Friday Tour d’Horizon, 2016 Week 30

This Tour d’Horizon collects a bunch of stuff off the spindle.

This is where we throw a lot of our open tabs.

Guns

I don’t wanna work, I just wanna bang on my gun all day.

Slide Fire Solutions Bumps off Bump Fire Systems

Some of the gun media are reporting this as a “settlement,” which it is, technically; but it’s a settlement in which one side takes a deep draught of hemlock. As Guns.com reports:

Bump Fire Systems, as part of the deal, agreed to pay a “confidential sum of money” to Slide Fire Solutions. The company also stopped production and sale of their bump fire stocks per the agreement.

Bump Fire is offering refunds to buyers who bought in the last thirty days, but they have shut down “for the duration of the terms of the patents.”

Judging from the grammar on their website (see 1st two lines below), attention to detail was not their thing:

ALL CURRENT MODELS HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED INDEFINITELY !

WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SALE AT THIS TIME

NO STOCKS AVAILABLE

Slide Fire Solutions, LP and Bump Fire Systems, LLC announced that they have resolved their

patent infringement lawsuit. Pursuant to their agreement, Bump Fire Systems, LLC pays a confidential sum of money to Slide Fire, acknowledges the validity of four patents asserted in the litigation and agrees to a judgement under which it must cease and desist from any further sales of bump fire stocks for the duration of the terms of the patents.

Slide Fire’s Jeremiah Cottle has many patents, but four were at issue in this case. Most of the patents were issued from 2004-2014 and have a typical duration of 14 years.

The Guns.com article is a good overview of the case, and there has also been extensive coverage at The Firearm Blog.

State Department Attacks Gunsmiths

If you’re a gunsmith who cuts metal on firearms or firearms parts, the State Department has just mounted an attack on you. You will now need a $2,500 annual “registration fee” to as much as crown a barrel or fit a flash hider, because you’re now “engaged in the export of armament services.”

And Gun Control Group Attacks Gun Shows

The anti-gun Democratic group, “Americans for Responsible Solutions,” led by Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords, has opened a new front in its pursuit of gun bans: pressuring venues to ban gun shows. They’ve secured bans with the help of friendly anti-gun Democrats in Saratoga Springs, New York, and Nashville, Tennessee(!).

Heil Healey! State AG Attacks Gun Owners; Governor Melts; Manufacturers Shrug

In Massachusetts, national socialist Attorney General Maura Healey (Heil Healey!) banned nearly all semi-automatic centerfire firearms with a broad “reinterpretation” of gun laws, effective midnight the next day; then, after she inspired a run on dealers that cleaned out MA FFLs, she issued a follow up saying that no, it was effective immediately, and the 2,500 or so ARs, etc., that were sold before the deadline — cleaning are, like all the “MA Compliant” ARs, etc., now contraband. She then said that even though the owners of the hundreds of thousands of freshly banned guns are now felons, she isn’t going to prosecute them — now. She reserves the right to do it later. And she just might prosecute the dealers that sold the guns.

Governor Charlie Baker, a nominal Republican, has been talking out of both sides of his mouth, praising Healey’s ban to supporters of it and opposing it to opponents. When his staff finally figured out that the opponents outnumbered the supporters and had opinions of much greater intensity, he wrote a letter begging Healey for “clarification,” to which she responded, surprisingly reasonably: “Hey, you were all for it when we discussed it before I implemented it.” Or as that news story put it:

Healey’s office said that’s different from what the Baker administration told them last week.

Baker’s staff is still telling callers that support the fiat ban one thing and callers that oppose it something else; trying to split the baby between tyranny and resistance, but de facto on the side of the ban. Baker’s weak, vacillating, and cowardly inaction has shown him to be #2 to his own attorney general. She’s twice the man he is.

If Baker has been a coward and a cuckold in this, the state’s remaining gun manufacturers have been utter eunuchs. Smith & Wesson? No statement. Troy? No statement*. Kahr? Crickets. All three make banned firearms in Massachusetts. Even Seecamp, whose products aren’t banned yet? Nothing.

*Unless you call this a statement: “Effective Immediately: TROY cannot sell semi-auto firearms to Massachusetts civilian residents.”

Usage and Employment

The hardware takes you only half way. (We have nada this week).

Cops ‘n’ Crims

Cops bein’ cops, crims bein’ crims. The endless Tom and Jerry show of crime and (sometimes instantaneous) punishment.

At the Conventions

Last week, we said:

In case of riot, one of their agencies was tasked to provide thousands of gas masks. Some literal-minded equipment manager duly delivered what looked like the agency’s entire stock of masks.

No filters.

This has been clarified to us, and perhaps we have it right now. 400 gas masks were sent to each convention. It appears that none of the ones sent to the Republicans’ convention had filters, and maybe half of the ones sent to the Democrats’ did. As God protects the fools, the innocent, and the 1% that mismanage Federal agencies, riot control gear wasn’t needed much; the TTPs that work on two-year-olds being generally effective on Black Criminals’ Lives Matter, Occupy Dad’s Basement, and Butthurt Bernie-bros also.

In addition, plate carriers that don’t hold standard size SAPI plates were sent to the convention locations, and plates that are odd sizes and don’t fit any standard carriers. Naurally, neither the odd-size carriers nor the odd-size plates actually match and fit each other.

It didn’t occur to the geniuses issuing this equipment to get the SAs to sign for it, so now, they only know they didn’t get a lot of it back, not who got it, who returned it, and (therefore) who still has it. It’s pretty unlikely any agent wants a protective mask or a set of maladjusted plate carriers as a souvenir of a political convention, so they should probably have thought through issue and turn in a little more. If nothing else, SACs could put out a collection box for returning agents to drop their junk in, and when it fills up, send it to whoever the genius was that send the wrong stuff to special details!

At the Democrats’ convention, there was enough hostility to cops that the managers insisted on tactical and response teams being dressed in suits and not displaying arms or armor overtly. Rather appropriately, the convention was gaveled into order by the Baltimore mayor who gave the Freddie Gray rioters “room to burn” and who has pursued, through her DA, the prosecution of a number of cops, exactly zero of whom have been convicted in what look like fair trials.

 The Perils of Kathleen: Continued

This is our ongoing series where we examine the ongoing meltdown of the paranoid, vengeful and extremely anti-gun Pennsylvania attorney general, Kathleen Kane.

• As we said last week, The Trial Begins on 8 August 2016. Here’s the judge’s “decorum” order.
• The judge has dealt with a blizzard of motions, generally ruling unfavorably towards Kane’s “bang on the table” defense. Most of the news stories dwell on Kane’s bizarre “porn” defense (which the judge disallowed), but this one also details the other defeats:

In addition to the porn question, [Judge] Demchick-Alloy denied a motion by the Kane team to block any testimony regarding her ongoing feud against Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, who hired former Kane staffers and pursued a corruption sting Kane had argued was fatally flawed due to racial bias.

Kane had spiked the corruption investigation, possibly because the crooked state politicians were all political allies of hers.

Demchick-Alloy also allowed prosecutors to pursue a taped conversation involving Joshua Morrow, a Kane political consultant who was at the heart of the alleged leaks.

“Morrow questioned the strategy behind the leak and described the defendant as being unhinged,” according to an earlier motion filed by prosecutors.

Kane’s motion to compel the release of handwritten notes from the case against her was also denied by the judge. Steele, the Montgomery County DA, argued that his office had turned over all of the evidence in their possession already.

These developments bode ill for Kane’s defense, but then again, she’s guilty, which always makes a defense attorney earn his pay.

• Will She Testify? Kane says, “Maybe.” The subtext there is that her lawyer is unlikely to raise some of the stuff that the judge has told him not to raise in these motions denials, so this is her one chance to bang that stuff on the table. This is one of many reasons that the attorney will probably discourage her from testifying. On the other hand, if her goose looks cooked anyway, it gives her a chance to grandstand and play Joan of Political Arc on her way to conviction.
• The cost of Kane’s corruption? To the taxpayers of PA, at least $436k and counting. Her personal defense in criminal and civil case employs top-dollar legal talent. (That their results have been, shall we say, limited, has less to do with their legal abilities than with the fact patterns she has given her attorneys to work with. They’re lawyers, not miracle workers). (Do Read The Whole Thing™ because it has a rundown on several of the lawsuits, none of which paint Kane in a good light).
• Kane flunky Doug Gansler, brought in from out of state as her paranoia mounted to the point where she trusted no one local, is lining up to run for governor in Maryland. His issues will clearly be corruption (all for it, obviously), crime (ditto), and guns (unclean! Unclean! He’s against ’em).

Maura Healey (Heil Healey!), have a loo. Kathleen Kane’s political present could be your political future.

Unconventional (and current) Warfare

What goes on in the battlezones of the world — and preparation of the future battlefields. 

Erdo’s Countercoup

The goats themselves are not safe in the new Turkey. Tens of thousands of Turks have been rendered jobless, thrown in jail, or driven into exile. Austin Bay has a good roundup at the Observer.

It’s a Mystery, My Son

What’s a mystery? Why Moslems keep murdering people while screaming Aloha Snackbar, that’s what. At least, as Tim Blair recounts in the Australian Telegraph, it’s a mystery to the see-no-Moslem enablers of the Press.

UK: Hide, Soldiers, Hide

The British Forces reacted boldly as Brave Sir Robin, when faced with an attack by Moslems on an RAF Marham airman. Did they declare open season on jihadis? No, you silly goose.

They told the troops to run (but not alone!) and hide.

After a spate of terror attacks in France and Germany rocked Europe, Top Brass are determined not to see another Lee Rigby-style attack on a British hero by anyone inspired by the Munich or Nice attacks.

Troops are also warned to run in pairs off base after two Middle Eastern men armed with a blade tried to bundle an RAF airman into the back of a van in a feared abduction attempt this week. …

The guidance, added: “While there remains no ban on the wearing of uniform in public, personnel should not feel compounded to wear it outside MOD establishments when common sense says a lower profile would be more appropriate.”

Yeah, that’ll fix the problem. “And when the enemy reared his head, Sir Robin turned his tail and fled, brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin….”

US: We Need a War on Air Conditioners

That is a supremely silly statement, so you won’t be surprised to learn it comes from the supremely silly Secretary of State, John Kerry, whose previous diplomacy experience includes looking French, marrying African ketchup heiresses, and trying to sell out to the North Vietnamese (who rather sensibly refused to pay even 1 Dong for the turncoatery they were already getting gratis). To wit, the wealthy half-wit twit emits:

Secretary of State John Kerry said in Vienna on Friday that air conditioners and refrigerators are as big of a threat to life as the threat of terrorism posed by groups like the Islamic State.

Yeah, whatevs. Call us next time an air conditioner beheads a priest, m’kay? When the phone doesn’t ring, we’ll know it’s you not calling.

Meanwhile, Sumdood reacted appropriately, and filed a petition to strip the overpaid, underworked striped-pants dullards of the Department of State of that murderous air conditioning in their offices, limos, and uparmored Escalades.

India: Bodyguards for Rich Guy’s Wife, Bupkus for Crime Victims

India seems to be pursuing US levels of corruption. Now: commando force detailed to protect a wealthy crony’s consort.

The Indian government was dispatching a team of elite commandos to protect Nita Ambani, the socialite wife of India’s richest man.

Her husband, Mukesh Ambani, an oil and gas magnate worth $21 billion, has had a government security escort since 2013, when he was the subject of terrorist threats, and covers the costs himself.

But in a country where there is a shortage of police officers, the news about 10 additional officers for his wife rankled.

“Women raped daily in Delhi. No security for them despite repeated requests. But [prime minister Narendra Modi] providing security to his friends,” Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, said in a tweet.

How crooked does it get? It sounds like that third world country is almost as far gone with crony-capitalist corruption, which the Indians call “VIP Privilege,” as the USA.

Veterans’ Issues

Is it time to disband this thing yet, and letting all its bloatoverhead seek its own level in the Dreaded Private Sector™?

VA Appears to Encourage Disability Fraud (Again)

That was a headline last week. This week, we heard that a VA rep tried to lure a friend who’s perfectly well-adjusted (well, for an SF guy) into making a PTSD claim, with this argument:

Hey, it’s free money. If you have it, it’s all inside your head, and so no one can ever prove you don’t.

Apparently, the Powers That Be™ are pressing the patient-facing workers to maximize PTSD claims. We don’t know why. Maximize budget? Look like they’re doing something? Your guess is as good as ours. Does anybody else find this morally reprehensible?

Lord Love a Duck!

The weird and wonderful (or creepy) that we didn’t otherwise get to. 

Photon Torpedoes?

The hoary old science fiction weapon might be realistically possible, say British physics students. Their description seems to suggest a chain-reaction cascade of high energy particles much like a nuclear blast, but directional. If we understand it, but it’s that kind of physics that we probably don’t.

Hat tip: Futurism.com via we forget (sorry)

Urban Ruins: Tire Plant

The US Royal Tire Company, later Uniroyal, made tires and other natural and articficial rubber products for a century in Chicopee, Massachusetts. The 26-acre plant site is now a combination of ruins, Superfund brownfields, and demolition projects. Jeannette DeForge and photo Don Treeger of the Springfield, MA Republican, made a rare visit to the site and there’s a long report and a 44-shot image gallery online. Here’s three of Treeger’s images:

(stand by, we’re having image problems).

Go See The Whole Thing™ if you share our fascination for industrial ruins.

Unfortunately, most of the potentially beautiful riverfront site is under political control, so it will be used for centrally-planned ego projects and to reward cronies, not put to economic use. Most of the 19th and early 20th-century bricks will be used as landfill.