Buy-A-Gun Day 2008

I realize that I'm a little early for National Buy A Gun Day this year, but the Albany Rifle and Pistol Club held their semi-annual Gun Show this weekend and I couldn't resist.

The thing is, I was looking through my credit cards &etc. last week to see if I couldn't do without carrying all that plastic, when I came across my Concealed Handgun License (CHL). Looking at the date, I noticed that it was due to expire in October of this year. Five years I've had it, and I have never used it!

Well, I work on a college campus and I can't carry there. Other than that, I'm at home, or on my way to or from a shooting range. (No, I really don't get out much.)

The only reason I had taken out the license in the first place is because when traveling with a gun in the car, it's really a good idea to have a CHL. If I ever am stopped for a traffic infraction and the office sees I have firearms in the cargo hold, I don't want to worry whether it is properly stowed. (The rules for CHL owners are much different from travelers without a CHL; they're much less stringent.)

The fact is, I'm uncomfortable with carrying. But there are times when I wish I was armed. Unfortunately, I'm a fan of 'big guns' and everything I have is fairly awkward to carry around.

But it has been 11 months since I bought my Mossberg 590 (Buy A Gun Day 2007), and my gun fund was in good shape. Also, since I haven't been competing much over the late fall and winter, I haven't spent much on match fees, traveling expenses, reloading components ... I can actually afford to buy a gun. I've been reading a lot about new, small carry pistols and maybe it's a good idea to go to the gun show to see what they actually look and feel like.

And if I don't see anything that I like, or at a price I like, I don't have to buy a gun today, right?

I found some nice little carry guns. I like the little 9mm Beretta. The Ruger Millenium in .40 looks good ... in .45 it looks even better! ... but those are a bit bigger than I was looking for. I even found a small stainless derringer in .22 magnum, and a couple of long/skinny AMT NAA revolver derringers in .22 magnum.


I saw some S&W carry pistols in various metals and finishes, some with shrouded hammers (which I really liked) but again, just a little bigger than I wanted and much too pricy.



Then I started looking at the Taurus 85 five-shot in .38 special. I'm not much of a fan in .357 in a small revolver ... my hands are too big for that power (and recoil) with a two-finger grip, but the .38 special 85 has a nice rubber grip which helps. At $319, they were getting into my price range, but not quite there.

Finally I found Taurus 85 'used' (but it looked like new, the barrel was good) for $20 less. This slipped in under the Geek Sniff-test barrier and registered a resounding 'BINGO!' on the Geek-o-meter. Better yet, it was on the multi-table layout of a local gunshop. I do prefer to buy locally if at all possible.


Being convinced that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, I nipped over to the tables on the other side of the display and snooped until I found a Kel-Tec P3AT ... which stands for .380 caliber (Get it? 3AT = 380. Cute as hell.) It fits in the same 2-finger grip as the 85, but with flat stocks. Shoots the weaker (arguably) 9mm Kurz, and will hold 6 rounds in the magazine and one up the spout if you choose to walk around with a semi-cocked DAO pistol.

And the price was less than the Taurus.

What to do, what to do?

You know what to do.

I bought them both.

At least I don't have to worry about having a bloated Gun Fund for a while.


But wait, there's more!
After the paperwork was completed they asked me how I wanted to pay. "Uh, I don't know. Personal Check? Or I can put it on my credit card."

The lady at the counter said "we accept personal checks, or if you want to put them on your credit card we charge an extra 3%." I allowed as how that was uncommonly trusting of them. The lady snorted: "A man would be a fool to pass a bad check on a firearms purchase. They'll hunt him down." Good point, I didn't ask who would hunt me down because I was very careful to check my balance before I left the house.

I wrote out the check and didn't even weep when I wrote down the amount, as I usually do.

"How about a spare magazine for the Kel-Tec?" I asked. Ever the harbinger of bad news, the lady replied "sorry, we're all out. We can't keep them in stock. But check in at the shop next week, and they'll let you know when we get more in." She also suggested that I check other vendors at the show ... but nobody had them.

Then I left, two new (to me) pistols in hand, to look for a Kel-Tec .38 magazine and 'practice' ammunition for both pistols. It took me a while to find practice .38 Special ammunition (2 boxes at 13.95 each), a box of 20 .380 hydroshock (old @ $10) and two 50-round boxes of 92 grain .380 ( jacketted) @ $10.50.

(Note: the next day ... I found the Les Jones review of the P3AT. He mentions feeding failures; SWMBO and I shot about 20 rounds through this weanie pistol, and it fed perfectly. Les Jones also mentioned a white dot on the sights, which was not evident on my version. It appears that some changes, which are improvements, may have been applied to the design since Jones reviewed it 2 or 3 years ago.)

I also looked at holsters for the Taurus 85, but most of what I found were that awful Uncle Mike stuff, including shoulder holsters and the most uncomfortable, ungainly and inconvenient ankle holster ever conceived by the mind of man. I passed. I may find something from Dillon or somewhere on the web for the revolver, but it won't be made of ballistic nylon no matter how highly touted they are for preventing rust. (I'm not certain of the basis of those claims, but they are distinctly low-class. On the other hand, I use to think the same of Forbus holsters until I saw how well they worked.)

OFF to the range!

From there it was a 20 minute drive to the range, where I ran a half-box of each through the guns. (Didn't shoot the Federal hydra-Shok 90 gr hollowpoint ammunition.)

Unfortunately, not really expecting to buy and shoot guns we didn't think to bring ear protection. After shooting the first cylinder of .38 Special through the Taurus 85, I found an old Blimpie's Sandwich Shock paper napkin in a jacket pocket and tore off a quarter sheet to stuff in each of my ears. SWMBO thought I was being too geekish, but when I suggested she try both pistols she could no longer hold her hands over her ears and she, too, resorted to the primitive ear protectors. Believe me, even the crudest hearing protection is better than none at all ... especially when shooting pistols with extremely short barrels. That dog's bark is the same as its bite, they both hurt!

Even using reading glasses it was very difficult for me to see the sights for either pistol, but to my surprise I found it was easier to shoot a 'tight' group at 8 yards with the Kel-Tec than with the Taurus 85 ... for definitions of the expression "tight group". Here, it meant the difference between one I could cover with my fist, and one that I could cover with my hand; and as I have mentioned, I have big hands.

Being accustomed to the crisp glass-rod-breaking feel of a premium quality STI Open Gun, SWMBO was appalled at the long, heavy, mushy feel of the Kel-Tec DAO trigger. I noticed that she tended to take a LONG time to drag the trigger back, and just at the end the muzzle dipped.

However, she had some experience in shooting a Taurus Model 65 (4" barrel, an N-frame if it was the original S&W upon which the Taurus is modeled, in .357 magnum ... which is her house gun now), and had no real complaints about it.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with both of these pistols. I like them both, although I too found them difficult to get use to. I suspect I'll get a wallet holster for the little Kel-Tec and use it for the casual 'going to the store' kind of gun. The revolver may end up being a car gun, for traveling. Or it may become the house gun, although I already have an uncounted number of house guns at Chez Geek The Mossberg 590 will always remain my primary, loades with 7-1/2 shot because of population density in my neighborhood. The Taurus will probably be the one to use when the shotty gun isn't close at hand.

But I already know I have to find something better than Winchester 130gr FMJ for the new house gun.

Did I mention that these pistols were too loud to shoot comfortably without ear protection?

XL650 Goes To The Doctor

The night before the Dundee match last weekend, I went out to the loading bench (in my garage) with the intention of loading up a few hundred rounds of .38 Super ammunition. We had enough loaded up for one shooter, but SWMBO and I both intended to shoot the match.

Because I had been experiencing some problems with the Dillon XL650 lately, I decided to load up 300 of the 400 rounds of new Winchester brass. I had enough primer fill tubes charged with small rifle primers to handle the job, so I figured it would take me about a half-hour from start to end.

After a half hour, I had completed less than 30 rounds ... and some of them didn't have primers in them.

What's the problem?

First, the shell plate wouldn't index correctly. I have had that as an 'intermittent' problem for a while but I had never experienced the situation when it NEVER indexed correctly.

Second, the return lever on the primer mechanism never returned far enough to pick up the next hole in the primer plate. This was also not a new problem, and as an expedient I had got into the habit of manually placing the return lever in the primer plate hole with my thumb. Annoying, but not enough to upset me.

This time I experienced a new problem: the mechanism (Case Insert Slide & Slide Cam) which advances the cartridge case to the shell plate wouldn't move the case to the shell plate, even when the shell plate was correctly indexed.

I tried every trick I could think of, including cleaning and lubrication and partial disassembly of each assembly to check for breakage. When I realized that I had already spent much more time trying to trouble-shoot the problems (without success) than I had expected to spend for the entire task, I turned off the lights and went inside. I figured I could use my 10mm Edge for the match, and I already had enough 10mm ammunition for a couple of matches.

(As it happened, events conspired to prevent that solution from working, either.)

After brooding for a week, I decided that there were just too many things wrong for my poor mechanical skills to fix. In fact, I had replaced every one of the three assemblies, in part or in total, during the 15 years I've owned it. I have put several thousand rounds through this loading press almost every year, and about 20,000 rounds per year since SWMBO decided to take up the sport. That adds up to over 100,000 rounds on a machine which remained about 50% of the original parts, aside from the piston and the frame.

So this morning (Saturday, March 1, 2008) I called Dillon and explained my problem. Then I asked if I could send the machine to them for reconditioning. The man at Dillon replied immediately "Sure!". I asked him what I should include. He told me to take off the turret head including the powder feed mechanism (assuming I wasn't having problems with that, which I wasn't ... I had replaced that under warranty some time ago!). Also, take off the charging handle and be sure to include the primer feed assembly. "And here's your Return Authorization Number .... it will take about two weeks".

It took me about as much time to strip down the machine as it had the previous week to realize I couldn't get it to work. I found the original packing box and realized that it was much bigger than it needed to be: the stripped down press was only about 20" long. So I found a box which had originally contained a disassembled office chair (the box was double-layer cardboard, so I figured it would be strong enough for the 20# plus Thirty-Five Pounds! hunk of iron) and used the cardboard cutout which was part of the original packing material to position the press.

Then I took it to The UPS Store and told them to finish packing it so it wouldn't rattle around like a big pea in a tin cup. I marked the Return Authorization number on the shipping bill and on the outside of the box in two places, and also put my business card with the RA# in a plastic envelope in the box. Including the $4.50 packaging charge, it cost me $31.01 to ship it to Dillon's business address in Scottsdale, AZ. The nice lady at the counter told me it would be delivered by Thursday via UPS Ground.

So I won't be shooting a lot of USPSA matches for the next month, but after that it should be a lot easier for me to load up for the weekend on the night before the big match.

There's a happy ending to this story. While I was searching my garage for a suitable shipping box, I found a box in which I had previously received an order from Dillon. I had been dumping spare gun parts (springs, old holsters, etc.) in it for over a year, but at the bottom of it I found 600 rounds of new-in-packing Winchester .38 super brass. Since that product has increased in price by 50% in the past year, this serendipitous find will save me more money than the shipping charges incurred.

Now, if I can only find some Small Rifle primers for less than $30 a brick ...

Encoded Ammunition: on a roll

Welcome LWR Rifles;

Welcome Maryland 'Shall Issue';

Welcome Tennessee Turkey Hunting:

Welcome Something Awful;

Welcome BuckMasters;

Welcome Open Congress;

Welcome Fun Turns to Tragedy;

Welcome AT&T Web Search - tn ammo bill;

...

Welcome ... all of the blogs and websites who have acknowledged that "Encoded Ammunition" bills constitute an attack on the Second Amendment.

Many RKBA weblogs / websites are becoming increasinglty aware that the "encoded ammunition" issue has become a cause celebre'.

Dangerous Corner - Stage 6 per Mitch

Perhaps not in response to criticism from the (absent) Hobo Brasser, Mitch provides more video footage .. including at least one competitor who realized he could shoot 'weak hand' to his advantage.

William F. Buckley Jr. - Rest in Not-Peace

The Editors on William F. Buckley Jr. on National Review Online


He taught us how to speak, how to write ...

Obviously, he was a better example than he was a teacher.

But he was, indeed, a Great Man, and I shall miss him.

My only claim to a connection is that I was moved, last month, to buy his latest (his last?) book, titled


"Cancel Your Own Goddamn Subscription!"

A man could do worse than to go out with that tagline.

Encoded Ammunition - Federal?

In a January 17, 2008 article, Capital Weekly published an article titled "De Leon Pledges to Bring Back the Ammo Bill".

This article is significant because (among other reasons) it presages the February Attacks ... a dozen states to date having introduced into their respective legislatures an 'Encoded Ammunition' bill which has the potential of making the purchase of ammunition economically unfeasible for everyone in America except for The Very Rich.

These bills are bad enough for the individual states. However, consider the "microserialization of Ammunition: bill enacted into law in California. The Left Coast Wacko's who passed this bill have shown other gun-control states that 'it can be done'.

If enough states in the hinterlands pass these bills, it will provide significant encouragement to Congress and the Senate to introduce, and pass, similar bills at a Federal level.

When that happens, all of the concerns about "Heller v DC" will recede into insignificance. The ownership of private firearms will not be an issue, without ammunition.

The 2nd Amendment acknowledges our God Given Right to 'keep and bear arms' ... but it doesn't explicitly say anything about ammunition, or whether it should be affordable.

Here's what the article has to say:

Ammunition is widely viewed as the next big battlefield in the gun debate — that is, pending the outcome of a Second Amendment case out of Washington, D.C., that the Supreme Court is set to hear in a few weeks. In October, another freshman Democrat, Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, was able to get a controversial microstamping bill into law. AB1471 mandates that handguns must stamp a serial number on the shell of every bullet fired.

Well, the terminology is a little mangled in translation, but nobody expects either the reporter or the politician to know what the heck they're talking about. There is no 'real' justification for this law, no practical expectation that it will reduce crime. This is an end-run around the 2nd Amendment, pure and simple, and is designed to appeal to the emotional circuit in the brain of the average American, completely avoiding the logic circuit (assuming that it exists.)

There is not only not justification for the bill(s); there is no assurance that the technology exists to accomplish the stated objective ... identify the owner of every bullet and every 'shell' (cartridge case) which may be legally owned under these bills.

And there is no consideration for the mass-production techniques which allow 'bullet' and 'ammunition' manufacturers to sell their product for 'pennies per unit', or how they would be obsoleted by the 'cottage industry' manufacturing processes which are mandated by these bills ... effectively turning the manufacturing costs to 'dollars per unit'.

And there is no mention of the fact that if the state/federal government accept or impose the regulation that the serial number of the bullet match the serial number on the case, 'reloading' the cases from expended ammunition will be effectively forbidden ... even if there is nothing in the law which expressly forbids it.

Except, of course for the criminal, who will be The Only One who is not affected by this legislation.

Heck, they steal everything they use, anyway. That's why they call them 'criminals'.

90 and 30

In May of this year, my mother will celebrate her 89th birthday.

In July of this year, my daughter will celebrate her 30th birthday.

And you know that I'm somewhere in the middle.

Actually, my birthday wasn't as personally traumatic as these two may prove to be.

It's just that -- I'm neither as pretty as my daughter, nor as indomitable as my mother.

But almost ... almost.

Encoded Ammunition: The Shooting Wire

In today's edition of The Shooting Wire, Jim Shepherd provides his usual excellent comments on the 'encoded ammunition' issue. (Some people, including Senator Obama, think this is a good thing.)

In the middle of an 'editorial' about the HELLER issue, soon to be decided in the Supreme court, Shepherd interrupts himself to talk about Arizona's Ammunition Bill:

One bit of legislation moving through the Arizona legislative process, however, decidedly is unfriendly to gun owners. Arizona House Bill 2833 would require – as early as 2009 – bullet serialization. That’s the process where each round of ammunition is identified and marked with a laser-engraved serial number.

This whole idea is laughable, but the measures keep being introduced around the country to call for individual identifiers on each round of ammo. As Lawrence G. Keane of the NSSF has written, it’s neither practical nor prudent.

"If manufacturers had to comply with bullet serialization, NSSF estimates that it would take almost three weeks to manufacture what is currently made in a single day," says Keane. "This massive reduction in ammunition would translate into substantially lower sales and profitability, and ultimately force major ammunition manufacturers to abandon the market. In turn, there would be a severe shortage of serialized ammunition and all consumers, including federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, would be faced with substantial price increases. Ammunition will go from costing pennies to several dollars per cartridge."

There’s a good reason to believe that anti-gun groups hope that Keane’s words are correct – nothing would stop the firearm industry quicker than exorbitantly expensive ammunition. And a gun without ammo is a poor tool for anything – including self-defense.

(I wish I could provide the link to this editorial, but The Shooting Wire doesn't permalink Shepherd's column. I hope they don't object to my quoting the significant portion here.)

As Shepherd says, this proposal is 'laughable', and 'neither practical nor prudent'. But he does recognize that it is a back-door threat to the free ownership and usage of firearms. That Arizona is not the only state to introduce these bills (there are 12 states which have, so far and to my knowledge, introduced such bills), and that they would increase the cost of ammunition from "...pennies to several dollars per cartridge", are both important considerations.

I'm most grateful that he emphasized the magnitude of the increased cost of ammunition. I have read comments from shooters who seem complacent because they seem to believe that the cost increase would be only a few cents, at most, added to the price of a single cartridge. That kind of complacency is dangerous. And even if it were true, since the best price of 'white box' 9mm (for example) is in the neighborhood of $7.50 per box of 50 (13 cents per round) a two cent increase in price is more than 15% increase in price ... with no increase in value.

What if the cost of encoding ammunition were only $0.87 per round? That would price the same box of ammunition at $50. That would clearly price ammunition out of reach for most of us for all but 'Armageddon' rounds -- which includes ammunition intended for illicit/illegal purposes. It certainly wouldn't be affordable to practice to improve gun-handling skills. USPSA would fold in a New York Minute, because nobody could afford to shoot a match if the match fees were $15 and the ammunition costs were $150.

Think about it. And if you're a resident of one of the 12 states whose legislatures have proposed such a bill ...
Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington.
... this might be a good time to call your state legislators and register your objections to being stabbed in the back.

Dangerous Corner

At the Dundee USPSA match last week, we were treated to a lot of interesting challenges. Generally speaking, it was a fun club match and it helped us to hone our skills in preparation for future Level II and Level III matches.

It also provided the opportunity, if not intentionally, to learn about stages which had been built with challenges which might prove dangerous to all but very experienced competitors. In fact, almost EVERY competitor was challenged by the target engagement problem on the left side of the stage, which required shooters to lean far beyond the optimal point of body balance to engage two IPSC targets.

While it's not permitted for shooters to protest that a stage is 'too difficult', this particular stage featured a body-position far out of balance along with the need to run to the shooting position, stop on the exact location where the targets could be successfully engaged, and then move to the next (far downrange) shooting position.

I personally found the stage exceptionally difficult to shoot, because the footing was poor (there was a metal prop support there, made of L-Frame steel, which was a tripping hazard) and the angle of shooter-to-targets was uncomfortably close to the 180-line. In this uniquely designed bay, shooters were never confident that their muzzle was safely within the legal direction dictated by the confines of the shooting bay, and there was a real concern that the gun might inadvertently end up pointing in the general direction of the spectators.

This stage would have been much safer to shoot if the restricting vision barrier had been moved a few inches farther downrange, allowing the shooter to achieve a balanced stance and to NOT maneuver his pistol muzzle so close to the 180 line in order to clear the vision barrier support, both while going into, and exiting the narrowly defined shooting position.

I'm sure I'm not the only one of the almost 50 competitors who found himself so off-balanced that he almost fell.

And while the good news was that Left-handed shooters didn't experience this near-vertigo imbalance, the stage clearly offered an advantage to left-handed shooters.

After I had shot the stage, and as I was drafted to work as the Range Officer, I asked SWMBO to position herself in a spot where she could easily view the shooters at this position in the stage layout, and record some videos of the various ways in which participants resolved the shooting problem.

In retrospect, I do wish I hadn't asked that of her. If a competitor had actually broken the 180 line at that point, it would have placed her in a position of some risk.

In the actual event, no unsafe conditions (speaking in terms of having the muzzle of the gun pointing at SWMBO) were ever experienced. However, this happy state of affairs is more a credit to the gun-handling skills of the members of the squad, than to my own judgment.

The following video demonstrates poor vs good techniques. My own run is demonstrably "poor", in that I almost fell at the Dangerous Corner. The final clip, "Dave", shows how the stage may be safely engaged. I may be amiss if I don't mention that Dave is left-handed, and the state is certainly much easier for a 'lefty' to shoot than a 'righty'.

If nothing else, this situation emphasized the value of every USPSA match ... even a "Club Match" ... to conduct a walk-through before the match actually starts. Had I seen this stage earlier in the day, and had I the option, I would certainly have objected to the safety hazard demonstrated on this stage.

Watch the video, identify the unsafe situation, and please comment.

Encoded Ammunition: Ammunition Coding Systems

The Ammunition Encoding Systems website is a source of much technical information about micro-engraving serial numbers on the base of bullets.

This is one of the companies which confidently asserts that it can micro-engrave analog information on the base of bullets, and that this information will remain readable "by simply using a good magnifying glass".

Sounds incredible, doesn't it?

Why do we care about this website?
(a) This is the first corporate website that I have found which defines the claims which have obviously influenced legislators in at least a dozen states to generate 'Encoded Ammunition' bills based on these (inflated) technical claims, and (b) based on these 'inflated' claims, it's easy to understand why ignorant legislators could confuse 'feasible' with 'practical'.

What claims does ACS make about Encoded Ammunition:
Here's the money quote from the ACE main webpage:

In an effort to provide law enforcement with modern crime fighting tools, a new patentpending bullet identification technology known as the Ammunition Coding System (ACS) has been developed. ACS assigns a unique code to every round of ammunition manufactured, and by recording sales records, law enforcement personnel will be able to easily trace the ammunition involved in a crime and have an avenue to pursue and solve even the most difficult cases. The key to ACS is the unique code that is micro-laser engraved on factory-produced ammunition. This laser engraving is etched on both the projectile and the inside of the cartridge casing. Each code will be common to a single box of cartridges and unique from all other ammunition sold. The unique ACS codes will be tracked and records maintained to identify individual ammunition purchases. The ACS technology will provide a method for law enforcement personnel to trace ammunition purchases and link bullets and cartridge cases found at crime scenes to the initial retail ammunition purchaser. This system will not necessarily prove who pulled the trigger, but it will provide law enforcement with a valuable lead and a starting point to quickly begin their investigations. The design of the ACS laser engraving system will allow law enforcement personnel to identify the bullet code in cases where as little as 20% of the bullet base remains intact after recovery. Since bullets are designed to keep the base solid and in its original configuration, the likelihood of ACS codes remaining legible after recovery is very high. Law enforcement testing has already shown a 99% success rate in identifying the ACS code after bullet recovery.

Wow!
That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Practical Magic, cheap and easy and effective.

Let's take a closer look at these claims:

In an effort to provide law enforcement with modern crime fighting tools, a new patentpending bullet identification technology known as the Ammunition Coding System (ACS) has been developed. ACS assigns a unique code to every round of ammunition manufactured, ...

That sounds wonderful so far. A 'new patentpending (sic) bullet identification technology ..." -- but we're left to wonder whether a company that can't spell 'patent pending' correctly can insure that the coding is truly 'unique'.

... and by recording sales records, law enforcement personnel will be able to easily trace the ammunition involved in a crime and have an avenue to pursue and solve even the most difficult cases.

Uh, wait a minute. ACS doesn't claim to offer the technology to 'trace the ammunition'. This assumes that the 'law enforcement personnel' are able to develop the technology. There is no assurance that ACS will make this technology available. This function is left to the imagination and competency of the "law enforcement" agency, or to the sponsoring state. Any guesses who will PAY for the development of this technology?

If your guess is that "the state" will pass the costs on to you, you're probably right.

The key to ACS is the unique code that is micro-laser engraved on factory-produced ammunition. This laser engraving is etched on both the projectile and the inside of the cartridge casing. Each code will be common to a single box of cartridges and unique from all other ammunition sold.

That's the scheme as envisioned by ACS, and it bears no practical relation to the manufacturing techniques currently used by bullet manufacturers.

The folks that make bullets have a slightly different priority, which is an Industrial Manufacturing Process; this is related to a Marketing Plan.

Here's what the Marketing Plan of a bullet manufacturer looks like:

1. Identify a bullet weight/caliber/configuration which we can sell .. either to the general customer base or to a 'niche market' (which means that not a lot of folks are buying this product, but we have to cater to their preferences anyway.)
2. Build a gazillian bullets which meet these technical criteria.
3. Find people ... usually ammunition manufactures, but maybe home ammunition reloaders .. who are willing to buy this product.
4. Box the bullets in lot sizes appropriate to the customer (50, 1000, 10,000, 1,000,000) and ship them to the customer.
   

The unique ACS codes will be tracked and records maintained to identify individual ammunition purchases. The ACS technology will provide a method for law enforcement personnel to trace ammunition purchases and link bullets and cartridge cases found at crime scenes to the initial retail ammunition purchaser. This system will not necessarily prove who pulled the trigger, but it will provide law enforcement with a valuable lead and a starting point to quickly begin their investigations. The design of the ACS laser engraving system will allow law enforcement personnel to identify the bullet code in cases where as little as 20% of the bullet base remains intact after recovery. Since bullets are designed to keep the base solid and in its original configuration, the likelihood of ACS codes remaining legible after recovery is very high. Law enforcement testing has already shown a 99% success rate in identifying the ACS code after bullet recovery.

But wait!

The newly introduced 'Encoded Ammunition' bills require that an unique serial number will be assigned to each 'box' of bullets. That may be as few as 20 bullets, or as many as ... 50 bullets. It doesn't matter who the bullets are actually sold to, the manufacturer must plan for as few as 20 or 50 bullets (the number commonly boxed for rifle and pistol bullets, respectively), and vary the manufacturing process according to 'special orders'.

That grinding noise you hear is Henry Ford (the originator of 'Mass Production') rolling over in his grave.

If a bullet manufacturer responds to an order for 1,000 bullets, and produces 1,000 bullets with the same serial number, that manufacturer has no control over how the bullets are actually used by the purchaser. The buyer can reload 1,000 cartridges and sell them to, say, 200 customers, and the serial number will not be unique to each individual retail customer.

'Not a problem' for the bullet manufacturer', you say?
Wrong.
While the retailer is typically subject to fines from The State if the bullet serial numbers are not unique to the 'box' of loaded ammunition, the bullet manufacturer is subject to fines of up to $10,000 'for each occurrence', even if the bullet manufacturer has no control over the ammunition manufacturer.
Not only is the Bullet Manufacturer held accountable for situations beyond his control, he is subject to significant fines if he is unable to impose these controls over his customers. Given that a thousand rounds of bullets may be sold at less than $200 per thousand by the bullet manufacture, he can be charged $10,000 for each box (50 rounds) of ammunition created using these bullets ... call it 1,000/50 = 200 boxes of loaded ammunition at $10,00 per box, or (200 x
$10,000), or a 2 million dollar fine for selling one thousand bullets.

Am I the only one who considers this excessive? Yet it may be law some day.

But wait, there's more!

Many states have introduced bills which require the serial number on the bullets to match the serial number on the cartridge case. Assuming that everyone plays nice during the manufacturing process, how likely is it that this will happen when the bullet manufacturer is not the same corporate entity as the ammunition entity? Especially when, again, the job lots are 20 or 50 rounds per unique serial number and the manufacturer is required to guarantee... GUARANTEE! .. that the serial number on the case matches the serial number on the bullet?

Think of any manufacturing process with which you are familiar, and consider that the only sure way to match serial numbers include only (a) a very expensive scanning technology, which has not yet been created, or (b) a human-inspection process ... and we ll know how fallible humans are.

EVALUATION: This may be 'feasible', but it certainly isn't 'practical'.

To continue with fisking the ACS statement:

The unique ACS codes will be tracked and records maintained to identify individual ammunition purchases. The ACS technology will provide a method for law enforcement personnel to trace ammunition purchases and link bullets and cartridge cases found at crime scenes to the initial retail ammunition purchaser.

Again, the burdon of enforcement is placed on the controlling political division ('The State'), and ACS grandly passes over the issue as if it doesn't exist..

Well, why should they acknowledge the complication? They're trying to sell a process; they have no investment in making it work!

And their website comments are absolutely accurate: IF (problematic) their technology works, and IF (problematic) the state can establish technology to take advantage of their technology, then the SCHEME may possibly (perhaps, but not likely PROBABLY, identify the original purchaser of the ammunition.

What is the value of this?

Zero.

Criminals already steal guns from houses; how much more likely are they to target ammunition which is even less likely to be locked up in a gun safe in the home of even the much more aware and conservative gun owner?

Let's look at the rest of the undocument, unsupported, irrealistic claims of ACS:

This system will not necessarily prove who pulled the trigger, but it will provide law enforcement with a valuable lead and a starting point to quickly begin their investigations.

The vendor of this technology acknowledges the limitations, but it is buried in the contextual bullshit. How likely is this to be noticed by the Casual Reader? Answer: not.

The design of the ACS laser engraving system will allow law enforcement personnel to identify the bullet code in cases where as little as 20% of the bullet base remains intact after recovery. Since bullets are designed to keep the base solid and in its original configuration, the likelihood of ACS codes remaining legible after recovery is very high. Law enforcement testing has already shown a 99% success rate in identifying the ACS code after bullet recovery.

There is no evidence presented to support this outrageous claim.

Look at the image presetned at the beginning of this post. Imagine there are five strips across any axis of the bullet base. Then imagine that only one of these strips represent readable data.

Do you believe that the remaining data is sufficient to identify the owner of the bullet?

"Well, do you, Punk?"
_______________________________

There are ... uh ... ONE reason to believe the extreme claims of this vendor: because you really want to believe that it has some value.

There are an untold number of reasons why you might NOT believe the claims; among them, that the vendor is desperately trying to justify a situation which is not at ALL practical in an industrial processing context, and any profit-motivated Bullet Manufacturer is unlikely to accept the added manufacturing and quality control requirements, even disregarding the financial penalties for events beyond their control.


Any acceptance of this manufacturing process as a 'standard' can have only one effect: that ammunition and bullet manufacturers would choose to drop out of the market, rather tan to meet insupportable regulations.

These bill are based on the biased and unproven technology supposedly available from ACS.

They would have no effect in the solving of gun crimes. Rather, they are an undeclared and IPSO FACTO imposition on the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms. They would not only make the purchase of 'legal' ammunition beyond the reach of most honest citizens, but they would also impose such unmeetable regulations on the infrastructure of ammunition Manufacture that legitimate businesses would rightly choose to go OUT of business rather than to attempt to meet the unrealistic restrictions ... and pay the unrealistic penalties ... inherent in the bills which this tantalizing pseudo-technology encourages.

2.2.1.1 - Illegal Fault Line

The 2008 USPSA Rule Book has not successfully addressed the question of Legal Fault Lines. More specifically, the rule which addresses fault lines which are deemed to 'extend rearward to infinity'.

2.2.1.6 Fault Lines extending rearward (uprange) should be a minimum of 3 feet in length, and unless otherwise stated in the written stage briefing, are deemed to extend rearward to infinity.

I have written extensively here my dissatisfaction with this rule, and while I continue to enjoy competing in club matches I likewise continue to protest stage designs which rely on lazy stage construction which relies upon this bizarre rule

The ground-fault stick depicted here supposedly defines a 'Fault Line'. However, it ends short of the initial starting position, and in fact if a competitor declines to abide by the de jure restrictions imposed by this 'short stick on the ground' he retains the right to request arbitration on any procedural penalties based on the stage procedure requirements to 'engage targets behind the fault line' by virtue of Rule 2.2.1.1:

"Shooting Boxes and Fault Lines shoud be constructed of wooden boards or other sutiable material, must be fixed firmly in place, and provide for both physical and virtual references to competitor For hard ground surfaces clear of debris, 075 inch material is the minimum allowable size. On other range surfaces such as covered with turf, sand gravel wood chips or similar, thincker materiel which rises at least 1.5 inches above the surface is recommended."

In the actual event (depicted here), the 'Fault Line' is a virtual restriction which fails to meet the minimum requirements of Rule 2.2.1.1 (USPSA 2008 Rules) by virtue of the fact that the physical construction does NOT extend to location between the end of the 'Fault Line' and the rearward boundary of the area where the targets may reasonable be engaged.

In other words, one may engage difficult targets beyond the uprange reach of the 'Fault Line' and gain advantage (because more more of the A-Zone of the target is visible), by moving laterally left of the starting box. While the 'Fault Line' SHOULD restrict this movement, it cannot because of the lazy failure to extend the physical fault line to the reasonable limit of rearward movement.

To put this in more easy-to-understand terms: the stage construction crew used a short stick to define the 'Fault Line'. There is a large gap between the end of the 'Fault Line' and the shooting box; it would be to the advantage of the competitor to take two steps to the left, beyond the 'obvious' end of the 'Fault Line' to engage targets. The Range Officer may be inclined to impose penalties because he considers the shooting position to be 'past the Fault Line', but no physical Fault Line' is available (see Rule 2.2.1.1) to tell the competitor he has fouled.

Therefore, due to the lack of a fault line which is discernible by touch or by sight, it is impossible to legally penalize the competitor.

What can be done to control the competitor's natural desire to exploit this obvious stage design flaw?

(1) The RO can require the competitor to reshoot the stage, even insisting that the competitor move not more than one step to the left of the starting box. As long as the competitor persists in moving past the position defined past the position defined by the RO as 'over the ...' (non-existent) ... 'virtual fault line', the RO is presented with the same irreconcilable conundrum.

(2) Eventually, either the RO must charge the competitor with imaginary 'unsportsmanlike conduct' .. which is subject to a Request for Arbitration (RfA) ... or the RO must bump th question up to the Match Director for resolution. Note that the Range Officer is not allowed to file a RfA.

Assuming that the RO is not willing to accede to the competitor's insistence that the 'Fault Line' is not supported by the rules, the MD must necessarily intervene.

What options are available to the M.D.?
The M.D. (Match Director) can declare the competitor's action a 'Forbidden Action'

2.3.1.1 In lieu of modifying course design or physical construction, a Range Master may explicitly forbid certain competitor actions in order to maintain competitive equity.

In order to enforce this ruling, the M.D. must be willing (assuming that the Competitor will be willing to advance his protest to USPSA) to justify his ruling at the Regional level. Since such a ruling is not justifiable under rule 2.2.1.1, we can only assume the (a) the M.D. will eschew such an extreme reaction, or (b) the M.D. will alter the stage to conform to existing rules, or will (b) take a chance that the USPSA BOD will find in favor of a stage design which is not supported by a local Arbitration Committee ... which is comprised by knowledgeable and experienced competitors who are, supposedly, as outraged by poor stage design as the original competitor.

Summary:
In the ultimate extreme, poor / lazy stage designs will not be accepted by either the USPSA or the knowledgeable competitor. The worst possible case is an inexperienced competitor who is reluctant to challenge Match Officials.

The obvious solution to this problem is .. if you find yourself constrained from using realistic (eg: "Gaming") stage tactics on an illegal stage, the best thing you can do is to be confrontational.

Sure, you need to be sure that you are 'right'. The "old Dudes" can help you here, because they probably understand the rules better than you do.

But if you're too shy to stand up for your rights, and too proud to protest, you deserve every disservice which may be visited upon you.

Nobody's Perfect, and if you don't defend yourself (even if it totally pisses off someone you respect), you have nobody to blame but yourself

February 23

What important events occurred on February 23?

According to Wikipedia, we can include the following:

• 1455 - Traditional date for the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed from movable type.
• 1836 - The Battle of the Alamo begins in San Antonio, Texas.
• 1898 - Émile Zola is imprisoned in France after writing "J'accuse", a letter accusing the French government of anti-Semitism and wrongfully placing Captain Alfred Dreyfus in jail.
• 1900 - In South Africa, the Boers and British troops fight in the Battle of Hart's Hill.
• 1903 - Cuba leases Guantanamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity".
• 1904 - The United States gains control of the Panama Canal Zone for $10 million.
• 1927 - The Federal Radio Commission (later renamed the Federal Communications Commission) begins to regulate the use of radio frequencies.
• 1941 - Plutonium was first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg.
• 1945 - World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines and a commonly forgotten U.S. Navy Corpsman, reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo would later win a Pulitzer Prize.
• 1945 - Jerry the Geek is born.

Whoa! Back up there.


The raising of the (2nd) American flag over Mount Suribachi was a monumental achievement. The battle for Iwo Jima was fierce, deadly and prolonged. Heroes were born there; heroes died there, usually unrecognized and unheralded, on both sides. A few heroes, all of them American, were recognized by (as usual) the winning side; this is defined as 'those who ended up in possession of the land'.

The battle for Iwo Jima was necessitated by the need for American forces to find a spot of land from which they could launch B-17 Bomber attacks against the Japanese mainland, within the fuel range limits of the B-17 which also allowed them to carry a significant bomb weight and, if damaged during attacks, to limp to safety. It's arguable that the number of Americans who died taking Iwo Jima were greater than the number of Americans who would have died because they were crew members on bombers who ditched and were lost because they could not return to American-controlled air bases.

But in the larger picture, the loss of crew wasn't as important as the heavier bomb-load and the recovery of damaged aircraft.

Was the Iwo Jima campaign worth the loss of thousands of Americans?

In the final deciding event, the Enola Gay was launched from the island of Tinian, using a B-29 launched from the island of Tinian. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the final final series of catastrophic events which forced the Japanese to capitulate unconditionally. President Truman had determined that conventional troop landings on the Japanese mainland would result in hundreds of thousands of American deaths, and probably at least as many Japanese deaths.

Why? Because the Japanese civilian population had been conditioned to defend the Japanese mainland 'to the last man, woman and child'. Only when it was demonstrated that American forces could reduce the entire infrastructure to rubble, and the entire population to radioactive corpses, did Japan accept defeat.

The slaughter due to firestorm attacks from Iwo Jima, and Nuclear attacks from Tinian, forced the Japanese political and military leadership to accept the literally devastating consequences of continued resistance. The result of the Japanese surrender, while it signalled the downfall of the Japanese Bushido-based culture, preserved the bulk of the Japanese population to find their destiny in the necessary evolution of a new culture based on more 'western' priorities.

Did Japan benefit from this forced evolution? That's debatable, unless you consider the current economic and cultural advances which were the ultimate result of dragging Japan kicking and screaming out of the 17th century. Certainly the demonstrated loss of life, and economic well-being, and destruction of infrastructure as a result of mass waves of bombers from Iwo Jima proved that Western forces could ultimately defeat the military might of Japan ... although the consequences to America and Japan both would be little short of genocide.

That America also demonstrated that "Death From the Sky" had a new meaning with the advent of the Atomic Bomb was a convincing argument that resistance would, indeed result in effective genocide ... certainly 'death of the culture".

Is it better to lose the infrastructure of a nation, as well as its population, to salvage it's perceived National Pride and Culture? Or is it better to lose the National Pride and Culture, and retain the infrastructure and the population?

That was the question which was, with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (remember that nobody know how many atomic bombs were available to The Americans), presented to the Japanese leadership.


Wisely or unwisely, Japan chose to continue its existence as a Nation, and capitulated to Western forces in August, 1945.

The situation was, by any measure, a tragedy. So why am I proud of the taking of Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945 (my birth date)?

Because it served to demonstrate that Japan's declared enemies, who had been subjected to the most craven of sneak attacks on December 7, 1941, had both the will and the ability to either devastate the nation of Japan by an extended series of 'conventional' attacks through bomber bases on nearby islands, or by a shorter series of nuclear attacks from bases far away from any chance of Japanese reaction. (Remember that by this date the Japanese Navy had been reduced to a few ineffective ships and submarines, mostly operating without any effective defenses against Allied predation.)

The Nuclear Option was a bold decision by President Truman, and one which haunted him for the rest of his life. If the Japanese had been unwilling to accept defeat, the only recourse would have been an invasion supported by numerous and effective air attack from near islands. The death rate would have been much higher, not only among American forces but also among the Japanese general population as they threw themselves into the lemming-like counter-attacks by civilians as prepared and encouraged by the Japanese General Staff.

Without the Atomic Bomb, it would have been impossible for the Allied forces to discourage this fanatical last-ditch defense of the Homeland.

But without the availability of near-island air bases, it would have been impossible for Allied forces to reduce the resistance to invasion at all ... and the attacks would have continued until only a primitive survivalist society remained in the Japanese Homeland.

I'm proud of the American determination to show their aggressor the Two Faces of American Retaliation: Bad, and Worst.

You choose.

In the current contretemps between Western Civilization and Islamo-Fascist terrorists, the decisions are even more horrific.

Without a Host Nation, it's impossible to impose force upon the aggressors. The kind of Force on Force solutions which were available during the Second World War are no longer available.

It's simply not acceptable, for example, to apply Atomic Bombs on Tehran simply because the Iranian government 'might' develop and use the same or similar weapons against us. For one thing, there are too many Irani citizens who oppose their government's development of Weapons of Mass Destruction. For another reason, such application of ultimate force weapons would serve more to alienate potential allies (and enervate avowed enemies) than to discourage governments from desisting in their planned terrorism on a national level.

The loss of life, which was a significant criteria in WWII, is even more striking today. We lack the National Will to incinerate civilian populations, and I think that, while it handicaps our list of alternations, it is an advance in global responsibility.

We may consider WWII as "the last 'clean' war", but we must not forget that there was nothing 'clean' about it ... only a series of easily definable, legitimate targets for the deployment of WMDs.

Today, we are required to give much credence to the 'political' options to war. I'm not entirely certain that this will result in a victory for Western Civilization, but at least we can console ourselves that we fought a 'Clean War", sans nuclear weapons.

This may be a Pyrrhic victory. But at least our decedents, while they toil in dhimmitude, can console themselves that their slavery is consistent with a Higher Moral Value.

That will, no doubt, be a great comfort to my grand children.

In the meantime, I'm 63 years old today.

With any luck at all, I'll be dead before I have to see my grandchildren curse their Grandfather for his lack of determination.

Encoded Ammunition: Is it greed or politics?

Nom de guerre: Rivrdog: Micro-serialization redux - UPDATED

George at Rivrdog has the first tiny lead on who's behind the Encoded Ammunition scheme.

No way to tell about the veracity of the information provided, but this is more information than has been available before.

Go read the article, follow the links, and decide for yourself.

Is it, indeed, a "follow the money" situation?

Is it not about politics, but about gold after all?

That would be just wrong. Okay so either way is wrong, but between misguided politics and greed, it's hard to determine the relative levels of venality.

UPDATE: February 25, 2008
Syd, at his Good Neighbor Law website, has this summary of the entire 'Encoded Ammunition' controversy, comparing the bills to a 'Trojan Horse'; virus or Iliad version, it's all the same -- one thing masquerading as another. You'll find there a list of other bloggers and resources with something to say about it.

Syd's implied conclusion: Politics!

Also:

Someone ("tangent4ronpaul) on a Ron Paul website posted an excellent analysis of the "Ammunition Accountability" chain of responsibility. I have no idea who 'tangent' is, but one thing is sure ... he's an excellent researcher.

I've only skimmed this post, but the links and the wealth of detail make this one of the premier starting points for anyone who really wants to follow the possible probable links in the chain of responsibility.

(This comment may also be found on my February 15, 2008, "Ammunition Accountability" post as an UPDATE.)

The author's implied conclusion: Greed!

(Possibly the original source for most, if not all of the 'tangent' post may be found here on the AR15 forum.)

Musings of a Geek Gone Gonzo

[sigh]
In the evenings, after work, as I page through my sidebar links to "Websites That I Visit Every Day", I find myself wistfully wishing that I didn't have to work for a living.

Just think: like Sondra K at Knowledge is Power, Kim du Toit at The Other Side of Kim, and David Codrea at The War on Guns (for example), I could spend my days surfing the net, finding interesting or curious articles, and being The First to Blog Them.

But alas, as my 63'd birthday approaches (Saturday), I find that after a full day in GeekDom Office, by the time I get home, fix dinner, 'have a life' (such as it is), my time available for blogging is not only limited by the need to work/sleep/eat but also by the Requirements of Life.

Recently I've been spending more time on family matters, such as addressing the computer crash so my mother can keep in touch with her very large family via email; paying bills; submitting my annual tax return and generally keeping myself informed on Events of the World.

It's not that Life is Bad, as such.

I have my health, which 'they say' is important for 'a man of advancing years'. (I attribute my success here to my propensity to avoid doctors whenever pain is not so distracting as to preclude activities which I enjoy more than talking to doctors who insist I quit smoking and drinking, and smoking, and drinking, and mile exercise via occasional visits to The Range.) And I have activities which interest me ... writing, reading, not doing housework even if it kills me.

I have my job, which I love. I've been an Applications Programmer for over 35 years, and while some programs are more interesting to write than others, I have an excellent boss (not a pointy-hair to be seen), users who are intelligent and personable -- at a University, it's amazingly refreshing to discover that they really CARE about the students whose welfare they are dedicated to serve -- and the people I work with are bright, articulate and invariably helpful to each other.

My family is a constant joy. My children never write, they never call; I never write, never call my mother, and my sibling often challenges me to eschew defensiveness in favor of actually considering that she may have a point when she emphasizes my lapses in appropriate behavior ("I never write, never call ...")

My friends are almost entirely members of the Practical Shooting community, if I may identify them so, and they are universally personable, bright, outgoing, charming and great fun to spend the odd weekend at the range with. My children are working out the problems of starting a familial life, and I can be as supportive as I like but ultimately their occasional problems are a concern, but they are not MY problems.

To put the cap on the day, I enjoy The Love of A Good Woman -- SWMBO. Another constant joy, and one of the sanest people I know. Besides which, she's as cute as the proverbial Bug's Ear. (If this seems to be Faint Praise .. sorry. It's an expression of affection. Get over it.)

So what is the source of my angst?

Actually, nothing. There is no angst.

I love my life and I'm not afraid to admit it. I am secure in my love of life. It may be popular to declare "it sucks to be me", but while to paraphrase Kermit the Frog "it isn't easy, being Geek", I get more fun out of being me than most people, I think.

I like me. I like the people with whom I choose to associate. I have an interesting job, interesting activities, and the only demurrer in my litany of joy is that there are just not enough hours in the day to do EVERYTHING I would wish to do.

I'm no 'Lotus Eater', looking for diversions as an excuse to avoid Life. Rather, I think I enjoy life ... for definitions of "Life" which suit my personal philosophy. That philosophy embraces sufficient guns to shoot; sufficient books to read; sufficient articles to read and sufficient articles to write (even if nobody reads them); people to love; a rewarding and fulfilling job that pays me just enough money to do the other things I enjoy; a home in which I feel comfortable (and which no longer leaks); and more things I want to do than I have time in which to do them all.

Envy me, O you pagans!

What's the point of writing all this down and publishing it?

Gloating, my friend. Pure egocentric gloating that, if your life sucks in the smallest possible way, I feel better.

Someday the smoking will catch up with me and I will have to deal with lung cancer or "Heart Disease". Or my genetic background will be inflict in my mind with Alzheimer's (and die in unrecognized pain and agony), or my retirement will reveal itself with insufficient funding to support myself. I will suffer some irredeemable ill or misfortune against which I have not prepared myself.

And in my ultimate discomfiture, I will reflect on a life of Selfishness, Self-Indulgence and Self-Fulfillment.

And I can say: "I have been selfish, and I have enjoyed every fricking minute of it!"

Note to self: the people I love? Be sure to tell them at every opportunity that they are loved.

Oh, and clean the bathroom, and the oven, will you? This place is a shambles.

Envy me, O you pagans!

In the meantime, while I recognize the we must all go sometime ...
("Do not go gracefully into that good night.
Rage, Rage at the dying of the light!")

I expect to outlive all of you. You're Good People, you deserve a dedicated mourner.

I can do that.

Respectfully submitted,
Jerry The Geek

UPDATE: the next day
This morning I woke with the feeling that I should not have posted this. It was all too personal (too egocentric) and more than a little too smarmy 'effusively earnest'.

No time in the morning to login at home and change the status to 'DRAFT'; I'll do it later.

But my day at the office was so busy that I never found time for lunch, so I decided to wait until I got home.

Now here I am, and there are some very nice comments. Rather than disrespect the people who cared enough to respond, I'll just leave it up. It'll soon be forgotten ... but not by me.

Thank you, good people, for the grace to let me be 'smarmy'.

Star Wars Defence Initiative

Missile Hit Dying Satellite, Official Says - Orlando News Story - WKMG Orlando
In case you were wondering, the ship-launched SM3 missile DID hit the satellite, according to "one official" (of the two interviewed). He said it was to early to determine whether it hit the specific fuel tank, the contents of which constituted a 'toxic substance' (hydrazine) which, it was hoped, would vent into empty space rather than to be carried back to the surface of the earth.

Maybe tomorrow we'll know about that.

Sure hope that it lands in the sea, as opposed to on land where people are vulnerable to impact.

For those who haven't been keeping track of the SWDI project, this is Ronald Reagan's continental defense system against ICBMs. It has taken over 20 years to develop to the point where defenders were able to destroy 12 of the 14 test missiles ... which were rated at about 3' long, which is much smaller than the satellite whose orbit had decayed to the point where it was destined to fall from the sky. The SM3 missiles had been planned to hit the satellite at an altitude of about 150 miles above the earth, outside the atmosphere, and as such constituted a much more difficult than the guided missiles which it had been designed to target.

Why was this a more difficult target?

The missile was essentially 'heat homing', as would be the case in relatively short-flight ground-launched ground-to-ground missiles with a flight time of mere hours, if not missiles -- thus retaining much of the heat of the engine firing.

The satellite had been orbiting in space long enough for the heat-energy to have been radiated away, so the only hope of the project designers was that the satellite might have absorbed sufficient heat from the sun to be detected against the background of cold space.

According to McClatchey Newspapers (via World Net Daily), the closing velocity between missile and target was around 22,000mph. Much of the preceding comments were based on information available from this website during the past few days.

(See also the article at Defenslink)

2006 King Air Gear-Up Landing

The Hobo Brasser is my ultimate source for nearly ALL the miscellaneous 'blogmeat' videos and pictures, and this one is no exception.

As the title suggests, this shows a perfect landing ... I mean, truly perfect! ... of an airplane which can't get its wheels down.

You can download this (5mb) WMV format video here, but this is how it looks in a much smaller and grainer Blogspot version.

Do we remember these?

Again, thanks to The Hobo Brasser (that aged reprobate).
click here

Computers: the Luddites were right!

Even my mother is a geek!

Mom, who was born in 1918 (do the math), was gifted with a computer a few Christmases ago because AOL offered a computer complete with monitor for about $200. Her children and grandchildren thought it would help her to communicate with far-flung friends and family.

Got the picture? An 80+ year-old great-gramma gets a computer and discovers the thril of email, via AOL.

What's more, she learns more than she wanted to know about computer games.

As time went on, we (her family) realized that she couldn't easily access internet photo-galleries of her grand-chilluns, because the dial-up modem was SO SLOW!

Enter best-intentioned Geek son:

"Hey, Mom! How about I get you Cable Modem access to the Internet? No cost to you. It'll be good, trust me; and Merry Christmas!"

Enter The Cable Guys, who can't complete the installation because as soon as the install the firmware (she already has a cable modem, under the Comcast "Magic Plan", she already has cable TV and cable Phone service) ... the computer won''t work.

Geek again: "Hey Mom! How about I get you a new computer? No cost to you. It'll be good, trust me; and Happy Birthday?

Today the 'new' computer (a refurbished business Dell) was delivered to her home. I drive down to Springfield to set up her new computer.

It doesn't work. Well, the cable guys couldn't get it to work last week, and simply replacing the compute still doesn't give her a screen. We don't know what's wrong.

Drive over to my sister's house to borrow another monitor. No image on the computer.

Working magic with power cables from another electric outlet (to isolate the power supply), hooking up the new computer and the new borrowed monitor, it still doesn't work.

Geek confusion: the monitor and new computer are isolated, plugged into the socket in the bathroom, and ... they ... don't ... work!

Geek is entirely perplexed. New computer, new modem, new power source; what could be more simple?

Hard to define a simpler, more pure test bed, but either two computers are toasted (one recently refurbished by Tiger Direct), or there is some weird mojo working here.

Eventually the Geek goes home without having resolved Mom's computer problems.

The only good news out of this litany of tears is that Mom and Sis give me my Christmas and Birthday presents, which are personally rewarding but embarassing considering that the supposed presents to Mom don't ... work.

Sister vowed to get a Geeks A'knocking dude to make a house call to figure out what's wrong with Mom's computer setup. Geek goes home, defeated and technically embarrassed, to contemplate his sins.

Anybody have any idea what causes this? And no, I know power is delivered to the PC. But no image is transferred to the monitor.

Darn! I hate hardware ... I'm a Software kinda guy!

AA-12

The Hobo Brasser point-shoots this video depicting a new design of full-auto shotgun. "It's the only large-bore weapon that's designed this way" That is to say, the recoil is 'totally' absorbed by the mechanism, which aids in accuracy

This video is available on YouTube here, where you can find other video demonstrations.

Most impressive is the "AA-12 Part 2" video, which shows men shooting the gun on full-auto without benefit of a shoulder-to-gun connection.

Yes, the videos show that the recoil does not cause the muzzle to rise, as is the case of ALL other full-auto weapons.

But as I watched the first minute of the original video, I noticed some dramatic misses ... usually UNDER the target, which suggests that the shooter was overcompensating for a non-existant muzzle rize.

The gun, when fired in semi-automatic mode, is capable of adequate ... even extreme ... accuracy, if the claims are to be believed. ("One hundred seventy five yard accurate fire", "You can put 12 rounds through a window at 100 yards in four seconds".)

Still, most people shooting a full-auto weapon WILL miss their target a significant percent of the time.

Why?

Because we get all excited when shooting full-auto, even if there is NO recoil-induced muzzle movement. We get so caught up with shooting a lot of ammo in a short time, we viscerally forget that the purpose of the exercise is to put the shot on the target, and then index to the next target.

This gun is (as is mentioned in the video) superbly qualified for certain specific missions. Case in point: "Clearing a room in an urban setting." I do admit that 'a lot' of 12-gauge shotgun rounds in a closed room is extremely intimidating, if not always effective. However, I'm not convinced that a full-auto shotgun is a military weapon whose time has come ....

... flashback: Viet Nam, 1969.
Dude, this would have been SO useful for point-men in a "search and destroy" mission. The problem has ever been that when you walk into an ambush, the only thing the point-men could do was lay down such a heavy base of fire that it would momentarily suppress incoming fire long enough to bail out of the kill-zone and allow your following squad, platoon or company to react to an 'instant ambush'.

Either that, or lay down to avoid being hit by enemy fire.l

Either that, or die.

Sometimes, hitting the target is not the only purpose of firing on an aggressor.
Sometimes, the best you can do is to so intimidate the enemy that they drop their volume of fire so you can escape the kill-zone.

I'm still not convinced that this new weapon is as effective as it is advertised to be in terms of lethal force.

But I am convinced that it has a certain level of effectiveness in terms of suppressing enemy fire.

In certain narrowly defined situations, it can bring a quantity of fire to bear with the effect of allowing elements of the advance party to egress an unsurvivable situation.

That alone is worth the price of admission.

Goodbye Guns and Clark Garen

The Unofficial IPSC List today offered (via listmember John H.) an interesting 'grass roots' attempt at Gun Control:


Here's the original post:

We, the people, therefore call upon you, our elected representatives, to enact legislation to remove all guns and firearms from private ownership. We, the people, call upon you, our elected representatives, to enact laws to:

1. Create a one year period for the United States of America to purchase at fair market value all guns and firearms, including hand guns, rifles, and even antique guns and rifles from domestic private ownership.
2. Prohibit and criminalize the domestic sale of guns and firearms, whether new or used.
3. Seize and destroy any gun or firearm found after the termination of the purchase period without compensation.
4. Prohibit and criminalize the domestic possession of a gun or firearm after the termination of the one year purchase period.
5. Provide exemptions for governmental law enforcement agencies, the armed services, and bona fide museums.

1. 
   

http://www.goodbyeguns.org/

--
"John McCain has always prided himself
as a man who marches to the beat of a
different drummer … [h]ow depressing to
learn that the drummer is Ted Kennedy."

Okay, that last non-indented was John's personal tagline. I liked it, I included it. It's my blog, I can do that.

Being a blogger and an analyst, I was sufficiently curious that I followed the link. Sure enough the website "goodbyeguns.org" actually exists. There's not a lot of content there, but that much of the quote is extant in fact.

There's more: there is a name there ... ''

A PETITION SPONSORED BY THINK RADIO CLARK GAREN

So I GOOGLED 'Clark Garen', and I found this:

What a guy!

Despite charges of bankruptcy fraud (not proven), unresolved (contested! Free Speech, nonviolent acts of civil disobedience!) tax liens on Los Angeles property, practicing law without a license in Nevada, operating a "900" business without a business license (it was "his mother's" business, and besides it was a "976" business), a "false arrest" suit, a "large number" (7) of Bar procedures "instigated by creditors", Mr Garen's application for admission to the Washington Bar ... originally rejected due to "lack of good moral character" ... was overthrown.

Comments in the final findings, which was unable to substantiate "lack of good moral character", include:

"Mr. Garen’s apparent lack of candor makes the committee somewhat apprehensive. It appears as though Mr. Garen usually tells the technical truth, yet a lack of openness and candor is apparent both through the letters and responses to questions given to him by the committee."

and

Perhaps in hindsight Mr. Garen should have volunteered more, however, that does not demonstrate the intentional deception necessary to overcome Mr. Garen’s proof of good moral character.

Ultimately, the court offered this observation:

Oscar Wilde once said, "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike."\Fn.8

\Fn.8—Quoted in Mark R. Privratsky, A Critical Review Culminating in Practical Bar Examination Application Techniques in Regards to the "Good Moral Character Requirement"—In re Majorek, 244 Neb. 595, 508 N.W.2d 273 (1993), 74 Neb. L. Rev. 324, 325 (1995).

Given there was no real evidence of bad moral character on Mr. Garen’s part, perhaps this explains why the committee did not recommend that Mr. Garen be admitted. I can find no other.

Throughout its history, the moral fitness requirement has functioned primarily as a cultural showpiece. In that role, it has excommunicated a diverse and changing community, variously defined to include not only former felons, but women, minorities, adulterers, radicals, and bankrupts. . . . In the absence of meaningful standards or professional consensus, the filtering process has proved inconsistent, idiosyncratic, and needlessly intrusive. We have developed neither a coherent concept of professional character nor effective procedures to predict it. Rather, we have maintained a licensing ritual that too often has debased the ideals it seeks to sustain.

Deborah L. Rhode, Moral Character as a Professional Credential, 94 Yale L. J. 491, 493-94 (1985).

Mr. Garen has proven a prima facie case of good moral character. The Character and Fitness Committee has provided no express findings to the contrary. He is, and has been, an attorney in good standing for many years in both California and Texas. I, for one, would welcome him to practice in this State. I request publication of this dissent.\Fn.9

\Fn.9—By majority vote the court has denied my request to publish.

Mr. Garen, esq., has suffered a world of legal attacks and has emerged unscathed.

However, that doesn't make him a likable character. Given the sentiments expressed at goodbyeguns.com, I don't like him.

That doesn't mean he's a 'bad guy'. It may just mean that my standards are different from the Washington State Bar.

Other links for Clark Garen: "Victims"; "Firing Line Forum".

Encoded Ammunition: Maryland - They're Baaack!

Maryland Shall Issue has some new information, as well as a link to all the "encoded ammunition" articles here. The nice thing is that they have the 'local' take on House Bill 517.

I was not aware that the Encoded Ammunition bill of 2007 (which had died in committee as a result of the usual Sunset clause) was re-introduced in 2008. On January 1, 2008, in point of fact.

The Maryland bill, having been read into record, is in the Judiciary Ways & Means committee, and there will be a First Hearing on February 26, 2008, at 1pm.

All of the 'usual suspect' clauses are in HB217 (PDF): applies to "regulated firearms" (45 brands/models defined, including several shotguns and I have no idea how to encode #9 shot! but there is a clause which exempts these firearms; only encoded ammunition to be sold as of 1/1/09; all uncoded ammunition to be "disposed of" (no compensation) by 1/1/11; penalties for manufacturers, retailers and private citizens; both bullet and cartridge case must be encoded, but no requirement that the case be encoded 'on the inside'; exemptions for LEO and military; tax relief of 0.5% of sales for retailer; bill to be effective 7/1/08.

I apologize for telling you that the Maryland bill had failed. It had, but this is the "Night of the Living Dead version (2.0).

"Called on the Carpet"

The day before Valentine's Day, I posted an article titled "Encoded Ammunition - Pro and Con". There I attempted to find (besides the source of the recent attacks on the 2nd Amendment via 'Encoded Ammunition ban") an internet website ... any website! ... which represented "organized efforts at a national level to counter these bills".

I went through National NGO (Non-Governmental Organizations", such as the NRA) and finally reduced my search to bloggers.

In the process I listed the most (to my mind) prominent bloggers and described their efforts to (a) oppose the recent bills introduced to state legislatures, and (b) identify the anti-gun organizations which might be behind such anti-RKBA attacks.

I went through the links on my blog sidebar, visited the posts on each website for the month of February (during which period the majority of the Encoded Ammunition bills had been introduced in 2008), and reported on the attention that this issue had enjoyed.

The results of this survey appeared on February 13, 2008, at 11:35pm.

I was surprised that the very next day, February 14, 2008, at 3:40pm, Dr. John Lott posted an article responding to my comments.

My Comment:

John Lott - Nothing.

His response:

2/14/2008

Encoded ammunition

Here is some discussion on encoded ammunition. I am called on the carpet for not dealing with this issue, though I have written on this type of question in the past and I had thought that I had put up one post on this. The problem is that in California they already have so many gun laws this law will not actually have any effect. There will be no newly designed guns because of other gun laws even if this new rule hadn't been passed.

posted by John Lott at 3:40 PM

...

Well, he has a point. Several points, in fact.

First, I don't know whether or not he has addressed this issue. My guess is that he has discussed the California Microstamping Law, recently passed and signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, which requires firearms to 'microstamp' a serial number on the primer of each round fired through a gun. (This would be by virtue of an encoding on the firing pin of every 'legal' firearm.)

This clearly has no direct correlation to the recent proposition of bills which requires that bullets (and sometimes the interior of cartridge cases) be 'encoded' with an unique serial number which is in turn related to the serial number of a 'lot' (box) of ammunition purchased by a retailer.

Perhaps Dr. Lott is not aware of the TWELVE states which have introduced this and similar bills during the 2007 - 2008 legislative period. (Note that six of these bills have been introduced in 2008.)

Second, I'm distressed that he considers my inclusion of his blog in the list of those which have 'nothing' to say about this disturbing trend.

Third, I'm disconcerted that he seems to take a defensive attitude toward my assertion that he has done 'nothing' to address this recent, pervasive issue which has appeared in twelve states (six of them since the current 2008 legislative session).

Finally, and ultimately, I'm concerned that he appears more willing to defend his own personal position in re the "you have nothing to say" issue than the "someone is working to attack the second amendment via unsupportable bills restricting ammunition accessibility" issue.

I am confident that Dr. Lott has yet to examine, and appreciate, the issue; and when he has time to examine it, he will perform his own examination (or take advantage of that research which we have done here), and will eventually provide his own unique and reasoned perspective discourse on the issue.

Until then, we are left to consider only the reactive, defensive position initially described by Dr. Lott and we are bereft of his usually scholarly evaluation.

I do hope that Dr. Lott can get past his original dismissive evaluation of these laws, and recognize them as an organized 'back door' attack on the Second Amendment.

It's easy to dismiss these bills as something which the sponsors recognize as infeasible nuisance suits. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to perceive that these bills, proliferated among so many states, might conceivably be passed in at least one state ... which would bode ill in other states in which similar bills might be proposed. After all, if one state passed such a bill into law, it would set a burdensome precedent.

With Dr. Lott's active support, we have a chance to successfully oppose such bills. Without Dr. Lott's active support the counter-arguments have a much lower chance of success.

I wonder if Dr. Lott realizes how important his input may be in the effort to oppose these bills.

And NO, Dr. Lott, I have NOT 'called you on the carpet'.

I only encourage you to evaluate the recent bills, and to take a stance consistent with your earlier avocation of Gun Rights.



Without the support

Gun Free Zones

I work on a university campus.

Five days a week I position myself in an office environment open to anybody who cares to walk through the door. We're not allowed to lock it. That would inconvenience our users, and students who stop by to ask directions to the bathroom.

With all of the school shootings (the latest at N.I.U., but high schools receive the same loving attention from disenfranchised a-holes), it's difficult to concentrate on the job. You don't want to lose your 'situational awareness', y'know? Even though I have a carry license, can I carry a gun there? NOOoooooooo! At the mall? NOOooooooo. I can't even go to church without feeling as if I'm more a target than a worshiper.
_________________

On the weekends, I spend at much time as possible as possible at gun shops, gun shows, and gun ranges. Can I carry a gun there? Heck yes. I don't even need a license. It is considered "The Thing To Do" there, and there are no disapproving frowns to be seen when I walk by with a range bag full of ammunition and a pistol. I can even carry a gun 'fully exposed", and nobody considers me a risk to public order and safety.
__________________

So tell me, when is the last time you heard about a shooting in a Gun Free Zone? What ... today? Sorry, that was a cheap shot.

And when was the last time you heard about a massacre at a gun store, a gun show ("the gun-show loophole"), or a shooting range.

...

I rest my case.

Beautiful ... Just Beautiful

The Angry White Man.

Hat Tip to Kim duToit.

Encoded Ammunition: Ammunition Accountability dot Org

Here's a piece of good news ... if we can call it that.

Thanks to David at War on Guns, we now have a link to a very professional looking website by someone self-called "AmmunitionAccountability.Org"

About Us

Ammunition Accountability is a newly forming group of ammunition coding technology supporters. Our group includes gun crime victims, industry representatives, law enforcement, public officials, public policy experts, and more. We are working together to pass legislation to make ammunition coding technology a reality.

Ammunition coding technology works by laser etching the back of each bullet with an alpha-numeric serial number. Then when a potential criminal purchases a box of 9mm cartridges, the box of ammunition and the bullets’ coding numbers would be connected to the purchaser in a statewide database. When a bullet is found at a crime scene, the code on the bullet can be read with a simple magnifying glass and then be run through a statewide database to determine who purchased the ammunition and where, providing a valuable investigative lead.

There are many ways that you can help us solve gun crime around the nation. For more information about our organization or information about the technology contact us: ACT(at)ammunitionaccountability.com.

Their "Legislation" page provides a map of America, with all states having introduced 'encoded ammunition' bills highlighted in red. The states are listed separately, and at the bottom of that page are links to ALL of the bills.

Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington.

This is a much more extensive list than I have compiled so far, and likely more current. (Note that Maryland is listed; I had discussed the 2007 bill, but now I find that Maryland has introduced a similar bill on January 30, 2008.) I knew about Arizona, but haven't yet examined the proposed legislation. States NOT on my list include New York and Pennsylvania.

Without yet having followed all of the links, I'm willing to stipulate that TWELVE states have introduced similar bills requiring ammunition serialization, in various forms.

Twelve. Out of fifty. That is very near to a quarter of the country. This moves the issue beyond a trend and (given the organization required to track the information) definitely supports the assumption that there is a central locus which is driving this state-by-state campaign.

This is NOT a 'grass-roots' campaign.

I don't know much about this organization yet, but you can do the follow-up research as well as I can if you care. My cursory view of the website statistics reveals nothing particularly revealing, such as server or geographic location.

However, I note in passing that several of the listed bills refer to firearms rather than ammunition, and further that several of them are identified as 'carried over from 2007' rather than representing 'new' legislation introduced in 2008.

UPDATE: January 25, 2008
Someone ("tangent4ronpaul) on a Ron Paul website posted an excellent analysis of the "Ammunition Accountability" chain of responsibility. I have no idea who 'tangent' is, but one thing is sure ... he's an excellent researcher.

I've only skimmed this post, but the links and the wealth of detail make this one of the premier starting points for anyone who really wants to follow the possible probable links in the chain of responsibility.