Archive for the ‘Firearms’ Category

I think I actually know what’s going on in this photo, so let’s write it down and see what I learn.

The mortar was loaded like this: powder in the depression in the bottom, fuse coming in lying over that, then bowling ball.  Then two ziploc bags of gasoline were placed on top of the bowling ball.

Here’s what we’re seeing in the photo:

B is the bowling ball itself.

A1 and A2 are the two ziploc bags, ruptured and just about done spewing a mist of gasoline (the enlargement at left makes this a bit clearer).

C is the mist of gasoline recently released (see also E and F).

D is the flame front, as it works its way up the cloud of mist.

E shows actual droplets of gasoline, not yet vaporized (may not be clear at screen resolution, but is quite clear at full res).

F shows actual droplets at the side, as well; the flame front has not yet consumed them.

Note that the projectile B has already passed the bags A1 and A2.  This is not that surprising, given their relative density and aerodynamic coefficients.

Yep, it’s definite.

There’s now a gallery for these here, or the whole snapshot gallery here.

We appear to have had a good time.

I’m not going to go into this in any depth, but I wanted to post something acknowledging that the Supreme Court handed down the right decision on something (not that rare even for this court).

No reasonable interpretation of the Second Amendment, based on its history, its language, the debate surrounding its adoption, or the other related measures debated and sometimes adopted for state constitutions, can possibly justify understanding it as anything other than an individual right to “keep and bear arms” for self-defense and any other lawful purpose.

One can sanely think this is a mistake, and thus favor fixing it; but to fix it requires a new constitutional amendment.  It’s been done before; slavery was thrown out, and prohibition was brought in and then thrown out, for example.

Justice Scalia’s decision goes into the historical and linguistic scholarship in some detail, and is also remarkably nasty to the dissenting opinions.  I haven’t yet read them; the two of them are bigger than the main opinion, and I just haven’t had time.

The decision (in PDF format) can be downloaded here.

There’ll be years of litigation, of course, trying to expand from this beachhead into a real, solid, acceptance of the most basic human right, the right to defend yourself.

With a tiny number of exceptions (and no decent training, and in hindsight the people I shot with before were not competent), I didn’t start shooting until about 1978. Then I started with handguns, and the people who started me then were competent and gave me an excellent introduction to safety and shooting skills. (I probably wasn’t competent to have that opinion until last year; but now that I’m an NRA certified instructor in several areas including pistol, I think I have a decent idea of what a good introduction looks like.) Before this last year, I don’t think I’d fired more than 5 rounds from rifles — some .22, and I think one round from a .223.

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