Folks That's A Bow

Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining when you claim that it's not a bow.

Bush bowed too.

Why the need to lie about it?

Comment:

Random Thought

Media bias.

They've certainly picked a side.

I think many people don't mind because it's their side.

I've heard more and more from people who I would never have thought were interested in politics ask, "When did the media stop reporting the events and start making everything an editorial?"

I can't really answer that. I noticed they were doing that somewhere in the Branch Davidian stand off. Wikipedia says that was 1993. That's where I noticed the media calling an M2A1 Bradley and an M728 CEV tanks. The Bradley is an infantry combat vehicle and the M728 is a combat engineering vehicle. The M728 is based on an M60A1 tank, but I know from watching them during the Gulf War that they have people on staff who know the difference between the vehicles used and tanks. Even using the term "armored vehicle" instead of tank would have been accurate. But they chose tank. It was inaccurate. It had to be deliberate. Why?

I've never found an answer to, "why?" that didn't scare me.

I also have to ask, "How come every time something that I know something about is presented, the media gets key things wrong?"

It's made it so I cannot trust them. They have a side and are advancing that side's agenda.

It must be older than 1993 though. Remember when Walter Cronkite declared the war in Vietnam unwinnable right after the Tet Offensive? We won that battle. We'd actually won the war. Congress (Democrat majority) voted to cut funding and end air-support for the South Vietnamese; snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The North Vietnamese were still receiving material support from both USSR and China. Most people don't know that. The evacuation of Siagon took place almost two years after the last US combat troops had left. South Vietnamese troops, with US funding and supplies along with US air support had successfully repelled an invasion from the North the year before. So many people think that the evacuation of Saigon (1975) is DURING the withdrawal of US combat troops (1973). Gee, where do you think that this impression comes from?

Happily, the internet is combating this. A year ago there was little mention of the order of events at the end of Vietnam. Now there's Wikipedia! Prior to the internet it took some digging in military history sections to find this stuff; now it's online.

Chekov's Gun

There's a trope about what bugged me about "Atlas Shrugged".

The demonstration of the sonic goat death ray led me to expect it would be used on or at Galt's Gulch. That bothered me so much I couldn't really enjoy the pages and pages of speeches that come later.

A Reminder

I would like to point out that not one of my firearms participated in the murder of those three cops in Pittsburgh.

And that this fucktard is still a fucktard: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/4/716640/-Eliminationists-leave-daughters-without-fathers

Talk radio didn't make this guy do this. The NRA didn't make this guy do this. Barack Obama didn't make this guy do this. His dog pissing on the floor didn't make this guy do this.

I would also like to remind everyone that murder is illegal. Anyone who's bound and determined to break that law is not going to spend time worrying, "Does my magazine hold too many rounds?"

Some Details

I think about space and starships from time to time. Thanks Roberta X!

Since I look at things from a GM to Player perspective most of the time I like think about details.

Hatches.

Sliding doors and iris-valves are neat, but would be complicated. Think about the materials you need to use to prevent things like vacuum welding.

I have described sliding hatches that had double doors. Each face moves towards the center, away from the jamb so that in case there's pressure on one side and not the other, the vacuum side will be pressed more firmly in its coaming and cannot be slid into its pocket until both sides are centered.

Swinging hatches are likely to be more common. If you put a geared mechanism on the door, the pressure will not prevent it from opening or closing (nor will high g-loads). But what keeps a bone head from opening it at the wrong time?

I propose a simple diaphragm bolt. Springs hold it centered if there's pressure on both sides. If there's a pressure drop, the air pushes the diaphragm against the springs and the bolt slides into the opening mechanism and prevents it from opening. This same mechanism can also be used to trip the closing mechanism. I envision the slider looking like an emergency stop button. Slap it, the spring loaded door closes FAST. Vacuum pulls it, door closes. What if you need to open it? You pull it out, and hold it while the door opens. You could override the closure mechanism by wedging something under the button, there might even be something built in for that. No lights, you can feel for the button. If it's down you know the other side is in vacuum.

Comments Policy

I do treasure comments, but try to remember that I have stuck my own opinions out here to be flayed. I do have a personal stake in what I have said. This is ME that is here. There is a substantial emotional risk to stating one's opinion in public.

If your opinion differs, tell me in your own words. Use your own opinion, I used mine. Don't just link me to people who disagree. Don't just repeat someone else's words without sourcing.

If you find your reply is getting to be longer than the post you are replying to, you should really start writing for yourself on your own blog or Live Journal. Clearly you have something to say and deserve to say it where you make the rules!

I detest devil's advocacy when not prefaced as such. Remember, a devil's advocate does not subscribe to the position, he merely is taking it to help find flaws or illustrate the point. Unless you say you are taking the devil's position, you will the treated as if that is your own mind.

Do not quote the mainstream media and chide me for using biased sources.

Feel free to agree with me! When all one hears is people disagreeing all the time, one feels so very alone.

If you agree but think I said it poorly, then tell me! I want to say it well. I want the people on the fence to move to my side of the yard. I don't want to drive people to the other side.

Ask questions! Ask for clarification. Ask if I really meant it the way it was said. I am not a professional writer, I am an amateur.

I know there are more than three people reading this, but I rarely (if ever) hear from them.

Freedom Of Speech

If there was really true freedom of speech, then conspiracy laws would be unconstitutional.

"Conspiracy to," is what makes a crime 1st degree, not the actual conspiring.

If I have freedom of speech, then I can conspire all I want as long as I don't actually commit the crime I am "conspiring" about. Literally, no harm, no foul.

Creationist Screed

I am willing to concede that the universe was created by God if you are willing to concede that He made it the way that it appears.

Hell, I will be willing to concede creation if you are willing to willing to take seven days and multiply them by 3.65x10^11.

I'll be willing to concede that abortion is murder if you'll concede that wiping the seed of families like The Shitheels off the face of the planet is a net good.

I'll concede that insulting Islam is wrong if you'll concede that they have to apologize for all the murders.

Gay Marriage

The problem with this is both sides presuppose that the government has the power to define and regulate who is, or can, be married.

I think that it's a religious matter and if your church forbids homosexuals to marry then be content that they will burn in hell for their sins, God even says that's how He wants things to run since the judgement is His alone. Read your Bibles! The atheist should not be the one pointing this out to you. If your church says Tom and Dave can love each other and be husband and, er, husband; then God will punish them if they are wrong. It's not my business.

You can easily make it a contractual thing. I think the reason we haven't is it would allow polygamy. Religion once again encroaching on the state.

Male-female marriage might deserve a special spot under law because it's a good idea for society to have its own kind breeding. "We are married and intend to reproduce, please give us our tax break for furthering our society." If we came out and said it and then did it so that the productive members of society benefitted from having kids then perhaps we'd see less of The Shitheel model of sloppy reproduction. Imagine if you got a 50% tax break for having an income above $35k and porked a child! Imagine no additional break if you paid no net taxes.

Comments:

Comparing Red Dots

Today's comparison is between the Aimpoint Comp M4s and the L3 EOTech 552.A65/1 (Rev F).

First, the EOTech.

This is the right side of the unit.  You can see the elevation (left) and windage (right) adjustments here.

Left side of the unit showing the mounting screw.  A tool is really required to get the recommended last 1/4 turn.

Looking to the rear at the front of the unit.  The battery compartment is plastic and kind of exposed compared to the sight window which is protected by an aluminum hoop.

The controls.  Either square button will turn it on.  The up arrow turns it on and sets the "time-out" for 8 hours, the down arrow for 4 hours.  Pushing both arrows shuts the unit off.  The up and down arrows also control brightness.  The round button labeled 'NV' toggles the unit into a dim mode that is night-vision compatible.  Using any control (except turning it off) resets the "time-out" clock.  With two AA lithium batteries and set to the default brightness of 12, the battery should last for 1,000 hours.

The reticule.  It's a 65 minute-of-angle (moa) ring around a 1 moa dot.  It is also hard to get the camera to cooperate with this.

Now the Aimpoint Comp M4s.  It's a variation of the standard Comp M4 that has the battery compartment mounted at 5 o'clock instead of 1 o'clock, as seen from the rear.  The Comp M4 is issued to US Army troops as the M68 CCO.

Lens covers closed from the right.

Covers open.  The windage and elevation are in the more traditional scope locations.  The caps covering the adjusters are captured on rubber lanyards, as is the cap for the battery compartment.

Left side view.  You can see the "QRP 2" knob here as well as the spacer (horizontal bar with the holes in it).  Removing the spacer put the unit about 9mm lower, which causes it to no longer be lined up with my LaRue Po-Boy magnifier.  The QRP 2 knob requires no tools to get correct torque.

Front view showing the kill-flash unit.  This helps keep reflections from the lens from giving away the shooter's position.

The control.  Shown here set to position 10.  The first few clicks are very dim for use with night-vision.  There is no "time-out" with the Aimpoint, if you forget and leave it on, it stays on until the battery dies.  It is supposed to have several years (80,000 hours with lithium) of battery life on a single AA cell while left in position 12.

The reticule.  A single 2 moa dot.  I find that the one feature I really like better on the EOTech is the reticule.

We Are Simon Jester

 Original web page is dead.  Quoted in entire.

We are Simon Jester.
We are not anarchists.
We are not Far-Right or Far-Left. We are the seventy percent in the middle.
We are not Capital “L” libertarians, although we do have sympathies with their platform.
We are neither bitter clingers nor conspiracy nuts.
What we are is a group of folks that think we see liberty and freedom eroding in our beloved United States. We see the policies and agendas of the hirelings in Washington D.C. heading toward an abbreviation if not outright abrogation of the Bill of Rights.
We think that the Federal government is grasping to consolidate power using the current crisis, since as Rahm Emmanuel said, it’s a terrible thing to waste. We think the Federal government, not just this administration, is more interested in self-serving personal, political, and party power than it is in actually doing its best to do the least.
This President didn’t make it this way. It has been heading along this path since Woodrow Wilson held political prisoners and FDR held four terms as president; since Johnson’s Great Society and Nixon took us off the gold standard; since Bush Sr. lied about no new taxes, Clinton desecrated the Oval Office, Bush Jr. rammed through the Patriot Act, and Obama wanted every high school kid to ‘volunteer.’
For almost a hundred years, our country has been heading towards becoming a Socialist, centrally planned, Nanny State where the Federal Government tells it citizens how to conduct business, what they could grow in their own gardens or on their own farms, and now even how much a private citizen is allowed to earn before punitive and illegal taxation takes it away.
Now is the time to make it stop.
The Constitution of the United States of America tells us how our government is supposed to operate. It tells us what powers they have been lent by its citizens. It even delineates what powers each branch of government is supposed to have. Our Federal Government, all three branches, has over-reached. Continually.
The Declaration of Independence told King George what we felt about the way he was treating the Thirteen Colonies. It also told the world what we as Americans believed were natural truths about how government should work, with the consent of the governed. It amazes us how many of the things the Colonies begged King George to address have raised their ugly heads in the present day. We are taxed without our consent for government programs we don’t want. We are told that our natural resources are not ours to do with what we would. We are even told that our property can be confiscated if the government thinks it can get a bigger tax base from a different owner. Our elections are swayed by huge amounts of dollars and the willing collaboration of the old media giants. More than that, our elections are influenced by unconstitutional law such as McCain-Feingold, communist groups such as ACORN signing up 200,000 illegal voters in Ohio, and terrorist groups like the Black Panthers staking our polling places such as in Philadelphia. And we, the legitimate voters of this country are forced to accept the results.
Our voice has been ignored, even to the point of telling the citizens of a state that a duly enacted and overwhelmingly voter-approved constitutional amendment would not be allowed to stand due to political correctness.
Our representatives have listened to us on occasion however; only to be overturned by a pen-stroke from the Executive Branch, like when we said we didn’t like the idea of bailing out the auto industry.
Our legislature has pretended to listen to us about our need to protect our country’s borders, but then come back and tried to tell us that they have changed their minds. All the while trying to curry favor to their own districts with pork projects.
We flood D.C. with calls and letters and emails demanding that the administration not burden our grandchildren with huge government debt that will necessitate huge tax increases, but are told that our thoughts on the matter have no bearing because some things are just too big to fail; only to hear the same legislators come back a few months later and demand punitive taxes on those companies it gave money to against our wishes.
The current administration has appointed all of these extra-constitutional “Czars” to oversee what they view as problems in our country and in our world, including an avowed Communist.
This administration, as well as far too many legislators, clings to a philosophy of man-made global warming that is far from settled science and has decided that “Cap and Trade”, regardless of the huge burden that will place on the consumers, is necessary to limit carbon emissions. The fact that it has been tried in Europe and FAILED to limit carbon emissions doesn’t matter because this program will generate huge tax dollars for the government while at the same time penalizing the consumers of energy in the form of higher energy bills.
Another thing that has failed in Europe and elsewhere is the idea of universal health care. Yet still our government is racing headlong towards rationed medical procedures, diagnostics, medicines, and preventive care because it is yet another way to control the population. It is very hard to tell the government “No” when you or your spouse, or your child, depend upon the government owned and run kidney machine, insulin shots, or cancer treatments.
And now our Federal government has asked for more power. It isn’t even trying to hide it anymore. They want the power to regulate to the point of confiscation the administration of every business in the United States, just for our own financial safety or course. They want to regulate our salaries and compensation. They want to bankrupt the coal industry, which provides eighty (80 !!) percent of all the power in this country. They don’t want us to be able to drill for oil or natural gas. But at the same time they don’t want to allow the transmission of power from wind farms or solar farms across the countryside because they say it will affect the natural beauty of the desert or they don’t want their view cluttered out past Martha’s Vineyard. They want control of the means of production, the type of crops we grow, and the structure and location of the buildings in which we live. And, despite their protestation to the contrary, they want to disarm us. Too much has slipped out about that for them to be able to deny it any more.
And yes, we repeat, they now are asking for more power. This isn’t just theft, it is a bloody strong-arm robbery with a knife in your ribs.
Now, here is where Simon Jester comes in.
This whole thing isn’t about the Democrats or the Republicans, because they are both taking us to the same place and they aren’t afraid of us anymore. It is about our Constitutional form of government. The Rights were there before the words were written, for they are inherent in all people. They don’t come from government; government, no matter how hard it tries, cannot dissolve them. Now, here we the people are, having all these Tea Parties, trying to show our government that we, the seventy percent or so of the country who is right smack dab in the middle trying to raise our families and give our children better lives than we had, are tired of this grab for power. These Tea Parties, where no one actually throws anything in the harbor, are getting hardly any coverage from the press. In fact, the TWO counter protesters at the March Tea Party in Orlando got as much or more local coverage than the under-reported thousands who attended the rally. So, short of actually committing acts of vandalism and felonious assault, how are we going to get noticed?
Simon Jester. A symbol, since “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert A. Heinlein was published in 1966, of dissent against authority. Let the press, and the government, and your neighbors know that you are paying attention to what the Federal government is trying to do. Let someone ask you what that little devil underneath the word “Citizen” across your chest means and then explain it to them. Explain to the one pool reporter who shows up at the next Tea Party that you and Simon have your eyes open and are watching as the government tries to control your life. Explain to your pastor, or your waitress, or your barista at Starbucks, that our government is power hungry and that you and others like you are trying to be heard.
We are Simon Jester. So are they.
And so are you.

Let There Be Light

I have procured a Surefire X300 Weaponlight.  It is easily brighter than the 4-D Cell LED Maglite I have.

The house was completely dark when I took this!

States Rights

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0327/p02s01-usgn.html

The article says most of the points, I think.

I beg to differ on one small point, this movement really started under Clinton, not Bush. The Congressional change in '94 was an attempt to reverse the power consolidation that had been happening since Hoover.

When the Republicans did not do things much differently from the Democrats is when the movement really started to get traction, and that WAS under Bush.

Comments:

Red Dot Madness

I've been an Aimpoint fan since back when the Aimpoint 1000 was new. I had one on my Mini-14, it survived my first FAL, I sold it to Geff when I got unemployed. He had it installed on his Bushmaster M17S and he sold it to Marv, who has had it mounted on an AR. That thing is over 15 years old and still functioning. It kinda eats batteries though.

The Lovely Harvey has adopted the spare Carbine. It has been dubbed Kevena.

Since this is her optic ready carbine, we needed another optic since the EOTech was all we had.

So Dottie now sports an Aimpoint Comp M4S. It's got much better battery life the controls are accessible when the magnifier is mounted. I still prefer the wider window and reticule on the EOTech. The Aimpoint is supposed to be submersible to 150', the EOTech just 33'; I am a whore for water resistance in an optic...

Kevena and Dottie together to compare the sizes of the optics.

Kevena and Cheyenne together.

Dottie and Kaylee together.

0.75"

Here are three guns in .25 ACP.

Top to bottom in order of manufacture:

Beretta Model 950, 1976 (designed 1953)
Colt Junior, 1968 (designed 1958)
Colt 1908 Vest Pocket, 1919 (designed 1903)

Seems Like A Million Years Ago

That people were calling George Bush a Fascist.

I have a dictionary that defines Fascism as: A system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of the opposition (unions, other, especially leftist, parties, minority groups, etc.), the retention of private ownership of the means of production under centralized government control, belligerent nationalism and racism, glorification of war, etc.

Bush:
A system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship -- No.
Forcible suppression of the opposition -- No.
The retention of private ownership of the means of production under centralized government control. -- No.
Belligerent nationalism and racism -- No.
Glorification of war -- Maybe.

Obama, so far:
A system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship -- No, but the large majority and unwillingness to work with the Republicans makes it seem like it sometimes.
Forcible suppression of the opposition -- Yes, look what happened to the press in Missouri and Joe the Plumber. Here the media "watchdogs" are literally watching, and not reporting. I expect that to end, though, when they realize that their freedoms are being taken too.
The retention of private ownership of the means of production under centralized government control. -- Yes, dictating terms to AIG post facto and forcing the resignation of Rick Wagner while taking over GM's warranty obligations.
Belligerent nationalism and racism -- No.
Glorification of war -- Definitely not.

Kids, Obama is definitely more of a Fascist than Bush was. It also nicely illustrates that Fascism is not a right wing ideology. It's left.

Plus comments...

A Thought...

Penny Arcade reminds me of something.

There's nothing you can store in a steel 55 gallon drum that will burn for a few seconds and then explode after being hit with small arms.

There are a few things that will explode immediately. And 55 gallons of it going off will be an impressive blast. Far more impressive than a hand grenade, which has less than a half pound of high explosive; a barrel of explosives would have about 500 lbs of boom in it.

There are very few things that will burn after being hit with tracer or API. Even gasoline will not light after a tracer round goes through and an API will not light it if the barrel is full at impact. Look up vapor pressure. It's the same thing that keeps the in-tank electric fuel pump in your car from lighting it on fire.

The few things that will light don't often lead to explosions, but they can. 55 gallon barrels do not split at the sides and blast outward. The failure point is the crimp around the lid or base. If it's the lid, you get a flaming splash of the burning contents, and a low-pressure fireball. If it's the base you get a flying barrel and a small ring of flaming contents.

Just Got Back From The Range

I finally took my .45 Colt Anaconda out to the range Sunday. What a honey! With a 6" barrel, recoil was negligible even with the Speer Gold-Dots that were all they had in .45 Colt. Six shot groups fired single action gave a single hole at 15'. This a far more pleasant experience than the 4" .44 Magnum Anaconda I have in the safe.

The 1908 Pocket Hammerless shoots a similar group at 15' too. Not bad for a gun made in 1923. Zero malfunctions with Georgia Arms hollow-points that Marv provided.

Did some shooting of the R604 at the 100 yard line. I can get a head consistently at that range. This was with 55 gr bulk PMC ammo too.

Marv's sister, Sandy, and her partner, Susan, came along. This was Susan's first trip to the range and she was clearly afraid of guns. We had her shooting Sandy's Ruger Mk II and an old H&R 9 shot .22 break open. She did quite well for a first timer. She even fired a single shot from Marv's Bersa. She almost fired the R604, but declined at the last second. She's very worried about recoil and dislikes the louder rounds.

We attempted to kill Marv's eBay flashlight by mounting it to the side rails of his 6.8. I fired the fatal shot! Post mortem revealed that the regulator module had merely come unthreaded from inside the barrel and it's all better now! Take that! Surefire!

It Is Entirely FuzzyGeff's Fault

Last summer Geff, Tim and I played in my GURPS: SEALs in Vietnam single shot.

I became inspired to make our characters with 1/35 scale model kits.

Some notes about the start follow...


Geff's character took an H&R T223. He selected it because it has a 40 round magazine. The T223 is a license manufactured H&K HK33.

I was OK until I went to find a kit that contained the aforementioned HK33. Dragon used to make an MP.5/G.3 Family kit with a couple examples of every H&K gun. I cannot find that set anywhere.

So, I made one.

Here's one compared to an M16

This is an Israeli Negev light machine gun.

I took the magazine.

Next an MP5A3 was donated from the LAPD SWAT team kit.

And I stole its stock. This worked out well since the HK33 uses the same stock as an MP5, and different from a fixed stock G3.

I next took a G3A4 from a Modern German Paratrooper kit.

And removed the sliding stock base and magazine.

Then we glue it all together.

I'd like everyone to notice the dime. These are tiny little guns.

Tim's character presented my next problem. His character took a CAR-15 R607 and a Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, Pump-Action Grenade Launcher. The R607 I snagged from a Dragon M16 family kit. I had to make the NWSCL GL from scratch.

I used the barrel from an M79 I got from a Vietnam era USMC Recon kit. The magazine is the barrel from an M203 out of the M16 family kit. The stock is from a Mossberg 500 that came in a Nam era SEAL kit. The remains of the M203's parent rifle donated some stuff too.

Because the GL was so much more involved, it didn't get as well documented.

My Mary Sue has an M3 OSS grease gun. This is merely a silenced M3, there's a video of one shooting on this very Live Journal! Making this was simple, I just cut off the old barrel and used my lighter to stretch some sprue. Notice the correct taper? I love when I get lucky.

The really sad thing about this is I had to get 6 packs of 4 figures each to get enough bits to make three Player Character models. Damn their independent thinking and all!

Edit:
I added the action bulge to the bottom.

I changed the magazine on the T223 from the Negev to one from a StG.45(M). I think it looks more like the photo now.

Hmmmmmmm...

I said, "I rub everyone wrong eventually. I'll piss you off and you'll be outta my life."

She said, "We'll always be friends. No matter what!"

That was then.

Today she pleaded, "Tell them you know me! Tell them I'm not one of THEM!"

Today I said, "Yeah, she's one of them. Take her away."

I took no satisfaction from her lifeless form hanging from the gallows. I dimly recall trying to warn her too.

I Cannot Help But To Giggle

Left is a Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket. Right is a Colt licensed AirSoft patterned off of it. I wonder how many people have both.

Armas de Mexico

I've mentioned before that there's was a growing number of people who would have thought shooting the illegal Mexicans would be OK.

Mexicans are shooting each other now over drug smuggling.

The anti-gun people are attempting to make us feel bad about that. It's not going to work, because we're OK with people shooting Mexicans thanks to people like them.

I've seen "90% of the guns used by Mexican drug cartels come from the USA," bandied about, implying that it's people like me supplying all those guns. Then they talk about the machine guns and grenades the cartels have. Many times they show pictures. I'm a gun geek and I know an M16A2 when I see it. There were less than 1,000 of those to hit the civilian market before the 1986 ban on new civil manufacture hit. What this likely means is this gun comes not from a gun-owner in the US, but a government agency of some kind.

Since M16A2 are made by Colt in Hartford Connecticut, and FN in McLean, Virginia, I guess you can say they came from America even if it didn't come from a civilian gun owner. I'm willing to bet that if we call Colt and asked them to tell us who they sold that S/N rifle to they'll point us to a government arms room somewhere. I am also willing to bet that the majority of the guns being used in Mexico were exported to a nation to support their drug interdiction program.

I am entirely fed up with being blamed for a problem I am not the cause of. I don't do drugs, so I am not part of the market that the cartels are fighting about. I did not make the drugs illegal, which makes them expensive enough to be worth fighting about. I did not make the border so porous that anyone can wander in unchallenged; if you can't stop someone from walking in without a penny to their name, you are damn sure not going to stop someone with the level of funding the drug cartels have.

But, just for the sake of argument, let's say that the everyday average gun owner is the principal source of guns for the Mexican druggies. I have a solution to the problem, that also addresses the illegal immigrant problem. Seal the damn border. Make it so that nobody just can walk in and you also make it so they can't just walk out. Use the Army. It's what armies are for, defending the frontier. If the Mexican government gets butt-hurt about it, invite them to try and stop us. Now we get to use the Marines and they get to overemphasize the "halls of Montezuma" part of the song.

Of course, the real solution is not militarizing the border. It's eliminating the reasons people are smuggling the shit in. Mexicans come here because Mexico is a shit-hole by comparison to the shit-hole jobs they're coming to do here. That would require changing things about how we force businesses to operate and changing the underlying issues of Mexico. Minimum wage, OSHA, and all manner of taxes make hiring illegals cheaper than hiring Americans. And this is all about the bottom line, if company A is using illegals and company B isn't they can sell for less, and they do. If the consumer, that's us, doesn't boycott company A, then company B is losing business because they can't lower the price of their goods because of labor. Just like drugs, it's us that are the source of the problem.

Drugs are expensive enough to kill over. The only way to make that not true is either legalize them or stop enforcing the law to the extent that it's defacto legal. I don't think there's a way to get the demand to go away.

Interesting Vid

I Didn't Write It But I Agree And Wish I Could Have Written It

Stolen in its entirety from: http://www.atomicnerds.com/

These Things I Believe, by LabRat.


You can’t make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago “Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world’s music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don’t have to die of dental abcesses and you don’t have to do what the squire tells you” they’d think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say ‘yes’.

— Terry Pratchett

I don’t really call myself much of anything firm when it comes to politics and ideology, at least not without a lot of hemming and hawing and mealy-mouthed qualifiers. I’m a conservative- but socially liberal in a lot of ways, and there are a lot of other “conservatives” that make my hide want to twitch right off. I’m a libertarian, but I want some controls and limits anyway because I think pure libertarianism contains just as many in the ways of crippling ideological flaws as pure Marxism does. I’m a minarchist, but put me in the same room with an anarchist and we’ll rip each others’ fool heads off*- and when you get right down to it I’m not exactly sure where the lines should be drawn for that -archy. At all.

So, I don’t have an ideology so much as I have a number of guidelines. Here are a few of them.

Any system that depends upon people becoming better people en masse, no matter what motivation is offered- spiritual, material, or political- is doomed to failure. More or less instantly, in fact. If it depends on EVERYBODY being better, no exceptions, then it’s not only going to fail, it’s going to go up in flames overnight.

Even if you do, in fact, know what’s good for someone better than they do, if they’re not your minor child you have no right to enforce this upon them in any way unless their poor conduct is putting you in direct danger.

People do not act altruistically at all times. People do not act rationally at all times. People do not act morally at all times. People do not act independently at all times. If your vision depends on them doing so even most of the time, your idea is in trouble.

There is no such thing as freedom without responsibility, or responsibility without freedom. You must take them both together or not at all, and if you think you can get away with it otherwise, someone has sold you an illusion and the bill will be coming due shortly. There is only one natural right: to do as you will. There is only one natural duty: to accept the consequences. The rest of society is a negotiation from this starting point, from contract law right on up to the death penalty.

People are more than animals, and yet animals still. Any system which ignores this truism is doomed to see people fulfill it to the most blatant and grotesque degree.

Likewise, any system that treats people like animals and nothing more has a very nasty series of surprises coming to it.

No idea, no matter how good, survives contact with reality intact. If one good blow will cause it to shatter, it wasn’t a good idea.

Some people will be philosophical in the face of extremity. There is also a reason why such a minority of people are philsophical to any degree at all. Don’t expect philosophical from people in extremis, be pleasantly surprised by it.

People have a hard ceiling on their ability to understand and manage complexity. No matter how smart and rational the people you put in charge are, and how many of them there are, once the system exceeds a certain size they will be incapable of controlling it, only succumbing to the illusion that being in control of the resultant bureaucracy is the same thing. This applies to traffic, economies, religions, and many other systems.

There is no more tragic misapprehension than “we are wiser now”. Assume at all times we are no wiser than we were in the Pleistocene, even if we are more advanced in knowledge. Knowledge is cumulative, the wisdom that comes from experience is not. This is why historical lessons must be relearned generationally. Never assume that that stops with yours.

You are NOT capable of fully controlling the behavior or reactions of another person. If your plan depends on this and nothing else, your plan is entirely dependent on luck. This also applies to crowds, nations, and any other unit of humanity, up to and including significant others.

Stereotypes and labels and prejudices don’t exist because society is rotten, they exist because it’s part of how we cope cognitively with a complex world that often demands decisions based on little or no information. If you think you can or have rid yourself of them, you have merely rid yourself of self-knowledge.

Children may be innocent, but innocence does not imply harmlessness. Rather the opposite. Remember that innocence is the opposite of knowledge. It is not something to be treasured in and of itself.

Children do not receive a visit from the Judgment Fairy on their eighteenth birthday- they rely on their parents for that, and they had better well have as much of it as they can possibly gather before they become adults. Remember that when contemplating when to broach the subjects of firearms, sex, alcohol, or anything else deemed “adult”. When the law deems them so is too late.

Life is inherently unfair and absolutely jam-packed with disproportionate consequences for minor bad decisions. There are more of these aspects that are immune to engineering than aren’t. Treat any and all proposals to engineer the parities of life with great skepticism.

Lack of education can turn a person with great innate intelligence into an idiot, but extra education cannot make a great mind of a person with little of it, any more than twenty years of music school can make a great musician out of the tone-deaf and arrhythmic.

All people are basically the same under the skin by dint of being humans. This only goes so far- merely because someone else can speak your language does NOT mean they think like you, and it is the height of dangerous arrogance to assume as much. Fish have no word for water, and you are probably unaware of most of your assumptions that stem from your culture rather than your biology or specific rearing. Likewise, any assumption that all members of another cultural context think and behave in the same ways is equally mistaken. If you can’t get six randomly chosen people on your home street to agree on pizza toppings, assume that similar diversity and disagreement exists in other cultures, scaling in degree with the degree of importance of the issue.

Freedom for other people invariably and inevitably means discomfort for you- physical, emotional, and moral.

Your causes and ideals are just that- yours. You do not have the right to force other people to work to achieve them, and you do not have the ability to force them to care.

*Unless it’s civilization’s most civil one, of course. Perhaps strong words over tea, but I doubt it.

MoH Day

Today is Medal of Honor day.

I'm of the opinion that anyone who survives the event that leads to the award should be given a McMansion, choice of car, free transport via private jet at whim, pay no taxes on anything...

Well, you get the picture. Set for life.

OR!

A MoH holder gets, once per award, to slap any current or former president upside the head and say, "You stupid shit!" That would be far more entertaining.

All JMB All The Time

Four John Moses Browning designs, three are real Colts!

Top to bottom: M1911A1, .45 ACP; 1908 Pocket Hammerless, .380 ACP; 1903 Pocket Hammerless, .32 ACP; 1908 Vest Pocket, .25 ACP.

Well Isn't That Interesting

Go here, watch the vids, read the post.

It's wrong of me, but I just can't keep myself from laughing at her. This is the group she supports. They are threatening to do something to her that she's supported them doing to others.

I guess there is Justice, and it's poetic.

I hope she is rescued from them though. Even idiots don't deserve being treated that way.

Yes!

 

I am:

Robert A. Heinlein

Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.






Which science fiction writer are you?

Drug Gangs Are Winning The Arms Race

That's a headline I saw in passing.

Well, of course they are winning. I am banned, by law, from competing because I am a law-abiding citizen. I point to my sending a Form 1 to ATF in WV to ask permission to lop 4.5" of barrel off my XM177E2 clone.

Drug gangs are, nearly by definition, not law-abiding so they are not much constrained by the laws forbidding the acquisition, possession and use of a wide range of weapons.

Here's your sign.

Revenue

I am sure I mentioned before that in 1986 Congress passed and the President signed the "Gun Owners Protection Act." This act did a lot of good in defining what the ATF was allowed and forbidden to do. Not enough, but it was immensely helpful.

Included in this act, however, was the Hughes Amendment. The Hughes Amendment, in a nutshell, forbids the construction of new machineguns for private citizens.

The government is going to be hurting for revenue soon. At $200 a gun a repeal of the Hughes Amendment would generate a lot of dough. I'd be willing to plunk at least $600 here. And think about it, that's $200 per gun that doesn't take $200 in services to generate. We change the rules slightly we can make it cost even less to process the Form 1s!

Right now they run a complete background check on every single application from every applicant. I propose that only be done with the first application. Subsequent applications only checks for disqualifying activity between the previous approval and the current date. The same thing could be done for all the back-ground checks for all guns.

Write your congresscritter, it's for the children!

GRRRRRRRRRR!

Please, if you voted for President Obama, put a loaded gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.

By the way, this is a link to click on that explains why I'm just a little miffed.

I found this here.

Cold Fury has noticed as well.

The Truth About Magnetic Particle Testing

There are several debates out there in the AR15 world that add up to not mattering to the everyday shooter.

The simple lack of a third position on the selector and the fact we have to buy our own ammo tends to nullify the 4140 vs 4150 debate. You will have to really work at it hard to get a barrel hot enough that it matters with semi. I don't think you can get the barrel hot enough that the differences between 4150 and 4150 CVM show up.

Another "mark of quality" is the magnetic particle (MP) test. This test is familiar to hot-rodders and engine builders as magnafluxing. It's a special magnetic dye that you apply to a part under a magnetic field and it's attracted to cracks, allowing them to become visible.

Why would this test matter in the real world of guns? It really doesn't. The military requires that every single rifle procured be fired with a proof round. This shot is well above maximum pressure. If the gun doesn't blow-up, it passes. The Army added this as a requirement after it got many M1903 rifles that had poor heat treatment that would explode.

Things were fine with this test for a long time, now enter the AR. The M16 would pass the proof test and then break shortly thereafter. This adds MP test to the list of things to do. Seems that the proof charge was cracking bolts and barrels so that they would fail under normal use later, but not enough to fail at the proof test. MP testing spots if the bolt or barrel has actually passed the proof test.

The problem with the M1903 was quickly identified and corrected, but we've kept the proof check for 106 years. The reasons for the cracks in the bolts and barrels during the proof test were found and fixed in about 1969, but we keep the MP test. Also note that there have been studies of guns that never were proof tested lasting just as long as the proofed ones. The MP test is BECAUSE of the proof test, and it seems the proof test is no longer really necessary. But if you proof check, you need to also MP test to make sure the proof didn't break anything.

If you don't proof test, then an MP test is meaningless. If you proof every single gun, you need to MP every single gun too. If you only proof one gun per batch, then you only need to MP that gun.

We're Our Own Worst Enemies

Read this dead link.

Mr Scoutten's show, Shooting USA, has every right to air or not air anything he wants. It's his show and his rules. What I am objecting to is his implication that his rules apply outside his show.

He's also wrong about the police being civilians. The police need to be demilitarized and we don't need a prominent member of the gun-press encouraging them to be more like soldiers.

The dress code rankles me. Shooting is not golf. What I mean is that a dress code seems akin to a country club elitist attitude that does not belong with shooting. Shooting should be a common sport, an everyman activity. His ban on camouflage is the silliest part. Many shooting games are designed to improve ones skill as a hunter, and wearing camo is a part of hunting.

I would presume when he bans targets that aren't pre-approved by him that he's also eliminating events such as three gun matches.

His assertion that we should want the shooting sports to be covered as if it were a mainstream sport bugs me too. He's not saying it should be covered LIKE other mainstream sports, he's saying it should be covered AS IF IT WERE a mainstream sport. Mr Scoutten, it's already a mainstream activity, we just aren't televised and, in part, it's people like you who are trying to make it more like golf than baseball (or basketball) who are really at fault for that.

I've encountered his sort of elitism in the gun sports community before and I hate gun snobs. I used to shoot trap and field events. I dared to do so with a <GASP> pump shotgun with rifle sights and extended magazine. I was told, repeatedly, that I SHOULD be using an over-under. Preferably an over-under that cost about ten times what my Remington 870 cost. I was told, repeatedly, that my gun was too slow and unwieldy to be competitive. Guess who did quite well? I've got two third place trophies around somewhere.

It reminds me of when I got my first FAL. We were having fun blasting when one of the benchrest guys commented that he'd NEVER own such an inaccurate rifle. I conceded that his would print smaller groups, but that a battle rifle was meant for a different purpose and it was accurate enough and better than a scoped bolt action in many cases. It went back and forth a couple times and I offered to prove it. We set a couple of gallon jugs of water out at the 100 yard line. First person to hit their jug wins. Ready? GO! He starts to aim, I put the sights in the general direction of the target, bang bang bang bang bang bang bang splash, I win. "But it took you seven shots to hit it!" he exclaimed. "Yup, but that's seven more shots than you took and I hit it."

Wildlife In The Back Yard

We found some Carolina Wrens on the back porch this evening. This one refused to be shooed outside so I took its picture.

A Lyric

Love is the light in your face turned to the sky.

This Is Why You Fail

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/4/

Some People Just Don't Wanna Learn

The more I deal with Harvey's friend, Lenny, the more I realize that he doesn't know a fucking thing about guns.

He's an expert, if you ask him.

He's on a mission to get his step-daughter hurt now, and I know that I will not be able to convince him he's wrong. He bought her an old .32 S&W Long revolver so she'd have something for personal protection. Something is better than nothing, I will grant, but there are plenty of .38 Specials just as cheap.

You may have noticed there's something of an ammunition shortage associated with the ascension of The One. All the normal makers of .32 S&W are backordered while they focus on making ammo for more common guns. Lenny has found a company that loads an 85 grain bullet at 850 fps. That's a little hot for an older .32 S&W Long.

.32 S&W Long dates back to the black-powder days. Many of the makers of the guns chambered for this round didn't make the change to accommodate smokeless powder until long after black powder was quite obsolete. Most ammunition makers load light so as to not be sued by "Lefty" after his H&R Top Break exploded. An 85 grain bullet loaded to these levels should be about 790 fps. The loading he's found is about halfway between max-safe Blackpowder .32 S&W Long and .32 H&R Magnum!

Remember kids, just because you got away with it doesn't make it a good idea!

And Now For Something Completely Different

I Have A Question

Why is it we can use a single letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists to explain how the 1st Amendment builds a wall between church and state but we cannot use the Federalist Papers to explain what the 2nd Amendment means?

Especially since Jefferson's letter was his opinion alone and the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers were the opinions of several of the founders.

Quote Of The Random Interval

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."


Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 --2005


Seems really appropriate to post on the day the DOW dropped below 7,000 for the first time since 1997.