Biden’s brain cell still lonely

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Vice President Biden keeps demonstrating his profound ignorance and stupidity:

Biden also suggested that [Newtown school shooter] might have been killed sooner had he had to spend more time reloading.

“Think about Newtown,” Biden said. “Think about how many of these children or teachers may be alive today had he had to reload three times as many times as he did.”

The transcript of that speech doesn’t report anything about Biden saying the shooter was killed by police so Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake may be solely responsible for that sentence. In the transcript Biden does claim the police responded in two and a half minutes. That is probably false unless you want to claim one or more cars having started to move in the direction of the school qualifies as “responded.”

The shooter started his attack at about 9:35 AM and stopped about 9:46 AM to 9:49 AM after firing 152 rounds. See also this report.

The shooter killed himself at least 10 minutes after beginning his attack. Some reports have it as police arriving 20 minutes after the attack started. I have also used this number but recent reports indicate it was significantly less that that. Biden is either purposely ignorant and/or stupid if he thinks what he said is true. And even if it was true two and a half minutes is enough time to fire a lot more than 152 rounds even with 10 round magazines.

Reloading an AR-15 takes a bit longer than it does for my STI Eagle but I got 40 rounds on target in 16.8 seconds which included three reloads and clearing a malfunction:

Extrapolating to 152 rounds and you get 63.8 seconds for trigger time and magazine changes. When shooting dozens of passive “targets” the thing that takes the most time is the target transition and acquisition. This includes moving to a new position to view the next target and getting an appropriate sight picture. It’s not the trigger or reload time which can frequently be done in parallel with the target transition and acquisition.

Even if the police did arrive two and half minutes after receiving the first call the number of magazines required simply doesn’t matter. Many of the magazines he used were dropped after firing only 15 of the 30 rounds they contained. If he had been required to use 15 magazines instead of the approximately 10 that would have only added another, at most, 15 seconds. And that assumes he wasn’t doing something else at the time he made the magazine changes such as moving to a new shooting location. If he was doing the magazine changes in parallel with moving it could be that it would have made zero difference in time.

I can only conclude Biden’s brain cell is still lonely and/or he is deliberately attempting to deceive the public.

At first I cringed

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When I saw the title “The five minute NRA speech that would change the gun control debate forever” I cringed. I expected the article to be something along the lines of advocating the NRA saying, “We were wrong. Assault weapons are evil.” I was wrong:

The time for partisanship is over; now is the time for action. And that’s why the NRA is requesting the assistance of the ACLU.

The Sandy Hook tragedy, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Aurora “Batman” shooting, the Tucson shooting – all of the killers had something in common: They were all mentally unstable young men who were prescribed mind-altering psychiatric drugs.

The only thing I disagree with is that speech would change the gun control debate. For most politicians and many activists their gun control agenda isn’t about saving lives. That isn’t even debatable anymore. It’s about control, money, and security theater.

Addressing the extremely difficult problem of how to appropriately deal with mental illness isn’t something that lends itself to simple, even if false, answers and sound bites. Politicians don’t get elected by getting people to think about complex issues. They get elected by offering simplistic “solutions” to distressing emotional events and/or situations.

Don’t expect pigs to fly and don’t expect politicians to advocate people thinking.

It’s not over

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Via email from the CSGV:

Where We Stand on the Assault Weapons Ban

By now, many of you have heard about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement yesterday regarding the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013. Speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Senator Reid announced that the Assault Weapons Ban will not be part of the base gun violence prevention bill he brings to the Senate floor next month.

The reaction from gun violence prevention advocates was fierce and immediate; many felt betrayed. The press quickly reported that “the Assault Weapons Ban is dead in the Senate.”

The press is wrong.

There’s no doubt that Senator Reid’s statement could have been more sensitive and thoughtful. But it’s important to understand the procedural hurdles he is contemplating. If there is a filibuster by Republicans, Senator Reid will need 60 votes to bring a gun violence prevention bill to the Senate floor for a vote. He is weighing whether he can get those 60 votes in a package bill if the Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) is included. His estimation is that it is better to leave the AWB out of the bill he brings to the floor, so that he can break a filibuster and get it there in the first place. Once it’s on the floor, Senator Reid has been clear that he will allow Senator Feinstein to introduce the AWB as an amendment to the bill. This strategy would ensure that all the important pieces of the Senate Judiciary Committe’s package (universal background checks, anti-gun trafficking penalties, and the Assault Weapons Ban) actually get votes, as opposed to none of them.

And let’s remember what the sponsor of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, Senator Dianne Feinstein, said on January 27th of this year:
“There will be a package put together. If assault weapons is left out of the package…I’ve been assured by the majority leader I will be able to do it as an amendment on the floor, which is the way I did it in 1993. So, that doesn’t particularly bother me.”

And it shouldn’t bother us either.

Let’s all stay focused and get the up or down votes on the Senate floor that gun violence victims and survivors so richly deserve. Please continue to call your Senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to vote YES on universal background checks, the assault weapons ban, and tougher criminal penalties for straw buyers and gun traffickers.

Thank you as always for your support!

Sincerely,

Josh Horwitz
Executive Director

Barb S. and I used to say, “I’ll believe it when the check clears the bank.”

In regards to anti-gun legislation being dead: I’ll believe it when the perpetrators are convicted. Until then we need to be on guard because it isn’t and won’t be over for a long time.

Quote of the day—Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

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The State of New York has resorted to a “turn in your neighbor” program, for enforcement. Knowing that people will not willingly comply, the state has resorted to a tried and true tactic of turning the citizens upon each other to aggrandize the power of the state.

Does this strike a responsive historical cord, in anyone???

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
March 20, 2013
And so it begins
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

The Stars Came Back -043- Permission to train

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INT – night – mid-deck passageway

Kaminski and Kaushik are talking

Kaushik: -OK by me, but if you plan on using Company guns and ammo, better run it by Kat or Lag. Shouldn’t be a problem, but- Continue reading →

Slugging it out with a “cell of one”

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Last night I found myself in a town conspicuously like my home town – the place I spent the first 18 years of my childhood. I was up against a sniper. She was a Chinese woman; determined (“Hell-Bent”, even). She was wearing the classic Cultural Revolution style, plain O.D. jacket and plain O.D. hat, and she had a rifle. I think that’s her on the right, but she’s younger in this photo;
RevolutionWoman

It started out with her trying to snipe me from some distance (I hate it when that happens) but it ended up as a running, ducking, hiding, urban-style shootout from about 150 yards. I took a couple of rounds but were superficial hits. I thought I had nailed her good in the end. Through my low magnification, illuminated scope I saw her go down just as she was trying for cover.

The next day however, she was back to her usual self, dressed like a perfectly ordinary American woman in the small, eclectic community of immigrants in which I grew up, tending to her ordinary American life with her perfectly ordinary, American-born children, interacting in her perfectly normal, friendly manner with friends and neighbors.

I spoke about the encounter with some of my friends, showing them my bullet wounds, which had healed to the point of being mere scars, and explaining what had happened, pointing out to them my now perfectly innocent-looking enemy. Funny what the light of day can do to a person that was trying to kill you just a few hours ago in the cover of darkness. I saw the woman a few times that day, and both she and I were pretending nothing had happened the night before. Neither of us wanted entanglements with law enforcement or other authorities, knowing that such would be the undoing of us both. This had become a chess game. We were going to have to settle our differences later…

I don’t remember many of my dreams lately, and would certainly not have remembered this one except for something my daughter said to me this morning at around 06:00 that triggered the memory.

The Stars Came Back -042- Gigajoules

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Fade in

INT-Day- Engineering.

Stenson, a couple of his maintenance crew are working in an open access panels near the back wall. Stenson turns a wrench, tightening a bolt down, done with his immediate task. Suddenly, in the corner of his eye he sees the lit-candle logo dimly lighting up and glowing just above a closed access panel. He looks at it, cocks his head as if thinking a bit. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Magpul Industries Corp.

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We have said all along that based on the legal problems and uncertainties in the bill, as well as general principle, we will have no choice but to leave if the Governor signs this into law. We will start our transition out of the state almost immediately, and we will prioritize moving magazine manufacturing operations first. We expect the first PMAGs to be made outside CO within 30 days of the signing, with the rest to follow in phases.

Magpul Industries Corp.
Facebook statement, March 18, 2013.
[H/T David Hardy.

What gun owners did to politicians in 1994 over the AWS should happen to the legislators and governors of states that even attempted to implement these repressive laws. Then they should be considered politically untouchable and used as examples to others for the rest of their lives as if they were Grand Wizards of the KKK.—Joe]

Wow!

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Via Sebastian.

Lupica: Morbid find suggests murder-obsessed gunman plotted Newtown, Conn.’s Sandy Hook massacre for years:

What investigators found was a chilling spreadsheet 7 feet long and 4 feet wide that required a special printer, a document that contained [his] obsessive, extensive research — in nine-point font — about mass murders of the past, and even attempted murders.

But it wasn’t just a spreadsheet. It was a score sheet.

Someone that dedicated and reasonably intelligent cannot be stopped short of an extremely repressive police state. Attempting to legislate preventive measures for someone like that is insane in any society and should be criminal in a free society.

What can, and should, be legislatively done is to enable and strengthen the defense of the potential victims.

The Stars Came Back -041- Racing

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Fade in

INT – Night – cargo bay

In the dim reddish lights of the night shift, Harbin leads two dozen recruits in bayonet drills, very similar to what the monks were doing, but not so slow-motion. Parry, feint, riposte, thrust, butt-stroke, slash, thrust. The recruits are looking exhausted and ragged. Harbin is sweating, but crisp and precise, and his voice calling the moves in a cadence is strong and clear. Barely noticed in the background, Lag is doing the exercises, too, with the smooth grace of much practice and hard muscles. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Senator Orrin Hatch

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If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying … that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 … establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.

Senator Orrin Hatch
In a 1982 Senate Report
[Senator Hatch said this over 20 years before I tried to say essentially the same thing with Just One Question.—Joe]

New Idaho Concealed Weapons License

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From Mike Brown, Executive Director/General Counsel of Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance:

Fellow shooters:
 
For the past several years we at the Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance have been working to get more reciprocity for Idaho concealed weapons licenses. This year we were able to get a bill printed- House Bill 192 which establishes a new tier of concealed  weapons licensing- the Enhanced Concealed Weapons License (ECWL). This bill has been tailored to meet the requirements of those states which recognize at least some other states licenses, but which currently do not recognize the current Idaho CWL such as Washington and Nevada. The new ECWL is completely optional and requires training equivalent to NRA Personal Protection, including live fire and qualified legal instruction on firearms law and the use of deadly force by private citizens, thereby allowing much improved recognition by other states.

Although the new ECWL will have no affect on the current license, thus leaving it available, the ECWL will have the same in-state benefits as the current license and will not require the current license as a prerequisite. This is an exciting development for those of us who want to carry in other states and have had to get out-of-state licenses to get the coverage we need. We are already working with officials in other states to recognize the new Idaho enhanced license when it goes into effect on July 1. We hope to have enough states recognize the new license so that an Idaho resident will be able to carry in up to 40 states.
 
We have heard nothing but positive comments on House Bill 192. The most common response has been, “Why didn’t Idaho do this years ago?” Believe me we have been trying.
 
Despite passing unanimously in the House, H192 is in trouble in the Senate. Senator Lee Heider of Twin Falls attempted to send the bill to the amending order on Friday. With two weeks left in the session this would have killed the bill!
 
H192 needs your help: please contact your Senator and ask them to vote for H192 when it comes to the floor this week.  If you live in Twin Falls (District 24) please contact Senator Lee Heider and ask him why he wants to kill the enhanced bill. Do not believe anyone who tells you that they just want to “amend” the bill– anything other than a “Yes” vote is a vote to kill enhanced licensing.
See you on the range,
 
 
Mike Brown
Executive Director/General Counsel
Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance
 
P.S. To learn more about IDSSA or to make a donation to help us continue our work for you in Idaho, please visit www.IdahoSSA.org

More on communication

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When I was a boy, out working the fields alone on my grandparents’ farm, I heard voices wafting in from the distance. Two men were standing next to a tractor, its engine running, and so they were shouting at each other to be heard over the engine noise. Two to three hundred yards away, I could hear nearly every word they were saying.

“Ah Hah! Unlike addition and multiplication, communication over a noise source can be asymetrical, or one way.” YOU may be able to hear ME just fine, but it may be utterly impossible for me you hear you, or vice versa. I knew that there was no possible way I could ever shout loud enough for those two men near the tractor to hear me, though I could hear them pretty well.

I’ve used this as an example on several occasions, trying to explain this as the reason why the frustrated fool on the other end of the conversation cannot get through to me. My wife, for example, has never understood this, and she will get angry when I tell her I can’t understand her as I’m washing my hands at the sink. SHE thinks I’M the dumb one, see.

Same goes for radio communication, when someone hears you booming in on a 100 watt repeater, but can’t understand why he isn’t being heard from his 3 watt handy-talkie (then he shouts into the microphone, which makes it worse, because his over modulation [FM} spreads out his three watts over more bandwidth, out toward the edges of the receive passband).

Then there are those who, when wearing ear muffs or headphones and you’re not, and you’re standing right next to them, will shout at you.

And we won’t even get in to the subject of those “low talkers” – those who will talk under their breath apparently as a means of irritating you or for some bizzare reason they want to use it as a means of feeling superior to you, because you’re struggling to hear them while they can hear you perfectly well, and so what’s wrong with you, Chump?

The Stars Came Back -040- Bad joke

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Fade in

INT – DAY – cargo bay

Harbin watches as a group of two dozen recruits run a simple obstacle course around the ship. They are jogging forward the mid-level passageway on one side, down the stairs, across the cargo bay, up the stairs on the other, then jogging aft through the other mid-level passageway. They are evenly spaced, and doing OK. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Nina Knorr

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Quote of the day–William R Tonso & David B. Kopel

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According to Mr. Schindler’s wife Maria, when Schindler decided to liberate his Jewish workers, he handed them all semiautomatic weapons so they could fight the Nazis.

In today’s politically correct Hollywood, Steven Spielberg probably would have ruined his chances for an Oscar by telling the whole story about Oskar Schindler’s devotion to freedom.

William R Tonso & David B. Kopel
August 24, 1994
Gun Bans and “Schindler’s List”

TheStars Came Back -039- Onboard Power

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Fade in

INT – Bridge – Day

Helton stands at the command station, Stenson to one side in the main pilot station, Lag at the other (co-pilot) station. SGT Kaushik stands at one station, Allonia at the other, and Quinn stands wide-eyed in a corner to watch it all. The forward window shows the space-port, side “window” screens various readouts. Continue reading →

The Stars came Back -038- Plaque and Power

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EXT – Day – Ground near the stern of the ship.

The ramp is down, but the thick main cargo-bay doors are closed. Allonia and Helton are out for a walk around the ship together, to get some fresh air and stretch their legs. It’s sunny and bright, with the sun at a fairly low angle. Helton is wearing a pistol on a belt, and his cloths are somewhat simple steam-punkish in style. Allonia wears a conservative calf-length skirt and blouse, her hair is in a thick braid. They look like friends out for a stroll. The camera follows them from a distance as they head for the ramp, zooming in slowly. We can’t hear what they say, but it seem to be funny by the smiles and apparent laughter. They get to the foot of the ramp, and start walking up it. Continue reading →

The vortex of coincidence

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March 16th is the six month anniversary of the first date between Barb L. and I. It is also the birthday of my soon to be ex-wife. Our first date was on September 16th. This is the birthdate of Barb L’s soon to be ex-husband.

This is but a small part of what Barb L. calls, “The vortex of Joe Huffman coincidence”. That should be “JoeH/BarbL” instead of “Joe Huffman” but she named it months ago and we are kind of stuck with the name at this point.

As RobertaX and many others have pointed out our brains are pattern matching engines and find “interesting things” where there really isn’t anything of particular significance. But still it’s fun to look at the patterns sometimes.

Within a minute or two of our first date Barb L. and I started noticing a plethora of coincidences between us:

  • Her first and middle names are identical to that of my (soon to be ex-)wife.
  • Her (I can’t wait until he is my ex-)husband is not named “Joseph”. That is the name of his identical twin.
  • Her mother’s name was Josephine.
  • Her son’s middle name is Joseph.
  • She has a hand gesture that is identical to one used by daughter Xenia for the same circumstances.
  • She spent time on a farm when growing up and even milked cows by hand like I did.
  • She lives on the eastside of Lake Washington, as do I, and works in downtown Seattle about six blocks from where I work.
  • Her mother’s birthday is the same as my wife.
  • Her son’s birthday is the same as my wife’s sister.
  • Her birthday is one day after my brother’s birthday.
  • Her birthday is one day before my wife’s sister’s birthday.
  • Both her mother and my wife’s mother were teachers.
  • We both went to the University of Washington at the same time (but to be best of our knowledge we never saw each other).

Yes. I’m aware of the birthday paradox.

Anyway… we aren’t superstitious but every once in a while, we look around to see if there is someone filming us because it sure seems as if there is a script writer in the background someplace. And that guy that walked by as we were kissing around the corner at REI at one day at lunch time and said, “Don’t worry, no pictures were taken!” didn’t exactly reassure us that we aren’t acting out someone else’s script and we are being recorded on video for a reality show on Lifetime or something.

Quote of the day—Kevin Baker

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She should get a fucking Ferrari and a mansion to park it in.

Kevin Baker
March 15, 2013
Motherf*%&ers!
[I respectfully disagree. I think justice would be better served with a different settlement.

My suggestion is a truck from each of the police officers involved. The police officers involved would then drive her trucks at no charge, including fuel and maintenance, for the rest of their lives. They would be required to deliver whatever legal cargo she asked them to. It would be free income for life because of their massive screw up.

I would then offer her suggestions on particularly noxious farm waste that needed to be delivered to the cops homes once a month or so.—Joe]