Dovahkiian

My friend Luis bought a private fireball for Boomershoot 2017.  I've done something special for him:

I aten't dead

I just haven't shot a single shot since last Boomershoot.  Moved, new house, lots of stuff to fix, et ceteras.

Getting back on target

Following Boomershoot, I moved house, and with one thing or another, I was quite delayed in getting my Boomershoot videos edited.  Well, that issue has been rectified.

In which a NRA Patron-level member proposes a Universal Background Check System

Well, that subject sounds pretty odd.  Those two things do not seem to go together from the point of view of either side of the debate.

The stalwart NRA members knows all the deep, deep flaws in the gun control advocates proposition, and cannot abide what sounds good in theory, but in practice is a mechanism toward all the previous disasters, such as a repeat of what the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei did when it got ahold of the Weimarer Republik's gun registration records.  (Hint:  mass graves.  See also Joe Huffman's Jews In The Attic test)

The gun control advocates publically state that they want gun violence to reduce, criminals to not get guns, et ceteras, and as far as that goes, the NRA, membership and leadership, is on the same page with them.  Because the NRA opposes them on the policy prescriptions, there is a tendency to think that the NRA wants more gun crime, wants criminals to get guns, doesn't care about dead kids, ad nauseum, and therefore, the five million members of the NRA are the most evil people since the Nazis.  (The fact that the Nazis really loved their gun control is lost upon them.  So did Stalin and Pol Pot and Mao.  It's a theme amongst totalitarians of all stripes.)  There is simply an inability to understand that someone would see how the desired result is completely uncoupled from the laws proposed, and thereby oppose the policy while agreeing with the desired result.  At least, there is for most of the gun control movement.  A communication guide for gun control advocates was uncovered a few years ago, and among the snippets of advice were "don't wait for the facts, declare the need for gun control" and "don't be specific when you call for gun control, because later facts might undermine the argument".  This is not just a mechanism for deceiving the public, but also a psychological mechanism to armor the gun control advocate from having to re-evaluate their position.  Someone on their end understands what's going on, and the weakness of their arguments... but they really need true believer foot soldiers to parrot their lines in front of the credulous media.

So, how did I, a Patron-level NRA member, come to devise a Universal Background Check system?  Well, I was pretty tired of hearing about this half-baked "we need universal background checks" thing and decided, OK, you want universal background checks?  I'll give you a system that does that, and it will not be half-baked.  Oh, no, we're riding this train to the end of the line, and I think the end result will work out pretty well with regards to the effects on crime, simplification of the federal legal code with regard to guns, advance the legal theories behind recent Supreme Court decisions, and get rid of a lot of legal cruft that has accumulated over the years.

Also, I've been swinging this bat at away games a lot, and I decided I might as well bring it home for a bit.  So, despite steering clear of politics on this blog so far, here goes the wall of text.  If TL;DR is an issue for you, stay out of the gun debate, because everything goes down to the details.

Let's get to the meat of the proposal and the argument.

Currently, the background check system can only be used by Federal Firearm Licensees. Individuals can't use it, cops can't use it, the states can't use it. It was designed with all the intelligence late 1980s politicians could come up with.  Basically, their idea of the state of the art in government was the DMV.

I propose to replace this system with technology and security from the early 2000s, and make the system completely universally accessible.

The basis of the entire system will be the same kind of certificate signing and verification that underpins the security of the world wide web.

Here's how it would work:  At some point, a prospective gun owner would go to an FFL, fill out the same kind of information that would go on a Form 4473, and provide the kinds of IDs necessary to buy a firearm. (They may not be buying a firearm at that time, or they could be. Doesn't matter in this system.) The FFL sends this information to the FBI, who does the same background check look-up that they do today. If the individual passes, we now know that this individual does not have any legal impediments to purchasing a firearm.

Here's where things change: The FBI maintains a digital certificate signing authority (CA). Every FFL also has a digital certificate, which is signed by the FBI's CA. Every employee of the FFL also has a digital certificate, signed by the FFL's cert. Finally, everyone that goes through the background check and presents their credentials to the FFL's counter clerk has a final certificate generated, signed by the clerk's cert, that indicates that the individual has been through the background check.
 
About three days after this process has been completed, the individual receives in the mail a credit card-sized card from the FBI. On the front, it has the words "National Instant Check System", the name and address of the individual, a serial number, the serial number of the FFL clerk that checked their ID and some text describing what form of picture ID must be presented with this card for it to be valid. On the back is a QR code that encodes all this information along with a digital signature.  The digital signature on the card ensures that the information on it is valid and can't be forged without having access to the FFL clerk's private digital key for this system... which even he doesn't have, because the FBI retains it.

Using a smartphone app and the phone camera, or a PC and a webcam, ANYONE (this is where the universal part of this system comes in) can scan the back of this card, and the app will go to the FBI and get the applicable Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs). If the serial number of this card is on the list, the app tells you not to accept it. If the FFL clerk's certificate serial number is on the list (if he was dirty, got caught and his cert revoked) the app tells you not to accept the card. If the FFL's cert serial number is on the revocation list, the app says not to accept the card. Anyone, anywhere with wireless internet access, can do this check at any time.

 If for some reason you don't have access to the internet, but you have access to a regular phone, you can call a service, punch in the serial number of the FFL clerk's certificate on the phone keypad and the service will request the CRLs for you, then prompt you to enter the last four digits of that card's serial number.  If those last four are anywhere in the list, it'll ask you for the second-to-last four digits to narrow the field.  If at any point as you enter series of digits, you match one record on the CRL, it'll let you know not to accept the card.  For added assurance to the use, this system could be a proxy operated by the NRA or ACLU, which would request the CRLs from the FBI without revealing who the user was or how he was making the request.

All of this is being done with tried and true technology that has been built into everyone's web browser since the early 2000s, with the exception of the smartphone camera app, which is 6 year old technology. You're using this system today to protect your online banking. The only complicated part is to get the justice system in this country to report any disqualifying crimes to the FBI so they can look up the criminal and revoke his certificates and block the criminal from getting issued a new one.

Rather than making everyone have to tromp into the FFL to run the check (which incentivizes people to work around the clunky system, resenting the fact that the criminals never will comply) everyone can do the check wherever they are, fully confident that the encryption used to protect the digital signatures means that every step in the chain of trust is mathematically correct, all the way back to the root certificate at the FBI.  One single digit off, and the math doesn't work out.

A side benefit of this system is that it is relatively cheap for the government to operate.  The FBI has to do the background check in depth only the first time.  After that, they just need to do daily updates to their database with those individuals that have been convicted in a court of law of disqualifying crimes.  The database once per day updates all the CRLs on a static content web server.  After that, every NICS check after the first one is nearly free.  This would actually decrease the cost of the NICS system.  They could get rid of most of their call center people that are taking calls from FFLs all day as they sell guns.  They'd just need enough staff to handle brand new gun purchasers, or people who lost their cards, or their old picture ID expired.  There would also be no more outages, as the static content could be mirrored easily and simply at non-government CDNs.
 
Now I hear the cries from my fellow NRA members, asking why I'm helping set up a system that no criminal will abide by and creates a stealth gun and/or owner registration system. Fear not, NRA members, here's the payoff: The serial number of the prospective buyer is not transmitted to the FBI. The list of revoked serial numbers is requested, and then the app checks the serial number against the list. All the FBI knows is that three sets of CRLs have been requested: one for the clerk, one for the FFL, and one for the FBI. It doesn't know who you're looking for on that list. As a matter of fact, for security purposes, the system can't work any other way. Any kind of system that could receive data from the end user could be hacked. The only safe way to serve out the CRLs to the public is to have them served as strictly static content with any other inbound data completely ignored.

So, with this proposal, I address the major stated concern of both the NRA and the gun control advocates: that legitimate sales of firearms only go to people that can legally receive them, and we have a reliable means to determine whether someone is a legitimate receiver. I address the NRA's concern of not facilitating any kind of government registry of gun owners. I also address the publicly stated concern of the gun control advocates in that the system is universally available to everyone, everywhere, at all times, with minimum effort on the part of the prospective seller of a firearm, and therefore legitimate sellers have no reason not to use it. For extra credit, because the system is UNIVERSALLY available, cops can now do a check, right there on the street, in seconds, and find out if someone they encounter with a gun is a prohibited person.  It might take a bit longer if that person doesn't have a NICS card on them, but it is no worse than their current circumstances.

At this point, I might be thanked by an intellectually honest gun control advocate, possibly using these exact words:

Thanks.
Yours is a thoughtful and specific proposal to address what I see as one of the few reasonable arguments against universal background checks: the potential for the system to become a gun owner database.

Well, there is another very good argument against legally mandatory background checks: the reasoning from Haynes vs US (1968).

The basic reasoning from the 7-1 majority decision is that it is unconstitutional to prosecute a criminal for not registering a firearm, because to do so would be compelling that criminal to announce to the state his illegal act, which is a violation of the Fifth amendment protections against self-incrimination.

Following that reasoning, if a universal background check system is legally mandatory, criminals could not be prosecuted for failing to use it. You could get them for illegal possession, sure, but you have to catch them first... like you have to do today.

Meanwhile, all those non-criminals (that could pass the background check) could be prosecuted if they don't use it. The US Supreme Court precedent doesn't protect them.

In effect, mandatory background check laws are a hazard only to the people who aren't the problem. That legal precedent is as solid as Roe vs Wade.

(What about today's mandatory background checks for FFLs? That's within the power of Congress to compel dealers to do as a condition of their licensure, under the Commerce Clause. It's a requirement on the dealer, not the receiver.)

So, there are two essential features of my proposed background check system: 1) So easy to use that anybody could do it, anywhere, any-when and 2) there's no penalty for not using it and no way to tell if you use it or not.

However, I would tighten up on the federal law against providing a firearm to a prohibited person. Right now, it's really difficult to prosecute an individual for breaking that law because it is impossible to prove whether the seller knows the buyer is prohibited at the time of the sale. Individuals can't access NICS, and forcing people to go to the gun store (at the expense of their time, their gas, and the fee the FFL will charge them) just makes them resentful, especially when they know criminals don't make that effort. If we make it so easy to check, with no tracking worries, and then we find out later that the seller provided to a prohibited person... I'd say ignorance, willful or not, is no excuse. But we can only do that if we've made the system trivially easy for the seller to use.  At that point, the seller would be able to establish innocence if he can identify the day of the sale, and the previously qualified recipient with a good NICS card had become disqualified after that date.  The FBI would have the change records for all of the CRLs.

Then, the use of the system becomes a simple matter of marketing: "It's simple! It's easy! It's absolutely reliable! There's no tracking, and if you don't believe us, use the NRA or ACLU's proxy service! Do it anywhere or anywhen! You don't have to use it... but if you provide a firearm to a felon, accidentally or on purpose, you're going to be his cell-mate. Make sure before you sell, give or loan."

As a bonus, here are some gun laws that would go away under strict or intermediate scrutiny because they are excessively onerous when a less onerous system is available:

• Any gun registration system (DC, NYC, etc)
• Any permit to purchase system (DC, NJ, CA, NYC)
• Any license to own system (MA, NJ)
• The long processing time for NFA tax stamps
• Any waiting period after the first one
• Prohibition on interstate sales without transfer between FFLs
• Most state concealed carry licenses could be repealed and replaced with a requirement to carry a NICS card and its accompanying picture ID

In good time...

Last Monday, The Boy® had a day off from school. Forecast called for fog, eventually burning off and becoming an unseasonably warm day. This meant that wind speeds would be in the 1-2 knot range, and with the tree cover around my range, that would be pretty negligible. So it seemed like a good time to take The Boy® to the range for the first time.

Now, The Boy® is about 6 months behind his sister in this regard. She went to the range for the first time right after she graduated from kindergarten. But every child is different, and you have to make the call on whether they can focus, control themselves, take direction and show respect for rules that they might not entirely understand at this time.

Miss Tacticute was ready to follow her daddy's direction right after kindergarten. The Boy® has been admonished on a regular basis to show some self control, and I didn't think he was ready back then.

After a little more time, and with an opportunity at hand, we went for it. First part of preparation was to take all that pink off the .22. Simple enough, swap out the pink-laden AR-15 lower with an all-black one, and that's all set. Then I just had the swap out the pink barrel carbine length handguard on the upper receiver, move the bipod onto the black equivalents, and it's fashionably black again.

25 yards, bipod on bench, but he's shooting from a standing position because there are no stools tall enough to get him up to the bench height.  The four holes immediately below the bullseye are mine, checking the rifle, and the rest are his.  I'd say that's not bad for the first time on the trigger.

2014 Boomershoot

Late post, but no reason not to get to it eventually.

Went to Boomershoot this year with 3 other fine fellows, and had an excellent time.  It works much better when you've got a shooting team for spotting.

I shot like gangbusters on Friday, shooting my three boomers in four shots.  Saturday, things started getting sloppy, and I couldn't figure out why until I went to make ascope adjustment and it flopped around.  I had shot the scope loose.  A little loctite will take care of that.

We had some cover over our shooting position for a couple days until the wind picked up and bent the legs.  Next year: stiffer legs.

Someone at Boomershoot discovered that one of my compatriots was a Proper English Gentleman, so they brought him some milk so he could make some Proper English Tea.  Oleg Volk partook of this, and I got a picture of him doing so, and thus I count coup.

 High Intensity lived up to its name.  I collected a panorama of the line before we blew it all up.

First pass at a color fill

With a little model enamel, enamel thinner, shop towels and some toothpicks, I've done my first coat of a color fill on the roll marks of my new lower.

Click to embiggenate

Patience of a saint

I may not have any other quality of a saint, but patience I certainly have.

It's been a long time coming, but here's the new Boomershoot gun.

Savage 10 BA, .308 Winchester

I tried to get two different scopes in the door, but I finally had to go with something that was definitely in stock and otherwise met the design criteria I was looking for: high magnification, front focal plane, super complicated reticle, et ceteras. Ultimately, this was a Leupold Mark 8 3.5-25x56mm riflescope with illuminated H-58 reticle. I went with a one piece scope mount, and added to it a Flat Line Ops level and angle indicator.

More turrets than a fairy princess castle.

Everything is properly levels, tightened and torqued, so now it's time to get out to the range and sight it in.

Every time you build an AR-15, a guardian angel gets its wings

Wally of York Arms was kind enough to fit me into his production schedule to make a custom AR-15 lower that I will stick a Tac-Con 3 mode trigger package in. Appropriately, there are three labels on the safety selector on this Monster Hunter International themed lower.

(click to embiggenate)

Coming soon...

I haven't posted much since just after Boomershoot, and there's a reason for that: I haven't been out to the range much since then. I just do gun stuff here. No politics, although I have strong opinions in that direction. No current events. No personal stuff. Just gun stuff, and I haven't been up to much.

But there is plenty about to happen:

• I have a Form 4 pending with the BATFE for a Osprey 45 suppressor. It'll take until February to finish up (at last estimate) a wait of only 11 months. I'll order the threaded barrels for my .45 pistols once it's in my hot little hands.
• I have a new Savage Arms 10 BA, my new Boomershoot gun, and I'm just waiting on the Nightforce BEAST optic to put on top of it.
• I'm taking 4 co-workers, plus one replacement for one that couldn't work the budget, to Boomershoot this year. Apparently, my videos looks like enough fun to warrant some serious vacation plans.
• With the help of an un-named manufacturer (inferred at his insistence until the matter is a fait accompli), I will have a new custom marked AR-15 lower to put a TacCon 3 mode trigger package in. I will report extensively on the behavior of this trigger, with video. Machine guns are illegal to possess in Washington State for your average civilian, but this is not a machine gun, by the determination of the BATFE.

Boomershoot 2013 wrap up

I had a blast. All puns, double entendres and innuendos are intentional.

Real life intruded, but here's my video extravaganza:

• Friday's High Intensity Clean Up
  
• Saturday's Rifle League instructional demo
  
• Sunday's Boomershoot opening fireball(s)
  

Year End New Shooter

The surprise new shooter of the end of 2012 is...

The Missus.

Well, it surprised me.

So we rented a Ruger 22/45 to start on for basic skills and familiarization, then we tried out what I had in the bag, a couple .45s.  At the rifle range, a .22 LR rifle, instructed by Miss Tacticute, followed by something with more oomph, as much as she had tolerance for.  As the Cornered Cat recommends, offer things to try, and quit when you're ahead.


All, in all, this was a very good day.

'Tis the Season to be Quiet, Fa la la la la, la la, la la

It's taken quite some time to get all the paperwork fixed, gunsmithing done, and find some time to get out to the range.  Fortunately (for high-sigma values of 'fortunately'), I felt like death warmed over this morning when it was time to get up to go to work.  Out of an abundance of caution, I called in sick.  A few more hours sleep, then shanghai'ed into taking the kids to school, and a few more hours sleep, and I felt much better.  I had a few hours left to go before my usual school pick-up routine, so I used it productively.

The new Trijicon RX06 sight is an amazing improvement.  Using the top point of the triangle as the aiming point, I was able to put .22LR rounds within an inch of each other.  Miss Tacticute will be thrilled.

I know when I'll be shooting next.  After all the sturm und drang over the shooting in Connecticut by a high disturbed young man, whose mother was trying to have committed, the end result of my discussions with my wife is that she (out of the blue) told me she wanted to get familiar with firearms.  After eleven years of marriage, and tens years of being pretty clear she wasn't interested, this surprised me a little.  But I kept her out of the guns stuff when she wanted to be out, and I'll certainly support her now that she wants to know.  In typical fashion, this has ballooned into a fully planned pistols in the morning, long guns in the afternoon extravaganza.  I guess I'll just have to keep up with the agenda.

Friday Night Rifle League

On occasions when Mrs Tirno does not have a Friday engagement, or in this case when her sister is in town and we have en-suite babysitting, I can get out to West Coast Armory for a little rifle league. My first run with the lights on went very well, except that I forgot to set the camera to record. All good hits, no misses, no hits on the no-shoots. My second run, with the lights out didn't go quite as well. One no-shoot winged and some misses.

 Here's video:

 

Of interest:

• Despite only my bare legs being visible in the video, I am not shooting this video in the altogether. I'm totally rocking the anti-tacticool, Dad-in-shorts-and-sandals look.
• The long pause between setting my rifle on the barel and starting to shoot with the pistol was me trying to activate the Viridian laser/light module. Between my first run and the second run, the battery went dead.
• The 'aw, man' you hear at the end is me realizing I winged a no-shoot with my M&P 45C.

Note to Viridian: I seem to be replacing the batteries on that thing every time I turn around. I'm still running on the batteries that came with the Streamlight on my rifle, after more than a year. In the first run, the light and laser were nice and bright, and then I turned it off and put it away. Second run about an hour later, totally dead. Based on performance to date, I completely expect it not to work unless I have just replaced the battery. That is not the reputation you want in a bit of gear that is supposed to have tactical value.

Newest Shooters

We've been planning this for a long time, but Mr and Mrs Neighbor have finally been able to join us at the range.

 

We spent a lot of time discussing general gun safety and range rules on the drive over. I field stripped the weapons to show the mechanics of how they worked, and talked them through aiming (three different types of optics), holding, loading, chambering and firing three rifles, starting with Miss Tacticute's pink.22LR AR-15.

 I also got to try out my new Contour camera with mounts on each rifle.

Boomershoot 2013

It'll be a long several months waiting for this, but I have position 21 on the main range at Boomershoot next year, April 26th to the 28th.

There will be stuff to get ahead of that, plus practice with that stuff, but mostly I need a lot of match grade 7.62 NATO rounds, some sight in time to get my scope totally dialed in with those rounds, and some practice shooting from the prone position.

This is the sound of silence

Today was a good day at the range.

After carefully arranging the arrival time to be after the scheduled competition, we set up targets and made ready.

Miss Tacticute shot first with her AR-15/22.

Next was my turn.



That was certainly good fun, so Miss Tacticute wanted a turn. Not surprising, since my M-14 was now about as loud as her .22. The recoil was significantly less, so I calculated that she would be pushed around, but was unlikely to come to any harm or result in an unsafe situation.



Excellent results all around. Miss Tacticute put 75 rounds of .22LR into her targets at 25 yards. The larger holes were sight-in shots after adding the suppressor to the M-14.

After getting the scope sighted in so I was 3" high at 100 yards, I started taking shots at the 200 yard targets that had been waiting so patiently to be ventilated. The middle squares are my targets, and almost all the rounds are on the 8"x8" targets. This is pretty good, considering that I wasn't taking my time with the shots, and the backblast from the action was making my eyes water.

Next purchase priority: airtight shooting goggles to keep the gas out of my eyes.

Buy-A-Gun 2012

Well, not the gun, per se, but what is now attached to it.



Suppressor paid for: July 2011
Time Paperwork sent to BATFE: Early August 2011
Time Tax Stamp Finalized: Early March 2012
Arrived at Dealer: Late March 2012
BATFE Inspector: Sandra J Snook

I left the rifle with the dealer to have the Gem-tech QD mount put on, which necessitated removing the standard M-14 flash hider. Of course, this took the standard front sight with it, so the front of the gas block was replaced with a part that has a hooded front sight built into it.

Lamentably, the range I normally shoot at has a competition occupying the main range for the entire weekend, so I can't go shoot it until the next weekend. I'm sure the suburbia that has sprung up around my range will appreciate me changing the BANG! to a more sedate gun raspberry.

It was a cold and rainy day

Apparently, President's Day is a good day to go shooting... indoors. When Miss Tacticute and I arrived at the indoor range, the waiting time was two hours.

Well, no way, we wanna shoot something now.

In the rush to get out the door, Miss Tacticute's own coat was left behind. Had we been shooting indoors, this would be no concern, but now it was cold and rainy and we were outdoors.

Well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Miss Tacticute got my jacket, with sleeves well rolled up.

Here she is on the beginning of 125 rounds of .22LR:



She had been making some complaint about being cold, and the report of nearby shooters bothering her, but as soon as she settled down to shoot, all of that went away.

I did 75 rounds of .22LR and about 41 rounds of .45 ACP myself later. I didn't bring my own larger caliber rifles because we had intended to shoot indoors at a range that doesn't permit rifle calibers.

On the NFA front, I'm looking forward to getting my tax stamp for my 7.62 Gemtech suppressor any day now. The .22LR suppressor will be some time behind it, but the 5.56 suppressor is delayed due to USPS buffoonery. Apparently, the package I sent through the mail was thick enough to jam their machines and got shredded. They mailed back the parts that had my address on them, which was just the check. Other paperwork they mailed back to the dealer. The Form 4s were nowhere to be found. I had my dealer make new Form 4s, and now I'm going to scan those suckers in so I have my own copies. I forgot to do that this time, although I scanned other things.

And then he lightly tapped my scrotum

I'm flying to Israel on business, and since I'm not travelling with my family as I was a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to opt-out of the backscatter X-ray. No fuss, the opt-out was handled without a raised eyebrow, and the TSA agent accomplished the invasion of my privacy with as much professionalism as could be wanted under the circumstances.

Some updates of recent history, since I have time to kill in this terminal:

The week before flying to England, I attended rifle league at West Coast Armory. Checking the score sheet before I left, I saw that I was the only one that had perfect 26/26 hits on both runs. My times were about double the front-runners, and this is not surprising. At my regular range, rapid fire is not permitted, so I don't get much opportunity to practice double taps or recoil management. Still, it's good to hit what I want to hit and not hit what shouldn't be hit.

My Form 4 for my 7.62 suppressor still hasn't cleared the ATF, but my dealer finally got the .22 suppressor transferred to him, so I got to send off the Form 4 for that yesterday.