Month: June 2003

In the Interest of Paying Back

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The Truth Laid Bear’s New Blog Showcase is up for its second week of competition. In a stunning come-from-behind fashion (and no one was more stunned than I) my blog won the inaugural competition last week. As a result, I got a LOT of traffic, and quite a few links.

It seems only fair that I pay back that largess by voting on a couple of contenders out of this week’s entries.

I believe that blogging is about to take off like CB radio did back in the late 70’s. Steven Den Beste stated that 90% of the blogs out there right now are crap, and I’m afraid that he’s largely correct, but the difference between CB and blogging is that feedback is immediate, and it’s a positive loop correction mechanism. If you’re crap, nobody links to you or reads you. There is no equivalent to slapping a 100W booster on your station and using a Moonraker to wipe out everybody within 50 miles. And good bloggers have come to act as really excellent corrective feedback loops on the mainstream media, as the recent New York Times debacle, and the even more recent Guardian fauxs pax have proven.

So I found this entry by The Blog Herald really interesting: Europe goes to the Blogs. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. Lets hope that it reaches Iraq very, very soon.

I also liked Rkayn Knowledge’s post of Tuesday, June 3 (scroll down, the link may be bloggered) concerning the state of judicial nominees. Fact checking Elanor Clift of (and) Newsweak. See what I’m talking about? Corrective feedback. Pass this one around. The Truth Shall Make You Free.

I WANT to read Graham Lester’s column, “A Nonbeliever’s Defense of Religion,” just on the strength of the blurb he put up on TruthLaidBear’s site, but apparently Blogger isn’t the only service to have problems. I get a “Cannot find server” error at this time. I’ll give him a vote anyway.

My final vote this go-round goes to DANEgeurs’s quite well-done fisking of Gary Hart. More feedback!

It will be interesting to see who wins this week.

I’ve Started Reading Atlas Shrugged

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I’m probably not the first to mention this, but when Rand wants to make a point, she’s certainly not subtle about it, is she? Not when she can bludgeon the reader a few dozen times, just to make sure he gets it.

One-thousand sixty-nine pages.

I hope it gets better.

Soon.

Back from the Range

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Just one picture, a 5-shot 100 yard group from the Enfield, off sandbags. Remember, this is open sights, where the front bead is the diameter of the black bull at that range:

No one is more surprised than I am.

Of course, I wasn’t able to duplicate that group, but I’m blaming that on the wind. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

My 1917 Enfield

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Just a few pictures as a test.

The Redfield rear sight.

The front sight.

Close-up of the receiver. Winchester, baby!

There’s supposed to be a screw-in aperture for the rear sight which didn’t come with the rifle. I’m trying to locate one. As it is, the rear sight is about equal to a No. 4 Enfield’s “battle sight.” I miked it at about 0.15″ Not quite big enough to drive a truck through, but…

No More Blogging Today

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At least not until much later. I have honeydo’s to do, and I’m going to load some ammo. I’m going to the range tomorrow. I want to play with my “new” 1917 Enfield (made by Winchester in 1918) and my Kimber Custom Stainless .45. And maybe my 1896 Swede (Carl Gustaf, 1916). And yes, both rifles are sporterized (not “bubba-ized”).

You People ELECTED This Asshat?

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More from the Pasadena Star News article about the proposed 10¢ per round tax:

Assemblyman Mark Ridley- Thomas, D-Los Angeles, authored AB 992 because he said he believes the state’s health- care system needs relief during the current fiscal crisis. Officials estimate that the state’s budget shortfall is about $38 billion over the next 13 months.

Ammunition qualifies for a sin tax because guns are even more harmful to society than alcohol and cigarettes, he said.

“Alcohol and cigarettes are not by definition designed to do destruction. Guns are,’ Ridley- Thomas said.

Really? Let’s see: According to this Centers for Disease Control site, “Cigarette smoking accounts for approximately one in every five deaths in the United States.” Some 2,403,351 deaths occurred in the U.S. in 2000. That would make tobacco the cause of some 480,000 deaths that year.

According to this CDC page, “Excessive alcohol consumption is an important factor in more than 100,000 deaths in the United States each year.” According to this CDC report alcohol is directly responsible for 19,358 deaths not including “accidents, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to alcohol use as well as deaths due to fetal alcohol syndrome.” According to this site Fetal Alcohol Syndrome affects about 1 in 1,000 newborns and “(t)wo to three times that many are born with an alcohol-related developmental disorder, but they do not have any obvious physical abnormalities.” There were 3,959,417 births reported in the U.S. in 1999. That means that over 3,900 infants were the victims of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Some 8,000 to 11,000 more suffered from alcohol related disorders. I thought the big concern was over The Children(tm)? Alcohol was a contributing factor according to this CDC site, in 17,448 motor vehicle fatalities. That’s on top of the 19,358 deaths caused directly by alcohol, and just a small part of the 100,000 deaths annually.

Death by gunshot, both homicide and suicide accounted for 28,663 of the total, and many of them also involved alcohol or other, illicit drugs. If you take suicides out of the equation (and I do, because I don’t believe that the method of suicide has much to do with the act of suicide) the number drops to 11,807.

Considering that there are an acknowledged 200,000,000 plus guns in private hands, that’s an awfully low number for something “designed to do destruction.”

Gunshot wounds, about half of them accidental, cost the health-care system more than $250 million annually, Ridley-Thomas said.

Yeah? According to this site, the percentage of accidental gunshot injury nationwide over the period from 1993 to 1997 is 20%. Are Californians somehow more accident-prone than the rest of America? And according to this site, “the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that alcohol-related crashes in 2000 were associated with more than $51 billion in total costs.” That’s Billion. With a “B.” Divide equally by 50 states (although California has far in excess of 1/50th the number of automobiles in the country) and you’re still looking at over a billion dollars.

“We just have the proliferation of these weapons of destruction and it has a completely negative effect on society,’ he said.

It doesn’t have a negative effect on ME. It doesn’t have a negative effect on the absolute minimum 108,000 people each year who use a gun to defend themselves.

Come out and say it, goddamnit. If you want to ban guns, say it. Stop this incremental death-by-a-thousand-cuts before you piss us off enough to do what the Declaration of Independence says we ought to. Put it up to the voters and let them decide. Enough of this nanny-state “we know what’s best for you” bullshit!

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But When a Long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, Pursuing Invariably the Same Object…

KeepandBearArms.com links to this story about how the fine legislators in California, seem to want to fix the massive debt their state is running by putting a 10¢ per round tax on ammunition. Actually, they say it’s to “help reimburse shooting victims and help pay their health-care costs.” but we know what legislatures do with money, don’t we? And if they’re going to put a $500 tax on a $200 case of .22 rimfire, then all they’re going to do is start a new black market. We’re already seeing it with cigarettes in the Northeast. Supply and demand, you morons.

They call it a “sin tax.” Gee, what was once a highly regarded practice, one guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights, is now a sin? One of the ethicists interviewed for the piece states that “sin taxes” put the legislature in charge of labelling right and wrong. And here’s the money quote:

“Once you start doing that, then government becomes something above and beyond what the American founders thought it should be,’ Palm said. “Government becomes more of a parental figure.’

I’m not sure where Mr. Palm’s been, but our government’s been parental since the 1914 Harrison Act. Prohibition followed close behind.

Big Brother knows what’s best for us chillun’s.

No wonder politicians are concerned about the armor-piercing capabilities of the .50 BMG cartridge.

Ten cents a round, eh? How many legislators are there in Sacramento?

Give me a few minutes. I have more to say on this matter.

KevinLeave a comment

Screw This, Time for Some Gun Stuff!

I have one of these:

but I want one of these:

And while I’m at it, one of these:

MSRP is $832, $1,153, and $1,058 respectively, though you can do a bit better at your local Kimber dealer.

Beautiful tools.

Oh, and just so you don’t think I’m an autoloader snob, I’d like a pair of these:

The S&W 627, eight-shot .357 revolver. They run around $800. But the guy responsible for putting “8 TIMES” on the barrel flat should be drawn & quartered.

Here’s a fine one, a Custom Shop snubbie 627:

I hate to think “How much?”