Assault rifle or deer rifle?

Here in the US the anti gun folks have been beating the drums to outlaw "assault rifles".  The phrase "assault rifle" sounds so terrible that they have had some luck in getting laws passed against them.  In actual fact, assault rifles, like are issued to soldiers, have been illegal in the US since the 1930's.  Back in the heyday of Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, and all the rest of the infamous American gangsters, who got Hollywood movies made of their exploits, and made the FBI famous,  Congress passed a law that made machine guns illegal.  The 1930 law required registration and payment of a $200 tax (humungous in 1930) for each machine gun owned.  A later law tightened that up more and now machine guns are just plain illegal to own.  By machine gun, we mean any weapon that keeps firing, round after round, as long as the trigger is depressed. 
   In the years after WWII armies issued their soldiers machine guns,  reasonably light (7-9 pound) shoulder weapons with detachable magazines holding 20-30 rounds, chambered for low power cartridges to keep the recoil down in full automatic fire.  The Russian AK-47 and the US M16 (AR-15 when sold to civilians) are typical examples.  The troops loved them, thinking that spraying bullets like a garden hose would make up for poor marksmanship.  The Army leadership worried about ammunition supply.  One good long pull on a trigger and brap,. 20 rounds expended.  If the troops set off with 200 rounds, which is a lot, and they get heavy fast,  then do brap ten times and you are out of ammunition.  Every Army officer from corporal on up worries about this problem.  In fact, the US Army modified their M16 rifle so it only does three rounds in "automatic".  Each pull of the trigger gives a mere three round burst, rather than a magazine emptying brap.  Conserved ammunition.
    Anyhow, veterans who carried assault rifles in the service, and liked them, will buy legal versions of the Army rifle for deer hunting after discharge from the service.  Legal means no automatic fire.  Pull the trigger and fire a single shot.  You gotta pull the trigger once for each shot.  Semi automatic is the buzz word, another is self loader.
   And, the legal weapon is no different from any other deer rifle.  The objective things, caliber, power of cartridge, range, accuracy, weight, barrel length, are all the same as a deer rifle.  In fact the "assault weapon" rounds are less powerful than the old 30-30 round for my 1950 Marlin lever action rifle.
   Which left the anti assault weapons lawmakers with a problem.  How to describe an assault rifle?  In California the law listed illegal assault rifles by model number.  The industry assigned new model numbers, and presto, chango, their product became legal again.  Other states  listed cosmetic features such as bayonet lugs, flash hiders, and bipods as making a gun into an illegal "assault rifle". The industry quickly removed those cosmetic features. 
   After all this sound and fury, one needs to remember that crimes are mostly done with handguns, not shoulder weapons.
  

Negative Political Ads are here

Now that the primary is over, and the opponents know who they have to slam, let the slamming begin.  Sunday morning WMUR (good old channel 9, the voice of NH) was just wall to wall with very aggressive and very negative ads, mostly by Democrats slamming Republicans.  It was solid. 

Rush hour in Martian Orbit

We have two Mars orbiters arriving at Mars later this month (21 and 23 September) .  NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven for short) and India's Mangalaan Orbital Mission (MOM for short.  NASA spent $671 million on Maven.  India's MOM is famous in technical circles for getting to Mars for about one tenth that.  Both orbiters still have one heavy duty maneuver before they can be considered to have "arrived"  That is the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI)  a 34 minute burn of the rocket engines to slow the orbiter to Mars orbit velocity.  That's a long burn, especially for an engine that has been floating in vacuum, unused, for nearly a year.   To make the MOI dicier, the maneuver must be executed by the onboard microprocessor, since radio signals from Earth take 20 minutes to reach Mars.  15 years ago a gross software fault caused a Mars Orbiter to crash on Mars from a failure of the MOI maneuver. 
   Maven carries instruments to verify a Mars creation theory.  Now that we have good evidence of free surface water in the distant Martian past, the theory suggests that the water vapor escaped into interplanetary space due to Mar's weak gravity.  Maven's instruments will measure the flow of gases and ions in the upper Martian atmosphere, hoping to show that water is still escaping and measure the rate, as a way of figuring how long surface water lasted on Mars, before it escaped into space.
  To add to the fun, Siding Spring, a comet, will swing by Mars on 19 October.  It is believed that Siding Spring is a new comet, on it's first trip into the inner solar system.   It is thought that new comets are chunks of ice and gravel that have been floating in interstellar space ("the Ort Cloud") since the beginning of the solar system, and Siding Spring represents matter from the dawn of time, or at least the birth of the solar system which is a long time ago.  Scientists are eager for any information the Mars orbiters can gather from Siding Spring. 

Anti Terrorist Operations

John Kerry spent some TV airtime explaining that what we are doing in Iraq and Syria are "anti-terrorist operations" NOT a war on ISIS.   Sounds like Kerry just wants to do some fireworks displays and go home.  "Operations" are something you can just declare to be over.  If he were to call it a war, then the country would expect victory, which he has no desire to produce. 

Lone Ranger

Another Netflix.  Didn't bother to see it in the theaters.  Good thing too.  It was terrible.  Nobody did anything heroic or romantic or even very interesting.  Nobody was very funny.  Johnny Depp, who can be very funny, didn't get any decent lines.  Armie Hammer, who played the Lone Ranger, did such a super nerd act that it was painful to watch rather than funny.  It went on and on, for ever.  Nobody ever said "Hiyo Silver", no William Tell overture.  I'm not a real Lone Ranger fan, but I do remember the comic books, the TV show, and the black & white movies.  This flick didn't touch any of those bases for nostalgia or for laughs. 
   I didn't bother to watch it to the end, I switched it off and watched Obama's great Tuesday night speech.  Not sure if that was such a great idea.  IMDB estimates Disney spent $215 million to make this disaster and it only grossed $89 million.  I thought Disney was smarter than this.  They must have got the John Carter crew to do 'em another turkey.

What Obama did say last night

Not much.  He spoke for only 15 minutes, which is not much.  He came on TV right at 9 PM as promised.  Thinking this ought to be an important speech I took written notes.  He did give a partial goal, to "degrade and destroy" ISIS, which is something of a question beggar.  If you destroy them you don't have to degrade them.  He did not say what we want to do with the land that ISIS has conquered already.  He mentioned the US pullout of 140K troops from Iraq as if that was a good thing.  "The US is safer, BUT we still face a threat."  That's luke warm, on one hand things are safer, on the other hand the barbarians are at the gates.  What's a citizen to think about that?  Do we kick back and relax or do we go out and buy firearms?
   "ISIL is not Islamic and not a state".  That's a stretch.  They worship Allah and they control more territory than the Bahgdad government or the Assad regime in Syria.  He did call them terrorists, which is new for Obama. 
   Obama worried about ISIS fighters with US or European passports, who could fly into New York without visas.  Doesn't worry me much, I'm sure pass ports can be bought somewhere if they need them.  Plus with 3000 miles of seacoast and 5000 miles of land border, you don't need paperwork to get into the US.  You just walk in, or come by boat.  Little kids from Honduras can do it, so can anyone else. 
   Obama said we had flown 150 airstrikes against ISIS so far.  Actually that's not too shabby, considering we have been at it for 30 days or less.  That's about four airstrikes a day.  Back in the Viet Nam war, my wing only managed two strikes a day, flying off a nice big air base with 10,000 foot runways, road and rail supply from Bangkok, daily Log Air flights and 90 fighter-bombers.  It's harder when flying off an aircraft carrier. 
  Of course you want to do some checking.  If, Obama said "air strike" when he actually meant "sortie" then we got trouble.  150 sorties isn't much.  We used to fly 70 sorties a day out of Korat, going up to bomb "Route Pack 6" (Hanoi). 
  I did hear Obama say we would fly air strikes into Syria.  I also heard him say another 475 troops were going to Iraq.  That brings the troop total up to 1500 US troops in country.  I also heard him say "no boots on the ground"  which makes ISIS feel nice and secure. 
  Obama asked for Congressional support, type and kind unspecified.  He did not ask for a declaration of war (we don't do those any more) or an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or even a supplemental defense appropriation bill.  If he doesn't ask for something, he won't get it. 
  Then Obama gave a lengthy riff about American exceptionalism, the first I've ever heard him do.  He spoke of some great things from American history, and called them good. 

We survived the New Hampshire primary

I went to the polls early yesterday.  Voting had started off heavy for an off year primary.  All the action was on the Republican side, the Democrats were all running unopposed, or at least with no serious opposition.  When the polls closed we have Walt Havenstein handily beating Andrew Hemmingway for the governor's nomination.  Walt is in his 50s, former CEO of BAE, a big Nashua aerospace contractor (started out as Saunder Associates in the 1960's, I worked there once).  Andrew is a nice very young guy, really too young to be an effective governor, he simply hasn't been around long enough to develop the connections a governor has to have to be effective. Walt now has to beat the incumbent democrat, Maggie Hassan. 
   Scott Brown took the Senate nomination, with something like 50%, far ahead of Jim Rubin and Bob Smith.  Polls predicted Scott's win.  He looks to be the strongest guy going up against incumbent Jeanne Shaheen.  I think Scott can take Jeanne, giving us a second Republican senator. 
  And, surprise, Marilinda Garcia swept the House nomination in my house district.  She got 50%, with Gary Lambert trailing at 20 something %.  This was unexpected.  Marilinda has campaigned hard, and has enjoyed some heavy duty out of state support, TV ad buys.  Certainly the strength of her primary victory makes her the strongest candidate we can put up against Anne Kuster, the democratic incumbent, who is looking kinda old and frumpy and dowdy.  Marilinda is young, slim (very slim) and good looking. 
   In the other congressional district, Frank Guinta won the primary.  Frank has some name recognition in the district.  He has been mayor of Manchester (biggest city in the state). He has been US rep from that district, until Carol Shea Porter beat him two years ago.  So it's a rematch, and who knows how it will come out.
   The Democratic incumbents,  Kuster, Shea-Porter, and Shaheen have been seriously critised in the press for NOT holding town meetings, get togethers with voters, with un rehearsed questions from the floor.  Whereas the three Republicans have been out pressing the flesh with voters for months up here, they have been able to handle questions and just about all the voters have had an opportunity to meet them in person.