March 2011 – Page 10 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Inspiring Confidence

These days if someone finds a powdery substance somewhere, it pretty clearly has to be tested. This happened at NASA recently, and it was found to be cocaine. This wouldn’t be of much note if the same thing hadn’t happened last year:

In January 2010, about 200 Kennedy Space Center workers were tested when a small bag of cocaine was found inside a space shuttle processing facility where Discovery was being readied for flight. That case was closed, and there were no arrests.

Good to know that the employees of NASA are flying high as they prep the space shuttle to fly high. Maybe it helps take the edge off those budget cuts, and impending unemployment caused by the end of the shuttle program.

Even the LA Times Couldn’t Ignore the Hypocrisy

The LA Times is hardly a hotbed of pro-gun radicalism, but even they couldn’t help but notice:

The bill,Â SB 610, says the good-cause determination would be deemed to be met for any California member of Congress, statewide elected official or member of the Legislature.

The surprising thing about this bill isn’t just that it has appeared in California, which tends to favor restrictive gun laws, but that its coauthors are all Democrats who in the past have voted to limit gun rights for ordinary citizens.

They go on to worry about the implications of panicked politicians spraying bullets into crowds. At least the LA Times is consistent — they think it’s dangerous for everyone to carry a gun, except for the police who have magical gun powers.

Open Carry in Florida on the Move

Passed out of committee. Robb notes that the level of disinformation being presented by opponents was disturbing. Politicians are usually only concerned with what’s going to help get them elected, and they’ve learned over the years that passing bills like this is a way to please one of the larger single-issue constituencies out there, with very little in the way of downside. NRA has been pushing this bill using the justification “to prevent license holders from being charged with the crime of violating the ‘Open Carry’ law because a concealed firearm accidentally or inadvertently became visible.” Given that OC gives some gun owners the willies, I think this is the right tactic in trying to push this through.

A Sign Some Californians Need to Get Over Themselves

Do not worry. The radiation will not affect California. Whew! That’s a relief! Had me worried there for a second. At the risk of being accused of poor taste, because clearly there’s nothing wrong with worrying about California when the death toll in this could hit five figures in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably dumped more radiation on California than this incident will, and that’s not even mentioning all the atmospheric tests in New Mexico and the South Pacific during the 50s and 60s. This has me wondering if we weren’t better off as a society when we were lighting off nukes like our own radioactive Fourth of July, and encouraging young men to “Yes, get out of your foxhole and march toward the mushroom cloud,” because I’m honestly not sure which extreme is worse.

I’m utterly amazed that the LA Times has the gumption to write an article that conveys “California is fine, everyone, nothing to worry about,” when the death toll in Japan could hit five figures, and there are plenty of people who are worried about trivialities like food and water tonight, and would probably be happy to drink water with a few dozen bananas worth of radiation dose, as long as it didn’t come with a side of dysentery.

Meanwhile the international media hypes the trouble at the reactors to try to ride the anti-nuclear hobby horse as much as humanly possible. Everyone needs to relax, and eat some brazil nuts.

UPDATE: Now we’re totally screwed. There are sushi shortages in the Bay Area.

Sales Spike for February

John Richardson has even more evidence that all our opponents are accomplishing is selling more guns, as gun owners, wary of new restrictions, are buying up. I would note that magazine sales do not factor in to these figures, and I’d expect magazine sales would have seen an even greater spike.

AN-94 Envy

It would seem it’s developing in the US military. The AN-94 is certainly neat, but also just as certainly unproven. I’m rather skeptical that a mechanism as complex as the AN-94 can be made as reliable as a traditional weapon.

NRA Response to Obama

You can read it here.

Fire in the Storage Pool?

Great. Now officials are saying that the storage pools, where every nuclear power plant stores spent radioactive fuel, have experienced a fire and may be boiling. My understanding of spent fuel is that it won’t boil the water, so I have a feeling there’s misunderstanding here. However, a fire at one of the storage pools would be a very bad thing, and would seriously increase radiation levels if that fire created steam.

If there’s one thing that is unsafe about nuclear power it’s the practice of storing waste on the site of the plant in containers that aren’t as over-engineered as the reactor. But this is not an engineering problem, it’s a political one.Â This issue is one that’s been made by the hippies and politicians, since there are safe solutions to this problem, but the hippies and politicians refuse to allow government to implement those solutions.Â The same hippies and politicians will now use this as evidence that nuclear power cannot be made safe, and that we should stop building new plants, since we can get all our energy from flowers and unicorn farts, or something like that.

It’s enough to make my inner engineer weep if I think about it for too long.

Rebuffed?

The New York Times is reporting:

â€œWhy should I or the N.R.A. go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?â€ saidÂ Wayne LaPierre, the longtime chief executive of theÂ National Rifle Association.

There really isn’t any reason to sit down with the Administration unless the conversation is “What are you going to do for us?” Maybe then gun owners can talk turkey with Obama. But until then, what is there to talk about? Any legislation coming forward can be blocked by Congress.

The only card Obama really has is that he could come out in favor of gun control and push it in a big way. This is actually more of a threat than I would like it to be, but it I wouldn’t view it as much of one. Congress is not likely to be in the mood, and with promises that Obama made to some Democrats, like John Tester, Bob Casey, or any number of Democrats in red states that are up in 2012, this could easily play against Obama.

Live Fire Tests

Jason tells me we’ve gotten to the point in the magazine project where we’re ready for a live fire test. There’s only one problem: we need a place where we can both shoot and film. There’s a range near us that allows full-auto, but it does not allow cameras or recording equipment, I’m guessing because of people’s tendency to do stupid things with guns when cameras are turned on them. At my club, we could film, but we couldn’t fill the magazine, and definitely could not shoot the machine pistol on full auto. So I need somewhere within 20 or so miles of Philadelphia that will allow full auto and for the experiment to be filmed for posterity. Anyone know of such a place?