QOTD - Economics

Found here.

“Real Socialism” has never been tried in the same way that “Real Capitalism” has never been tried.

The difference is that “almost socialism" resulted in the impoverishment and death of hundreds of millions of people.

While “Almost Capitalism" has lifted billions from absolute poverty.

@Mark Antro

Gun Rights - Under The Radar

The Peoples Republic of Boulder has an anti-gun measure before the city council right now that so far has garnered opposition in the council meeting, and a protest out on the street. The outdoor protest happened in spite of inclement weather and at least some aspects of it such as open carry of firearms were already banned in Boulder. The police took a neutral view of this and limited actions to informing people of the relevant Boulder ordinances.

The city council has been sufficiently alarmed by public opposition to their proposed "assault weapon" ban that one of the bills supporters is now opposing a suggestion to put the measure on the ballot this November to let the public decide. Seems he doesn't think the public can be trusted to limit their civil rights in a politically correct manner and is asking that the measure be passed by the council without any further input from the peasants as quickly as possible.

Bloombergs sock puppet groups are also worried that if the measure is not rammed through quickly, there will be more demonstrations and public sentiment will be swayed to support the second amendment.

Restraint shown by the police in the face of a peaceful gathering is certainly laudable with no word as yet as to whose idea that was. I suspect that had the demonstration been one by say Antifa that involved rock throwing, assaults, and the burning of a building, that the Mayor would have told the police and fire departments to stand down rather than risk infringing anyones civil rights to free speech.

Gun Stuff - Over The Top

The opposite of silencers, these things add to the noise and flash of your gun. Works best with ammo loaded with the slowest burning powder you can find. Fit one of these to your .44 snubbie and load with a +P dose of Power Pistol and when used against a late night home intruder, one shot should take out all your windows, knock everyone on their asses, and set fire to everything in the room in which you fire it. The final resting point of the bullet is of no real consequence. In fact, if you should hit the intruder, he'll probably thank you for the quick end to his suffering.



Shown here on an AK platform with a short barrel which should add to the fireworks. Pic of this in action at the link. Spectacular!

Rifling Spud Guns - Follow-up

So I glued some felt onto one of the 12ga darts I made for the 1" barrel, and fired it to test the rifling. I have to report that is spins right smartly with a twist rate of about 1:24. There was absolutely no evidence of coning on the flight which probably helped the penetration go more smoothly.

The dart was painted in black and silver to make spotting easier. The black shell is the "before" picture for the darts. Flaring the open end helps the velocity as it greatly reduces leakage. Adding the felt accomplishes the same thing. The felted one was fired at a modest 20 psi and a range of 12 yards. That's 1/2" plywood it's sunken into. An un-felted dart was found to have traveled some 175 yards at 65 psi so I imagine the felted one would make over 200 without much trouble.

Gun Fun - Rifling Spud Guns

Attacking one of the burning question in the shooting world today, here's how to add rifling to your PVC spud gun. There are 2 approaches to this, one is to make a button to press down the barrel that enlarges the barrel and leaves the rifling as positive grooves, and the opposite approach is to cut the grooves abd leave the barrel diameter alone. I used method #2.

Here is a die I made to fit a 1" barrel from my Pedal Air Gun.

The 1" wood dowel slides closely down the 1" PVC. I cut slots in it at a 7-1/2*deg angle, initially to accommodate some clothes line wire. Later I recut the slots to fit some 3/16" square stock. The depth is set to make the metal bits about .030"* larger than the ID of the tubing. The ends are smoothed to be a sharp, square edge.

Break the inlet end of the tubing to allow the cutters to get started down the tube, and pound the whole thing through the tube using a broomstick as a pusher. I ran this through the tube 3 times, twice with the wires, and once with the keystock. Here's the result:

All in all, not bad. The keystock grooves are the 4 darkest ones. FWIW, I need to drill some holes at the leading edges of the grooves in the tool to give the scraped off plastic some where to go. Details, details. Fitting the 12ga darts (click the link) with some adhesive door insulation to tighten up the fit inside the barrel should give enough grip to properly spin them. In season, the crabapples should also fit closely enough to pick up the spin. Twist rate by the way is 1:24 which according to the web page on the topic, should be plenty for this size of projectile. 

As mentioned before, the smooth bore groups about 5 inches at 10 yards. When the snow stops and the sun comes back out, I'll see how much smaller the groups get. For all of you trying for a match grade spud gun, here's how to do it, or at least how to keep you busy for a while.

*All dimensions are approximate. +/- 10% is not out of reason.

Incoming Robots

I saw a Daily Mail article on a "Tedroy" bot and would like to humbly submit that the vast, immediate market for this type of bot is the national and local news media. Imagine selling a set of 3 bots, one a distinguished middle ager, one a 30-something bloke, and one an attractive female. The station now has its news, Sports, and weather anchors, capable of voicing pre-written scripts for the news broadcasts at a small fraction of the cost of hiring good looking airheads to do the job. Monologues can be written by student interns who can show competency in basic spelling and grammar and even better, the whole show can be pre-run to insure no glaring errors. The kidnapping of the Queen by aliens from outer space will be reported with the same calm reserve as the auto crash on the freeway.

Later they can move up to running them for city council or higher office with a committee of party hacks deciding on what they say. I look forward to seeing an aspiring pol speak for 30 minutes without saying anything.

 Oh wait, we have that now. Not only that, but a bot is running for Mayor of Tokyo. These bots thus, are a shoe-in for whatever office a committee wishes to anonymously hold.

What do you think?

Gun Law - Viewpoints

First here's an article denouncing the NRA for taking an overly pessimistic view of humanity:

The NRA sees a bleak Hobbesian world. So why does it want to arm individuals with guns?

Fox Butterfield, call your office. Most Socialist Utopians like to go on the assumption that basic human nature is easily moldable and can be turned to happy altruism with only a minimum of coercion. Historically the amount of coercion required is measured in millions of bodies, but this time we are assured, they'll get it right.  The french constitution was based on this principle. Chairman Robspierre is alas, not available for comment.

The U.S. constitution was written on the basis that most people, especially elected officials, look after themselves first and their neighbors second, if at all. Thus the founders simply wrote protections in to limit the mischief that people could foment between each other. That approach isn't perfect either, but its held up reasonably well in spite of concerted efforts to get around it. The rule of law establishes police, courts, judges, and juries. The right to bear arms gives the citizen legal recourse until the law can actually show up, which may take a while.

Next up is the peoples Republic of Boulder with a proposed ban on assault weapons, which means anything the city council doesn't like. Hearings on the proposal were lengthy and sometimes a bit acrimonious with complaints from the antis that some of the opponents didn't actually live in Boulder (average new home price $1M+) and thus should have no voice in the prospect of becoming felons while passing through town. The councils initial reaction is to pass that buck to the people in a referendum, but the antis, afraid of losing out to normal people arguing against the measure, are demanding the council simply ignore possible objections and pass the measure as written and fight the inevitable lawsuits later.

Legal Question

I'm sure everybody already knows the answer to this question, but humor me for a moment, I seem to have missed that discussion in my Thermodynamics class or somewhere.

1. Poll taxes are forbidden under the 24th amendment:

24th Amendment . Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.. Passed August 27, 1962. Ratified January 23, 1964.. This Amendment was sponsored by US Senator Spessard Lindsay Holland of Florida (Democrat).

Then:

In the 1966 case of Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, the Supreme Court reversed its decision in Breedlove v. Suttles to also include state elections as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

2. Why then are taxes on firearms of any sort at all, legal?

Gun Rights Rally - Denver

A group calling itself America For Americans or  National Constitutional Coalition of Patriotic Americans, or something called for a national rally for gun rights a few days ago, co-ordinating the call with no one as nearly as anyone here could tell, nevertheless drew some 200 people to the governors mansion for a roadside rally. It was supposed to be at the capitol, but the venue was already booked. Probably just as well since such short notice drove the attendance down.

View looking SE. We filled all 4 corners of the intersection. 

Nobody told this guy his flag was backwards. If I got a roof from them, my insurance agent would probably hold out for the gun.

Signs were a last minute affair. The fellow selling flags from a 5 gallon bucket seems to have made a nice fortune. This one was acclaimed the best slogan:

Reducing this to 6 words makes it bumper sticker material:

Click to embiggen, save to desktop, print 11" wide, and tape to back car window.

Splitting California

Always an interesting proposition depending on the new proposed state lines. Looks like the proposition will be on the ballot this November as Someone with money has collected way over the minimum number of signatures to do this.

This looks to me like Mr. Draper is trying to please everyone by creating 3 states with with large metropolitan areas that could conceivably deliver 4 more Democratic Senators. This would probably go over better in the US congress than the 2 state version in which the coast from San Fran down to San Clemente would be one state and all the rest would become the other.

Arming Teachers - The Collectivist Error

President Trumps suggestion to arm teachers to prevent or at least mitigate the effects of school shooters has been met with widespread disapproval by teacher organizations and other anti gun groups. The most likely reason for this is the collectivist mindset common to such groups. If you suggest arming teachers, they see the program as requiring ALL teachers in a school to be armed. The individualist view is that only teachers willing and able to take on the responsibility would actually be armed, and this would likely be a small fraction of the total faculty.

The collectivist, seeing that only a few teachers might be armed, will pooh-pooh the idea that 1 or 2 armed opponents might stop a dedicated shooter. They visualize an army of some sort standing shoulder to shoulder. Here is a graphic that shows the reported rape rate at CSU in Ft Collins across the '00s.

At 2003, the reported rape rate dropped from around 32/year to about 12. That was the year Colorado became a shall issue state, and no one had thought to demand that universities be gun free zones.

Doing the math, one must be 21 years old to get a permit, which pretty much means only Seniors are likely to have one, and only about 5-7% of eligible people actually apply so the odds of a sex offender meeting a carrier are as close to zero as not to matter much. Still, the question is posed. If your chances of getting shot while attempting a rape are about 2%, do you feel lucky, punk? Statistically the answer seems to be NO.

Would arming a few of the faculty stop school shootings? Not completely, but this looks like an easy route to a 66% reduction.

Springtime In The Rockies

The peach tree is in full bloom so we all know what that means: Snowstorm!
Admittedly it isn't very much of one but take a look at this tree in my front yard:

What's wrong with this picture? Normally We when we get snow, it accumulates on the grass but not under the tree. This time, however...

I'm With Him - Robinsons Speech

Everyone should see this.

Gun laws, for the most part, inconvenience only the law abiding and provide the criminal with a safer working environment.

Selling Guns - NICS Checks

Nothing like a school shooting to bring the antis out from under their rocks waving the same legislative placebos they've been pushing since the invention of the rock tied on to the end of a stick. This time they have some 15-18 year old sock puppets to front them and with the usual suspects standing behind them they see an opportunity to make some real progress toward the goal of disarming the American public.

The extra loud screeching and offering of extremist legislation however, seems to be having the opposite effect:

You can complain all you want to the city council, but if the council is 100% Donk, they have no reason to listen to you and certainly won't. The way to get them to listen is to get some of them to lose their jobs which is a reachable goal in most towns. The problem is to find a level headed candidate, and then get the Reps in town to turn out en masse to actually vote for him.

Or you can just buy more ammo.

Proposed New Bumpstock Law

As Orville said"Gee I don't know Wilbur, I don't think this is gonna fly."

The rule revolves around this statement

Specifically, these devices convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun by functioning as a self-acting or self-regulating mechanism that harnesses the recoil energy of the semiautomatic firearm in a manner that allows the trigger to reset and continue firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.

If only it were true. As the gun rocks back and forth, the shooter must be present and engaging the trigger on each shot. Absent the shooters finger, the thing doesn't work.

H/T to Market Ticker for the link.