Month: August 2011

This Needs Explosive Targets

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Joe Huffman runs Boomershoot, an annual long-range shooting event held every spring in upper Idaho.  At Boomershoot, the goal is to hit small (4″ square and 8″ square) targets with rifles at long range.  How long?  The closest targets are more than 300 yards away, the farthest are 700 yards.  Joe does this to promote the skill of long-range shooting.  I’ve been to the shoot (2009).  Trust me, hitting a 4″ square boomer at 640 yards is very rewarding.  Two in a row is an almost indescribable ego-boost.

It looks like long-range shooting is gaining popularity.  As some wag once said, “A golf course is a waste of good rifle ranges.”  Now there is Rifle Golf.

A round of “rifle golf” works like this: Accompanied by a guide, you drive a six-mile loop on a dirt road on a sheep ranch. Along the way, you stop at four different shooting stations. The stations have tables and chairs for benchrest shooting. At the first station, your first target to shoot at is a black wooden silhouette of a moose, at 442 yards away. At the place where a hunter would place an ideal shot on the moose (at the center of the heart/lungs area), there is a hanging half-circle white metal plate, about 11 inches in diameter. If you hit the plate on the first shot, that’s scored as an “eagle” (2 under par). If you get the plate on the second shot, that’s a birdie (1 under par). If you miss the first two shots at the distant target, you take your third shot at something closer; on “hole” 1, that’s a deer at 285 yards.

RTWT. It actually sounds like a LOT of fun.

But it would be more fun if the targets exploded.

Just sayin’.

And hey!  There’s video!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLxHaGdlrTY]

You’ve Gotta Have Standards!

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So our public education system has resulted in a population in which 1 in 7 adults are functionally illiterate, and “only 12 percent of high-school seniors, who are getting ready to vote for the first time, have a proficient knowledge of history.”

What about math? I think this picture says the proverbial 1,000 words:

Well, it’s good to know in these dark days of mass ignorance that our institutions of higher learning have their standards! Or, at least are considering having standards.

The local junior college, Pima Community College has a standard: students must be at least sixteen years old. But now they’re considering imposing some new ones:

The question boils down to how smart you should have to be to attend Pima Community College.

Currently there is no requirement. You only need to be age 16.

But Pima’s governing board is considering changing that to require new students to have a high school diploma or GED. Students also would have to pass a reading, writing and math assessment test with the skills of a sixth or seventh grader.

Pima Chancellor Roy Flores says, “We need to find different pathways for those students that are testing in at second, third, fourth and fifth grade levels.”

Sweet. Bleeding. Jeebus.  No, it’s not a question of how smart you are, it’s a question of how educated you are. Ignorance is correctable, but as comedian Ron White has said, “You can’t fix stupid. There’s not a pill you can take; there’s not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever.”

Bear in mind, this is a college. Yes, you can go learn to weld at PCC (and if you don’t test out at above sixth grade, be prepared to suffer a lot of burns for the rest of your life), but you can also go get a 2-year associate’s degree. When I moved to Arizona I went to PCC for the first two years and got caught up on my freshman and sophomore courses before transferring to the University of Arizona (at in-state tuition rates, which I couldn’t get at the U of A until I’d lived here a year.)

Read the last line in the above excerpt again: “We need to find different pathways for those students that are testing in at second, third, fourth and fifth grade levels.” These are, at minimum, sixteen year-olds. The vast majority of them are over 18.

And as Say Uncle put it this morning, “their vote counts just as much as yours.”

You want to know how we ended up with the government we have? This is how. In 1983 the report A Nation at Risk on the state of public education in America pulled no punches when it stated:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.  As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.

Our government-provided schools have produced generation upon generation of government-approved product. It’s a positive-feedback loop, and it has achieved full screeching saturation.

Tar, Feathers, Rail – Some Assembly Absolutely Justified

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So a recent Rasmussen poll reports that 46% of “likely U.S. voters” believe that “most members of Congress” are corrupt.  That’s up 7% from June, by the way.

And I thought that only 1 in 7 adults was functionally illiterate.

Well, it would seem that their belief is well founded (quelle surprise). Watch the video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96TY5JsV-s?rel=0]

I’d like to see the data. And the list of names.

Three Things

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One, from CNBC:

Markets could rebound after Thursday’s global market sell-off, but investors should see any bounce as a selling opportunity, as the world economy rolls towards total collapse, Mark Faber, editor and publisher of the Boom, Doom and Gloom Report, told CNBC Friday.

“The trouble is that governments can default in two ways. Either they just stop paying the interest and there is a debt restructuring, like Argentina went through; or they just pay the interest and the principle eventually, in a worthless currency. That’s the way the U.S. will likely do it.”

“By printing money, problems are not solved, but they can be postponed, and they become larger. It’s like the recession in 2001. Had there not been massive money printing, it would have been steeper than what we had, but equally, we would have avoided probably the financial crash in 2008.”

The next crisis will be far bigger, according to Faber.

“The next time we have a global economic crisis, it will be much worse than 2008. Before this happens there will be money printing and there will be war. The whole system will collapse,” he said.

The second from Victor Davis Hanson:

The so-called tough debt ceiling deal still ups the borrowing to $16 trillion, or over 100% of annual GDP. So why are we rejoicing about curbing, rather than stopping, the borrowing? We are not discussing paying back the massive sums that we owe. And we talk not of cutting the baseline expenditures, but only about the rate of increase in entitlements — reminding us that revolutions start not with the impoverished, but with threatened cuts of subsidies to the middle class. Its appetites increase faster than the state can satisfy them, as most judge their well-being not in having at last more than the poor but in always having less than the affluent.

And, finally, the incomparable Bill Whittle:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkebmhTQN-4]

There are people out there that would rather tear up $100,000 than bear to see everyone else get more.

Truth.

Scary, isn’t it?

Edited to add one more, from Weird and Pissed Off from the post Going Galt:

All you Leftists ask yourselves a question: What will you do when the folks who provide the things you need…all quit? How will you survive when you’ve strangled the last doctor, dentist and power company?

I know the answer, even if you’ve never considered the question. You don’t care. You hate humanity, and you hate yourselves for being human. You’d rather die than see mankind prosper. That’s why you embrace the suicidal insanity of Leftist policies. Your subconscious has followed them to their logical conclusion, and you know, deep down, that what I’m saying is true.

33 Days ’till the Rendezvous

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The sixth annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous is only a month away, and there’s even more stuff to win this year.  In addition to the Ruger Blackhawk that Bea is donating, Ruger is also donating another firearm to be determined,  Glock has donated a certificate for any standard Glock pistol, MKS Supply will probably be donating another Hi Point Carbine (they’ve donated a firearm to the Rendezvous every year since its inception), and I have been informed by email that Weatherby is donating a PA-08 pump-action shotgun.  That’s at least four and possibly five firearms, and more may be coming.

But not only firearms will be given away in Saturday’s raffle.  Leupold is donating one of their VX-R Patrol scopes and a couple of game trail cameras, Pro-Ears is donating one of their electronic ear muffs, Woolrich is donating about a thousand dollars worth of their tactical clothing to one lucky winner, and there will be the usual other goodies like AR-15 magazines, range bags (Brownell’s makes a damned fine range bag), t-shirts (I’m bringing two Kalashnikitty shirts donated by the maker and one S&B “bullet” vacuum-packed shirt I got at Bulletfest 2011), cleaning supplies, lubricants, and more!

In addition, you can hob-nob  with (and shoot beside) celebrities like Alan Gura, Smith & Wesson sponsored shooter Molly Smith, and possibly stars from the first season of Top Shot.

And remember, it’s all for a good cause:  Project VALOUR-IT.  Here’s the founder, Maj. Chuck Zeigenfuss talking about how Project VALOUR-IT came about:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0sQMXSynvY]

Chuck has attended two Rendezvous, but won’t be able to make this year’s since he is currently stationed in Hawaii.

We’ll be shooting Friday, Saturday and Sunday again this year.  Friday will be “shoot what ya brung,” Saturday will be Steel Challenge, sponsored in part by Sig (which ought to be very interesting!)  Sunday once again will be Cowboy Fast Draw.  Here are some videos from previous Rendezvous:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWxVvZUpT1Q]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9dB1gLWGGc]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1MMHW72DNc]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYEenS0dcHE]

You don’t have to be a blogger, readers are more than welcome!  So scrape your pennies together, make your reservations and come enjoy a great weekend with a great bunch of people.  Gun Blogger Rendezvous VI is coming!

Gun Ownership Up in England & Wales

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At least that’s what they’re reporting.

Gun ownership is always thought of as a rarity in the UK. We may like to think that this country has lower levels of gun crime than the US, and that we don’t have the same problems of US gun control – especially after the Tucson shooting last year.

Forgotten Derrick Bird so soon?

But there are still plenty of firearms around here, all held legally. These latest figures from the Home Office have just been released and they show that more guns have been licensed than ever before.

How many?

• There were 141,775 firearm certificates on issue on 31 March 2010, an increase of 2% compared with the end of March 2009
• 580,653 shotgun certificates were on issue on 31 March 2010, 1% up
• Those certificates cover a total of 1.8m guns

This is exclusively England and Wales.  It does not include Scotland nor Northern Ireland.

So we have a grand total of 722,428 licenses covering 1.8 million rifles and shotguns.  Surely there is a large overlap between the group of people who possess firearm certificates (rifles and certain shotguns) and shotgun certificates (single- and double-barreled shotguns only), so the total number of individuals possessing licenses is going to be well under 722,000. 

The article states that the ratio is about 3,323 shotguns and rifles combined per 100,000 population, and that much is true, but what’s the license ratio?  The population of England and Wales is a bit over 62 55 million (correction pointed out by James Kelly, mea culpa), meaning that perhaps one in eighty-five seventy-six people is licensed to have a firearm of any kind.

I can’t help but recall the words of St. George Tucker from his 1803 Blackstone’s Commentaries on American law:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep,(sic) and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty …. The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.

Well, I guess they can count themselves lucky that they’re doing better than one in five hundred.

Legally.

The estimate on illegally possessed firearms?  Well, in 2000 the Sunday Times reported:

UP TO 3m illegal guns are in circulation in Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style executions, new figures have revealed.

That dwarfs the 1.8 million currently legally owned, doesn’t it?  And in 2008 The Guardian reported:

The gun shown here, a Webley, is up for sale in London for £150, one of hundreds of such weapons that are easily and cheaply available on the streets of the UK’s big cities, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

The variety of weapons on offer in Britain is extensive and includes machine guns and shotguns, as well as pistols and converted replicas. A source close to the trade in illegal weapons contacted by the Guardian listed a menu of firearms that are available on the streets of the capital.

“You can get a clean [unused] 9mm automatic for £1,500, a Glock for a couple of grand and you can even make an order for a couple of MAC-10s,” he said. “Or you can get a little sawn-off for £150. They’re easy enough to get hold of. You’ll find one in any poverty area, every estate in London, and it’s even easier in Manchester, where there are areas where the police don’t go.

“People who use shotguns tend to be lower down the pecking order. There is less use of sawn-off or full length shotguns, and if a criminal wants street cred, he wants a self-loading pistol, a MAC-10 or an Uzi submachine gun.”

—

But it is the arrival of eastern European weapons that, alongside a homegrown industry in converting them, has contributed to the firearms glut. “There has been an influx from eastern Europe and particularly from Poland, and there are also a lot coming in from people who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said the source. “In Liverpool docks, you can put in an order for 10 guns and some grenades and they’ll say OK and two weeks later, they will be there – and they are straight goers.”

Grenades!

There have been grenade attacks in the UK.  In 2003 a 63 year-old woman lost a leg when a grenade was tossed into her Liverpool home, for example.

But if this information is even close to accurate, it means that you have a greater chance of meeting someone who possesses a firearm illegally  in Britain than someone who possesses a firearm legally.

And the person who possesses one illegally is far more likely to stick it in your face by way of letting you know.  So you can hopefully forgive me when I dismiss the idea that the UK’s “strictest gun laws in the world” has done much of anything to disarm its criminal element or prevent spree-shootings.

THIS!

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From Walter Russell Mead, The Progressive Crisis:

The progressive state has never seen its job as simply to check the excesses of the rich. It has also sought to correct the vices of the poor and to uplift the masses. From the Prohibition and eugenics movements of the early twentieth century to various improvement and uplift projects in our own day, well educated people have seen it as their simple duty to use the powers of government to make the people do what is right: to express the correct racial ideas, to eschew bad child rearing technique like corporal punishment, to eat nutritionally appropriate foods, to quit smoking, to use the right light bulbs and so on and so on.


Progressives want and need to believe that the voters are tuning them out because they aren’t progressive enough. But it’s impossible to grasp the crisis of the progressive enterprise unless one grasps the degree to which voters resent the condescension and arrogance of know-it-all progressive intellectuals and administrators. They don’t just distrust and fear the bureaucratic state because of its failure to live up to progressive ideals (thanks to the power of corporate special interests); they fear and resent upper middle class ideology.

RTWT

And I want to add this as an aside:

The progressive ideal of administrative cadres leading the masses toward the light has its roots in a time when many Americans had an eighth grade education or less.

And, I would argue, this goes a long way to explain the destruction of the public education system here. As mentioned a couple of posts down, the estimate is that one in seven adults in America is functionally illiterate – i.e.: has a less than eighth-grade education. If one in seven can’t read, what percentage of today’s population meets that “eighth-grade education” criteria? How many colleges offer basic mathematics and english courses to incoming freshmen because they lack the necessary skills a high school diploma used to ensure?

A “progressive ideal of administrative cadres leading the masses toward the light” depends on those ignorant masses. EDUCATED masses tend to think for themselves, and in quite un-masslike ways.

From Where Great Britain Used to Be

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How’s that gun control working out again?

Terrifying arsenal of weapons found in teaching assistant’s Newall Green home

Terrifying. Their word. Another Glock 18?  No. 

The weapons – described by police as some of the most destructive they have ever seized – were linked to a series of shootings in Manchester and the north west, including one incident where a bullet narrowly missed a baby.

In a raid at the house in Burbage Road, Newall Green, police found a frightening array of firearms and ammunition, including two 9mm pistols, a 12-bore shotgun for use in combat, a Skorpion sub-machine gun, and lethal hollow-point and soft-tip bullets.

Terrifying or frightening?  Make your mind up.  There’s about an order of magnitude difference.  And you know, not one of those is legal to possess in the UK. Let’s see:

A compact Glock. Must’ve purchased that at an American gun show.

That’s a “Tariq 9mm believed to have been smuggled from Iraq” that “has been linked to three shootings in Greater Manchester, including a 2009 incident where a bullet narrowly missed a sleeping baby.” Wow. Don’t they know that handguns are illegal in the UK?

That’s your generic 12 gauge semi-auto short-barreled shotgun. I can’t tell from the photo make or model, but quite effective.  Benelli, maybe? And with the extended magazine tube, quite illegal. Not that it matters, obviously.

The pièce de résistance:

A Czech Skorpion submachinegun, probably chambered in .32ACP, but it might be .380. With one magazine.  That’s unpossible! Full-auto weapons have been banned in the UK since 1937!

Four guns. Four guns described as a “terrifying arsenal.” Kinda reminds me of Tams snark:

It’s good to have goals. Mine is that, when they finally come after me for felony jaywalking or confuse my address with the crack house two blocks down, and in the aftermath spread all my stuff on bedsheets in the front yard, I want the kids on the intarw3bz gun boards to look at that junk-on-the-bunk display and say “Wow, that is an arsenal.”

If they saw what I have in my safe, they’d wet themselves. And I don’t own anything full-auto.  I haven’t seen it, but I doubt my collection is but a shadow of hers.  She probably owns more Smith & Wesson revolvers than I own guns.

Nuke the Site from Orbit, Part Who-the-Hell-Knows

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More evidence that the public school systems are working about like you’d expect from a .gov system, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars “invested” in it over decades, despite the creation of the Dept. of Education ($1.2 trillion alone – not inflation adjusted – since its establishment in 1980):

Literacy study: 1 in 7 U.S. adults are unable to read this story

Key grafs:

A long-awaited federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children’s picture book or to understand a medication’s side effects listed on a pill bottle.

—

How low? It would be a challenge to read this newspaper article or deconstruct a fuel bill.
“They really cannot read … paragraphs (or) sentences that are connected,” says Sheida White, a researcher at the U.S. Education Department.

Well, good to know we spent $1.2 trillion to find that out!

But all is not bleak!

In many cases, states made sizable gains. In Mississippi, the percentage of adults with low skills dropped 9 percentage points, from 25% to 16%. In every one of its 82 counties, low-skill rates dropped — in a few cases by 20 percentage points or more.

Still, there’s more bad news:

By contrast, in several large states — California, New York, Florida and Nevada, for instance — the number of adults with low skills rose.

Why, you might ask did Mississippi improve so remarkably? Need you even ask?

David Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, an adult-literacy organization, says Mississippi “invested more in education … and they have done innovative programming. We need much more of that.”

We need more money! MUCH more money!

I swear, it’s the only play in the playbook. WE NEED TO SPEND MORE (of other people’s) MONEY!