Sometimes when you’re in West Texas with a lot of guns and ammo, you just have to get a few pictures of some Kalashnikov moments:
Author: Sebastian
Out of Beer
On Friday I went to draw a glass of my Hulmville Honey Red to celebrate the end of the week. There’s nothing more frustrating than tapping the keg, going to draw the glass, and getting that awful gurgling sound that indicates the keg is empty. I made the honey red back in October, which is the last time I got to make any beer.
So it’s time to make beer again.  The question is, what to make? My stouts seem to go over best with guests, which is good because it means the beer disappears faster, and thus I can make more of it. I was thinking, though, of maybe making an IPA again, or perhaps trying an Imperial Stout.  I’m leaning toward the Imperial Stout.
I make my beer from a bag of grain. I use a Rubbermaid ten gallon Gatoraide cooler as my mash/lauter tun.  The cost for producing a batch of beer typically runs about 20 dollars. That gives you roughly two cases equivalent, but I seldom bottle anymore, and typically just go straight into a five gallon Cornelius Keg.
So I might have to show Bitter next weekend how we make beer. We’re taking a tour of the Budweiser Brewery in St. Louis when we’re there for the NRA convention. To have an appreciation for making beer on such a tremendous scale, it helps to have knowledge of how it works on a small scale.
Uses of Ovens
You know you’re a gun nut when, for the first time in a few months, you use your oven, not a cook a roast or a turkey, but to heat up some parts from your AK-74 so they’ll dry out after you gave it a nice bath in warm soapy water to wash out all the corrosive primer residue that built up on it after a day’s shooting.
I’m about 1/3rd through my batch of the corrosive stuff. I might take the other tin that was in the crate and reserve it, and bring it out sometime when I’m either short of 5.45×39 or nostalgic. The good thing about corrosive primed ammo is that it lasts forever. Non-corrosive primers have a shorter shelf life.
Why Isn’t the RAF Bombing Iran?
The Times of London is reporting that the kidnapped British soldiers are going to be tried for espionage by Iran. Witnesses claim the British vessel was in Iraqi waters when it was attacked by the Iranians.
This is an act of war under any interpretation of international law. What I want to know is, why haven’t the British responded along the lines of
“You have 1 hour to return our soldiers. If they are not returned by then the Royal Navy will be executing a blockade of your ports.  If they are not returned in 24 hours, the Royal Air Force will begin bombing military targets inside Iran itself.”
I don’t get why we’ve been pussy footing around with these people. I can understand invasion would be difficult, but we could destroy most of Iran’s combat power within a matter of days.
Making Political Hay
The Citizens Committe for the Right to Keep and Bears Arms is calling out the Democrats for their recent vote on DC Voting Rights, which was voted down because of the addition of an amendment that would have repealed the Washington D.C. gun ban:
Congressional Democrats claim at every turn they “support the Secon d Amendment,†but the truth came out Thursday when they pulled a coveted District of Columbia voting rights bill because of an amendment that would have ended the long-standing handgun ban.
“This shows the true colors of the Democrat leadership,†Alan M. Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms stated. “It should have been easy for the Democrat caucus to agree to the Republican-sponsored amendment, because of the recent federal appeals court ruling that declared the handgun ban unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
“Instead,†Gottlieb said, “Democrats proved once again that all their avowed support for the Second Amendment is nothing but empty rhetoric. House Democrats had a chance to stand up and be counted, but instead they ran for cover, afraid to have a recorded vote prove that, as a party and as individuals, they remain as anti-gun as ever.â€
I can’t honestly say I’m all that displeased with the outcome, to be honest, because it would have removed standing for the Parker plaintiffs if they go before The Supreme Court. But this move was purely political: to get the Democrats on record as being in favor of handgun bans, so much so that they were willing to sacrifice a coveted bill in maintain it. The politics of this is pretty smart for the Republicans, as polls show that most Americans do not favor making handguns illegal. This puts the Democrats on record as being pretty extreme on the gun issue when compared to most Americans.
But the Democrats could be playing it smart too, in a way. Parker is a win-win case for them, and I could see that they might think twice before they would derail it.
If Parker prevails, it will essentially give the Democrats the political cover they need to back further away from gun control as one of their issues. The Democrats seem to have accepted that this issue has been a killer for them in national elections, and is in no large part responsible for them being reduced to strips along the Northeast Corridor, parts of the Midwest around Chicago, and the West Coast. In 2006, they won on the backs of some pretty pro-gun Democrats like Jim Webb, Bob Casey, John Tester, and the like. Parker changes the political landscape a bit, and might give some politicians with less then stellar records on guns, to back away from the issue without making it look like flip-flopping.
If Parker loses, then the Supreme Court would be emboldening anti-gun forces within the Democratic Party, and offering political cover for some more moderate Democrats to move more to the anti-second amendment position. The folks in Congress like Carolyn McCarthy and Charles Schumer would love to have a Supreme Court ruling that definitively said that the second amendment is no obstacle to gun control in order to beat pro-gun or moderately pro-gun democrats over the head with.
The real losers in the Parker case would be the Republicans, who would not like to see the gun constituency split between the parties. We’ve been a good voting block for the Republicans, so I can see why they’d want to get this issue away from the courts and back into the legislative arena where it can help them more. If gun owners feel secure in their gun rights, they might just be tempted to vote Democrat. If we go down to defeat in Parker, it could convince a lot of gun owners that the system is stacked against them, and stop participating in political activism altogether.
I think looking carefully at each parties interest can explain the vote on the issue.  I don’t think it means the Democrats will head back to their gun control roots; they will stay away from the issue until after the 2008 elections. Both parties are using this particular vote as part of a larger political game, and getting rid of the DC gun ban at this point isn’t in the Democrats political interests, even if a lot of party members would like to move away from an anti-gun position.
Of course, I could be wrong about this, and the Democrats are just being stupid.
Day 1 – Rain + Mesquite = No Fire
The first night we were in Texas, after a heavy rain the night before, we tried to make a fire. Turns our mesquite doesn’t burn too well when it’s wet and so is everything around it. This video is pure blackness, which I found amusing for some reason. At least we didn’t get the part on film where Carrie was questioning my manhood for not being able to get a fire going ;) [googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6179279145523913679[/googlevideo]
Bitter is taking the video and is the loudest voice on the movie. The male voice is obviously me. The Texas accented female voice is Carrie’s mom. The non-southern accent voice is Carrie. The end of result of a cup of diesel fuel:
Once the diesel burnt off, nothing. But fortunately, I managed to redeem my manhood in the eyes of the ladies present the following night when got the fire going finally. Things just needed another day to dry out:
It was a nice fire. And that night, you could see every star in the sky, and the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy. Priceless. You just don’t see things like that near a city.
Why Pat Murphy Rocks
[UPDATE: It should be noted that we have been deceived by Congressman Murphy in the intervening years, as he signed onto the semi-automatic ban I wrote to him in reference to below. See Congressman Murphy’s Anti-Gun record here.]
I had been wondering what my new Congress Critter’s stance on the gun issue was. I had planned to write about HR 1022 shortly, but hadn’t completed my thoughts yet. I was quite pleased when perusing the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association to find a copy of a letter received from Congressman Patrick Murphy on the same subject. I’ll post the good bit:
Thank you for contacting me in support of maintaining the rights of gun owners. As you probably know, I personally hold a concealed-carry permit and I am a strong supporter of upholding the 2nd amendment. You can rest assured that when legislation involving gun-owner rights comes up before Congress, I will keep your thoughts in mind.
A Democratic Congressman who admits he holds a PA LTC? Congressman Murphy has overcome a big hurdle toward getting my vote. If the Republicans run a bonehead, as they are wont to do, there’s a strong likelihood I’ll be in his court come election day.
In the comments…
A commenter mentions:
As someone who used to shoot before anything apart from a .22 was banned in my country, I can feel a great deal of sympathy for those whose rights are under attack.
But seriously, a guy spends 30 years making drunken assholes with high capacity firearms running around the woods look legitimate, then suggests that carrying an AK47 around might be resonant with events on TV and you all turn on him.
Seriously, anyone watching this little farce who isn’t attached to Mr Heston’s baby cannon gets a pretty ugly picture of the NRA and shooters of the US. There’s a reason why, when someone wants to depict an incompetent and reckless hunter, it’s always some American in a Davy Crockett hat.
You have a very warped understanding of the American shooting community if you think that’s what hunting in America is all about. Hunting accidents in the US are exceedingly rare, despite the fact that the sports has tens of millions of participants. Same goes for sport shooting. There is nothing irresponsible about hunting with a semi-automatic firearm (no one hunts with a machine gun, an none of us would advocate that) provided the caliber is appropriate for the game. The rifles Zumbo was talking about are military patterned, but they are semi-automatic, and not capable of automatic or burst fire.
And maybe the reason that everything apart from a .22 was banned in your country is because shooters there didn’t take their gun rights seriously enough. Ever stop to think about that?
Not Bad Press
I think Gun Law News just got us all some good press from Fox News:
“The amazing thing about Zumbo was, he posted it on Friday night and by Monday there was a mushroom cloud,” said Jeff, a gun-rights advocate who runs GunLawNews.org and did not want to be identified by his full name. “I think it teaches a lesson to those who are listening that the power of the Net should not be underestimated.”
He’s not happy about the segments used, but I think overall this isn’t bad press. I don’t, however, really appreciate how NRA vs. Bloggers was played up though:
While Cox said the NRA is able to “update our members in real time” on legislative alerts and other perceived threats to their cause, some bloggers say their online network has allowed them to report stories even faster.
“Blogs covering gun rights provide the same immediacy of coverage and action as others do that cover more general politics,” said Soyer. “Blogs are on the story as it happens.”
Miller suggests that blogs have evolved to the point that they can go around the NRA hierarchy to communicate with millions of people on their own.
“I think bloggers have diluted the power of the NRA,” said Miller. “If I find an atrocity done by my elected official in my state, I don’t have to contact the NRA and tell them to get on it. It can be passed along where it does not have to go through the bottleneck, where the NRA puts its own spin on it.”
Cox said, however, that the NRA is at the heart of the grassroots effort. “Both our friends and enemies agree that when it comes to making a difference, when it comes to grassroots activism, no one does it better than the NRA.”
Bloggers are important, and we’re definitely not the NRA lapdogs the press and Brady Campaign would make us out to be (as my position on the workplace carry bills should convince anyone), but we’re all essentially on the same side, and we both need each other.
Bad Shooting Range Bill in Oregon
Joseph of Geek vs. World, has a post about a bill that’s recently been introduced in Oregon that would require you to turn over your “papers” (vere are your papers?) to a government mandated “range master”, including what guns you were shooting. You might even have to keep a government agent present to shoot on your own property. Needless to say this is bad with a capital B. The fact that this was listed as introduced by the committee itself is not very good news.
Oregon is becoming a state we might have to start fighting for, so it’s important to keep an eye on this bill. Even if it fails in Oregon, this tactic might get tried in other states as well, all in the name of safety. It’s for our own good, you know.