From CCRKBA:
EXT – DAY – a large tan expanse of open ground with scattered grass and bushes.
A small convoy of wheeled military vehicles roll through across the plain at high speed. They are in a loose cluster, disorderly. They are mostly APCs, a few fast wheeled gun platforms. Guys and gear are hanging on the sides as they race along kicking up a lot of dust. There is a sudden explosion not far from one, but it doesn’t swerve or anything. They are just charging along, fleeing the shots being fired at extreme range from somewhere behind.
[Note: Music along the lines of Two Steps From Hell’s To Glory would roll along with them fairly well]. Continue reading
Many in the Democratic Party quite simply aren’t being ruthless about gun control.
Aaron Blake
May 28, 2013
Democrats still aren’t being ruthless about gun control
[Mr. Blake, I hope that statement is used at your trial.—Joe]
Someone I’d never heard of, sort of the other end of the spectrum from the Beatles or Ernie Ford. Interesting style. Decent acoustic guitar.
If you want to know more about him and his music, http://seandeburca.wordpress.com/ would seem to be the place to start. As always, all honest thoughts welcome.
There is a an old joke that goes something like (where X is lawyers/politicians/ethnic-slur/etc.):
Q: What do you call a bus load of X that drives off of a cliff?
A: A good start.
While I’m sympathetic to someone who has lost their job, probably through no or little fault of their own, I think of this as pretty much the same way:
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, and plans to use freelance photographers and reporters to shoot photos and video going forward, the newspaper said.
A total of 28 full-time staffers received the news Thursday morning at a meeting held at the Sun-Times offices in Chicago, according to sources familiar with the situation. The layoffs are effective immediately.
This is the same paper that still employs Mary Mitchell even after she said this:
There’s no telling how many guns would be taken off the street in gang- and drug-plagued neighborhoods if police were to set up roadblocks and search everyone going into those areas.
For those of you who argue that what I am proposing violates basic civil rights, forget it.
When you go to an airport or into most schools, you have to walk through a metal detector.
This is the same paper that publishes editorials like these with no author name:
Editorial: Reject concealed gun bill
…we shudder at the thought of the concealed-carry bill scheduled for a vote Friday in the Illinois House. The bill not only would allow concealed firearms to be carried throughout the state, but it also would overturn the assault-weapons ban in Chicago and Cook County, as well as other laws aimed at keeping guns out of criminals’ hands. In all, 109 home-rule governments would see their gun laws nullified. Gov. Pat Quinn came out strongly against the bill late Thursday.
Editorial: No more concessions on gun bill
We doubt many gun control proponents in the state Legislature ever thought they could vote for a concealed-carry bill that not long ago would have been a gun advocate’s dream.
…
At this point, gun-safety advocates must draw a line. No more concessions.
If the editors of that paper were writing “Reject mixed race marriage bill” and “No more concessions on segregation” and advocating warrantless searches of homes looking for mix-race couples they would, and rightly so, have trouble getting their newsprint delivered through the hordes of protestors.
That they and their ilk in Chicago steadfastly adhere to beliefs, proven false decades ago and in 49 other states, that it is appropriate to deny specific enumerated rights even after being told by the courts to change their ways is proof positive of their bigotry. Their advocating of the continuing and expanding infringements of basic human rights has contributed to the needless deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people over the years. I look forward to the Sun Times going bankrupt, the assets sold off, and the entire staff laid off. I would love to see their buildings torn down, then gun ranges, gun shops, and gun and ammo factories built in their place. Then offer the editors and management jobs cleaning the toilets in the gun establishments and tell them they should be thankful they aren’t in prison.
Cut to
INT – DAY – Tajemnica Bridge
Quiritis has her normal calm look on hers face as she works the controls, herding the starship through the twisting and narrow (for a seventy meter starship) canyon, and canyon walls fly past on the screens in their “glass cockpit” view. She rolls it this way and that, trying to keep one eye on the terrain, and one on the path laid out in the tactical display showing the planned path. No-one else looks calm, they are all white knuckled and tense-looking, watching things whiz by dangerously close. Suddenly, a red dot appears nearly over them in the tactical display. It is right at the top of a spur of rock sticking out into the looping canyon they are following. Quiritis pulls back on the yoke hard. Continue reading
The theory of collectivism relies on the unsteady moral conscience of leadership. Capitalism rests only on the material desire for more. The former requiring more virtue than the latter, it would be wiser to put one’s faith in that which does not demand the all-knowing hubris of central planners.
James E. Miller
May 27, 2013
Government and Collapsed Bridges
[I have nothing to add.–Joe]
The main ingredients of Tannerite are aluminum powder and ammonium nitrate. There is some other stuff as well but go look up the patent if you want the details.
Just ammonium nitrate and the right kind of aluminum powder mixed in the correct proportions will detonate via a high velocity rifle bullet. It won’t detonate as easily as Tannerite (or Boomerite) but it can be made to detonate. I’ve done it.
The tough part of doing this on your own without an ATF license to manufacture high explosives is getting the correct type of Al powder (you can get the AN from cold packs). I haven’t tried it yet but someone claims they have done it with a rock tumbler and Al foil.
It looks plausible even if it does take a week in the tumbler.
Basically you shred a bunch of Al foil by hand, put it in a rock tumbler with some carbon and large ball bearings, then let the tumbler do it’s job for a week. Out comes “German Dark Aluminum Powder”.
Another law (restrictions on German Dark Al) made to look silly by low tech tools and procedures.
The only reason I would voluntarily visit New Jersey is if I could get a no-limit varmint hunting license for the politicians and law enforcement. This has to stop:
Motorists driving through New Jersey can be subjected to a warrantless search if their luggage is similar in appearance to a gun case, an appellate court ruled last week. The Superior Court’s Appellate Division upheld a five year prison sentence against Dustin S. Reininger, a former police officer who was in the process of moving from Maine to Texas when a Readington Township police officer recognized the cases in the back of Reininger’s vehicle as the sort that usually carries a rifle.
During the long trip on March 20, 2009, Reininger became tired and decided to pull off the road in an empty, well-lit parking lot. He stopped his green Toyota SUV, turned off his lights, and went to sleep in the driver’s seat under a blanket. At 3:25am, Officer Gregory Wester knocked on his window and woke him up, shining a flashlight in his eyes.…
A jury acquitted him of the charges for possession of the “assault firearms” and handgun possession but convicted him in absentia of illegal possession of hollow-point bullets, shotguns, rifles and a high-capacity magazine. He was apprehended in Texas and extradited to New Jersey.
H/T to JoeyD Sr. for the email who, appropriately, used the subject line of “Fascist States of America”.
This is off topic but I really enjoyed watching this.
An 83 year old American pilot from WWII sees the video of his wheels up landing of a Spitfire modified for photo reconnaissance for the first time. He flew 51 missions. Alone. Unarmed.
H/T to JoeyD Sr. for the email.
Fade in.
EXT – DAY – on the plain not far from the badlands
View is low angle, watching the speeding ship approach and race by, one landing gear strut still stubbornly hanging down, partially extended. Continue reading
We’ve always been too polite, by appealing to politicians to do the right thing, … appealing to their conscience and hoping they’d come around even when the evidence suggested they wouldn’t. We went too far into the realm of educating the public and ceded the field of politics to the NRA. That was disastrous for us.
Ladd Everitt
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
May 2013
This Is How the NRA Ends: A bigger, richer, meaner gun-control movement has arrived
[The NRA ends? They just set a new record for annual meeting attendance. They had over 86,000 show up. The anti-gun organizations are run on shoestring budgets with unpaid interns.
The problem they have trying to educate the public is that the more educated the public becomes the more apparent it becomes that the anti-gun side is wrong.
The problem they have with politics is that just a single political organization on our side has 5 million members (the NRA). And there are others, such as the CCRKBA, which have hundreds of thousands of members. None of their organizations have dues paying members. Their “biggest” organization has a mailing list of 25 to 50 thousand. The politicians respect votes and little else. The anti-gun people cannot deliver the votes and hence the political field is “challenging” for the anti-gun people as well.
Gun control advocates are too polite?
Ah yes, I remember now:
I wonder what Everitt thinks the proper response should be.—Joe]
The video posted here reminded me of something important.
This lept out at me like a cat with firecrackers exploding at its feet;
“The question is…how do we prevent people from committing crimes in the first place.”
No it isn’t. NO IT ISN’T!
The question IS; how do we protect liberty and dispense justice equally and reliably? The concept of crime prevention doesn’t even belong in the conversation, that is, if we’re talking about legislation, which we are.
How many people understand this? It’s there in that pledge, thingy; “…with liberty and justice for all.” Note the absence of any mention of crime prevention in the Pledge. You don’t find it in the declaration of Independence either, unless by “crime” we mean government overreach (in THAT case it’s in there, and I’m all ears if we’re having a conversation about preventing government overreach).
You can in theory have liberty and justice, OR you can have “crime prevention” legislation, but they cannot exist simultaneously. They’re mutually exclusive. The former defines a free state and the latter a police state.
The term “liberty and justice for all” takes crime as a given, a fact of life (if there’s no crime, there’s no need for a justice system). It’s an acknowledgement of the obvious – that people can do bad things. Because people can do bad things, we need our liberty protected and we demand justice. The term enshrines our right to self defense, free speech and all the rest, and promises a system of correct, organized, consistent and predictable retaliation (justice) for criminal acts.
I don’t think this is widely understood anymore. It certainly isn’t taught, and yet it is at the core of American Principle. Liberty and justice are two sides of the same coin. Crime prevention legislation is an entirely different coin, of a currency we want nothing to do with. I could say this a thousand different ways, but who gets it?
No, Little Grasshopper; crime prevention is the excuse of every police state. Having your rights respected and protected and having a proper justice system is the best condition of government you could ever ask. The prevention part is a combination of individual self defense and moral leadership, and neither of those are government business. That’s your job as a citizen. Crime prevention is your job. If it could be done with government force, (and all the worst places you can think of) would be crime free.
Via an email from Paul K. we have instructions on how to make a working gun out of paper. I have duplicated the instructions here for archival purposes.
I really, really, have serious concerns about using one of these. I can see where the radial strength might be adequate when using a small gauge shotshell but the recoil could still be a problem. There is no breachface and stock to prevent the shot shell from pushing the nail (firing pin) and perhaps the case-head into/through your hand.
Use at your own risk and remember that the extent of my obligation should this result in you or a friend of yours dying an unnatural death is to nominate you for a Darwin Award. If, and only if, I am in a generous mood when I learn of your date with fate.
Via Guns Save Life we have this poll result from England:
Vote now: which bill would you like to see introduced in the Commons?
Total Votes: 9,726
It would be nice to have a scientific poll on the topic. Certain events can and do rapidly change the political climate. It could be the mindset of the subjects have changed because of the brutal murder of a soldier while bystanders watched and took pictures. You would have thought the steady rise in crimes committed with guns in England and Wales (from 2009) would have been sufficient:
The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year – a rise of 89 per cent.
In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold.
In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled.
…
Only four police forces – Cleveland-Humberside, Cambridgeshire and Sussex – recorded falls in gun crime.
But clearly it wasn’t. We should encourage them and provide examples of how to develop a healthy gun culture. Perhaps we can speed up the recovery of their sick culture which disarms and punishes victims and enables predators.
Sometimes people take a long time to grasp reality but that doesn’t mean reality doesn’t grasp them immediately.
Fade in.
INT – DAY – Tajemnica Bridge
The screen countdown shows 00:39, 0:38
Everyone in the bridge is seated and strapped in. Helton looks at his checklist book, still only half competed, in front of him. Continue reading
The National Rifle Association’s position and concerns will be made very clear when we file our lawsuit.
Alexa Fritts
Spokeswoman for the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action
May 15, 2013
Signing of Md. gun control bill to launch new legal battles, fight for public support
[This same quote is also attributed to “Jacqueline Otto”. It is possible that it was written by someone else or even a committee. But still, I like it.—Joe]
There are so many things wrong with this that I wouldn’t even try to enumerate all of them but here are the first two that come to mind:
Update: A better image from S Andrew Nicol:
Barb L. and I took Jazzy and Maddy to the ocean with us this weekend. Jazzy had never been to the Pacific Ocean. I took a bunch of pictures of Jazzy and Maddy and made a simple video of them.
We had some dramatic moments when they went on ahead of us around a tight spot on the beach while the tide was coming in. Barb ran to catch up with them, almost fell (I caught it in three sequential frames on my camera), then yelled at them, “The tide is coming in. Be careful!” They responded with, “We know!”
They then proceeded to continue on around the corner. We waited a couple minutes and watched with increasing concern as the water continued to cut off the “pass” between us and them. I then dumped my backpack and camera case and jumped between rocks over the water and ran around the corner to find them. They were another 100 yards or so beyond and about to go out of sight around another corner. I ran to catch up with them and yelled when I thought I was close enough for them to hear me above the waves, “You need to come back now!” I was concerned they might not heed my concerns either. But they responded and started walking back at a brisk walk. I ran back.
The “crossing” was almost unrecognizable as the place I had crossed maybe two minutes previously.
I stepped onto the closest rock and got my shoes wet up to just below the ankles. The hiking boots are water resistant and my feet remained dry as I waited for the wave to go back and I jumped across to another rock and climbed out the other side without getting wet.
Jazzy and Maddy soon followed and didn’t care all that much about the depth of the water because they had taken off their shoes much earlier (there is a tale to tell about the shoes too):
Maddy had tied her shoes to her backpack and then walked probably a mile or so before noticing that one was gone. We were able to determine, roughly, where she lost it because of all the pictures I had taken of them. But we figured the shoe was completely gone because the beach was about 100 yard narrower in that spot than when she had walked by earlier.
We were approaching the trailhead when Barb and I started thinking about making an improvised “shoe” for Maddy to walk the 3/4 of a mile or so on the gravel path back to the car. We had just concluded a t-shirt with a plastic bag wrapped around it held in place with a rubber band would work or maybe just have her wait at the trailhead while someone went back to the motel and come back with her other pair of shoes. Jazzy and Maddy were probably 75 yards ahead of us when we saw one of them point and then they both started running. “A race?”, I asked Barb. “I don’t know”, she said. A few seconds later we understood as Maddy picked her shoe up off of the beach. It was on the edge of the water and probably 75 yards inland from her path in the other direction. The two socks she had stuffed in the shoe were still there too.
Lucky day.
Fade in
INT – DAY – Tajemnica’s bridge.
Lag, Helton, Quiritis, Bipasha, Camp XO
Helton: Now we spin up, sound retreat, and get the hell out’a here!
Lag: (thoughtfully, quietly, looking at the AARAS display) … No. Continue reading