July 2012 – Page 3 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The Olympics & The Web

When I tried to check out the streaming coverage of the Olympics this morning, I found that I couldn’t watch it without “logging in” via my cable provider. Well, we don’t have cable.

However, the actual Olympics website has a cool feature for shooting sports coverage. They feature the targets of the winners during the final rounds. Take a look at the difference between first place and last place in the first medal event of the entire Games – Women’s 10m Air Rifle. For even the best shooters who read this blog, the “last” place target would be incredible on their best days. For an Olympic shooter, it’s pretty easy to see the shot that made this a an eighth place target.

UPDATE: Want to know more about exactly how these targets are scored? Olympian Jamie Gray answered a question about it from the comments! From her comment:

All the scoring is done electronically. So instead of shooting at a paper taget with scoring rings you shoot at a black dot. There is black paper (black rubber in Smallbore) that advances every shot. There are microphones that read the sound of the shot hitting the paper to calculate where the shot actually hit the target. The shot then appears on a monitor that is next to the shooter. These targets are very accurate. The qualification rounds are scored in full value, so you can shoot a 10,9,8,7â€¦the score needed to make the final in this Olympics was 397. That is missing the pencil dot hole in the center of the target no more than 3 times. The final is scored in tenths of points, where the best shot is a 10.9. So the rings are broken into tenths, 10.9, 10.8, 10.7â€¦10.0, 9.9â€¦this is all scored electronically as well.

Wow. That makes me feel a bit like a loser for finding silhouette hard to shoot. Regardless, it’s all the more reason to be amazed by what our athletes do over there.

In this event, there were no 10.9s shot. However, there were five 10.8s. The interesting thing about it is that three of those nearly perfect shots were shot by the silver medalist. However, when the “lowest” shot from the woman who won gold was a 10.0, you can see why she won the gold.

We thank Jamie Gray, a native of Lebanon, PA, for stopping by in the comments. Good luck in the Women’s 50m Rifle event on the 4th!

US Refuses to Sign Arms Trade Treaty

So reports John Richardson. So Dick Morris turns out to be wrong, but I’m sure all that exposure he got spreading that rumor helped sales of his book, which was likely his only goal.

UN ATT Postponed Without Agreement

There have been copies of a draft treaty floating around out there on the Internet. If you’ve read them, they say essentially nothing. It is a document of sheer meaninglessness, describing neither what is required of signatory nation or what must be undergone to be in compliance. It is the kind of pablum only unelected bureaucrats at the United Nations could come up with.

That’s why I share Dave Kopel’s joy this session ended without agreement. This puts off any further action until closer to the election, in October, meaning if we change the occupant of the White House, we may be able to avoid an Arms Trade Treaty entirely.

MAIG Going After Church Leaders of Politicians

All Nine Yards continues to do superb citizen journalism uncovering the tactics of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. His latest posts shows an e-mail exchange that must be read to be believed. I’m going to bet this is a pretty ineffective tactic. Not only is it creepy, but I doubt you’ll find too many ministers in Florida willing to preach a pro-gun control message, given that Florida is more culturally gun friendly than many states, and most of the churches who would be willing to preach such a thing are going to be in communities that already have a disposition in favor of gun control. Another revealing e-mail here is that she requested an intern position solely for outreach to the faith community. One wonders whether or not that is a paid intern position, which would likely be at taxpayer expense.

Rich Lowry of National Review on the NRA

Writing in Politico, Rich Lowry, Editor of National Review, writes of NRA as a model organization:

By the standards usually set for our politics, the NRA is a model organization. We say we want people more involved in the process. The NRAâ€™s more than 4 million members are highly engaged. The organizationâ€™s recent national conference in St. Louis attracted 73,000 people â€” one of the largest conventions ever held in the city.

We say thereâ€™s too much partisanship. Single-mindedly committed to its cause, the NRA endorsed about 60 House Democrats in 2010.

And we say that we value the Constitution. Gun-control advocates, nonetheless, treat the Second Amendment like an â€œink blotâ€ (to borrow Robert Borkâ€™s famous phrase for the Ninth Amendment). They consider it an anachronism, an unfortunate lapse by James Madison, a forlorn leftover from the 18th century.

To be fair, they don’t really claim that it was an unfortunate lapse by James Madison, they suggest that James Madison would have agreed with their position, and that his only concern was the preservation of the militia system, which since has fallen into disuse and disrepair, making any right of the people a complete non-barrier to anything they wish to accomplish, up to and including draconian gun bans. I think it’s important that we on the right get the exact crazy precise, but regardless of that, Mr. Lowry has done an excellent job with this article.

More on Cheap Safes: The DAC Fast Open Sportsafe

Following up on my previous post about portable gun safes, Bitter had aÂ DAC Fast Open SportsafeÂ sitting around that she had long lost the key for, and thought contained her passport. I decided to have a go at this, after watching some of the more detailed videos this guy produced explaining the common vulnerabilities. The good news is that the DAC Sportsafe, based on my non-expert attempts to crack, is good for protecting a gun from a young child. It doesn’t seem to open if you impact it any way that I could find, and rather than a latch, the electric motor extends and retracts a thick crossbar, which is held in the closed position by reasonably strong spring. The motor likely uses a worm gear to retract it against the spring. The mechanism from the inside is protected by plating, so any attack on the latching mechanism through the door or from exposed bolt holes will likely fail.

The bad news is that I did get into it, and now that I know how to do it, I could develop a tool to do it quickly. So for burglary, it’s not so great for someone who has knowledge on how to defeat it, and if it’s left unsecured to a floor or heavy furniture. The DAC’s fatal flaw is the rubber keypad, which if removed, allows both the electronics to be accessed through several holes. The DAC Sportsafe has an external power adapter that can be easily removed, also allowing access to the electronics inside. I did not explore attacks on the electronics, except to try a quick shorting attack on the external power adapter which did not work. With the cover off, a small gap can be noticed between the outside plate, and the plate they used to to “cover” the electronics. This gap allowed me to slip a blade from my Leatherman inside to push the crossbar out of the latch, pry the door back a bit, and then remove the blade, causing the door to open. The disappointment is that this could have been easily prevented by extending the steel plate a few millimeters so the plates overlapped. Bitter’s safe did not have power, so I could not try a learn button attack, to reprogram the access code, but a learn button attack on this safe is simple enough if you do not have the Â base plateÂ on, and the safe secured. You can do it with an old coat hanger. If you have a DAC Fast Open Sportsafe, the best thing you can do to helps is security is to properly secure it to a floor or furniture.

This is all making me wonder if people would pay 200-300 dollars for an electronic quick-open safe that is secure enough that you’d force an intruder or burglar to attack from the outside with cutting tools or drills. Most of these flaws are easily avoidable with a little engineering thought, and wouldn’t end up adding a whole lot to the overall production cost. Any cheap, portable safe is going to be vulnerable to cutting tools and drills, so the primary purpose of a safe like this is securing the gun against unauthorized access by children and burglars who don’t have the knowledge, tools, or time to engage in drilling or cutting. No safe is going to stop a determined professional who knows what he’s doing. I’d have to say the DAC Fast Action Sportsafe does a better job than most that we saw in the last post that had flaws, especially if properly secured to a floor or heavy piece of furniture, with the bolts installed properly and with thread lock used. I’d say if you’re going to buy a portable, Fast Open safe, this is a better option than many of the others that were exploited in Marc Tobias’s videos.

Beware of Cheap Gun Safes

Forbes does a report on gun safes, and shows many common, cheap gun safes are way too easy to circumvent. In some cases the child here was told by an adult how to circumvent, but there are several cases where a a kid could pretty easily do some of this stuff just being a kid.

Some of these problems could probably be solved by securing it to a floor, wall or heavy piece of furniture, but parents who own guns should be aware that not all safes are created equal. Generally speaking, good security costs some bucks.

Working on My Skee Ball Game

Company outing today to Hersheypark. Just got back. Thanks to Bitter for filling in. I basically tend to hit all the roller coasters I used to like as a kid (that I’m almost too fat for these days) and then spend the rest of the time cooling off in the arcade parked at a Skee Ball machine. I could play Skee Ball all day if I had enough quarters. I liked it as a kid, and still like it today. Spent part of the day with sometimes co-blogger Jason and two of his older kids, while his wife was back home with the baby. Hershey Park has changed a lot since I started going there as a tyke, but it’s nice that you can still take kids on the same rides that you went on when you were their age. The Coal Cracker is still fun after all these years, and The Comet can still shake the fillings out of your teeth, just like it’s been doing since it was built in 1946. When we were kids, we used to use the cable cars called “Sky Ride” that traveled high above the park to go from one side of the park to the other, but they seem to have torn that down in 1992.Â In the intervening years they’ve added a lot of steel coasters, but I’m still a fan of the complimentary chiropractic treatments the wooden coasters give you. I stick with the classics of wooden coasters and Skee Ball.

Redefining Insane

We’ve highlighted quite a bit of rhetoric from anti-gun advocates who view Second Amendment supporters as less than human, or at least as people who deserve less respect than they do as citizens. They want us thrown out of the political debate, our rights to petition our government officials stripped, our right to organize taken away, and our First Amendment right to even speak out with our opinions on what various government entities are doing in regards to firearms policy restricted.

With the Aurora shooting bringing more attention to the issue of mental health qualifications for gun ownership, I couldn’t help but notice a trend in quite a few pieces written by those looking for more gun control. (Emphasis added below.)

“US gun laws: Guilty by reason of insanity” – Laramie Boomerang: “Perhaps, if sane laws on gun control, including the ban on high capacity magazines, were in place, many in Aurora who are now dead or seriously injured would be alive and well today.”
Washington Post: “The gun lobby barely had to say a word before the media sent advocates of saner gun regulation shuffling off in defeat.”
New York Times: “The fact that Congress found it impossible to extend the law against guns that allow you to shoot off 100 bullets in a couple of minutes is simply insane.”
“NRA’s definition of ‘sane American‘ sure has changed” – St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Today, sane Americans can’t even talk about guns.”
“Gun Sanity” – The Record: “Stop the insanity. It is that simple. The Second Amendment does not give Americans a constitutional right to weapons of mass destruction.”
“Gun Insanity” – Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus: “The Luntz poll suggests that gun owners are saner than our leaders think. Responsible gun owners donâ€™t need access to assault weapons.”

They want to define their political opponents down. See, you can’t possibly be sane if you have a different opinion on public policy. If you’re not sane, well, we can’t trust you with firearms. It’s as simple as that…

Don’t Expect Transparency on Gun Policy from the White House

I love going back to look at some of President Obama’s promises about transparency in government. We gun owners and Second Amendment supporters shouldn’t be shocked that the administration’s dedication to keep public policy secrets is likely to be used against us. I mean the guy violated a key transparency promise to share all non-emergency bills with the public for five days before acting on them only nine days into his term. Nine days for the first transparency lie, is it any wonder that we still can’t get his administration to turn over documents about Fast & Furious? They’ve had three years now to perfect the ways they will violate the transparency pledges.

Remember last year when the White House promised to work on gun control secretly so that voters won’t know what he’s doing?

[Sarah] Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney. During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.

“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”

Obama’s buddy Mike Bloomberg already made sure that the White House has a blueprint for how he can enact more gun control without the oversight of Congress. Certainly, it sounds like the White House could be dusting off those plans from Bloomberg.

A day after President Obama vowed in a speech to â€œleave no stone unturnedâ€ in his quest to reduce gun violence, his spokesman said the presidentâ€™s efforts wonâ€™t include any new gun-control proposals.

â€œThere are things that we can do, short of legislation and short of gun laws, as the president said, that can reduce violence in our society,â€ White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

And another report:

President Obama suggested Thursday that he isn’t backing away from talking about gun policy.

“I’m sure we’ll have more opportunity to talk about this,” he said to a reporter’s question after he made brief remarks pressuring the House of Representatives to pass the middle class tax cut extension that cleared the Senate on Wednesday. …

Earlier Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president was focused on gun control measures “short of legislation.”

Even the DC political press is outlining ways for Obama to enact more gun control while skirting the accountability to the people that typically comes with pushing it through Congress first. They note that we probably shouldn’t expect to hear much on what actions Obama might take:

Obama is no stranger to dipping deep into the murky waters of executive powers and finding ways to achieve policy goals that Congress has thwarted. Proponents of gun control say that the president has crystal clear and uncontested powersâ€”some used by an NRA card-carrying GOP president (Bush resigned from the group in 1995)â€”to deal with assault weapons.

Yet the White House remains stonily silent on Obamaâ€™s intentions even to reevaluate whether to exercise these powers.

I would not be surprised if shortly after election day – regardless of the outcome – we start learning about all sorts of actions by various agencies to more tightly regulate guns in a way that circumvents the legislative process. You cannot expect transparency from this administration, so it’s probably best to prepare for the worst given the resources Bloomberg has provided and the promises the White House made to Brady in a closed meeting.