June 4, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Culture, Commentary & Rant - Bolt guns are Obsolete"--In Range TV (23 min.)

It is not just the generally poor precision in military bolt action rifles, but that they are slow to operate, slow to reload, and the rounds have such high recoil that it would be impossible to get a follow up shot on a mobile target. Update: I would note that the In Range team is not saying that bolt actions are obsolete for all purposes, but as combat rifles. 

• "AN M60 SLING MODIFICATION FOR YOUR RIFLE"--American Partisan has a nifty and simple modification that you can make to a cheap surplus M60 sling to make it into a serviceable tactical sling for a rifle.
• "Handloading the .38 Special for Snubnose Revolvers"--Shooting Times. Even though it is no magnum, the author recommends crimping the case. Also, he offers some recipes for reloading that he has found to work well out of the short barrel. He writes:

As you can see in the accompanying chart, several of the handloads I prepared maximize ballistic performance in a short-barreled S&W Model 637 revolver. In most cases, they feature light-for-caliber bullets constructed to expand at minimum velocities. Light jackets and generous hollowpoints with augmented expansion design features are the norm. I also included a heavy but soft, swaged lead hollowpoint bullet for comparison purposes.

•  "224 Valkyrie: Comparisons and Capabilities"--Shooting Illustrated. It appears that you need to get into the longer ranges to see much benefit over a heavy bullet from a .223/5.56.
• "Thumbnail Report: Urban Rifle with John Farnam"--View From The Porch. An excerpt:

One of the biggest doctrinal differences (if not the biggest) between Farnam's gun-handling mechanics and the things I learned from Pat Rogers and various Pat-adjacent instructors is the use of the safety on the carbine. Current best practice as I've been taught is that the safety on the carbine is on unless one is actively engaged in pressing off shots; the safety even goes on to reload. Farnam, on the other hand, doesn't express any strong preference for what you do with the safety while the gun is in your hands. I believe he stated that he takes it off when the gun is in his hands and doesn't reapply it until he slings the gun again, but I'm not 100% on that quote.

• "'Keep your animals safe if you live here!' Shocking moment a cougar attacks and kills a pet cat on the front drive of a Florida home"--Daily Mail. 

• Related: "Today, only a handful of Florida cougars survive in southern Florida, and most biologists believe the native Eastern cougar has been extinct for many years."--reported by the News & Observer on January 25, 2018.

• "Little evidence to support the efficacy of more gun control"--John Lott writing at The Hill. Among other points, he addresses laws that require firearms to be locked up or secured in some way:

Gunlock laws in certain states have made it more difficult for people to successfully defend their families. Such laws emboldened criminals to attack more people in their homes; there were 300 more total murders and 4,000 more rapes occurring each year in the states with these laws. Burglaries also rose dramatically.

At one point, Lott observes that "[t]he survey claims that 16 percent of people bought a gun at a store without undergoing a background check, but this is illegal everywhere in the U.S. It is not a credible claim." Well, maybe. In Idaho, for instance, a person possessing a valid concealed carry license does not have to go through the insta-check normally required for purchasing a firearm.

• "Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures"--David Solway at PJ Media (Part 2 here). Solway writes:

        As many observers have noted, America is now embroiled in a de facto civil war in which the nation is being relentlessly attacked and disassembled from within, not by the conservative Right, as The New Yorker and other progressivist outlets irresponsibly lament, but by the domestic Left.

        Reputable commentators like Kevin Williamson at National Review and John Podhoretz for the New York Post believe the nation is descending into chaos -- and place the onus squarely on the Left. In a prescient article for PJ Media about the potential result of a political coup orchestrated by the Left under the guise of the faux Mueller investigation, Roger Simon writes: “That word sounds hyperbolic but it isn't. We could see anything from civil war to social atrophy. Who knows if our country will survive it?” (As one commenter worries, “we are in some very real danger the next time a Democrat gets elected to the highest office” -- no paranoiac hypothesis.)

        It is a state of affairs that, in its insidious way, is no less critical than the bloody civil war that split the nation in the 1860s. There’s no blood in the streets yet -- or maybe just a little -- but the nation is split pretty much in half. One half wishes to destroy the other through a series of destabilizing tactics: electoral fraud, fake news, negonomics, industrial dereliction, globalist doctrine, climate change scam, university indoctrination, Blue State model primary and secondary education, the divisive concept of a “living constitution,” trade deficits, pro-Islamic logrolling, radical feminism, gender dysphoria, pro-choice abortion favoring a sub-replacement fertility rate, runaway entitlements, censorship-prone social media monopolies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google, the abolition of the Second Amendment, open borders, caravan immigration, sanctuary cities, politically correct -- and in some places, compelled -- speech, judicial overreach, ubiquitous surveillance of American citizens,  foreign policy surrender and revolutionary advocacy.

         ... Since at least the time of Woodrow Wilson, the Left has been carving longer and deeper inroads into the culture and the political landscape, and is now occupying the citadel. It is not about to go away or shrivel into a benign archaism. Despite the election of a people’s candidate like Donald Trump, the Left’s power continues to grow and consolidate.

          Realism must finally prevail. The battle for the nation’s survival as a constitutional republic cannot be won until the domestic Left is torn root and branch from the body politic. ...

In Part 2, Solway explores the use of Martial Law as a method of reigning in the Left.

• A house divided... "Warning: 2018 political ‘civil war’ threatens, fueled by media"--Washington Times. From the article:

“It’s no longer just a matter of Americans not knowing and understanding each other. We’ve seen these clusters deepen, and harden, until separation has led to anger, misunderstanding turned into hostility. At the individual level, it’s a formula for bitterness and negativity. For a self-governing people, it’s poison,” Daniels told his students this month.

• "The Real Reason Why the FBI Had a Spy in the Trump Campaign"--PJ Media. 
• "YES, SPYGATE IS REAL AND RELEVANT: It wasn't Russia they were after. It was Trump."--Front Page Magazine. 
• "PANDORA’S BOX: Trump/Russia May Expose Extent of “Five Eyes” Allied Spying"--Sara A. Carter. "Five eyes" is in reference to intelligence activities carried out by the United States and its allies in order to get around legal restrictions. For instance, if the CIA was prohibited from spying on a U.S. citizen, it would ask an ally, such as the U.K. or Canada, to do it.
• The wages of sin socialism: "A historic exodus is leaving Venezuela without teachers, doctors and electricians"--Washington Post. The article reports:

        This collapsing socialist state is suffering one of the most dramatic outflows of human talent in modern history, with Aquiles Nazoa offering a glimpse into what happens when a nation begins to empty out. Vast gaps in Venezuela’s labor market are causing a breakdown in daily life, and robbing this nation of its future. The exodus is broad and deep — an outflow of doctors, engineers, oil workers, bus drivers and electricians.

        And teachers. 

        So far this year, 48,000 teachers — or 12 percent of all staff at elementary and high schools nationwide — have quit, according to Se Educa, an educational nonprofit group. The vast majority, according to the group, have joined a stampede of Venezuelans leaving the country to escape food lines and empty grocery store shelves. 

Also:

        The Venezuelans are running from a nation broken by failed socialist policies, mismanagement, corruption and lower global oil prices — the country’s principal source of cash.

         “It’s not just about a few doctors leaving anymore,” said Tomas Páez, a migration expert at the Central University of Venezuela. “It’s about [understaffed] hospitals closing down whole floors.”

Besides the food shortages and lack of medicine, there are now frequent blackouts:

       This year, thousands of blackouts have hit Venezuela, darkening  cities for weeks at a time. A lack of imported spare parts to fix the poorly maintained power grid is one problem. But so is “the flight of our trained workers,” said Aldo Torres, executive director of the Electricity Federation of Venezuela, an association of labor unions. 

       “Every day, we’re receiving dozens of calls from colleagues saying they’re going to Colombia, Peru and Ecuador,” Torres said. “They’re being replaced by people who are mostly not qualified.”  

• "BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Colorado Baker in Gay Wedding Cake Case"--PJ Media. Unfortunately, the Court side-stepped the issue of whether a person can be forced to engage in speech that is supportive of a gay wedding, but instead focused on the obvious bias against Christians exhibited by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
• Black Lives Matter ... just not to each other: "Pregnant woman is among five people shot at a football game in Dallas before medics perform emergency C-section to save her baby"--Daily Mail.

News from Down Under: "How To Stop The Violent Escalating African Crime Wave"--Avi Yemini

(6-1/2 min). One Australian doesn't welcome refugees.

• Update: I see that Q has a new post as of yesterday. This is the first since May 22, 2018. On a possibly related note, Melania Trump is scheduled to attend a dinner honoring Gold Star families after being out of public view for the last few weeks.