May 25, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"LEO Recap: 3 shootings"--Donut Operator (8 min.). This video includes body-cam footage from three different shootings, each with their own lessons. The first incident shows how quickly a situation can devolve from something benign to a gunfight. In that case, the officer has stopped a vehicle and gone to the passenger side. After the driver indicated he couldn't roll down the window, the officer proceeded around the vehicle, where he encountered the driver standing at the back corner with a rifle in his (the driver's hand). The second incident shows that some attackers are not going to be stopped by one or two gunshots. In that case, the officer came across the perpetrator (who was high on PCP) trying to cut the head off his victim. The officer shot the perpetrator three times with no effect, but finally stopped him with a shot to the head. The third incident involved some officers entering an apartment to apprehend a suspect, when the suspect opened fire on the officers before quickly retreating behind an interior wall. The officers used suppressive fire through the interior wall before retreating to a safe location.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• Reality has a way of doing that: "Quote of the Day: A Home Invasion Changed My Attitude About Guns"--The Truth About Guns. The quote: "I was always anti-gun. … I wasn’t really scared of them, I just decided I wanted to be anti-gun, and what a difference 24 hours makes."
• "When to Replace Your Self-Defense Ammo"--Lucky Gunner. The author notes that it depends on several factors, including the type of weapon and how you carry or use it. For instance, he points out that ammunition in a revolver is not exposed to possible damage and probably will last almost indefinitely. Nevertheless, he suggests replacing it least once per year. Similarly, ammunition in an auto-loader that is only used as a side-table gun, and only loaded or unloaded infrequently will also rarely need to be replaced. (Although I recommend that even in that case, you should change magazines at least monthly to prevent spring set). On the other hand, a weapon carried on your person, exposed to sweat and grime, that is being chambered and unchambered, loaded and unloaded, will need to be replaced more often. The author carries a revolver and replaces the ammunition with new ammunition every 90 days (or four times per year).

       My own two cents. Ammunition can generally handle more extreme conditions than your body can. Unless you are leaving it in a hot car on sunny days over a long period of time, the odds of the powder or primer breaking down or decomposing or otherwise becoming ineffective is rather minuscule. Rather, the two primary problems to look for are (1) damage to the case, such as corrosion or adhesion of other materials (e.g., lint or dust), or dents or dings from loading it into the magazine or cycling of the slide, or (2) damage to the bullet which is almost always from repeated unchambering and chambering of a round. Generally this damage will either be the round being chambered, or the round at the top at the magazine which will have the slide or breach block passing over it. Dings to the bullet can prevent the bullet from chambering because of burs or the bullet becoming misshapen. Another problem, especially with repeated chambering of the same round, is the bullet being pressed deeper into the cartridge, which can result in dangerously high pressures. 

        If you unchamber and chamber a round into your carry weapon daily (which likely means that you will be constantly cycling between the first two rounds as to which one is chambered and which is the top round in the magazine), you should probably check the ammunition at least weekly for damage, including unloading the magazine completely and either make sure that the former top two rounds are put at the bottom of the magazine, or, if your budget allows, even replace those two rounds and save them for later practice. If you are unloading your weapon less frequently (for instance, when you take it off your belt, it goes still chambered into a safe, until the next day you put it back on your belt), then you are probably okay with checking it once per month for corrosion or some similar issue--at the same time you are switching out the magazines. Remember, you can cut back on the risk of corrosion by using the nickel plated casings, which is pretty much standard for the good quality defensive ammunition anyway.

• Well that was fast! The author of this piece, "For Self Defense: Drop the AR and pick up an AK," published on May 22, 2017, recanted on May 24, 2017, in "How the AR-15 Won Me Back: Part 1." 
• "The Difference Between AR-15 Buffer Springs"--The AR Guys. Stainless steel versus chrome silicon. Basically, 8,000 cycles versus 500,000 cycles.
• "A Modern Rifleman’s Pathway:"--The New Rifleman. The pathway from a new shooter, to an experience shooter, to an exceptional shooter, and the skills and knowledge that must be acquired at each stage. Long but well worth the read.
• "The Big One is going to happen, no matter how much you want to deny it, California scientists say"--Los Angeles Times. Seismologist Lucy Jones is trying to change the way people view the risk of an earthquake, looking at as inevitable rather than something that has a small change of occurring in the near future.

Other Stuff:

• The apple doesn't fall from the tree: "Manchester bomber Salman Abedi's father and brothers arrested, linked to ISIS, Al Qaeda"--Fox News. (Warning: video starts automatically). The arrests were made in region formerly known as Libya. Thanks Obama!
• "Woman Arrested in Manchester in Connection with Suicide Bombing"--PJ Media. The article doesn't indicate who the woman might be, but mentions that 7 people have now been arrested in relation to the bombing. 
• It will only get worse: "Nearly seven million migrants are 'waiting to cross into Europe': Leaked report warns of new crisis but Brussels insists the situation is under control"--Daily Mail. Per the article, "[o]ne million are living in Libya, it says, while around 3.3million of the total are currently in Turkey." And, "[a]ccording to the report, another 1million are waiting in Egypt, 430,000 in Algeria, 160,000 in Tunisia, and 50,000 in Morocco. Others are waiting in transit countries along the route, with up to 720,000 in Jordan." 2.5 million of these are fleeing Africa.
• How a K-strategist responds to a terrorist attack: "Rome Burns – Nero Worries About Pyrophobia"--Ann Coulter recommends the following response to future terrorist attacks: 

       The most humane response to terrorist attacks in the West is to kill a bunch of them for revenge, and then concentrate on our own problems. Instead of sending ground troops to Syria, we should be sending them to San Diego.

        Our policy following every Islamic terrorist attack anyplace in the West should be the following:

       1) We drop a nuke on some majority-Muslim city involved in terrorism.

       2) We add six months to the immigration moratorium (which Trump promised us in his Aug. 16, 2015, immigration policy paper, the greatest political document since the Magna Carta).

       3) We deport one Ninth Circuit judge.

• Good! "Principal Bars Pregnant Teen from Graduation: ‘Best Way to Love Her Is to Hold Her Accountable for Her Immorality’"--Breitbart. The young woman was attending a Christian school which requires its students to adhere to basic Christian standards of morality. The young woman nevertheless proceeded to get pregnant and is now butt-hurt because the school won't let her attend graduation. Yes, its nice that she didn't compound her sin by getting an abortion, but that doesn't make her hero.
• "Be warned: $25 oil is coming, and along with it, a new world order"--CNBC. (Warning: video starts automatically). This is the new peak oil crises: not that we will run out of oil, but that oil consumption will decline so fast and so far that it will destroy industries and economies based on oil production. The analyst cited in the article predicts that "[a]t $25 a barrel, that means deep-water, sands, shell oil, fields, most are going to be stranded, and also all the refineries and pipelines associated with these expensive oils are also going to be stranded. And that is going to reshape worldwide oil, geopolitics and so on." However, this prediction is premised on automobiles going 100% electric in the next decade, which seems unlikely. Even if all new cars produced at that time were 100% electric, the number of legacy gasoline and diesel vehicles will still be substantial. In any event, where is all that electricity for those vehicles going to come from?
• "Researchers Provide New Data on the Stagnation of Middle Class Wages"--Silicon Graybeard. Quoting a Washington Post article analyzing the study: 

First, from the cohort that entered the labor market in 1967 to the cohort that entered in 1983, median lifetime income of men declined by 10%–19%. We find little-to-no rise in the lower three-quarters of the percentiles of the male lifetime income distribution during this period. Accounting for rising employer-provided health and pension benefits partly mitigates these findings but does not alter the substantive conclusions. For women, median lifetime income increased by 22%–33% from the 1957 to the 1983 cohort, but these gains were relative to very low lifetime income for the earliest cohort.

The basic takeaway is that "[o]n average, workers born in 1942 earned as much or more over their careers as workers born in any year since, according to this research — and workers on the job today shouldn’t expect to catch up with their predecessors in their remaining years of employment." Yet, the author notes, during the same time as American wages have stagnated, workers in Germany and France have seen their real wages increase.

• "Moody’s Cuts China Down To Size"--The American Interest. "... Moody’s said it downgraded China’s rating to A1 from Aa3, while changing its outlook to stable from negative."
• The lady doth protest too much, methinks: "Donna Brazille Warned Off Seth Rich PI"--The Anonymous Conservative. The key part from the cited article:

Former Democratic National Committee interim chairwoman Donna Brazile is the high-ranking DNC representative who allegedly called police and the family of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich and demanded to know why a private investigator was “snooping” into Rich’s death, the private eye revealed to WND Monday.

And the question posed by the Anonymous Conservative: why would an such an important and busy DNC official bother with whether someone was investigating the death of a low level staffer, unless there was something to hide.

• "California Decides to Become Uninhabitable Within 10 Years"--Silicon Graybeard. The author observes that "California's state assembly and senate have passed laws that require the state to reduce carbon emissions to 40% of the state's 1990 levels by the year 2030." He goes through the numbers and determines that the impact on global CO2 levels will be so small, it won't be able to be measured, meaning that the purpose of the legislation is not to to control CO2, but simply to control ... every aspect of everyone's life.
• "Standing Athwart American Hegemony"--American Conservative. The author maintains that "[t]he foreign policy of National Review’s David French may be many things—idealistic, costly, dangerous, to name a few—but it is not conservative." Simply put, we cannot afford to create or maintain a world hegemony policed by the United States either fiscally or politically: a large military requires a large, intrusive federal government. But as I've noted before, such a hegemony is what the political classes of both the right and the left desire, notwithstanding the wishes of the populace otherwise. But it is lust for Empire that requires outsourcing of jobs and importing of alien populations: such are necessary for Empire, notwithstanding that it has always resulted in the collapse of past empires.