Month: April 2009

Delicate infrastructure

/ hsoi

I work for a company in California.

Right now we’re supposed to be having a lot of meetings using a mix of telephone and Internet for voice and video, screen sharing, all other sorts of technical goodies.

But it’s been odd. I haven’t seen anyone from the office online yet. No IM’s, no emails. Meeting is supposed to start but no one is around, nor is anyone calling me into the meeting. I pick up the telephone and start calling. Every line is busy. That’s odd. I call mobile phones, they all kick immediately into voice mail. That’s really odd. I tried a few people’s home phones (reach the spouse, ensure I have the right mobile number) and they were busy. Now things are just getting weird. Of course any attempts to connect via the Internet to the office (e.g. VPN) aren’t happening.

I called the company’s main office down in southern California. They confirm the other office seems to have no phone or Internet. This sometimes happens, so I think no big deal, but coupled with all the other inabilities to get through (e.g. mobile phones), I hit Google.

I find this.

That’s basically the area where the office is located. So best I can say is this is the problem. So who knows how long we’ll be high and dry.

Think about the implications of this:

  • An AT&T fiber line was cut. As a result, 50,000 land lines were down, mobile phones are down, Internet is down. This leaves a massive number of people without any means of communication to anything further than shouting distance.
  • Report says that people may not be able to contact police. They are saying if you have an emergency to go to the nearest police station. Think about that. If you ever counted on the police coming to help you, how can they know to come help you if you can’t tell them to come help you…. again, unless they’re within shouting distance.
    • If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you can probably figure out what I’m implying here.
  • Of course, emergencies aren’t just police. What about medical emergencies? What if your house catches fire?
  • How are hospitals coping?
  • If everything can be brought to a screeching halt by severing one line, what does that say about infrastructure? Lack of redundancy?
  • How much commerce is affected? Not just our company’s inability to do business, but think about simple credit card transactions. I doubt those can go through. No grocery shopping, no buying gasoline, no nothing. Heck, I’m sure ATM’s aren’t working. Got cash?

And there are many many other things that you can imply by the fact that one line was cut and all this goes down.

Technology is great, but how much do we depend upon it? And how fragile is it all?

Updated: Word I hear is that this is now being view as vandalism. That someone maliciously cut 5 fiber optic cables. It’s created all sorts of chaos, it demonstrates how reliant we are upon such technology, and it shows how fragile things can be.

Updated 2: Looks like the plot sickens. Interesting quote:

“We would never condone any kind of destruction like this,” [Communications Workers of America union] spokeswoman Libby Sayre said. “We didn’t do it this time. We would never do it.”

Emphasis mine. This time. Mmm.

Random thoughts from the gun range

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I was able to make a quick trip to the local indoor gun range this morning to try out my new purchase. Nothing really cohesive here… just a bunch of thoughts from the trip.

First, the Buck Mark was so nice. I cleaned her before I went, to take off the manufacturing/shipping residues and ensure it was well-oiled. Daughter helped me. I do think she’s more into shooting than her brothers, which is great! She can’t wait to try out the Buck Mark. I just didn’t have time this morning (and I refuse to take my kids to the indoor range), so I’ll soon be making time to take her to the outdoor range as soon as I can. Meantime I told her we can do some dry practice with it at home so she can learn it.

At the range, it was nice. This is why I prefer going early on weekday mornings: I was the first and only person on the range. Shot benchrest so I could get the rear sight adjusted. Shot at 7 yards to get it on paper, then out to 15, then 25, then back to 7. Fine tuned along the way. Should be sighted in, but after squinting so hard for so long my eyes were getting upset with me and it’s so dark in there, so I may need to re-verify the sight-in later. I have a hard time shooting with both eyes open, but it’s something I work on and I’ll get there eventually. 

The Buck Mark itself was quite nice. It balances very well (has a 5.5″ barrel). The grip is very comfortable, but either it’s a wee thick (nah) or the magazine release button is a little short (this)… I can’t quite get my thumb to drop the magazine. I’ll have to see if there’s an aftermarket replacement for the mag release that’s just a hair bigger, but it’s a minor nit. Trigger felt nice. The magazine is a little tricky to load but once you get the hang of it, not so bad. I did buy one of these HKS magazine speed loader things, tried it once, didn’t use it again. Not that there’s anything wrong with it (I’m sure it’ll make things a bit easier for my kids), but it’s just another gadget to lose or break or forget and doesn’t really offer me any sort of advantage… certainly didn’t help me load any faster.

All in all, I’m happy with it. I really want to shoot some steel with it… that’ll be fun!

As for other things at the range…

When I arrived there were a group of guys in the parking lot talking. I figured they had just finished up and were talking before leaving. But as I was finishing up I saw they had moved into the ready area and were coming in. So, I only put about 70 rounds total downrange and did feel I got her dialed in fine, but with them coming I opted to leave a little early (only thing remaining was to just shoot offhand for some fun). I have no idea what their gun handling skills were like, but seeing some of their targets at 3 yards with holes all about well… better safe than sorry.

When I was back in the store area waiting for a cashier, I observed other people. One guy was at the rental counter trying out different guns. He would hold the gun at his stomach to rack the slide, violating rule 1 in a few ways, the biggest of which was that “into your stomach” is not a safe direction for a muzzle. Another man was getting his gun worked on. Looked to be a Ruger Charger Pistol, looked like he was getting a bore sight. Bore sight completed, employee handed the gun back to the man, then I don’t know what he was doing but he then proceeded to aim at the ground (and his feet) and do something… with his finger on the trigger. I did my best to stand somewhere else.

The shop/range wasn’t all that busy this morning, but it was enough. I try to avoid this place for these reasons (amongst others), but there are some things it’s good for (e.g. sighting in). So, when I was leaving to go there this morning I had to explain to the kids why they couldn’t go and why I won’t take them. When I got home, I was able to give them specific examples as to why I won’t take them there.

On the drive home, I thought more about the Ruger Charger. Oldest likes it because of how it looks. He really wants one. I tell him it’s just the same as the Ruger 10/22 rifle we already have (it’s the same action), just different stock/grip and shorter barrel. So that’s why I haven’t been interested in getting one as I haven’t seen the point. However as I thought about it, I think I do see a point. Sometimes I don’t like shooting the 10/22 because I want to shoot a handgun, not a rifle. Then when you consider the Ruger 10/22 is the most popular rimfire rifle in the world and has a big aftermarket, what that means is with the Charger you can have a .22 pistol with a massive aftermarket, so you can really customize and tune it just like you like it. That’s actually a pretty good thing. So no, the Charger isn’t on my “to buy” list, but now at least I’ll consider it.

HB 1893 update

/ hsoi

I just received an email update from TSRA that HB 1893 passed out of committee by a 5-3 vote.

As of this writing the bill’s page isn’t updated and I can’t find more details yet… hopefully more details soon.

Updated: Still waiting on the meeting minutes. I’d like to know who voted how.

Updated 2: Finally, the meeting minutes have been posted. I list their name followed by party affiliation, district number, and NRA 2008 grade:

For: Merritt (R, 7, A); Frost (D, 1, A+); Driver (R, 113, A+); King, Phil (R, 61, A+); Lewis (R, 81, C).

Against: Burnam (D, 90, F); Mallory Caraway (D, 110, C); Rodriguez, Eddie (D, 51, D).

Absent: Vo (D, 149, B+)

tolerate != approve

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

Shoothouse Barbie has a nice (and growing) piece worth reading.

A good quote:

The word “tolerate” has been hijacked and misused for so very long that few people are really using it appropriately any more. Suffice to say that “toleration != approval”. 

She’s quite right. When you live in a state with 24,000,000 people, a country with over 300,000,000, a world with over 6,000,000,000, or just in your own household with maybe 3-5 people, people are going to do things you do not approve of. No one says you have to approve of it, but we do have to tolerate it. Rather, we do have to tolerate it if we wish to call ourselves a free society. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to support it, but you have to tolerate it… else someday someone’s going to not tolerate things you like and do. Treat others as you want to be treated, and all that good stuff.

The Rules

/ hsoi / 18 Comments

When dealing with firearms, there are rules of gun safety. I’ve mentioned “the rules” here and here and alluded to them here, but I haven’t had a good post that just discusses “the rules” so I’m remedying that with this post.

When I first was learning about guns I heard some basic safety rules, and as you dig around the Internet and talk with other people, you’ll find various incarnations of “the rules”. Some say there’s 1 rule, some say 3, some say 4, some say 10, some have even longer lists. Then you may go to a gun range and get even more rules, but often those rules pertain to the range and not general gun safety (and certainly they never negate the basic rules). All rule sets tend to be well-intended and have good advice. For instance, this 10 commandments of safety has some good stuff to it, both in terms of general safety and good advice for safely walking the fields while hunting. This is a list of 14 safety rules from a US Army manual. However, being an engineer I appreciate simplicity.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

As a result, I gravitated to the two front-runners of the gun safety mantra: Col. Jeff Cooper‘s:

  1. All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
  2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. For those that insist this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target. This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60% of inadvertent discharges.
  4. Identify your target and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything you have not postively identified.

and the NRA’s:

  1. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
  2. Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
  3. Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

Between the two, I leaned towards Col. Cooper’s version of the rules. I read the debate between the two versions, I read Cooper’s Commentaries, I saw how other gun folk I respected followed Col. Cooper’s version, and I don’t know if I gave into the herd mentality and/or opted to bow at the altar of Jeff Cooper, but I settled on using Cooper’s 4 rules as the rules I would build my foundation upon. Life was good, and safer. But I must admit, something about Cooper’s rules never sat well with me. I think it was rule 1. While I do think rule 1 is a good guideline, there are aspects of gun handling that require you to treat a gun as unloaded, such as dry fire. I have been unable to reconcile the two, as a rule shouldn’t be violated; a guideline perhaps can be, but a safety rule should not. So how can I dry fire if the gun is (treated as) always loaded? In “the debate” a great point was made about this very issue:

The simple reason the NRA’s Rule One is superior is that if this rule is followed – even if all others are forgotten – nobody will get hurt. The same cannot be said about Cooper’s Rule One, and that is yet another reason why it is inferior – especially for the tyro.

The NRA method is far more universal than Cooper’s rules. Further, while there is no excuse for pointing a gun in an unsafe direction, there are lots of good reasons for treating guns as unloaded (e.g., dry-firing, inspecting the bore, etc.) when it is positively determined it is unloaded and made safe. I can dry-fire a verified safe gun in a safe direction; I can’t dry-fire if it is “always loaded.”

No “rule” so frequently and facially untrue carries much weight. That said, I still assert it is a valuable mindset. But proper mindset is a level above following rules to which only a minority of gun handlers ever aspire.

Furthermore, Jeff Cooper himself, at least at one time in his book Fighting Handguns on pages 97-98, advocated point shooting, which would preclude using the sights and thus violate his rule #3.

While sitting in classes at KR Training, Karl starts every class with a safety lecture. I noticed when he teaches safety to beginners, he teaches the 3 NRA rules. I asked him why he teaches that set of rules instead of some other. He gave me a detailed response, but there was one thing about his response that stood out to me:

The NRA rules are written as positive statements (what you should do) in a logical order (safe direction is most important) with nice clean parallel sentence structure (each starting with always for emphasis).

I hadn’t made that observation about the 2 rule sets, but (as usual) Karl is right. In light of my “mindset is everything” posting, this really struck home with me.

So as I think about it: the rule reconciliation, the universality and applicability, the structure, the presentation, the mindset, and the greater simplicity, I’m going to improve my mindset and adopt the 3 NRA rules. This affects my own mindset, as well as what I teach to others. I’ll still keep Cooper’s rules in my head as there’s still value to them, but I’m going to change my mindset to follow the NRA’s.

Inanimate object springs to life

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

… and manages to cause death and destruction. At least, according to this guy.

I am not unsympathetic to the death of 5 children. I am sure they were fully innocent, and this is the act of a lone, upset, confused, sad, twisted man. The whole story is sad and terrible.

However, a gun did not kill these children, a man did. Yes he used a gun, but that really doesn’t matter unless you’re pushing an agenda. This man did what he did because he had deep problems, and had he lacked a gun he likely would have found some other way. When someone driving a car hits and kills someone, we say the driver killed the person, not the car. If that person was drunk, we say a drunk driver killed the person, not Anheuser-Busch. When a person slips in the bathtub, we don’t blame soap. Why are guns singled out as the one inanimate object that is somehow able to do things on its own?

But what I really wish to comment on is Mr. Rivers’ comments in his posting. I had started to write this long piece, dissecting his assertions and arguments…. but I got tired and opted to edit my posting here to a simple thing.

Mr. Rivers, can you demonstrate and explain how your proposed solutions will actually solve the problem that you see existing? Don’t just keep reciting the same old mantras of gun control, no emotional appeals, but actually articulate how your proposed means will achieve your desired ends. I’ll wait right here for your answer. Joe Huffman has been waiting for nearly 5 years.

Mr. Rivers, I used to come from a similar place as you. Then I became educated on the topic, arguably from “the other side”. Knowing “both sides of the issue” instead of clinging to my old one side, logic won out and I now find myself where I am today. As a result, it’s difficult for me to look at viewpoints such as yours as anything but ignorant; I was ignorant on this matter, so it helps me recognize ignorance when I see it. Mr. Rivers, if you’re willing to engage in open, calm, and rational discourse on this matter, I’m happy to speak with you.

Imaginary boundaries

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Another article discussing Texas’ effort for concealed carry on college campuses.

Though most college students are legally adults, they are still maturing and are often subject to stress that can lead to depression, substance abuse and other mental health issues, the statement says. Bringing guns into that environment could be dangerous.

The proposed law only extends to people with a concealed handgun license, which in Texas means you must be at least 21 years of age.  Furthermore, these same people can carry when not on campus. Is there something about the invisible line of a campus boundary that changes things? If a person is having problems, they’re going to have them on both sides of that line. If they’re not having problems, they’re going to not have them on both sides of that line.

Shirley Reed, president of South Texas College, said she also opposes the legislation and believes security should be left to the professionals. Although concealed handgun licensees may know how to use a weapon, they are not versed in how to make the judgment of whether to fire it, she said.

Because they are professionals doesn’t mean much. I can’t carry a cop around with me all day every day. Even if I could, it’s been ruled time and time again they are under no obligation to actually provide any sort of security. Then even if they would, it doesn’t mean they are effective and capable. Furthermore, Ms. Reed states that a licensees are not versed on how to make the judgment of whether to fire a gun. If you are in fear of your life, you can fire it. If you are not, then you shouldn’t be firing it. But apparently I can’t make that judgment call…. and then I wonder, what else are we not capable of judging? Ms. Reed, if you don’t think we’re capable of that, what do you think we’re capable of? Just what do you think of us and our ability? Why do you think so little of the students that attend South Texas College? Are you that ineffective as an educator?

“I strongly believe in the right to bear arms,” [Rep. Veronica] Gonzales [D-McAllen] said. “But there’s a time and a place for it.”

Please tell me, Rep. Gonzales, what that time and place is. Furthermore, it sounds like you have the ability to see into the future and can predict when bad things are going to happen. I don’t have such an ability, so the best I can do is take a cue from my Boy Scout training and Be Prepared.

“A school should be a peaceful environment,” Gonzales said

Why does a school get some sort of special treatment and consideration? It is not holy ground (and this isn’t Highlander). 

Marcos Silva, the [UTPA] student body president, said students have told him that if they knew a classmate had a gun, they would be more likely to focus on that person than what a professor was saying.

Why? You’re college students. You’re supposed to be open-minded. You consider yourselves wonderful good people that don’t hate, that don’t carry around prejudices. So why this attitude? Facts show folks issued a concealed handgun license tend to be amazingly law-abiding; in fact, they tend to be more law-abiding than the general populace. Why do you want to focus on a law-abiding citizen? Looking for a role model?
“If the law permits it for adults, with licenses … what is the problem?” said [Rep. Aaron] Peña, D-Edinburg. “We’re not dealing with children here. We’re dealing with adults.”
Apparently some think adults are only capable of exercising their own judgment in certain situations. In other situations in other places, they apparently need their mother or big brother to make their decisions for them.