This is what happens in places without guns—Case XXIV

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From Mexico where private ownership of guns is almost completely banned:

Lorena Villareal Elizondo went to meet a friend at the Casino Royale, a popular low-cost lunch spot, when armed men burst through the door shouting: “Get out! Get out! We’re going to burn everything!”

It was only 19-year-old Carla Maria Espinoza Vega’s second day at work at the casino when the intruders sprinkled accelerant around the front door and set the building on fire.

Both died in the arson attack that killed 52 people, mostly women, in the casino this wealthy northern city.

With the arsonists in plain sight and without cover they would have been under almost immediate fire as soon as they opened their cans of accelerants. There might have still been a fire but it would have been much smaller and there would have been perpetrator bodies in the ashes.

This probably also qualifies for one of Weerd Beard’s Gun Death posts.

Off work for weeks

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Yesterday Barb visited the doctor for a follow up after breaking her ankle/leg last week. They found a tibia fracture as well as the known fibula fracture and the damaged ligaments. She is not supposed to put weight on her leg for another six weeks and it may be 12 weeks before she can walk normally again. Being a physical therapist this means she will be off work for many weeks. Physical therapists do not have desk jobs.

It’s a good thing that she has something like 300 hours of sick leave available as well as disability insurance.

One might think of this as a paid vacation but vacations for her usually involve lots of travel, restaurants, and walking. In this case she can’t do much but hang around the Clock Tower and wait for me to come home. She is mostly stuck eating my cooking too. I’ll bet work never looked so good to her before.

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Quote of the day—Marcia Capellan

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#GunControl, por favor! Or just ban guns completely! What’s wrong with the world? #whereisthelove? [link]

@linoge_wotc Why should I respect ignorance and violence? I could never do that. #peaceonearth [link]

Just realized that I’ve done absolutely nothing to prepare for the hurricane. Oops! Hope Philly will be OK. #Irene [link]

Marcia Capellan
August 26, 2011
See also her follow up blog posting.
I also gave serious consideration to “Thank you, dear Twitter gods, for giving the willfully ignorant, narrow-minded, and bigoted a place to demonstrate their shortcomings freely and without limitations to the rest of the world.”
[The irony is almost intolerable. In addition to her realization that she has done nothing to prepare her blog is titled “Clear Quiet Thoughts”. It’s easy to be clear and quiet when they are so ignorant.

Of course “Reasoned Discourse” has broken out at her place. See the continuing discussion someplace more free.—Joe]

Ron Paul Web Site Melt-Down

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I’ve been met with pure emotion every time I question a Ron Paul supporter on RP’s foreign policy positions.  The aggregate response is; “What are you, stupid??!!!  Ron Paul is great!!!!” but in comments on his web site it is mostly smoke screen– pure distraction– Ignore and Redirect.

I went to the obvious source of Ron Paul positions– Ron Paul’s own web site, for clarification, and found none.  The best I could ascertain was that RP’s position on hostile enemies is; “Stop, or I’ll say Stop again!” or “Stop, or you’ll get a letter of condemnation on official letterhead!”

There are two ten minute videos there.  I got through one, with only more questions.  At one stage, where he’s making the point, “America negotiated with the Soviet Union and so therefore we can negotiate with Iran” he wraps it up saying that, after all, Iran is no bigger a threat than was the Soviet Union.  (oh boy)  No, see; the Soviet Union was a massively greater threat than Iran is today.  See.  Mutually Assured Destruction was well in place.  His reasoning is backwards.

In another segment of the same vid, he says he’s totally opposed to sanctions, on the notion that they’re an act of war.  OK.  I could agree with that, but then he slips in the idea of “putting pressure” on hostiles without giving any clue as what that could mean. Let’s see, maybe 12 years, seventeen UN resolutions against the Saddam regime in Iraq, followed by Saddam kicking out the UN inspectors?  “Pressure”, with nothing to back it up, will be met with laughter by our enemies.

As it went, we had not one, but two U.S. Congressional authorizations of force (official declarations of war) with Congresscritters falling all over each other to get in front of the cameras and make sure we all knew they favored military action.  A few weeks later and it was “Bush Lied, People Died!” and “9/11 Was An Inside Job!” and “No War For Oil!” and as far as I can tell Ron Paul agrees with the later attitudes, saying we’re illegally doing this and illegally doing that, and no wonder people hate us because we suck (no explanation of why the Russians and Chinese, among others, aren’t as hated as the U.S., after they’ve been ten times as “Imperialist” as anything the U.S. ever did).

My best assessment of Ron Paul’s foreign/military position is that it’s a conflation of Jane Fonda’s, John Kerry’s and Cindy Sheehan’s, i.e. pure emotion mixed with the belief that the U.S. is on balance a force of evil in the world, with some shameless pandering to the “Make Love, Not War!” constituency (which he must see as an important voting block) mixed in.  That and he apparently can’t afford a moderator for his web site.  Other than that, I like Ron Paul a lot.

It’s a start

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I’ve often wondered if budget cuts would lead to less infringement upon our freedom. This is just a drop in the bucket and the effect will probably go completely unnoticed at our level. But it is a start:

The Transportation Security Administration is soon hoping to offer buyouts to about 3,000 administrative workers, one of dozens of federal agencies aiming to trim the payroll amid a budget crunch.

TSA is seeking authority from the Office of Personnel Management to offer buyouts to about 3,000 administrative and managerial workers based at its Northern Virginia headquarters and at regional offices nationwide, the agency said late Thursday.

Something that is more than a little telling about this organizations is the following from the same article:

The agency has offered voluntary early retirements to workers since December 2004 — about a year after the agency first opened.

It sounds to me like a major function of the agency is redistribution of wealth. When the budget crunch really hits I won’t have any probably advocating for the letting these guys and the politicians who enabled this sort of crap fend for themselves.

Quote of the day—Marlene

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I am a trans woman. Because of that, I can reasonably expect the police to be as likely a danger to me in most of the United States as a source of protection from violence. The idea that the police should have the monopoly on the power to exert deadly force for my protection is completely ludicrous to me.

The scarcity model of gun control does not work for crime prevention, but does work to disarm social movements. If a person intends to murder or intimidate people as a means of support, a gun is of much greater value to that person than the cost increase caused by illegality. Most gun control legislation in recent history has been designed to induce price increases or difficulty of purchase, while having no impact on the operation of the illicit market. That has a greater impact on broad social movements, especially those by the poor.

Marlene
August 26, 2011
More About Guns
[There are two different and important points here.

The first is the clear example of the police not always being a force for good. At the current time I’m not too worried about the police, in general, being a direct threat to certain segments of society but it does happen. There are specific instances in this country where a few individual officers misbehave and some of those may even qualify for use of deadly force to defend against them. But those instance are very rare. Much more likely is that the police will “look the other way” or be slow to respond when individuals of certain social groups are attacked. I would expect situations like this to represent the vast majority of examples of the fallacy of a police monopoly on force. Regardless, Marlene is correct to state it is completely ludicrous for the police to have a monopoly on the power to use deadly force.

The second point is is the phrase, “The scarcity model of gun control”. I like that phrase a lot. It can be used when someone says something about “the easy availability of guns”. Names and concise accurate descriptions of things enables clear thought and understanding.

Thank you Marlene—Joe]

Choices

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Jared Cano has been making some really bad choices for quite a while:

Tampa Police Maj. John Newman said that Cano had been on a list of juveniles who police checked on from time to time because of their brushes with the law.

“We’ve been very, very familiar with him,” Newman said.

Then on Tuesday, in his own words, “I jut [sic] did the dumbest thing ever”.

Here is a hint:

He now faces a variety of felony bomb and drug charges including threat to throw, project, place or discharge a destructive device, possession of bomb making materials, cultivation of cannabis, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.

As Roger S. said in the email he sent me about this, “Why aren’t the lefties trying to ban PVC pipes, fuel, and ‘shrapnel’?”

He is correct in that they are far from consistent. Their answers may include:

  1. Guns are “different” from PVC pipe, fuel, and ‘shrapnel’.
  2. Some tools are just too dangerous and too tempting.
  3. Guns are only to kill.
  4. Individuals are not capable of making choices in the best interests of society and “bad choices” must be removed from the realm of possibility.

My answer is that lefties do not have principles. They have issues.

Quote of the day—phlcstgan

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The fact that “gun blogs” are a thing makes me really worry about America.

phlcstgan
August 24, 2011
Comment to Gun Blogger Ignores NRA Undermining Gun Law Enforcement Measures
[The fact this person has such an aversion to our Bill of Rights makes me really certain they do not belong in the U.S.—Joe]

What could go wrong?

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The most obvious problem with this it is that it’s part of the continuing degradation of our privacy:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is beginning real-world trials of cars equipped with prototype vehicle-to-vehicle technology, deploying a communication network where cars can talk with one another to increase overall road safety.

Starting in August, 2012, the agency will begin gathering data from 3,000 cars equipped with wireless communication technology. Known as The Safety Pilot, the trials will run for one year in Ann Arbor, Mich., to provide data for setting V2V standards and determining what data streams are most helpful.

…

Here’s how it works: Using existing, universally accessible technology such as GPS and on-board diagnostic data, cars broadcast what’s called a “Here I Am” message at 5.9 GHz. All V2V equipped vehicles will be able to communicate on this band, sharing data such as speed and location. On-board computers sense the presence of other nearby vehicles, calculate the risks they may pose and even taking action — such as hitting the brakes or warning the driver of an impending collision.

From a privacy point of view as long as the vehicles do not broadcast a unique ID I don’t have a problem with it. But if they broadcast an ID that can be traced to the individual car this fails my Jews in the Attic Test.

But what really looks bad to me is the potential to cause accidents with this. Imagine some jokester/terrorist/whatever turning on one of these ‘”Safety Pilots”, broadcasting a signal indicating a stopped (or going the wrong way) vehicle in the middle of a busy freeway with vehicles traveling 70 MPH. People could use them to block emergency vehicles. It could make escapes easier and delay firefighters and/or police to terrorist events.

It’s possible, I suppose, the creators thought of these sort of problems and successfully addressed them. But my guess is they did not.

People need to think of the not only the benefits but the problems created with new technology. Especially those associated with government mandates.

Quote of the day—The Washington Times

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The arguments of the gun-control crowd are like an annoying barfly that needs to be sent home. Expanding the rights of lawful gun owners makes everyone safer.

The Washington Times
August 22, 2011
EDITORIAL: No gunfights at the saloon–Crime rate drops as concealed-carry restrictions are relaxed
[While an appropriate metaphor in the given context I think the Brady Campaign is more accurately viewed as a geriatric sports team. Former President Paul Helmke was never a strong player and there was evidence of Alzheimer’s and/or profound stupidity. And this was the best and brightest the Brady Campaign was ever able to field on their team! With a “star” player that feeble it shouldn’t be too surprising that up and comer Colin Goddard hid under a desk at Virginia Tech waiting to be shot rather than attempting to fight back, and second stringer Dennis Henigan is an invalid who soils his own bed.—Joe]

Hunger is coming

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I’ve been saying for years that hunger is coming and that lots of people are going to die. I can’t find it on my blog but I know I have said it many times in private, “People have to get hunger before they revolt.”

Instapundit linked to the overview (via Kenneth Anderson) and David linked to the paper supporting my claims.

One of the biggest questions that comes to mind is what about the government forced famines in the Ukraine in the 1930s? Were there riots then? If so we know they weren’t sufficient to overthrow the communists but they didn’t have personal firearms either.

I agree with some of the others, the August 2013 date is a little too precise. The world could have bumper crops for a while and push the date out or there could be a bunch of crop failures and the date gets closer. But the bottom line is the conditions for revolt are approaching. As a general rule revolutions are bad for liberty. Will the U.S be different? What needs to be done to hold on to a free market and freedoms in general if there is a revolution? Would the preservation of private property via the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms be sufficient? Or will the forces demanding the abolition of private property be overwhelming? If the latter then it is my opinion that many more millions will die.

Quote of the day—The Charleston Gazette

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Chicago and Toronto are roughly equal in size. Yet Chicago averages 450 gun murders per year, while Toronto has fewer than 60. Why are Chicagoans seven times more violent and deadly than Toronto residents? Maybe it’s because Canada has sensible gun control laws.

The Charleston Gazette
August 21, 2011
Gun murders: American curse
[And maybe the Charleston Gazette editors are ignoramuses. My friend from Toronto legally owns 40 guns. Most of them are handguns. Handguns, until recently, have been banned in Chicago. How much more “sensible” than banned do these idiots want the gun control laws to be?—Joe]

Two words for Dennis Henigan

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Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign soiled his pants when presidential hopeful Rick Perry hinted he might be carrying a handgun while on the campaign trail.

I have just two words for Henigan: Eleanor Roosevelt.

Okay, I have some more words for Henigan. Dennis, if you are going to try running with the big dogs you really should get yourself some diapers.

H/T to The Volokh Conspiracy for the link to the picture.

Quote of the day—Dallas Morning News

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Finding someone to stand up and take responsibility for the feds’ ill-advised gun-walk-to-Mexico program has been anything but fast. Only the denying, obfuscating and bus-throwing-under has been furious.

Dallas Morning News
August 19, 2011
Editorial: Details only get worse from ATF’s Fast and Furious fiasco
[That seems to capture the situation so far pretty well.

H/T to NRA-ILA.—Joe]

A Little History

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I’ve long suspected (“suspected” as in I hadn’t set out to prove it, though I knew for sure anyway) that many of our gun restriction laws were vigorously supported by the gun industry.  It’s the only explanation for some of the import restrictions, and it makes sense to explain licensing requirements for manufacturers– protection for the established companies against cheap imports and upstart competitors, respectively.  This motivated American companies, and even the NRA, to get into bed with the anti-rights movement.  Add to that the government’s multi million dollar contracts potentially held over company’s heads, and you have an extremely powerful influence against liberty.  I bring this up because this sort of thing has been going on all throughout our society for, well, essentially forever.

Researching an answer for a customer, which is something I spend a lot of my time doing, I came across this (emphasis mine);

“The patent on the M1 carbine was owned by Western Cartridge Co. and David “Carbine” Williams, and still in effect when Penney and Arnold wanted to begin manufacturing M1 carbines in 1958. Penney and Arnold contacted Winchester-Western and offered them a percentage per carbine manufactured, in return for permission to manufacture the M1 carbine. John Olin, owner of Winchester-Western, refused. Olin, Winchester-Western, and more than a few other American manufacturers were opposed to all of the surplus weapons being returned to the United States, where they were being sold at prices the manufacturers couldn’t compete with. This opposition eventually led the manufacturers and the National Rifle Association to support the Gun Control Act of 1968, which, amongst many other things, prohibited the importation of U.S. military surplus.“

The capitalist in me, which comprises my entire being, says; “Why didn’t Winchester and other manufacturers buy up all the cheap imports, then, or at least strike a deal with the new company?”  But some obvious questions often go unanswered, or un-asked.

Point being; a huge number of the vast mountain of restrictions and barriers to entry into the marketplace we have now, started with a politician getting into bed with someone in business, and working out a deal.

What to do about it?  First be aware of it.  Then understand that our government was set up, partly, to avoid this sort of thing.  Hence I lay the majority of the blame on the corrupt operators in our government.  There will always be one person willing to sell out his country for money, but government is specifically charged with protecting liberty.  Tar and feathers, anyone?  And be aware of what your favorite advocacy group is really doing before you give them money.

Ammo makes a difference

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I have had lots of experience with rifle ammunition being the cause of extreme inaccuracy. But I had not seen a huge difference in accuracy with handguns. Shooting offhand at handgun distances I just couldn’t see it making that much of a difference. For nearly all my purposes I just didn’t think it could matter when the human error was going to dominate (I thought) the results.

When loading rifle ammo for accuracy I measure each charge down to the 0.1 grain. I measure and trim the necks of the shell casing which are all of the same brand. I clean the primer pocket. I weight the cases. I use a special seating die that aligns the bullet precisely. I use match grade bullets. I sometimes weigh and sort all the bullets. All total, each round takes about two minutes of my time to assemble.

When reloading for pistol I shop around for the cheapest bullets I can find. I use whatever cases of whatever brand I happen to find on the range. I load 300 to 400 rounds per hour.

As I reported a couple weeks ago I discovered some cheap gun show pistol ammo was key-holing once the range exceeded about 30 feet. This was 180 grain .40 S&W BVAC remanufactured ammo.

The ammo will still work fine for USPSA short range practice on the indoor range which doesn’t allow lead bullets. But for an actual match or where the range exceeds 30 feet I needed something better. I had some 180 grain Montana Gold JHP bullets that I loaded up last weekend with 6.0 grains of VV N350 in mixed casings with Winchester primers.  Yesterday I tested my loads. I also tested my carry ammo, 180 grain Winchester Ranger in .40 S&W, and some other cheap ammo I bought at Wal-Mart a year ago.

Here are the results from shooting offhand at 75’. Some of the outliers are my fault but you should still get the idea:

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This is my target from two weeks ago with the BVAC ammo.

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This is another tests of the BVAC ammo (8” group).

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This is another test of the BVAC ammo. Ignore the 2.5 holes at the top center. They do not belong to the same group. That outlier at the top left was not my fault. I know when I pull the trigger wrong. This was not one of those times.

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This is 180 grain Winchester Ranger ammo that I carry on a daily basis. The four holes at the bottom are probably my fault.

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This is 135 grain Winchester Ranger ammo.

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This is 180 grain Federal FMJ AN from Wal-Mart.

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This was my new handloads with 180 grain Montana Gold JHPs over 6.0 grains of VV N350 (5.25” group).

It looks like I have some new loads that work well in my gun and that are welcome at indoor ranges.

Gun Cartoon of the day

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Via Whoopie at Waznmentobe who also points out rioters shot at the police during the recent riots:

uk-guncontrol

An article about the shootings at the police is here.

Important demographic

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One of the most anti-gun demographics are black women. Here is a story by Joshunda Sanders that indicates things may be changing and may help affect that change:

That sense of vulnerability and fear followed me into adulthood, when I found myself, as an African American single woman, working as a reporter in Beaumont in 2001.

In addition to the pressures of learning how to be a reporter, learning Texas and being far from home, I was warned in the newsroom about active clusters of Ku Klux Klan activity. It had only been a few years since James Byrd Jr., a black man, had been beaten by white men and dragged to his death in nearby Jasper.

…

It surprised me to discover that I was part of a larger trend in Texas. Applications for concealed carry permits began rising in the state before the 2008 elections, an increase some attributed to concerns that anti-gun politicians would be voted in . Of the total number of licenses granted, women made up 21.9 percent in 2010, up from 17.7 percent in 2001, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. For reasons that are unclear, black women are the fastest-growing group of women being issued licenses for concealed handguns in the state.

…

Adam Winkler, author of the forthcoming book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over The Right to Bear Arms in America,” traced the birth of the modern gun rights movement to the Black Panthers in the September issue of The Atlantic. In it was a fact of history that I’d never heard: “Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied,” Winkler wrote. “But from then on, armed supporters guarded his home.”

Closer to my demographic was the historian Danielle McGuire’s book, “At the Dark End of the Street,” which fills out commonly told stories about Rosa Parks and other women of the civil rights movement who were subjected not just to racial intimidation but also sexual violence. Among the most jarring stories of black women attacked in the South, sometimes by police officers, was the story of Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old mother and sharecropper who in 1944, as she walked home after attending church at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Ala., was snatched from the street by seven white men armed with knives and shotguns. They raped her and left her for dead. It was Rosa Parks, the president of the local NAACP branch office, who was sent to investigate Taylor’s case.

JoshundaSanders

Sanders took and passed a course to get her concealed weapons license in Texas. More pictures are here.

Adam Winkler’s Facebook page is here. The excerpt from his book in the Atlantic is here.

Quote of the day—Melissa Rooney

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For each firearm a “Genuine Reason” must be given, relating to pest control, hunting, target shooting, or collecting. Self-defense is not an acceptable reason.

…

If only America responded to our incessant shooting rampages with half this vigor and political consolidation.

Melissa Rooney
August 20, 2011
From Down Under
[Self-defense is not an acceptable reason? I almost made that the QOTD by itself. The most basic of all human rights, the right to defend your life, is “not an acceptable reason.”

Tell that to the people I pointed out here. Or tell Ms. Rooney, Molōn labe!—Joe]

It must be a conspiracy

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I don’t know who said it first but the phrase “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action” appears to be very popular. I’m sure that test provides accurate results in the vast majority of circumstances. But consider the following.

On our fifth year wedding anniversary we were broke. We had just barely qualified for the loan on our first home with both Barb and I working. We didn’t tell them that in three months Barb would quit her job to go enter physical therapy school. After two plus years (including her non paid “affiliations” with various medical facilities) of Barb being in school we didn’t have any money plus she was busy finishing things up. We didn’t have the time or the money to do anything special for that anniversary.

On our ten year anniversary daughter Kim was just one month old and we thought we could take her to a movie with us. She should sleep in the dark, right? Wrong. We didn’t get to see more than 30 minutes of it before Kim made it very clear that she needed our attention and the movie did not.

On our fifteenth anniversary Symantec had just purchased Zortech (who I worked for). They had a big meeting in their Boston office that everyone had to attend. Barb celebrated with her mom and the kids at Pizza Hut in Sandpoint Idaho. I “celebrated” with Symantec who told us how badly we were going to get screwed over (the person who received several million dollars in the purchase didn’t see what the problem was, those of us who had no job and found out they weren’t going to honor our contracts were rather pissed).

On our twenty anniversary we had a nice vacation planned in California and along the Oregon coast with Barb’s sister Susan. On our actually anniversary day we were supposed to leave the kids with Susan and Bob while we went off by ourselves for the evening. On the way from Idaho to California the van broke down in a little town in Oregon. We had to leave it there and we continued on with a rental that was too small for our family of five plus all the luggage for two weeks. On the actual day of our anniversary as we were traveling up the coast of Oregon, I drove a total of twelve hours to take the rental car back and return with our repaired van. Barb spent the day with five kids and sister Susan at a motel. I got back to the motel late at night and very tired.

On our twenty fifth anniversary I was unemployed during the dot com bust of 2001. At that time, we were taking turns choosing and making all the arrangements for our anniversary. With money tight we couldn’t go someplace far away and exotic like Bob and Sue who went to Hawaii or Barb’s brother Dow and his wife Katie who went to Ireland for their anniversary. I found a motel near Lake Coeur d’Alene which was about a 90-minute drive from our home in Moscow Idaho. It wasn’t the same name, but it was in about the right spot for the same place we had spent our honeymoon. They had recently remodeled, and their rooms had different themes. I chose the “Hawaiian Room”. It turned out it was the same motel. Our room had plastic vines, “jungle” wallpaper, funny carpet, and a hot tub decorated to look sort of like a pool in the middle of a jungle. Barb still laughs about that room.

On our thirtieth anniversary we went to Missouri. Barb mostly did genealogy stuff. We celebrated five days early with Dave and his family with a crab dinner and fireworks. The day of our anniversary I was traveling back to the Seattle area to go to work the next day while Barb stayed in Moscow to work. Actually, that was a pretty fair outcome. Perhaps we had broken the pattern!

Our thirty fifth anniversary was today. We planned to go to Mount. St. Helens for the day, spend the night in a nice motel and do lots of hiking. Yesterday morning as Barb was walking to the bus stop with me, she stepped on a rock, twisted her ankle we both heard a loud, “Pop”. She limped back to the Clock Tower by herself as I went on to work. Today instead of going hiking we spent it in Emergency Room at the hospital she worked at 20+ years ago. She has a small fracture of her fibula:

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IMG_6322FractureShownWebIMG_6350

According to the rule it must be enemy action or a conspiracy of some sort. Barb says she is afraid of what might happen on our fortieth. I asked if that meant she wanted a divorce.