March 29, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Eyewitness to a Massacre"--Bill Whittle (9-1/2 min.)

Bill Whittle gives his thoughts and impressions from watching the video of the Christchurch shooting. His primary takeaway is amazement at how unemotional was the shooter. My takeaways from watching the video of the shooting was more pragmatic. First of all, and Whittle makes a mistake here, the firearm used by the shooter when he first entered the mosque was a shotgun; and the video once again demonstrates the awesome power of a shotgun at short range. Second, a guy runs around a corner during the shooter, taking the shooter by surprise. If the guy had had been intending to attack the shooter, the guy could have probably taken the shooter to the ground. As it was, he was simply trying to get past the shooter, and was shot in the back for his efforts. Third, most the people that died had simply gathered into the corners of the room, cowering. It does not appear that anyone had tried to break windows to escape, and no one attempted to attack the shooter.

• TGIF: This week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Among the articles and videos to which Ellifritz has linked are a few on active shooter events, including one on the lessons to be learned from the Christchurch shooting.
• Just a reminder that Baugo Blades is closing, and has their forager knives on sale. They also sell elderberry seeds and have instructions on how to germinate the seeds. They have been a great friend to this blog for a long time.
• "OUT OF THE BOX PRODUCT REVIEW: FALCON 37 ADVANCED ENGAGEMENT CHARGING HANDLE"--American Partisan. The author gives his initial take on this interesting produce. Essentially, the product is an AR charging handle, except that rather than terminating with the T-shaped handle and locking mechanism as on most charging handles, it has an adjustable cheek piece that extends from the back of the handle. This does two things: it provides, as expected, a cheek rest. The other, however, is that you can simply grip the cheek rest and rack the charging handle, just like a racking a slide on a pistol, to chamber a round/cock the hammer. The article has an embedded video showing off the product which you need to watch to fully appreciate how it works.
• "Keep Your Head in the Fight"--Recoil Magazine. The article notes that medical advances means that headshots that previously would have been fatal are now treatable. It also discusses what happens if you get shot in the head: 

         So what actually happens when a bullet hits the skull? The one thing that Hollywood may have gotten right is that bullet strikes to the head produce a wide array of different outcomes. There is no “typical” wound pattern associated with headshots. Factors like trajectory, angle of impact, deflection caused by the skull, and bullet velocity all affect what the wound looks like once the bullet has come to rest or exited the skull. However, there are a couple things worth noting. One is that bullets don’t bounce. Over the years, we’ve probably all heard a lot of “gun store wisdom” or so-called anecdotal evidence about how small, light bullets will enter the body and just sort of rattle around, tearing up everything in their path. This is inaccurate. Bullets can deflect if they hit the inside of the skull after entry, but the idea of a bullet bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball is pure, unadulterated bullshit. It’s also possible for a bullet to strike the head, but miss the brain entirely. This is especially relevant in the context of a frontal shot to the face. The orbital bones of the eyes, nose, teeth, and jaw bone may deflect a bullet or even stop it completely from entering the brain.

         If a bullet does actually penetrate the skull and enter the brain, what happens then? There are three primary mechanisms that can kill a person who has sustained a gunshot wound to the brain. The leading cause of death in these cases is blood loss. There are a number of large blood vessels located in the brain. The internal carotid artery provides blood to parts of the cerebrum, and the vertebrobasilar arteries supply part of the cerebrum, part of the cerebellum, and the brainstem. These two arteries are joined at the base of the brain, forming a large blood vessel known as the Circle of Willis. Then there are smaller, penetrating arteries deep inside the brain, known as lenticulostriate arteries. These are all thick, pumping vessels filled with oxygen-rich blood that the brain needs to function. Damage to any of these caused by the physical impact of a slug, or by cavitation, will cause rapid, severe hemorrhaging. Since you cannot employ a tourniquet, surgical intervention is the only way to treat this.

       The second leading cause of death is physical destruction of the brain itself. Specifically, any type of damage to the brainstem is considered catastrophic. This is the part of your brain that controls basic life support functions like breathing, blood pressure, and heartbeat. Gunshot wounds that result in damage to the brainstem are effectively 100 percent fatal, with death often occurring at the scene. This is the closest thing to that “magic light switch” we see on the big screen.

      The third major mortality factor in headshot patients is increased cranial pressure. This over-pressure may be caused by swelling of the brain itself or by the presence of a hematoma (blood clot) inside the skull. Though its effects are not immediate, increased pressure can lead to oxygen starvation, which will cause permanent brain damage. It can also cause brain herniation, where the brain actually squeezes out through openings in the skull. Part of the brain may swell out through an entry or exit wound, or through natural openings in the brain like the foramen magnum — the opening in the base of the skull where the spinal cord connects to the brain.

Read the whole thing.

• Gabe Suarez's company is now offering for sale the book GUERRILLA SNIPER II by "Sua Sponte". Sua Sponte is the nom de plume of a sniper that contributes to Suarez's forum.

• Related: "Improving The Remington 700–Part 1–Buy a Rifle"--Ammo Land. The author notes that the Remington 700 makes a good base for building an accurate long-range rifle. He discusses the rifle, some of the features, and ideas for improving the system.

• "The Renaissance That Isn’t There."--Quietly Armed. The author cites to an article by Claude Werner comparing the number of snub-nosed revolvers sold versus the number of compact .380 pistols to make the point that there is no resurgence of interest among revolvers for defensive handguns. This is somewhat confusing to me because I read a lot of articles on shooting, and I have not noticed any particular trend of articles suggesting that we are in a renaissance of revolvers for defensive carry. Revolver sales have fallen since the 1980's when the "wonder 9s" first became popular (as well as shows like Miami Vice popularizing semi-auto handguns). The more interesting question is not why have revolver sales fallen over the last few decades, but why the revolver continues to sell as well as it does. Because, although I have not seen any articles arguing for a revolver renaissance, I have seen many articles over the last decade proclaiming the imminent demise of the revolver. Instead, what we see is revolver manufacturers continuing to offer new models, and have seen manufacturers enter or return to the revolver market (e.g., Kimber and Colt).
• "The Perfect Cartridge for Pelts"--Outdoor Life. It's one thing to shoot varmints simply to kill them, and quite another to shoot them to preserve the value of a pelt. The author notes that "[t]he goal of any fur-taking cartridge is simple. We want a round that will instantly incapacitate the animal we shoot with it while doing little or no damage to the pelt. On top of that, it should do that every time, on every animal." Of course, the size and build of the animal will have a lot to do with dictating the cartridge: a cartridge that is perfect on a larger animal may blow a smaller animal into smithereens. For instance, the author relates:

Anything that would be considered an adequate coyote rifle, such as a .223, will usually damage fox or cat hides badly. On the other end, the .22 LR, .22 Win. Mag., and .17 HMR do very little hide damage but lack the oomph you need to knock them down consistently. The sweet spot for foxes and cats seems to be in the .17 Win. Super Mag., .17 Hornet, and .22 Hornet, with the .17 Hornet being top dog in my experience.

• "Stop practicing shooting!"--The Street Standards. The author wants to impress on his audience that accurately shooting a firearm is only one of many considerations in surviving a defensive shooting (without facing jail time). For instance, the author lists 25 considerations and skills, of which shooting an assailant is only number 13. He explains:

        I’ve probably missed a few things, but 25 is enough.  Of course at this point the fun’s just beginning; you still have an investigation, court appearances, and possibly a trial to go through.  As well as other things that are even less fun.

       And yet, almost all American training focuses only only on element 13.  That is, one out of 25+ things you need to be competent at to truly survive a violent encounter.  This out-of-whackedness has only gotten worse over the last 20 years.  One of the pioneers of civilian deadly-force encounter training, Massad Ayoob, did (and still does) teach almost all of these elements in his flagship course.  But almost no one else does, certainly not the plethora of young “trainers” these days with no real-world experience at all.  They can shoot (in some cases), but they aren’t teaching you how to survive: they don’t know how to; they don’t even realize that they aren’t.

      Ditto most competitively-focused instructors.  Whenever I point out the limitations of competitively-focused training, I invariably get someone whose only significant experience is in elements 8 and 13 lecturing me about how those elements are critically necessary.  No shit.  As much as I admire (indeed, covet) the skill of competitors, it’s not enough.

      So why do we (Americans) focus almost exclusively on just shooting?  I submit it’s because, unlike our South African friends, the high level of safety in most of our country allows us to get away with it.

• Only professionals can be trusted with guns: "How terror unfolded inside Scientology church lobby after a Bentley-driving man 'acting crazy' burst in with a Samurai sword before being fatally shot in the head by police"--Daily Mail. The relevant part for my purposes:

     Police said one of the officers was shot in the hand and the other suffered a gunshot wound to the arm during the standoff.

* * *

      They are investigating whether the officers who were injured accidentally shot each other when gunfire erupted. 

• "'Gun therapy' eases symptoms in Parkinson's sufferer: Competitive shooter who was diagnosed at just 38 trembles constantly unless he's firing"--Daily Mail. From the article:

         Parkinson's leaves the 46-year-old from Georgia helpless to control his tremors. 

        Except, that is, when David shoots. 

        In the many videos David shares to his Instagram, his violent tremors slowly subside as he raises a gun, takes a few deep breaths and pulls the trigger. 

        He's remarkably accurate, and instead of keeping David from his favorite sport, Parkinson's has inspired David to turn professional, he told Fox.  

        It's not just good for his collection of prizes. Practicing shooting eight hours a day, seven days a week may actually be encouraging David's brain to form new connections, one of the few ways patients can combat Parkinson's symptoms.

• "Federal Judge Rules New York’s Dumb ‘Gravity Knife’ Law Is Unconstitutionally Vague"--Reason. The article reports:

        The law was passed in 1958 to criminalize knives that rely on gravity to open and lock into place. It was intended to address knives modeled after World War II paratrooper knives that opened by depressing a button, whereafter the knife blade fell and locked into place by force of gravity. However, New York City police interpreted the statute to mean any folding knife that can be opened by a flick of the wrist.

       As Crotty's ruling notes, a gravity knife, unlike many other weapons, is defined not by its design but by its function, as determined by the "wrist flick test."

      Martin LaFalce, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, a legal aid group that has released several reports on the gravity knife law, says in an interview with Reason that the Cracco decision "recognizes the basic principle that criminal liability cannot turn on the flick of an officer's wrist, and it's impossible for New Yorkers to comply with the gravity knife statute."

• "Gun Review: Savage Arms MKII FV-SR Threaded Barrel 22 LR"--The Truth About Guns. The author reviewing this rifle thought it to be a great little rifle, especially if you want to put a sound suppressor on a .22 rifle. It also comes with an Accu-trigger, and a Picatinny rail for mounting a telescopic sight. From my experience with this rifle, I agree that it is a great little rifle, but ... the comb on the rifle stock is intended for shooting using iron sights, such as found on the standard MKII, and is too low for optics mounting on the optic rail provided with the rifle. This means that you must either replace the stock, or fit some type of cheek riser to it. The rifle comes with a 5-round detachable magazine, but you can buy 10-round magazines to fit it.
• ".38 S&W (The Other .38)"--Forgotten Weapons.  From the article:

     The .38 Smith and Wesson cartridge enjoyed a respectable 100 year service life as it evolved from the weaker black powder pocket pistol cartridge to a more potent military round in its day using heavy bullets and smokeless powder. Other names for the cartridge exist like “.38 Colt New Police”, “.380 Rim”, and “.380-200” depending on the market and manufacturer.

       While the guns slowly fade into obscurity, so many have been made and remain serviceable that new ammunition can still be found if you look hard enough. This author is aware of no firearms currently produced in this caliber and the few sources of factory ammunition available can universally be counted on to be of the type safe enough for use in the least common denominator of those guns. Fragile break top revolvers from the end of the black powder era were often made by companies that did NOT make a name for themselves in the pages of gun-making history and the phrase “wall hanger” is frequently applied to them if they show functional imperfections.

      When it can be found, expect to pay a lot for new factory ammunition which will consist of a ~146 grain lead round nose with muzzle velocities in the 600-700 feet per second range. Such rounds will be accurate, have low recoil, and tend to cause a report that’s very mild, even if the shooter forgets their ear protection. While these may perform on par with modern cartridges like .380 ACP or 9x18mm Makarov, reloading is essential if affordability or enhanced performance is desired. 

• More: "Consider the Forgotten .38 S&W"--Chuck Hawks. The author writes:

        Eventually the U.S. Cavalry would give the .38 S&W field trials, and it was officially adopted as a service cartridge by Great Britain, most of her former colonies, and Israel during its war for independence. Countless police departments in the U.S. and around the world also adopted the cartridge.

      The 38 S&W was still in official use as late as the 1970s in those parts of Africa and Asia once controlled by the Brits and, even today, artisans in the troubled border region of India and Pakistan still turn out the notorious "Khyber Pass Specials," handmade reproductions of the Webley and Enfield revolvers designed more than a century ago. Some of these, long considered dangerous to fire, have been brought into the U.S. recently as battlefield pickups by returning Afghanistan veterans.

"Has Our Culture Hit a Dead End?"--Paul Joseph Watson (14 min.)

Watson has done other videos on how bad is what is considered "art" and "architecture." This video focuses more on popular music and movies, noting that there is a general decline in originality. We have literally entered an era when pop music basically sounds alike and our blockbuster movies seem to follow the same script. As Watson notes, the creativity seems gone, replaced by the need to make a movie non-offensive to the largest possible audiences. This should not surprise students of Spengler, since he noted that with the rise of the world cities, the separation of the civilization from the root culture would cause art to stagnate and that culture would be replaced by money and techniques.

• For a further explanation of why movies are all the same: "Save the Movie!The 2005 screenwriting book that’s taken over Hollywood—and made every movie feel the same"--Slate. From the article:

         If you’ve gone to the movies recently, you may have felt a strangely familiar feeling: You’ve seen this movie before. Not this exact movie, but some of these exact story beats: the hero dressed down by his mentor in the first 15 minutes (Star Trek Into Darkness, Battleship); the villain who gets caught on purpose (The Dark Knight, The Avengers, Skyfall, Star Trek Into Darkness); the moment of hopelessness and disarray a half-hour before the movie ends (Olympus Has Fallen, Oblivion, 21 Jump Street, Fast & Furious 6).

      It’s not déjà vu. Summer movies are often described as formulaic. But what few people know is that there is actually a formula—one that lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay. It’s as if a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster.

     The formula didn’t come from a mad scientist. Instead it came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.

      When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. The book offered something previous screenplay guru tomes didn’t. Instead of a broad overview of how a screen story fits together, his book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed “beat sheet”: 15 key story “beats”—pivotal events that have to happen—and then gave each of those beats a name and a screenplay page number. Given that each page of a screenplay is expected to equal a minute of film, this makes Snyder’s guide essentially a minute-to-minute movie formula.

• More fallout from the Mueller report:

• "Spygate: The Inside Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump"--Epoch Times. The author argues that "[t]he weaponization of the intelligence community and other government agencies created an environment that allowed for obstruction in the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the relentless pursuit of a manufactured collusion narrative against Trump." Read the whole thing.

• "On Point: The National Security Impact of Mueller's Russia Investigation"--Austin Bay at Strategy Page. He writes:

       Hard evidence exists that a serious national security crime was committed during the election and early 2017. Trump and his campaign were spied upon, not by foreign adversaries but by America's security agencies. Moreover, criminals in these agencies colluded with media compadres to mislead the American people.

        The security agency corruption and media collusion produced a cold, hard totalitarian horror committed in and against America, the world's paramount democracy.

        Here are some of the Obama administration narrative warfare extremists who waged war on America: Former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, former CIA kingpin John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

       These corrupt men corrupted their institutions and damaged U.S. security.

• "You’re A Sucker For Not Believing That The System Is Rigged"--Kurt Schlichter at Town Hall. The author, referencing the Russian collusion fairytale, Hillary getting off Scott free after exposing state secrets, and Smollet getting charges dropped after his charade, contends that:

       The American dream has morphed into the American grift. And we normal people are the marks.

       Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop accepting the ruling class’s lies. And let’s stop lying to ourselves. America has changed. There used to be one standard, one set of laws, one set of rules. Now, there are two.

      The one set of rules for normal people is designed to jam us up, to keep us down, to ensure that the power of the powerful never gets challenged.

     And the one set of rules for the elite can be summed up like this: There are no rules.

• Related: "What happens after rich kids bribe their way into college? I teach them"--The Guardian. Remedial education in the Ivy Leagues. 

• It's an invasion--time to treat it as such: "U.S. Projected to Add 1.5M Illegal Aliens to Population this Year"--Breitbart. Pres. Trump was pushing the Overton Window on Hannity the other night, by referencing how many countries have successfully used machine guns to deter illegal aliens, but he doesn't want to do that. Now the thought is out there in the public sphere.

• Related: "Mexico braces for new caravan of Central American migrants"--AP. A caravan of 20,000+ migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala could be forming.

• "French spy found dead in Alps after being accused of plot to assassinate exiled Congolese politician"--The Independent. From the article:

        The body of Daniel Forestier was discovered last week by police in a car park in the remote Alpine town of Ballaison, close to the French border with Switzerland.

        The 57-year-old had been shot five times in the head and chest. Prosecutors said the calculated nature of the shooting meant it was being treated as a professional hit.

       French media have widely reported Mr Forestier was a retired agent for the DGSE, France’s external intelligence agency, comparable to MI6.

       Mr Forestier had been under investigation by authorities in connection with a plot to kill Ferdinand Mbahou, an exiled military general and high-profile opponent of the Congo-Brazzaville government.

• A follow up to an news item I had linked to last week: "Playboy model, 25, is charged with murdering 71-year-old psychiatrist who was found bludgeoned to death in the trunk of a car in Nevada"--Daily Mail. 
• Of course: "How ‘Green’ Electric Cars Are Killing Congo’s Child Miners"--Principia Scientific.
• How predictable: "Eat, Pray, Love author who left her husband for a woman before losing her to cancer reveals she is now in a relationship with her late girlfriend's male friend"--Daily Mail. If your spouse ever forced you to watch this film, you probably know that the "Eat, Pray, Love" story is about a woman's journey of discovery ... after she discovered that she was bored with her dependable, loving husband. By the way, the "husband" mentioned in the headline is not her original husband, but the exciting lover she encountered while in South East Asia.

• Related: "Coveting sin: The Law of the Double Standard."--Dalrock. He explains:

        It has long been obvious to me that whenever the topic of the sexual double standard is raised the end result is a rush towards female sexual immorality.  The correlation here is perfect, but the mechanism had until just recently eluded me.

       The reason for the perfect correlation is that when women raise the topic of the sexual double standard they are not expressing a revulsion for sexual sin, they are expressing envy for men.  Envy of men is at the core of feminist rebellion, and envy is an exceptionally powerful temptation for women. ...

• Flashback: "Inside the ‘Q Group,’ the Directorate Hunting Down Edward Snowden"--Daily Beast. From the article:

       The people who began chasing Snowden work for the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, according to former U.S. intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity. The directorate, sometimes known as “the Q Group,” is continuing to track Snowden now that he’s outed himself as The Guardian’s source, according to the intelligence officers. ...

       The security and counterintelligence directorate serves as the NSA’s internal police force, in effect watching the agency’s watchers for behavior that could pose an intelligence risk. It has the authority to interview an NSA contractor or employee’s known associates, and even to activate a digital dragnet capable of finding out where a target travels, what the target has purchased, and the target’s online activity.

• "THE VAMPIRE AND ITS LINEAGE"--Tony Thorne. The author explains:

In fact the figure of the bloodsucking or life-draining revenant is recurrent and attested in almost all prehistoric and most early modern cultures. There are examples from China (so-called ‘hungry ghosts’), Malaysia, the Americas, and, most interestingly from a linguistic point-of-view, the Kipchaks and Karachays of Caucasia and their relatives, the Tatars, and other Turkic-speaking peoples of Anatolia. Their languages give us yet another possible ancestor for the many names, culminating in today’s ‘vampire’, listed above. In modern Turkish obur denotes a glutton or greedy person, but in older folklore the Obur (Tatar Ubyr) was a bloodsucking night-demon that could shapeshift into a cat or dog or a beautiful woman. Here, then, is another possible – and rather plausible – antecedent for later slavonic upirs or vampirs.

• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "DEA Never Checked If Its Massive Surveillance Operations Are Legal, Watchdog Says"--Nextgov.  The article reports:

       In a heavily redacted, 144-page report published Thursday, the Justice Department Inspector General revealed the administration failed to fully assess the legal basis for three massive international surveillance operations that ran largely unchecked from 1992 to 2013. Two of the programs remain active in some form today.

      Under one initiative, which investigators called “Program A,” the administration used “non-target specific” subpoenas to force multiple telecom providers to provide metadata on every phone call made from the U.S. to as many as 116 countries with “a nexus to drugs.” Investigators found some companies also provided the officials with data on all calls made between those foreign countries.

       The administration also conducted two other bulk surveillance programs during that time without assessing their legality, investigators found. Under “Program B,” officials used similarly sweeping subpoenas to collect information on anyone who purchased specific products from participating vendors. Through “Program C,” DEA purchased telephone metadata for targets of ongoing investigations through a contractor for a separate government agency.

      Program B ran from 2008 to 2013, and Program C began in 2007 and remains active today, according to the IG.