Guns, Cars, and Tech

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  • Gun Porn

    At this month’s meeting of the Tennessee Firearms Association we had James Kay from The Battle of Nashville Preservation Society give a presentation on civil war arms, and a bit of history on the Battle of Nashville. I’m not an antique gun guy, but it was pretty neat. One thing I did not know before last night was that Union troops had cartridge firing repeaters by the end of the war. The other thing I didn’t know was that rifles shooting Minie balls had effective ranges out past 900 yds. Mr. Kay told a story of a General who’s last words were “He can’t possible hit us from that distance.”

    I used to carry a Derringer as a backup gun. People laughed at me, until I showed them the round it fired:
    image
    I kid, I kid. That’s from a siege gun that could hit a barn door at 1600 yards.

    The top one in the picture below is (IIRC) a Springfield that was converted from flint-lock to percussion. The bottom one is a cavalryman’s carbine of some sort. Again, I’m not an antique gun guy
    image

    And the obligatory JayG bait:
    image
    ZOMG! Bayonets at the Golden Corral! EVERYBODY PANIC!

  • It all ends with puppy-killing SWAT teams

    As you may have noticed, Penn Jillette has an opinion piece on CNN that talks about why he is a libertarian. It’s all over my Facebook feed, so it’s resonating with peopleUncle pointed out that Jillette used the phrase “government is force”, which is a rare thing to see in an MSM piece.

    Here is the what he said:

    There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.
    People try to argue that government isn’t really force. You believe that? Try not paying your taxes…. When they come to get you for not paying your taxes, try not going to court. Guns will be drawn. Government is force — literally, not figuratively.

    I would like politicians and bureaucrats to acknowledge this: Every law, rule, and regulation made by the government ends in puppy killing SWAT Teams. Every dime that is spent in our name was taken at gunpoint.

    I want them to understand that every action they take has this statement as a footnote: “This is important enough that my grandmother should be killed if she does not abide.”

    The rhetoric might be a little over the top, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Take the story of Rawesome Foods, who were raided twice in one year by full-ninja swat teams for such horrible crimes as “improper egg temperatures.” I mean really what could possibly justify that?

    It seems ridiculous that this could happen, right? Well, all it takes is one word: No.
    As an example, I’ll use my city’s recent doubling of property taxes to fund such necessities as computerized timing mechanisms for public baseball fields. Here is how it goes:

    Government: We need to double your taxes so that umpires don’t forget to turn off the ballfield lights after games are over.

    Citizen: No.

    Government: Um….but we need it.

    Citizen: No.

    Government: Well, it doesn’t matter what you think. You have to pay it anyway.

    Citizen: No.

    Government: [Later] I see you didn’t pay the new tax rate. Here’s your updated bill with penalties and interest.

    Citizen: No.

    Government: Okay, fine. See you in court!

    Citizen: No.

    Government: What? BUT YOU HAVE TO GO!

    Citizen: No.

    Government: Fine. We waved a magic wand and took ownership of your house. You have to get out.

    Citizen: No.

    Government: [Press Release] SWAT was deployed today and killed a barricaded suspect. Multiple attempts to negotiate were rejected, so SWAT had to move in. The suspect resisted arrest and was shot 37 times. We waited a couple of hours and then found out he was dead.

    Pick any issue, and that’t how this will end. From speeding tickets to multiple murder, the only way to ensure a civilized society is with brutality. If a violation doesn’t end that way, then what’s the point? I mean, if I can just say no until you go away, then why have the rule in the first place?

  • A little less creepy

    It’s still creepy that they do it, but I just noticed that Facebook is collapsing threads for politicians other than The One.

    I feel better. Glad my suspicions of an in-kind donation were unfounded.

  • Why would you ever need to carry a gun in your own house?

    Because some people don’t care that you’re home with your young son when they want to steal your stuff.

    Via email from Steve in TN

  • Well that’s neat

    I just accidentally discovered that Windows Key + number launches “the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number. If the program is already running, switch to that program.”

    I use Alt+Tab, Win+D, Win+E, and Win+L daily. I’ll need to re-arrange my taskbar add this to my list.

    More keyboard shortcuts here

  • Notes from the gun show

    I went to the local gun show last weekend with a couple of friends of mine. One was a prolific shooter, the other was getting his first gun. More on him later.

    There were two guys selling personal Tec-9’s. It’s a long-term goal of mine to own everything on the ’94 ban list, so I have to look. Don’t judge me.

    The first guy had an absolutely pristine one with a stainless upper receiver, barrel shroud, and 32rd magazine. He wanted $400, and I probably would’ve negotiated a bit with him if I’d had more cash on me.

    The second guy had a standard one, but it also had a barrel extension on it. The extension matched the original barrel shroud, so it looked like it had a 12″ barrel on it. Kinda silly looking–even moreso than the original design. That guy wanted $500 for his, saying “you’ll never find another Tec-9 in this area”–right as the guy with the stainless one rounded the corner.

    It’s odd what you notice when you start paying attention. I’ve been going to this particular gun show since 1998, and I don’t think I’d ever seen a single IFAK, aka blowout kit until this weekend. And I swear every third table had one, ranging from about $45 for a simple kit with some bandages and quikclot to $200 for a minor-surgery-in-a-molle-bag kit.

    I asked every vendor I saw with one where I might be able to take a class to learn how to actually use one of these kits and not a one of them reacted like they’d ever been asked that. They also didn’t have an answer.

    I went looking for a new factory threaded Ruger 22/45 and a S&W M&P15-22 just to check street prices. They were everywhere last month but this month I only saw one of the Rugers and the only M&P15-22 I saw was a pistol version that someone else had just purchased.

    So in summary, I found everything I wasn’t looking for, and nothing I was looking for.

  • Guess they decided they DID need to play

    Google has announced that it will buy Motorola’s cell phone division for $12.5 billion.

    Most people don’t know this, but over the last few months there has been a bit of a war going on between the largest tech companies in the world. Patents are the weapons*, and Google didn’t have any. Now they have 17,000 of them.

    *Basically this was mutually assured destruction. Company A has 200 patents, and Company B has 300 patents. Both A & B make phones that have features that infringe on on or more of the other’s patents. Instead of suing each other out of existence, A & B just decide to engage in reciprocity. This worked well until Android became successful and started eating in to Apple’s marketshare. Apple fired the first shots at Samsung earlier this year and it’s been crazy ever since.

  • New digs

    After posting for a little over two years at Walls of the City, I’ve decided to open up my own little shop.

    I want to publicly thank Linoge for allowing me to guest post over there. Through my association with him I’ve gotten to do a bunch of cool stuff and meet some good people.

    I’ll be forever grateful to him for getting me started in all this.

    Over here on this new site, I’m going to be talking about some other things as well. Yes, you’ll still get guns and libertarian-ish politics, but I’m also going to be doing more geeky stuff. The site title comes from an observation that my wife made several years ago. She noted that anytime two guys get together, they will talk about guns, cars, or computers. Maybe all three. I broadened “computers” to “tech” because a lot of the things I’ll be talking about don’t really involve computers–like phones and DIY CNC machines.

    Posting tempo will probably be light at first, but go ahead and add me to your RSS Reader! If you decide to keep up with the full site, please note that I’ll be doing theme and layout changes pretty regularly until I get a handle on this.

  • Hmmm

    What is this I’ve found?