A Quick Run Around the Web--February 10, 2016

• "WROL? You better know your Local Laws"--FerFal at Modern Survivalist. Without Rule of Law (WROL) is more fantasy than reality. FerFal writes:

The simple truth is that society doesn’t disappear, it may get chaotic at times but it’s still there, and more relevant to the topic the laws don’t go anywhere the day you’re brought to justice and asked to answer for your actions.

The problem with all these fantasies about going out shooting raiders and looters is that there are real looters and real criminals out there. Before the world goes Mad Max and you start kidnapping people and using them as walking blood banks because the world run out of food (but somehow managed to retain the ability to build the most insane custom vehicle with horrible fuel efficiency) before any of that happens you will have to go through very hard times. You will have to avoid getting kidnapped in parking lots or carjacked, defend your home from home invaders, somehow make your home safe when away, find ways of defending your income, you will have to survive for REAL, not Man vs Wild but REAL SURVIVAL folks, do you understand what I mean by this?

• "Hating on the Taurus Judge"--Active Response Training. The summing up:

Overall, despite being popular and fun to shoot, I really don’t think I can figure out a very good use for this gun. The bird shot loads are not likely to do much damage to a human attacker. I doubt you could kill small game with it beyond 30 feet. And it’s pretty big to conceal.   Slugs aren’t a very good choice out of this gun.  The ,410 slug only weighs 87 grains (about the same as a .380 round) and is probably moving about 1100 feet per second out of the short barrel.  That’s between .380 acp and 9mm in power.  Not terrible, but not great either.  Good buckshot loads may be  fairly potent, but probably don’t offer any more stopping power than the .45 Colt.   If you want to shoot .45 Colt for a defense round, there are certainly better options out there for that. This gun really doesn’t serve much of a purpose.

• "Mossberg Goes M-LOK"--The Firearms Blog. Their MMR rifles now use front hand guards sporting the M-LOK system. Another sign that M-LOK appears to be winning out over Key Mod.
• "Two-thirds of American households lack adequate plans and supplies for a disaster"--Phys.Org. "Nearly two thirds (65 percent) of American households do not have adequate plans and supplies for a disaster. This is virtually unchanged from 2011 (66 percent) and represents only a modest improvement from since 2003 (77 percent)."
• Because I was so ill last week, I didn't get around to reading Active Response Training's Weekend Knowledge Dump last weekend. Lots of good articles, of course, but one that caught my attention in particular was this: "What Really Happens When You Get Shot" from Wired. Just a brief excerpt (and a lesson for all of us who rely on firearms for self-defense):

[Bullets] have the potential to cut through arteries and large veins without alerting the body’s muscles to problems. With bullets, it all comes down to shot placement and passage—which, without the gift of surgical precision that no gunman will ever have, is another way of saying it comes down to luck. Aiming for limbs to create “flesh wounds” is a movie myth, and generally not something that police or soldiers ever train to do.

Furthermore, even multiple gunshots to the torso won’t guarantee death, or even incapacitation. Arun Nair is an attending physician in the ER at Johns Hopkins, and an International Health Fellow. “Bullets are magic,” Nair tells his students. He recounts the story of a young man in Lebanon who survived after being shot six times. He took repeated shots to the chest and throat. One of the six bullets stopped inside his pericardium, the narrow space between the heart and its thin protective membrane. Another bullet ended up in the victim’s esophagus; he swallowed it. Amazingly, the patient was alert and speaking lucidly to the doctors. You can’t assume anything, says Nair. Bullets can bounce, ricochet, and change vector under the skin.

• "China confirms first case of Zika virus - Xinhua"--Reuters.
• "Brownells Partners with Aero Precision to Offer OEM Rifle"--The Truth About Guns. The firearm is a bare-bones .308 (7.62 NATO) AR style rifle. By "bare-bones," I mean no butt stock, forearm, or sights--these are left off for you to customize the rifle. Even so, it is still $999 (not including shipping or the transfer fee that an FFL will charge).
• "Is Europe worth saving?"--The Bookworm Room. 

The problem, as I see it, with continental Europe is that it has absolutely no tradition of individual liberty. It is statist to the bone. Whether Europeans are indulging in garden-variety-dictatorships, medieval/Renaissance theocracies, monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, socialist parties (communist or otherwise), or rule by bureaucrat (i.e., the EU), the European model is always directed at total state control. That’s why there is no conservative movement in Europe, as we in America understand conservatism.

To Americans, conservativism means small government, free markets, and maximum individual liberty, a belief in the common man’s energy, imagination, and initiative that paved the way for America’s dynamic emergence on the world stage in the 20th century. To Europeans, being “right wing” or “conservative” still means total government control — it just means total government control with varying degrees of nationalism, as opposed to all those other -isms, thrown in.  The European “right-winger” still wants his government checks and government regulations.  It’s just that he just doesn’t want the “other,” whomever that other happens to be (sometimes Muslims, sometimes Roma, sometimes Italians or Greeks, and always Jews) to live with him under that tight government control.