Typo or Freudian slip?

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From the ATF website:

However, because of the potential misuse of explosive materials, ATF’s role plays a vital role in regulating and educating the explosives industry and in protecting the public from inadequate storage and security.

The ATF role plays a vital role?

I sometimes mock the ATF but my interaction with them, on the whole, has been pleasant enough. I do want the storage of Boomershoot reactive targets to be theft and bullet resistant and their contribution to making that a reality was significant. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was “vital” but it certainly was more than role playing.

Quote of the day—TruthtoConservatives

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They need a 30 round clip to get an erection. @sampuzzo @2enchantu @abynorml @mahvros27

TruthtoConservatives (@ToConservatives)
Tweeted on February 4, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to Janelle for the email.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

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There can be no doubt after the Not Guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman that murder has now been legalized in half of the 50 states.

…

The acquittal of George Zimmerman is confirmation that the American promise of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” will continue to be squandered until the NRA’s pernicious stranglehold on our legislatures is broken. Lawmakers in states with “Stand Your Ground” laws should immediately repeal these cancerous blights on American values, law and tradition.

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
July 14, 2014
CSGV STATEMENT ON VERDICT IN ZIMMERMAN TRIAL
[It’s no wonder CSGV is irrelevant and fading away.

A jury found Zimmerman not guilty of both murder and the lesser charge of manslaughter. Yet CSGV, without the benefit of seeing all the evidence and testimony seen by the jury, is convinced he committed murder. A jury that took only 16.5 hours of deliberation to reach that conclusion. It was no surprise to nearly all the trial observers. The evidence clearly supported the conclusion that the shooting was in self-defense.

The wild claim of murder is the same as that by other anti gun people who claimed the Boston Marathon terrorist shooting at the police, and shortly thereafter shot by the police, was a “gun violence victim.” Apparently these people live in a world where everyone shot and killed are murder victims. The only thing that could make it more clear is if they declared Gary Gilmore a “gun violence victim.”*

Their world and reality only intersect to the extent that we can sometimes understand the words, but not the substance, of what they are trying to say.—Joe]

*Someone should ask Joan Peterson about this.

Editing is tedious

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My eyes are starting to go buggy. Been spending a LOT of time recently working on editing The Stars Came Back. The story is done. I’ve addressed some of the issues people had, like the attempted rape scene (ubu), the no-alarm airlock (Sendarius, I think, or was it Defens?), the “sudden pile of bodies” shortly thereafter (several people), the poker game (ubu), the multiple planets in one system L3/L4 issue (forget who, but thanks, it helped later, too), etc. Also think I got all the to/too, breath/breathe, clothes/cloths issues. Still a few things to work on, and now awaiting to hear back from a few of those brave souls that said they’d be happy to look it over and see what errors they can find in it. (If you asked to do so, and haven’t heard from me, drop my a line, because apparently my email to your email address you use when posting isn’t working for me). Not sure on the going live on Amazon date. Still awaiting to hear back from a couple of people on possible cover-art things (still entertaining suggestions on that front, actually), and want to go through it at least once and not find another error of some sort.

Watching the stars

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I have just laid down in my sleeping bag near Boomershoot Mecca. No tent. Just the sleeping bag, pads, pillow, and a blanket.

I was going to fire up my computer and make a quote of the day post to go live at 6:00 AM but it is totally quiet except for an occasional dog barking a half mile or more away and the sky is moonless and clear. I can easily see the Milky Way. The QOTD blog post can wait. Tonight I’m going to watch the stars instead.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

Quote of the day—mikee

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It isn’t eternal vigilance the residents of Illinois need, it is eternally outraged aggressiveness against their own government.

mikee
July 11, 2013
Comment to Three Yards And A Cloud Of Dust…
[It isn’t just in Illinois that this is needed. And there are lots of things to be outraged about.

The judge that forced Illinois to allow people the “bear” part of “keep and bear” arms didn’t prohibit the state from requiring someone to get a permit to exercise a specific enumerated right. Reading a book, even the most dangerous ones such as The Communist Manifesto, doesn’t require a permit. Worshiping the god(s) of your choice doesn’t require you to register with the state. And you don’t have to get the local sheriff to sign off on you exercising your right to have a lawyer present when you are being questioned by the police. The BATFB (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Books) can’t declare book as failing to meet a “religious purpose” test and forbid it being imported as they can with a gun that doesn’t meet its “sporting purpose” test.

Gun owners are like a child so badly abused that they are grateful just to be given a few scraps of bread in a bowl of water. The abuse has been going on for so long and so extensive that it is difficult for us to imagine what a “normal life” would be like.

Talk to someone that has lived in an abusive relationship for decades and then got out. Even after a year they will still marvel some little thing they are so grateful for but is really a normal human interaction. While in the relationship they didn’t, and probably couldn’t realize, that was another instance of abuse in their relationship. And probably just as, if not more, important is that the abuser absolutely does not see it as abuse. No matter how many times they are told, no matter how much data is supplied the abuser will insist the victim deserves it and no abuse is actually occurring.

It’s easy for someone from Idaho to see the abuse in New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. It’s much more difficult for the people being victimized to see it. And the legislators advocating even more abuse cannot imagine why the victims complain.

Just like an abusive parent or spouse whose actions result in the injury and death of those innocents under their control these abusive politicians, who infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms which also results in the injury and death of the innocent, need to be arrested and given appropriate punishment.—Joe]

Internet drama and gunternet shenanigans

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Or is it gunternet drama and internet shenanigans? Thankfully, aside from the regular stuff I’ve seen for many years and have learned to avoid for the most part, I’ve not the slightest idea what anyone is talking about. No, don’t go a-linkin’ to it here, neither. I don’t want to know. Thank you.

It’s a lovely July day here in Moscow today. Not too hot, and so my garden likes it too, and the last two evenings have been bliss, with a very gentle, cool, fragrant breeze wafting in through the open windows.

I tried to get my wife to notice, but she’s too busy with the drama in her head (and emanating from the television) and is more interested in planting said drama into my head (or the head of any who will listen, encouraging her with undue patience) than in most anything I have to say. It’s that “most” part that gives me any hope.

One thing I have learned, among the few others, is that I don’t have to coddle and germinate the seeds of drama that other people try to plant in my head. They just fall away and dry up, waiting for some other fool to pick them up off the floor and run with them (which is more often the case than not).

If it’s not actionable on my part or of some value to better understand how to live my own life or to help others live theirs, or of some value in understanding the immutable laws of physics or of human nature on the macro level, or of understanding history, I’m pretty much uninterested at this juncture I think. Mechanics and petty squabbles I mastered long ago.

Sorry there’s nothing to excite you here. I’m finding that excitement is vastly overrated and I’m of the opinion that we spend far too much time pursuing it at the expense of things that matter. It seems we spend the first half of our allotted lifespan seeking excitement and the second half, if we’re lucky, cleaning up the wreckage.

Carry on (as in, replace the “party” in the Wayne and Garth term “party on” with “carry”, so it has a nice double meaning for a gun blog).

Gun Song – Gunpowder and Lead by Miranda Lambert

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Not exactly an an uplifting song, but gives a good story why someone might want to own a gun, and why they are called “equalizers.”

Miranda Lambert has been on the country music scene for about a decade. Decent body… of music.

Forget who recommended the song, but thanks.

Quote of the day—Scott Adams

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If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

Scott Adams
[He has a very good point.

I think it is important to acknowledge there are stupid people and that even smart people sometimes say stupid things. One should not pretend that something stupid didn’t just occur but to handle it graciously when it does.—Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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3a8307e52ca620168967c71c07463fd7

I have no idea what the cartoonist was thinking. This makes absolutely no sense what so ever to me.

The right to keep and bear arms is an explicitly enumerated right in the Bill of Rights on equal ground with the rights listed on the sign. “Union rights” are not explicit in the Constitution or BOR but some aspect of a union have implicit protection such as freedom of association. But how do gun rights threaten any aspect of the other rights or of someone wishing to be a member of a union?

My best guess is the cartoonist has crap for brains. Does anyone have a better idea?

Quote of the day—Patrick J. LoPresti

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When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow.  They print useless messages like, ‘C-h for help’ and ‘”foo” File is read only’.  So I use the editor that doesn’t waste my VALUABLE time.

Ed, man!  !man ed

ED(1)               UNIX Programmer’s Manual                ED(1)

NAME
ed – text editor

SYNOPSIS
ed [ – ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.
—

Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it’s the standard.  Everyone else loves ed because it’s ED!

“Ed is the standard text editor.”

And ed doesn’t waste space on my Timex Sinclair.  Just look:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root          24 Oct 29  1929 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-t  4 root     1310720 Jan  1  1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  5.89824e37 Oct 22  1990 /usr/bin/emacs

Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user’s disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!

“Ed is the standard text editor.”

Let’s look at a typical novice’s session with the mighty ed:

golem> ed

?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?

—
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage.  Ed is
generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm
the novice with verbosity.

Patrick J. LoPresti
July 11, 1991
The True Path in alt.religion.emacs
[There is more but this should give you enough of a hint to get you to read the whole thing—assuming you GET OFF OF MY LAWN!

This remarkable piece of enlightenment is just as valid today as it was when it was originally posted 22 years ago today.

And as I was telling Ry the other day, not only would I rather not be running Windows 8, I still harbor some resentment DOS was replaced with Windows 95.—Joe]

Failure to report a crime becoming a crime?

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For those that thought it couldn’t happen, we’ll see. Obama is looking to stop insider leaks. Specifically by ordering federal workers to spy on each other, and it includes making failure to report a crime, a crime. East Germany, full speed ahead.

Can you saw “witch hunt?” Can you say “ideological purification?” can you say “regulatory capture?” I knew you could, boys and girls.

Gun cartoon of the day

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69845_600

It’s not just the Chicago gun ban that was defeated by the Constitution. The ban on public carry was defeated as well.

Stuff it Handgun Control Inc. (now calling themselves The Brady Campaign in public while retaining HCI for more private discussions).

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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It is time for Illinois residents to join citizens in every other state. If Gov. Quinn and other gun prohibitionists need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, where all civil rights – including the right to bear arms – are recognized, that’s their fault. They tried to transpose the Second Amendment from a fundamental civil right to a heavily-regulated privilege, and that is not what the court ruling allowed him to do.

We welcome Illinois to the United States of America.

Alan Gottlieb
July 9, 2013
SAF APPLAUDS ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS FOR OVERRIDE VOTE, COURT COMPLIANCE
[I’m not sure it’s really valid to say they have entered the U.S. It’s more like they are in quarantine. They still need to rid themselves of their gun control infections but they are making progress and I do welcome that.—Joe]

Hat tip; theBlaze

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Happy Independence Day.

He probably complied too much, and should have stood his ground on the “Am I being detained” part. I don’t know what I will do when my time comes, but I have been through a similar incident before and it left a bad taste in my mouth. In that case I was in fact in violation, by having studded tires after the deadline for removing them. If I were totally innocent, who knows what would happen? I’ve seen the dog trick before too. It’s bullshit. I do know for sure that I will be asking the criminal posing as a cop to get out a pad and pencil and jot down “18 USC 241” and “18 USC 242” and informing him that he is putting himself at risk for prosecution.

A dashcam would be a good investment about now, to document the crimes committed by corrupt police, if for no other reason than posterity, so future generations can see how and when our republic fell into the shithole.

Gun cartoon of the day

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Via Weerd.

c5e3f043acb326bca68159143af06112

As Weerd points out this is a straw man argument.

I also wonder if there is some “Freudian slip” in regards to almost all the triggers looking more like fishhooks than a real trigger. The overweight gun owners is an almost universal stereotype (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and of course the original classic first gun cartoon I clipped from a newspaper, and wrote the editor about, from the mid-1990’s).

It’s true that guns are successful conflict resolution tools. But the nature of the conflict for which they are appropriate and advertised for would be more along the lines of, “Home Invasion Deterrent”, “Personal Protection on the Street”, “Grizzly Bear Repellent”, and “Rodent Population Control”. Nothing on the entire set of NRA web sites or in any of their literature would even hint at any of the things this cartoons explicitly claims.

Our enemies cannot succeed on the basis of facts and things we claim. As one anti-gunner finally admitted, “You … are too strong for me. By that I mean a great compliment. Your knowledge of the subject is too great for me to compete with.” They must, by necessity, live in an alternate reality where they think we say things that we do not and then gleefully shoot down their imaginary foes.

Quote of the day—charles hugh smith

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Everything centralized, from the Federal Reserve to the Too Big To Fail Banks to Medicare to the National Security State depends on the Federal government being a Savior State that must ceaselessly expand its share of the national income and its raw power lest it implode. All Savior States have one, and only one trajectory– they must ceaselessly expand and concentrate wealth and power or they will fail.

They are like the shark, which dies once it stops moving forward: the Savior State must push forward on its trajectory of expansion or it expires.

Stasis is not possible, nor is contraction; the promises made to the citizenry cannot be withdrawn without political instability, but the promises cannot be kept without fatally disrupting the neofeudal financialized debtocracy.

charles hugh smith
July 4, 2013
The Next American Revolution (Emphasis in the original)
[His main point is that the next revolution will be much different than any in the past. It will be one where the existing bureaucracy is bypassed and ignored rather than being forcibly removed from power. It will be, he claims, a place where, “wages are no longer an adequate model for distributing the surplus generated by the economy.”

I agree with his characterization that the government is on a path where it must constantly expand or implode. I can believe his is right that the next revolution will be different than any ever seen before. But I am far from convinced that he has it right on the nature of the next revolution.

It seems to me that the nature of the majority of people is that they want/desire/require a central leader or authority. Either they either want to be ruled or they want to be a ruler. The concept of just leaving people alone to freely associate with others is inconceivable to most people. Even in a relatively free state they think in terms of freedom being forced upon them by some authority.

It is my expectation that from the ashes of our current government there will rise some new form of claimed authority to rule over the people and the vast majority of people will have not learned the lessons of history and will welcome it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Background N015e

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@acallipo @barronbarnett @smrzle @toddkincannon “It looked so long and hard, but then he emptied his clip soooo fast…..*sigh*… oh well.

Background N015e (@backgroundN015e)
Tweeted February 6, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to Barron.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Plato

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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Plato
From here.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Golem XIV

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There is a New Cold War but it is not like the old one. It is not country against country. It is the shadow state in every nation against its own people, with the collusion of an inner core within the regular State.

Golem XIV
July 3, 2013
NSA/GCHQ – The New Praetorians and the New Cold War
[He makes some good points.

I just wish someone had some solutions.—Joe]