 (1989): 637-569
[Via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.
And not just the legal academy, but society at large must recognize and respect the Second Amendment. We all have a job to do in making this happen. There are many ways to contribute. Do what you feel most comfortable with.—Joe]
The open carry crowd. Their guns have more bullets in them than they have IQ points. They consistently demonstrate that they need a gun to walk out into public places. Frightened, scared and cowardly they parade their failings for all to see. What’s next? Open carry their penises to prove they have one?
I-84
June 17, 2014
Comment to Gun-control, open-carry supporters stage dueling demonstrations one week after Reynolds shooting
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
When I started reading this I was working myself up for a rebuttal but by the time I finished I decided it wasn’t worth it.
The fastest way to lower crime rates is to get rid of guns.
Stanley Bonk
September 4, 2014
Comment to Moms’ Group Calls Out Kroger’s Gun Policy In Unprecedented New Ad Campaign
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.
Bonk needs to compare crime rates inside and outside the formally gun banning regimes of Chicago and Washington D.C. But I expect facts are outside his area of experience.—Joe]
If judges can pontificate on questions of firearms engineering, then I can write legal decisions legalizing the possession of fully automatic firearms and rocket propelled grenades by the unorganized militia (ie, us). That’s fair, isn’t it?
Scott Connors
September 4, 2014
Comment to Judge Tries His Hand at Engineering
[Yes. It is fair.
It’s also just as likely to be faulty as the judge’s engineering efforts. This, of course, was his point.
What the judge and other “smart gun” advocates apparently don’t or can’t understand is that engineering against an intelligent adversary is dramatically different and more difficult than engineering devices to reduce the probability of accidents or the mitigate the effects of such an accident.
Turn signals and brake lights reduce the chance of accidents. Seatbelts mitigate the effects of accidents. There has been little need to significantly improve the technology of these in the last 50 years.
The technology of antitheft devices has seen dramatic improvement in the last 50 years. This is because in the case of the theft of a car the engineer has an intelligent adversary working against them. Both the thief and engineer attempting to protect the car innovate nearly constantly.
And even that analogy is weak because:
If you are going to pontificate on “Smart Guns” you should get the advice of an engineer with experience in security.—Joe]
Daughter Kim told me about this yesterday. Great. Just great:
An Idaho State University assistant professor with a concealed-carry gun permit shot himself in the foot with a semiautomatic handgun that accidentally discharged from inside his pocket in a chemistry classroom full of students, police said on Wednesday.
I expect it will be years before the damage done by this accident will fade away.
Don’t be stupid and ruin things for everyone. Use a quality holster whenever and wherever you carry a handgun.
Who else wishes Pres Obama would force through gun control before he leaves?
I wish he would force it trough like he has done other things. The NRA has the cons/tea partiers worshipping them like Christ and the entire country wants more, strict, comprehensive gun control at a rate of 94% support. I think this would be an amazing humanitarian move by him and a gift he could give the children of this country.
harrington
September 4, 2014
Yahoo! Answers
[This fails on so many levels it’s difficult to even address.
“Force through gun control”? Apparently this person doesn’t have a clue about the U.S. Constitution or more likely just doesn’t care. They want a king or dictator not a constitutional republic.
The constitutionalists and Tea Parties worship guns? The entire country, 94%, wants strict comprehensive gun control? Citation needed.
Humanitarian move and gift? Forcing people to be defenseless is not humanitarian. It’s not a gift if it wasn’t something you owned to begin with.
Hasn’t this guy heard? Gun control kills kids! Here’s the story in comic book form so maybe he can understand.—Joe]
The University of Idaho vehemently opposed respecting the Bill of Rights and the Idaho State Constitution in regards to firearms. The legislature finally told them to suck it up and face reality. They have reluctantly entered the 21st Century screaming and yelling and they still don’t like it and they are doing whatever they can to make sure the students know they don’t like it.
The fall semester just started which is the first semester since the law went into effect on July 1 of this year. One professor, Dan Hickman, put the following into the syllabus for one of his classes:
The University of Idaho bans firearms from its property with only limited exceptions. One exception applies to persons who hold a valid Idaho enhanced concealed carry license, provided those firearms remain concealed at all times. If an enhanced concealed carry license holder’s firearm is displayed, other than in necessary self‐defense, it is a violation of University policy. Please contact local law enforcement (call 911) to report firearms on University property.
Apparently he wants to ostracize people who go through several hours of training and a FBI background check in order to exercise a specific enumerated constitutional right.
Daughter Kim sent me this picture from the Memorial Gym, the same location as the ROTC gun range:
They create a victim disarmament zone and then declare it a “Designated Safe Zone”?
And, as Kim pointed out:
It also bothered me that the only sign I saw in memorial gym was that one on the door to the women’s center which is supposed to be about women empowerment.
Irony. Find your definition here.
Western civilization is at war with the IslamoNazi world.
The problem is that Barack Obama, allegedly, the leader of the free world, does not recognize this simple truth. And that’s because he is a radical leftist who is incapable of recognizing, much less confronting, true evil.
…
Imperial Japans was defeated by killing lots and lots of Japanese, and incinerating their cities.
Same for the Nazis.
And that’s how we are going to defeat IslamoNazism. By eradicating these human monsters and their sanctuaries. There is no talking to them. There is nothing to negotiate.
They must be hunted down and killed.
Robert J. Avrech
September 3, 2014
How to Defeat IslamoNazism in One Easy Lesson
[Negotiating with them would be like negotiating with someone who wants to murder you. There is no compromise available.
The sooner and more vigorously we get started on this unpleasant task the lower the death toll for everyone.—Joe]
The other day Kevin made a post about the inflated price of reloading ammunition.
Today I was looking at the price of Ammonium Nitrate which is the principle ingredient in Boomerite.
In 2012 I paid $0.99/pound (see also the pictures of it here).
Today it costs $1.06/pound.
The price of freedom supplies keeps going up.
Update: As requested by Paul Koning I have expressed it in ounces of gold per ton of AN:
