Quote of the day—Joseph Stalin

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Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?

Joseph Stalin
[It seems obvious (because “common sense”!) that our anti-gun political opponents must have an even greater distrust of people with “the wrong ideas” than people with guns. And with a little bit of conjecture one might even say the ultimate goal is the destruction of the First Amendment.

Most of us celebrated this SCOTUS decision which contains this paragraph:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.
It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

If ideas really are far more powerful than guns then wouldn’t it be just “common sense” to have a SCOTUS decision which said:

Like most rights, the First Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and read any book or religion or engage in any speech whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, child pornography and religions with human sacrifice, or riot inciting speech  prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of books or practice of religion by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the advocating of religion in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of books. Previous holding that the sorts of books and religion protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the practicing of dangerous and unusual religions and owning or reading dangerous and unusual or speech which is dangerous or unusual books.

The political campaign donation “reforms” they are so fond of advocating are just the tip of the iceberg.

Because they want to ban your guns you are reasonable to suspect they want to ban your speech as well.—Joe]

Shooting a rifle upside down

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Ry pointed out this thread to me on ARFCOM. Probably many people will want to stop at the picture and move on after that but the more interesting part to me is solving the sighting problem.

UpsideDownRifleShooting

Here is my thought process on the problem:

The drop is the same regardless of the gun orientation. Keep in mind that drop is independent of point of impact (POI) relative to point of aim (POA).

To solve this problem in general look up the drop for this range on the ballistics table for your ammo.

With the gun zeroed for this range the barrel is angled up such that it compensates for both the drop and the height of the sight (Sight Height or SH) above the bore.

Suppose the drop is 2 inches and the sight height is 1.5 inches. Hence the angle of the barrel is such that the bullet rises, relative to the muzzle, 3.5 inches between the muzzle and the target.

When you invert the gun you have the angle of the barrel giving 3.5 inches additional “drop” to the gravity induced drop for a total of 5.5 inches.

But you have the sight below the barrel which means you “get back” twice the sight height of the total. So the gun will be shooting -5.5 + (2 x 1.5) or 2.5” low.

Hence, the general solution for a gun zeroed at a given range when you turn it upside-down it will have a POI of:

POI = POA + SH – 2 x Drop

Or probably more useful is the POA relative to the POI:

POA = POI + (2 x Drop) – SH

And people think I’m a packrat

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Son James has often said he is glad he didn’t inherit the packrat gene from me. Barb has hinted at similar thoughts on more than one occasion. I’m a long way from being a hoarder but I admit I keep things most people would throw away.

I heard this story over the weekend when visiting Idaho but SIL Julie blogged about it so I’m comfortable telling about a relative of hers:

The funniest find of the day was a small box I pulled off the top shelf of the pantry.  I opened it and there was wedding cake!  Very petrified wedding cake.  Their parents were married 64 years ago…

Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? Trailer

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Yet another trailer is out for the last in the Atlas Shrugged series.

As is the case for many others I’m disappointed they again changed the cast. And the main characters are played by people too young for the parts.

I’m still going to watch it. September 12, 2014.

Update: Find a theater near you.

Quote of the day—Femitheist Divine (Krista)

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It is a proposed global initiative for population reduction which will, in a few decades, lead to a worldwide male population of roughly one to ten percent… This population reduction is the only logical long term solution.

Our plan is one of pacification and submission and many of these short term solutions are already underway in the western world so we are confident in our ambitions.

…

You can’t stop us, and you will not define us, so don’t even waste your time.

Femitheist Divine (Krista)
October 7, 2012
[H/T to Glenn Reynolds.

It has to be a joke, right? Maybe it started out that way. But I don’t think she is joking anymore.

Evil does not come in the packages presented to you by Hollywood. Evil isn’t required to have a long black mustache to be twirled by the villain. Evil doesn’t have to wear jackboots and use a swastika as their symbol. Evil doesn’t always wear a mask and have Jack Nicolson’s animated eyebrows.

Although it is frequently implemented from the muzzle of a gun evil doesn’t arise from it. Evil arises from the ideas of people. Freedom of speech and thought are far more risky to society than the right to keep and bear arms.

“Pacification and submission”? I think that is what ISIS say they are doing in Iraq right now.

This is the risk you take when you cede power to a central authority. Their master plan is one that benefits the masters. It may not be packaged and sold that way but that is the way to bet it will turn out.

What if someone proposed a similar plan to reduce the worldwide Jew/black/female/whatever population by a factor of 5 to 50 of the present values? Why is there no outrage similar to what would happen in those cases? Would anyone even hire someone like that for anything more than manual labor?

And some people think there is a war on women.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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Considering the downside of the The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and various religious based genocides it is extremely clear the risks associated with the First Amendment far outweigh the risks of the Second Amendment.

If anyone wants repeal the Second Amendment because we are “more civilized than that” or some such utopian fantasy point them at the genocide and beheadings going in Iraq right now and suggest we need to repeal the First Amendment as well because freedom of religion obviously leads to barbarism.

If they then wanted to repeal both the First and the Second Amendment and you gave them a swirly in response I would vote not guilty if it made it to trial and I was one of the jurors.

I-594 questions

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Text of I-594 here.

Video of testimony here.

I’ve been going over it a bit. I’ve got a few questions that might be good to ask its supporters.

A person wants to take an adult friend to do some casual training and firearms familiarization, planning on loaning her a variety of guns and ammo during the afternoon. They want to go to a nearby parcel of public land that has been legally and safely used for recreational shooting for decades. What specific section or subsection of 594 would exempt them from having to run a background check every time they handed a gun back and forth? Considering a vast amount of training is done this way, it seem important.

A friend discovers her violent ex-husband just got released from jail, and she calls you at 10 PM Saturday night, fearing he might show up at her door any time. She’s a decent shooter, but due to finances she doesn’t already own a gun. What specific section or subsection of 594 would exempt you from having to run a background check to loan her a gun for a month until she can get the money together to buy one?

Sec 3(4)(f) states that [requiring background checks] shall not apply to a list of specific activities, such as”: The temporary transfer of a firearm (i) between spouses or domestic partners;
Why are no other family members included?

(ii) if the temporary transfer occurs, and the firearm is kept at all times, at an established shooting range authorized by the governing body of the jurisdiction in which such range is located;
Why is there no section listing such shooting ranges, or providing for how an existing range can become authorized?

(iii) if the temporary transfer occurs and the transferee’s possession of the firearm is exclusively at a lawful organized competition involving the use of a firearm, or while participating in or practicing for a performance by an organized group that uses firearms as a part of the performance;
Why isn’t training for self defense, hunting, or recreation included?

(iv) to a person who is under eighteen years of age for lawful hunting, sporting, or educational purposes while under the direct supervision and control of a responsible adult who is not prohibited from possessing firearms;
Why only minor children, not other family members or adult children?

or (v) while hunting if the hunting is legal in all places where the person to whom the firearm is transferred possesses the firearm and the person to whom the firearm is transferred has completed all training and holds all licenses or permits required for such hunting, provided that any temporary transfer allowed by this subsection is permitted only if the person to whom the firearm is transferred is not prohibited from possessing firearms under state or federal law;
Can you clarify exactly when it would, or would not, be legal to borrow a gun to hunt with?

More generally, what section allows for temporary transfers for training for recreation, self defense, or hunting with privately owned guns without requiring a background check every time a gun changes hands?

Overheard in the kitchen at work

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Joe: Where are you originally from?
Inga: The Soviet Union.
Joe: Oh! I’m reading The Gulag Archipelago right now.
Inga: It’s well written but it is a bit difficult for me to read. My grandfather and great grandfather were executed, at separate times, by the government.

We had an interesting, but somewhat depressing, conversation after that.

Quote of the day—Lebek Johnson

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We need more legislation. But what I just don’t understand is why murder hasn’t been outlawed yet – it would save so many innocent lives if it were only illegal.

Oh, wait…

Lebek Johnson
August 28, 2014
Comment to Gun control groups galvanized, but progress is slow
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

MAIG bribery

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To be more specific, Mayors Against Illegal Guns member Gordon Jenkins, a New York, Democratic Mayor, was arrested on bribery charges. Not just ““bribe receiving” but also “endangering the public health” and “intimidating a witness in connection with an incident in Fallsburg.”

A fine, upstanding bunch of folks those gun controllers mayor Bloomberg hangs with are.

Quote of the day—labman​57

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Whenever these gun-toting knuckleheads see the Target logo, they get all moist in the loins and have an uncontrollable desire to whip out their weaponry for all the world to see.

labman​57
July 2, 2014
Comment to Big Win For Gun Control Groups: Target Bans Guns In Its Stores
[Emphasis in the original.

It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!–Joe]

On the bumper

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I saw this on the bumper of the car my daughter drives:

WP_20140816_012

Quote of the day—Doug Huffman

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We were horrified, and rightly so, at Adolf Hitler’s solution to the problem. But we haven’t got a solution to the problem either.

Doug Huffman
August 16, 2014
[No. No any sort of mythical “Jewish problem.” The problem Doug was talking about was what to do with those people that are “unfit” to support themselves because they are too stupid, crazy, or lazy. In our society we are on track for an Idiocracy type “solution”.

Doug and I talked late into the night on this and other somewhat related topics.

The problem as I see it is that our ethics are appropriate for a tribe but they don’t scale to a population of a million people let along a population of 300+ million. When we see someone, children in particular, hungry or in need of care we help them even if they will never be able (or choose) to support themselves.

In a tribe of a 100 to 200 people everyone know everyone else and the peer pressure significantly reduces the freeloader problem. As soon as there is anonymity freeloaders become an essentially unsolvable problem. And with large numbers of people combined with a society in possession of advanced technology in the essentials of life it now becomes possible to support those that cannot support themselves as well as those who chose not support themselves.

And with that support of those who cannot and choose not to support themselves we end up, literally, breeding more of them. We are scared, perhaps even justifiably horrified, of the risks of the government assuming the power to mandate some people not be allowed to reproduce or to raise their children the way they see fit.

I see horrific outcomes in either of the two “solutions”.

There is at least one other potential solution. It is, as I see it, the least unpleasant of the available alternatives and as you might expect, the least likely path for our society to take.

That potential solution is for our Federal government to stay within it Constitutional bounds. If the individual states or counties or cities wanted to experiment with government welfare or “free healthcare” then those experiments could have run their course over the last 200+ years.

What I expect would have happened is with enough of these type of experiments being run that people would realize there are some people that we just have to let “nature take its course” with. We would have a lot fewer freeloaders. We would have a constant, but small, set of tragic cases of people that could not support themselves and could not convince family and/or friends to support them.

There would be heart wrenching cases and people would organize charities (Shriners, Elks Club, Eagles Club, Salvation Army, etc.). to help those for whom help was appropriate. The decision to help or “let nature take its course” would be done in more of a “tribe environment” for which our ethics were “designed” for.

I don’t see how our society can get from where we are now to the “least bad of the available options” without a lot of pain, suffering, and death. It’s like trying to solve a global optimization problem when the slopes of the sides of current local optimum are steep and high.

Nature is “going to take it’s course” with us. All of us. I’m certain many, perhaps even a large percentage of, people will survive the big “challenges” ahead. But I cannot predict if those challenges will send our descendants to the stone ages  or to a Star Trek universe. But one way or another this ethical problem will “resolve” itself if we don’t resolve it.

Nature is testing it’s own “solutions” right now. Ebola, economic instability, and even the immigration issue are in beta test now. They may not be released soon or even ever if people do the right thing. But if we don’t then full production of something awful is coming soon.—Joe]

Riots and shopkeepers, “all damn day”

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News from Ferguson, shopkeepers exercising their 2nd amendment rights. Who knew such things were possible? Well aside from anyone that actually pays attention…

I like the shirt one guy is wearing.

Quote of the day—AWR Hawkins

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The report begins with the fairly innocuous idea of to removing “loopholes” where they exist between states and the federal government regarding information on the mentally ill. But after that, the focus turns to confiscation…

Five ideas, four of which deal with gun confiscation or gun bans. Is this really the “rational middle ground”?

AWR Hawkins
August 16, 2014
Report: Giffords, Kelly’s Gun Control Group Now Pushing Temporary Gun Confiscation
[As usual, they keep trying to push us down a slippery slope.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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Don’t tell people who want to ban high capacity guns about knives. You never have to reload them!

Quote of the day—Bob Owens

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Media Matters and their leftist allies view this trend towards gun ownership in demographics that they once “owned” as a “gateway drug” towards classical liberalism, libertarian beliefs, or conservatism. They are fearful that if young liberals start following their peers into social shooting events at the new “guntry clubs” popping up around the nation, then the political shift towards anti-gun Marxism and socialism will not only be arrested, but reversed.

They know that firearm ownership is a gateway towards thinking as an individual and thinking more about individual rights, and this terrifies the anti-gun, collectivist left.

For them, fighting against the “new NRA” is more than fighting against gun ownership. It’s a fight for the very survival of a belief system that is starting to collapse under its own ponderous weight.

Bob Owens
August 6, 2014
Why the “New NRA” Terrifies the Political Left
[H/T to Sebastian.

While I believe it is true that gun ownership is a “gateway drug” toward classical liberalism I’m not sure the collectivist left is able to articulate their hatred that succinctly. I think it is more like, “Must hate because GUNS!”—Joe]

Symbolism

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I came across an interesting article at the Blaze about a conversation with a former gang member. It was from an excerpt from the book “The Future of the Gun.” It looked at guns as symbols, specifically symbols of power in inner cities neighborhoods, and how the youngsters saw people in light of the laws, guns, and power/strength, in a way that makes a lot of sense, but a perspective articulated in a way I’d never heard before.

Let me show you what’s going on here: Over there you see some stores that are open — there are shop owners there. They should be the pillars of this society. They should be the leaders…everyone should look up to them. But they don’t. They’ve been neutered, their guns have been taken away. They have to call 911, and hope [someone comes to rescue them] if something happens. So they’re victims waiting to happen.

Conversely:

Now look around more: There’s a cop. Unfortunately, too often the youth…they don’t look up to police officers, and there’s all sorts of deep reasons for that…Now look around more, what else do you see? What you see are…gang leaders.

The end result in this former gang member’s view is that for the young kid:

he looks around the neighborhood, and he looks for the power…He looks to the gang member who has a gun tucked away in his shorts. He’s the power in that neighborhood. Whereas the average person who has been disarmed, the average store owner who has been disarmed are neutered, they don’t.

He’s right. People, especially young men, want power, to feel empowered. Welfare laws what they are, there are few good fathers to be role models in a lot of inner city “families.” Boys and young men look for “strong”  men to emulate, and they see gang-bangers above shop-keepers in the social hierarchy. The anti-gun laws have created the inner city gang problem, and here is the underlying mechanism. Gun laws are not only unconstitutional, they are anti-human, they are anti-black, anti-business, anti-woman, and anti-equality. As people are wont to say, “read the whole thing.” It’s not long.

90 days to turn them in

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H/T to Barron on Facebook.

Please note that this was as of February 14, 2013. That was nearly 18 months ago.

Missouri Democrats Introduce Legislation to Confiscate Firearms – Gives Gun Owners 90 Days to Turn in Weapons:

Missouri Democrats introduced an anti-gun bill which would turn law-abiding firearm owners into criminals. They will have 90 days to turn in their guns if the legislation is passed.

Dana Loesch Radio reported on the new legislation being pushed by Missouri Democrats:

Any person who, prior to the effective date of this law, was legally in possession of an assault weapon or large capacity magazine shall have ninety days from such effective date to do any of the following without being subject to prosecution.

Here’s part of the Democratic proposal in Missouri:

4. Any person who, prior to the effective date of this law, was legally in possession of an assault weapon or large capacity magazine shall have ninety days from such effective date to do any of the following without being subject to prosecution:

…

UPDATE: It’s not just Missouri…
Minnesota Democrats Introduce Law to Confiscate Guns… Using Same Language as Missouri Democrats

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

Test everything

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The picture below is from a computer backup I was doing over the network.

TransferRate

This was with the existing file on the target drive being overwritten. For new files the transfer rate is nearly constant and a little above the peak shown here.

I suspect the algorithm used by either the driver or the controller for the hard disk for update an existing file results in a large number of seeks of the head. The file copy program (Robocopy in this case) could work around the problem by deleting existing files before doing the copy. But the designers of the program may not have been aware of the problem with this particular hard drive.

In my situation I don’t care a lot because it can just run as a background task and it doesn’t much matter if it takes 10 minutes or 300 minutes (yes, the transfer rate is over 30x slower). But for some people it might.

As always, thoroughly testing your products, processes, and assumptions is important and either this one wasn’t fully tested or management marked the bug as “Won’t Fix” and shipped it anyway.

Having presided over numerous Boomerite failures I know how easy it is to say, “This change shouldn’t matter” or “This has to make it better, no need to test it.” There is a reason many companies have a test team that is independent of the development team and may even have a reporting chain independent of engineering.

This, almost, paranoia about testing can be generalized to a lot of things in your life. Have you ever changed a tire on your current vehicle? I bought a used vehicles a few years ago and discovered a day or so after I bought it that it didn’t have a jack in it.

You have a gun to defend your home and loved ones? Have you ever pied the corners of your home with that shotgun? Have you looked at possible choke points for stopping a home invasion? How about looked at what happens to misses or shoot-throughs from likely shooting positions? How do those speed reloads you practice for USPA matches work out for you when you are at the top of the stairs in your birthday suit?

Progressives want the government to have more power to implement “social justice”. Ask the tens of millions of people that went into the Gulags of the USSR how that worked out for them. Oh, that’s right, most of them that weren’t shot after their forced confessions were worked and starved to death. We don’t need to run that test again. 100+ million people have already been killed during the testing done by various progressives regimes in the 20th century.

Anti-gun people want to register guns. Ask Canada how that worked out for them.

Does your bug-out kit included canned goods but you forgot to include a can opener?

You’ll discover many such things when you test.