Two Shot at Denver Pot Fest

From the "why is this news?" department, apparently if you get "tens of thousands" of pot smokers in one place, you'll find one unstable enough to shoot some of his fellow smokers.  A man and woman who were together with their dog were all shot. 

Witnesses described a scene in which a jovial atmosphere quickly turned to one of panic at the downtown Civic Center Park just before 5 p.m. Several thought firecrackers were being set off, then a man fell bleeding, his dog also shot.

"I saw him fall, grabbing his leg," said Travis Craig, 28, who was at the celebration, saw the shooting and said he used a belt to apply a tourniquet to the man's leg.

The guy is expected to be fine, no surprise there.  Honestly, unless the shooter accidentally nicked his femoral artery, the victim was probably at more risk from the tourniquet applied by a stoned hippie.  No one has been identified as the shooter.  No word on the dog's condition.

Alrighty then...

New Frontiers in Fail - Chris Christie

Scrolling through the news ticker on the bottom of the screen while I was having breakfast, I noticed that Chris Christie has introduced new gun control legislation into the already draconian laws of New Jersey. 

The plan calls for expanding New Jersey’s already strict gun control laws, expanding government-funded mental health treatment, making it more difficult for kids buy or rent violent video games, requiring that would-be gun owners show government-issued IDs and bolstering penalties for gun-related crimes

One that jumped out at me as particularly stupid was this little gem:

New Jersey has the second toughest gun laws in the country. The first facet of Christie’s plan seeks to make them even stricter. This includes banning future purchases of the Barrett .50 Caliber...

Oh. My. God.  We're going to reduce crime by banning "Barrett 50 calibers" by name?  What horrific crime wave are we reacting to here?  Can anyone name a single crime anywhere in the US committed by someone using a Barrett?  The Violence Policy Center has a page listing all the "crimes" committed with .50 caliber guns and with the exception of one used in a drug cartel shootout in Mexico, they all appear to be malum prohibitum crimes, "crimes because we say so": crimes of possession, or of someone who owned one being involved in some other crime (owning while stupid?).  No actual "shooting someplace up" crimes. 

I'd love one of Ronnie's beautiful toys myself, but at $12,000 MSRP stripped, and $170 for each magazine and ammo at about $5 per round, it's undoubtedly a rich man's toy.  You'd need to live somewhere with truly wide open spaces to shoot it.  The rifle club I belong to forbids the use of .50 BMG.  

I'm going to go out on a limb and say if anyone in New Jersey owns and shoots a Barrett .50, they're rather rich and either live in a gated suburb or on an estate farm.  In other words, the people least likely to be involved in crime - but we're going to make sure no one can buy another one.  That's an effective use of legislator's time.

Considering most of us can't tell him from a Democrat, Christie probably just threw away any chance of a Republican presidential run.

Good.    

(source)

More On Decoupling

A couple of days ago, I noted the decoupling of precious metal spot prices and what you could buy actual silver coins for.  I've since noticed other commentators writing on it, too, including some financial guys at survivalblog. 

Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge writes on the decoupling of gold and stocks.  He presents this plot showing the situation.  Major decoupling at the red ovals (top) correspond to the negative areas in the plot (in dark pink). 

The last time this correlation broke badly was in advance of the 2008 market collapse.  Is this just a phenomenon or a precursor?  

It's interesting that the US Mint set its all time record in one day gold sales, 63,500 ounces, on the day gold tanked, April 17th, bringing the total sales for the month to a whopping 147,000 ounces or more than the previous two months combined with just half of the month gone. (Gee, people buy more of something they want when the price goes down?  Who would have thought?)

You know how folks wonder if there's much gold in Ft. Knox?  What if they run out? 

If They Outlaw Your AR, Then What?

Wirecutter has been running ads from Advanced Rifles for a while now, and I never really looked at the details until yesterday.  They have a very reasonable idea and approach.

The idea is something I talked about a couple of years ago when I built my AR from an 80% lower.  In every legal sense, this is an AR-15 rifle:

That's a completely machined, but completely stripped, AR lower receiver.  That's all.  This particular lower is from Arfcom, but they're made by Colt, Bushmaster, Ruger, DPMS, S&W - you name it.  Everyone who sells their own branded AR-15 makes a lower with their name, identifying model number, serial number and all the markings required by the laws.

Advanced Rifles offers a very reasonable conclusion here.  Let's say you own a Bushmaster model that has just been made illegal by your state.  You are required to turn it in or register it.  If you remove the lower receiver, remove the trigger and all the components in there, stripping it down to just the hunk of metal and a pile of parts, that stripped receiver you're left with is the Bushmaster AR-15 in every legal sense.  You can hand in that stripped lower receiver and comply with the law.

Now what?  You have an upper receiver, barrel, chamber, bolt, charging handle, stock, buffer tube, trigger kit, all the things that are legally just parts made of metal or plastic.  All you need is a lower receiver.  You can now buy an 80% lower receiver, complete the machining yourself, and rebuild those parts you previously removed into/onto your new rifle.  But your lower will not be any of the rifles banned by name anymore because it's not the Bushmaster you started out with.  It may have a Bushmaster upper with a Bushmaster stock and a Bushmaster lower parts kit but it will not legally be a Bushmaster.  It will be whatever you decide to call it.  (Mine's a "Mo's Guns")

I, of course, have had links to how I made my AR up since I started the job.  Unlike me, Advanced Rifles promises to stand behind you and help you build your AR.  It can be done with a milling machine (if you have one, you probably don't need me to tell you this) or a drill press.  Advanced Rifles likes to call it "monkey simple".  You don't need to hold outrageous accuracies to complete an AR.  Remember the AR made out of HDPE - essentially a kitchen cutting board?  Let that be your inspiration.  I should point out that as of tonight, April 17, 2013, Advanced Rifles is getting quite a bit more for their 80% lowers than Colfax Tactical, where I got mine.  The Colfax Tactical non-anodized lower is $99, with $10 more for anodizing.  Advanced Rifles is getting $180 for their equivalent, non-anodized lower.  Advanced Rifles seems to be offering more in the way of an online community and support to help you through the build.

Edit 4/18 2100 EDT:  I had a nice email from Advanced Rifles about this post.  Due to the very high response they've had, they've been able to get some higher quantity discounts and lower their prices.  They also think they'll do better on order backlog time than Colfax.  I'll quote a few pieces here:

Your observation on pricing was accurate and we have been in the middle of revisions for the past week.  We did not expect the response from the market and the patriot community that we received.  "THANK YOU!"  is the only thing we can say!  We have been able to make changes that can only come with high demand.   We were able to bring in more staff, acquire larger/faster equipment and do larger bulk purchases. The boost will dramatically lower costs over a longer period of time. Which we are passing all that savings back to the community. We will still be able to continue our support of the community in other ways at this volume and price point as well.  This is going to be fun.

$120-ea / $110-5pc

There is still a spread, but not much. We will need to get more than Colfax / Redmond due to to the broaching of the mag well. It costs more to produce that way, so it needs to get bundled into the sale price. However, our capacity means that once we get through this catch up period, we won't have a backorder problem.  The other guys are 6-12 months out on back orders.

So count me as a fan of Advanced Rifles.  They've got a nice handful of innovative ideas there - American small business at its best.

No financial ties, no affiliations, I haven't bought a thing from them, I'm just an interested observer on this.  My next project is either going to be an AR from aluminum plate or it's going to be a 0% lower. 

A Reloading Blitch

Blitch?  A blog bitchfest.  Hey, if a beg can be a bleg, why not?

Back at Christmas, dear Mrs. Graybeard gifted me with an RCBS Progressive reloading press.  The Pro2000 with auto-indexing.  Due a miscommunication or two, she missed a couple of needed parts (shell holders) and while I was able to get them, I wasn't making progress assembling it until, well, today.  Vacations are wonderful things.

My blitch is this: is it just RCBS or are all reloading presses essentially a DIY kit of not-very-well-made parts.  I thought RCBS had a good reputation.  My only experience with reloading has been with RCBS stuff, and I had a heck of a time with the hand primer.  I had to send it back and exchange for a second one that finally worked.

This time, my gripe is with the sexy micrometer adjustment on the powder dispenser.  The dispenser comes with two cylinders, one with a larger bore and capacity, which uses a large screw to meter out the amount of power it will throw, and a smaller set.  The smaller set will handle 2 to 50 grains of powder which covers pretty much everything I've got to reload, so I'm setting up to use the small cylinder and small metering screw.  The manual says to screw the micrometer into the cylinder and note where the index line (zero) comes up.  It should be on the top surface of the cylinder where you'll see it; if it doesn't, three washers are included, each one of which should rotate the index line about 90 degrees back.  My line came up pretty much 180 degrees out, so two washers should get it to the top, right?

Only they don't.  The index line stayed in exactly the same place.  Puzzled, I repeated this process a few times and eventually realized that the washers are loose and flopping around.  That means the micrometer's thread is bottoming out in the cylinder's hole before it can be threaded in far enough so the washers matter. And that means a poorly tapped hole is keeping the micrometer thread from going all the way in.  Tapping through holes ain't exactly rocket surgery, you know.  People have been doing that for a long time. 

Not having the right tap (it appears to be about a 9/16" by 18 TPI hole, but I didn't really measure the pitch diameter), I tried to force it in, essentially using the threaded portion as if it were a tap to clean up the threads in the hole.  Those of you who have done this know that didn't have much chance of working.  And it didn't. 

Now I have both a cylinder with a poorly tapped hole and micrometer with damaged threads.  Note the boogered (damaged) threads at the left end of the micrometer center. 

Pardon my blitch, but is this normal?  Do you ordinarily have to machine your own parts for reloading equipment you buy?  Equipment you buy at no small expense, I might add.  Heck, I'm a home shop machinist, I like to make things.  But nowhere on the box does it say, "Reloading Press Kit", or "holes drilled, you just tap!".  It reads like it's supposed to just go together and work.  At this point, I'll say, "yeah...right".  (And, yes, I've contacted customer support, first waiting on hold for almost an hour, then sending an email.  We'll see how they handle it.)

Silver and Gold Crater - What?

As I'm writing this, gold is at a two year low, while silver's low goes back 2 1/2 years - the white metal closed at $43.05 two years ago today, April 15, 2011.    Oil is lower than it has been in several months, and the industrial metals: copper, palladium, platinum, lead, nickel, zinc, are also down.  Of course the DJIA is down over $200 and the other stock market indices are also down with it. 

Everybody who follows the metals and the apparent coming collapse of fiat currencies around the world is looking at this and wondering what's going on.  With the warning that I'm not a financial analyst, I'm just a random internet dood with a blog, allow me a couple of observations.   

There's a famous saying that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" and that seems to me to be what's going on.  Substitute the word "governments" for "markets" and I think you've got the picture.  Cyprus' central banker, Mario Draghi, has been in the process of selling off his gold to pay the debts he's required to pay off.  Central bankers have been advising everyone to sell gold - but are buying it themselves in massive quantities.  Are they trying to manipulate the price of gold, like they manipulate the price of stocks and everything else in the world?  Do I have to answer that?  Just as you can't bet against the market when the fed's monetary creation is driving it higher, you can't bet on gold when they're trying to crash the price of it. 

If the times we're living in are a massive - perhaps, final - showdown between Keynesian and Austrian economics, and they certainly seem to be, this is a moment where the Keynesian empire is striking back.  It has been looking like the empire was on the ropes; so much money-creation has been going on with the world still mired in crisis after crisis, that it looked like the final Keynesian monetary bubble was going to pop and the world have to resort to money based on something.  The central banks can flood so much currency that they can cover all the losses, if creditors will only accept this freshly created currency.  It doesn't matter that it's not backed by anything if people would only believe the digitized faux-money in their accounts is worth something. For the moment, it's looking like they can keep the illusion going. 

Do me a favor, though.  Go to Apmex or Kitco or your favorite precious metal vendor and try to buy some silver coins.  What you will find is that you can't buy at today's spot price.  The spot price is meaningless.  At the moment I'm writing this, the spot for silver is $22.72.  $1 face value in silver contains 0.71 troy ounce, and a $100 bag of 90% "junk silver" coins contains $1643.55 at that spot price.  Ordinarily, the coins are offered at a small premium, a few percent, to cover the costs of weighing in the coins, bagging, tagging, and so on.  Today, if you can find any in stock, the cheapest I see on Apmex are $2174.50, almost a 33% markup.  In small quantities, they're getting $6.59 each for silver eagles vs. the usual $4.00 or so. 

Various commentators have been predicting that a great decoupling is coming when the spot price will mean almost nothing.  People who had the metal would sell it for their own price.  That seems to be the situation today.  Clearly, if those dealers thought the price was fair and wanted to sell at spot, they could and would.   That tells me they think this is a sudden sale and it won't stay that low.  Why sell it for $1644 if it's going to go for $2174 soon?  Hold on to it; but if someone wants to pay $2174 now, why not? 

At times like this, I ask myself if anything has suddenly gotten fundamentally better in the world economic situation.  If it has, I don't see it.  I could back up the truck and fill it up, if I could buy at the spot price. 

Hard Choices

Should Remington have decided to leave New York?  Should Mossberg and Colt leave Connecticut?  Magpul made the tough choice to leave Colorado, and I cheered.  HiViz has decided to follow suit and leave with Magpul.  Beretta has decided to leave Maryland and I cheer again.  Does this mean we should never buy Remington products again? 

I find these decisions harder than the simple black and white "move back to America" idea that's so widespread.  After watching this video between Cam Edwards of "Cam and Company NRA News" and Joe Bartozzi, VP of O.F. Mossberg and Sons, the other side of the argument started seeping into my consciousness. 

Connecticut is his home, and it has been the home of O.F. Mossberg and Sons for almost a hundred years.  Their families are there; their family's roots are there.  The employees and their families are all tied to the state, too.  It's hard to move a factory, but even that pales next to uprooting a hundred or more families.  But Mossberg, Stag Arms, magazine maker ASC and others are considering doing just that.  Individual gun owners are putting pressure on these companies; some to bring the jobs into their own state, most (I believe) because they intend to boycott anti-gun states.

Hundreds of emails are pouring in from customers, like this one to Stag Arms: "I've narrowed down my purchase of an AR-15 to a few companies and yours was one of them until you decided to stay in that communist state."

There are good reasons for these companies to move out of the states hostile to the very industries enriching them: stand by their customers in that state.  Take the tax income away from the state.  Hit the politicians with the very real economic consequences of what they do.  It seems to me that to the true leftist tyrants (I repeat myself) that want to eliminate all civilian ownership of guns, the tax money is undoubtedly "blood money" they'd rather do without.  I'd be glad to help them not have that blood money to irritate their consciences.  Pragmatically, the economic consequences are the part that hurt the states the most.  Why else would every state considering these bills write in exemptions to the manufacturers to keep them from moving?  They need the tax income like any other crack ho needs her crack.

But let me tell you where this gets me a little queasy.  At what point does every gun company leaving a state that passes crazy anti-gun bills turn into the equivalent of giving up your house if a home invader breaks in to your garage?  At what point is the right answer fight, not flight?

By that logic, in the rabidly anti-gun states like Connecticut and New York, the invaders aren't breaking down the gate, they've been there forever.  They already had absurd gun laws - they've just gone from absurd to ludicrous.  In others, like Colorado, the invaders are winning the territory for the first time.  Is leaving Colorado at this point is just giving the state over to Nanny Bloomberg's shock troops?  Is that saying Magpul is wrong to leave?  I just don't know.  Part of me says boycott the state, get your money out, and the part says no; stay and fight.  While researching some links for this, I came across this link at Natural News speculating on companies leaving pro-tyranny states as being the sides forming for the new civil war.  I can see the logic behind that.   

I have a modest proposal.  I wouldn't want to say that Remington, Colt or all the other companies shouldn't sell to the government at all.  I don't want guys in the sandbox to be denied their M24/Remington 700 or other needed tools.  But could we make it so they don't sell to the state or local police forces or other agencies?  There are sticky issues to work out if the companies are under contract to those buyers, but let's conveniently ignore those.  If citizens of New York, or Colorado or whomever are denied AR-15s, well, police are regular citizens, not military, aren't they?  Why should the police be treated differently from the other citizens, just because they've been sprinkled with the magic fairy dust of working for the state.

Would it hurt the gun companies? Not really. Before It's News speculates that of the 11 Million new guns bought last year, police sales add up to less than 1% of sales.  Of course, they don't need to give up that whole 1% of sales; they only give up sales to police in the crazy states that abuse their citizens.  I can imagine a great deal of customer loyalty being created by that. A good starting place is Sean's New York Boycott List.  I'd like to see this grow to a list covering New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland and any others. 
 
Personally, I'm avoiding spending money with any business in those states.  I know the effects of one guy are small, but since this all started, the choice of buying something from an occupied state or a free state has come up a few times, and I've gone to the free state every time.  

Dark Lightning

A slight detour away from the gun control, economics and politics that consumes so much energy, over to the realm of sci-tech.  Within the last week, the story has surfaced that a new form of lightning has been recognized: dark lightning.  Dark lightning is not a conventional flow of electrons, a massive spark between cloud and ground, dark lightning is a discharge of gamma rays.  Every school child knows the story of Ben Franklin flying a kite to attract a lightning strike (Franklin, clearly no fool, was not standing outside in the storm, the kite was tied off to a structure). 

Unknown to Franklin but now clear to a growing roster of lightning researchers and astronomers is that along with bright thunderbolts, thunderstorms unleash sprays of X-rays and even intense bursts of gamma rays, a form of radiation normally associated with such cosmic spectacles as collapsing stars. The radiation in these invisible blasts can carry a million times as much energy as the radiation in visible lightning, but that energy dissipates quickly in all directions rather than remaining in a stiletto-like lightning bolt.

Gamma rays are quite energetic, but are just photons; at lower frequencies (lower energies) photons are visible light.  At still lower frequencies, photons are radio.  But these bursts of energy in thunderstorms are enormously powerful, almost as powerful as stellar events.  Until now, there was no acceptable theoretical physics to explain how this could be.  Dr. Joseph Dwyer of the Florida Institute of Technology and colleagues presented a paper at a press conference meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria, April 10, showing that they've created a physical mod that can explain it.

According to their model, instead of creating normal lightning, thunderstorms can sometimes produce an exotic kind of electrical breakdown that involves high-energy electrons and their anti-matter equivalent called positrons. The interplay between the electrons and positrons causes an explosive growth in the number of these high-energy particles, emitting the observed terrestrial gamma ray flashes while rapidly discharging the thundercloud, sometimes even faster than normal lightning. Even though copious gamma-rays are emitted by this process, very little visible light is produced, creating a kind of electrical breakdown within the storms called "dark lightning."

In this illustration, from NASA by way of PopSci  the pink represents the spherically expanding gamma rays, and the yellow represents the positron stream, both diverging from the thunderstorm at bottom center.  The white circle is the moon:

Because of the association with thunderstorms, it's believed that airliners may occasionally be struck by dark lightning.  Not every thunderstorm can produce this level of energy, but it's considered possible that passengers in a commercial aircraft can be given a large dose of energy from a dark lightning event, perhaps equal to a year's allowed dose of radiation.  For comparison, in the industry we say that the commercial air transport-class jets get struck by conventional lightning once a year.  That's an average with the number depending on where they fly and a lot of other variables.  (click here for a well-known video of an ANA 747 being struck by lightning on take off from Tokyo.)  We design systems to withstand and play through rather outrageous lightning events.   It might surprise any radio hams or hobbyists out there that modern avionics radios play through direct lightning strike to the antennas.  You'll hear a burst of noise during the strike but that's the only service degradation they'll allow (it's pretty much unavoidable). 

Dark lightning is a new one on me, though.

The work here is very new and the physics isn't really well understood.  Quoting the overview in the Washington Post again:

According to gamma-ray researcher J. Eric Grove of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the gamma-ray flashes that Dwyer’s model describes match closely the best recent satellite measurements of thunderstorm emissions of these high-energy rays. But he also notes that recent data from an Italian satellite implies that thunderstorms might be producing gamma-ray flashes far more energetic than Dwyer’s theory can account for, adding mystery even as it helps confirm dark lightning’s existence. 

It just strikes me as very cool that thunderstorms are capable of this much energy.  Cooler yet that new natural phenomena are being discovered and fundamental physics about how the world works is still being discovered. 

A Little Clarification

I did a really crappy job of saying what I wanted to say in my previous post, so I'm going to try again.  I won't make excuses (I was tired!  The dog ate my post!)  I screwed up so I'm going to try to fix it.

The important point is that the new mantra is for background checks as if that's going to solve things.  It's not.  Lott quoted a 2004 NAS study showing no reduction in violent crime from background checks, and several other worthwhile facts. 

I know this is old news to many of you, but on the chance new readers haven't seen it, the web site Gun Facts (now up to version 6.2) is an indispensable source of referenced facts to common anti-gun myths.  According to their pdf, the Brady Bill (which mandated background checks) has been a rather total failure.  The percentage of guns used in homicides stayed the same, the percentage of inmates at both the state and federal levels caught with firearms went up, the Feds have apparently never gone after people who fail the background checks in any number, and federal prosecutions of gun-related crimes has been apparently continually declining.

Likewise, the attempts to enforce more background checks and close some mythical "gun show loophole" is going to fail.  Criminals don't buy guns at gun shows - in 2002, 0.7% did (Bureau of Justice). They steal them or buy them from someone else who stole them.  

But just as I virtually pleaded with my Evil Party Senator, Bill Nelson, not to vote for gun control and have had zero effect, no matter what I ask him, I don't think we have a chance of convincing the anti-gun legislators.  What we might be able to do is convince our friends and neighbors that our arguments are right - if they're truly open-minded and care about finding solutions rather than "doing something".

Congress critters are nothing if not self-serving, self-glorifying pigs, right?  As it stands now, until they declare unrestricted dictatorship they need to get re-elected.  They watch the professional pollsters and count votes closer than a pair of four-year olds watch to see one got the bigger cookie.  They watching tracking polls and every indicator they can to make sure they don't make the voters take away their sweet, sweet gig.  The more people we can sway to our side the better - and that especially includes the gun owners who go along with this flawed idea. 

I may be wrong, but I'm close to the idea that the "Gun Culture 1.0" folks, the folks who grew up hunting and around guns - the guys sometimes called "Fudds" - are more apolitical and more friendly to this idea.  These are the folks whom we need to convince of the stupidity of more laws.  Gun culture 2.0, the people who are streaming into gun ownership through concealed carry, seem more on our side already,  based on my small, highly unscientific sample. So try to convince those people, too.   While you're at it, if you know guys who are bow hunters and don't care because they think crossbows are not going to be regulated, work on them, too. 

Background checks sound like a good idea - but laws rarely if ever work out the way they intend them to with no unintended consequences.  It's the same problem as with gun control in general: they're trying to invent laws that stop people who aren't following laws.  They can't affect those people with laws.  All they can ever do is make life harder for the people who do obey laws. 

The original Fudd and Duck Face.  My most popular (stolen) cartoon ever. 

On Background Checks, The New Mantra

John Lott writes the definitive piece on Fact vs. Fiction on  Background Checks and the Gun Control Debate.  A couple of Fun Facts should you be debating an anti-gun type:

Furthermore, there is no real scientific evidence among criminologists and economists that background checks actually reduce crime. In fact, a 2004 National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that the Brady background checks didn't reduce any type of violent crime. Nor have other later studies found a beneficial effect.
...
The number of criminals stopped by the checks is also quite small. In 2010, there were over 76,000 initial denials, but only 44 of those were deemed worthy for prosecution and only 13 individuals were convicted.(pdf here) Even those 13 cases don’t tend to be the “dangerous” criminals Obama claims are being stopped.

The 76,000+ denials were out of 14,320,489 NICS checks in 2010 (source) represents 1/2% being denied, and the 44 prosecuted is statistical noise.  People who know they will fail a background check don't usually apply for one.  Criminals get their guns from other criminals, not FFLs.  I know: "well, duh!!"

Lott starts with the famous "40% of gun sales take place without a background check" claim Obama and others make.  This is a misleading number for several reason, the biggest being the study was done before the Brady bill required background checks.  The 40% includes all transfers, including non-sales between family members. And besides, even with those two important facts, he rounds up the study's 36% to 40%.

Counting only guns that were sold gives a very different perspective, with only 14 percent not actually going through federally licensed dealers. But even that is much too high as there were biases in the survey. For example, two-thirds of federally licensed dealers at the time were so-called “kitchen table” dealers who sold gun out of their homes and most buyers surveyed were likely unaware these individuals were indeed licensed.

Go read; it's not long.

FBI data at FiscalTimes

The Toomey-Manchin Deal and Be Careful What You Wish For

The dead press and the blogosphere area alive with talk about the supposed deal between two absolutely detestable sacks of rancid meat senators: Toomey, the Dead Elephant, from Pennsylvania, and Manchin, the Dead Ass, from West Virginia.  The exact details of what's in it aren't actually known, so it's hard to say much.  The things I have heard sound like the ever-popular tactic of making illegal things "more illegaler" so it looks like they're doing something - for the children of course.

I want to emphasize that the next handful of points is just a set of rumors.  I've seen a few versions that are close to this set, edited from what I first saw from Miguel at Gun Free Zone this morning.  The main points of the agreement seem to be close to this: 

1. All internet sales must go thru FFL
2. All Gun Show sales must go thru FFL
3. Private sales remain private.
4. No Dianne Feinstein AWB or Hi Cap mag BS attached to the bill.
5. Federal funding to improve the NCIS system or studies of violence or something.

Of all of these, there is nothing I'd call a positive win.  Overall, it leaves things as they are, so if you're inclined to see not losing any more ground as a win, you'll see it as a win.  I see it as a waste of millions of dollars and thousands of man hours in defending territory we already hold.  Comparatively speaking, I think the anti- side has many times our financial resources.  They can just keep doing this year after year, bleeding us dry of money until there's no opposition.  Bloomberg alone has more money than all the pro-2A groups put together.  I'd think he'd rather not spend all of his own money when there are so many other rich liberals to help, but if he wanted to, he could outspend us by a factor of 10 all by himself.  

Now, personally I'd love to know where this magical land is where you can order new guns on the internet and have 'em shipped directly to your door with no FFL involvement, but I've never seen it.  Likewise, as we all know, Gun Shows don't exert a magical force field that negates firearms law and lets you buy anything without filling out forms and getting background checks.  If private sales remain private, and transfers remain sales, things remain as they've been for a while.

That said, it isn't as bat shit crazy as the president saying we need a criminal background check just to be allowed into a gun show.  As sure a sign as any that he's never been inside one in his life.  Is he afraid of the assault beef jerky?  The military style belts?  Assault paracord?  Jewelry?  Military memorabilia or bumper stickers? 

The NRA statement is pretty good, but in light of what's happening in New York, it bothers me.  They said:

Expanding background checks at gun shows will not prevent the next shooting, will not solve violent crime and will not keep our kids safe in schools. While the overwhelming rejection of President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg's "universal" background check agenda is a positive development, we have a broken mental health system that is not going to be fixed with more background checks at gun shows. The sad truth is that no background check would have prevented the tragedies in Newtown, Aurora or Tucson. We need a serious and meaningful solution that addresses crime in cities like Chicago, addresses mental health deficiencies, while at the same time protecting the rights of those of us who are not a danger to anyone. President Obama should be as committed to dealing with the gang problem that is tormenting honest people in his hometown as he is to blaming law-abiding gun owners for the acts of psychopathic murderers.  (bold added - SiG)

The problem with the emphasis on mental health is the gun and permit confiscation going on in New York right now.  New York, in what seems to be a violation of the 4th and 5th amendments along with the federal HIPAA law, is going through the medical records of everyone with a permit to own a gun, finding those who have taken certain drugs, notably SSRIs, and deeming them to be unworthy of the permit.

A lot has been made about the SSRI connections with the Aurora and Newtown shooters, and the connections to mass murders in general.  The problem is that these are very common drugs, including Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac and others.  Millions of people are prescribed these at some time in their lives, but only an extremely tiny portion will ever get violent.  James Alan Fox, the recognized expert in the study of mass shootings, has pointed out that the people who commit these mass murders are virtually impossible to find in advance.  The best quote in that piece is from the interviewer, Megan McArdle, who said:

So you have been saying that many of the most popular remedies for mass shootings won't work. They aren't all identifiably crazy before the shooting, so mental health screenings for gun buyers won't stop them. Neither will waiting periods, because they're long-term planners. And restricting certain scary guns (an "assault weapons ban") won't have much effect, because they'll just pick another gun.

In our rush to say we need to fix the mental health system, I fear congress is going to fix it as well as they fixed healthcare, gun laws and pretty much everything else.  They'll make it a thousand times worse.  If all they have to do to kill the 2nd amendment is get you to be prescribed one pill one time in your life, that's pretty dang easy.  It would be even easier to define wanting to defend yourself as mental illness.  Anybody who would put up with federal laws to own a gun must be out of their mind.

0100 Hrs UTC And All is ... Stable

It's interesting that two people whom I respect both talk about the chances that the North Koreans do something - probably something really stupid - soon.  The official name is the Democratic Peoples' Republic of North Korea, DPRK.  Old NFO writes "An Opinion":

And I truly hope that I am wrong with this one…

But I ‘think’ that DPRK is going to shoot ‘something’ on the 10th, if it is nuke (and there is activity around the tunnel) there wont be much response possible.

He then goes on to speculate on a few possible scenarios.  He doesn't mention this, but South Korean media is reporting DPRK submarines have left their bases and there are reports of numbers stations on DPRK frequencies.  These are assumed to be transmitting information or orders to DPRK operatives "somewhere".  (Numbers stations are shortwave stations that broadcast just a voice reciting lists of numbers.  It's a low tech, low risk way of passing information to undercover agents.  Some information here.)

And Ol' Remus at the Woodpile Report, a gentleman who typically writes longish, compelling pieces, writes on the very same subject.   Now, the way his blog works, this just a link to the top and it will scroll off the bottom within a day or two, so I'll grab a few morsels.  You should RTWT.

This is information from sources ol' Remus uses to judge speculations about an EMP missile attack by North Korea. This isn't expert analysis, it's a layman's understanding of it. And how much of public information is disinformation, or is just plain wrong, can't be known by your average Dick Tracy hat-wearing, pipe smoking, superannuated hillbilly. Even the best of it amounts to good faith guesses by western experts, but even so, in this life y'gotta be willing to be surprised. Again and again. Before Pearl Harbor, Japan's carrier-based air power was said to be low-tech knockoffs of western designs. Then we met the Mitsubishi A6M Zero and the Long Lance torpedo.
...
North Korea's stockpile is generally estimated to be be fewer than ten weapons although some say more. They claim to have tested five, only three have been verified, all low-yield, the largest at 40 kt as the upper estimate. Nuclear EMP warheads produce significantly less explosive blast than "conventional" nuclear warheads. While a yield of 10 kt is sufficient to generate a useful pulse, 10 or even 40 kt is far short of what's needed to black out the continental US. It's considered enough to shut down an urban region 'though. Expert opinion varies as to the extent and duration but no one ever went far wrong ignoring official optimism. Most urban regions are thisclose to a blackout as it is, an EMP could actually improve things.
...
With adolescent adults in our halls of power busy taking revenge on reality, the hard cases of this world have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to surprise us. Pearl Harbor and the attack of September 11th 2001 argue against dismissing North Korea's threat outright. It may be posturing, it may be imminent. As with any aggressor, beware the lull. And stay away from crowds.

It's already the 10th over in the DPRK, so if Old NFO meant 4/10 over there,  it's mid-morning as I type this.  Ol' Remus doesn't put a date on it, but raises some excellent points, the best is that last paragraph.  We have adult adolescents in charge, ex-60s radicals like Ayers and those pathetic idiots, who project neither an air of competence or strength.  It's the kind of environment that encourages other adult adolescents, like the son of Glorious Leader who never led anything before his country.  Come to think of it, that's a good description of our Glorious Leader, too.

(Source)

The President's Plan To Limit IRAs and 401k Plans

In what should come as no surprise to anyone, the President's budget proposal, as leaked by a White House Spokesman, aims to cap the tax-sheltered Individual Retirement Accounts.

President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.

The reference to Mitt  Romney is from The Hill's article, not the spokesman, because the Hill is a Liberal/Progressive site.  Using Romney's name is a "dog whistle" to draw the attention of the 50% who don't pay tax.  It's saying people that rich don't deserve to put money in tax-sheltered retirement accounts.  Rewording that slightly, it's saying in the name of fairness, we need to treat them differently than lower income people.  Excuse me?  Doesn't fairness mean treating everyone the same?

The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.

Plus, they get to decide what a reasonable retirement income is.  $205,000, just like their level at which people need to get taxed for making too much. 

Newsflash: if you think this will end at the equivalent of $205,000 per year, I have some land to sell you.  The plan is to eliminate these accounts. In September of 2012,  2 1/2 years ago, I wrote: 

Barney Frank and others have publicly said they want to eliminate 401k plans because only "rich people" use them.  Second, there's about $10 trillion in those accounts, and they need that money like a crack whore needs her fix.

Because that's what it's about: getting every last penny of money they can take as taxes before they venture to outright confiscation.  The line between taxation and confiscation is going to get pushed and stretched until we don't recognize it.   

Simple rule for troubled times: if you can't control it, you don't own it. 

Tools You Should Have When The SHTF

While I have a pretty good shop, I know a lot of other people are just getting started. A friend sent me this pretty inclusive list of tools you might want to have, and what they're most commonly used for. I have most of these tools and can vouch for the accuracy of this compilation. 

DRILL PRESS:
A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly-painted project which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

WIRE WHEEL:
Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers.

SKIL SAW:
A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.  Exceptionally well suited to cutting its own power cord.

PLIERS:
Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of blood-blisters.

BELT SANDER:
An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

HACKSAW:
One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle... It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS:
Generally used after pliers to completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH:
Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a bearing race.

TABLE SAW:
A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.  Sometimes useful for splattering everything in sight with blood.

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK:
Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

BAND SAW:
A large stationary power saw primarily used by most shops to cut good aluminum sheet into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash can after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside edge.

ENGINE HOIST:
In the common, two-ton capacity, a tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER:
Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER:
A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws and butchering your palms.

PRY BAR:
A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

HOSE CUTTER:
A tool used to make hoses too short.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent to the object we are trying to hit.  Ladies, it's also useful for applying today's black or purple coloring to fingers and nails in an all-natural way.

UTILITY KNIFE:
Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially useful for slicing work clothes, but only while being worn.

Headline of the Day So Far

Traces of Pork Found in Moose Lasagna. 

I don't why this strikes me funny, but it's Ikea - which I tend to think of as a company that sells "functional furniture".  They apparently also sell frozen foods in Europe and someone in Belgium determined the Moose contained around 1.6% pork.  I suppose if one were allergic to pork it might be detectable.

I think the people who care the most would be Moose-lims. 

Sorry, Bullwinkle.

The Latest Subprime Problem

Those makers of infinite problems, the Federal Reserve, is pushing subprime car loans.  Reuters' article begins:

Money was tight last year for the school-bus driver and neighborhood constable in Jasper, Alabama, a beaten-down town of 14,000 people. One car had already been repossessed. Medical bills were piling up.

And still, though Nelson's credit history was an unhappy one, local car dealer Maloy Chrysler Dodge Jeep had no problem arranging a $10,294 loan from Wall Street-backed subprime lender Exeter Finance Corp so Nelson and his wife could buy a charcoal gray 2007 Suzuki Grand Vitara.

To fulfill most of the required $1000 down payment required on the loan, Mr. Nelson put up a  Mossberg shotgun.  They also got hit with a 21.95% APR loan.  Fairly predictably, the loan failed.  Mr Nelson and his wife divorces, he has declared bankruptcy.  She has the truck and payment book and is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy as well.

Subprime loans: what could possibly go wrong?  Besides everything. 

Until this appeared a couple of days ago, I hadn't heard of subprime car loans.  I'm not going to tell you that nobody should ever get a car loan and only buy cars for cash - although you'd be much better off financially if you could.  I'm paying off a car loan right now.  In January of '12, I bought a nice '09 Explorer with a 3 year loan.  I also daresay my finances are in much better shape than the Nelsons, and that's the point  If your finances aren't in good enough shape to buy a five year old used truck, maybe you need to buy a 10 year old used truck. 

This is all part and parcel of the Fed's Quantitative Easing program ("To Infinity and Beyond!").  The fed is financing virtually the entire US deficit with money from nothing.  That money has to go somewhere. 

The Fed's program, while aimed at bolstering the U.S. housing and labor markets, has also steered billions of dollars into riskier, more speculative corners of the economy. That's because, with low interest rates pinching yields on their traditional investments, insurance companies, hedge funds and other institutional investors hunger for riskier, higher-yielding securities - bonds backed by subprime auto loans, for instance.

This is exactly what led to the '08 collapse, and is building to the next crisis.   What's that?  The '08 crisis wasn't cars, it was subprime housing loans?  Those are back, too.  The problem wasn't the loans themselves, it was the banks selling the securities based on subprime loans as low risk and then the Feds bailing out those banks.  If someone wants to take this risk, fine.  Just don't back them up with taxpayer money. 

You know, houses of cards don't fall down one card at a time, very slowly.  It's pretty much all at once. 

Yet Another Sign of the Approaching Storm

Society has gone almost 100% dysfunctional.

The city of Phoenix, Arizona, a relatively sane state, needs lifeguards for its public pools.  But it has decided the most important characteristic of these lifeguards shouldn't be that they are good at, you know, actually guarding the lives of people in the water.  Judicial Watch tells us Phoenix  has decided it wants these lifeguards to be racially and ethnically diverse, even if they can't swim.

To diversify the lifeguard force, Phoenix will spend thousands of dollars to recruit minorities even if they’re not strong swimmers, according to an official quoted in a news report. Blacks, Latinos and Asians who may not necessarily qualify can still get hired, says the city official who adds that “we will work with you in your swimming abilities.”

Blink. Blink.

Okay, maybe it wasn't fair of me to assume "not strong swimmers" was the same as "can't swim", but given how people in the process of drowning are known to try to overpower their rescuers and switch roles with them, "not strong" and "can't" are pretty similar.

How did it ever come to this? Competitive swimming is a sport dominated by whites. In fact, studies have found that blacks and Hispanics have lower swimming proficiency compared to whites. In Phoenix public pool lifeguards have traditionally come from “more affluent parts of town” where schools have swim teams. That means virtually no minorities, so the city launched this special program to recruit some.

The logical conclusion of this is that the racial/ethnic background of the lifeguards is more important than what, in a functioning world, anyone would consider the most important characteristic: that they be able to save someone who is in trouble in the pools.  That they be the strongest swimmers possible.  Judicial Watch continues:

Though this is a local effort in one city, it’s also part of a national trend to boost the minority workforce at whatever cost. Under President Obama we have seen a lot of this at the federal level through a variety of specially-designed government programs that give ethnic minorities special treatment at all federal agencies as well as medical and agricultural fields, among others.

Earlier this year the administration made history by hiring the government’s first “Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity” to mastermind a multi-million-dollar effort that boosts the number of minorities in biomedical research and slashes discrimination in the federal grant process.

The real shame here is that this makes all of us distrust these people: the lifeguards and the scientists who are hired because of these diversity prpgrams.  That means the people who are really qualified and would have been in those jobs anyway will be penalized because of the "equal opportunity cowboy". 

My prediction: a few people will die this summer in the Phoenix pools.  Families will sue the cities for not hiring the most qualified candidates.  It won't end well. 

Coming next: once the the doctor shortages caused by Obamacare reach fullness, doctors will be recruited the same way.

Is It By Fire or Ice?

No, not climate change.  Does the economy get destroyed in inflationary fire or deflationary freeze?   This is probably the one aspect of the coming nastiness that the fewest people agree on.  There are strong, vocal advocates for both hyperinflation and complete deflation.  I've been studying this for a decade and writing on it for the 3 years I've been here, and I'm not convinced one way or another. 

In comments to last night's post, a comment by Taylor proposed the idea that it's by deflationary collapse.  It's worth reading the whole thing.  Grabbing a few key points:

The inflation that people fear is coming due to The Bernank's actions is a one step logical assumption. If things are denominated in dollars and dollars become more available, it will take more dollars to buy something. And this is true...to a point.

You have to go a step further and think how logical people will react in that environment.

See, as people we learn over time and react to our surroundings. Over time people will see prices ever increasing as more and more money works its way into the system. Eventually a point is reached where people will not take any amount of dollars for a thing of real value. Instead they will demand something of equal or greater value in exchange.

I would start by saying inflation is here now.  The collapse is going on right now, albeit in slow motion.  Both smaller packages of products at slightly higher price, and same sizes at much higher prices, too.  Here's something I wrote on this back in 2010.  Shadowstats estimates current inflation at close to 10% per year.   But hyperinflation isn't just bad inflation.  As Gonzalo Lira put it, also in 2010:

If we think that hyperinflation is simply inflation on steroids—inflation-plus—inflation with balls—then it would seem to be the case that, in our current deflationary economic environment, hyperinflation is not simply a long way off, but flat-out ridiculous.

But hyperinflation is not an extension or amplification of inflation. Inflation and hyperinflation are two very distinct animals. They look the same—because in both cases, the currency loses its purchasing power—but they are not the same. 

In fact, hyperinflation is just another flavor of collapse. 

Taylor is absolutely right in this statement, too:

The sudden loss of faith in the currency has a hyper-deflationary effect as the market tries to find a new medium of exchange and barter markets emerge...both of which cause transitional illiquidity of the market.

It's worth noting, though, in the latest hyperinflationary disaster, Zimbabwe, they switched over to US dollars, as the one thing they could trust.  If I'm recalling correctly (lazy!) the same was the case in the Weimar Republic of Germany.  There probably won't be a dependable currency for us to fall back on.  I don't think of gold as a reserve of wealth in this case, just a very dependable barter medium - as will also be silver coins, beans, bullets, band-aids and, yes, skills.  There's a historical number that I wrote about right after Christmas 2011, on whether the US could go back to a gold standard,

It has been said that an ounce of gold buys today about what it did at any point in the past.  Stephen Harmston, former economist at Bannock Consulting, wrote that “across 2,500 years, gold has retained its purchasing power, relative to bread at least” which is seemingly proved when one considers that “It is said that an ounce of gold bought 350 loaves of bread in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who died in 562 BC” which is roughly what it buys today, a stretch of 2,500 years.  With some judicious selection of the exact brand of bread, you get remarkably close to 350 loaves (and I'm sure there was some variation in what a loaf of bread cost even in King N's day).  Likewise, you'll hear that an ounce of gold would buy a good toga and sandals in pre-Christian Rome, and buys a well-tailored suit and shoes today, or you'll hear that a $20 gold piece bought an 1851 Colt Single Action Army revolver, and today buys a good grade 1911.

In 2009, they said that in Zimbabwe 1 gram of gold would buy 10 loaves of bread.  There's 31.1 grams in a Troy ounce or 311 loaves of bread.  When something has been a dependable trend for 2500 years, it's not crazy to think it will continue, so I think gold will still make good barter material.  It's more crazy to think you know better than 2500 years of history, Dr. Bernanke.   The problem with gold will be how dense in value it is.  A 1oz gold coin will likely be the kind of thing you'd buy a car with.  My good handguns or rifles will not be for sale at any price. 

I think in today's fiat currency, that's a pile of 90% silver, $2 bills. 

A Little Ketchup

As in catching up.  Tab clearing.

There was a Fun Show in town this past weekend and Mrs. Graybeard and I dropped by Saturday afternoon.  There was no line and the crowd wasn't overwhelming.  The last one we went to was the last weekend of December (there's usually one a month here in town) and it was more crowded.  I was wondering what I'd see on ammo prices and the shock started early.  The first seller I saw with 500 round bricks of .22LR on his desk wanted $65/box for them.  We kept moving.  A dozen tables away, another seller was asking $95/box. The cheapest box of .45ACP 230 grain FMJ I saw was about $35.  Most was closer to $45.  9mm 115 gr. ball was $20-ish for box of 50.  .223 was closer to .75/round (in the common 55grain FMJ).  There was ammo, it was just 2x to 3x the prices from before the Schumer storm started. 

ARs seemed down in price from the December show and they were everywhere (as fits "America's Rifle").  I saw several "bare bones" ARs in the $900 to $950 range, and the higher end guns seemed pretty reasonably priced.  I should have written down more prices, but I seem to recall Bushmasters at $1250 or $1500 - pretty reasonable for those guns.  Nobody was giving them away, but nobody was asking for body parts in trade, either.

Hunting guns were there in number, as bolt guns have not been as popular as semiautomatics.  I saw a Savage Axis XP in .308, that really caught my eye and made me go sit and think about getting it (I didn't) but not at Bud's price here, at full list price of $420.  Bolt rifles seemed pretty much unaffected by the price hits that black rifles are getting. 

Yeah, I still have my unrequited lust for something like a Scout rifle and still haven't gotten around to doing it.  I like 308 as a cartridge and Colonel Cooper envisioned a nice configuration.  From what I know, the choices are the Ruger Scout and the Savage 10 FCM - unless you have really deep pockets.  Savage has their "Accu-Trigger"; but I have no idea if it's worth going for.  Ruger's offering is more expensive, but a quick check of a couple dealers show magazines are cheaper (but all are out of stock).  

Got this in the daily email.  He has a point.

Lastly, CA at WRSA links to this article in the NY Times that has gotten some buzz; it's by David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan.  Stockman tells a lot of important truths about the economy and it's worth reading.  Written last week (3/30) he begins:

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

I've said before and firmly believe that the peaks in the stock indices are strictly due to the funny money that the Fed is creating out of thin air.  Up to 90% of the deficit is being funded by creating money with no value behind it.  The stock market isn't creating wealth, it's taking $10 bills and writing another number on them.  Hideous inflation is coming.  When corrected for inflation, the Dow been losing value since its inflation-adjusted peak in Y2K.  The Fed gladly takes credit for driving those prices up as more dollars chase a relatively fixed number of stocks, but won't accept any blame for food prices going up, as more dollars chase a relatively fixed amount of food.  The same artificial pricing game is being directed at housing prices right now.

Tough times are coming.  I wish I could tell you exactly when.  But they are coming.

The Next Frontier in Cryptography

The public key encryption systems that are the basis of GnuPG and PGP are really quite secure.  If you use a 2048 bit key, it's estimated that the time to factor that number with today's computers is 6.4 quadrillion years.  For the moment (don't hold your breath) that's more than six times the size of the US Deficit and unfunded liabilities, expressed in years and not dollars.

Quantum computing is supposed to change that and make it radically easier to break these keys by brute force:

In 1994, while at AT&T Bell Laboratories, mathematician Peter Shor developed a quantum algorithm that can factor large numbers in polynomial time.  Transitioning from classical to quantum computing, Shor's algorithm has the potential to break all of the existing public key schemes used today. 

There are many who believe that all of our modern security systems are in trouble once quantum computers hit.

I'm happy to divulge here a form of quantum cryptography you can perform at home. 

Quantum cryptography depends on the "spooky action at a distance", as Einstein called it, of quantum entanglement.  A pair of particles can't have the same quantum properties, so if you create a pair of photons, keep one and send the other to a remote site, and you know some property of your photon, like its spin, then you know the spin of the other.  Furthermore, you can change the state of your photon and the other one has to change because of entanglement, and the information of the state change has been measured at well over (4x) the speed of light.  If a third party tries to tap into the photons, they change its state letting you know that the data has been compromised. 

All you need to do is to use a pair of quantum tweezers to sort out the photons in small burst of laser light, keeping the ones you want and sending the rest on their way.   Until recently, optical tweezers required a lot of space and expensive equipment, like this:

but thanks to remarkable innovation here, I'm able to offer these photon-based quantum tweezers for the ridiculous price of $19.99. 

These precision quantum tweezers are great for sorting out the photons you want to send, but they are also great for trimming quantum eyebrows or quantum nose hair.  

And if you act now, we'll include this complete set of body armor so that when the bad guys "drug you and hit you with a $5 wrench", you'll be safe.  Free - you just pay shipping and handling of $4995. 

Act now.