Dynamic building clearing class

This sounds like fun:

Dynamic Building Clearing

An incredible and intense tactical training. Make hundreds upon hundreds of room entries, work in low light, plan missions, conduct rehearsals, execute the MISSION!

This course will teach the most modern and up-to-date version of dynamic clearing as is being used by the worlds best Entry Teams. This is a perfect course for both new and experienced SWAT officers, tactical trainers, military personnel, security contractors, or anyone who has a desire to understand the tactics being used on a daily basis in the GWOT.

Buckley, WA
September 06 – 08, 2013

But I have too many other things to do this month. And besides, if I really needed to clear a building I think I would use explosives.

A whole different level

Via a comment from Bill:

Pat Kelley and others are quite impressive as well.

2nd Amendment presentation

Via email:

Joe,

I will be giving a one hour presentation on the Second Amendment at the Des Moines Area Community College campus in Ankeny, Iowa, at 11:30AM on Sept. 17, 2013 as part of DMACC Constitution Day activities.
More info at my blog:
http://onsecondopinion.blogspot.com/2013/08/upcoming-speech-at-des-moines-area_26.html

Take care,
David Young

He was the editor of The Origin of the Second Amendment: A Documentary History of the Bill of Rights in Commentaries on Liberty, Free Government & an Armed Populace 1787-1792. This book was cited over one hundred times in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals US v Emerson decision and six times in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent District of Columbia v Heller decision.

Quote of the day—Stranger

The “Right of Kings to disarm their subjects” was recognized nearly as far back as history goes. As does the “Right of free people to be armed.” So the roots of the Second Amendment go back at least to the Akkadians, some 4500 years ago.

And in all that time, not even one weapons control law has ever resulted in less crime or violence.

Stranger
February 9, 2010
Comment to Origins of the bigot meme
[See also Just one question.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Natural is better than artificial. Right? Man-made is bad. Right? So what could be more artificial than the way we use electricity?

The next time someone tells me how much better something is because it’s “natural” I’m going to tell them I’m sure they would be much happier and healthier if they replaced all the electric lights in their home with all natural whale oil lamps. It’s a renewal energy resource. Right?

Quote of the day—William Pascrell

This bill represents a major investment in the protection of our children and our communities, and reflects the long-term societal costs of gun and ammunition purchases in our country.

William Pascrell
U.S Representative, Democrat, New Jersey
August 26, 2013
Dem bill would trigger huge new taxes on guns, ammo
[He’s got it totally backward. If you really want to interfere with the free market in an attempt to improve society in regards to firearms there should be subsidies for guns, ammo, accessories, and training. There should be outreach programs for those most at risk from criminal violence and social workers should help them get the proper equipment and training to both help them get out of potentially violent environments and defend themselves and other innocent life as necessary.

But since Pascrell and other are so ignorant and bigoted they can’t or won’t comprehend the data that shows guns do more good than harm. Let alone that the right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right that can no more be taxed than speech, religion, and freemen (the 13th Amendment). Hence they will just continue the way of the KKK into the dustbin of history.—Joe]

New Gun Competition Shows

Two new shows, Hot Shots and 3 Gun Nation, premiered this month on theBlaze TV. When Top Shot came out it was all the buzz on the gun blogs. This time, not so much. This time however, the new shows are NOT soap operas with some shooting thrown in.

When Survivor came out and was a big success, I got interested and watched a couple of episodes. By the description I thought it was going to be something good, where the survival skills of the competitor would win the contest. Man, was I disappointed. It turned out to be all political/mind game horse crap that you see on any soap opera, and the strongest skills are often among the first to be voted out as a threat to the weak. Belch! And Top Shot was made in Survivor’s image.

Not this time. So far. I’ve seen two episodes of Hot Shots and one of 3 Gun Nation, and they are all about shooting competition. What a relief! We got to see, as a side story, a guy fire 18 shots from an auto pistol, with a draw and two reloads, in under five seconds, and hit his target. He used a pure race gun and all race gun gear, but regardless, it is was beautiful to see.

The shows would be better if we were given a little more nuts and bolts of the game, and if we were told a little bit more about the gear (so far no one has even told us what caliber they’re shooting and so we’re left to guess based on magazine dimensions and airborne brass) but if you’re into shooting competition and you despise soap operas half as much as I do (no one gets voted off, for one thing) these are worth seeing. On episodes one and two of Hot Shot, Miculek goes for his 20th straight championship.

I’m just cringing though, hoping against seeing the episode wherein the top shooter is all angst-ridden over his ex girlfriend’s pregnancy with his best friend, and her upcoming surgery, and whether his best friend’s baby with his ex will survive, and whether the dark nemesis with a quaintly unidentifiable European accent will try another takeover of an ambiguously gay shooter’s fashion design business empire, while tempers flair over the Jade’s snooping of Monica’s love affair with Pete.

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

Where laws and politics are concerned, no battle for freedom is ever won in perpetuity. But gun owners have certainly pushed freedom’s adversaries back across the Rhine, and apparently no one knows it better than Josh Horwitz.

NRA-ILA
August 23, 2013
What a Difference a Year Makes
[Horwitz is the director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence which was formally known as the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. You might think that the name change was to soften their image of gun banners but actually it was because they wanted to broaden their scope to include “assault weapons”.

And now Horwitz has dreams of, maybe, someday, getting “universal background checks” as the law of the land.

Give it up Josh. Gun ownership is a specific enumerated right and your desire for infringing that right is no more valid than denying the rights guaranteed under the 13th Amendment if someone fails a background check.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Amber Callipo

@backgroundn015e @barronbarnett @smrzle @toddkincannon an assault rifle is used to lure for women. Disappointment soon follows.

Amber Callipo (@Acallipo)
Tweeted on February 6, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to Barron.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barb L.

Meh.

Maybe I’m getting spoiled but one stunning view looks pretty much like another.

Barb L.
August 24, 2013
[This was while looking at the scenery seen in the images below.

IMG_8317Corrected

IMG_8323Corrected

IMG_8322Corrected

We walked over 11 miles, at altitudes from 6000 to 8000 feet, looking at stunning view after stunning view.

It was a pretty awesome way to spend the weekend.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ayo Kimathi

Waging war against whites is at the core of the Afrikan warrior’s spirit.  It’s the flame that drives our willingness to fight in the face of certain defeat and/or death.

….

Afrikan Nationalists must become diligent about making acceptable Black behavior match our Black complexions.  We must become militant, hostile, violent, and deadly to those individuals and groups in our community who don’t comply to Black decency and Race First standards.  We cannot continue to be Black people with white behavior.  – Black Afrikans Only!

Ayo Kimathi
June 8, 2010
Black Ethnic Cleansing: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
[H/T to Lyle in the comments here.

Those who see a revolution on the horizon about freedom/liberty/guns/etc. must also be aware that in almost any revolution there are competing factions. These factions will take advantage of the chaos and fight for domination over the others. In the quote above you can perhaps see more clearly the dichotomy. On one hand he is advocating blacks go to war against whites but he also advocates ethnic cleansing of blacks by blacks. Similar things happen in most civil wars.

In our country in addition to a battle against an oppressive government there would be battles against the communists/socialists/progressives who believe the government should have more power. And the people like the guy quoted above would take advantage of the chaos and fight their own battles. There would not be just two sides, there would be dozens. Civil wars are very messy and there are seldom clear winners.

I believe there are better ways to attempt regaining our freedom.—Joe]

Gun Song – Twofer

Just realized I failed to post a gun song last Friday. Arg. Oh, well, I guess I’ll make a two-fer today. Cash and Kilmer Continue reading

Quote of the day—mikee

Once we’ve gotten that pesky self-preservation instinct under control, getting everyone to head toward utopia will be as easy as loading a cattle car.

mikee
August 22, 2013
Comment to Evil
[This is in regard to the CSGV making it explicitly as well as implicitly clear they are philosophically opposed to self-defense. It shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise to anyone. As irrational as they (or anyone) are within some restrained context their world view will make sense. I’ve seen this sort of thing in many individuals.

I’m reminded of a joke my psychology professor in college told:

Some guy is in the cafeteria holding an empty water glass to each ear. Another guy comes up to him and the conversation goes like this:

Guy2: Why are you holding the water glasses to your ears?

Guy1: It keeps the wild elephants away.

Guy2: But there aren’t any wild elephants in North America.

Guy 1: See! It works!

It is going to be very difficult to convince, in the abstract, the guy with the water glasses that he is wrong about their effects. Within his set of constraints his world view is entirely consistent. Rock solid logic.

The anti-gun person is going to be drawn to the same sort of constrained world view where their logic works. It might go something like this:

Guns are bad.

Guns are used for self-defense.

Self-defense involving lethal force must therefore be bad.

The lethal force qualifier may or may not be required.

It turns out that the concept of using lethal force for self defense is not a universally believed to be moral. I’ve talked to people that strongly believed in “proportional response” even when the aggressor was using lethal force such as a club or a knife. A gun would not be “proportional”. Somehow they believe, and sometimes explicitly state (as my cousin, who has been raped three times that I know of, once told me), that it would be worse to be killed with a gun than clubbed or stabbed to death. In their world view if there were no guns in the hands of private citizens then even the weak/disabled/elderly would not need guns because they would (almost) never have to confront someone with a gun. Hence victims would (almost) never be justified in using a firearm for self defense because proportional force would (almost) always be something less than a gun.

But, you might claim, eliminating self-defense is a long way from loading up the cattle cars. There isn’t anyone that wants to do that these days.

I would like to remind you of Barack Obama’s “neighbor and family friend” Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground who told FBI informant Larry Grathwohl:

I asked, “Well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?” And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.

And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.

And when I say “eliminate,” I mean “kill.”

Twenty-five million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.

You could now claim that that was a FBI informant that can’t be trusted.

Perhaps. But it is consistent with what happened in the USSR. They sent 10’s of millions to reeducation camps. And they sent millions to their graves in their pursuit of utopia.

How could they rationalize that? How could they believe that was a path to utopia?

Easy. My communist brother-in-law, a business professor in Chicago, indirectly explained it to me:

The good of the majority always outweighs the good of the individual.

My protestation about individual rights being violated were dismissed without concern:

You have to look at the big picture. The good of the majority is more important that the individual.

He views me as narrow minded. He claims that I “can’t see the big picture”. My examples of tens of millions of innocent people murdered by their own governments in the last century were dismissed with:

We just need to have the right people in charge.

It’s all so simple, logical, and blindingly obvious to these people. This is why they think there is something wrong with us. This is why they want “reeducation camps”. They really believe that despite the grinding poverty and mass graves of all the communist utopia that it is always the fault of a few greedy/selfish/ignorant/stupid individuals that their utopia fails to materialize. Reeducate those that are willing and elimination of the rest and then mankind will finally achieve equality, peace, and social justice. How can it be a high price to pay to dismiss the so called rights of an individual when the achievement of a peaceful forever is so close? What about the rights of the billions of others and the billions more to be born in the future? Don’t they have a right to live in utopia?

The cattle cars will be filling up soon. It’s for the greater good.

My belief is that the greater good will be achieved by small pieces of precisely placed rifling engraved copper jacketed lead in the heads of the so called leaders and intellectuals who give the orders to load the buses and trains*. They think I’m just a narrow minded bigot who can’t see the big picture. But they mistake the narrow focus for narrow mindedness and underestimate the clarity of the picture at a distance with my Leupold scope.—Joe]


* One could make the case there is a compelling reason why liberals are so opposed to individual transportation.

The roots of modern tribal culture

Ancient tribal cultures were held together by the common cause of survival. The desire for control of the tribe had to be backed up by strength, sharp senses and good judgment, or the tribe would either fail or select a new leader by any means necessary, and quickly.

In our industrial society, with property rights, specialization and mass production of everything imaginable, what is the jealous megalomaniac to do so as to get people to submit? Strength, sharp senses and good judgment are better utilized in the markets or to improve one’s own property, and so those attributes don’t go looking for political power. The megalomaniac doesn’t have the fear of starvation or wild predators, he doesn’t have that common, obvious, consolidated will to follow along just to eat or to keep the rival tribe at bay, so he has to invent fears and uncertainties, and inculcate them into the society. He needs you believing that you need him. He needs to be needed, therefore he cannot abide the strong and the capable. He cannot abide a well-functioning, prosperous society. He needs you on your knees.

So the next time you find yourself wondering how someone could say something so toweringly “stupid”, do such “stupid” and obviously counterproductive things or be so “irrational” and contradictory as the average politician, wonder no more. There is a clear, deadly method to all the madness. Be sure– the wannabe rulers and plunderers (same thing) need you to be uncertain, fearful, upset, angry, off-balance, distracted, pointing fingers at “the other guys”, confused, and on the whole, weak. Otherwise you’d never give the son of a bitch the time of day. As it is, you hang on his every word, most especially when he’s being a total jackass. See how that works?

Don’t fall for it, Grasshopper. When Megalomaniac (any politician or policy wonk) gets you into a heated argument over policy details, stupid plans, silly assertions, statistics, global economic theories and so on, he’s got you right where he wants you. Whether you go along or rebel, you have been played.

“Oh; you don’t like this particular megalomaniac? No problem– There are hundreds from which to choose. Why, come right over here, My Friend– I just got this one in on trade, just this morning as a matter of fact, and she’s a real gem…”

Changing the world

It’s talked about quite a lot. Obama ran on it, but I have yet to hear anyone ever specify; FROM WHAT, TO WHAT. To hear someone embrace “Change” without specifying “from what and to what” is more than a little disturbing. It has to mean that you believe things to be so bad right now that they can’t get any worse, and that therefore ANY change will be for the better. I’ll have to assume that you’re motivated purely by angst, and that will never turn out well.

Change means you’re moving away from some particular situation or condition, and toward some other situation or condition. If you’re going to advocate unspecified change, or talk about changing the world as though it should be taken as a given that changing the world would be a good thing, then you’re insane. Simple as that.

If you’re telling me you want to change the world, you’d best be specific as to what you believe is wrong with it right now, and be specific about your premises, ideals and goals. Then we have something to discuss. Otherwise I have no time for you.

New shooter report

My brother was in town with his lady-friend. She’s from Chile, and had never shot a handgun before because guns are VERY strictly regulated there. As far I know, she’d never even held one in her hands, which are tiny. Her hands are even smaller than my ten year old daughter’s. So I offered to take them to the range, of course, as part of her “experience” of America. But what to shoot? Well, .22 LR, of course, but what else that would fit those tiny hands? The S&W 629 and other large revolvers seemed right out. So I grabbed a selection for the range bag and a few hundred round of ammo, and we headed for the range.

She tries the little S&W 22 AirLite first – fits her hand well, low recoil, but a long, heavy, rough trigger. She struggles a bit with the dry-firing as she gets the feel for it. I put the target at 7 yards, and she puts first round in the black. OK, good start. I load another round, and she puts it in the ring just outside the black. The next eight rounds all are inside the rings, and generally centered. Off to a good start!

We try the Ruger 22/22WinMag interchangeable cylinder next, but it doesn’t fit her hands well when dry-firing, so we skip it and go to the Ruger GP100 with 6″ barrel, shooting 38 Special. Dry fire for a bit, load one, shoot one in the black. All righty, then. Looking good. Try some more, all inside the rings. I do some coaching on stance and grip throughout, but she is starting to get the hang of it. She try some more 38s, does well.

We move up to 9mm, trying a Sig and a Glock. She likes the Sig more, but does fine with both. She doesn’t like the Glock trigger much, but the doesn’t like the Sig single-action double-action change of pull feel, either. Eh, pretty typical, I think.

So I got out the 1911 in 45 ACP, and her first three shots were all on the bottom edge of the paper… Hmmm? Night sights, maybe? We explained lining them up properly, and the next three hit much closer to the middle.

I demonstrate some heavy .357 loads (125gr hp with 16 grains of 2400 – they do about 2150 fps in a lever action, and produce a serious THUMP and flame in a revolver), and she says she’s like to try them, so she does, and again they are all in the rings.

She said she’d like to try “bigger,” but I didn’t have any because I didn’t even think the 1911 would fit her hands, so we just tried whatever she liked the most. She mostly moved back and forth between the .45 ACP and the heavy 357 Mag loads, which surprised both me and my brother. But, as I keep telling people, I don’t care how it looks on paper, or what it feels like at the gun-store counter, until you actually try it, you just really don’t know what’s going to float your boat when it comes to shooting handguns. Try a bunch, buy a couple, practice. All in all, another good day at the range introducing a person to the realities of shooting a gun.

Quote of the day—Lyle

When I hear this drivel about “having a conversation” it sounds like this, set in 1930s Germany; “It’s time we had a serious conversation about the Jewish problem.”

Lyle
August 21. 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

So-called “gun free zones” have never been known to prevent a single violent crime and even the CeaseFire president has acknowledged that “this won’t stop someone determined to cause violence but we hope that standing together and giving businesses a tool to say no to guns will change the conversation around gun violence.”

That is dangerously self-delusional and it is one more exercise of symbolism over substance that makes neighborhoods less safe by creating risk-free environments for robbers, rapists and other criminals.

Alan Gottlieb
August 19, 2013
SEATTLE’S ‘GUN FREE ZONES’ IDEA IS ALL FLASH, NO SUBSTANCE, SAYS CCRKBA
[Self-delusional, symbolism, and dangerous. Yup. That about sums it up.

And don’t forget that we had the “conversation” for the last 40+ years. It’s time these guys got over the fact that they lost every argument.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Why isn’t the forcing of Obama Care upon the people a First Amendment issue? Isn’t freedom of association a protected right anymore? If some group of people, say an insurance company, wants to contract with an individual, a group of individuals, or another company then why are those individuals and groups not free to associate with each other as they please?

Quote of the day—Kurt Geissel

It sends a message that it’s not cool to just walk around with a gun all the time because bad things happen.

Kurt Geissel
August 18, 2013
McGinn asking Seattle businesses to go ‘gun-free’
[It “sends a message” alright. But it’s not the messages they think they are sending.

The message they are sending is that they don’t want the business of this nations 80 million gun owners. Would they consider putting up signs saying “No colored people allowed”? There are only about 42 million people that identify as “black” or “African American” in this country. There are approximately twice as many gun owners.

The message they are sending is that the people that visit and work at their business are unarmed potential victims. If a criminal is looking for soft targets then these people are self identifying. They are like a deer with a limp with a pack of wolves looking for dinner.

The message they are sending is they are more interested in sending messages of narrow minded bigotry than in the principles of this country or the state of Washington.

And most importantly the message they are sending is they are the type of people who have crap for brains and that think “sending messages” accomplishes something useful.—Joe]