Walking to bible study while listening to Disney music. I’m so badass.
Xenia Huffman-Scott
Via Twitter
[That’s my girl.–Joe]
Gun safety–what media bias?
What news organization would call the KKK and their ilk “public safety groups”? Don’t these groups think of themselves as protecting their white women from being raped or “polluting the race”? They were bigots and most of the press treats them like bigots. Yet we get this crap from a major newspaper, the Washington Post, where the anti-gun organizations are referred to as “gun safety groups” six times in the article. These are organizations that have never taught a single person a gun safety class. Having probably taught millions of people gun safety and with it’s 50,000 instructors it’s the NRA that is the leading gun safety group in this country and probably the world.
And I “love” this comment to the article:
How to spot an NRA member:
-lives anywhere South of DC or West of Pennsylvania, but east of California.
-Especially between Virginia and Texas
-sports mullet
-drives an old beat up pick up truck with bumper sticker that says “keep honking im reloading”
-still lives with mom at age 30
-lives in a trailer
-thinks voting 4 Bush is a good idea because he will make guns easier to obtain
-trash can filled with Bud cans
-wears an old faded out cap with a nascar logo
-reeks of the smell of urine and booze
Quote of the day–Jacob Sullivan
What will Obama cling to when voters question his commitment to the Second Amendment?
Jacob Sullivan
September 23, 2008
Revenge of the Bitter Gun Owners
[Obama pissed off the wrong people with his “clinging” remark. Gun owners are probably more inclined than any other group to be one issue voters. And what is incredibly telling to me is that Obama could neutralize all the skepticism of his “support for the Second Amendment” by saying he as President would veto any anti-gun legislation that came to his desk. He could easily win the election by continuing his current plan and then repeatedly and convincingly saying that one sentence. But he hasn’t. He wants to cling to the possibility of further restricting our civil rights.–Joe]
Sarah Palin buttons
More evidence of A Security Theater
An email from Molly H. over a month ago got lost in my in box and I just now found it while procrastinating about something else.
Remember those reinforced doors they put on the airplanes to help prevent hijackers from getting control of the plane? It turns out there aren’t any restrictions on taking lock picks on board. And even if there were restrictions it is trivial to get them past security.
As Molly said, “More proof that TSA is just a security theater…” or as I like to point out the acronym TSA really should be AST for A Security Theater.
Boomershoot maintenance
As I reported a few weeks ago I did a bunch of earth moving at the Boomershoot range. Last Sunday Kim, Xenia, and I went back to plant grass on the fresh dirt, winterize the Taj Mahal and deliver 800 pounds of decorative concrete blocks to the Taj. Barb’s Jeep was sort of dragging it’s tail as we drove out to the range. We will use the concrete blocks as stepping stones around the Taj to keep the explosive workers out of the mud when it is wet. As a side note on Thursday Barb took her Jeep to be “detailed” which consisted mostly of removing mud and small pieces of concrete from the interior.
I didn’t take my camera but Xenia brought hers and I planned to post some of the pictures she (and I) took of the work we did. Unfortunately the mechanism involved in transferring the pictures from her camera to me failed with the crash of Barb’s desktop computer (it’s complicated, don’t ask because it’s not worth it). I could have worked around it in any number of ways but I had, and have, more important things to do.
I did want to get a post up about the grass planting just so people would know the chances of the area being nothing but mud next spring are less than 100%. Also this gives me an excuse to post a link to Xenia (our artist) pictures from the day. As you can see from the sample below it’s an artist taking the pictures and not her engineer father.
Xenia reflected in the solar panels on the Taj Mahal.
Kevin Baker on hate
Kevin wraps his mind around why the left, and to a lesser extent the right, has so much hate and shares the result via quotes as is his style.
Very good stuff and I highly recommend it. It explains so much.
The Financial Crisis for Dummies
The shorter and even simpler version is, “You can’t fool the free market forever even if the politicians think they can. The laws of economics can no more be changed than the laws of physics. Obama and other Democrats were the biggest contributors. Vote for McCain.” Set to music:
H/T to George for the email with the link.
Update: The video was pulled and via Kevin I found the replacement.
Laser on Gun Blog 45
As I reported earlier I had a dead battery in the Crimson Trace Lasergrips. As Rob pointed out the case is tight enough that if the master switch was left on the grip switch would be activated when the gun was cased.
I installed the new battery and the laser came to life but wasn’t right. It was just like it was when I tried to use it at Summer Camp. It appeared to be hitting the pin for the slide lock and what light hit the target was a blob instead of a laser beam. Further testing indicated the laser lens was either dirty or possibly defective. I tried using an ordinary cotton swab with alcohol but I couldn’t detect any improvement after repeated cleanings.
Say Uncle sent me an email saying he had similar problems with his laser and when he used the swab supplied with the grips rather than ordinary cotton swab it cleaned up and worked correctly. The cotton swab is just too large to deep down to the laser lens. I was able to confirm his results. My laser now works as expected.
I practiced drawing and dry firing with the laser probably a 100 times. I discovered that frequently I don’t have a solid grip on the gun with the middle finger on my strong hand. It isn’t gripping the gun strong enough to turn on the laser. It turns out sometimes my weak hand will push it forward as I wrap my weak hand around my strong hand during the process of gripping the gun. I’m going to modify the process some so I get a better and more consistent grip.
I also used the draw and dry fire exercise to observe the movement of the gun as I put the sights on target and pulled the trigger. One observations instructors in the past had made that I was not pushing straight out to the target but instead was pointed the gun above the target then bringing it down. It appears I have fixed that error in my draw stroke.
These laser grips are proving to be useful even before I have fired a single shot with them.
Quote of the day–Roberta X
… I don’t see the real world playing out like the last few chapters of Atlas Shrugged. We’re a bit short of Galts and Gulches an’ Midas Mulligan’s been in a Federal pen for a good long while now, accused of “redlining.”
Roberta X
Meanwhile, Back At The Launch
[Atlas Shrugged is a great book but there are lots of deviations from reality. It does have some wonderful points to make but as a plan for restoring our country’s freedom it obviously won’t work. Economic collapse may be required but an organized strike by the truly intellectual to force that just isn’t going to happen.–Joe]
Too much information
I review my Sitemeter referrals fairly frequently but today I got too much information:
| Domain Name | (Unknown) | |||||||||||||||||||
| IP Address | 63.241.190.# (AT&T MFS-NB 2.0– Mesa, AZ – Trial) | |||||||||||||||||||
| ISP | CERFnet | |||||||||||||||||||
| Location |
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| Language | English (U.S.) en-us | |||||||||||||||||||
| Operating System | Microsoft WinXP | |||||||||||||||||||
| Browser | Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Javascript | version 1.3 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Monitor |
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| Time of Visit | Sep 26 2008 11:35:03 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Last Page View | Sep 26 2008 11:35:03 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Length | 0 seconds | |||||||||||||||||||
| Page Views | 1 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Referring URL | http://search.msn.co… 2 fingers in rectum | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Engine | search.msn.com | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Words | electrical 2 fingers in rectum | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | http://blog.joehuffm…aspx?date=2007-08-13 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | http://blog.joehuffm…aspx?date=2007-08-13 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Out Click | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Time Zone | UTC-8:00 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visitor’s Time | Sep 26 2008 11:35:03 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Number | 360,904 |
I’ll be busy with lots of other things today trying to get that image out of my mind.
The only motivation for the above web search I can think of is there that must be a shortage of sheep in Mesa.
New Jersey DOT wants to build a shoot house
This isn’t definite of course but it’s a reasonable indicator that the New Jersey DOT wants to build a shoot house:
| Domain Name | state.nj.us ? (U.S.) | |||||||||||||||||||
| IP Address | 160.93.145.# (New Jersey Department of Transportation) | |||||||||||||||||||
| ISP | New Jersey Department of Transportation | |||||||||||||||||||
| Location |
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| Language | English (U.S.) en-us |
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| Operating System | Microsoft WinXP | |||||||||||||||||||
| Browser | Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; InfoPath.1) |
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| Javascript | version 1.3 | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Time of Visit | Sep 26 2008 10:23:09 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Last Page View | Sep 26 2008 10:23:09 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Length | 0 seconds | |||||||||||||||||||
| Page Views | 1 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Referring URL | http://www.google.co… shoot house&spell=1 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Engine | google.com | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Words | building a shoot house | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/08/25/the-shoot-house/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/08/25/the-shoot-house/ | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Time Zone | UTC-5:00 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visitor’s Time | Sep 26 2008 1:23:09 pm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Number | 360,869 |
I have to wonder why they would need a shoot house. Aren’t carry guns already outlawed there? If none of the private citizens can carry guns why would the DOT need them? Oh, that’s right, they already have the guns off “the streets” and now they need to go into the home to collect what is left. After all, New Jersey has officially decleared, “When it comes to firearms, the citizen acts at his peril.”
Big Brother tightens his grip
This is the sort of thing you can expect once Big Brother has taken your firearms away:
“CrimTrac has told us there will be 5000 cameras around the country, overwhelmingly in populated areas, taking some 70 million photos every day.
“There’ll be maybe 1000 cameras in downtown Sydney, close to that number in Melbourne, perhaps 100 or so in Brisbane.
“If you use the main roads, you’re likely to be snapped several times a day, and all those photos and any related data will be held by CrimTrac for up to five years.”
Mr Vaile said it was false to represent the proposal as number plate recognition: “It’s a photograph-all-drivers system.”
At present, there are an estimated 300 fixed ANPR cameras and 100 mobile units in Australia.
CrimTrac is due to hand a $2.2 million scoping study for an integrated ANPR to the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, and the Ministerial Council for Police and Emergency Management in November.
According to a privacy consultation paper issued in June, all ANPR data collected would be made available to participating agencies in real time, and retained for five years for future investigations.
This fails my Jews in the Attic Test with such authority it takes some thought to imagine ways to fail worse.
As my Austrialian friend who sent me the link said, “This is some scary shit…”
Lead ammunition in Washington State
There has been some concern about the potential for restrictions on lead ammunition in Washington State. A recent email from Jason with a pointer to the Department of Ecology web page Lead Chemical Action Plan finally got me motivated enough to take a look.
After spending an hour or so scanning through the 335 page draft I was somewhat less concerned. Yes, as the NRA says, there is a “Mandatory” section to “Ban lead from certain products”. This is on page 208 where the NRA pulled it’s quote, “Products that do not need lead and directly expose wildlife include wheel weights, small fishing weights, and some ammunition.” But this is misleading because this is just one of several alternatives under the subject of “Mandatory”. Other mandatory options mentioned in the draft plan are much worse (ban all lead with some exceptions) and some are much more tolerant such as “Require labels” which is also on page 208.
Yes, the plan goes through the cost estimates of shifting to steel shot and this certainly raises concerns if the intent is to eliminate the use of all lead shot not just in the hunting of water fowl as is currently the case (someone correct me if I am wrong on this point) under Federal Law.
I haven’t written my comment letter yet (email: hdav461@ecy.wa.gov by October 6) but it will be centered on questioning the utility of restrictions on lead shot beyond that of water fowl hunting. Basically, is there any evidence non-hunting lead ammo is a significant sort of involuntary human or wildlife lead levels? Until there is evidence of this and other more significant sources are addressed then it would be inappropriate to take action against lead ammunition in general.
Headlines for Obama
Barack What First Amendment Obama has sent threatening letters to new agencies in Pennsylvania and Ohio demanding they not run NRA advertisements. This act should be immediate disqualification of him as a candidate on at least two different levels. One is the obvious disrespect he has for the First Amendment (as well as the Second). The other is the crass stupidity. In addition to this being the Internet age where everyone can upload or download almost any video they want in a manner that is virtually impossible to block outside of a hard core police state this makes a news story out of the NRA ads. Which means TV stations are likely to start showing the ads for free!
As Dave Hardy said people will want to see what they are forbidden to see. A psychology prof lecturing about advertising once did a quick survey in his class about signs that were effective in getting the students to spend their money on a product. He was somewhat surprised to find one of the most compelling signs was “Under 17 not admitted without parent or guardian.” Has Obama never learned that people buy and read banned books (get your button here) because they are banned? The same thing applies with guns, ammo, and accessories.
Just think of the headlines (the following are copyright exempt) this act of stupidity will enable:
- Obama Campaign Running Scared (NRA web page headline)
- What Obama doesn’t want you to know
- See the video Obama wants censored!
- Obama attempts to ban free speech!
- Obama jumps the gun and goes for the First first
- Obama imposing “reasonable restrictions” on human rights
- What’s next? Restrictions on the right to trial by jury?
Someone this out of touch with human nature and the Bill of Rights has no place in American politics.
Update: Barack Enlightened Leader Obama also has local law enforcement pledged to come down on certain anti-Obama ads. This reminds me a lot of the early days of Adolf Hitler. Only here we have these rights specifically enumerated and Obama is, in essence, saying, “Bill of Rights? We don’t need no stinking Bill of Rights!”
Update2: It’s not just Obama! The Democratic Party is trying to suppress free speech. But that is to be expected I guess. It was one of the most liberal Republications and a liberal that brought us McCain-Feingold. Repression of economic and political freedom–it’s what liberals do.
Quote of the day–David Hardy
When will people learn? Upon hearing “you should not be allowed to see this,” every real American feels a Pavlovian urge to see it at once, even if it’s a Sanskrit manual on chariot repair.
David Hardy
September 25, 2008
Obama campaign tries to get stations to refuse NRA ads
[Apparently Obama is trying to get an early start on gutting the First Amendment. Apparently just signalling his attitude on the Second Amendment wasn’t enough. It’s obvious that he and his followers think of him as the Great Leader but one would think he could control himself until he seized power. Could it be that he just can’t help himself?–Joe]
Journalists on fact checkers
Via an email from Simon–Political Fact-Check Sites Proliferate, But Can They Break Through the Muck?
I think the answer is, they could, but they won’t because most fact checkers don’t know what facts are and freely substitute opinions. See the Heinlein quote for assistance in determining the difference.
Please! Let’s not fight among ourselves
Via an email from Oleg I read his Live Journal post Going to court.
This time and energy would be much better spent defeating those that would violate our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. Let’s get this resolved quickly and with as little money expended as possible.
Quote of the day–Dann Dalton
It’s the public school system. Let’s be honest, it’s full of liberal loons.
Dann Dalton
September 23, 2008
Fifth Grader Suspended for Wearing Anti-Obama Shirt
[H/T to Say Uncle and David Codrea.–Joe]
Hello Dennis
I just received a visit to my blog from Handgun Control (now known as the Brady Campaign). It looks like it might have been Dennis Hennigan:
| Domain Name | sct.com ? (Commercial) | |||||||||||||||||||
| IP Address | 65.242.56.# (HANDGUN CONTROL) | |||||||||||||||||||
| ISP | Verizon Business | |||||||||||||||||||
| Location |
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| Language | English (U.S.) en-us |
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| Operating System | Microsoft WinXP | |||||||||||||||||||
| Browser | Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) |
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| Javascript | version 1.3 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Monitor |
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| Time of Visit | Sep 24 2008 10:22:02 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Last Page View | Sep 24 2008 10:22:02 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Length | 0 seconds | |||||||||||||||||||
| Page Views | 1 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Referring URL | http://www.google.co…nigan%22&btnG=Search | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Engine | google.com | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Words | “dennis hennigan” | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/08/31/quote-of-the-day-dennis-hennigan/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/08/31/quote-of-the-day-dennis-hennigan/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Out Click | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Time Zone | UTC-5:00 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visitor’s Time | Sep 24 2008 1:22:02 pm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Number | 360,023 |
Unfortunately he only visited the one page but that probably was enough for him to realize he wasn’t going learn anything here which he has any interest in knowing. I wish he had at least checked out Just One Question. But that probably is a nightmare he doesn’t want to think about.