Boomershoot AAR

So, four days of driving for two days of shooting.  Was it worth it?

Youbetcherassitwas.

This post will be pic heavy, so everything else is under the fold.

Chains of Command

I just finished Marko Kloos' latest novel, Chains of Command. EXCELLENT book. He just keeps getting better. If you've not been reading his Frontlines series, I strongly recommend them.  Near-future military Sci-Fi written by someone who knows military life and can write it well.

Write faster, Marko.

Homeward Bound

I left the Konkolville Hotel at 5:50 this morning, drove into Orofino, checked the tire pressure (*wink*), and then headed South.

Just South of Twin Falls, what did I run into?  This:

I drove through this crap for 100 miles, then finally it switched back to rain.

Until I got near Ely, NV. It's doing this:

When I checked in at the hotel, I asked what the weather forecast was. It's supposed to snow until 11PM. The temperature currently is 34ºF and it's going to get colder. Who was it that thought going home through Ely was a good idea? And what the hell happened to Global Warming?

UPDATE: 8:30PM and it's not snowing. And warmer. Whew!

When Even VOX Recognizes a Problem...

This piece has been making the rounds, "The smug style in American liberalism" by Emmett Rensin.  There's too much to quote and I recommend you read the whole thing, but I was struck by this passage:

A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.

A few years ago I pulled a passage from a book, John Ringo's The Road to Damascus that I'd like to repeat here:

(The party) is composed of two tiers. The lower tier produces many outspoken members who make their demands known to the upper tier. The lower tier is derived from the inner-city population that serves as the base of the party. The lower tier's members are generally educated in public school systems and if they aspire to advanced training, they are educated in facilities provided by the state. This wing constitutes the majority of (the party's) membership, but contributes little or nothing to party theory or platform. It votes the party line and is rewarded with cash payments, subsidized housing, subsidized education, and occasional preferential employment in government positions. The lower tier provides only a handful of clearly token individuals allowed to serve in high offices.

The upper tier, which includes most of the party's management, virtually all the appointed and elected government officials, and all of the party's decision-makers, is drawn exclusively from suburban areas where wealth is a fundamental criterion for admittance as a resident. These party members are generally educated at private schools and attend private colleges. They are not affected by food-rationing schemes, income caps or taxation laws, as the legislation drafted and passed by members of their social group inevitably contains loopholes that effectively shelter their income and render them immune from unpleasant statues that restrict the lives of lower-tier party members and all nonparty citizens.

(The party) leadership recognizes that in return for supporting a seemingly populist agenda, they can obtain all the votes they require to remain in power. Even the most cursory analysis of their actions and attitudes, however, indicates that they are not populists but, in fact, are strong antipopulists who actively despise their voting base. This....is proven by their efforts to reduce public educational systems to a level most grade-school children (in other countries) have surpassed, with the excuse that this curriculum is all that the students can handle. They have made the inner-city population base totally dependent on the government, which they control.

Well, one more:

The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those out there in the country, was not a political ideology at all.

The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better.

From the masthead of this blog, the quote from Sultan Knish:

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem.

Self-realization from the Left? Too little, too late. I bet the piece gets memory-holed.

Two is One and One is None

And apparently two is none, if you don't check adequately first.

So as reported I've been on my way to Boomershoot.  I departed from my hotel in Brigham City at 07:00 local time (06:00 Pacific Standard Time), and Google Maps, being a bi%$h, routed me through the tiny Idaho burg of Weiser (pronounced Weezer).  Just outside of Weiser, this happened:

I'd had (I thought) all the tires checked for proper inflation on Wednesday before I left, but apparently I hit some road debris and that was that. No warning until the tire just let go. So, off on the shoulder I jack up the truck and pull the bad one off, then I drop the (supposed) spare from under the bed:

FML. At least I had cell service. I called State Farm for roadside assistance. Took half an hour to get them to figure out where I was and dispatch a tow truck. Text message said they'd be about 90 minutes out. Wonderful.

Then a local Sheriff's deputy pulled in behind me, scoped out the situation, and offered to take me and my tire back into Weiser to the closest tire shop. I cancelled the tow, and off we went. Two hours, two tires and $470 later, the new spare is the old driver's side rear, and I have a new set of Cooper tires on the back axle:

Finally got into Orofino about 5:45 Pacific time, but I'm ready for Boomershoot now!

Iowahawk is a National Treasure

Tam says it best:

Apparently the Nazi Anime Fan wing of the internet has its jimmies thoroughly rustled by the fact that the genocidal founder of the Democrat party has been replaced on the Twenty by a gun-toting African-American Republican woman. And the Pinko Identity Politics wing of the internet doesn't even realize that's what just happened.

This is like sipping a martini made out of hippie and Nazi tears, shaken AND stirred.

And this is the BEST suggestion for the $20 bill I've EVER seen:

Trigger warning! TRIGGER WARNING!!

Boomershoot Update

Made my last pre-Boomershoot trip to the range this morning.  Seems during my previous testing with the .300 Win Mag I managed to shoot my scope loose.  Red Loctite applied, torqued to spec, and I'm now dialed in at 500 meters.  Took the target AR and ran a magazine through it at 400 meters.  It's ready to go.  Still need to load some .260 Remington for the Power Tool™.  I'll have to sight that in on Saturday.  I think I'm going to use it on the 385 yard berm only, though.  Last time I scared a lot of targets with the pistol at 640 yards, but I think I only hit one.

I have someone sharing Position 26 with me now, so I've got a spotter and so does he.  I head out for Orofino on Thursday.  I'm planning to stop in Ogden, UT Thursday night, which should put me in Orofino on Friday afternoon.  I'm doing Field Fire and High Intensity on Saturday, and then the event itself on Sunday, departing Monday morning for the drive home.  Haven't picked a route back yet.

I've got a 5'x7' canopy and some tarp sidewalls to keep the wind and (probably) rain as much at bay as possible, and a half-inch plywood sheet for a ground surface to put my chair and table on.  Weather report says cool and probably rainy Saturday, cooler and maybe rainy Sunday.  Thankfully the wind is supposed to be 10 mph or less.

The Politics of Envy

Bill's been busy!

In Memoriam

My mother passed away on this day one year ago. In honor of her memory, I'm reposting the eulogy I gave at her memorial service:

Apropriate This!

Bill Whittle's latest:


And if you are a member of PJ Media, you might want to join BillWhittle.com. PJTV is shutting down all future production. Klavan, Scott Ott and Steven Green need a new home. Bill gets a lot of his income, or did, from PJTV.

I've been a member for a couple of years now. You can join here.

Received via Email

I took down my Rebel flag (which you can't buy on eBay any more), tossed the ‘Don't Tread on Me’ flag and peeled the NRA sticker off the front door. I gave the pit bull to my mother-in-law and stored my AR-15. I disconnected my home alarm system and quit the wimpy Neighborhood Watch.

Instead of all that silly stuff I bought two Pakistani flags and put one at each corner of the front yard. Then I purchased the black flag of ISIS (which you CAN buy on eBay) and ran it up the flag pole.

Now, the local police, sheriff, FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Secret Service and other agencies are all watching my house 24/7. I've NEVER felt safer and I'm saving $69.95 a month that ADT used to charge me.

Plus, I bought burkas for my family. When we shop or travel everyone moves out of the way and security can't pat us down.

Safe at last!

Is America getting greater every day or what?

Kinda reminds me of the old story where a guy is woken by his wife who says that she hears a noise. Turns out, there are a couple of people outside in his tool shed ripping him off. He dials 911 and tells the dispatcher that his tool shed is being burgled as they speak. The dispatcher tells him that they can't have a patrol car there in less than 45 minutes. "Forty-five minutes! They'll be long gone by then!" he exclaims. "Never mind, I'll take care of it."

A few minutes later he dials 911 again, and gets the same dispatcher. "You don't need to send a patrol car anymore, but you do need to send an ambulance. I shot those guys."

Three minutes later a patrol car comes screaming to a halt in the driveway and the burglars are apprehended as they come scrambling out of the shed.

One irate cop accosts the homeowner: "I thought you said you'd shot them!" The homeowner responded, "I thought you couldn't get here in less than 45 minutes!"

"Give Me Your Shit, Or I Will Kill You."

The Season Six final episode of The Walking Dead introduced the character Negan, and in that scene (see clip below) he utters these words at the 2:30 mark:

Give me your shit, or I will kill you.

And at about 3:30 he says:

You are not safe. Not even close. In fact, you are pegged. More pegged if you don't do what I want, and what I want is half your shit.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is government distilled to its very essence: You are not safe. Give me the portion of your shit that I want, or I will kill you or have you killed.  And I won't take it all, because if you're dead I can't keep taking your shit.

You'll note that expressing this fact will result in a lot of protest, objecting that that is not the role of government at all!

Bullshit.  Thank you government-schooling for obscuring the raw facts, for whitewashing reality.

The earliest form of government is the tribe, sort of an extended family, but tribes have a HMFIC, and that HMFIC can decide to strand you, kill you outright, or banish you to near-certain death.  Each step up the ladder of government complexity has, as its base, the tax collectors who will take your shit or kill you if you don't pay up.

"But might doesn't make right!" you may object.  No, it doesn't.  Might makes right irrelevant, though.

Coercion as a founding principle of government works, because people want to feel safe more than they want to be free.  Here's another clip:


Loki states,

It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation.  The bright lure of freedom diminishes life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity.  You were made to be ruled.  In the end, you will always kneel.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but "Oh, bullshit." But the man who stands to face him? He does serve as an object lesson. Just as Negan will kill one of Rick's people to cow the rest into submission, Loki attempts to kill the man who opposes him to accomplish the same end - rule by fear.

It isn't that humanity is "made to be ruled," it's that humanity contains rat-bastards willing to kill TO rule. And they will recruit followers who will kill at their instruction, and those followers will kill anyone who opposes them. Recent examples: Saddam Hussein & Sons, North Korea's Kim family dynasty, Robert Mugabe, etc. History is replete with them.  In fact, it is only historically recently that such rat-bastards have been displaced with democratic forms of government, and as I wrote in 2004's Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them, I believe that the reason for this is in large part due to the firearm.  While watching that last episode of The Walking Dead, I kept asking myself, "What happens if someone blows Negan's head off?"  His is a cult of personality.  Cut the head off the snake, who takes over?

As I also said in Those Without Swords, the ability to reason and the ability to exchange ideas leads to a belief in freedom, one shared among people.  But only if those people are armed do they have a chance to break out of rule by fear.  It's not a given, but it's a chance.

But one thing that people need to understand is - at its base - government is "give me what I want, or I will kill you."  We forget that at our peril.

And April 15 is fast approaching.