Quote of the day—Mike Summitt

You’re violent, primitive, procrustean, and mentally ill, for the most part, and I want a psychological test administered before any of you are allowed a deadly weapon, which I predict would disarm over half of you.


Mike Summitt
July 4, 2011 on Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Facebook Wall.
[It’s an attempt to dehumanizing gun owners. It’s a lot like what the white supremacists say about people of color. It’s totally without factual support and more accurately could be described as projection on his part.


It’s one of the prerequisites to genocide but don’t let that bother you. Liberals aren’t all violent all the time.


Via a reTweet by SebastianSH of GunFreeZone about their blog post.—Joe]

Revolvernomics

Where is it written that most single action revolvers have to require chambers to be loaded/unloaded individually whereas a double action usually has a tip-out cylinder?  For that matter, where is it written that, if one wants to run a revolver in single action, one can’t buy a double action and run it exclusively as a single action, benefiting from the superior reloading system that is the tip-out cylinder?


If Major Schofield had come up with the moon clip back in the 1800s, and called for a double action, he’d have created what might be regarded as a modern revolver even by today’s standards.


It’s my understanding that the moon clip was created as a stop gap measure after W.W. I, allowing .45 ACP ammunition to be used in revolvers, with a minor alteration to the cylinder, at a time when 1911 pistols were in short supply.  Why don’t we see more moon clips, which allow faster reloading, used with rimmed cartridges?  Instead of carrying speed loaders, you carry the loaded moon clips and drop the whole business into the cylinder.


Cylinders with an odd number of chambers make it easier to place the lock notches in between chambers instead of at the thin spot right atop a chamber.  If I were getting a revolver chambered for a high pressure round I think I’d want a seven shooter or a nine shooter.


An 1858 Remington New Model Army, with its change-out percussion (“cap and ball”) cylinder, can be reloaded faster than the later Colt Peacemaker, so long as you have another loaded cylinder.  The consumable envelope cartridge of the 1860s can (if you’re willing to risk igniting the powder from the hot residue in the just-fired cylinders while you’re ramming the balls in) allow a percussion revolver to be reloaded almost as fast as the Peacemaker.  One problem was their fragility.


The French had combat caliber (10 and 11 mm) metal (pinfire) cartridges and bored-through cylinder revolvers years before the outbreak of our War Between the States.  I did not know that.


I can’t fully explain why, but I want a percussion revolver based on the 1858 Remington but with a lengthened and beefed up frame and cylinder so it can safely handle a 250 grain 45 caliber cast lead bullet and 60 grains of FFF black powder.  It’s what the Colt Walker should have been.  By comparison, the later .45 Colt metal cartridge used a maximum of about 40 grains black powder.  That and I want a matching carbine so they can use the same cylinders.  No fooling around with reloading metal cartridges – just cast the bullets.  Among the reasons I want these is that the way I read the WA State hunting regs for muzzleloader season (last year’s anyway) they’d be legal on deer.  Plus I think it would be cool.

Posit

A coercively funded, government controlled education monopoly verses liberty.


I’ll put it another way.  Let’s suppose we put that on a national ballot.  You have two selections.  You may vote for the coercively funded, government controlled education monopoly on one hand, or liberty on the other.  Either/or.  That’s your choice.


But wait; do you or anyone else, no matter your numbers, have the right to vote against liberty?  Why?

Quote of the day—Kevin Baker

To surrender completely to the control of others – either a secular government or a religious one – control that invades every waking action, requires people unwilling to do for themselves. The first step is and must be the destruction of education. People must be prevented from thinking for themselves, from reasoning. George Orwell explained it with “Newspeak” in his novel 1984:



That preparation started in the early years of the 20th Century. Thus today we have “politically correct” speech. With destruction of language skills comes the destruction of logic skills – if you can’t read, you can’t integrate ideas new to you. In fact, new ideas are gibberish – words that have no meaning. “Politically free” is a null value to someone planted in the fields of politicism. It’s a weed.


A free society requires an informed and virtuous citizenry.


“Free,” “informed” and “virtuous” have become null terms.


The 21st Century will be a century of struggle between freedom and politicism. Polticism has two competing versions – Marxist and Muslim. Freedom?


Null term.


Kevin Baker
July 4, 2011
TL;DR
[Kevin has some good points. There are even some points that he doesn’t directly address that support his pessimistic outlook. For example, the title, “TL;DR”, is very telling. Our society changed dramatically with instant entertainment. I’m certain that television and even radio are factors in the transformation of our culture into a more ignorant one. We can be mindlessly entertained rather than improving our minds and/or our bodies or producing something of value. The idiot boxes are such a great temptation that instead of doing something productive we take another hit of the entertainment drug. And there is so many “drugs” to chose from. If one doesn’t grab you in the first 15 seconds you change the “channel” until you find one that does grab you. Instant gratification is critical to success of a “channel”. Who in their right mind would be willing to read and understand, let alone write, books like those of Locke and Hobbs (unless it was Calvin and Hobbs) when you have Grand Theft Auto, Entertainment Tonight, and meth available? Those are so much easier to understand and offer near instant gratification. Who has the time to even read a Kevin Baker post? Understand it? Bah! In the grand scheme, it’s almost no one.


The fraction of the population that is capable of that is so small and the fraction of those that would care even if they could understand it that the blip on the vote tally would be impossible to detect in the statistical noise let alone the voter fraud. And the voter fraud will always be aligned against the likes of Kevin.


I understand all that. But I still have, perhaps perverse, optimism for the outcome. While the upside of our near instant communication isn’t as obvious as the downside I still think the potential exists to ultimately prevail. Because we have the ability to communicate to thousands across vast distances at nearly the speed of light and publish we have a incredible advantage over Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Samuel Adams. They were part of a nation of just three million people and built the foundation of most powerful economic and military force the world has ever seen. We have three million or more like minded people in our country now. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are ten times that many. The problem is that those people’s voices have been drown out by the noise from the parasites clamoring for “social justice”, or “their fair share”.


There have been many great civilizations before us that collapsed and some of the causes may even be common to our own. Internal and/or external enemies, exhaustion of natural resources, over population, or even climate changes (you have heard of the little ice age, right?). But our current crises is mostly due to internal enemies with some added pressure by external enemies. As Kevin points out these are the cults created centuries ago by Marx and Mohammad. I think the Marx cultists is doing most of the damage and is the bigger threat. But I think it is possible that even they have reached the zenith of their power and may soon experience a catastrophic collapse even more rapid than our society as a whole.


What the socialist/communist/progressive masses don’t understand is that they are, as Ayn Rand pointed out, looters. And the life of an unhindered looter is only great as long as there is someone left to loot that doesn’t offer meaningful resistance. And they just looted the last “store” on the planet.


The Marxists always describe people in terms of “class”. I think there is a grain truth to be harvested from a class division of people. But it’s not the class division taught by Marx and his cult. The class division I find useful is of producers and looters. And as the economic realities of discovering the last store on the planet has already been looted the looters will either become producers or they will die off. I suspect there will be lots of dead. Most from starvation and disease and a few from being shot by the producers that finally start doing what should have been done a long time ago—protecting their property from the looters.


The instant communication channels will allow us to find other producers and identify looters. This will give us hope and it will enable our cooperation. This is the upside to our technology and may yet save our species from the great endarkenment looming over us. This is an ace-in-the hole that no civilization before us ever had available.


The looters of the future will not be so well camouflaged as the looters of today. Today they have a few leaders who wear suits and smile as they wave to the camera and ask for your vote. In the not so distant future their leaders are likely to live lives that of the last couple of years of Saddam Hussein and meet similar ends. The looters will be hungry, dirty, and run in wild packs. Without the camouflage producers will recognize them for what they are and appropriate action will be taken.


I don’t know the end result of the coming final class struggle. Maybe the looters will destroy the last of the producers and it will be another ten thousand years before a civilization can rise from the ashes. But at this point I don’t think that is a forgone conclusion. I think the producers may have to look the other way as millions of looters become beggars and then finally corpses. They may be millions of tons of rotting flesh to be cleared but the producers may be able to survive the coming apocalypse and end up with a much stronger society two or three generations from now.


Some lessons are very, very difficult to learn. But sometimes you cannot advance to the next level until you master the current level.



I just hope Gerard Vanderleun is wrong and our society can learn the lesson of this level before we have lost all our lives and it is game over.—Joe]

I wish I could shoot like a girl

On rifle she is a force to be reckoned with but Roxanna usually ends up in the middle of the pack at our USPSA pistol matches. Things were different on one stage today. She doesn’t appear to shoot it particularly fast but everyone else “had problems”. She didn’t have any misses and beat us all.

I tweeted about it here.

She asked for the video so here it is with Adam as the Range Officer:

Quote of the day–Brian Malte

What Ohio wants to do is totally different from what we’re seeing elsewhere. It definitely goes a lot further than other states. I would say it goes further also by including sports stadiums, which is a very radical idea.

Brian Malte
Director of state legislation for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
June 18, 2011
Ohio Set to Allow Concealed Guns in Bars, Restaurants
[It’s only “radical” if they don’t look past the end of their noses. Idaho, and I believe Washington, have not had any laws against it for decades and perhaps “forever”. There isn’t a problem with it. It’s time to stop discriminating against people exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.


He should, and probably does know better. I have to conclude that this is just another lie from the Brady Campaign.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Barbara Scott

You enjoy this way too much.


Barbara Scott
July 2, 2011
[No. She wasn’t talking about sex but almost.


I was mapping out my game plan with the ATF after they said something stupid. Except I think maybe they aren’t as stupid as they appear at first glance. I asked them one little question in response and instead of getting an answer back they went silent. I suspect they realize no matter what they say next it’s going to be embarrassing for them. More details if I ever get a response from them.–Joe]

Helmke is incoherent

Paul Helmke does not know what he is talking about:

Congress allows dealers to destroy criminal background check records after 24 hours, preventing the ATF from learning how well shops are following the Brady background checks requirements.

Dealers don’t have background check records. The FBI does. The dealers aren’t “allowed” to destroy the records, the FBI is required to. The rest of the sentence becomes nonsensical with the corrections applied.

But that doesn’t matter because I can’t even make even sense of some of the things the Brady Campaign (soon to be ex-) President says when there aren’t any factual corrections to be made:

It is time for Washington’s politicians to look out for average people who do not deserve to have unethical gun dealers – and the gun lobby that shields them — pushing illegal guns into their neighborhoods.

Which guns are illegal? Guns the spontaneously disassemble by the time you fire your 100th round? Guns that go full auto and don’t stop when you release the trigger?

And how does a gun dealer push them into a neighborhood? Does this mean the dealer pulls up in your cul-de-sac and pushes a pallet of guns without serial numbers out of his truck onto the pavement? No gun dealer does that—that’s more like something our government would do.

Liberals are violent

As Donald said in the email he sent me, “For your Why are Liberals so Violent file”. The full story is here.

The gist is that Lindsey Piscitell and her friends had “a happy accident” when they spilled wine on the wife of Glenn Beck (Piscitell described him as “Fucking asshole”). One friend, Marissa Barker, upon hearing Beck and his family were in the park with Piscitell Tweeted:

Ew, can you “accidentlly” spill something on him? Or “accidentlly” kick him in the mouth?

We should not be surprised at this. It’s what liberals do.

Quote of the day—Tommy_G

I think it’s time to take guns out of the hands of the government. They have proved to be far too irresponsible too and should not be allowed to handle them. Time to return guns to the people, who are more responsible and know better how to use them.

Tommy_G
June 30, 2011
Comment to Dems to spin Fast & Furious probe into gun-control rally
[Certainly there is sufficient evidence to support this assertion. But I don’t think we need to go that far just yet.

[sarcasm]We just need some common sense gun regulations for them. Any government employee that is allowed to possess a firearm while on the job should be licensed with strict training requirements. All government guns should be registered. All ammunition use should be documented. All of these records must be put online and be publically available.[/sarcasm]

I’m currently listening to the Audible.com version of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (not recommended if graphic violence bothers you, some of it brought tears). The millions murdered by the police (with some help by the military) with guns is more than sufficient reason to be nearly serious about making a police officer with a gun a “shoot on sight” offense.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mark Walsh

Illinois is really important nationally. The country needs one state people can look to and see it’s still doing the right thing.

Mark Walsh
June 29, 2011
Director of the Illinois Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Ill. likely to see fierce battle over gun control
[And if they were the last state in the union that still had legalized slavery, Jim Crow laws, or outlawed alcohol what would be the response?

Nationally both Illinois gun laws and anti-gun organizations are a disgrace and nearly irrelevant. It’s time to shame them into the dustbin of history.—Joe]

Quote of the day—kiplingsburdens

Schumer is a criminal put in power by russian mobsters and israeli criminals. What better way to further the interests of criminals than to see that those they prey upon are absolutely defenseless?

What better way to condition a population into victim-hood and perpetual oppression than to have them used to being perpetual victims without any ability to defend themselves?

kiplingsburdens
June 25, 2011
Comment to Do We Need Gun Control?
[I don’t know about the “Russian mobster and Israeli criminals” but something similar has been at least joked about in regards to Chuck Schumer for many years. And it is claimed the original intent of the Sullivan Act, a New York State gun control law, was to protect criminals.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dalai Lama

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.

Dalai Lama
May 15, 2001
Dalai Lama urges students to shape world
[And what if your government outlaws the reasonable action of possessing and/or carrying a gun? Doesn’t that mean the government is “unreasonable”?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Walter E. Williams

Becoming a burden on society is not a problem of liberty and private property. It’s a problem of socialism where one person is forced to take care of someone else. That being the case, the government, in the name of reducing health care costs, assumes part ownership of you and as such assumes a right to control many aspects of your life. That Americans have joyfully given up self-ownership is both tragic and sad.

Walter E. Williams
2009
Who May Harm Whom?
[Via Lyle in the comments.

Read the whole thing. I think the concepts presented have the ability to shut down, in my favor, many of debates that I sometimes get into.—Joe]

Long day, sort of

Barb and I got up at about 2:30 AM this morning. Daughter Xenia and her husband needed a ride to the airport.

We helped them get through the check in line and started through TSA and then left. We were sad because daughter Xenia is now living over 2000 miles away. It’s the furthest any of our kids have moved away from home. We then came back to my bunker and went back to sleep.

We ended up spending the entire day in bed watching videos (“Night and Day” followed by 12 episodes of “In Plain Sight”). We only got up for bathroom breaks and to get a little bit of food.

It probably wasn’t the best treatment for mild depression. Exercise probably would have been better but it’s what we felt like doing.

Quote of the day—Giovanni Bisignani

Today’s checkpoint was designed four decades ago to stop hijackers carrying metal weapons. We need a process that responds to today’s threat. It must amalgamate intelligence based on passenger information and new technology. That means moving from a system that looks for bad objects, to one that can find bad people.

Giovanni Bisignani
June 15, 2011
The future of airport security?
[Today daughter Xenia and her army husband went through TSA on their way to Alaska. One of his checked “bags” (a large plastic “tote”) had the locks broken so TSA could search the contents. He was also singled out for special attention. He opted for the “feel me up” search rather than the “naked body scan”.

The U.S. government trusts him to fight terrorists in the sandbox using some very expensive equipment and with the lives of the men under him and around him but they have to feel him up before he can fly on a commercial flight with his wife and her cat?

I think I know where to find the “bad people”.—Joe]

Something for anti-gunners to think about

There are over 330,000 Washington state residents with concealed handgun licenses. The state population is about 6.7 million. That means that almost 1 in every 20 people have a concealed handgun license.

As Dave Workman points out Washington Ceasefire only has about 7,000 members. For every Washington Ceasefire member there are nearly 50 people with a conceal handgun license.

It’s no wonder we are winning.

One round of 9mm equals 15 years in prison

From the ATF:

Steven L. Roberts, 43, of Kansas City, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple to 15 years in federal prison without parole. Roberts was sentenced as an armed career criminal due to his prior felony convictions for crimes of violence.

On Feb. 8, 2011, Roberts pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of ammunition. Roberts admitted that he was in possession of one round of 9mm ammunition. Roberts was arrested on Aug. 8, 2009, after a short foot chase by Kansas City police officers. When Roberts was searched, officers found the ammunition in his pants pocket. Officers also found a Makarov 9mm semi–automatic pistol, a small amount of methamphetamine and some marijuana when they canvassed the area through which Roberts ran.

That seems a bit harsh to me. Where is the victim?

But that’s the point isn’t it? To make gun ownership extremely risky.

Quote of the day—Howard Nemerov

I recently correlated Black homicide rates from the CDC with Brady Campaign report cards 2001-2007. Brady evaluated states on how well they implemented gun control laws. The result shows that more gun control correlates with higher Black homicide rates and lower Caucasian homicide rates.

Most of Brady’s reports graded states on “A” to “F”, though that’s recently been replaced with stars. In any case, it conveniently divided states into quintiles. When comparing Quintile 1 (most gun control) with Quintile 5 (least gun control), Blacks averaged 20.7% higher homicide rates in states with the most gun control, while Caucasian rates averaged 64.1% lower.

Gun control still benefits Caucasians and harms Blacks, just like it did before and after the Civil War.

Garry McCarthy just happens to be Caucasian (picture here). For that matter, so’s Brady president Paul Helmke.

Just a curious coincidence, no doubt.

Howard Nemerov
June 24, 2011
Chicago’s top cop: ‘Federal gun laws are racist’
[See also this QOTD.—Joe]

With accomplishments like these who needs failures?

If I had a list of engineering “accomplishments” that were projects that failed to achieve their goals I wouldn’t be in the engineering profession for very long. But somehow the Brady Campaign doesn’t see it that way (or at least publically doesn’t want to admit it) when it comes to the failures of Paul Helmke. Their list of “accomplishments” strike me as failures or irrelevancies:

  • responding to the decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald in a way that makes legislation implementing common sense restrictions on guns more likely in the future; [FAIL! It’s now three years post Heller and no significant gun control legislation has passed Heller or McDonald addressed.]
  • helping pass the NICS Improvement Act in 2007, which law has already helped spur the addition of another million records to the Brady background check system; [IRRELEVANT! The NRA supported this legislation.]
  • engaging a new generation of victim advocates, such as Virginia Tech survivor Colin Goddard, in the fight for sensible gun laws; [IRRELEVANT! How many are of the “new generation” are voting anti-gun?]
  • supporting the filming, release and distribution of two new documentaries on the gun issue — Living for 32 and Gunfight; [IRRELEVANT! How many people have watched it and changed their position? The numbers are statistically insignificant.]
  • pursuing an aggressive media strategy, including national television and radio, as well as local, newspapers, magazines, and web outlets; [FAIL!  My pathetic YouTube videos get more traffic than the Brady Campaign videos do.]
  • the Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence initiative; [FAIL! I have never heard of it. If I haven’t heard of it then almost for certain the number of people who have heard of it and acted upon it is vanishingly small.]
  • beginning relationships with professional athletes such as Plaxico Burress; [FAIL! I can’t see this as an accomplishment for either party in the relationship. It’s a suspect and very odd relationship that will go nowhere.]
  • advancing Brady’s “assault clips” campaign and targeted district strategy; [FAIL! This campaign has achieved zero legislatively and even if it were to get passed by some legislature it probably will not pass the “in common use” test of the Heller decision.]
  • enlisting 100+ sponsors for bills to close the gun show loophole and ban assault clips; [FAIL! This legislation didn’t even come up for a vote let alone get lip service from the President.]
  • implementing successful defensive efforts in the states to stop “guns on campus” as well as helping pass strong pro-active legislation in places like California; [FAIL! We made several steps forward and zero backward.The right to self-defense on campus was passed in several states. It was not repealed in any.]
  • leading the Starbucks “open carry” campaign; [FAIL! Starbucks told them to mind their own business.]
  • steering the organization through the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression; [FAIL! Income is down by how much? It’s so much that Helmke barely has enough to pay his salary and keep the lights on in his office.]
  • supporting the writing and promotion of a new book on the gun issue, Lethal Logic by Dennis Henigan; [FAIL! The book is full of half-truths from the front cover on and everyone knows it. And in the book Henigan admits it is difficult to determine whether the presence of guns leads to high crime rates.]
  • getting more attention from the White House, Administration, as well as many leaders on the Hill than in the past decade; [FAIL! And what has the attention gain the Brady Campaign in terms of getting their legislative agenda passed? Zip.]
  • budgeting for new investment in donors that resulted in thousands of new donors and supporters. [FAIL! Where’s the money?]