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Monday, June 11, 2018

June 11, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"#4 buckshot interior wall penetration test (short)"--7N6 (1-1/2 min.)
So much for the theory that a shotgun won't penetrate interior walls. I will acknowledge that the test may not be as accurate as we like, since there is no insulation in the walls. On the other hand, the test only involves #4 buckshot which the individual pellets of which have less momentum than you would see with a 00 buckshot pellet. Greater momentum generally equates to deeper penetration, so I would expect 00 buckshot to actually penetrate farther than the #4.


  • "A very worthy new Combat Magnum revolver"--Bayou Renaissance Man. A look at S&W's new "Combat Magnum," which is a short barreled version of the Model 69. The Model 69 is a .44 Magnum that uses an L-frame (rather than the larger N-frame), which makes it substantially lighter than S&W's other .44 Magnum offerings. However, the smaller frame also means that the weapon is limited to 5 rounds in the cylinder.
  • Of course, there are other options: "Centimeter Revolver: Ruger 10mm GP100 Part I"--Revolver Guy. The GP100 is roughly the same size as a S&W L-frame. This is a 6-shot revolver. While you can use it without moon-clips, you will in such instances have to eject the spent rounds individually since the star is designed to use with the moonclip and the cases are rimless.
  • Op-Sec lesson: "Your Phone Is Listening and it's Not Paranoia"--Vice. If you use voice activation features on your phone, it is no coincidence that the subjects of your conversations may suddenly appear in the advertisements being offered to you. I would be suspicious of the phone listening, however, even if it has not been voice enabled.
  • "Is the Mouse Gun a Dying Breed?"--American Rifleman. "Mouse gun" is the derogative term used for ultra-small handguns, typically chambered in .22 LR, .25 ACP, .32 ACP, and, occasionally, .380. Since the size and weight is a major factor why people buy these handguns, I would say that there are not going to be disappearing anytime soon. Yes, the availability of larger calibers in smaller packages have undoubtedly cut into the market, in that someone might now pick a small 9 mm like the Glock 43, whereas before he or she might have elected to go with a smaller .380 or .32. Where I think this loss will be most pronounced will be the heavier, all-steel, "mouse guns" such as the Beretta and Taurus models.
        Las Vegas hotels believed to have hired the new teams include Wynn Hotels, Sands Hotels - which owns the Palazzo and the Venetian - and MGM Resorts, which owns the Aria and the site of last year's shooting, Mandalay Bay.
             New hires include former FBI agents, Special Forces operatives and highly-trained embassy guards, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have served in dangerous war zones.
              According to security sources with knowledge of the increased security, it's understood the crack squads were assembled before Christmas during a secret recruitment and selection process.
               It was a gruesome murder: A 14-year-old girl was raped and strangled, her body buried under brushwood in a secluded area near the railway tracks near her hometown in western Germany.
                  But the fact that the chief suspect is an Iraqi asylum seeker has turned a terrible crime into political dynamite.
                   On Friday, the case dominated the German news media and became the latest cudgel for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s opponents and, some predicted, a potential turning point in the migration debate in a country where some 10,000 asylum seekers still enter every month.
                     There is no doubt the murder has given ammunition to those who want to get tougher, led by the far right, who are waging a widening challenge to what they contend is the government’s botched handling of asylum cases.
                       The killing comes on top of a deepening scandal and calls for a full-blown parliamentary investigation over allegations that civil servants may have granted asylum to as many as 1,000 migrants in exchange for money — and that some of those migrants may have been criminals or even terrorism suspects.
                        The murder suspect, identified as Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi, arrived in Germany in October 2015, shortly after Ms. Merkel opened the borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants. He was rejected in late 2016, but was allowed to stay in the country while his appeal was pending.
                          “If he had been deported, she would still be alive,” read a headline in the country’s largest tabloid, Bild, which devoted two pages to the case.
                             He came to the attention of the police several times, involving allegations of jostling a police officer, robbing a passer-by and carrying a knife.
                                Last Saturday, he and seven other members of his family managed to flee the country, boarding a plane in Düsseldorf with papers apparently issued by the Iraqi Consulate but featuring false names, after paying cash for a one-way fare to Istanbul and then on to Iraq, where he has since been arrested.
                          Unmentioned in the NYT article is that the murdered girl was Jewish, which at least should raise the question if it may have played a role in her murder. 
                                  The four most populous states in the union are now natally majority-minority. ...
                                    In Texas, it's one-in-three. The putatively rock-ribbed Republican stronghold is undergoing a demographic transformation that will turn it purple and then blue. Texas is to my knowledge the only state in the country where whites vote more strongly Republican than non-whites vote Democrat. They do so only marginally, though--the white and non-white votes are essentially the inverse of one another. This means when non-whites reach an electoral majority in the lone star state, it'll move to the Democrat column.
                                      The Southwest is lost. It's past time for political dissolution. A decade ago, we were mocked for advocating secession. In a decade, we'll be on the cusp of it.
                              • Herschel Smith responds to a Washington Post op-ed by Michael Gerson calling for gun control, and delivers a warning:
                                       We do not look to the state to provide, protect and give us cradle to grave security like you do Michael.  It might be “scary” to you that we’re armed the way we are.  That’s by intent, for our armaments are not only for our own personal protection, but amelioration of tyranny.  We aren’t “legitimate protectors of your rights,” we are legitimate protectors of our rights.  People like us believe that the Mr. David French you cite is too progressive and we pay little attention to him.  You mustn’t forget the history of gun control, with the Armenian genocide, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Hitler and The Third Reich, and Stalin, all of whose regimes were preceded by gun confiscations and gun control laws.  Deaths at the hands of tyrants in the last century approached 200 million souls.
                                         So the best and quickest way to ensure the war you apparently fear is to keep pushing government control and disarmament.  Do it at your own peril, Michael.  Your secure home and lifestyle inside the beltway may not be as secure as you think if you can’t control that controller impulse in yourself.
                                Every peer developed country in the world has the same cultural mixture of mental health issues, aggrieved entitled young white males who believe life has denied them the power, wealth, or influence they believe they’re entitled to (i.e., the profile of almost every single mass shooter in American history, especially in the hundreds of mass shootings in recent decades), violent video games, drugs, pornography, lost jobs, divorces, bullying, and everything else. But this isn’t a problem in a single one of our peer developed countries, where shooting deaths over the last several decades can be counted on one hand compared to our thousands of shooting deaths in a single year.
                                Well, actually, Mr. Fowles, the mass shooters in our "peer developed countries" are generally Muslim. And as for the United States, the "thousands of shooting deaths" every year of which you write are not committed by "aggrieved entitled young white males," but young black and Hispanic males. And what "hundreds of mass shootings in recent decades"? Not even the most ardent anti-self-defense pundits claim so many. So, you are lying in order to make your argument. "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." You, Mr. Fowles, use lies to reach an unrighteous conclusion that innocent people should be disarmed and made helpless in the face of evil. Truly your fruits expose you for who you are.
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