Saturday - June 22, 2024

Once Again, The One And Only Post

June 22, 2024

Not a lot of new to report. Wifely and I had Friday off, and for once the demands of senior care placed upon us were absent, mostly. So we were able to get a lot done around the house. We spent most of the day outside getting the gardens and the patio fixed up. It was mighty hot and I got a little bit of sunburn. But we got the last 2 dozen annuals in the ground, after we broke up that ground, worked in some good topsoil, and watered it deeply. It hasn’t rained here in about a week, and it won’t rain again for another several days, so things are getting dried out. Which drove me to to work on the hose reel and get that cleaned up but not repositioned yet. We’ve got it sitting on a slab which isn’t in quite the right spot, and the plastic reel box doesn’t weigh enough to stay in place when we try to pull out some of the 150 feet of hose inside. Needs glue or bolts or something. It lives in a nook between the chimney fascia and the lower end of the patio, keeping out of sight. That slab needs another slab next to it so the reel can move over about 10”. And we need to get moving on putting down anti-weed mat, gravel, and some more paver slabs to pretty up the area. We have a couple rolls of the mat stuff but just haven’t got around to it yet.

We did manage to attach a few hanging plant hangers to the split rail fence at the edge of the gulch beyond the patio, and mixed up some good soil, fertilizer, and potting soil to fill them, then put a couple annuals in each one. So it looks nice.

As part of that hose task I put a two-way splitter head on the patio faucet and got hold of a 10’ hose to go from there to the hose reel. The 6’ was too short, so that’s now the stub hose for the patio for filling watering cans etc. Next part of that project is to scrub down the 75’ hose that was the inner length on the reel. Somehow it has become extremely filthy, caked with mud and maybe mold. So I’ll set up a big bucket of water and detergent, and put a couple pumps of D128 in there, which will kill any mold or fungus. ( D128 is the greatest cleaner/disinfectant ever. It will literally take the stink off of poop, and kills every germ, virus, mold, mildew, fungus etc. A gallon lasts nearly forever. ) Then I’ll give the whole hose a serious scrub and lay it out in the hot sun to dry off, soften up, and work the curls out of it. Not sure if I’ll put it back on the reel or find a spot for it in the garage. We really only need that second length when watering the garbage garden which is across our small parking lot from our garage.

Note to self: find 2 or 3 10” galvanized lag bolts and install them to support the air conditioner’s air handler drain extension. I’ve had it propped up with the sprinkler to keep the sag out of the PVC drain pipe, but after I used the sprinkler for a couple hours the other day and put it back several gallons of water came rushing out. I do NOT want the condensation pan in the attic to overflow, so it’s high time I put in a permanent solution.


#############

Mom isn’t doing too great. She lost another 2 pounds in her time in the hospital, so she’s down to barely 100lb. Skin and bones, hardly any muscle left anywhere on her body. While we did have a nice visit with her Thursday - I dragged my brother along in his wheelchair, as he hasn’t seen her in over a month - she has reached a darker level of dementia. She was off in her own world when we got there, drumming out a tune by bouncing her plastic juice glass on the roll up table on her bed. And spilling juice everywhere. Once we got her attention, reintroduced ourselves, and started feeding her fancy chocolate she was able to focus and be a little conversant for about 90 minutes. We brushed her hair and held her hands and were loving and patient; people in her condition need physical contact and kind attention. And endless patience. I took him because she has reached the angry and violent phase of things. The psych nurse called me up the day before, mom was screaming and thrashing and insanely mad. When I took the phone call I had to ask if it was puppy day, as I could hear barking in the background. No, no dogs. That was my mom. They had no chocolate, which so far has done the trick. So I got up there the next day.

And the day after our visit I got another call from the psych nurse. Mom having another violent angry fit. Tried to kick and bite the nurses. This is not cool. They’re starting her on some Avitan, an anxiety med that’s lighter than Xanax and lasts twice as many hours. This rehab place is really NOT set up for dementia patients, so I’m going to have to call them Monday and arrange a meeting with this one and that one. She’s there for physical therapy, but if she fights against it (she’s done so several times now) then her progress will plateau or even drop, and that’s what fires off the kill switch from Medicare. So it will be back to the memory care home, where she’ll probably become a bedridden resident. That’s pretty awful, as she was making really good mobility progress before she fell and fractured her femur. And there are no TVs in the rooms at the memory home, not that she would watch anyway. And the comfortable double bed there is not a hospital bed so she’d have to be put in a wheelchair to eat or move around. And I’d have to get a wheelchair for her, but Medicare will pay for it if one is prescribed. This is a sad way for her to exist in her final days but not much else can be done. And I’m thinking that the hospice nurse’s evaluation 2 months ago is going to be pretty accurate. She gave my mom 6-9 months to live, based on her 25 years of dealing with thousands of getting-near-the-end seniors.

What happens after she’s gone? That’s the next row to hoe. I’ve been pushing my highly handicapped brother to think things out and come up with a plan. He can barely barely manage on his own in that house, living on just the ground floor and not doing much cleaning. Even with me going there at least once a week to do laundry, some more cleaning, etc., it’s a marginal situation at best. And now he needs cataract surgery and maybe has a prostate situation coming? Great. A couple more things for me to take care of. My needs? Eye exam, replace my falling apart 16 year old glasses frames, my own healthcare, and anything I’d like to do? My knee surgeries that I really need to have done that each have a 12 week recovery? Back burner it all. I am their servant.



!!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ !!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ !!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ !!!!

June 17, 2024

It wouldn’t make any difference but someone should try anyway
My delayed response to Sotomayer’s “walks like a duck” dissent on the SCOTUS bumpstock overturn



As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the other day the Supreme Court threw out the ATF’s ban on bumpstocks because making such a ruling was beyond their jurisdiction. Such rules should be laws, and such laws must be passed by Congress. That’s it, beginning and end.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a bump stock does not transform a firearm into an automatic weapon, striking down a federal rule that banned bump stocks.

In a 6-3 decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, “Congress has long restricted access to “‘machinegun[s],’” a category of firearms defined by the ability to “shoot, automatically more than one shot . . . by a single function of the trigger.”

In his opinion for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote what most people who understand and are familiar with firearms have been thinking all along.

“Semi-automatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machine guns,” Justice Thomas wrote. “This case asks whether a bump stock—an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—converts the rifle into a ‘machine gun.’ We hold that it does not.

“A bump stock does not convert a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does.”

Thomas further wrote: “We hold that a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machine gun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically’. ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.” [ emphasis mine ]

Lead by their lead Affirmative Action hire on the Court, “wide Latina” Sonia Sotomayer’s moronic and unreasoned dissent lead the entire Left cabal of statist Marxists into an apoplectic keyboard meltdown. Perhaps the most egregious of these turbo-stupid rectal oral suction essays was penned over at the beyond-the-horizon leftist rag called Slate. One diarrhea diatribe being deemed insufficient, Slate has now squeezed out three putrid wet ones on the subject. Each stinks worse than the one before it.  Brown stain 1, Brown stain 2, Brown stain 3.

I propose a few video examples to be made that show the complete lack of knowledge of physics and firearms that went into her willfully benighted dissent. The woman, with the support of the other two knowledge resistant leftwing women on the big bench, should not be allowed to publish an opinion on anything, especially anything to do with the 2A or firearms. WTH, the left thinks Alito should recuse himself over anything because his wife flew a flag upside down for a couple days once. 

My examples would use a bumpstock equipped AR-15 and a single shot musket just to highlight that physics works regardless of the device employed.

First a tiny bit of information about bumpstocks. All they really are is a spring loaded stock with a sliding cover around the top of the AR-15 handgrip. They only work (when and because) you use your other hand to continuously apply forward pressure on the forearm grip of the rifle. You pull the trigger but don’t relax your finger pressure afterwards. Recoil pulls the rifle backwards a bit, compressing the springs in the stock AND relieving pressure on the trigger which allows it to reset. Your forward pressure on the forearm pulls the rifle forward after it has cycled a new round into the chamber, and that forward pressure causes your unmoving trigger finger to depress the trigger and fire the next round. And so on and so on, until you a) lift your trigger finger, b) stop pulling the rifle forward, c) run out of ammunition.  You may not have consciously pulled the trigger repeatedly, but physics did it for you. One pull per shot, not matter what.

The Gun Control Acts define a machine gun (operative word “machine") as a firearm that can shoot multiple times from a single pull of the trigger. That’s the definition. Period. The automatic firing part is built into the weapon. It is NOT an add-on accessory, such as wearing a special shooting vest covered in springs. Or putting a rubber band around your beltloop and your trigger finger and shooting from the hip. There are exhibition shooters who can fire guns very rapidly. They are just really quick; they are not machines.



Ok, first experiment. Roll the video.


Take both these rifles, load them, and put them on a sturdy wall hanger. Design the hanger so that it loosely cradles the guns, and has a fixed post (eg a dowel) in the trigger guard ahead of the trigger. Have someone push the rifle from behind. Bang! It goes off, because shifting the weapon forward is the same thing as pulling the trigger back. Basic, right? Repeat this with the bumpstock rifle. Same thing happens.

Reload the musket and return it to the wall hanger. Now stand next to the rifle and pull it forward by the forend. Bang! It goes off, for the exact same reason as pushing it from behind. It’s the forward movement that actuates the trigger being pressed, not the location of the force that moved the guns forward.



Next experiment.

Load the rifles and hold each one one handed, as if each was a pistol. Pull the trigger. Bang! The musket goes off. Pull the trigger on the bumpstock rifle and it goes off too. Once. Wait, isn’t this thing a web-footed machine gun according to Ms Wisdom? What happened? Lack of forward pull is what happened. Without that the bumpstock doesn’t work.



Next experiment.


As machine guns are defined BY LAW as being able to fire repeatedly with a single pull of the trigger, devise a device (similar perhaps to the old school cable used as a remote shutter button for cameras) that presses the trigger very firmly and stays depressed. Maybe it needs a ratcheting clamp, maybe it needs a significant spring. The point is, it pulls the trigger once and doesn’t let go. The trigger stays pulled. On an actual machine gun, the weapon will continue to fire. On the musket the gun will fire once, but that’s moot as the thing only has one shot. On the bumpstock rifle, even when held properly with lots of forward tension, the rifle will fire only once. This is because the trigger is unable to reset, as that action of being reset pushes the trigger a little bit forward. The action will probably cycle in a new round, but the firing pin in the bolt will not be cocked, by design. Because it’s not a machine gun, by design.



Next experiment.

This one relies on gravity, and requires the guns to have a trigger pull force less than the weight of the weapon. This is not hard to achieve; there are special weight gauges to measure trigger pull, muskets are fairly heavy to begin with, and gravity is ever present. You would need to figure out a safe place to point the muzzles downwards so that you wouldn’t get hit with any ricochet from the ground. Maybe use blanks instead of real bullets. 

Turn the wall hanger to a vertical position. Load each weapon and place them on that hanger with the muzzles pointing straight down. Do this very carefully so that the trigger peg is just barely in contact with the trigger but is not pressing it. Release each rifle. Bang! the mass of the weapon and the pull of gravity overcome the trigger resistance, and they go off. Does the bumpstock rifle hang there and shoot off a whole magazine? Of course not ... although it is slightly possible IF the recoil impulse is enough to bounce the gun up enough to allow the trigger to reset and then fall back down on the trigger peg again. Might want to think this one through a bit more first. But it shows the old “common sense” practice works, that you never carry a firearm by the trigger. That’s just stupid.


######


These videos wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference to Sotomayer or her brainless “feelings” minions on the Big Bench, or to Slate. Because feelings trump reason, feelings trump physics, feelings trump reality. Yeah, such wisdom. Such deep reasoning. Such jurisprudence.

Actually, several diagrams, GIFs (possibly animated ones) were presented to the high court when hearing this case. Slate was offended and dismissive of these. Guess it tasted like mansplainin’ to the willfully benighted. Gee, too bad. It’s called reality, the ultimate actual “based”.

Hey, if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it’s a duck. Kill it, pluck it, fry it up nice and crispy, and serve it with a nice helping of HOLY SHIT ARE YOU STUPID sauce.

There. I just felt the need to show that I can actually write a normal blog post once in a double blue moon.

Next thing you know I’ll be back to writing about politics. Crivens!

!!!! ~~~~~~ !!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~ !!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~ !!!!

Posted by Drew458     on 06/22/2024 at 06:17 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (31) • Trackbacks(4)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner