QOTD - Extended

Found at Ace of Spades:

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.Gilbert K. Chesterton

The same might as well be said about capitalism.

Gun Law - Mission Creep

A California (where else?) legislator is attempting to expand the states Red Flag law to give essentially anyone the right to ask for an order to confiscate anyone else's guns.  They get an inch, and in the next session, they amend the inch to cover as many miles as they can get.

So if pajama boy with his sticker-bedecked Prius is one of your co-workers, you cannot yet ask for a restraining order against him on the grounds that he is a demonstrably extreme lefty and thus far more likely to come in to work one day and shoot the place up in a fit of pique. This is a shortcoming of the red flag legislation that urgently needs to be addressed in all states that have such. Equal protection for all I say, it's in the 14th. Call it the workplace psychosis amendment.

Given the symbolism of red flags and all, I think this is a perfectly reasonable amendment and no Red Flag bill should be without it. Of course this may impact the legislative support for the things, but we all need to make sacrifices now don't we?

Fitbits Latest Feature In Beta Test

Fitbit would never make a watch that accidentally shocks its owner, so I'm guessing that the next iteration of the watch will include as a feature, a built in motivator for users. If you haven't reached some percentage of your desired daily level of exercise by some predetermined time, say 3 PM, the watch will deliver a jolt to the wearer to encourage them to get with some form of activity. NOW ya lazy slacker!

If no activity is detected within a moderate length of time, say 5 minutes, another jolt is delivered. Not to worry. If the watch detects no heartbeat, it can call the EMTs.

Remember, never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by simple corporate intent.

Gun Laws - All Of Them

Ever notice that anti gun laws, at the end of the day, invariably seem to benefit the criminals?

Boulder To Ban Assault Weapons Tonight

The Boulder City Council is meeting tonight to consider on first third reading, a bill to ban assault weapons from their socialist utopia. The ordinance was first proposed a couple of weeks ago and met with stiff opposition. It was significantly rewritten, but kept the original title, so the new version counts as the first, and the first reading of the new version counts as the second reading of the first. Opposition was still stiff and proposals were floated to put it out as a referendum.

Based on the pushback the council was getting, it looked like the referendum would fail, so the re-re-written act will be considered tonight and if passed, will become law without having to deal with obnoxious peasants.

Per local channel 7:

The current version of the proposal reads in part, “Assault weapons are semi-automatic firearms designed with military features to allow rapid spray firing for the quick and efficient killing of humans.”

The law also has the usual exemptions for the police without actually explaining why the police would need to quickly and efficiently kill large numbers of humans. It's possible of course that polling is showing the large bloc of students at the University may be drifting away from the party plantation, not wishing to culturally appropriate Venezuela, and may be in line for more direct persuasion that just being forced to listen to elderly Marxist professors droning on in lecture halls.

In the latest version, if you acquire an "assault weapon" before June 15 you may keep it, but you must:

• Get a background check

• Obtain a certificate from the Boulder Police Department saying they own the weapon

• Find a safe place to store the weapon

• Only possess the weapon on their property or at a gun shop

• Report theft within 48 hours

Presumably the BPD will issue identification to the owners:

 Perhaps in the form of a shiny brass badge which must be affixed prominently to their outer garment at all times. After June 15, the guns become officially toxic in that you will no longer be able to buy, sell, or inherit one of them.

It has also been suggested that the law as currently written, may well be unenforcable. The Boulder police chief says he has no plans to do a door-to-door looking for the guns but his men may enforce the law if the opportunity presents itself.

IDPA – PCC – Lessons Learned

I got my second shot at the PCC qualifier today, this time in the down sized format. I learn something every time, so here it is.

In the full scale format, where the targets are at 15, 25, and 50 yards, having a low power scope is a swell idea. Especially at 50 yards. My scope is adjustable, 2-6 power with a 50mm apeture so I get a nice wide field of view. This is good when you move from one target to the next as you worry less about whether you're looking at the right one or not. NOTE: make sure your adjustable scope is set to the lowest magnification at the start. You want to see as much as possible and not just the -1 number stamped into the cardboard somewhere. When I shot the full sized qualifier, I lost the most points on the closest strings, which isn't supposed to happen. On subsequent strings, I changed the magnification to 2X.

The alternative setup for the qualifier is to change all the setup dimensions from yards to feet, including the target size. Here it is on an 8-1/2x11 sheet of paper.

Download the pic and print it out. You can set up a stage in a room and shoot it with an airsoft pistol for practice or you can take some copies to the range and set them up at 15, 25, and 50 feet to dial in your PCC. 

In 1/3 scale format, again 2x is plenty of magnification but what you need to remember is that at very short distances, your rifles point of impact will be 2-3 inches below your point of aim. Nearly everyone today had that problem. Additionally, with the target being only 1/3 of normal size, a 2”-3” drop will be equivalent to a 6-9” drop on a full sized target. Thus aiming for the torso A zone will get you hits on the lower edge of the target if you're lucky. Aiming at the head will get you hits in the torso A zone. If your scope has multiple ranging marks, you need to dial it in at 50', then move up to 25' and 15' making note of which mark is your new POI. Yeah, yeah, everybody knows this. So why did almost nobody seem to know this today?

At this point, I need 3 cheat sheets, one for IDPA close qualifiers, one for normal IDPA qualifiers, and one for USPSA events which run out to 200 yards. 

Most PCCs make 1200-1300 fps at the barrel which is very similar to a .22lr hi velocity. The best way to set one up is probably to zero at 35 yards, which gives another zero at 125 yards, and 18" low at 200. Now work out the hold overs for the close in stuff, and the hold under for 100 yards and make a cheat sheet.

Red Flag Gun Laws

Colorado's Red Flag Law was killed in committee this year, but don't worry, it will be back if the Donks hold either house in the next session. Sean Sorrentino comments on Facebook:

So imagine, if you would, that you're a person whose only motive is to prevent violence from occurring. You have no interest one way or another about guns. Let's say you knew a person was a danger to himself or others and he had a gun. Would you
A) Immediately take this person who is a danger to himself or others to a mental ward so he can be treated for whatever is wrong with him?
or
B) Take his guns, but leave him free so he can buy a new gun from Ice Dog and Ray Ray down on Dot Ave in Southie and then go murder whoever set him up with the restraining order?
Seriously, which would you choose?
Stop making the Due Process argument. No one cares about that but us, and we're already convinced. Insist that your representatives add a line to these laws in committee. Add words to the effect that if a judge finds a person to be dangerous to himself or others that he be taken directly to the mental ward for a 72 hour evaluation. If he's safe enough to release, he doesn't lose his guns. If he's too dangerous to release, then he gets committed. Anyone who wants to prevent violence by unstable, dangerous people wouldn't leave unstable, dangerous people on the street where they can still cause mayhem.

Italics are mine.

So instead of taking someones guns first and letting them go through legal hell to get them back, why not just lock them up for 72 hours and see if losing their job on some vindictive ex's say so sits better with them than having their property taken and effectively held for ransom.

If a law can be abused, it will be sooner or later. Keep thinking about this. No one wants crazy people to have guns. Knives work nearly as well and aren't regulated yet. Figure out some easy quick way to evaluate someones sanity that can at least suggest whether or not a more in-depth evaluation is needed. It shouldn't take 72 hours and should include an evaluation of the accuser as well.

Remember Wednesday Addams when asked about her Halloween costume: "I'm a psychopathic mass murderer. We look just like everybody else."

QOTD - Socialism and Millennials

Found on Breitbart:

“If I was a kid right now and they asked me why I don’t want to practice socialism, I’d use their own language to get out of it; I’d say, ‘You know why I don’t want to practice socialism, because I don’t want to culturally appropriate Venezuela.”          Dennis Miller on Breitbart News

Oregon Goes For The Gold - Gun Ban

Some folks in Oregon have an initiative that would ban most guns and require them to be turned in. The petition title mentions exceptions, but comments on the petition note that none actually appear in the document text.

Quick summary:

Any semi automatic gun, be it pistol or rifle, that is “capable” of accepting a magazine that holds 10 or more rounds would be banned, along with any such magazine, be it a fixed magazine or detachable.

All these would be banned, which covers a rather large percentage of all firearms currently extant.  Seems you would also be responsible for any crimes committed with any firearm you own or ever owned up to 5 years after you sell it.

Even in Oregon I don't see this going very far but you never know. Step 1 there is to get the petition recognized, which has happened.

Step 2 is a comment period which they are currently in. Normally a ballot initiative gets 10 or so comments but this one has over 1000. Topics include a permanent title for the initiative. Some of the suggestions are interesting. If the courts approve the wording and title, there needs to be a second round of signature collection to get it on the ballot.

Step 3, if it gets that far would be the vote from the people of Oregon.

Judenrein at Denver University

Well, not exactly Juden, but in this case, they have effectively driven out the Young Americans for Freedom and the Federalist Society. The target is different, but the philosophy remains the same. Tuition at D.U. is steep so only the best-heeled liberals can send their offspring to it and if they tend to be of a conservative bent, they need to learn to keep their opinions to themselves.

This is a university! You can't take a conflicting opinion here!

It's embarrassing to find oneself living so near such a bastion of bigotry.

Ammo Comparisons 2 - Mo Data

The Ammo To Go people have been shooting the gel blocks and have added 16 more loads to their already extensive data base.

Click the link and see what they found out. Ignore the complaints in the comments about the terrible negligence in failing to test 25 different manufacturers offerings in such popular(?) calibers as .32 magnum, 9mm Makarov, 44 Magnum and .454 Casul. They do cover the better known ones of .380, 9mm Luger, .40 S&W, and .45ACP.

The latest additions focus on defensive ammo which means hollow points.

Survey Says: Convention Of States

The Convention of States group, which is advocating for exactly that to consider possible amendments to the constitution, has completed a survey of its followers asking among other things, what it is that they see as the most important issues facing the country today.First results are out, and shake down like this:

Top Five Biggest Threats to the American Republic Today1. Illegal Immigration 20%
2. Erosion of Individual Rights 19%
3. Runaway Spending 17%
4. The Media 12%
5. Politicization of the Education System 11%
6. Infringement on 2nd Amendment 9%
7. Money in Politics 6%

Put this way, gun rights doesn't figure very highly but when you consider that gun rights are individual rights, and toss them in with erosion of individual rights, you get 28% seeing erosion of individual rights as the biggest issue out there today. The above list and a quick summary of some of the other results appears in a Paul Bedard column here.

Full disclosure: I'm a member of the COS group and participated in the survey. FWIW I don't believe the survey was given to anyone outside the group so it's not a representative survey of the general population. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter so I don't know if they've been banned, blocked, excommunicated or whatever or if they even have a presence there. The group sounds like one Z-burg would ban as "hate speech" if he knew anything about it.

Boulder Gun Ban Advances

The Peoples Republic of city of Boulder has passed on "second" reading a much modified version of its previously proposed ban on assault weapons and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. If it is passed a third time, the city will have their ban without having to submit it to any pesky peasants who might, even in Boulder, go so far as to reject it.

As per usual, the ordinance bans weapons "capable of spray firing and killing the greatest number of people in the shortest time" and includes an exception for the police. As also per usual, no one on the city council wants to explain the envisioned circumstance under which the police might be called upon to perform such an action.

Spring!

Spring having put in a one day appearance today, I took the bicycle out for a ride. 28 miles later I can report that the strength training I've done over the winter is paying off as I didn't get winded on the uphills and managed to keep a decent pace for the entire trip.

A bicycle group I sometimes frequent, Pedals and Pints, is having a Cinco de Mayo ride this weekend. Looks to be ridiculously easy at this point although the addition of a couple of beers along the way will slow the ride down a bit. Some of my less athletically inclined friends hear that they will be expected to actually pedal some 12 miles and immediately wimp out. Their loss. Pedals and Pints is a very sociable group.

A typical ride with P&P runs 10-20 miles, starts at a brew pub and visits 2 others on a round trip. My idea of a nice ride is 30 miles and using that as a round trip, there are over 60 brew pubs within that range of my house.

The only way to go.

Rifling PVC - Bigger

This is a perfect example of why engineers should never be left to their own devices or unemployed. Following on from the earlier successful attempt at rifling a 1" barrel, I've now prepped a 2" barrel.
This is probably my favorite size as empty caulk tubes are a near perfect fit and fly like lawn darts. So here's the button, fitted with 6 cutters.

The .410 dart is for scale. For this one I added a couple of ball bearings and an axle with which to push/pull/whatever the button through the pipe. Turned out I just put a piece of pipe over the all thread and hammered the thing to the bottom, then did the same the other way to get it out. The bearings let the button turn as the cutters are angled at 7 degrees. It worked.

Getting decent pictures is tough but you can see the 6 grooves 1/16" wide running down the pipe. Test darts were one "Nerf" dart made from pipe insulation, and one caulk tube with one wrap of decorative felt to give a tight fit into the barrel.

Results on this one were inconclusive. I may need to cut the grooves again to get them a bit deeper. Or something. Probably also need to make a cutter with a more aggressive twist although large bores like this seemingly don't need as much.