January 2010

Henry Golden Boy .17HMR

The 17 HMR has revolutionised shooting for many New Zealanders, meaning that the old adage of a man only needing three guns, a shot gun, a big game gun and a .22 is dead. There was always plenty of scope for arguments about what calibre of big game gun a man should have, and good logic to having most. When it came to shooting rabbits, hares and possums, there was only one calibre, the .22. Most shooters learned how to shoot with a .22, a cheap, effective cartridge that teaches boys (alright, and girls if they are into shooting) good field craft and placing shots, as you have to get bloody close to a rabbit to knock it over.
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Over the years there have been plenty attempts by different people to create a souped up .22, but none have really caught on as the .22 was simply too cheap, too effective and too much fun to shoot with. This all changed in 2002 when the 17 HMR (Hornady Magnum Rimfire) was introduced.

The 17 HMR is a tiny little projectile that sits atop a 22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire (22 Mag) cartridge. For the layman, this means that the power is condensed into a wider, shorter area, providing even powder burn, improving velocity, drop and accuracy. That’s the theory. In practice the 17 HMR is a life changing weapon because it allows you to reach out to 200m and knock over rabbits and hares without having to stalk in like you did with a .22. A rangefinder and a bipod mean that killing at 200m should be expected if you are a half decent shot and can find something 200m away to shoot.

Depending on the cartridge, a 17 HMR zeroed at 100m will drop 22cm at 200. This makes anything under 100 pretty easy, so you start seeking bunnies further out. This cartridge goes like a cut cat, flying out the muzzle at over 2500 fps, between 700 & 1500 fps faster than  .22 Long Rifle (the correct name for the .22). At under 100m it punches a pretty big hole in a rabbit, picking it up and tipping it over without too much trouble at all.

It slows down a fair bit at 200m but still drills a pretty big hole in a rabbit, and will dump a hare without having to worry too much about inch perfect shot placement.

Close range shooting for possums is meat and drink for the 17, as it puts a very, very large hole in the possum so you don’t end up with a possum hanging in a tree with a  few .22 bullets in it, wondering whether it needs more to humanely finish it off. Wild cats, on the other hand, tend to bounce around a bit much after getting a .17 in them, which is not ideal especially if the wild cat happens to be the neighbours pet that is knocking off a few of your native birds and needs to be discretely sent to a better place. In that case a suppressed .223 is a far better bet as the extra grains in the .223 give it much more knock down power rather than just relying on the speed of the bullet. Suppression of bullets is a good thing.

There are a good number of 17 HMRs available in NZ, with lots of different configurations to choose from. At the bottom end Marlin & Savage produce effective rifles but the Marlins action suffers a bit from being a bit short in the bolt, and not being that smooth. Going up the cost scale the CZ has a good number of faithful adherents, and Ruger make a very nice .17 also. There are other brands on the market, usually more expensive and usually pretty bloody good, but the Savage will do as an introductory rife for just about anyone except the most fanatical varminter. Being  left handed shooter I prefer a semi-auto or a Lever action and my preferred lever action is the Henry Golden Boy in .17HMR. It has a nice heavy octagonal barrel and good balance, if you stick a bipod on it and decent scope you have a very effective rabbit slaughtering machine. If I were to have a semi-auto you can’t go past the rugged dependability of a Ruger except they don’t make a .17HMR, but Magnum Reasearch do. Booyah! For those who don’t know Magnum Reasearch are the makers of the Desert Eagle pistol in either .357 Magnum or .44 Magnum. The Magnum Research boys make a custom model based loosely on the proven Ruger 10/22 action and magazine system. That blowback system  though is not suitable for the high pressure .17HMR and so Magnum Research have made significant adjustment to the action. And very cunning their modification is too. They have developed and have a patent pending unique operating system that combines gas operation with the old blowback operation. They have precisely located a very small orifice hole directly in front of the chamber of this rifle that bleeds a very small amount of expanding gas as the bullet passes it. By doing this they are able to “equalize” the peak pressure of this gun and allow it to operate as a blowback action. They have also developed and installed a “gas block” on this rifle that diffuses the gasses safely under the fore-end. Now a word of warning, this rifle is expensive at $2299 but I just bet it works flawlessly.

The only thing to be wary of with the 17 HMR is barrel fouling. Barrels need a lot of cleaning and you will lose accuracy if you don’t keep your barrel clean.

I think I would still stick with the Henry, a true Classic.

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Judith Collins has an opinion piece in the NZ Herald and in her indomitable way puts liberal panty-waists like “FIGJAM” Power on notice that at least one of our politicians is staying in touch with the people in the street.

Time and again, victims of crime have told me they feel let down by a system that seems to put greater emphasis on the rights of offenders than victims.

People expect safe communities, where they can walk the streets without the threat of violence or intimidation, where they can sleep at night knowing their families are safe in their homes, where there is respect for property, people and the law.

These things are among the most fundamental obligations of any government. I believe we need to revisit the basic principles of punishment and reform.

As far as I am concerned, Offenders have no rights except the right to be housed and fed. We seriously do need to look at our Justice system.

In this country we have many people who have made a thriving industry out of making excuses for criminals.

In the past decade these people have overwhelmed the debate on law and order with their views on the rights of offenders.

By making excuses for criminals, these people send a very strong signal that crime is acceptable in our communities, that it is an accepted fact of life.

One thing I do not understand is how you can tell someone whose life has been torn apart by crime that it is acceptable.

Recently, a senior judge told me that he believed there was “far too much emphasis on victims in our courts at the moment”.

That Judge should be sacked. it is their job to protect society by putting crims away, not dishing out big hugs and cuddles. Collins is right, making excuses for criminals victimises the victim al over again. This is one of the reasons I set up SHAME. To stop people making excuses and hiding from the awful crimes that they committ.

For every crime there are victims like Leigh and her family, and for justice to be truly done it must strive to bring peace and closure to those victims. I believe it is time to reclaim a few basic ideas of what justice is and what it is supposed to do.

The public expects the system – first and foremost – to punish those who have broken the law. Punishment for serious crime in the majority of cases should be harsh, because anything less fails to acknowledge that victims of crime are never truly released from their sentences.

I don’t believe prison should be enjoyable. Prison should be an unpleasant experience so offenders do not want to return.

The justice system’s sole focus should not be on punishment. It is very important to give people the opportunity to turn their lives around.

Precisely. Judith Collins is right in touch with the feel on the streets, she clearly doesn’t ensconce herself in the rarefied atmosphere of the beltway. Serious Offenders need serious punishment, not PLasma screens and heated floors and cuddle toys and warm blankets. They need hard punishment and then when they get that message we can start looking at rehabilitation.

But pressure from those who advocate for the rights of criminals has resulted in too much focus on rehabilitating the prisoners who are least likely to be rehabilitated.

We should accept that some offenders will never be rehabilitated, and divert resources to those who could benefit from it.

The Government has announced a three-strikes policy that will escalate the severity of sentences.

Hoorah! The days of the panty-waist liberals running our prison is over. In the Police and Corrections Minister we have a minister who knows and understands about the victims of crime and what we need to do about. Som eoffenders are beyond redemption and the faster they are worked to an early grave the better. Perhaps under our free trade detail with China we could outsource the detention of lifers to China. They at least know how to make their sorry lives useful, often by using them as organ donors. The Chinese are very efficient when it come to making the useless useful.

John Key has barely shaken the cards for his Cabinet re-shuffle. Sensibly he has taken Tertiary Education off Anne “The Closer” Tolley, especially now as the Teacher Unions have declared war against National Standards and League Tables. The portfolio has been handed to Steven “Cardinal Richlieu”Joyce, who is fast becoming John Key’s Bill Birch.

The only interesting thing is the preparation Nick “Quota” Smith for political neutering. It isn’t surprising for those who watch politics closely, with his bizarre behaviour at Copnehagen being spoken of in hushed tones. John Key has gone to the Minister who had the only positive result out of the farce of Copenhagen and appointed Tim “Allah” Groser as the  Minister for Climate Change International Negotiations. This is a not to subtle undermining of Nick “Quota” Smith whose time in parliament is likely to come to an ignomious end very shortly.

Which brings me to the topic of Climate  Change.

Now that Copenhagen is dead with China, the US and India saying naff off one has to wonder why we rushed into legislation the ill-conceived ETS. It should immediately be shelved. It is farcical to cripple out productive sectors with taxes that no-one in the rest of the world is ever likely to implement. More to the point it has emerged that Grass Fed cattle are actually better for the environment that grain fed cattle therefore putting our cattle and milk herds in the best position green wise, without doing a single thing.

It is ridiculous to now encumber our productive sector with an ETS. I will go further and suggest it is also ill-conceived to lumber the population with a carbon tax which no doubt that Pinko Farrar will suggest. We need less taxes not more. Ditch the ETS, it was Nick’s idea anyway, so blame him, and resist the urge to put in a carbon tax.

With the so-called science and IPCC shibboleths being destroyed daily, a cautionary wait and see approach would be best, oh and firing Nick “Quota” Smith.

So Labour has re-selected Phil Goff and Annette “Married to the Mob” King to lead them to defeat in 2011.

“Silent T” Cunliffe has absolutely ruled himself out from this challenge and further challenges admitting that he has never wanted the job.

Shane “Five Chins” Jones has taken a different tack though.

Mr Jones initially said no comment before returning to say it was a “negative, divisive question”.

“Absolutely no interest whatsoever in applying for leadership or doing anything that breaks our unity.”

Asked again if he could pledge that for the full parliamentary term, he responded: “This is an attempt to be very divisive and to create rubbish.

Bye bye.”

That my friends isn’t a categorical no and so Goff now has one confirmed stalker looking to jam a shank into his back. At the same time as not confirming his full support of Phil Goff, Shane “Five Chins” Jones was putting the boot into the Maori Party. This it seems is his master strategy to help Labour win.

“Five Chins” is clearly playing draughts while the Maori party are playing Chess. Shane Jones is actually sabotaging any chance of Labour winning and Goff becoming PM by attacking the Maori party, of course after 2011 he will have an epiphany on the road to Kaikohe and suddenly change his mind.

This has gotta hurt.

The wonders of technology.

David S. Hopper

or·di·nar·y

(ôrdn-r)adj.

Labour's Election billboard leaked

Today was Mum’s Birthday. We went and had fish and chips at Mission Bay for dinner. It was beautiful evening and a cruise-liner went out as we watched. I wouldn’t want to embarrass readers by telling you how much that cost to organise.

While we were there a Ginga Day-Walker came down to the beach with all his friends. That’s right, he was alone. He set up on the beach and quite literally everyone with in 15 metres of him moved. It was like there was this force sucking the souls from people that drove them to escape. I took a photo unsure if Ginga Day-Walkers could be captured on film. Turns out they can. As you can see there is no-one on the beach near him. People walking on the beach detoured around him.

Scary.

Ginga Day-walker with his friends

I have spoken to a couple of people in the last few days who have said things like “You don’t look depressed on TV” or some such other drivel.

My retort to them is “So what does a depressed person look like?” Their answer is always that they don’t know and that I don’t look depressed. The left wing use this and they even accuse me of fraud and malingering because I happen to be able to write a blog.

Well I am going to explain to you what depression looks like from out of my eyes. I know it well, it dogs me to this day. I didn’t choose this nor do I want it, I hate how I have to live and I hate how I feel. Fortunately for me my depression is “Fight” based and it is there that I will start.

My business was sold on my birthday to a supposedly good guy who came to the rescue for the deep whole we had dug. What  didn’t know at the time of agreeing to exit and sell the company was that my business partner was in league with this guy and had been playing me big time. I knew thought what was really going on and so I walked away knowing that karma will bite. Eventually it did when the my former business partner was given the shaft by his former ally. I don’t want to talk about this though it is depression I want to share.

I had spent the last 18 months trying to keep the business afloat, I was working incredibly long hours and in an environment where I couldn’t trust anyone, even my business partner. Include into that a trip in an ambulance to Middlemore with suspected meningitis which turned out to be pneumonia. The Doctor when he came around after the 5th day in hospital said I was lucky to be alive, and all I wanted was my cellphone and laptop so I could continue killing myself.

So here I was standing on my driveway after having left for the last day of work little knowing that I wouldn’t work again for nearly 6 years. Three days later it was Guy Fawkes night. We went as a family down to Howick Beach which is something of a local event. The problem was about to erupt. 8 late teens/early twenty-somethings fired a skyrocket across the beach and it landed and exploded about 6 feet from me. This was the tinder for the explosion. I went and spoke with them and asked politely for them to fire them out to sea. Then 5 minutes later another was fired and landed right in front of my son. I exploded.

Nothing was going to stop me. I tore up the beach and assaulted the biggest one first, then when the other seven started to come to his rescue I started on them. Another Dad from down the beach came up behind me and advised them not to get involved and the best thing they could was leave and take their injured fellow with them. I literally had the red mist across my eyes.

I did all this automatically, without thinking and just reacted. I did it in front of hundreds and I did it in front of my family. As the re mist cleared I was deeply horrified by what I had done and said to my wife, I need to see a doctor. This was the start of my diagnosis of depression. Of course the symptoms were there a long time before that but trying to keep the business afloat meant I lived on adrenaline and was an adrenaline junky. By not having that for the 3 days to cover over the hurt my body had flushed the adrenaline and now I was operating right at the core of my brain.

I saw the doctor the next day. My doctor is a Singaporean Army trained Doctor who has won awards for compassionate care. That day he saved my life. I was referred to see a psychiatrist who was a lovely Chinese man and he diagnosed my depression. the Following day I went to see a psychologist and started down the trail of learning exactly what this thing called depression was that was controlling my life. The very first thing I found out was that it doesn’t mean you are a bit sad and you just need to HTFU.

With depression especially severe depression your body has learned over a considerable period of time to react with only the amygdala. The core of the brain where there are only two responses. This part controls how you react to emergency situations, it is primal and it is blunt. There are just two possible things to do when your amygdala takes over control of you. Flight or Fight. This is the bodies survival instinct kicking in. Imagine if you will a burglar jumping out of the dark and frightening you. Some people immediately and without thought flee, this is flight. it doesn’t mean they are chicken or weak it is just how they are programmed at their core and when threatened the amygdala just issues orders. The opposite is fight. This is what I do. I stand and deliver, every sense incredibly heightened ready to do battle with anything that comes my way. Again with not thought. It is control deep within the core.

The amygdala kicks in and floods the body with adrenalin ready for the fight or the flight, this is like a shot of speed straight to the brain and the muscles. Your heart rate increases as the body reacts to the threat and your breathing becomes faster and shallower, pumping more oxygen into the system.

The problem with depression is that the brain works more in this way and the body is working under the control more this way and so your body remembers this position as the default. That is where you need to reset. You aren’t thinking rationally, you are literally a binary human. Yes or No, Right or Left, Up or down. Fight or Flight. The problem is you are now wearing yourself out in this constant state of being and eventually the body give in and your depression worsens.

You get to a point where even the simplest of task become impossible. i would go for a walk with my wife and get to the driveway and she would ask me a question. bad mistake. She wanted to know whether we went left or right out of the driveway. That required a decision, that required the decision right now, it forced the brain into the core again, so you get a panic attack and breathing becomes difficult  and you heart is racing. Fight or Flight. Or how about cooking dinner. you go to the freezer and stand there for 10 minutes staring at a mountain of food and being unable to make a choice. You shut the fridge door and go lie down because you are literally exhausted from having to make a decision. You shut down, you sleep even though you aren’t tired, because you brain says sleep. This is the darkest point.

Once you can get yourself up and about though you need to reset your body. Basically you have to do hard physical exercise that forces to body to react in a normal manner. Deep breathing as you exercise, setting up a new habit. training your body to relax, to breathe properly, to act properly. It took me a year to stop having major panic attacks, they still happen and are situational and triggered by a memory. I can’t spend more than an hour at Botany Town Centre for example, for shopping I have to do it in small chunks. Even then I am wrecked physically for the day after just one hour shopping. And I am fit. It just slays you though.

Then I also get hyper-vigilance. This is a heightened aware-ness of what is going on around you. You re basically constantly scanning for threats. For me this is also situational. Although physically I am afraid of no man, my brain kicks in and takes over and says “watch out, there is a potential threat”. This also becomes debilitating.

This is my life and has been my life for the past 5 and a bit years. It is shattering and it is destructive, and I haven’t even got onto the drugs. The drugs are truly awful. I have found that exercise has been far more beneficial, but the problem is once you start on the drugs it is a trap and a trap that you don’t want to be in. I know most of the anti-depressants intimately and they all affect you in differing ways. They universally suck.

But that is all fine, as you battle your way forward, and let me tell you when I started this i thought I needed just to HTFU and have a bit of a rest for 6 months and then back at it. The problem is it doesn’t work this way. I have learned that if you screwed with your body for 5 years, neglecting it, thrashing it and your mind for 5 years it will take you at least that long to crawl back. That is if everything goes swimmingly. However if you get an upset in there, back to square one you go and start again. That is my life. my business partner promptly went bankrupt leaving me holding the can for the creditors, and they came after me. Boy did they come after me and the worst by far was IRD. That battle took two years, where essentially I got to the point where even just thinking about money would spin me out. I couldn’t pay the bills, I didn’t care about spending because I wasn’t paying the bills and we were living on about half of what I was earning. We lost an investment property, fortunately at the peak of the market. Another 2 months and it wouldn’t have been the same and the money from that enabled us to settle with the creditors.

Then there was the impact of my insurance company. It was great to start with, the worry of feeding the family and paying the bills was gone. That is until 2 years into it they decided to in their own words “tune me up” to see if I was faking. What this meant was that two days before the next payment was due they wrote a letter to me telling that they were cutting my benefits in half. We were now living on half of half. At the same time fighting creditors. it is no surprise to anyone that I deepened in my depression and all because the insurance company wanted to tune me up. They said those words in a conference I made them have to explain themselves at which they also reinstated and back paid us. This however took 3 months to resolve. Three months of living on half of half and fighting creditors. I couldn’t even deal with the insurance company or the IRD, I had to get my wife to deal with them.

All this time I didn’t look depressed. I sure felt it. i sure felt like I had a shitty life and my outlook was through shit-tinted glasses.

After about 18 months of depression you find out how may friends you really have. I can tell you, that ignoring close family, and even some of them don’t get it, you end up with just one friend. A true friend who will literally do anything for you. i was also lucky that i also had a true friend it was just that she lived in a different city. She still kept in contact with me and I with her. She also had her own issues but that is her story to tell not mine. Basically though you find out that you have just one friend. my friend came around home and ordered me to get dressed and come to his office, to get out of home, to change my outlook and forced me to remove the shit-tinted glasses. I owe that friend along with my GP my life.

So where am I today? Well I don’t look depressed, except to those who “know”. I can write a blog, though my detractors say it is shit, but then they don’t have the traffic I have. Like everyone else who blogs, it is a hobby, not a fulltime thing. I have the uncanny ability to put 2000 words on screen in a fast amount of time. A lawyer today asked me how long ti took to write the Tale of Two Houses. He was astonished when I told him no more than 10 minutes. He told me that he would have taken 2 hours to write that at least, and his job is all about writing. I guess that is a plus.

Despite all that I am still depressed and of course it didn’t help that six months ago with even flimsier evidence that the IPCC they came to the conclusion that my claim was medically completed. Actually not even their on the payroll doctors said that but they just decided and again two days before the payment was due I was faced with no income, the prospect of losing my house, wondering what to just what to do. I collapsed again. I went into a hole, it took me three weeks to surface. The evidence is there for those who know me right on my blog. I get phone calls from my new blog friends when they notice the signs. i got a few calls today after they read yesterdays efforts. I am thankful that I have these friends from the Far North to the Far South, some I have never met, but send me emails of support. I am thankful that I found God again (no it isn’t a crutch), a caring loving God and again I am thankful for the two friends that kept me going and the support of my loyal wife.

But I am still depressed. I went to the Kaimanawas at Christmas for two reason. I didn’t blog at the time the real reasons, but going there helped me reconnect with happy times, it helped me clear my head and it reset me. That feeling has lasted just three weeks but it is the best three weeks I have had in nearly six years. It also coincides with all the publicity I have got. So the publicity and my appearances and my discussions in a high stress environment all occurred at the time in the past 6 years when I could best cope with it, except the tax for that kicked in on the weekend. I spent Monday in bed after three nights of less than 2 hours sleep caused by insomnia, a regular and debilitating occurrence with my depression.

I want to be well, I need to be well but I have learned it takes time. Am I still depressed, you bet I am, just ask my close friends. Cactus can recognise it, so can Barnsley and Jadis and Adolf and Bryan. All I can say is thank god for friends.

Now you can get some idea of what it is like living with the black dog. It ain’t all motherhood and apple pie. I wrote this because I needed to, not because I wanted to. Of course my detractors will use it to abuse me but what they don’t know is i simply don’t care what they say. That is partly the drugs and partly it won’t help caring, so I screw up their barbs like metaphoric paper and through it in the bin metaphorically because they can’t hurt me more than I have and feel already. I hope this helps someone and if any one has the symptoms or feelings of depression then please seek help. The only other option is one I will not take. Suicide is for cowards whose flight response has taken over. Those with Fight would never contemplate such a selfish and wasteful act.

To my friends I thank you, they know they are. To my enemies fuck you, you know who you are. For me depression isn’t described by sadness, it is described by anger. I will continue the battle and remember don’t mess with The Whale.

Labour Labor in Australia on this issue at least is showing up New Zealand Labour on how to deal with dead-beat teachers.

TEACHERS identified as underperformers by the Government’s new school rating system should expect to be roused at by disgruntled parents, the Education Minister, Julia Gillard, says.

The My School website, to be launched on Thursday, will allow parents to compare schools and will have enough data to pinpoint specific subject areas of underperformance, potentially identifying the responsible teachers.

Right, so in Australia “league” tables will be available for all to see and not only that they will published online.

Following a briefing on the website yesterday, Ms Gillard told the Herald the Government welcomed the fact that the website would empower parents to badger school staff to lift standards. ”We would expect parents to have robust conversations with teachers and principals,” she said.

Ms Gillard said teachers were already trained to deal with complaints on parent-teacher nights. Now, parents would be armed with even more information with which to complain.

”This should put pressure on people,” Ms Gillard said.

Meanwhile back here in NZ  our Labour Party wants no part in anything like this, in fact they have tried along with their union mates  to have any performance data made more secret than even SIS files by not making the information subject to the OIA. Labour have also said it will repeal any law that National has in place. Further our Teachers unions are saying that they will simply refuse to implement government policy.

Julia Gillard in Australia has different ideas saying that more than $2 billion has been earmarked towards addressing disadvantaged schools, improving teaching standards and lifting literacy and numeracy standards. Of course in order to know which schools are failing you have to measure them and so you end up with league tables. But in measuring them you can also track progress. If you don’t know where you started from how do you know if you are improving?

”We’re going to shine a light on some schools that need a helping hand and we are ready to work in partnership with those schools with new money and new programs,” she said.

The website will publish a range of information, including national test results, student and staff numbers, and attendance rates for each of the nation’s almost 10,000 schools.

Each school will be graded using a colour-coded system on its national tests performance in the areas of reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy for years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

Each school will be compared with about 60 other schools that cater to ”statistically similar” student populations, according to a specially developed Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage. Each school will also be compared against the national average.

Very simple, let’s get on and do it here and tell Labour and the Unions to stop trying to protect the useless, the indolent and the stupid. Tell Labour and the Unions that in a modern world there is no place for mediocrity.