Politics

Taliban Gun Locker

/ hsoi

A NY Times blog posting about what you find in a Taliban gun locker.

The guns are old (e.g. a 95 year old Lee-Enfield was being used), beat up, but still work (shows that proper lubrication of the internals is most important). I’m curious how accurate they are, but after watching this video well… at least something’s accurate.

The conclusion of the article is a good one:

The paired Lee-Enfields and Kalashnikovs in Marja say as much about the nature of these weapons, and their ammunition, as they do about the Taliban. The Lee-Enfield and Kalashnikov lines were made by the millions, and both are noted for reliability and durability. These two facts have made them, in the eyes of people who carry or face them in war after war, either remarkable tools or a scourge.

And along with the Mosin-Nagant rifles that also turn up in Taliban caches, they and their ammunition are markers of old empires and the standardization of cartridges that accompanied war in the 20th century. That leads to the next point: Cartridge standardization between units and among allies — meaning, fielding many weapons that all fire the same ammunition — was intended to make logistics less complicated for conventional armies and their nations.

It has been a boon for insurgents, too.

For the 24 rifles and machine guns in the locker, produced in multiple nations over many decades, only three types of cartridges are required to feed them — the Lee-Enfields fire the .303, the Kalashnikovs fire the 7.62×39-millimeter round, and the PK machine guns and Mosin-Nagant fire the 7.62×54R round that has been issued to Slavic forces since the 1890s in Imperial Russia.

All of these facts and factors might seem arcane. They are not.

Together the technical qualities of these rifles and the thinking behind them, along with the quality of their manufacture and the relative simplicity of their ammunition resupply, have helped a largely illiterate insurgent movement not just to exert its will on its own country, but also to stand up to the most sophisticated military in the world.

TSRA endorses Perry in 2010

/ hsoi

Received this email announcement from the Texas State Rifle Association PAC

On Thursday, September 16th, the Texas State Rifle Association-PAC joined Chris Cox, Director of NRA-ILA, in Dallas to formally endorse Rick Perry’s re-election as Governor of Texas.

Governor Perry, an avid hunter, target shooter, and a concealed handgun licensee has signed every pro-hunting, pro-self defense, pro-gun bill brought to his desk by TSRA or NRA.  In 2007, Perry signed Castle Doctrine legislation as his first bill of session.

Governor Perry is not only endorsed by TSRA but rated an A+ based on his consistent record of support.

Houston Mayor Bill White, the Democratic challenger, is rated a B for two reasons; his answers to questions on our 2010 candidate questionnaire and his long-time alliance with Mayors Against Illegal Guns.   MAIG’s founder, Mayor Bloomberg of New York supports everything from assault weapon bans to stopping gun shows.

Why would a Texas Mayor align himself with out-of-state, anti-gun mayors?   A person must be “known by the company they keep”.

We urge our members to support a life-long friend to Texas gun owners.

The rest of the TSRA-PAC ratings/grades voters guide is supposed to come out October 1.

Simplicity

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I am an engineer by trade, and Wife points out that I have an engineer mind.

While I spend much of my time working with complex systems, I understand that simplicity is king. Simplicity is actually quite difficult to achieve because it takes work. You start off doing what you need to do, over time things grow and it will become more complex and kinda messy. You must take the time to stop, step back, and reengineer and rearchitect things to regain that simplicity. Typically this will mean you must discard and cast off.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said:

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

Tao Te Ching #48:

In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.

Simple is not easy, but it is best.

I’ve seen a few things in the past couple days that reinforce this.

I stumbled across this blog posting on “What is good code?”

Good code is simple. Even complex good code is comprised of simple building blocks. Good code hides or cuts through the complexity in the problem, to provide a simple solution – the sign of a true coding genius is that he makes hard problems look easy, and solves them in such a way that anyone can understand how it was done (after the fact). Simplicity is not really a goal in its own right, though; it’s just that by means of being simple, code is more readable, discoverable, testable, and maintainable, as well as being more likely to be robust, secure and correct! So if you keep your code simple (as simple as possible, but no simpler), it is more likely to be good code – but that is by no means sufficient in and of itself.

And all of this talk of simplicity isn’t just something for the world of engineering…. I think it applies to all things in life, and I think it’d do well to be applied to government.

Witness the mess there is in classifying sensitive information: (h/t Slashdot)

Protecting and classifying sensitive information such as social security numbers shouldn’t be that hard, but perhaps not surprisingly the US government has taken complicating that task to an art form.

It seems that designating, safeguarding, and disseminating such important information involves over 100 unique markings and at least 130 different labeling or handling routines, reflecting a disjointed, inconsistent, and unpredictable system for protecting, sharing, and disclosing sensitive information, according to the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office.

Read the full article (it’s short) to see just how messy the problem is. This is not simplicity, this is about the furthest thing from simplicity. How does this make life easier?

Then I see this flowchart on Department of Defense acquisitions:

The Integrated Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Life Cycle Management System -- MY BRAIN HURTS!

Wow. Even the name (The Integrated Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Life Cycle Management System) is a complex beast.

I truly hope no one considers that to be a simple, streamlined process.

Have you ever noticed, any time the government talks about streamlining or improving their process, they always create some new group to do so? Nothing ever gets shut down or shed or cast off… it’s always grows.

If people are tired at how inefficient government is, at how bloated and slow it is, how complex, how confusing… why aren’t we working to truly simplify things? Why does no one believe in casting off? Why do we call them “law-makers”, as that seems to imply all they can do is make more laws instead of refining or repealing what we already have?

Why don’t we have any politicians that run on a platform of repealing, stripping down, and simplifying? Why is a discussion of “loss of government jobs” considered a bad thing? closing of government agency a bad thing?

Consider how truly simple things are better in life (or at least, consider how those ugly complex things make life difficult). Work towards the ideal.

2009 FBI Crime Stats – an interesting tidbit

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

So the FBI released their crime statistics/summary for 2009.

Violent crime went down. Of course, everyone wants to come up with reasons for this. LA Times reports:

Crime experts have cited several possible explanations for the falling crime rate, including better policing, a swelling of the prison population, the decline of the crack cocaine epidemic and an aging population. But regardless of the reason, crime fell sharply during the 1990s and has declined gradually since then.

And you’ll have your pro-gun people attributing it to the fact that more law-abiding citizens are armed, and criminals don’t like getting shot either. I’m not going to hypothesize.

What I find more interesting is to look at the breakdown. Most of the breakdown is stressing “murder by firearm, especially handgun”. But look at the last column: “Hands, Fist, Feet, etc.” (which includes pushing). Almost 6% of the total murders used no weapon at all.

You ban guns, you ban knives, people are still going to find ways to commit evil acts. If someone really wants to hurt you or kill you, they will. Are we going to ban hands and feet? Violence is not an act of an implement — we don’t blame hands when someone pushes someone else off a cliff to their death, so why do we blame a gun when an evil person uses a gun to injure another?

(h/t Everyday No Days Off)

Trigger The Vote

/ hsoi

Chuck Norris and the NRA… part of the Trigger The Vote campaign.

Regardless of your political stance, registering to vote is an important first step. The other part is to ensure you get educated about the propositions and people on the ballot, then get out and vote!

And I love the choice of Ted Nugent song.  😉

“We just want to know where they are.”

/ hsoi

Queensland lawmakers don’t get it, but it’s not about getting it.

ANY ITEM that looks like a gun will have to be licensed under several changes to the Weapons Act being considered by the Queensland State Government.

Even guns made out of materials as unlikely as soap or plastic may have to be kept under lock and key if they could “reasonably be taken to be a weapon”.

The draft act says an imitation is a “reasonable copy” of a weapon that is not capable of causing death or injury.

“If it looks like a gun and feels like a gun, it will have to be licensed,” said a government source.

“We just want to know where they are.”

Emphasis added.

Registration leads to confiscation… and if you want to confiscate, you need to know where they are.

The first political stomach turning of the season

/ hsoi

I live in Texas state district 47. That means my Texas State Representative is Valinda Bolton.

I’ll say up front that Bolton isn’t horrible — we certainly could do worse — but we certainly can do better.

This weekend I’ve seen lots of campaign re-election signs going up for her. I love how the signs tout “independent leadership”.

Yeah… she’s painting herself as a free-thinker, as a moderate, one not party to partisan politics.

*cough*bullshit*cough* My stomach has been turning all weekend as I see her signs around town.

I just found her Facebook page. March 20 status:

Valinda needs your help to win Sen. Watson’s Monopoly Buster contest. $10,000 would go a long way towards helping us keep District 47 Democratic. Please vote and share with your friends!

Emphasis added. Yeah, so independent. Yeah, so non-partisan. </sarcasm>

And her voting record is clear enough.

I’m not exactly thrilled with Paul Workman (oh Donna Keel… I liked you much better, and Bolton barely beat you in 2008), but these days I’m all about the purge.

Dump Doggett

/ hsoi

And so… November 2010 draws closer.

So what to do… what to do… apart from making some popcorn and watching the festivities. 😉

I will say, living in the 25th Congressional District of Texas, that means my U.S. Representative is Lloyd Doggett.

He’s got to go. Or better said through the phrase gaining in popularity ’round these parts:

Dump Doggett

As of now, it appears that Dr. Donna Campbell is going to get my vote. Yeah, I’d prefer to vote for the Libertarian candidate, but this time around I’m finding myself having to vote differently. Normally I choose to vote for the person I feel is best for the job (regardless of party affiliation). I don’t like voting for “who sucks less” or the “lesser evil”, nor do I feel voting for “someone with no chance of winning” is throwing my vote away. But this time around, I feel the more important thing is that Washington needs a serious purge (enema?). Doggett has demonstrated time and time again that he’s… well let’s just be frank about it… he’s an elitist that has forgotten how to do the job he was sent to Washington to do. He has got to go. Thus, I feel I have to vote in whatever manner gives the best chances of replacing Doggett. Right now, that seems to be voting for Dr. Donna Campbell.

That said, Dr. Campbell doesn’t seem to be all that bad. Heck, look how Dr. Campbell regards the Second Amendment, gun rights, and gun issues. Given that, remember what Suzanna Gratia-Hupp said:

How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.

Consider then what Lloyd Doggett must think of you. He made it quite clear he’s ignoring the will of his constituency. This is not how an elected official — supposed servants of the citizenry — are supposed to behave.

I’m putting my vote behind Dr. Donna Campbell to represent the 25th Congressional District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As a general note… folks… these 2010 elections are very important, on the local, city, and state level, but especially on the national level. You must get active, you must contribute money, you must contribute time, you must do something positive towards effecting the outcome of these elections.

I love Gene Simmons

/ hsoi

Check this. Gene Simmons on Fox Business:

It’s worth watching the whole clip, but if you want highlights, check out Gene at 2:10, then again from 6:30 until the end.

Gene nails it.

You don’t have to like Gene Simmons, but you cannot deny the man is an embodiment of the American Dream®. He loves capitalism, and he knows how it works and how to make it work. There are far more repercussions for businessmen behaving badly than any Congresscritter ever deals with… they make horrible decisions and there are zero repercussions for their actions… oh sure, they may not get reelected, but that’s hardly a repercussion.

Go Gene!

Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s response

/ hsoi

So that EPA lead ban thing came about.

I emailed my Congresscritters.

Today I received a response from my US Congressman, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D, 25th district of Texas).

August 30, 2010

Dear John:

Despite its many benefits, the Internet allows misinformation to travel swiftly. You have been provided such misinformation regarding the claim that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to ban all traditional ammunition. The EPA did receive a petition from an outside group, exercising its right to petition — a right available to you or any other citizen.  But this petition to ban lead in hunting ammunition was denied by EPA as not even being an issue within its jurisdiction.

Rest assured, as someone who grew up around guns and hunting here in Central Texas, I respect the right of gun ownership, though I frequently question the propaganda of groups like the one that promoted this misinformation.

Please keep me advised of any federal matter with which I may be of assistance.

Sincerely,

Lloyd Doggett

I love the snide overtones. I reckon if we changed the context of this to something he favored, like Obamacare, he’d respond saying we had no right to petition and object. Certainly he’s behaved in the past like he’s above us mere commoners.

I love the “I respect the right of gun ownership”. Bullshit. Explain your “F” grade from the NRA then. And I replied to him as such (well, I didn’t say “bullshit”).