Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Guns, Health, Publishing, Writing stuff
I usually try to avoid posting things on April 1, since *I* don’t trust hardly anything I see online on April Fools. So I held off, other than the link to my Guns.com article.
Anyway, some interesting things to report. First off, the numbers. March had 768 downloads of my complete novel, which means there’s been over 2,000 downloads so far this year, and some 31,000+ total. No, I have no idea when it will be actually published by Trapdoor, so don’t ask.
Hits to BBTI have slowed a bit – down to only 350,650 for March. That puts us at 5,759,535 total hits. Even with it slowing down, we should break 6 million total hits sometime before the end of this month.
Writing for Guns.com has been fun, and seems to have gone well enough. The articles are being well received from what I can tell. I’ve been asked to start also doing ‘Editor Reviews’ of some handguns, and those will start to show up here any day now, if you are interested in such things.
I had another CAT scan this week, following up on the ongoing health issues. Preliminary report from the scan is that things are clear – no major problems show. Which is good – there’s nothing serious going on. But also somewhat frustrating, since it doesn’t show what is causing the lingering pain I feel in my ribs on my right chest. I see my doc next week to discuss things, but mostly I think it will be a matter of just dealing with the pain and getting on with life. Best guess is that it’s probably some kind of muscle/tendon damage that can’t completely heal because I keep breathing. And I’m not willing to stop doing so in the hope that the pain will go away.
But the real news is that yesterday we filed the paperwork with the Missouri Secretary of State to form “HFY Publishing, LLC.” Yeah, on April Fools Day. Seemed appropriate.
No, seriously, while this is a small and largely symbolic step, it was an important one. An even more important one is that I’ve now heard from all of the beta readers, and gotten some very valuable feedback. We (my co-author and I) need to expand the introductory material of the book, to better explain how and why the book is structured the way it is and how to use it to best advantage. We also need to tweak the layout of the book for clarity. Neither of these are major changes, and we should be able to get them sorted in the next week or so.
Well, that gets everything up to date, I think. Now time to go do some home repairs.
Jim Downey
My latest article is up on Guns.com. Here’s an excerpt:
I picked up the gun. Replaced my original magazine, the one with premium defensive ammunition. Chambered a round, took aim. Pulled the trigger.
Just a “click.”
I felt a cold chill run up my spine. My face felt a bit clammy. I waited, then cleared the magazine and round from the gun. My vision focused into a tight tunnel on the pistol in my hands, as the full implication of what had just happened settled in: my carry gun didn’t work when I expected it to.
Read the whole thing to find out what happened.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Gotta love it:
Except for the accent, this guy reminds me so much of my step-brother Patrick. He was always doing wildly insane but pretty cool crap like this.
Needed a chuckle, after being subject to more abuses of the medical-test variety this morning. Just a CAT scan trying to sort out the ongoing pleuritic pain, so nothing to worry about. Still, having to stay off coffee until after the test was annoying, and the above vid helped.
Jim Downey
Got a note from a friend last evening:
Isn’t it cool to actually use the scientific method to figure these things out? I feel like I should send a thank you note to my high school chem teacher.
* * * * * * *
Last week one day when it was warm, I took advantage of the opportunity to get out to a nearby shooting range. I needed to proof some test loads for one of my guns, before I reloaded a bunch of ammo to those specs. That went fine.
I also planned on getting in a little pistol practice with a couple of my pistols I rely on for self defense. That didn’t go fine.
One of the guns had a problem. It failed to fire. I checked the ammunition, and determined that the firing pin wasn’t striking hard enough to initiate combustion. This was bad, and could have led to all manner of very negative outcomes.
* * * * * * *
Listening to the Diane Rehm Show this morning, they were talking about the protests and political situation in Wisconsin. One of the people Diane spoke with was the current Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels. Governor Daniels had been Director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Bush II Administration.
During the discussion, Gov. Daniels started in on how government deficits were what was driving the problems in Wisconsin. And he made a comment to the effect that this was just a reflection of the problems we’re having all across the country, particularly at the Federal level.
So far, so good. Deficit spending really *is* a problem, and it needs to be resolved at all levels of government. I couldn’t disagree with Gov. Daniels a bit on that.
Then he said something else: that the problems were all due to government spending, and that further cuts had to be made, in particular to the ‘entitlement programs.’ By this he meant Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
* * * * * * *
Yesterday I had the time to take apart the pistol which had malfunctioned. Based on what had happened, I knew to look at three possible causes: a problem with the ammunition; a problem with the firing pin; a problem with the spring which drives the hammer forward into the firing pin.
I had ruled out the ammunition as a likely cause. Yeah, the first couple of rounds I tried were reloads (my own), and it was possible that I had either gotten a bad batch of primers or they hadn’t been seated properly. But the third round I tried was factory ammunition. Factory ammo can also fail, though in my experience that is fairly rare. The chance that I would have three failures in a row with different ammunition struck me as highly unlikely.
So I’d probably find the source of the problem in the gun, with either the firing pin, or the hammer spring.
I did the basic dis-assembly, breaking the gun into a couple of main components. One of these was the bottom of the gun, the part that has the frame & grip. At this point I could test the strength of the hammer manually, and see whether it had adequate power. It did.
So I turned my attention to the top of the gun, the part with the slide and barrel and that stuff. Getting to the firing pin isn’t exactly difficult if you know what you’re doing, but it does mean you’re basically taking the whole thing completely apart. And it’s not something you do as part of a routine cleaning – the bit which holds the firing pin and makes it operate properly is pretty closed up, and designed to not need detail cleaning very often.
* * * * * * *
Income disparity in the US has gotten consistently worse for the last 40 years. It’s about twice as bad now as it was in 1968.
Remember the Social Security “lockbox“? How about the “peace dividend“? Do you remember how, during the latter part of the Clinton Administration, there was so much of a budget surplus that there was actually a discussion about the damage it would do to our economy if we retired too much of the national debt?
What happened? Where did these huge deficits come from?
Actually, I think there are a whole bunch of reasons. An economy as massive as ours is subject to a huge variety of forces, both internal and external. But let’s boil it down to the bare essentials:
- Increased spending.
- Decreased revenue.
Gov. Daniels, and most of the rest of the political class these days, is saying that the problem is almost entirely increased spending. And that therefore, the way to fix the problem is to decrease spending.
That would perhaps work. But what if it is due to decreased revenue instead? The Bush tax cuts, recently extended, dropped the US federal government’s total income from taxation below the historical averages. Furthermore, we’ve seen a steady decline in tax rates on the upper income earners and corporations for the last 50 years – the top marginal tax rate during the Eisenhower administration was 91%. For most of the Reagan Administration, it was 50%. During the Clinton years it was just under 40%. It dropped to 35% thanks to the Bush tax cuts.
And during the same time we’ve seen such huge declines in the tax rates, we’ve also seen a growing disparity in income distribution.
* * * * * * *
Got a note from a friend last evening:
Isn’t it cool to actually use the scientific method to figure these things out? I feel like I should send a thank you note to my high school chem teacher.
My friend was responding to the information I had shared about the problem I had with my gun, and how I had tracked it down thanks to a little application of the scientific method. Proper analysis, test the theory, draw conclusions. Problem solved.
But he could have just as well been responding to trying to determine what was the problem with our national deficit.
I think most people don’t really mind some income disparity – we all want to think that we will be rich, ourselves, one day. But the analysis of what is going on with the deficit is another matter, particularly when you start talking about making substantial cuts to programs which make a huge difference for the bottom end of the income distribution. Just going back to the tax level and policies of the Clinton era would not solve all our problems.
But it sure as hell would be a good place to start.
Jim Downey
From Communion of Dreams, chapter Six:
Navarr smiled slightly. “Yeah. Here.” He picked up the weapon, passed it over to Jon.
It was large, ugly and very functional looking. He handled it, felt the heft and the balance of the thing. There was a palmkey sensor on either side of the grip.
“Nasty little brute, isn’t it? Uses the new generation of ceramic-lattice rounds.” He handed over a magazine with one of the white bullets showing. “Lots of mass for punch, and on impact the lattice collapses, causing the volatiles to fuse. That creates a mini jet of plasma that’ll cut right through ballistic cloth.”
Jon slid one of the rounds from the clip. Designed to offset advances in body armor, the plasma jet would carve right through ablative material and high-tensile cloth that would stop normal slugs or even high powered lasers. Where the jet came in contact with tissue, part of the tissue was vaporized, creating a steam explosion that caused considerable damage. “Anything stop it?”
As mentioned recently, my next article on guns.com concerns selecting a good self-defense ammunition. Here’s the lede:
You need to choose self-defense ammunition for your gun. Simple, right? Just get the biggest, the baddest, the most powerful ammunition in the correct caliber for your gun, and you’re set, right?
Wrong. Wrong, on so many levels. For a whole bunch of reasons. We’ll get to that.
Check it out, pass it along, let me know what you think with comments here or there.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Just a quick note – my first article for Guns.com has been posted, and you can find it here: Ammo by the Numbers. Here’s the lead paragraph:
One of the most bewildering moments for a relatively novice shooter is selecting ammunition. Go online, or into a big-box store, or even into your local gun shop and you can be confronted with a huge array of choices in any given caliber or cartridge design. Most of the boxes have a sort of ‘code’ on the side; some have little charts or even graphs on the bottom. But which one do you want? What does this stuff even mean? Do claims of a certain velocity or energy tell you anything?
Response so far has been good. And this afternoon I got started on a sequel, on how to choose an appropriate self-defense ammunition.
Onward!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Guns, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Writing stuff
Thought I’d pass along a small note – I’ve been asked to do some freelance writing for Guns.com.
In spite of it being about the oldest and most obvious firearms-related domain name possible, not much has been done with it previously. Late last year a new crew took over management, and the new owners seem to have a pretty good attitude about what they want to develop it into. They like my writing on firearm-related topics, and starting next week I’ll be a regular contributor there. It should be fun, and I’m actually kinda excited to be involved with it!
This is very early in the game, but I think it has a lot of potential, not just for me but for anyone interested in almost anything to do with firearms. Check out their site if you get a chance. I don’t plan on cross-posting much here, but if something particularly interesting or noteworthy happens, I’ll probably mention it here and on Facebook.
Wish me luck!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: BoingBoing, Constitution, Failure, Government, Guns, Society, Travel, YouTube
. . . you will quickly find yourself punished, even if you are a deputized Air Marshal and airline pilot.
That’s about the only conclusion one can draw from this story:
Pilot in Hot Water for Exposing Security Flaws
An anonymous 50-year-old airline pilot is in hot water with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) after posting on YouTube a behind-the-scenes tour of what he says are security flaws at San Francisco International Airport.
While airplane passengers go through security screening — such as with metal detectors, full body scanners and pat downs — the pilot shows in one of several video clips, recorded with his cell phone, that airport employees at SFO simply swipe a card to go through an unmanned door.
* * *
According to sister station ABC7 in San Francisco, the disclosure resulted in federal air marshals and sheriff’s deputies showing up at the pilot’s home — an event the pilot, a deputized federal air marshal, also recorded — to confiscate his federally issued handgun.
There’s a nice video clip there on the news site about the whole incident. Which contains this great quote from the TSA in a letter sent to the pilot after Federal Marshals showed up at his home to confiscate his handgun that says “A FFDO (Federal Flight Deck Officer) must not engage in … conduct that impairs the efficiency of TSA … or causes public loss of confidence in TSA.”
There’s also an interview with the TV station’s aviation consultant who worked at the airport in question for 47 years who confirms that the problems the pilot documented are as characterized.
So, while the traveling public has to deal with enhanced groping and potentially dangerous scanners, anyone with an access card gets to take whatever they want out onto the airfield and onto planes being serviced. But if you’re in a position to document that fact and publicize it, you should expect the TSA to come down hard on your ass.
Jim Downey
Well, it was a fun couple of days this week out at Camp BBTI – doing a new round of testing, primarily focused on the .380 ACP cartridge (9x17mm). This has become an increasingly popular cartridge used for small self-defense guns, so we decided to expand the different ammos we tested using the BBTI ‘chop tests’ as well as a dozen real world guns. You can see the guns here:
And here’s a great pic of Jim K and Keith at the shooting table, getting ready to shoot the 4″ barrel:
We also did the full chop tests (as well as a real world gun) on 9mm Makarov and 9mm Ultra – two cartridges which are between a .380 and the 9mm Parabellum in terms of power/performance. We’ll post the full data on the BBTI site as soon as everything is crunched and ready – but for now let me just say that heretofore I haven’t been a big fan of the .380, but with the right ammunition I’d consider carrying a gun in that caliber. We were all surprised at how well the Buffalo Bore rounds performed at even the 2″ barrel length.
Jim Downey
Cross posted to the BBTI blog.
Filed under: Ballistics, Gardening, Guns, Habanero, Health, Publishing, Writing stuff
OK, it’s been a while. But not due to anything bad.
First, I am feeling a lot better. I’ve communicated with my doc, and it looks like the last round of antibiotics finally did the trick with the pneumonia. I still have some recovery to do – minor lung pain and whatnot – but I am at least sleeping normally again and have a lot more energy. Now I just have to ease back into getting decent exercise and enough rest, and then I can start on making up for all the stuff that didn’t get done in the last month.
Second, we did another round of ballistics testing this week, focused primarily on a bunch of new ammo types in the very popular .380 caliber. Got some interesting results – more on all of that, later.
Third, got a rejection from the agent who had expressed initial interest in the care giving book. Here’s what she said:
This needs a lot of work. By “this” I mean both the proposal, which is really dry, and the material, which is uneven because of your source material. You need to put more effort into using the source material to tell a story, not sticking it into chapters and relying on it as the primary storytelling device.
Which tells me that she completely didn’t “get” the whole idea of the book. I don’t usually dismiss out of hand any criticism, but I also have enough sense to not over-react to the first response I get. We will continue to look elsewhere for someone else who may be interested in representing the book.
Lastly, got the first harvest of Red Savina habaneros out of the garden. Last night prepped and dried about two dozen. Here’s a pic of them before they went into the oven:
And here they are when I took them out this morning:
Once dried, turned them into about 3 ounces of delicious nuclear-powered spice. Yay!
So, things continue. Now I need to do a bit of yard work.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 