March 2007 – Page 2 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The .577 Tyrannosaur

I ran across this video of some folks, at what appears to be a range outside the US, shooting the .577 Tyrannosaur:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJSZs-euZU[/youtube]

You can find some background on the round here:

As A-Square loads the cartridge, it fires a 750-grain bullet at 2,460 feet per second, for muzzle energy of more than 10,000 foot-pounds. For the record, the case will hold 180 grains of H4831! No other company loads the cartridge or makes the brass, but since brass, bullets, and loaded ammunition are once again readily available from A-Square, securing a supply is less difficult than for many other big cartridges.

Jim Smith, the new owner of A-Square, says the first question anyone asks about the Tyrannosaur is â€œWhatâ€™s the recoil like?â€ Since there are a couple of videos floating around the internet showing several people being thrown across a room when firing it, your long-suffering correspondent would like to assure you that it simply is not like that.

The Hannibal rifle employs Art Alphinâ€™s â€œCoil-Chekâ€ stock, which minimizes recoil in heavy cartridges through proper stock design rather than gadgets like muzzle brakes and recoil reducers. However, Art conceded the Tyrannosaur needed something more and put three reducers in the stock. So equipped, it weighs about 13 pounds.

10,000 ft-lbs of muzzle energy? Â Holy recoil batman!Â But hey, if your goal is a last ditch defense against a charging elephant, I’d wager you’d need every bit of it.Â Now I really want to shoot one.

Create a Commie

My friend Joy brought something back from Portland that I thought was really amusing. It’s called “Create a Commie”:

A pinko variation on Wooly Willy. Create your very own commie rat bastard, then shoot him. Well, OK, I haven’t done the last part yet. Don’t want to damage my pink carpet… or is that pinko carpet?

UPDATE: This company needs to get with the times. Â I noticed they are missing Hugo Chavez. Â For that matter Chavez needs to get some trademark hair style or facial hair so he can distinguish himself from his other role models.

We already knew she was a hypocrite…

… for having a concealed weapons permit when Diane Feinstein herself is a huge advocate of taking guns away from ordinary Americans. She’s apparently used her power in congress to make millions for her husband’s firm too.

Feinstein is and always has been a piece of garbage, and ought to do the honorable thing and resign. I don’t think she has an ounce of honor in her though, so I’m not expecting much.

I’m really glad the Democrats took over from those corrupt money grubbing Republicans, let me tell you. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Stuff Yer Face – I Am So There

Tyler Cowen gives us a snippet from Benjamin Barber’s New Book “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole“:

There is actually [sic] a restaurant in New Jersey called Stuff Yer Face, and fast food generally is about stuffing your face: about nutrition, fueling up, taking in the calories, food as instrumentality, eaters as mere animals responding to biological imperatives.

I’m maybe 50 minutes away from New Brunswick. I think I will make it a point to go there so I can be infantalzed and swallowed whole. Their website has corrupted me into thinking their strombolis sound rather appetizing. I think washing it down with a beer, chosen from their large selection, is most definitely feeling like a biological imperative as well.

Thanks for the tip, Benjamin Barber. I’m always looking for new and fun places to eat. Stop by if you like.Â I’ll buy you a beer.Â Then explain to you the many ways you can go to hell for having the audacity to and gall to presume that your fellow citizens are nothing but a bunch of infants who can’t make rational decisions for themselves.

The Pesky Thing Called Physics

The gun blogosphere is pretty quiet today, so I thought I’d take some time to take a look at a new technology. While I’m a gun blogger normally, by training and profession I’m an engineer, so this will be a rare occasion when I get to use that skill in the blogosphere.

Instapundit points to a technology that claims to be able to make hydrogen from magnesium and water. This is interesting, but I consider this another example of a company cashing in on the alternate fuel craze. The big reason not to get excited about this is the second law of thermodynamics will always demand that you lose. You will need to put more energy into cleaving the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen that you will ever get back from putting it back together either by burning it in a conventional internal combustion (IC) engine or fuel cell. In short, this system is essentially turning magnesium into an energy source, with hydrogen as an intermediary, to be turned into a usable form of energy in a fuel cell or IC engine. Interesting idea, but is magnesium cheap enough and sufficiently energy dense to be a practical motor fuel?

Magnesium seems to cost about $2.75 per kilogram. A kilogram of magnesium contains about 24.7 megajoules of energy. To compare to gasoline, we really need to measure energy by volume, which is 43 megajoules for a liter of of magnesium, compared to 34.6 megajoules for a liter of gasoline. Magnesium wins on energy density!

A liter of magnesium has a mass of 1.74 kilograms, and a cost of $4.79 based on recent pricing. It would take 1.24 liters of gasoline to have the same amount of energy that’s in a liter of magnesium. Gasoline in my area is about $2.60 a gallon, which comes out to about 69 cents per liter. Therefore the energy equivalent for gasoline comes out to cost 86 cents, compared to magnesium’s $4.79. So magnesium costs about five and a half times what gasoline does if you use equivalent energy.! If you do the unit conversions, to get the same amount of energy that’s in a gallon of gas, it would cost you $14.48. A little pricey for driving the kids to soccer practice, wouldn’t you say?

Also consider this is based on the current price of magnesium. No doubt common use of magnesium as a motor fuel would drive the price through the roof. Magnesium mining also requires energy, and is not exactly environmentally friendly.

So unless Ecotality has found a way to get around the second law of thermodynamics, this technology is a dead end. I’m sure the government would gleefully throw lots of grants (tax dollars) in their direction, but I certainly wouldn’t invest.

My source material was largely this Wikipedia article on energy density, plus a little Googling for prices. Someone go ahead and check my math if you want.

UPDATE: Glenn updated the article with a bit from a chemist who reveals where the energy is going in the process; making the elemental magnesium in the first place, and then recycling the oxides back into free metal.Â If you submerge magnesium in water, it will react with the water as a matter of course, releasing hydrogen. Â Didn’t know that.Â My background isn’t in chemistry. Â But the physics still says you lose.

Rick Perry Signs No Duty to Retreat

Rick Perry has signed the no duty to retreat into law.Â Texas is already one of the more friendly jurisdictions to lawful self-defense, and it just got friendlier.Â Expect hysterical predictions from the media and gun control groups that will never come true.

Haven’t Forgotten

I still have some Sheriffs to contact in the state to see whether they would release license information.Â They only answer the phone during the day, and I have to work during the day.Â Â Believe it or not, it’s easier to get on to make the quick post or comment than it is to get on the phone and call someone.Â I wish all the Sheriffs had e-mail addresses, because I find that easy, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.Â Kudos to Chester County Sheriff for being the only Sheriff’s Office in the area who appear to be living in the 21st century with the rest of us.

For some reason I find having to make a phone call during the day to be a lot more distracting to my work than computer related communication.Â Anyone else feel that way too?

Careful Throwing The ‘E’ Word Around

Despite the fact that I don’t look too highly on legislators placing themselves above the laws that apply to the rest of us, from Instapundit:

I agree that he seems to have broken the law. But it’s within a prosecutor’s discretion not to prosecute, and cases of inadvertence like this are often dropped — and should be. (It’s not clear that Thompson even knew the gun was in the bag.) Reader Larry Boykin thinks I’m an elitist (“So, it’s alright to have one set of laws for the common man and another set of laws for the ‘elite’? That’s what you are advocating if you believe that charges should be dropped. “) but I think that charges should be dropped for anyone in these circumstances. Would they be? Well, I don’t know. I know of some similar cases where ordinary people weren’t charged — but it’s true that they weren’t at the U.S. Capitol. If charges are dropped here under public scrutiny, of course, that’ll be an argument for treating ordinary people in similar circumstances similarly in the future.

I don’t think Glenn is an elitist. I agree that prosecutors should use discretion in cases like this, and I wouldn’t want to see anyone get the book thrown at them under similar circumstances, even if they were in Congress or were a staffer, just because they made an unknowing mistake (and who would knowingly put a briefcase on an x-ray machine if they knew they had a gun inside?).

I have no problem with shaming Jim Webb or his staffer for what appears to be carelessness. I have no problem with frowning on, or speaking out against politicians who carry guns in places the rest of us can’t, because they can get away with it, while we can’t.

But I can’t ignore the fact that I believe Washington D.C.’s gun laws are unconstitutional. I don’t want to see anyone prosecuted for a law that shouldn’t be on the books, whether they are an ordinary Joe, or whether they are Jim Webb. The constitution protects all of us, even politicians.

If we don’t like the idea of politicians flouting even unconstitutional laws that apply to the rest of us, and believe me, I don’t, we can remedy that at the voting booth.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh suggests that Webb’s aide should not be charged because he may be flat out not guilty.

Representative Paul Clymer – Gambling Nazi

State Representative Paul Clymer, who wants to be everyone’s mom and dad, whether you asked for it or not, seems to have other pet issues that involve treating responsible adults in our Commonwealth like well cared for children:

Although Governor Rendell has signed legislation legalizing 61,000 slot machines in Pennsylvania, Clymer continues to lead an anti-gambling coalition in the Commonwealth. Made up of legislators, church, community and pro-family groups, the coalition seeks to have some oversight on casino gambling and is also working to repeal the gambling bill.

This is from his very own web site. OK folks, pay attention, because this will be one of those rare moments when I have something nice to say about Governor Rendell: he was right to loosen restrictions on gambling in Pennsylvania, not because they will pay for all the programs he wanted, or because they’ll pay for property tax relief. It’s clear now he was full of crap on that count. No, Governor Rendell was right to loosen restrictions on gambling because there’s no good reason for adults to be told how they can and can’t spend their own money. If the state can tax it and regulate it, why the hell not? Any extra money flowing into the treasury is welcome, and if people have a good time doing it, it’s a win win situation.

Representative Clymer should spend less time fighting Ed Rendell about how grown adults choose to spend their money and spend more time fighting Ed Rendell on his rampant tax and spend policies, his support for gun control, and support for a massive health care overhaul that will be damaging to businesses in the Commonwealth.

Add State Representative Paul Clymer…

… to the list of Pennsylvania politicians who can go to hell. Why?

A bill introduced last week in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives would mandate that every car sold in the state be equipped with a breath testing device. State Representative Paul I. Clymer (R-Bucks County) insists that every motorist must prove that he is not drunk before starting a vehicle. Clymer’s proposal would require that, by 2009, all new cars sold in Pennsylvania have a device installed to estimate the amount of alcohol on the breath of a driver. If the machine believes the driver’s BAC is greater than .025 percent â€” significantly less than the legal limit of .08 percent â€” the car will not start.

So does that mean that Paul Clymer will give me a ride to work or pick me up on days when the interlock device decides to read a false positive, as they are prone to do sometimes? Paul Clymer obviously has no respect for the citizens of this Commonwealth, as he apparently believes we are all, even those of us who are responsible drinkers, or who don’t drink, such a risk to become drunk drivers that we have to be parented over by the state.

If Pennsylvania wants to retain educated young professionals, which everyone keeps saying we’re doing a sorry job of these days, then they need to make this bill die a very quick death, because it’s so bad, I’d likely leave the state over it, and go to a place like Arizona that treats people more like adults. If you live in Representative Clymer’s district, I urge you to vote against him in the next election, or if you’re a Republican, unseat him in the primaries. You deserve better representation than this.

Hat Tip: Nobody’s Business