Well, technically it’s a Colt 1991A1 question. How much difference is there between a ramped barrel and a “normal” barrel? Specifically, is there much work beyond grinding off some metal at the breech to turn a ramped barrel like this into an unramped barrel like this. Just by eyeballing it, it looks like grinding away the ramp (carefully, of course, and without overheating it, etc) should be all that is necessary. Is there anything else that needs to be done, or some other difference that makes them non-interchangeable? I’m not a serious 1911 geek, but I’m sure there are some out there that would know. The difference in availability is the reason I’m asking. The description says some minor fitting may be needed in any case, and I assume that’s generally emery-cloth minor grinding to slim it a thousandth or two in one spot or another to make for a proper fit instead of being overly tight, but is there more involved?
“Messin’ around shooting” with carry pistols
My friends and I, as a natural matter of course, sometimes try our carry or service pistols at 100 or even 200 yards. It’s always seemed to me an obvious thing to try. Why wouldn’t you?
And so when Oleg and I were out “messin’ around shooting” at various rocks, dirt clods, sticks and whatnot at various random distances, we did some 100 yard pistol shooting with our carry pistols (a 9 mmP and a 10 mm Auto).
I haven’t commented on this phenomenon before, but I’ve noticed that the point of hold for 100 yards with a Glock 20 isn’t much different from that at 25 yards. It was when Oleg, without any prompting, made the same observation regarding his 9 mm carry pistol that it occurred to me to say so in a post. Well here it is.
Oleg was striking a roughly 8″ square plate at 100 yards with successive shots from his 9mm Glock.
I don’t know what utility this sort of pistol shooting might have in defense, but it is good to know you can do it.
Quote of the day—Jay Leno
We wanted a president that listens to all Americans – now we have one. Yeah.
Actually, President Obama clarified the situation today. He said no one is listening to your phone calls. The president said it’s not what the program is all about. You know, like the IRS isn’t about targeting certain political groups. That’s not what it’s about!
I mean what’s going on? The White House has looked into our phone records, checking our computers, monitoring our e-mails. When did the government suddenly become our psycho ex-girlfriend? When did that happen?
Jay Leno
June 7, 2013
From here.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Alan Gura may not be our savior
Alan Gura did some awesome work by winning the Heller and McDonald cases. But some people are not certain his approach is the best in some other cases. They are very satisfying to the “true believers” like me but that doesn’t necessary generate the best results. Think, no compromise and losing versus getting incremental results.
The Drake case is a case in point. Peruta may be the better horse to bet on.
Drake had some baggage. It might have forced the justices to rule on whether concealed-carry permits are unconstitutional. That would be a huge jump for the justices, and there is a good chance that there are less than five votes among the Court’s current membership to rule for gun owners on that issue.
Once the Supreme Court settles an issue it is rare for them to ever revisit it, and traditionally the justices like at least 20 years to pass before reconsidering a matter (though there are exceptions). For those who want to advance gun rights, it’s much better to have no precedent at all than to have bad precedent.
The other problem with Drake is what is called prior-restraints doctrine, which is when the government requires you to get a permit before engaging in speech-type activity, such as a license before showing a movie. Any government system requiring citizens to get government permission before speaking faces a strong legal presumption that it is unconstitutional, and the government must show that the license is narrowly focused on achieving a compelling public interest.
Applying that legal doctrine to guns is considered far-fetched by many Second Amendment lawyers. The courts will likely never adopt such a demanding standard. Speech is by nature spontaneous and fluid. Many of the most important things to be said are said in the moment.
Firearms, in contrast, are tangible, heavy, and expensive. You have to think about obtaining a firearm, plan for it, budget for it, and then go to specific locations to obtain one. And words can rarely kill people, but guns can.
Yet these are the arguments Drake’s lawyers chose to make, so the biggest problem withDrake may have been the legal team. Lead counsel in that case is Virginia-based lawyer Alan Gura, who was one of the lawyers who argued both of the Supreme Court’s famous Second Amendment cases, Heller and McDonald.
…
In contrast to Drake, Breitbart News has already explained why Peruta is a perfect case for the Supreme Court to take. California law forbids openly carrying firearms outside the home and provides that no one is entitled to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. It empowers local sheriffs with the discretion to decide who gets permits, and the sheriff inPeruta requires applicants to give some special reason aside from a desire for self-defense.
Peruta was extensively discussed in the Drake legal briefs filed as part of the petitioning process, more thoroughly than any other case except Heller itself. So the justices had ample opportunity to compare both cases and determine which one they would prefer. AndPeruta was argued by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, regarded by many as the best Supreme Court lawyer in America, who would also argue the case at the High Court.
It’s not just gun owners who are considered terrorists
A sample:
These incidents were not aberrations of the era. During the Bush years, for example, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed, as the group put it in 2006, “new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups“. The Pentagon was “keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database”. The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who “have done something wrong” should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing.
The opportunity those in power have to characterise political opponents as “national security threats” or even “terrorists” has repeatedly proven irresistible. In the past decade, the government, in an echo of Hoover’s FBI, has formally so designated environmental activists, broad swaths of anti-government rightwing groups, anti-war activists, and associations organised around Palestinian rights. Some individuals within those broad categories may deserve the designation, but undoubtedly most do not, guilty only of holding opposing political views. Yet such groups are routinely targeted for surveillance by the NSA and its partners.
One document from the Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012, chillingly underscores the point. It revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express “radical” ideas and who have a “radicalising” influence on others.
***
The NSA explicitly states that none of the targeted individuals is a member of a terrorist organisation or involved in any terror plots. Instead, their crime is the views they express, which are deemed “radical“, a term that warrants pervasive surveillance and destructive campaigns to “exploit vulnerabilities”.
…
The government may treat anyone who challenges its policies as terrorists. For example:
- The former head of the NSA and CIA compared privacy advocates to terrorists
- Peaceful protest may be treated as terrorism by the FBI
- Questioning war may be considered terrorism
…
Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead writes:
No matter what the Obama administration may say to the contrary, actions speak louder than words, and history shows that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes. What the NDAA does is open the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists, that technically applies to anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government.
Daniel Ellsberg notes that Obama’s claim of power to indefinitely detain people without charges or access to a lawyer or the courts is a power that even King George – the guy we fought the Revolutionary War against – didn’t claim. (And former judge and adjunct professor of constitutional law Andrew Napolitano points out that Obama’s claim that he can indefinitely detain prisoners even after they are acquitted of their crimes is a power that even Hitler and Stalin didn’t claim.)
And the former top NSA official who created NSA’s mass surveillance system says, “We are now in a police state“.
The implications of such massive surveillance are staggering. It might be nearly impossible to stop because with such surveillance in place a political reformist can and will be targeted. From the article:
Among the information collected about the individuals, at least one of whom is a “US person”, are details of their online sex activities and “online promiscuity” – the porn sites they visit and surreptitious sex chats with women who are not their wives. The agency discusses ways to exploit this information to destroy their reputations and credibility.
One might hope that an economic collapse of the Federal Government, which I think is nearly certain, will stop it. But an agency with that much power and the tools to maintain it will be among the last to go down and make itself “useful” in any government resurrection.
I’ve been sick
I was late in posting QOTD yesterday and today. I’ve been very sick. It wasn’t until today that the doctors figured out what was going on. It was a “perfect storm” of an undetected cavity in a tooth in proximity to a wisdom tooth fragment left behind after the extraction. A soft-tissue infection developed and even after the antibiotics kicked in enough for the visible infection to go away I still felt terrible. I have seen three doctors so far and will see five before everything is taken care of. I’m somewhat functional now but only with the help of drugs.
It’s amazing the effect something going on in a length of gum tissue less than an inch in length can have. Late morning on Wednesday was the worst. I was shivering uncontrollably. I was in bed with a down comforter and four blankets, doubled over, on top of me. It was 70 degrees in the room and still I was shivering and for inexplicable reasons, because I didn’t have significant pain at the time, had streams of tears rolling down my face. Barb turned on a space heater and heated the room up to I don’t know what temperature before I finally was able to stop shivering.
I’m so glad this didn’t happen during Boomershoot.
Quote of the day—Ayn Rand
There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.
Ay Rand
“Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapon,”
The Los Angeles times, Sept. 9, 1962, G2
From here.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
That’s not the way it works
As you might have gathered from reading Prince Law Office’s blog or what Sebastian had to say the ATF recently ruled that non-incorporated trusts are not considered a “person”. A careful reading of the law regarding machine guns then becomes very interesting:
(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), it shall be unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun.
(2) This subsection does not apply with respect to–
(A) a transfer to or by, or possession by or under the authority of, the United States or any department or agency thereof or a State, or a department, agency, or political subdivision thereof; or
(B) any lawful transfer or lawful possession of a machinegun that was lawfully possessed before the date this subsection takes effect.
Because it is only unlawful for a person to transfer or possess a machinegun and a trust is not a person then your trust can now purchase machine guns. If the law means what it says.
But that isn’t the way thing work in our country anymore. The way things work is that many or most of the politicians and judges dispense “justice” which means not what the law says but what they want it to mean at this particular time and place. We are long past the time when the law really means what it says. You don’t believe me? Review the history on Obamacare in the last few months. Or try getting a prosecutor to bring charges against someone using 18 USC 241 or 18 USC 242 for infringing upon the rights of people exercising the right to keep and bear arms.
And they are proud of the way they dispense “justice” so don’t expect anything to change anytime soon.
Quote of the day—Eric Bates
If we want to stop gun violence, the 2nd Amendment has to be reworked and we must pass bills that restrict access to all types of weapons. The rest of the civilized world has figured this out already – but Americans are always late to the party when it comes to doing smart and sensible things.
The big problem is that the 2nd amendment won’t be reworked.
Eric Bates
May 15, 2014
The “Guns Everywhere Law” Keeps Us Safe Nowhere
[Bate doesn’t realize that the US Supreme Court has ruled that the right to keep and bear arms is not granted by the 2nd Amendment nor “is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence”.
I think Bates should move to one of those “civilized world” places he think is “smart and sensible” where they infringe upon the right of people to defend themselves. He should choose wisely because I’m of the opinion we should push such countries to stop their human rights violations and respect the right to keep and bear arms.
Bates is one of those who Alan Dershowitz would call a foolish liberal.
If we want to stop slander and libel we need to rework the 1st Amendment. If we want to get more convictions for criminal activity we need to rework the 5th Amendment. And if we want to stop people with dark colored skin from committing a disproportionate amount of crime we need to rework the 13th Amendment.
We won’t be going there in my lifetime.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Brian Anderson
Besides the Constitutional issues with gun control, the thing that bothers me the most is that the anti-gunners just don’t know what the hell they are talking about. They say they want to have a “conversation” about gun control, but they aren’t even armed with the basic knowledge of how firearms work, let alone stats and facts to back up their attempts to disarm the American populace.
Brian Anderson
April 28, 2014
Anti-Gun NJ Politician Confused About Guns
[H/T to JPFO.
They don’t have basic knowledge about how firearms work, stats, and facts because they are irrelevant to them. Their “reasons” for wanting to disarm us are independent of such things or the facts that do matter to them must be carefully hidden from us in order for their plans to succeed.—Joe]
Mixed feelings
I approve of the end result but I wish we had got there via the legislature rather than the courts:
A federal judge has issued an injunction Tuesday blocking enforcement of Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage, saying it is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Magistrate Candy Dale issued the ruling in the case of four same-sex couples who challenged the constitutionality of Idaho’s marriage laws, which voters approved as an amendment to the state constitution in 2006.
In her decision, Dale wrote that Idaho’s laws barring same-sex marriage unconstitutionally deny gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry.
I see marriage law as being in the domain of the state legislatures. I haven’t read the court decisions but it would seem to be a stretch to find a fundamental right for same sex couples to marry in the U.S. Constitution, common law, or natural law and yet there be some question about the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms being protected.
Random thought of the day
If you listen to and read their propaganda closely you will notice gun control groups don’t say they seek lower violent crime rates. They seek things like:
- “Common sense” gun regulation
- Keeping guns away from people that should not have them
- Protecting peoples “right” to feel safe
It should be clear from the things they don’t say that they know increased gun regulation does not make the world a safer place. And because of this you must conclude that whatever their agenda is it depends on the public at large being less safe from violent crime.
Quote of the day—Ed Suspicious
The only constant in gun deaths is the presence of guns. Remove the guns you remove the gun deaths. Sounds great to me.
Ed Suspicious
May 11, 2014
Comment to John Oliver nails it on gun control
[Ahhh yes, the great “gun death” argument. As if everyone that dies from a gunshot wound is a tragedy and there is no benefit to gun ownership.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that no one wants to take away your guns.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Fed Up With Faith
that’s not dumb. You don’t need to Hunt. It’s only because your dick Is small!
@Fedupwithfaith
May 5, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via still another Tweet from Linoge.—Joe]
Enforcing the Second Amendment
I have been advocating this for quite a while and I’m glad to see someone else is advocating for it as well:
We have this legal tool on our side to arrest and prosecute anyone, of any office, who violates our constitutional rights. The time is now. Enforce Title 18, USC, Section 241. We just need to agree now on an orderly procedure for carrying this out.
Random thought of the day
If corporations were really legally treated like individuals then they wouldn’t be prosecuted for organizing like unions and engaging in collective bargaining with labor organizations.
Gun Lube
Via Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man I came across this article on gun lubes and water protection. Basically a guy with the handle of “Rancid Crabtree” bought a bunch of stuff, documented his procedures, tested things, took pictures, and posted the results. I’m sure quibbles might be made about some detail or another of what he did, but it’s a lot wider that any other test I’ve seen, and makes at least as much sense as others I’ve come across. Food for thought in any case.
Quote of the day—Chris and Jeff Knox
Reasonable people should recognize and admit that no gun control law has ever met the stated goal of reducing crime, and there is no evidence to suggest that any of the various proposals to further restrict an enumerated right, which “shall not be infringed,” would be any more effective.
Chris and Jeff Knox
On Being Reasonable.
Front Sight magazine, May/June 2014 Vol. 31, No. 3
[Another way of expressing Just One Question.
When someone says something about “reasonable gun laws” push back on them with this. Get them to admit that it’s not about reducing crime. It’s about creating new criminals out of you and me.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One) page 13, footnote 5.
[I agree with this review on Amazon
The writing style is captivating. To some extent, it has been a series of references about how certain people or groups of people were arrested and/or executed. All too easy how people disappeared without a trace and no one even missed them and couldn’t do anything if they wanted to. And the petty, heartless, political and bureaucratic reasons people were arrested makes one closely reconsider his day-to-day activities.
Chilling, as you can see the roots of this activity growing in our country daily.
It will take a while to finish all 3 volumes, but I plan on gradually finishing. It’s hard to read too much at once as your jaw gets tired of dropping constantly and your brain can only take so much astonishment at once.
I am only about a quarter of the way through the first volume (of three) so there may be other things that strike me more profoundly. But so far it is that nearly all believed “in the system”. That once “they” got things straightened out the arrestees would be set free and they would go home. This was even in cases where the NKVD was arresting 25% of an entire town. The NKVD had quotas to meet. And there was always multiple laws they had broken and would be charged with. Just as there are in our country today.
Because of this belief in the system they not only did not resist—they cooperated. At the request of the arresting NKVD they would even tiptoe out of their apartments so as to not wake their neighbors.
I would like to believe that if a similar situation came about in our country that my only attempts to be quiet would involve the use of a sound suppressor for my firearms.—Joe]
Privacy is tough
Very interesting stuff:
The signals produced by smartphones turn out to be so identifiable that it may never be possible to use one anonymously. Even basic privacy may be difficult to achieve.
Despite all the standardization and quality control that go into accelerometers and other sensors built into smartphones, each sensor contains enough tiny, unique imperfections to identify, not only the physical component, but also the data it records, researchers from the University of Illinois, the University of South Carolina, and Zhejiang University report.
“Even if you erase the app in the phone, or even erase and reinstall all software the fingerprint still stays inherent,” Romit Roy Choudhury, the UI associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science who led the team, said in a press release. “That’s a serious threat.”
By analyzing data from the accelerometers from more than 100 devices, the team was able to determine that tiny differences in the data recorded by the accelerometers were unique to the sensor itself, rather than reflecting flaws or differences in materials or environment from a particular plant of production line.
…
It’s not even necessary to get that specific or interact that much with one smartphone to identify it as unique. In June 2013, researchers at Technical University of Dresden published a paper that said variations in the performance of the power amplifiers, oscillators, signal mixers, and other components of a cellphone radio transmitter leave patterns in the analog radio signal that become a uniquely identifiable pattern of errors after the signal is converted from analog to digital.
That makes it possible to identify and track individual phones passively by their radio “fingerprints” without doing anything but listen to it, and to identify a specific phone even if the SIM card has been replaced or its unique identifying numbers have been altered, according to Jakob Hasse, lead researcher for the paper, which was presented at an ACM Workshop.
“Our method does not send anything to the mobile phones. It works completely passively and just listens to the ongoing transmissions of a mobile phone — it cannot be detected,” Hasse told New Scientist.
I forget who and when I was telling the following story to recently but it is my understanding that during the Vietnam war we had technology that could hear the radio emissions from the ignition systems from trucks many miles away. And because of variations in the ignition systems, such as worn spark plugs, dirty points, etc. the operators of that equipment learned to identify individual trucks.
I think the lesson to be learned is that if you leak electromagnetic radiation you can be tracked.