Quote of the Day

From Jerry Shores in Pinellas Park, Florida, in response to the St. Petersburg Times tirade about Florida’s gun licensing system:

Finally, and again using your reported numbers, there are 408,250 law-abiding, concealed carrying Floridians who have the means to defend themselves and their loved ones (and perhaps you and your loved ones as well) from an attack by an armed criminal. Frankly, I’m much more comforted by that thought than I am by the prospect that all I have to answer a criminal’s armed assault is your paper’s righteous indignation.

Zing! Good comeback.

h/t: Dave Hardy

Add John Rafferty to the List

John Rafferty can now be added to the list of people who can officially kiss my ass. Why? This is why:

The new chairman of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, PJ Stapleton, says the LCB has already approved the transfer of a liquor license to one grocery store that offers in-store dining and will now sell beer, and he says several applications are pending.

Buying beer in grocery stores? Now there’s something I can get behind! In states like Iowa, California, and many many others, you can buy a fifth of rye at you corner grocery store, not just beer. I’m happy Mr. Stapleton is moving Pennsylvania in line with most of the other states in the union. But wait:

But that chairman of the Law and Justice Committee, suburban Republican John Rafferty, says he’s concerned about the number of teenagers who work in grocery stores, and for that and other reasons he’s working on legislation that would close what he believes is a loophole in state liquor law.

Thanks John, for looking out after us, and getting this dangerous loophole that allows beer to be sold in supermarkets, which is clearly turning every other state that does it into a giant drunken frat party. It’s all about the children, after all.

And we wonder why young people are leaving Pennsylvania in droves once they get out of college?

Knox Gets a Boost

Tom Knox it seems has come from way behind to take the number two polling spot in the Philadelphia mayoral race. This is good news, because it pushes Nutty Nutter out of the number two spot and replaces him with a slightly more sane candidate. Tom Knox is also cooler because he has a blog. Bob Brady, the City’s top Democrat, has thrown in officially now too, but he’s still polling dead last, behind Fattah, Knox, Nutty, and Evans.

A Good C&R Carry Gun?

Ahab of WWJWD asks an interesting question about C&R carry guns:

After my recent experiment with the Hi-point pistol and the sundry disappointment that followed, I started thinking about “what if someone carried a C&R?” I ruminated on it for a while; and I did have a couple of germane thoughts. A lot of these older guns are military pieces, designed to ridden hard and put up wet. Apart from the abysmal sights on a good percentage of them, you could do a lot worse for a carry gun that packing a Star Model B (or whatever). Again, I’d say wait a month and buy a used GP100 for $300, but if all you’ve got is a surplus CZ50 (.32 ACP) and you can shoot it, it beats a pointy stick.

Makarovs are pretty good carry guns. I carry a Bulgarian Mak loaded with Corbon Pow’rball ammo in 9x18mm in my front coat pocket, or on a belt holster from time to time, as a backup gun, or in situations where I can’t carry my Glock. Most Maks, including the Bulgarian, aren’t C&R eligible, but Soviet Military Maks are. There are some out there on the market. They cost a bit more, because they are more collectible, but you can get it delivered to your door by the brown truck of happiness, just like anything else on the C&R list. You’ll feel like you just joined the KGB!

Pennsylvania Should Wait

Bruce’s post about Flutiecare in Massachusetts is a big reason why I’m not sanguine about the prospect of Ed Rendell boldly moving Pennsylvania into attempting to outdo all the other states to show how much we care about our citizen’s health care. We need to see how this works out in other states before we try to one up anyone.

I also notice that Rendell’s health plan includes a state-wide public smoking ban. Ed, you can totally kiss my ass. Remember kids, when the government pays for your health care, suddenly your bad health habits become everyone else’s business. No thanks! Call me a wacky libertarian, but government provided health care has always seemed to be to be the short line to the government controlling way too many aspects of life than any reasonable human being should be comfortable with.

I need a refresher course in exactly how it is I need to vote for Democrats because the Republicans are too busy stomping on civil liberties. Maybe it’s just the wacky libertarian talking again, but as far as I’m concerned, both parties seem to be equally good at trying to run my life, and as far as I’m concerned they can both go to hell.

The Media Assault

It definitely seems the media is currently engaged in a full court press against gun rights. But Why? And what does it mean? Believe it or not, I don’t think this necessarily is bad news for gun owners, but that doesn’t mean we can relax and stop being vigilant. It’s times like this that are important, but not because it’s a sign we’re about to start losing.

The main reason we’re seeing this media blitz is because of the Democrats taking over the legislative branch and generally gaining power. The anti-gun groups will be doing everything they can to get the gun issue back into the spotlight, so expect a lot of press releases, deception, and lying. And we must be aggressive about calling them out for it, and not let them an inch of breathing room.

This is an act of desperation, not an act of strength. The anti-gun groups know that if the Democrats actually abandon their issue, they are dead politically for the foreseeable future. I am not optimistic that we have won over the Democrats enough that they will actively work for us, but I think we have scared them enough that they are afraid to work against us, and that’s a tremendous accomplishment. But we have to keep them scared.

Keeping up the fight will mean writing letters to the editor challenging anti-gun editorials, and biased and inaccurate reporting. It will mean writing letters to politicians and your represenatives and making sure they are aware of your opinion on these issues. Probably most importantly, and I know a lot of people don’t like to hear this, it means making sure your NRA membership is current, and if it’s not, joining. Keep up your membership in the other groups if you like (I do) but the NRA is who the politicians in Washington and the state houses pay attention to, and how much attention the politicians pay is directly proportional to how many votes they bring to the table. Who knows, if we’re effective enough, we may even be able to get the Democrats to figure out they have more to gain by working with us than against us. Imagine how demoralized that would make you feel if you were a Brady supporter?

Global Warming

The traffic whore in me is noticing that you seem to be able to get a lot of attention by denying global warming. So I’ll offer a bit of my perspective. I work in a business where we attempt to model very complex systems. We don’t do it very well, but it’s enough that billions of dollars are chasing after ideas which look really good when presented to outsiders who don’t know science as well. Climate is a very complex system, and a lot of the claims that climatologists make do not pass the smell test as far as I’m concerned. I will remain very skeptical of many claims regarding global warming.

I should point out that I think global warming is probably happening, and that we’re probably contributing something to it. The evidence here seems pretty solid. But I don’t find the science convincing enough to start shaping public policy around it, because I don’t think we can really know enough to do it. How much CO2 to we need to stop emitting to make a difference? How much exactly are we contributing vs. natural contributions? How much can we expect sea level to rise? Temperature to go up? I don’t believe anyone who claims they can answer these questions with any accuracy.

I’ve seen way too many scientists claim to be able to model complex systems, who turn out to be wrong or misleading, to lend too much credence to wild claims. And if you don’t think scientists chase after grant money, you haven’t been around them enough. Don’t get me wrong, we need to keep the process going, keep learning, and keep trying to understand. But let’s not get all chicken little just yet. If we can do easy things to reduce our carbon footprint, let’s do it, but let’s not start talking about restructuring civilization just yet.

Random Obama Dreams

Jym: I had a dream last night that i was hanging out with Obama, and Osama kidnapped us with a van full of terrorists
Jym: And that i then single handedly killed them all, including Osama, to save Obama
Sebastian: What did Obama do?
Jym: Just kinda sat there
Jym: I had to do all the work
Jym: Goddamn Democrats
Sebastian: It’s shit like that which makes me feel I just could never support him

Rail Gun Porn

While we’re talking about futuristic weapons, how about some rail gun porn? Hat tip to powerlabs.org.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=c4ZjGUFh_c4[/youtube]
This is a 15 Kilojoule shot at target. You can see the plasma arc coming out of the gun. On their site, they say a lot of the energy got wasted because of the metal vaporization. Sad.[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=tV7aB8_0R74[/youtube]
8.3KJ shot with aluminium/teflon projectile. Apparently sending the projectile supersonic.
Take a trip over to powerlabs to get the details. You could build one of these yourself if you wanted to.

Laser Control & Futuristic Weapons

Without a doubt, eventually, someday, we’ll figure out a way to pack enough energy into a small enough space to basically render ordinary firearms obsolete. Indeed, materials technology is nearing the point, probably by the middle of this century, where body armor will be effective enough that standard small arms will not penetrate it, and light enough to be worn without too much burden.

But which technology would supplant the firearm? Well, lasers are one possibility. For various reasons, I think the least likely, but it’s interesting to take a look at the current legal regulations concerning lasers. From Sam’s Laser FAQ, we have:

Please don’t give the legislators ideas. Sales of lasers are unregulated except for medical and laser show systems, and a few systems under export controls. For all other systems, you just have to register as a manufacturer if you’re making them for public sales and submit your product for compliance, and maintain records of who it was initially sold to in case there is a need for a recall.

Of course, this is just the federal level. Apparently a few states regulate lasers.

NOW, where the crap hits the fan is at the state level. New York records the serial number of all lasers and requires licensed operators, transferring a laser in NY above class II to another citizen of NY without reregistering the unit is an offense. Transporting a laser through NY or selling it out of state from NY is not however a offense. Texas and Arizona have user fees to pay for their states radiologic safety programs, etc. I’m told by a friend that AZs fees are quite steep, on the order of $1,500 a year for large industrial lasers and that AZ inspects laser shows rather thoroughly. Other states may vary, but generally unless they have made misuse of pointers a issue, there are no worries except in NY and AZ. Possession is not illegal and they don’t deny permits to register in those states. However, they may disqualify a person who fails to pass the test.

Arizona is surprising. New York not so much, because New York likes to regulate everything. I don’t think you can take a dump in New York without a permit.

As I said, I think lasers are not likely to supplant firearms, because they take a lot of energy to be powerful enough to damage someone or something. Burning a hole through someone, other than through a vital organ, isn’t really all that serious, plus you could armor something just by putting a mirror on it.

What I think will likely supplant firearms are electromagnetic weapons. These are more commonly known as rail guns or gauss guns. While I don’t think these will supplant small arms for quite some time, they will probably start to appear on ships and heavy artillery platforms by the middle of the century. But if we ever figured out how to pack a lot of energy into a small space, in theory you could make a man portable electromagnetic weapon that could punch through tank armor. The ironic thing is, if you did this today, your device, as best I can tell, would be completely unregulated in most states (New Jersey, you’d still need an FID, sorry). But imagine an arm you could adjust a power setting on: low for taking out soft targets, and high for busting through hardned targets.

But I’m sure if you had one of those, it wouldn’t be long before the VPC and Brady’s would start preaching the evils of electromagnetism, and the need to ban assault magnets. It’ll come someday. You heard it here first.  Ooops, maybe you didn’t hear it here first.