April 10, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Cold Steel Gunstock War vs 'Deadliest Warrior' Ballistic Dummies!"--Zombie Go Boom. (3-1/2 min.). Although there is a lot of theater to this test, it is, at its basic, like a ballistic gelatin test of ammunition. In this particular test, the Cold Steel Gunstock warclub performs very well.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• A discussion on group size and mean radius: "Criterion 18 Inch Hybrid Profile Update"--The New Rifleman. This is a chrome-lined barrel that is touted by the manufacturer as having just as much or more accuracy than the heavy barrel (H-BAR) but at a lighter weight. The author believed that it performed very well. However, that is not caused me to want to share the article, but rather the author's use of, and justification for, 10 round groups and using a median (rather than absolute) sized group. From the article:

       Ten round groups are a solid (statistically speaking) means to measure barrel, ammo, and shooter performance. A ten round group gives us enough data to better evaluate accuracy and precision. The 10 round sample size is important as we all know almost any barrel could seem to be “match grade” via the cherry picking of statistically insignificant 3 round groups. Ten round groups also diminish the impact of flyers as a single flyer on the mean radius would represent only 1/10 of the group size. 

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       The max, or extreme spread, measures the distance between the two furthest points in the group. This is a data point that could be skewed by a true flyer, but never-the-less is included as it a very common data point and easily visualized reference. The problem with this method is that it factors in the two furthest points and takes no consideration of the other bullets as data points. 

       The mean radius measures the distribution of the group as it relates to the mathematical center of the group. This method averages all 10 data points to determine the overall average group size as it relates to the center.

    * * *  

       ... Mean Radius is a foreign method for most shooters as the more common method of measurement is the extreme spread. They are entirely different tools, and only one of them considers all 10 shots as data points. The data is the data, nothing more and nothing less. If your trouble is interpreting the data, then you need to simply read more about the topic. For those needing further info on the mean radius and why I use it to measure vs the more traditional method of measuring the extreme spread, please see Molon’s article at ARFCOM.

•  "MYTH BUSTED! No Reason for .357 Magnum Snubnose Revolvers? NOT SO, Says Luckygunner Test"--The Firearms Blog. Testing of various .38 Special and .357 Magnum rounds was out of a 4-inch Ruger GP-100 and 2-inch Kimber K-6 revolvers. Nathaniel F. writes: 

The results were pretty eye-opening: Out of the 18 .38 Special rounds tested, only 4 met FBI standards for penetration with expansion in 5 out of 5 bullets, and only 3 of those four gave the generally recommended 150% expanded diameter. The .357 Magnum was a different story altogether: 14 of the 20 loads met FBI standards with 5 out of 5 expansion, and 9 of those loads gave the recommended 150% expanded diameter.

       He explains that the reason was more energy (i.e., more velocity for a given bullet weight). Not a surprise. I had, in the past, graphed out average muzzle energy for various popular calibers based on testing from Ballistics By The Inch. You can see that with a 2-inch barrel, the .357 has more energy than a .38 Special (although, interestingly, the averages were the same between the 9 mm and the .357, and 9 mm +P had higher energy from a 2-inch barrel). But there is more than muzzle energy to consider. Especially in the case of a snub nose, you should consider the increased recoil and muzzle blast (flash and sound) from a .357 over a .38 Special. In fact, the Lucky Gunner article points out: "Keep in mind that the loads with the best numbers might not necessarily be the best choice for your defensive revolver once the effects of recoil are taken into account."  

       Nevertheless, there are certain .38 Special loads that stand out. For instance, the Hornady Critical Defense .38 Special (which was designed for the short barrel revolver) does fairly well, with all 5 rounds penetrating the recommended depth, and a respectable 0.44 inch diameter after expansion. The +P version of the same load fared slightly worse on depth of penetration, but slightly better on expansion (0.48 inches on average). Remington Golden Saber 125 grain +P loads were even more impressive with slightly better penetration, and expansion of 0.62 inches. The Winchester Ranger Bonded and Train & Defend also did very well. And by that, I mean these latter 3 loads performed comparably to many of the .357 loads (without the over-penetration of some of many of the .357 rounds).

• For those of you who wear a wedding band, here is a product that might be of interest: "Recon Rings | Staying Safe in a Kinetic Environment"--Loadout Room. These are rings made of silicone, and available in various colors (including subdued colors suitable for a camouflaged environment, and intended for wearing in activities where the ring might be lost or result in a injury if it were hard metal (e.g., combat or training for the former, doing mechanics work in the latter).
• Another interesting little product: "Survival Kit Content: The Rolly"--Dreaming Of Sunsets Over Ochre Dunes. "The Rolly Brush is a rubber disc with knobs, you move it around with the tongue against your teeth: Voila! Fresh breath and clean teeth!"
• If you thought you might survive the apocalypse by eating "long pork," you might want to reconsider: "Stone Age cannibals: Hunting each other not worth the hassle"--Associated Press (via Yahoo). A researcher analyzing cannibal practices of Neanderthals, noted that a typical Neanderthal only would provide 144,000 calories, which is much less than a typical large animal. In fact, he concluded that all of the remains of those Neanderthal that were eaten at the site he was studying had less caloric value than a single large animal like a mammoth, a woolly rhino or a bear. 

Other Stuff:

• Fun fact: the Korean War never officially ended. "US Navy aircraft carrier reverses course, heads back toward Korean peninsula"--Fox News. The carrier group headed by the U.S.S. Carl Vinson cancelled a port call to turn back toward Korea. The Chinese are torn: they criticize the deployment of the carrier group as raising tensions on the Korean peninsula, but also have warned North Korea to stop its nuclear tests.
• The boycott of Target stores over their policy of exposing women and children to mentally ill men has hurt Target, but the Target CEO is still unapologetic. In "The Target boycott cost more than anyone expected — and the CEO was blindsided," from Business Insider (via Yahoo), it reports that Target saw a decline of 6% of their sales, and, in addition, spent $20 million to build new single-occupancy restrooms in their stores. Nevertheless, the CEO's only regret was that the policy was made public. From the article:

[CEO] Cornell didn't approve the [blog] post [announcing the policy], according to The Journal, but he supported the policy in interviews after it was published.

"We took a stance, and we are going to continue to embrace our belief of diversity and inclusion," Cornell said in an interview with CNBC in May.

And the shareholders and customers be damned, he should have added.

• What rightful claim? "NYT: Mexico Owns California and Texas, Will Trade For Amnesty"--Breitbart. According to the article, "[t]he New York Times has just published an op-ed article saying that Mexico may give up its rightful claim to ownership of Texas, California and the entire Southwest of the United States, but only if the U.S.  government gives the hugely valuable prize of U.S. citizenship to many millions of Mexicans — plus citizenship for all their kids and grandkids, on and on, forever." We've been fighting a low-grade war with Mexico for the last 150 years. At some point, it needs to end.
• Speaking of which: "Cartels are growing marijuana illegally in California — and there's a war brewing"--Business Insider (via Yahoo). From the article:

Even as California embraces the booming legal marijuana market, though, it is also seeing an explosion in illegal cultivation, much of it on the state’s vast and remote stretches of public land. National forests and even national parks have seen a surge in large-scale illegal “trespass grows,” some with tens of thousands of plants spread across dozens of acres. As much as 80 percent of illegal pot eradicated in California is grown on federal lands, and that’s just the fraction that authorities find. (Trespass grows occur in other states in the American West, and even in remote areas back east, but at nowhere near the scale of California.) 

The article then goes on to report that many growers use poisons (including neurotoxins) that have been banned in the United States to kill rodents and insects, which poisons have been also been killing predator species and seeping into streams. And the growers destroy springs and creeks in order to obtain sources of water for irrigation. Of course, Mexican cartels and illegal aliens play their role:

       Law enforcement officials think many trespass grows are set up by Mexican drug cartels, which prefer to ship marijuana from state to state rather than smuggle it over the international border. Growers arrested during raids are often undocumented immigrants in their 20s from Michoacan, experienced in covert agriculture and hard living. They earn around $150 a day for two to four months, much more than they would at a farm or winery. 

* * *

       Captured growers sometimes claim their employers are holding their families hostage until the harvest is collected. Whether or not that’s true, they’re motivated to protect the crop. Hendrickson estimates between a quarter and half of raids turn up some kind of weapon, from crossbows to automatic rifles. He has found elevated sniper positions set up near grow sites.

       Growers have followed, detained, threatened, pursued, and shot at officers and civilians, including scientists and field techs. One Forest Service biologist who stumbled upon a grow site in Sequoia National Forest was chased for close to an hour by armed growers. When he briefly lost radio contact, his supervisors feared he had been captured or was dead, but he made it out safely. In a single week in the summer of 2016, two K9 dogs were stabbed while apprehending suspects at trespass grows. (Both survived and have returned to work.) 

Even forest service personal going about normal duties not associated with catching growers now have to go out in pairs, armed with ARs.

• "Sanctuary Cities and States Have Seceded from the Union"--American Interest. The author writes: "The sanctuary cities have declared themselves above the rule of law and feel free to disrupt the national unity by setting themselves outside the law and federal governance -- all on the basis of supposed compassion for the alien, when it is clear some of the underlying and murky motives include vote getting and cheap labor."
• This won't end well: "Big 7th Circuit Gay Rights Ruling"--American Conservative. The article notes that the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decided that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Of course, this was not even considered at the time the bill was passed, and flies in the face of how the term "sex" was being used. But decades of slowly expanding the scope of what activities or decisions were related to "sex" has led to from sex meaning "man or woman" to "with whom one has sex." As the author notes, "[i]n other words, the court took it upon itself to say that the law means things the drafters could not have meant. Rather than wait on Congress to change the law, the court changed the meaning of language itself. It is shocking. What democracy!"

       There are many things that could be said about this decision, but let me just raise two. First. of course, is that whereas prior instances where bakers, photographers and florists were forced to provide products or services in celebration of gay marriage arose under particular state laws, the 7th Circuit is now saying such reasoning applies on a national level. Concurrent with this expansion will be the further marginalization of those who oppose gay marriage.

       Second, I've discussed Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies many times, and, frankly, anti-discrimination laws are, by their nature, an additional layer of cost on a society, particular under the current scheme, because minorities can and will sue for being terminated even if there was good cause for the termination. It is too easy to assert that race or gender played a role. Further expansion of these laws increases the complexity and costs of civilization. Will it be the straw that breaks the camel's back? I don't know, but it certainly adds to the load.

• The perpetrator is sorry he got caught: "Marvel removes 'secret, coded anti-Christian and anti-Jewish messages inserted into X-Men Gold comic by Muslim artist' after fans spot them"--Daily Mail. The artist inserted anti-Christian and anti-Semitic references from the Koran including references to Chapter 5, Verse 51 of the Koran. The artist claims it was all innocent, and that "I don't hate Jews or Christians, I worked with them for 10 years. A lot of good friends too." But the verse he referenced states: "O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you - then indeed, he is [one] of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people." So, even though he cites a verse saying "don't be friends with Christians and Jews," he claims he is friends with Christians and Jews. If you believe that, I have a bridge I would like to sell you....
• The wages of sin socialism: "Venezuela Protesters Target Maduro, Vow to Keep up Pressure"--U.S. News and World Report. The protests erupted after the Venezuelan Supreme Court attempted to outlaw opposition parties. They been going on for over a week, having started on April 1.
• The world does not revolve around you: "Mailvox: but what about [fill-in-the-blank]s"--Vox Popoli. Vox Day responds to a reader that is concerned of what will happen to him when the civil (proximity + diversity =) war comes. Day explains:

His second mistake is to confuse what I expect to happen on the basis of past historical patterns with what I want. I cannot stress this enough: what I want is totally irrelevant. What all of us want is irrelevant. What is going to happen is going to happen according to the usual patterns of history.  Yes, blacks will be forcibly moved and killed. As will whites, Koreans, Chinese, Mexicans, mixed-race people, and pretty much everyone else. How does anyone imagine homogeneous nations are created in the first place? They don't spring ex nihilo out of the rocks.

• Obama lied, people died: "More Questions for Obama on Syria"--American Interest. The author notes that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters that the strikes on Syria were targeted in such a way as to avoid hitting sarin gas storage facilities. Of course, as the author points out, this raises a series of questions: Did the U.S. learn of these facilities during the Obama Adminstration? He answers his own question:

       The signs point to yes. In Congressional testimony last February, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged “gaps and inconsistencies in Syria’s declaration,” validating reports that Syria was still hiding banned chemicals at undisclosed locations. And on its way out the door in January of this year, the Obama Treasury quietly introduced new sanctions against Syrian officials involved in chemical warfare. Buried in the language sanctioning a particular official was a telling admission: “As of 2016, Abbas has continued operating at locations in Syria associated with chemical warfare-related missions.”

       Whether or not the Obama Administration knew of this particular sarin facility, then, they clearly knew that Syrians were still clinging to their stockpiles at several locations. They knew what Adam Garfinkle has been saying all along: that Obama’s deal to remove chemical weapons was not a historic diplomatic triumph but an unenforcable sham that the Syrians and Russians never intended to comply with.

• Commentary by Fjordman on the recent terrorist attack in Sweden and similar attacks in other European nations: "Western ruling elites behave in an almost zombie-like manner. They mindlessly walk from disaster to disaster, never understanding what caused the previous catastrophe and not doing anything substantial to prevent the next one."
• Diversity is our strength: Commenting on a news story about a riot that broke our at a caucus meeting in Minneapolis' 6th Ward (dominated by Somali refugees) to select delegates, Anonymous Conservative writes:

No arrests were made. This is now a normal part of the democratic process in America, during a period of free resource availability. You can riot and bloody up the opposition and there are no consequences. And this is merely the Somalis interacting among themselves. Imagine how they will treat real Americans when it is us or them.