They're.... baaaAAAAckk!

Linoge is doing another batch of his Russian Origami T-Shirts.

If you're a fan of folded receivers or simply want a  fun shibboleth then it's a good shirt to have.

Jerry Miculek: Seems legit.

You've probably seen before but I got a real kick out of it.

And at 3:30s wow... he can deprime brass in the same move.

Gun laws versus Hunting laws.

Tam has some history on Indiana's Deer regulations. 

In short:  The DNR was working to ween back a nearly extinct species (deer) about a hundred years ago and, surprisingly, succeed.  However despite having a glut of deer there mentality of "we need to make the culling harder" is only now slowly turning.

For even stranger lookup how the Indiana DNR determines what is a "rifle" cartridge versus what is a "handgun" cartridge.

Mr. A cheers for.... Rand Paul.

So...   Mr A came up and was routing this link:

 http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/a-win-for-rand-paul-senate-blocks-patriot-act-extension-leaves-town/

While saying "[Mr. A] does the freedom dance!"



Though it's not all skittles and beer.

See Mr. A is a known and very irate  Champagne Socialist and of late...  incoherent Gamergate supporter (incoherent in the sense that he produces pro gamergate memes that are dense and confusing).

So it shouldn't be surprising that  Mr. A is looking for other sources of news and taking it where he can.  This is a man who works in a technical field and despite being very liberal has a raging hate for Greens, Feminists, and SWJs (his words).

Heck, just look at this other peice on the same The Libertarian Republic  about "The Left" and their "War on Nerds"

What's interesting is the reaction from two others in the room.

[Blue-collar-Left-who is anti-police and anti-rich]: Huh rand paul
[Blue-collar-Left-who is anti-police and anti-rich]:  Guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day
[Quite Left, Quite Rich Englishman] Hey, at least your elected leader hasn't said "For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone."

That shows the lack of  true empathy (which is not limited to the left).  An American who follows police abuses and civil liberties should not be surprised that Rand Paul is anti-patriot act.

And as for the Englishman.... big words coming from someone who was all gung ho about "hate speech" laws.  And this isn't any sort of defense of the insane, totalitarian speech restrictions the Tories are promoting (which read like something out of an Allan Moore comic),  but then again, I don't advocate for hate speech or that news outlets I don't like should be banned...

[Quite Left, Quite Rich Englishman]  I'm pretty sure the tartan tory vote willl have literally died out within the next twenty years, after all.

Amusing given the Tartan Labour vote has also died out...  Don't they have the same number of seats up in Scotland as the Tories do?

Really the whole "One Nation" claptrap used to justify mass free speech suppression is darkly amusing given an openly secessionist party has one basically all of the Scottish parliament seats.

And Mr. A has some.. surprising thoughts on that:

I'm kind of thankful that the SNP exists.  Everyone in the states who gives a damn is looking at that and thinking, and we'd be a lot better off as a union of states than as either 'murrica or Amerikkka

Oh? "States Rights" and shrinking the power of the Federal government?  Though again don't take much heart to this,  given  Mr. A seems to be thinking this way because of "Those damn feminists!"

[Quite Left, Quite Rich Englishman] It hasn't stopped the UK electing a government whose agenda includes scrapping the Human Rights Act, permitting pervasive monitoring, bringing in arbitrary restrictions on undesirables, and introducing censorship of the media.  And that's just what they're admitting to.

Again, this is coming from someone quite well off (has a house in the London area that is astronomically valued) who thinks Labour isn't "red" enough.  And in the past has gone about the dangers of Hate Speech and that there's not enough restrictions to keep the media "honest".  Who, like Mr. A, has demanded confiscatory taxes that they themselves would be except from...


But this shows that "the left" is actually quite riven with division and cuts, especially when you go international.

Again the Englishman in the room has this sarcastic bon mot :

 On the 'plus side', telling the police union to piss off and live with their heavy cuts was a rather brave move for a politician to make after serious riots only a few years ago with heavy cuts to public services and welfare on the cards.

Which is a sharp contrast with the American leftists in the room who are extremely anti-police to where they'll even complain about police unions, which used to be sacred such US circles.

 (Though there will be come cognitive dissonance with gun control... in that cops shouldn't have weapons of war, but cops should be able to say who can and cannot have gun permits...)

All sorts of animals like Pet Pets.

From sharks,   to lizards.

Edit:  First link was borked here's another 

Out in the garden...

Well I was working on a side garden pulling out a dead bush and I found a nice creeping vine with lovely tiny purple flowers was growing on it.

So I made sure to pull out the bush gently and then got a set of trellises to replace it for the vines.

I also broke down and picked up some ferns while I was at the garden center.

I'll see how they do in the shade garden near the other ferns.


I also picked up a bit more English Ivy, and plant food and some soil...  interesting how it all adds up.

It shows my current gardening style of "Use perennials and natural shade and rip out weeds" is fairly low cost.... but is often a coasting on what's there.

Empty Turrets and the Duke of Columbia raised bounty on brigands by 30 gold crowns.

Two articles from Strategypage.

The first a bit of info on Russia's new tank.  Including the bit that made me interested on how there's no one in its turret. The crew is all within a capsule in the hull.

The second is about the United States giving bounties on various outlaws, pirates, and cut-throats..

How to spot the Media endorsing Censorship...

Ken White of Popehat notes that there's more than the overt pro-censorship messages among the media,  there's also pro censorship assumptions and rhetorical devices.  (Such as the idea that there's such a thing as "Hate Speech" under US law."

Fortunately , Ken White has some advice.

Fortunately, this ain't rocket science. Americans can train themselves to detect and question the media's pro-censorship tropes. I've collected some of the most pervasive and familiar ones. This post is designed as a resource, and I'll add to it as people point out more examples and more tropes.

When you see the media using these tropes, ask yourself: what normative message is the author advancing, and does it have any basis in law?

A range report.

So I recently got a CED 7000  shot-timer.

And yesterday, I just got back from the range with it.

And no complaints.   Menu easy enough to use,  sensor worked well.   It wasn't overly hot or overly bright today so I can't tell that.


One thing I did notice is:  Your mind LIES.

There were times where I thought my draw was slow and sucky,  but the timer said it was still on par.  There were a other times where I thought I was rushed and missed on the draw, but it turns out I wasn't any faster (I still missed).

But was important to realize that shaving some tenths of a second isn't good if I miss the steel.


So yes, I would recommend a shot clock.  Provided you've 1) got a range where you can have *some* privacy (the sensor would only pick up shooters within the same bay),  and 2) you're the type of shooter that has a logbook.  Since there's a lot of neat data you can get to compare your times versus groupings versus guns.

Oh, and if the range allows draw from holster that's gravy. As that's a neat time to checkout too.

But yeah, I really recommend a clock, especially if you want to work on some of the fundamentals.  And actually track how you're doing, because again,  your mind LIES.

Signals and Stopping.

Some info on a 3D Printed revolver.

A very intriguing design, and I'm amused by this bit:

The Imura revolver started when a university official, named Yoshitomo Imura, was arrested in Kawasaki, Japan after he was found to be in possession of 3D printed firearms. Even though some of these weapons had the ability to be fired with actual metal bullets, Imura claims to have only ever fired blanks with the weapons. The arrest took place after Japanese authorities found a video online with Imura firing one of his 3D printed guns, called a Zig-Zag Revolver.

Since his arrest the FOSSCAD community has continued upon his work and make several key changes to the weapon.  This is the latest version of the revolver now in 22lr.  No word on if this has been test fired yet but this proves that the 3d printed gun is still alive and well and the designs are continuing to evolve.

Hah!

Via Oddball in GBC

A bit of advice to you married folk....

If you're out with your friends for Sicilian food followed by Avengers and going out for Mexican...  and in the parking lot your wife drives up and says "Honey, I've got my mom watching the kids and I've got a hotel room;  hop in."

Don't complain that you've had a beer and feel a bit sleepy.

How to remain optimistic.

Some instructions on how to deal with the robot uprising..

And hey, it's not just ecological and agricultural reasons that the machines will keep us around.

Companion animals too!

Designated Marksman Rifle History.

Forgotten weapons has a brief example and bit of history on the DMR

Beer Can Mortars

A neat primer. (No you empty out the beer and fill with concrete).

They really are quite fun.

Air Mobile ICBMs? It's possible!

Watch this mid-seventies test where the Airforce loads a Minuteman missile into a C5 galaxy and pushes it out the back.

Smaller carriers? More bang for the buck?

Foxtrot Alpha has an interesting article on the possibility of the US Navy going away from an "all nuclear super carrier" force.   That is building a mix of Ford/Nimitz class vessels and smaller Queen Elizabeth-ish  class ships.


It's an interesting idea,  as the US Navy doesn't have anything between the Nimitz and the Wasp/America class.   And there could be many situations where one needs a flattop but doesn't quite need the full "Alpha Strike" or multi-mission capability of a Nimitz.  Especially with the increase of precision weapons in the last few decades.

And having more flattops would increase flexibility.   Especially given that a given number will be in dock for maintenance.

Slate's Pearl Clutching on Homemade guns.

Oh Slate.

I'll give them points for actually doing some historical research and realizing that the home fabrication of firearms isn't exactly new.

But then they get stupid.   See they point out how current law is that  non-FFL's (that is normal people) can make their own guns but are bared from transferring them to anyone else.

Sagely they claim this "is hardly a disincentive to those already trading in the black market."   while suggesting that a totally banning the home mfg of guns will.

Slate is aware that it's illegal for people to make meth right?  How's that going?
Or going digital... those bans on pirating movies and music are sure going well aren't they?

It gets sillier....

 In 2013 a man named John Zawahri killed five people in Santa Monica using an assault rifle assembled from parts legally purchased online.  In October in Kawasaki, Japan, Yoshimoto Imura became the first person prosecuted for making plastic guns on 3-D printers. And just this year, four men in Southern California were arrested for allegedly marketing dozens of homemade AR-15-style rifles on the black market.

Such cases are clearly just the beginning and threaten to sink reasonable efforts at regulating the traffic in “ghost guns,” as these weapons have been called. 

Wait what?   So...  people illegally making guns... threatens to sink plans to ban people making guns.

Huh?

Yeah, the rest of the article is just as logical.

Federal and state authorities are groping for ways to halt this alarming trend. Last year California Democratic Rep. Mike Honda introduced the Homemade Firearms Accountability Act, which would subject homemade guns to many of the same regulations as firearms sold commercially—though the bill stands virtually no chance of passage in a Republican Congress heavily beholden to the NRA and the gun lobby. Already in 2013 the Department of Homeland Security had issued an intelligence bulletin warning that halting or even slowing the distribution of the new homegrown guns “may be impossible.”

Oh no!  The evil NRA is blocking a bill that...  DHS thinks will be utterly impossible to enforce.  And the authorities are panicing over losing control.

So... Cody Wilson's right then?

And as for a bonus it ends with this bit of pearl-clutching:

 "But there’s a darker side to locophilia and the DIY movement, a place where the self-reliance of the woodshop putterer meets the libertarian zeal of the garage gunsmith."

Help!  If the citizens start to realize they can make whatever they want... why they might start thinking they can say whatever they want or maybe do what they want!

Chaos!

Vepr versus SVD versus PSL

A  neat comparison  of 54R  DMRs.

And huh.... I didn't realize that PSLs had gotten so expensive.

I don't mean to keep mocking Cracked but it's like they've gone mad...

So on Sunday Cracked ran an article where they postulated that the Police are: militarized, dangerous to the citizens, and utterly unaccountable  and thus there should be mass bans and confiscation of guns in private hands.

Now I've already talked about how fractally wrong of an idea that is.  Gee I wonder who's gonna enforce the demand that the citizenry give up their arms!

But Cracked managed to top themselves.

See now they're postulating that the Police are:  militarized, dangerous to the citizens, utterly unaccountable, and that voilence is the only means for progress against them Thus...  they've already stated the next Civil War.

Leaving aside the validity of their conclusions (Or pondering why is it that people living in cities like Baltimore don't have any real representation and even the poor are crushed by taxes and regulations... despite voting for the same Machine Politics for decades)...

Let's just bask in how Cracked is waving flag warning about an oncoming civil war...  while advocating that the police disarm their enemies.

Kinda makes you wonder exactly which side they're on?

Some fascinating firearms history

Forgotten Weapons looks at the Mannlicher 1885 semiauto-rifle.
One of, if not the, first weapons of its type.

Truely a fascinating bit of history, and one can see how it can influence the designs of subsequent weapons for over a century.

Oh Cracked.... Maybe this week isn't the right time to decry free speech or Timing is everything.

I wouldn't normally keep going to the Cracked well but...

They keep giving these low, slow pitches.

Once again Cracked plays the game of article title is different from the url with 5 Cases Of Free Speech That Will Make You Hate Freedom

With the url of: /5-groups-people-who-will-make-you-hate-free-speech/

And yes... this comes out days after the Garland Texas shooting...    You know...  timing!

And to be clear here's how the article starts:

Knowing how to make good use of our right to free speech can be tricky. We all know you can't scream "fire!" in a crowded theater, but would it really be so bad if we were to lower the threshold just a skootch? Yeah, probably, but while certainly no American has any sort of God-given right to go through life without ever being offended, when that theater we were just talking about starts filling up with wild-eyed yahoos jabbering things like, "Slap your children so we can stop the fags from putting the Devil music inside us with vaccines!" one might start seeing the lure in tweaking the limit to, let's not say silence, but ... encourage those folks to shut the fuck up for the sake of society at large. Folks like ...

Damn.  And emphasis in original.

You see.  Using mockery and satire to put down people you disagree with (as the article itself does) that's free speech.

But when you couple that "encourage" with openly lamenting why that the threshold for free speech is too high...  well then it starts to get a bit scary.

That it's framed as " wild-eyed yahoos jabbering things"  well that just puts a nice level of classim on it.

Now in fairness.  The article was pretty even (as could be with 5 entries) of right wing and left wing asshattery.

Though Cracked...  a bit of advice,  when you run an article that asserts, as one of its main concluding points, that "the line between rich and poor has a barbwire fence built over it"  don't release it concurrently with the above article where you bemoan that powerful and well connected are legally unable to jail "wild-eyed yahoos" who say things you don't like.

First those damn robots took our fry-cook jobs...

Then they took our square-jawed space-plane pilot jobs!

Or was it the other way around?  

Seriously, here's some info on the X73 spaceplane.  Neat!

There's Blaming the Victim and then there's....

Okay...  Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washing Post has decided that the Garland Texas attack was analogous to hunting over bait:

If the contest was intended as bait, it worked. Police say two men drove 1,000 miles from Phoenix, shot at a police car outside the event and were quickly killed by one of the hired guards. The shooting has been condemned by Muslim leaders, and Geller, too, has come under fire for staging an event many viewed as purposely provocative.

Well then.     If saying Geller brought it upon herself is the metaphorical "She shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt."

This...   this is: "Damn that Jezebel for using her harlot-whiles to get those nice boys kilt by the police! It wasn't their fault she got their dander up!"


And then the article goes on to talk about how Geller was "almost gleeful" afterwards and how bad of a person she is.

Uh... MSN...  yeah,  even assholes get Free Speech rights.

It's sort of like how  just because someone has a criminal record,  like say Freddie Gray...  still has the rights of due process, especially with regards to the police.

And for a bonus.... Geller might be an anti-Islam bigot.  I don't know her well enough to make that call.

What I do know...  she's not the one equating Muslims with some sort of game animal that can be predictably baited to a spot and then shot by hunters.  That's all on Somashekhar.

Huh, at least we know the writer's against provocative art that offends the sensitivities of gun-totin' religious conservatives.  Course... I'd worry about the incentive system being setup...

The latest group of "Only Ones" Theater Managers.

So... Cracked has had a bit of a... history of putting up some anti-gun screeds.

Now for amusement look at item #1 of this list  on behind the scenes at movie theaters.

Most managers started carrying a gun under their coat or at least had one in their office. It wasn't something the company was keen on, but when you are actually in the building ... you become aware of every gap in your security,

Huh...

Now, personally, I applaud the management for taking the defense of their patrons seriously and realizing the limitations of their security.

But... I'm not the management of said companies that, sometimes,  ban carry in their theaters  or try to keep their employees from carrying.

And I'm not a publication that will occasionally run articles laughing off self-defense as a paranoid fantasy and demanding broad firearms confiscation.

But hey, maybe Cracked thinks  Theater Managers are, like cops, among the "Only Ones" fit to carry guns.

The Tyranny of May Issue... Food Truck edition

Guess what,  Cali, NYC, and NJ all have onerous permitting requirements for getting a... food truck.

Surprise!

But don't worry, I'm sure there's no favoritism or other abuses in the issuing of those permits.

I figured since Craked posed something insanely stupid yesterday, I'd go into the slush pile for something to post today.

And once again mass stupidity brings me back into bloggin...

So I was out sick for a while and then just... stopped posting.

But then   Cracked decided to post an article entitled:  6 Reasons (Beyond Racism) Why Cops Keep Killing People

And yes,  reason #4. More Gun Freedom = More Police Shootings.


That's right!  In an article that's about cops killing unarmed citizens, the solution they present is "Let's make the citizens even more unarmed!"

What I love is they cite Canada as being such an epic gun control place.

Meanwhile, Germany and Australia had six cop-related deaths, and some people in Canada are currently scandalized that they've been averaging an estimated 25 deaths a year. Even accounting for population, and even if we go with the FBI's conservative (read: bullshit) statistic of 400 or so killings a year, US cops are still insanely prolific in this area. So what's the difference? It's not like these other countries don't have crime, racism, or police corruption -- shit, Europe probably invented those things.

Uh...   Cracked.  Canada's got a population of 35 million.  Oh wait, why normalize for population.  Or mention that Canada's got 30 guns per 100 residents.

Oh!  But they do mention the Canadian gun registry...  but not that was repealed.

But more importantly, they've also had troubles with guns. Like America, most of the countries we mentioned have had big gun massacres in the past 25 years. Unlike America, they've actually done something about it. In Australia, for example, 35 people were killed by a mentally ill gunman in 1996, and they reacted by immediately passing stricter laws that forced gun owners to surrender some types of firearms. We'll remind you that this is a country where saying "But what if a giant crocodile shows up in my living room?!" isn't bullshit.

Now do note this guy screaming "We have to DO something!"  immediately before this was hemming and hawing about mandating body cameras for the police.

And then the writer goes into a general aside for several paragraphs about how great gun control is (not even in relation to the police). And how the US is getting more violent (which it isn't  but hey he's on a roll...)

And then ends the section with this gem.

 English bobbies can afford to go on patrol with basically no means of self-defense except tasers and those pointy hats, but American cops are trained to be afraid of us because we might have guns. And obviously we can't just get rid of our guns now, because they are dang cool and awes-- uh, protection. We need them for protection, yeah. Lord knows the cops aren't going to help you in an emergency; they're too busy shooting people who might have guns.

So remember!   If you think you need protection from someone being violent you're just a paranoid.

But the state*totally* needs to take your guns away, because then all these cops who, thanks to 9/11 and drugs, are on a literal war mentality (item #3) and have no accountability (item #1)  will be extra nice to you!

That's right,  disarm so those paranoid cops who think they're in a war and have no accountability won't consider you a threat.   (Unless they think you have an illegal gun, because those will totally be gone).

So the author is framing the police as a paramilitary occupying force that can do whatever they want,  and his idea is to disarm the victims.

It's funny that the writer took such pains to deflect the whole "cops are racist" because if you remembered the disproportionate issue with regard to minorities then his gun control screed is basically...  "We need to ban guns for black people because cops keep thinking black people have illegal guns!  What? That's racist.  Fine   then ban guns for everyone!  That way those racist cops won't have to think."


Oh,  and as a bonus item #2 talks about how cops are trained to kill instead of wound.  Interestingly the writer points out that, contrary to Hollywood, is sensible.    And then he goes on about how cops think they'll need to shoot someone with switchblade.  Now he might be mocking the cops for being paranoid or think that's a legit fear.  Still either way...  doesn't that point out that cops will kill people even if guns were banned?

Heck, it's not like there was recent protests due to an officer shooting a man who he knew was disarmed.  Or that such incidents haven't happened (justified or no).

Note...  this is the guy who was just going on about how there needs to be mass gun control (specifically citing  handgun bans and registration and confiscation)  to make the police less "jumpy".


Though the real bonus comes from the first line... "In the time it took us to research and write this article, a man named Freddie Gray went from living anonymously in Baltimore, to lying comatose"

Wait...  wasn't Mr. Gray arrested because cops enforcing were Maryland's knife control laws?

Never-mind that Mr. Gray was killed... not in the split second of the cops confronting the man, never-mind that the cops were able to put him into custody.  Never-mind that the mortal injuries received had nothing to do with any firearms.  Never-mind that Maryland has more gun control at the level of the countries he stated.

Nope!  The answer clearly is: Cops get machine guns,  the proles shouldn't even have pocket knives.

Yeah... you can see why the fractal stupidity of this required me to post.