I watched the devastation of Helene as it tore through the Carolinas region. Entire towns are gone, and when I say gone, I mean they no longer exist. They are buried beneath rubble and mud in a level of destruction not seen (IMO) since the Galveston hurricane of 1900. I have heard reports of over 300 dead, and I think that’s ridiculously low. I know that the “official” number is currently 95 (as of this writing, 10/15/24), per NCDHHS. That number is just offensive. People on the ground are stating bluntly that they’ve seen piles of bodies.

Milton, too, was a force to be reckoned with, especially right after Helene. It spared the Carolinas, but hit Florida, and did so hard. I’ve heard of 17 deaths so far, and it’s well reported. There are news people in Florida, walking through the very wet, sometimes partially submerged neighborhoods. A number of houses are demolished, thanks to the tornadoes spawned during Milton’s arrival.

These two disasters are NOT the same. Please know, I’m not meaning to disparage any of the people involved in either hurricane. To anyone who has helped, in any way, you deserve kudos, love, support, and praise. But the response is just not the same, and the disasters are of entirely different levels.

Just as an example, “FEMA has approved more than $96 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 75,000 households.” (FEMA) and “FEMA has approved more than $177.6 million for over 56,900 households.” That means in NC, each of the households has gotten about $1280. In Florida, each household has gotten about $3093.

What?

And that’s just the reported stuff, right from FEMA’s website, which is probably quite biased. Florida, which wasn’t hit even remotely as hard, which hasn’t been rocked by watching loved ones swept away by violent mudslides they had NO warning of, have gotten more than twice what the folks in NC have gotten.

And people wonder why the folks in NC are “hunting FEMA” right now?

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The Heller opinion clearly stated that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right. That was the holding.

To get to that decision, the Supreme Court did their standard analysis. First, is the plain text of the Constitution implicated by the proposed conduct? Second, what is this nation’s historical tradition of regulation in this area?

Can I call a politician stupid? The congress might create a bill that makes it illegal to make ad hominem attacks on politicians. The president could sign that bill into law. I could then be arrested for violating that law.

That doesn’t mean that the law is constitutional. Regardless of what the congress might have said while contemplating the bill, claiming that “hate speech isn’t free speech”. The law must be evaluated in light of those two questions, is the plain text implicated and what is the history of regulation regarding speech.

Looking at the constitution, before the Bill of Rights, there is nothing in the enumerated powers granted to the State that authorizes them to limit speech. Thus, the law is unconstitutional. The state would argue that “promote the general welfare” authorizes them to make the law.

We can go a step further, we can look at the amendments.

Here we have a more clearly defined restriction on the authority of the state, Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. The conduct at hand, making speech, implicates the plain text of the First Amendment. It then becomes the state’s burden to prove a historical tradition of regulating speech.

The state cannot find historical regulations restricting speech because it is mean; therefore, the law is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court used the same methodology when deciding Heller. They first looked to see if the plain text was implicated. That required them to analyze the language of the Second Amendment.

Knowing the games that the circuit courts had been playing, they defined almost all the words. They used dictionaries from the time. They used dictionaries from multiple sources. Plus, they compared the words as used at the time.

This was part of dicta. Some inferior courts understand dicta and follow the guidance of the Supreme Court. Others do their best to twist the words. Often the inferior courts are more interested in what the Supreme Court didn’t say than in what they did say. Frequently, the inferior courts will say something like, “The Supreme Court didn’t say that 2+2=4, they said that 2+3=5. Since they didn’t tell us what 2+2 equals, we will just have to do our best.” Then proceed to hide a divide by zero to get an answer that says that 2+2=3.1415, getting pi in the face later when their opinion is vacated.

After establishing that the plain text covered the proposed conduct, the Supreme Court moves to the next stage, looking at this nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. In that historical analysis, they found that there were no laws that were analogous to a weapon ban, unless the weapon was both dangerous and unusual.

The Case at Hand

Barnett v. Raoul is a challenge to the PICA passed in Illinois. The People originally sought a preliminary injunction. They got it from Judge McGlynn. The state then appealed to the Seventh Circuit court. There, the administrative panel consolidated the case with other challenges to PICA. They stayed the preliminary injunction, allowing the law to stay in effect. They denied the requests for a preliminary injunction from the other parties and put the case to the merits panel.

This was not unexpected. The Admin panel had both Judge Easterbrook and Judge Woods on it. Both are statist and have often ruled against The People. Judge Easterbrook is most famous for having been overturned in McDonald v. Chicago.

Amazingly, the Merits panel had the same three judge panel as the original administrative panel. The circuit court heard the case quickly. They were under scrutiny by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court had denied cert in a different case, with Justice Thomas writing that if the case was delayed for the plaintiffs (good guys) to petition for rite of cert. again.

Having heard the case, the merits panel sat on their opinion. The Second and Fourth were sitting on their opinions as well. Most of the Second Amendment cases were locked in, waiting for the Circuit Courts to issue an opinion.

The Seventh Circuit was the first to issue their opinion. First, they found that they were not guilty of the two-step shuffle. That they had always been faithfully applying text and history. Because they were using text and history before Bruen, their earlier work was still good case law.

That case law found that the plaintiffs had not proved that “assault weapons” were arms under the plain text of the Second Amendment.

They remanded the cases back to continue the process.

Judge McGlynn did not allow any delay tactics. His case was argued on September 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th of 2024.

It is now time for the Court to analyze the briefings and testimony to determine the facts of the case and to reach conclusions of law.

Both parties will submit their proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. This is what they want the court to find/agree with.

On October 21st, the state of Illinois submitted their brief. There are 3585 pages, 58 exhibits, 2 attachments and an appendix.

Some facts are just that facts. They are easy to verify and check the veracity of. Others are opinions stated as facts.

The state says that PICA was enacted after July 4th. This is true and a fact. They identify that particular July 4th as the 4th of July when an asshole shot and killed 7 people.

It is not relevant to the Constitution that the shooting took place. Nor that the bill was enacted before or after that date. But it is a fact.

The state also wants the court to agree that the shooter used an AR-15 rifle and a 30 round magazine to kill 7 and would 48 people that July. Again, a fact but not relevant. The state then repeats that PICA was enacted after July 4th.

A more important date was the date when Bruen issued.

Here is an example of an opinion, dressed up like a fact.

Is the AR-15 a semiautomatic version of a firearm specifically designed for the military? Yes and no.

The AR-10 was a select fire weapon that Armalite designed for military sales. The AR-15 was a redesign, also for the military, using the lighter 5.56×45 cartridge. The original AR-15 was field tested in Vietnam, as the AR-15. The design was adopted and standardized as the M-16.

A new product was developed by Colt for the civilian market. It used the same name, AR-15. The differences were to make it capable of semi-automatic fire only. The simplest modification was the removal of the select fire control group and not drilling the hole for the auto-sear.

The early AR-15 SP1s out of Colt were M-16s without an auto-sear and with the hole for the auto-sear missing.

What is the state’s goal?

The state wants the district court to find that the weapons and magazines banned by PICA are not arms, as defined by the Seventh Circuit court.

To accomplish this, they need to have the court find that AR-15s and the ilk are really modifications of the M-16/M-4 platform.

The real trick in this that it is the plaintiff’s burden to prove that something is an arm protected by the plain text. The state does not carry that burden.

This is the difference between presumed innocent and presumed guilty.

Regardless of anything that happens in Judge McGlynn’s court, PICA will stay in effect for the foreseeable future.

It is likely that Judge McGlynn will issue his opinion with a short administrative stay to allow the state to appeal.

The Seventh Circuit administrative panel will issue a stay pending the merit panel issuing their opinion.

If the merit panel finds for the plaintiffs, the state will seek a rehearing en bloc. This will take time.

If the merit panel finds for the state, I hope the plaintiffs file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court.

It is likely that the Seventh Circuit will actually hold the case until the Snope case is decided by the Supreme Court.

Regardless, cases are starting to move again.

I’ve been listening to the Andrew Sisters for years. Their voices are wonderful. In all of those years, I had never actually seen them in film.

Last night, this song showed up in my play list. I was thinking about it, how our culture has changed. “Give me some skin” would get me in trouble today.

In my time, Harlem has always been a dangerous and scary place. There was a time when it was a cultural up end place to go.

Regardless, watching the sisters sing and dance makes me smile.

And another:

Squash soups are a favorite of mine. Because dairy and I don’t get along, I can’t indulge in my favorite chowders anymore (I don’t care what anyone says, chowder made with oatmilk is just not the same). Squash soups can be blended to give an impression of being creamy, when there’s not even a drizzle of dairy in them. Also, if you do need to add a bit of milk for flavor, oatmilk will do just fine because it’s a background thing and not the star. This is my recipe for Hubbard squash soup, and it’s really delicious. It’s great when you have to feed a crowd, because a single of these odd colored squashes is enough to feed a family of 20. Today you can get smaller ones, and indeed, my local grocery store has Hubbard squashes that are about the size of an acorn squash, but there’s something wonderful about using a huge Hubbard squash. They look like they belong in the Jurassic period. LOL!

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs squash peeled and cubed
• 3 onions diced
• 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 1/2 cup protein, boiled then minced
• 2 egg yolks, beaten
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp of sugar and 1 tbsp each of cinnamon & ginger, mixed together

Add the squash and onions to your broth, and bring it to a full, rolling boil. Reduce the heat and cook until the squash is tender. If you want a “creamy” soup, cook until it’s falling apart soft, and if you prefer a more clear broth with chunks, stop when just tender to the fork.

Your protein can be pork, chicken, or even vegetarian options such as seitan or walnuts. Boil meat until it’s very soft and falling apart (think pulled pork consistency) and then shred it with a fork or mince it up into very small pieces. Stir this into the soup along with the egg yolks and salt. Stir gently, then allow to cook for a few minutes.

When putting out the soup, set the sugar and spice mixture on the side in a small bowl, with spoons. Allow people to season to their own taste.

Serve this soup as a first course to a feast, or offer it with a salad and a more substantial meat.

I make considerably more of this recipe than is called for, because it freezes well and I like having convenient lunches I can just pop into the microwave later. A large batch takes the same amount of time and effort as a small batch, so why not “go big”?

Notes:

When I make this, I use 10 cups of broth and about 5 or 6 pounds of cut up squash. I use one very large Spanish onion and one regular sized cooking onion. I also like it to be meaty and hearty, as it’s usually all we’re going to eat, so I use about 3 or 4 cups of shredded chicken. I increase the egg yolks to 3, to thicken the soup, making it much more “creamy” or “silky” in texture. I used Himalayan Pink Salt, about 1.5 tsp, and a sprinkle of pepper on the top of each served bowl of soup.

This soup is incredibly thick and hearty, much moreso than you might think.  When my kids were younger, I used to make this a lot. They  suggested that the squash was kind of lost in the broth, and that it tasted rather like chicken noodle soup. This is a plus, in my opinion, as the soup was full of all sorts of good things for the kids that they wouldn’t normally eat. I’m all for hiding the good stuff in yummy dishes!

Trolling at its finest.

If there is one word that truly does not describe Kamala, it is “authentic.”

Everywhere she goes, it feels fake. Everything she says, feels fake. There is nothing authentic about her.

While people made fun of her for saying she owns a Glock and that ends her description of the type of firearm she owns, I didn’t find that off-putting.

I own a SIG. Lord help me if I know what model it is. I look when I need to. I have a Glock. Which model? I don’t know.

They are just tools. The Winchester Model 94s? Well, they are more history than tools. And yes, they have taken deer and raccoons. The Henry has taken a raccoon. The Rossi R95 has taken raccoons and possums.

It depends on the person just how detail they get with their firearms.

Regardless, I don’t think Kamala is part of “gun culture”. Not first, second, nor 100th generation gun culture.

While my accent changes, depending on whom I am talking to, that is mostly because I’ve had a southern accent in the past, and Michigan, and Wisconsin, and ugh, California. When I’m talking to somebody with those accents, I will slip back into it.

I was talking to a woman from Kentucky the other day and my southern came out.

Ally reported she had a thick accent. I found it pretty tame and lovely to listen to.

Regardless, Kamala is not authentic. If she told me that water was wet, I would want a second opinion and would test myself.

Trump is Trump. This election season, I find myself liking the man. “I don’t think he knows what he is saying” is a great line.

He has been more controlled in his messaging. Attacking their policies and capabilities rather than the person.

On Sunday, Trump kept his word and showed up for work. At a McDonald’s.

They started him on the Fryer, but at some point he moved to the drive—through window. My guess is that it took a bit of work for the Secret Service to figure out how to allow people to get that close to Trump in a vehicle “safely”.

It looks like he had a blast. And the people seemed to enjoy it as well.

And at this point, Trump has more documented time working at McDonald’s than Kamala has presented.

I am reminded of the image showing a US soldier on a hillside with civilians hiding behind him. The caption reads, “The difference is that we ourselves between them and the enemy, they put them between themselves and their enemies.”

It was, and is, such a powerful message of the differences between the animals and the civilized nations.

One of the more disgusting things I’ve seen out of Gaza was a video of Hamas placing the shattered body of a child into a bomb crater, to be found with a great deal of anguish on the faces of the actors.

The child was already dead. His skull was hanging open. It was disgusting.

I support Israel. I hope they root out every last terrorist bastard and send them to get their 72 raisins.

My newest cookbook is now available!

Clay pots are probably the oldest cookware known to humans. Since not long after we harnessed fire, we’ve been learning new and improved ways to make cooking vessels, and clay was an obvious early choice. When fired, it’s hard, heat resistant, and heat retaining. It holds liquids and solids equally well. And best, clay can be pressed into any shape. This small cookbook covers five recipes from each of five different time periods: Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Medieval, 18th Century American, and modern day. Each uses a clay cooking vessel, be it pot, pipkin, tagine, or pan. They are tasty additions to any modern menu, while still touching on the history of early human cooking. M. Allyson Szabo is the author of The Re-Enactor’s Cookbook, and Cook Small, Live Large! Her interest in all things historical and kitchen oriented has served her well, and she produces cookbooks that enlighten and educate with a conversational flair. Readers at all levels of cooking can enjoy her books!

So I don’t usually toot my own horn here on the blog, but I did want to post this up because it lends itself well to prepping and how to cook during an emergency. While the recipes in the book are a bit fancier than you’re likely to make during a major emergency, the methods you’ll learn will be useful.

If you can find clay, you can make pots. Once you have pots, you can cook. You can boil water to make sure it’s safe to drink. You can wash, shave, do dishes. The book doesn’t go into how one makes pots, but there are tons of amazing YouTube videos and articles on the subject that you can tap into.

The suspicion of an attack on Route 4 is growing: a fatally wounded person at one scene and a moderately wounded person at a second scene Amit Segal on Telegram, Google AI translation

Five injured Amit Segal

One of them died of his wounds Amit Segal

Ben Gvir: The person who killed the terrorists was a citizen who received a weapon thanks to my reform. Amit Segal

The title on the web page is now “Israeli Civilians Are Taking Up Arms”.

The article is another anti-gun screed by the normal people, decrying the number of deaths “caused” by guns.

One of the things that Ben-Gvir’s new regulations have accomplished is that Israeli citizens are no longer disarmed after a self-defense shooting.

While we in the US have backup guns for our backup guns, many people that own firearms in foreign countries consider themselves to be lucky to have just one. … the practice of requiring citizens involved in an attack to hand over their personal weapons for extended examination and investigation.Missing citations for QJSUMI46

It seems like they are starting to come around to “it is a good idea for people to be armed”.

To put this in some sort of perspective, Israel is smaller in area than New Hampshire. It is a little longer north-south and about the same east-west. There isn’t a place in New Hampshire that you can’t reach from the border within an hour of driving.

The enemies of Israel surround it. There is no place more than an hour from the border with hostiles.

There are lots of different types of shelter that we have access to. As with most things “prepper” related, everyone has a couple of opinions, and many of them clash. Basically, the idea is that you should have access to some kind of shelter in the first three hours of an emergency. It’s a good target to aim for, but it requires a lot of forethought and/or skill to pull it off.

The first kind of shelter that most of us have is our home. If you can stay at home, you probably should. Your home has all your food, your beds, your comfort items, and you know it. If you’re the type of person who’s been prepping a while, you probably have a plan in place for how to keep your home safe from raiders or marauders, and so that makes it one of the safest places you can be. A roof with four walls and a stout door really does trump most other types of shelter.

What if your home isn’t available, though? Whether it’s because you’ve been caught out when the emergency occurred, or a flash flood has washed away your home, or a tornado has ripped it into shreds, or any other reason, home is no longer safe. Your next easiest (and possibly safest, in many cases) form of shelter is your vehicle. You can cover the windows for privacy, you can lock the doors, and it’s mobile so you can move it to a safer place if things get hairy wherever you are. Your car also has the ability to hump more goods than you can by yourself. Again, it’s a fairly warm place (at least in comparison with outside), the doors lock, and it’s yours. You can formulate a plan around your vehicle long before you ever need it.

With your home and vehicle out of the picture, what else can you do? Well, that depends a lot on your strength, ingenuity, where you are, the time of year/weather/temperature, and lots of other things.

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Indicators

We took my daughter’s care up to have work done on it. The auto shop is a local business doing great work. While there, we got into a discussion with a young lady.

She made the statement that she might be trading in her car sooner if the economy improves after the election. I.e., if Trump wins.

We got to talking politics. She asked if we are seeing more Trump signs this election.

This made me think about it. There are Trump signs in all the public places. As expected. There are a few more yard signs around, but still not many. It is as if people were worried about expressing their support for Trump. Go figure.

What I have noticed is that there are fewer Kamala/Walz signs. About half as many as I would expect.

Is this an indicator of how the election will go? I’m always unhappy when my state is shown as deep blue for the coming election. We were a red state. Then purple. Now dark blue.

The Interview

Ok, I didn’t watch it. I can’t stand to watch her talking, much less listen to her. X has been blowing up with just how badly she performed.

What was mind-boggling was the number of posts claiming she did well. Now if only the media would take off the kid gloves and interview Trump as aggressively as they did Kamala.

The ratio is beautiful. The question I had was, “why?” Why would they post something so ridiculous? Anybody who has half a brain knows that Trump is out there doing interviews, sometimes multiple interviews per day.

We have all seen just how biased the media is against him. It was on full display during the presidential debate.

The answer? In my opinion, the posts/tweets are not directed at The People. It is directed at the base.

The democrat base has been conditioned to treat anything that comes from the right as lies. Even though Fox has never been a “Right” media source, they were much more balanced than the other media sources. Thus, the left considers everything that Fox does as tainted, lies, misinformation.

That base is never going to watch the Fox interview of Kamala. What they will do is read these posts, have it confirmed by the rest of their bubble friends, and know that Kamala did a fantastic job in a hostile interview that got testy.

Document Library

I have copies of all of Gun Free Zone’s library. I will start putting them up. I’m also going to reach out to some of the other sites that have libraries to make copies to host here.

I have a fairly complete set of FMs that I downloaded from someplace. They will go up as well.

Technical Package

According to Ian, Gun Jesus, one of the reasons it is difficult to manufacture modern versions of older firearms is that we have lost the technical package.

If I understand it correctly, the Technical Package is the documents that give the directions on how to convert blueprints into actual objects.

As an example, it can be faster to drill a series of holes and then mill out the metal between the holes than to just mill a pocket. Those decisions are important.

Another example is documenting the order of operations. When machining an item, we need to determine the sequence that will be performed on the item. First op might be all the roughing operations. Second op would be the finishing operations. Third op would be the heat treat, and fourth op would be grinding to dimension.

Here is a different, simple instruction. The drawing for the AR15 lower receiver calls for a 0.376 +/- 0.001 hole for the selector switch. The easiest method to do this is to drill a 23/64 (0.3593) hole and then ream it to 0.376.

I do not believe I have ever seen a technical package for a firearm. I’d love to get one for the AR15/M4.

Homeowner Laments

Our house is one that “just grewed.” It was likely built as a summer cottage in the 40s. From there it was extended. Multiple times.

I’ve been able to piece out some of that growth. My office was likely a porch at some point, or mud room for people coming into the house. The reloading room, off the office and dining room, used to be a kitchen or bathroom. It still has a small sink in it.

The entrance to the basement was in the reloading room. At sometime in the past it was covered over. The stairs are still in the basement, leading up to a solid floor. Currently, the entrance to the basement is from the outside.

After expansion, the house had one full bath, between the master bedroom and a secondary bedroom. That is properly positioned for the water supply to the house and the sewage connection. The “new” kitchen is at the other end of the “old” part of the house. It was a separate extension.

The water from the kitchen sink used to go into a copper pipe that slanted across the width of the house and then down the length of the house to tie into the sewer line.

When they extended the house the last time, they added a second bathroom. This was at the opposite end of the house from the sewer connection. There was no way to get the waste from the second bathroom to the sewer connection by gravity alone.

This is not a problem. You use a sewage sump/ejector. This is a sealed tub that collects waste until the float valve turns on the ejector pump. The ejector pump then shoots the waste up the exhaust pipe to the ceiling of the basement where it can then travel, via gravity, to the sewer connection. All good.

We had an issue where the pooper shooter stopped shooting poop. This required my son and I to go through each clean out to make sure that nothing was stopping up the flow.

Nasty, yucky work. Finally, it required the plumber to come fix the pooper shooter proper. The issue? Grease from the kitchen sink had formed a dam at the bottom of the pooper shooter, keeping the pump from working.

So why is this an issue? Ever since that fix, we’ve had an off and on problem with horrible smells.

Today, I think I located the source.

One of those clean out plugs isn’t fully sealing. My fun for the weekend is to make sure that nobody flushes while I take the plug out, clean the threads, then replace the plug with sealer to keep the smell in the pipes.

Every so often, I wish I were a renter, again.

Question For You

If you were forced to travel in a hurry, to escape the zombie’s (democrat city dwellers) and were limited to one handgun and one rifle, what calibers would you choose?

I would love to have a carbine in .45 ACP. I don’t, so that puts the PC 9 and Glock right up there. On the other hand, I might take the Winchester Model ’94 in 30-30 with a 1911. Good stopping power without the scare factor.

The CETME in 7.62×51 sounds nice, but I’m not sure. M1 in 30-06?

Please let us know in the comments.