Visit to Quantico

So, courtesy of CSIS's Marine fellow, a bunch of us got to visit Marine Corps Base Quantico yesterday. It was a lot of fun, although I had to get up around 5:45 to get to CSIS with time to spare for our 7:30 am departure. Our bus driver then got lost by going to the wrong quadrant of D.C. and so was an hour and ten minutes late. Although I did catch naps on the way down and back. As did the driver apparently, although our Marine noticed that before he drove off the road.

Even with bus difficulties, it was an awesome field trip. Pictures taken from someone else's camera may be posted later.

We started out at the rifle range. We were basically at point blank. Like 10 meters away maximum. This was a large outdoor range (which actually wasn't what I was initially expecting, I normally see indoor in TV and movies, although I've only ever shot outdoors). If memory serves the marines have to shoot at 200, 300, and 500 meters getting a score of 190 or so out of 250 to qualify. 1 to 5 points a shot. Although most of the shots are from the closer ranges. Similarly the further out shots are kneeling or prone. Apparently this is an area of disagreement with the army that thinks that 300 is as far out as it's worth testing rifle skills. I can see their point, since apparently at 500 meters the sights are about the same size as target at that range.

Anyways, got to fire a 9mm, .45, and a M-16A. Fun stuff. Particularly burst mode, although I doubt the latter two shots were on target. I'm not great with rifles, particular because it took me a few shots to remember that right-eyed trumps left-handed for the purposes of shooting.

We also got to eat MREs, which have chemical heating (just add water) which is just cool. They were reasonably tasty.

Finally we saw the high-end production facility they had and their range of sniper rifles. Metal Gear Solid was actually pretty accurate in describing how much a sniper rifle wavers when not using a base of some sort. Although there was no dopamine handy, so I couldn't see if that worked too.

On Taxes

Paid mine Saturday, although I botched the mailing of my MD estimated taxes. I'll wait a few days to see if it goes through anyways and the re-send.

John Edwards has a good tax reform proposal. Essentially, when the government already has the employer/financial institution information, they'd just send a "Form 1" where the IRS calculated the tax bill for the taxpayer. The person looks over the form and other signs and mails it back or recalculates it. Apparently that could apply to as many as 50 million Americans. For everyone else, the IRS will mail the records they have (on W-2s, 1099s, mortgage interest, and the like), so as to remove worries about audits on lost records. Seems like a fairly straightforward idea and one that is politically achievable.
Two things I'd add:
1) Free e-filing.
2) Allow charities to similarly submit information (at explicit donor request). So if you give your money to a big charity or a place of worship or the like, they notify the IRS and have it automatically incorporated into your form 1.

I'm not really worried about the privacy implications as this is all information that the government has anyways.

[Edit: Hat tip: Ezra Klein's blog.]

Also, I'm kinda freaked out by the V-Tech shooting. I hope the number of fatalities don't go any higher. I don't think there's any great insights that can or should be drawn at this point. It's just rather horrific and I've known a fair number of people that have gone to Virgina Tech so it feels a lot closer to home.