While the anti-gun folks weren’t looking: “Fifteen states have enacted laws regarding guns so far this year, more than 80 percent of them increasing gun rights.” h/t Dave Hardy. Of course, this is further division into Two Americas., with the “blue” states getting more anti-gun, and the “red” states getting more pro-gun. Where will Pennsylvania fall? What about the other states that are solidly Democratic, but have a gun tradition? That is the big question. There are examples of bluer states that have remained relatively free in terms of guns, like Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota. But how long will those states hold out with a Democratic Party that’s dedicated to eradicating the Second Amendment? Colorado hasn’t fared so well in its flirtation with going blue from purple. Washington State is not out of the woods either, since it looks like we’re going to be facing a ballot fight there.
Year: 2013
Dear NRA,
I will be very disappointed if I don’t see this work of art on display next week.
Love,
Bitter
P.S. I think I need to find a giant Pennsylvania outline and make buddies with the shotgunners at the gun club.
Sorry for the Lack of Posting Today
Things at work are busy. In addition to the main project I’ve been working on coming to a header in the next few weeks, as we get closer to final delivery, on the side I’ve been busy layering my wookie suit. I’ve started a Bitcoin mining pool based on a half-baked suggestion from our CEO.
Bitcoin mining is actually quite like real prospecting, only digitally. They are looking for rare hashes; ones with a certain number of runs of zeros (determined by the network), which is unusual mathematically. The network can adjust the required difficulty up and down, depending on how quickly new Bitcoins are being discovered. This is algorithmic, so there’s no “central bank” so to speak, controlling the supply of the “currency.” This is what makes Bitcoins so attractive to the wookie suited among us.
Prospecting involves running through a lot of SHA256Â hashes looking for the “valuable” ones. Turns out GPUs are quite adept at doing SHA256 hashing, and since we have quite a bit of GPU processing power hanging around not doing a whole lot, it seemed like a potentially fun experiment, to try to find some of those rare and valuable hashes. I have no idea whether this can earn real cash, or what we could actually buy with Bitcoins, but our company encourages side projects, and this seemed worth learning a bit about (no pun intended).
Fortunately for you guys, the blog server was absolutely pitiful at mining Bitcoins. It has CPU power (which sucks at prospecting) rather than GPU power (which excels at it), so I decided using the blog server’s spare CPU cycles was never going to be worth the electricity it consumed. My workstation is also not so good at mining, even though it has a decent GPU, partly because I think Apple’s OpenCL implementation is craptastic. But a Linux machine with a mid-range ATI Radeon card in it? All your hashes are belong to us.
Tom Knapp Passes
Courtesy of Exurban Kevin, I just noticed that Tom Knapp passed away today.
Long Term Consequences of Ammo Shortages in .22
Clayton Cramer blogged about the possible impact of a copper mine landslide on ammunition production, and that got me thinking about the extended impacts of today’s continued ammunition shortages.
Working with the Friends of NRA program, I’ve met several local instructors for youth shooting programs. Since most of these folks work with new junior shooters, they always start off with .22. I know at least one local Boy Scout camp shooting instructor who seriously questioned their ability to have any kind of shooting program due to the lack of ammunition. This is a long-term problem, folks. Every opportunity we lose to introduce new shooters to safe firearms handling is an opportunity to lost creating another pro-gun voter in the future. At the very least, it’s the loss of someone who likely won’t become hysterical gun policy debates because they at least have some basic understanding of firearms.
I’ve actually thought about getting back into shooting at Sebastian’s club more this year since I largely haven’t shot anything in a good year or more. But then that goes to the issue of not wanting to use up what ammunition we have knowing that we can’t easily get more of it.
A local gun shop is showing their new shipment of 50,000 rounds 5.56 which is already on sale (normally, they wait and put all ammo on sale on Saturday mornings) and even available for up to 10 boxes purchased at a time. Meanwhile, the few boxes of .22 are limited to one box per customer. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the shock of .22 being the high demand caliber of ammunition.
I am thinking about pestering Sebastian to fix my Crosman this year so I can shoot air gun again. A quick search of places that sell pellets actually show specials to get a free tin (or multiple free tins!) of pellets with a purchase. That’s a very refreshing change to see. (For what it’s worth, any air gun billed as “tactical” makes me laugh.)
The Problem of Pennsylvania
This is why the gun control debate isn’t going away in Pennsylvania.
It’s kind of funny that we’re not currently facing any serious threats at the state level, yet Pennsylvania seems to be right on an edge of voting for major gun control supporters.
It doesn’t make me feel any better that some are speculating a MAIG mayor who raised tons of cash for a re-election effort that was abruptly cancelled may turn that into a super PAC fund.
New Technology
We have a new toy in the house. A Samgsung Galaxy Tab 2. This is actually Sebastian, trying to get used to the piddly little keyboard , and setting up WordPress for Bitter. We got this to act as a substitute for a laptop when we go to Houston next week for NRA Annual Meeting . Not a bad toy for the money, when you compare it to the cost of an iPad. I’m still sore Apple end of lifed the iPad 1 two years after I got it.
Live Anti-NRA Protest
Watch as a small group of dirty hippies holds a K-street protest against lobby shops NRA uses. I think they even have a drum. One of them just said “You know, even if I’m on the same side as Bloomberg on this issue, F**k Bloomberg,” while flipping the bird. Even if his allies think he’s insufferable. I’ve seen more people at hanging out at my club on an afternoon.
UPDATE: Protest seems to be over now. They are headed to Arizona Senator Jeff Flake’s office. I hope for his staff’s sake they shower first.
UPDATE: Back on now. Looks like they are headed over to Flake’s office.
UPDATE: They want everyone to know “We’re regular people.” Well, so are we, and there are a lot more of us than there are of you.
UPDATE: Just heard one of them say “It would just be easier to beat the shit out of someone,” in regards to someone in a car nearly hitting them because they are crossing streets without paying attention. Why are anti-gun activists so violent?
Understatement of the Year
I linked to this article earlier, but I wanted to highlight a quote:
But the problem might be less with Obama and more with democracy itself. To be a citizen in a mass democracy is to live in a permanent state of political frustration. There are so many people in the country with so many different views, and the institutions of a mass democracy are inevitably so clunky, that the political process isn’t going to give you what you want very much of the time.
Like the people who founded this country, I’ve never been convinced that more democracy in government is always a good thing. The old saying that democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner is cliche, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Our system was supposed to be a Constitutional Republic, with some democratic features, but with enough restraints placed on government that we could govern a large, diverse country without constantly being at each other’s throats. Unfortunately, the more democracy you add to the mix, the more it seems like those restrains don’t matter.
Thursday Mini Dump
Hopefully this doesn’t run me out of stories for the day, but gun news is still running pretty hot out there, so I’ll risk it.
Gun control thoughts after the Boston Marathon.
During the manhunt in Boston, 69% of voters wanted a gun. Also interesting is that less than half of Americans are upset about the Senate gun vote. So much for the 80-90% number.
The upcoming gun control jihad. Some people just don’t know when they are beaten. Not that we’ve beaten gun control, mind you, but Bloomberg is gun control’s future. Groups like CSGV and Brady have become largely irrelevant in the debate.
Another analysis of why NRA won and gun control lost, by Mother Jones.
Hey, even true blue Western states don’t like gun control much.
Some lies on guns are even too much for the New York Times.
USA today misleads on gun dealer inspections. It’s worth noting that as the gun control crowd is attempting to make FFLs the only entities that can legally transfer guns in this country, they are simultaneously trying to reduce the number of FFLs out there.