August 6, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"WHY BLOCKING IS USELESS! A Las Vegas Cop Issues a Challenge and Teaches Some Lessons"--Funker Tactical (8 min.). This video argues that blocking, as generally taught in martial arts, is less effective and takes too long to process (using valuable time in the OODA cycle) compared to covering up and guarding. It also illustrates how guarding has a more universal application. Watch it and see what you think. 

• "The Distance Bias"--Active Response Training. Some thoughts about self-defense and using firearms at close or contact distances. I recommend that you read this article, and, if the topic interests you, then go and read the book "gunFight!" by Richard Nance. I have a review of the book, here.
• Defensive Pistol Craft has this month's list of articles and comments up. Lots of good articles and videos, and insightful comments. Check it out. One of his comments has to do with an article on cross-eye dominance. Jon writes:

     Just because you are right eye dominant does not mean you are going to be right eye dominant in combat (or any high stress situation).  I'm not an expert, but I'm sure your eye doctor or psychologist can explain to you all the circumstances that can change which image you perceive when you have both eyes open.  [It's not just right eye versus left eye.  It's also right field of vision versus left field of vision.  (Left brain processes right field of vision.  Right brain processes left field of vision.)  Actually, it's much more than that.  (Remember Inattentional Blindness?)  It's explained in visual perception psychology classes.  Yes, I spent way too much time in the psychology department as an under grad.]

      If you are right eye dominant and thus aiming with your right eye, but perceiving your left eye image at the moment you release your shot, your point of impact will be way off to the left of your intended target.  The only reliable way to prevent this is to close your non-aiming eye for the faction of a second it takes to release your shot.  (We are fighting Murphy's Law.  Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time.)

      If you can't close your non-aiming eye while holding your aiming eye open, drill a deep hole into your front sight (blacken the hole with an indelible marker), insert a tritium vial (glue the glowing vial into place), so that your aiming eye can see it, but your non-aiming eye cannot see it.  Any competent machinist will be able to do this for you.  You must be able to distinguish the right eye image from the left eye image.

You can learn to close one eye when taking a shot. Although I am left handed, my father made shoot with right handed. I have learned to generally concentrate using my right eye when shooting, but sometimes I skip back to the left eye, so I still tend to wink my left eye when I take my shot. It is the one thing I've learned to appreciate with red dots is that I can keep both eyes open when I take the shot.

• "Rationing"--Blue Collar Prepping. A national crises or war will likely see the government resort to rationing. The author discusses the results of rationing, including the spread of black markets in the rationed goods. One point not mentioned is that rationing will also lead to a crackdown on "hording," including stockpiles that you might have put together long before any crises. You could have your stored items confiscated and/or be prosecuted. I have a short post about an actual incident of this in the United States in 1918. So remember your op-sec. 
• "EXPEDIENT FIELD GEAR REPAIRS OR 'FOR WANT OF A NAIL'"--American Partisan. The author shares some lessons learned about expedient repairs of the load bearing equipment using 550 paracord, as well as using glue and tape to repair footwear (while also warning that you don't want your foot wear to fail on you--keep it in good shape and replace when needed rather than pushing your luck). 
• "6 Concealed Carry Gun Myths Busted"--Alien Gear Holsters.

"Budget Prepping in a Small Apartment"--The Broke Prepper (12 min.)

First in a series of videos where the author discusses how he has put together preps while living in a small apartment with his wife. 

• A reminder that when anti-gunners say they just want to save the lives of children, they are lying: "Report: Abortion Accounts for 61% of Black Deaths in America"--Breitbart. If the lives of children were so important to them, they would be spending as much or more energy to outlaw abortion.
• It's about the control, not the guns: "Let’s drop the facade"--Firearms UK. The author notes:

      If you look at the history of Firearms legislation in the UK the 1920 Firearms Act the first real act that restricted the “right to bear arms in the UK” a right that existed for centuries and was indeed an inspiration behind the United States Second Amendment.

      The public was told this act was because of the threat of increased crime involving firearms. The real reason was the Government of the day feared an uprising of the working classes, many of whom would come back from the great war to poor quality housing, lack of jobs but skilled in warfare. There was a paranoia within Government fuelled by the recent Russian Revolution.

• Black Lives Matter ... Chicago style:

• "In less than 7 hours, 41 shot, 5 fatally as violence rips Chicago"--Chicago Tribune.

• "66 shot, 12 fatally, in Chicago weekend shootings"--ABC News.

• "The Full Scale of Chicago’s Gun Violence"--War Is Boring. Key point:

       In 2014, 42,417 people called the Chicago police to report shots fired. In 2015 that number rose to 46,996. Paralleling the spike in shootings in 2016, 67,160 people reported shots fired that year. Though still high, the number of people calling to report shots fired in 2017 dropped to 55,584. Again, this reduction parallels the drop in persons shot in 2017.

      This means that the number of people actually shot in 2016, for example, only accounts for six percent of the number of people calling to report shots fired in their neighborhood.

• "It's time to hold Democrats responsible for Chicago's violence"--American Thinker. From the article:

       Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has retweeted an invaluable article from the January 2012 issue of Chicago magazine about how the city's famed violence is all the result of gangs and Democrats being in bed with each other, one hand washing the other, and in those very districts named above.  Democratic politicians sidle up to gang leaders for votes and use their thugs as substitutes for their political organizations.  They muscle voters to the polls for the Democrats, and anyone who rebels gets a beating.  Gang leaders in turn make demands of politicians for protection from police and get flows of city funds from these same Democrats, generally as city subcontractors, calling it "jobs for youth" and "second chances" or something.  The left benefits, so it gives the gangs what they want.

       Is this a revolting picture?  Obviously, with the stepped up shootings, the Democrats don't seem to be worrying too much, given that they have the votes and deals they want, so word is out that they aren't going to do anything.  Meanwhile, the cops have been ordered to stand down because of the political ties of the gangs, and word has gotten out about that, too.  Now the gangs are challenging each other because Democrats have made the power so easy to get.

• "American Pravda: The Bolshevik Revolution and Its Aftermath"--The Unz Review. From the article:

       Once I checked around a little, I discovered that numerous mainstream accounts described the enormous hostility of Schiff towards the Czarist regime for its ill-treatment of Jews, and these days even so establishmentarian a source as Wikipedia’s entry on Jacob Schiff notes that he played a major role financing the Russian Revolution of 1905, as was revealed in the later memoirs of one of his key operatives. And if you run a search on “jacob schiff bolshevik revolution” numerous other references come up, representing a wide variety of different positions and degrees of credibility. One very interesting statement appears in the memoirs of Henry Wickham Steed, editor of The Times of London and one of the foremost international journalists of his era. He very matter-of-factly mentions that Schiff, Warburg and the other top Jewish international bankers were among the leading backers of the Jewish Bolsheviks, through whom they hoped to gain an opportunity for the Jewish exploitation of Russia, and he describes their lobbying efforts on behalf of their Bolshevik allies at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference following the end of the First World War.

       Even the very recent and highly skeptical 2016 analysis in Kenneth D. Ackerman’s 2016 book Trotsky in New York, 1917 notes that U.S. Military Intelligence reports of the period directly made that astonishing claim, pointing to Trotsky as the conduit for the heavy financial backing of Schiff and numerous other Jewish financiers. In 1925 this information was published in the British Guardian and was widely discussed and accepted throughout the 1920s and 1930s by numerous major media publications, long before Schiff’s own grandson provided a direct confirmation of those facts in 1949. 

• Chinese colonialism: "What Is China Doing In Africa?"--Forbes. The author writes: "The reason Chinese corporations are in Africa is simple; to exploit the people and take their resources. It’s the same thing European colonists did during mercantile times, except worse. The Chinese corporations are trying to turn Africa into another Chinese continent. They are squeezing Africa for everything it is worth." True. European colonists at least believed in the concept of the "white man's burden," and endeavored, to some extent at least, to improve the lot of the average African. I doubt that the Chinese Communist Party labors under a similar constraint.