Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

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An Israeli sniper once confided to me an IDF counter-terrorist doctrine called: “Shoot the women first.” Because the female terrorist will rarely surrender, preferring an apocalyptic ending.

Robert J. Avrech
August 28, 2014
Three Essential Films About Terrorism
[In Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume Three) he talked about something related. During a slave camp rebellion the rebels positioned women rebels on the front lines with the men. This, he said, was because not only were the women just as willing to fight but also the men were braver and fought harder when a woman was present.

I wonder about U.S. law enforcement sniper doctrine. There is the Ruby Ridge incident to consider. Vicki Weaver was known to be the leader of the family. Even though she was holding a baby in her arms and not an immediate threat to anyone she was shot in the head by the FBI sniper.

This may have implications in future confrontations.—Joe]

Traumatic hair cuts

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Barb was in downtown Seattle today and had an appointment to get her hair cut.

Fortunately it was at a different location and time than this incident:

SeattleFireHairSalon

There were six people injured and the structural integrity of the building was compromised.

Can you imagine laying back with someone shampooing your hair, you are all relaxed, and mellowed out then CRASH! The room explodes with broken glass, flying debris, a car zipping across the room, and the ceiling sags down toward you?

On this day there were advantages to being bald.

Online version of Field Ballistics

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About a year and half ago I upgraded my Windows hosting service from ASP.NET 3.5 to 4.5. This broke http://field.modernballistics.com.

I checked log files and, as I suspected, almost no one was using it. So I didn’t bother to fix it. I was using a beta version of Field Ballistics (or maybe even released it) and it was so much better that I didn’t even use the web version myself.

Today someone at a manufacturer of airgun pellets sent me an email saying they really liked it (I think they were referring to that version, English isn’t their native language) and wanted to know how much it would cost to support them. I asked about what sort of support they needed and then poked around on my website some. It turns out it was trivial to get it working again. So… in case anyone is interested here is a mobile friendly web based exterior ballistics calculator intended for use in the field.

Just a little bit creepy

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The QOTD yesterday was by Vladimir Lenin. And, as you might already know, every post made gets automatically Tweeted to my Twitter feed. By the end of the day I had two new followers on Twitter:

wp_ss_20140827_0002Cropped

Yes, Lenin. The father of the USSR. The nation that murdered tens of millions of their own people and had tens of millions more in slave labor camps that persisted for many decades.

It’s possible these may be spam accounts but they are not mocking or disparaging him.

I find it just a little bit creepy.

Website ranking

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A couple years ago the Brady Campaign created a website called wearebetterthanthis.org. As you might expect it was anti-gun and very misleading if not outright lying about the issue. I decided I would “compete” with them in that information space and I purchased wearebetterthanthis.info. I never did anything with it beyond linking to that category on this blog.

Today I was looking at the websites I was hosting and wondered if I should do something with that domain. My impression is the Brady Campaign has been neglecting it after that meme failed. But is there analytic data to support that?

Of course there is. Website popularity is an important part of ecommerce and there are many people trying to quantify this sort of information. Hence I used the free data available from pagerankchecker.com and alexa.com to get my answer. But then I wanted to know more. I ended up building tables of various pro and anti gun websites then sorting them by various measures.

Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Malcolm Wallop

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The ruling class doesn’t care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us ad our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake.

Malcolm Wallop
Speech
March 8, 1997
1997 Conservative Political action Conference
Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington, DC.
[Via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

Agreed, it is not an honest mistake. However, I’m not convinced that, in most cases, it is a deliberate act to enslave us or even increase our dependence upon the state. I believe that many of these people have various degrees of mental illness. Their own lives and thoughts are chaotic and they, probably unconsciously, seek out outside control/guidance. They view freedom as risky, unpredictable, and uncontrolled. They want the comforts of a strong, gentle, loving mother not realizing that government cannot be a mother substitute. As George Washington said:

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.

In times mostly past many of these people got their comfort and strong guidance from the church. That authority, when it reaches the level of a theocracy, has its own extreme hazards. The U.S. Constitutional principle of separation of church and state neutralized that particular threat in this country. But today many people have a faith based belief in the power of an omnipotent, omnipresent, and all loving government. This results in all the hazards of a theocracy because, for all intents and purposes, theirs is a religion based upon the worship of government.

For individuals to say they want the power, via the right to keep and bear arms, to defend against the government is akin to saying you want to challenge the gods. This is an unthinkable heresy to them and they want you punished.—Joe]

A bad free speech decision

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Another court case over at Volokh. Bible Believers v. Wayne County (6th Cir. Aug. 27, 2014). Some true believer bible thumpers went a-preaching at a huge Michigan Arab festival. They got balls, even if they might be shy a few common sense points.

Any-hoo, they carried their signs, wore their shirts, did their preaching. The Muslims assembled took offense, and a lot of their kids (naturally) started getting actively hostile (always use kids, so if the cops crack heads it makes for good propaganda videos). The cops told the Bible Believers to shut up or leave. The Bible believers said they had first amendment rights. The cops said “leave or we’ll arrest you for disorderly.” The court agreed. Reading the decision excerpts, the court has an argument, but I think the defense / dissent (the Bible Believers) has a much stronger argument.

Be a good case to appeal, especially if they win. If they don’t, then the incentive is for the hostile Muslims to get REALLY hostile to shut down opposition.

Incentives are important.

What is it?

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I built this gadget around 20 years ago. It’s been in use on a mountaintop ever since, until being brought down to my shop today. Three of the cylinders are marked “C” and the other three are marked “L”.

I remember having it the back of my 1966 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon parked across the street from the Federal Building in Moscow, Idaho right after the Oklahoma City bombing and wondering if I was going to get hassled for it.

The Gadget

The Gadget

Quote of the day—Vladimir Lenin

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An oppressed class which did not aspire to possess arms and learn how to handle them deserve only to be treated as slaves.

Vladimir Lenin
Via Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume Three)
[The natural extension of this is, “Those who do not possess arms and know how to handle them are at risk of becoming slaves.”

That is how many oppressors view those they oppress. If they cannot overthrow or defend against their oppressors then they deserve to be oppressed. It’s the natural order of things.

These people have different principles than I. In their world view there are no natural rights. There is only power. And as Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book) said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

These are the same people who say the Bill of Rights grants us rights. It does not. It guarantees them. This concept is apparently too subtle or too alien for some people. If you attempt to have a discussion with such a person you will end up talking past each other. It is better to get this point settled before moving on to other issues. If they cannot accept this fundamental principle then simply move on. There is nothing more for you to discuss with them.—Joe]

Decisions, decisions

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In Taylor v. City of Baton Rouge, the ban on guns in places that sell alcohol — including supermarkets and service stations, and their parking lots — was struck down on Second Amendment grounds.

It’s cool to see the 2nd actually meaning something. Not sure if this is the best case to take the the SCOTUS, but it’s not a bad decision. A strange piece was that it was a default judgement, because the defendant didn’t answer the complaint properly.

In other court news, in Sylvester v Harris California’s 10-day waiting period was struck down with respect to people who already own guns. Not strict scrutiny, not any clear other level of scrutiny, either. In any case, good news.

As always, much more at the links.

 

Quote of the day—Anthony W. Ishii

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One cannot exercise the right to keep and bear arms without actually possessing a firearm… The purchased firearm cannot be used by the purchaser for any purpose for at least 10 days. Also, in some cases, due to additional costs and disruptions to schedules, the 10 day waiting period may cause individuals to forego the opportunity to purchase a firearm, and thereby forego the exercise of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Therefore, the 10-day waiting period burdens the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Anthony W. Ishii
SENIOR DISTRICT JUDGE
August 22, 2014
JEFF SILVESTER, et al., Plaintiffs v. KAMALA HARRIS, Attorney General of California, and  DOES 1 to 20, Defendants CASE NO. 1:11-CV-2137 AWI SAB
[As I said in email to the gun alias at work and as Say Uncle said, “A right delayed is a right denied.”

As near as I can tell the “A right delayed…” quote is the original work of Martin Luther King Jr., in a different, but just as valid, context.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Quilty

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@mtracey @PDPJ @michaelarria such tiny little penises, those cops in #ferguson with their toys. #playinggrownup

David Quilty
Tweeted on August 19, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to JoethefatmanTM.–Joe]

Quote of the day—William Saletan

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Yes, the facts will surprise you. That’s why you should embrace them.

William Saletan
August 24, 2014
Rethinking Gun Control Surprising findings from a comprehensive report on gun violence.
[It’s a fairly decent article but I think he was stretching for something clever to say for those last two sentences. You don’t embrace the facts because they “surprise you”. You embrace the facts because that is reality. To reject the facts is to reject reality.—Joe]

First steps

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Grandson Bryce took some off his first steps the other night when Barb and I were visiting and watching videos with son James and his family:

Quote of the day—Paul Markel

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You see folks, gun control absolutely does work. Gun control laws turn those who may have been strong and independent citizens into weak and subservient members of the collective. Gun control laws give legal standing to the notion that the armed state is superior to the disarmed populace. In the end that was the unspoken goal of gun control all along.

Paul Markel
August 21, 2014
Gun Control Works
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Moving

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Update 8/25/2014 @1:32 PM: After much anguish, many partial restores, lost DNS records, out of RAM issues, orphaned databases, corrupted files, and I’ve lost count of things, I think the blog is working again with only two minor comments lost.

Update 8/25/2014 @3:52 AM: The move is back on.

Update: The move has been postponed due to technical difficulties in the exporting of the content. You may comment and post as desired until further notice.

Commenters: I’m moving my blog to another hosting provider. Any comments you make while this post is visible will be lost.

Co-bloggers: Any posts you make while this post is visible will be lost.

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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But fond though I am of order and quiet, it’s costly and difficult to keep when purchased by the blood of brutes and fools — a well-run police state is quiet and orderly but it’s not free.

Roberta X
August 20, 2014
Frikkin’ Ferguson
[I’m probably in the 90th percentile of the people who have a fondness for order and quiet. But you’ll find me in about the 99th percentile of the people with a fondness for freedom. Hence people attempting to implement a police state are at high risk of me generating disorder and non-quiet as I oppose them.—Joe]

Refusing to enforce gun laws

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Nullification, as it should be. It isn’t generally discussed (such discussion would ruin the anti-rights, i.e. Progressive, narrative) but taking that oath not only allows an individual in law enforcement to judge the constitutionality or legality of an order or a law, it requires it.

That is its whole and only purpose. They don’t take an oath to blindly follow orders, or to obey the Dear Leader or any such nonsense as happens in more backward societies. They take an oath to uphold the constitution. That is not a trivial distinction. Those are functionally opposite concepts, so long as the constitution in question supports human rights. I’d rather they take an oath to uphold human rights (and prove that they understand the meaning of same) being as the constitution is valid only to the extent that it recognizes and protects human rights.

Know which side your sheriff serves!

Calling it ‘Ignorance’ is being generous

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I had thought it was well understood that one of the tactics of the anti rights movement has been to blur the distinction between fully automatic and semi automatic firearms (the former being ultra-restricted and therefore ultra-expensive and prohibitive and the latter being widely available and affordable). Apparently I’ve been very wrong.

Coyness apparently remains one of the most successful ruses for the anti liberty movement, even today when we have so much information at our fingertips that ANYONE who cares enough to jiggle his fingers over a keyboard for a few seconds can learn just about anything that is known by anyone.

That proves that most of us in the pro-liberty camp still fail to understand what we’re up against.

KNOW THY ENEMY!

It has been well-documented that anti-rights activists have spoken about, and organized efforts aimed at, confusing the issue of full verses semi auto, and yet we still would rather have fun pointing out the “stupidity” of people like Don Lemon. Well the joke’s on us, people.

More to the point though; if we were standing on principle, the distinction between full and semi wouldn’t matter. The Progressives have had most of us cowed for generations into accepting the NFA, and “defending” ourselves by accepting THEIR premise that, “Oh, well yeah– NO one wants machineguns ‘on the streets’! No-no-no-no!”

And so it’s an interesting play we’re in. The antis are using our own faults against us, by fooling people into making a distinction (which they’re trying to blur now) that only matters because they’ve been successful in fooling or intimidating us.

It’s the very definition of Progressivism. Get us comfortable with one outrage (in this case the NFA) and use that as a stepping stone to the next outrage (conflating semis with the already successfully demonized autos).

Far from calling Don Lemon an idiot or an ignoramus then, I’d say he’s pretty damned clever. So far he appears to have fooled 100% of the commenters on that Beck article.

Boomershoot steel target testing

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Phil repaired the Boomershoot target steel someone (not a Boomershooter, it’s a long story) damaged with steel core bullets. This last weekend I tested the “target dog” he built for me. It was also the first time I had shot at the steel myself from further than about 75 yards.

Except for a single shot with a .40 S&W from about 20 yards all the shots were from 375 yards.

WP_20140817_007

The target is 3/4” AR500 so they are not your standard pistol targets. They were intended to stand up to .300 Win Mag from 375 yards and beyond. The white splotches on the target above were almost all from 55 grain .223 FMJ bullets at 375 yards. They barely took the paint off and as near as I could tell did not rock the target backward. The spring, as Phil noted, is way too stiff for that. And I suspect that with a .223 and that massive of a target it’s physically impossible to select a spring such that a bullet strike would knock it backward such that a mild breeze wouldn’t also do that. The .40 S&W didn’t move the target either.

WP_20140817_008

Notice the white stuff at the base of the target? That is lead spray from the bullet strikes on the target.

I was trying to zero my .300 Win Mag, without a spotter, from 375 yards and only got two hits as I probed different hold overs and unders. And the bullet splash on the steel was so small I couldn’t see it even with the 14 power scope at that distance. Here you see the impact from a 190 grain Sierra Match King bullet hitting the steel at about 2475 fps:

WP_20140817_009

There is just the tiniest of craters there.

A hit on the edge of the steel is another matter:

WP_20140817_010

The two .300 Win Mag hits weren’t particularly good to judge the knockdown potential of the configuration but as near as I could tell there was, again, no movement.

I’m extremely pleased with the crater repair Phil did. The targets look awesome! But we need to crunch some numbers to see if it is possible to choose a spring or maybe redesign the target dog such that it will be self resetting for a .30 caliber bullet at Boomershoot distances.