Month: June 2014

Five Advantages of the Semi-Automatic Pistol

I came across an old article that discusses five advantages of revolvers. The article wasn’t unfair but I felt as though the advantages being given to the revolver was mostly applicable, or similar, to semi-automatic pistols. So I decided to go through the list and replace revolver advantages with similar pistol advantages. Keep in mind that I’m not implying that pistols are superior to revolvers. Only you can determine what is the best type of gun for you. I couldn’t care less what you carried or preferred.

Pistols are Efficient

The nice thing about modern pistols, especially the popular polymer frame ones, is that their internals are very simple. Unlike revolvers, which have roughly a bajillion springs so they can pull the hammer back and rotate the cylinder when you pull the trigger, there really aren’t a lot of parts inside of a pistol. They usually consist of a trigger that activates a striker that sets off the chambered cartridges primer. The action usually operates on the recoil of a fired cartridge instead of internal mechanical mechanisms. Detail stripping a pistol is generally much easier than detail stripping a revolver thanks to the simplified internals.

Pistols are Reliable and Field Repairable

Revolvers are often held in high regard for their reliability. Since revolvers aren’t reliant on ammunition and proper grip they can ignore many malfunctions that can occur on pistols. But the number of malfunctions one will encounter on a modern pistol, assuming they are using proper ammunition and not limp wristing like a bitch, are very few. I can count the number of malfunctions that I’ve encountered with my Glocks on my fingers. Not only are malfunctions rare but they’re generally field addressable. While malfunctions on revolvers are rare they are mechanical devices, which means they will fail. The problem is when a revolve fails it’s usually out of commission until you can take it apart and address the mechanical failure. Malfunctions on pistols tend to be ammunition related and can be correct in the field with the proper clearance procedure.

Pistols Will Fit Anyone

Pistols come in all sizes. You can get large full-size pistols from Glock, Springfield Armory, Smith and Wesson, FN, Beretta and almost every other pistol manufacturer. You can also get midsize and compact pistols from these same manufacturers. Want a full-size competition pistol? No problem. Would you prefer a Glock 21, Smith and Wesson M&P, or a Springfield XD? Need something that will fit in your pocket? How about a Ruger LCP, Smith and Wesson Shield, or Beretta Nano? Whatever your need you can find a pistol that will fit it.

Pistols Use Magazines

One of the reason modern militaries and police departments largely choose pistols is because revolvers don’t hold much ammunition and take longer to reload than pistols. With a revolver you generally have five or six shots. When those have been expended you have to open the cylinder, eject the spent casings, and load new cartridges. Loading new cartridges can be done one at a time, with speed strips, or with speed loaders. Speed loaders are the fastest of the three but they are shaped similar to the revolver’s cylinder so they tend to be awkward to carry. Pistols on the other hand can carry a lot of ammunition. Many full-size 9mms, for example, hold 17 rounds in their magazines. If you also have a round chambered that’s three times the capacity of a revolver. When you do run out reloading pistols is as easy as pressing a button to drop the empty magazine, inserting a fresh magazine into the grip, and releasing the slide (assuming you fired the pistol to empty).

Pistol Triggers are Reasonably Weighted

My first handgun was a revolver so I grew up on a heavy trigger. But many people didn’t and find heavy triggers difficult to use accurately. Fortunately most pistols have lighter triggers. The popular polymer frame pistols often have five or so pound triggers. That means they’re light enough for most people to shoot accurately but heavy enough to avoid being negligently fired.

Patent Office Off to a Good Start

Earlier this week the United States Patent Office invalided the trademarks for the Washington Redskins (it’s a handegg team for those who, like me, aren’t familiar):

The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board canceled six federal trademark registrations owned by the Washington NFL club today, ruling that the term “Redskins” was disparaging to “a substantial composite” of American Indians when the marks were granted between 1967 and 1990. The decision does not mean the Washington team must stop using the name.

A lot of people are complaining about this move and claiming that it’s abuse of the Patent Office’s power. Not me. I think this is a great move that needs to be replicated on all intellectual property claims.

War Criminal Calls Gun Rights Activists Terrorists, Irony So Thick You Can Cut It

The one thing I do enjoy about the upcoming presidential race is Hillary Clinton. She’s like a perpetual irony machine. Every time she opens her mouth to criticize somebody she dislikes she ends up saying something hypocritical. One group of people she really hates is us gun owners. So she takes every opportunity afforded to her to insult us. Most recently she called us a bunch of terrorists:

During a CNN “town hall” yesterday, Hillary Clinton said she was disappointed that Congress did not pass new gun control legislation following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December 2012. “I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation,” said the former secretary of state and presumptive presidential candidate. “We cannot let a minority of people—and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people—hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.”

I wonder what minority holds more terroristic viewpoints. Gun owners who tend to be very peaceful or officials in the United States government who bomb foreign countries seemingly at random and then laugh about it (seriously, Hillary, that quote is the gift that keeps on giving)? Considering that I’ve never threatened anybody with violence nor wielded violence against another it’s pretty hard to say I’m terrorizing anybody. Hillary, on the other hand, was the head of the State Department for the government that, under the current administration, dropped bombs on civilians in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia (and probably a few other countries that I’ve forgotten about).

I’d say if any minority holds terroristic viewpoints it’s her and her cronies.

America’s Relationship with the Middle East Continues to Baffle Me

I know what you’re thinking after reading the title, who isn’t. But this recent situation in Iraq makes the past relationship look positively simple. Apparently the White House has decided that our puppet government in Iraq needs to get the fuck out:

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is signaling that it wants a new government in Iraq without Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, convinced the Shiite leader is unable to reconcile with the nation’s Sunni minority and stabilize a volatile political landscape.

The U.S. administration is indicating it wants Iraq’s political parties to form a new government without Mr. Maliki as he tries to assemble a ruling coalition following elections this past April, U.S. officials say.

Such a new government, U.S., officials say, would include the country’s Sunni and Kurdish communities and could help to stem Sunni support for the al Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, that has seized control of Iraqi cities over the past two weeks. That, the officials argue, would help to unify the country and reverse its slide into sectarian division.

So we start a war with Iraq for no discernible reason other than our president at the time got a chubby whenever he ordered the invasion of a country and replace Saddam’s regime with a puppet government. All is well (as far as we’re concerned) and except for sporadic fighting that never ceased we declared the whole operation a gigantic success. Then we decided that we no longer want to sink money into the country so we pull out our combat troops, replace them with mercenaries from whatever the fuck Blackwater calls itself now, and kick back in our giganting embassy.

Things seem to be going fine until out of nowhere (nowhere being Middle Eastern slang for Saudi Arabia) this group called ISIS appears and begins wrecking our puppet government’s shit. On top of being surprisingly successful, ISIS also turn out to be total twats. In fact they’re such twats that Iran offers to put aside its past difference with the United States in order to stomp ISIS down. This news is so glorious that Britain says it will reopen its embassy in Iran. But now the White House wants to get rid of our puppet government and replace it with one that ISIS will find more agreeable.

da-fuq

I generally pride myself with having some understanding of who hates who in the Middle East. But right now I have no god damn clue who anybody, including ourselves, are allied with. The entire situation is a mess, which is why it’s a bad idea to meddle in the affairs of other countries.

This is Why I Try to Know as Little About the Authors I Like as Possible

I’m a huge fan of science fiction but if you ask me about my favorite authors I can seldom tell you more than their name. This is purposeful because I want my relationship with my entertainers to be of one where they provide me entertainment and I give them money. The more you add on top of this the more difficult it becomes to simply enjoy the author’s works on its merit.

One of the series that I greatly enjoyed is Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. The man is a good author, I just want to make that clear before I continue. Scalzi’s philosophy and politics differ from my own. I advocate voluntary association and he advocates using violence to make everybody conform to his person views. As far as I’m concerned a person is entitled to their opinion so I never dwelled on it much. But it wasn’t until last night that I found out how judgmental this supposed advocate for equality really was.

It all started, as many things do, with Twitter. Scalzi decided to start an Internet fight with another of my favorite authors, Larry Correia. For those of you who follow his blog you know that he’s not well liked amongst his fellow authors. Correia’s politics fall under libertarian statism. While I do agree with his staunch stance on gun rights I disagree with a lot of his other political views. Again, he’s entitled to his opinion. But last night Scalzi, seemingly out of the blue, makes the following passive aggressive tweet:

This is in regards to Correia’s post titled The Naive Idiocy of Teaching Rapists Not To Rape. It’s a good article that explains, as only Correia can, why the concept of simply teaching men not to rape won’t actually stop rape. Since he couldn’t find any fault with the content of the post Scalzi decided to criticize the title.

As this point I decided to settle in for a wonderfully entertaining Twitter battle. For the most part it was pretty entertaining but it was pretty obvious that Scalzi hadn’t read Correia’s post and was merely trying to attack him for, well, reasons. But then he decided to get very petty:

You would think that an author who believes himself to be an advocate for equality wouldn’t resort to insulting entire groups of people based solely on their literature preference. But he decided that anybody who reads Correia must “miss a few clues about misogyny”. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I try to avoid learning about the authors I enjoy. Too often I find that people who can write thought provoking science fiction are also judgmental pricks. Of course I can’t resist a good opportunity to take a quick jab at the self-righteous so I did:

Really I was just trying to point out who foolish it is to insult people based on the literature they read because you may very likely be insulting somebody who reads your work, which he did. But by extension Scalzi also admitted that some of his readers “miss a few clues about misogyny” since, not surprisingly, there is some crossover between readers of Scalzi and Correia.

In my experience self-righteous people who have even a modicum of fame don’t bother letting nobodies like me get under their skin. I tweet them and they ignore me. But Scalzi is so full of himself that he actually took the time to tweet back to me:

He’s upfront, I’ll give him that. But I didn’t think he would actually take the time to tweet back if I replied so, well, I replied:

But I was wrong! He couldn’t help but point out that he has plenty of customers already so he doesn’t need the likes of Correia’s readers:

Beautiful. Seriously, I love publicly drawing out the egos of people online. You know a guy who tries to start a fight with somebody over the title of that person’s blog post is already pretty full of himself. But when he has to take time out of his day to point out that he has plenty of customers without needing wretches who dare read a certain other author’s material it really demonstrates how high on the horse he is. Because I’m not actually full of myself I did tell him that he is a good author even though he makes baseless accusations:

After all, there’s no reason I can’t be professional even if the person I’m conversing with isn’t.

But this exchange was an amusing example of three things. First, you need to be the right kind of person to give Scalzi money. Second, Scalzi like to make baseless accusations against people who read authors he doesn’t personally approve of. Third, Scalzi loves to hate on authors who disagree with him even if he has to grasp at straws to do so. I think the real irony here is that Correia receives tons of baseless accusations from the self-described political left (who are fake leftists) even though he’s far less judgmental then they are. Meanwhile Scalzi, who seems to think of himself as a warrior for equality, is judgmental of basically everybody.

Unfortunately this exchange has ensured that I won’t give Scalzi any more money (not that he cares, my application to give him money was obviously found wanting). I like his works but even I can only overlook so much self-righteousness in authors. And I really see no reason to give money to somebody who insults me for something as petty as my choice in fiction not written by him

Why Do People Care About How Another Identifies

I’m going to take a slight detour from my usual topics because it’s my blog and I get to do whatever I want. Let me first start off by stating that the longer I identify as a libertarian the more of a mistake I believe it has been for libertarianism to align itself with neoconservatism. It probably made sense at first because neoconservative talking points often revolve around small government, individual liberty, and free markets. Obviously their actions don’t agree with their propaganda but in the political realm it probably made sense for libertarians to align themselves with the politically influential group that at least pays lip service to libertarian beliefs.

Here’s the problem, many neoconservatives now call themselves libertarians. Many gun rights advocates have been discussing how they don’t want Open Carry Texas on their side. For many of the same reasons I don’t want neoconservatives on my side. They make libertarianism look dreadful. Whenever a discussion involving social issues comes up there are numerous neoconservatives claiming to be libertarians spewing shit that isn’t libertarian.

While there are many camps of libertarianism most of them are built on the foundation of non-aggression. In other words libertarianism can generally be summed up by a quote from Will Smith’s character in Men in Black, “My attitude is: don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing!” Neoconservatives like to start things and that makes being a libertarian, which is tacitly associated with neoconservatism, really fucking annoying.

I feel as though points are best demonstrated with examples. In an online “libertarian” group I came across this story about a 16 year-old who ran into a snag attempting to get a drivers license:

Chase Culpepper — a 16-year-old who wears makeup and androgynous or girls’ clothing on a daily basis — went to the DMV in Anderson on March 3 with his mother to get his driver’s license after passing his driver’s test, according to a press release obtained by The Huffington Post. However, he was told he couldn’t be photographed while wearing makeup.

DMV employees said he did not look the way they thought a boy should, and one individual called his makeup a “disguise,” the release notes. Culpepper ultimately removed his makeup and got his photo taken, but the experience left a mark.

The first thing that came to mind when I read this story is why did the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) employee gave any fucks about Chase wearing makeup. It’s not like Chase is going to buy smokes or booze with a drivers license that states an age of 16 years-old. But the DMV employee wasn’t the only person who cared. No, quite a few neoconservatives who moonlight as libertarians cared a great deal.

The common thread running through the neoconservatives was basically that Chase should act like a man because he is a man (the thread was usually worded in a more derogatory way) and that the DMV employee made the correct call. OK, that’s their opinion, whatever. What really began to irritate me was the thread that began to spin off from the original article, which was whether or not the state should enforce gender identities (because “small government” to a neoconservative means a government big enough to enforce all of his or her beliefs).

Who in the hell thinks it’s appropriate to send costume-clad men with guns to kidnap anybody who fails to properly (whatever the fuck that means) abide by their gender? Neoconservatives, that’s who. And this is why they piss me off. Even if you believe there should be a government why would you want it to enforce how you personally identify, act, and dress? Are you really so offended by people not fitting your idea of what a man or woman should be that you want violence wielded against them?

To my dismay people have begun associating this stupidity with libertarianism and that too pisses me off. Often enough people assume that as a libertarian I hate gay and transgender people. I don’t. Quite the opposite actually. I want people to live their lives in the way that makes them happy. What I don’t want is people feeling as though they have to hide who they are or otherwise live a miserable existence.

That Whole Fair Trial Thing Was Woefully Out of Date Anyways

Do you remember that whole fair trial thing that people used to talk about? It involved zany things like the defendant being able to review all of the evidence that was going to be used to the prosecution. That mess lead to a lot of undesirable outcomes, namely people the state was targeting being found innocent of wrongdoing by a jury. Thankfully our benevolent overlords have corrected this problem and now allow the prosecution to withhold evidence from the defendant:

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled against terrorism suspect Adel Daoud, saying that he and his attorneys cannot access the evidence gathered against him. The Monday ruling overturns an earlier lower district court ruling that had allowed Daoud and his lawyers to review the legality of digital surveillance warrants used against him.

[…]

When Daoud’s lawyers discovered that this case involved secret evidence that they had not been privy to, they eventually asked the court to notify them if any evidence gathered had been done so under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order. Under the normal procedures of American jurisprudence, a defendant has the right to see the evidence against him or her and can challenge the basis on which such a warrant was authorized.

The government responded with its own affidavit from Attorney General Eric Holder, who told the court that disclosing such material would harm national security.

Now if we can just get rid of those inconvenient juries we will finally have a system that can throw anybody in prison for any reason whatsoever. I’m sure a convincing argument can be made for why juries are a threat to national security. After all a jury trial would involve 12 regular Americans hearing all of the evidence, which certainly qualifies as a threat to national security.

Shit like this is why I don’t take arguments claiming we need a government to administer justice seriously.

The Tor Challenge is Apparently Going Strong

On June 4th the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) kicked off the Tor Challenge, which is its attempt to encourage more people to run Tor Relays. Running a relay is fun and easy to do but I never imagined that the Tor Challenge would be such a rousing success:

However, Adrian Leppard, the guy in charge of the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (funded both by taxpayers and legacy entertainment companies) spoke at an IP Enforcement Summit in London and his comments, relayed by Torrentfreak, should raise questions about whether or not this is the right person to have anything to do with stopping “crime” on the internet:

“Whether it’s Bitnet, The Tor – which is 90% of the Internet – peer-to-peer sharing, or the streaming capability worldwide. At what point does civil society say that as well as the benefits that brings, this enables huge risk and threat to our society that we need to take action against?”

The Tor is now 90% of the Internet?* Holy shit, that’s one hell of an increase since June 4th! Congratulations to the EFF for transforming almost the entire Internet into an anonymous network in less than one month!

Seriously, this guy is a fucking tool who shouldn’t be allowed to head anything, let alone a crime unit focused on intellectual “property” violations.

* Just in case it’s unclear 90% of the Internet is not The Tor. The guy is simply an idiot.

As If She Hadn’t Assaulted Us With Enough Terrible Literature Already

Even thought she’s in the grave Ayn Rand can’t help but assault us with more of her shitty literature:

IRVINE, CA–(Marketwired – June 16, 2014) – The Ayn Rand Institute is excited to announce the new publication of a lost Ayn Rand novel. Ayn Rand’s work Ideal, written in 1934, is scheduled for release by Penguin Random House in July of 2015 and will be paired with Rand’s play of the same name into a single volume. The introduction will be written by Rand’s designated heir, Leonard Peikoff.

“We are delighted to share this wonderful news,” said ARI executive director Yaron Brook.

I guess somebody has to be delighted. On the upside it was written in 1934, so it predates Atlas Shrugged. That means it probably won’t contain a three billion word monolog by Objectivist Jesus. On the downside it’s written by Ayn Rand. That means it will have one dimensional characters, a boring story, and the pain that comes from being beaten over the head with Objectivism.

I’m sure there are a lot of libertarians who are already jerking themselves off to the idea of another Ayn Rand novel. Me, I prefer literature that is entertaining and doesn’t try to preach a One True Religion to me.

Economy in a Slump? Just Blow Some Shit Up!

The New York Times, the same publication that gives Paul Krugman space to print is insanity, has a piece under the heading “The Pitfalls of Peace”. As you can imagine from a publication that gives Paul “Boost the Economy By Warring with Aliens” Krugman space, the article is about how war is good for the economy:

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

Emphasis mine. Let us start off with the obvious, if a state is at war it has already failed at the most basic of basics, not getting involved in a war. Wars are only good for two things: destruction and death. And not surprisingly both of those things are bad for the economy. Recreating that which was lost is not economic growth, creating new wealth is. And death is always bad for an economy because is reduces both the number of producers and consumers.

Now let’s get to the second point. According to the author war leads to an investment in science or a, pardon me because this is hard to say with a straight face, liberalizing of the economy. Science is not something that only gets invested in by the state nor only during a time of war. Science is constantly being invested in because science leads to better products. Without being engaged in an all encompassing war we have seen computers go from room sized monstrosities that could only perform a few tasks to devices that fit in our pockets and contain more computing power than their full sized brethren from only a decade back. There is a bitchin’ fully electric car on the market today. The private sector is closer to returning to space than the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and it has a plan to mine asteroids for resources (seriously, how cool is that). Of course I don’t want to sell the state entirely short. As it is involved in several minor wars it is investing money into science. It currently possesses the best remotely controlled bombers on the planet! Granted, they’re not really good for anything productive but they exist and that counts for something.

We should also discuss the liberalization of the economy that supposedly occurs during a time of war. World War II, being the last all encompassing war, is a good example. Everything from metal to food to rubber were rationed for civilians so that those resources could be put into the war effort. Perhaps the author has a different definition of liberalize than I do.

Economists often discuss all of the scientific advancements that occur because of war. What they ignore are the scientific advancements made by the private sector regardless of war. The difference between the two methods of scientific investment is that the state focuses on impractical things whereas the private sector focuses on things the average person can fucking use. Give me better computers, cell phones, cars, and e-readers over remotely controlled bombers and aircraft carriers any day.

But, hey, nothing sounds better to the state than war being good for the economy. If there’s one thing the state is good at it’s war. Which is why it only hires economists who say war is good for the economy to its advisory boards.