April 30, 2019--A Quick Run Around the Web

"A Huge Tip For Using Cover and Concealment"--Active Self Protection Extra (4 min.)

A demonstration of why standing back from cover/concealment makes it harder for a bad guy to see you.

• California continues to become a third-world country: "PG&E’s Radical Plan to Prevent Wildfires: Shut Down the Power Grid"--Wall Street Journal. According to the article, "[w]hen dangerously high winds arise this year, the utility says it will black out fire-prone areas that are home to 5.4 million people." Those of you living in "fire-prone areas" will have to prepare for possibly days without power.
• The German government is apparently referring to survivalists as "ultra-nationalists." 
• "Defensive Shooting: How to Find a Gun That “Fits” You"--US Concealed Carry. The author begins:

       Firearms instructors out there, have you noticed how many shooters these days have fat butts?

       I’m sorry—I meant their pistols have fat butts. The proliferation of pistols with high capacity, double column magazines has created problems for many shooters, who have handguns that simply do not fit their hands. This makes proper performance difficult, especially when attempting to shoot at speed or under stress. Unfortunately, both of these circumstances are likely in a defensive situation. 

After discussing what can go wrong with a pistol that is not the right size for the shooter, the author continues:

      So, how do we determine whether a particular pistol fits our student’s hand? First, with a verified unloaded pistol, have the student grasp the pistol correctly, with the backstrap of the grip frame in contact with the length of the palm, and the wrist bones and forearm bones directly behind the grip, in line with the barrel. Now, have him place the pad of the trigger finger on the trigger.

     From above, you should be able to see a clear air gap between his trigger finger and the frame of the pistol, behind the trigger guard (see photos). Next, have the student try to cycle the trigger straight to the rear. Next, see if he can access the controls (safety/decocker, magazine button) without excessively compromising his master grip on the pistol.

• Related: "ADOPTING A NEW CONCEALED CARRY PISTOL…"--Civilian Gunfighter. The author discusses his difficulties over the years with Glock 19 pistols of various generations because they were just not quite the correct size for his hands--it was just slightly too long for the trigger reach. He has now switched to the S&W M&P9 M2.0. 

• "Making The “Lightning” For Your Force Multipliers"--Mason Dixon Tactical. A lot of our equipment is run by batteries, so it behooves us to have a means of either supplying new batteries or recharging batteries and devices. The author in this case describes the equipment he is using to provide for recharging, including off of solar panels, a crank generator, and from 12 volt batteries.
• I'd missed it last week, but here is Grant Cunningham's Hump Day Reading list from April 24.
• "The Handgun Skills Triad – The Key to High Performance Shooting"--Shooting Performance. An excerpt:

      The skills triad is way more simple than that, yet are absolutely the key to handgun shooting success.   Without understanding and mastering them, nothing else matters.   They are:

1. Recoil Management (gripping the handgun)
2. Trigger Management (making it go bang without moving it)
3. Sight Management (keeping the gun aligned on target)

Think about it for a second. If you can’t hit the target, It doesn’t matter if your draw is blindingly fast, or if you can reload quicker than The Great One – Rob Leatham, or even if you can shoot on the move as well as World Champion Eric Grauffel!   Managing those pesky three things is everything when it comes to actually hitting something.  

• "Frank Hamer’s Sweetwater Fight: Lessons Learned"--Shooting Illustrated. Hamer was one of the lawmen that tracked down and killed Bonnie and Clyde. Long before then, in 1917, he was involved in another gunfight over accusations that he had helped murder his wife's ex-husband. He and his wife were ambushed when they stopped at a service station:

      As Frank Hamer walked back out of the station, he came face to face with Gee McMeans, who had a .45 ACP pistol in his hand and quickly shot Hamer in the shoulder. Hamer slapped the gun down and it went off a second time, hitting him in the thigh. His blow to the 1911 caused it to malfunction, probably causing a failure to feed. With one hand holding the .45, Hamer used his other hand to beat McMeans about the face.

      As this was going on, McMeans’ henchman, H.E. Phillips, ran up to the struggling pair with his shotgun. He fired at Hamer’s head from close range and missed his whole head, but shredded Frank’s Stetson. As Hamer dropped to the ground, stunned, both of his attackers ran to their nearby car.

     Recovering somewhat, Hamer drew his .44 Spl. and turned to see McMeans pulling a shotgun from the car. Hamer fired one shot from fairly close range and hit McMeans in the heart, dropping him instantly. Phillips ran for it.

• Another case study: "The Medina, North Dakota Shootout"--Tactical Professor. "Thirty-five years ago today, on February 13, 1983, a violent gunbattle took place in Medina, North Dakota. Although less well known than the Miami Massacre in 1986, it was every bit as bloody and violent. Something it had in common with the Miami Massacre was preparation for conflict and the decisiveness of long guns at pistol ranges." Interestingly, the bad guys in both this gun battle and the Miami shooting both used Mini-14s. 
• Que the world's smallest violin: "Spanish Police Issued with Obsolete Rifles"--The Firearm Blog. The officers were using the CETME L, probably one of the worst 5.56 assault rifles ever issued. The L models were withdrawn, and the soldiers were issued older CETME C rifles--a 7.62 NATO rifle that is essentially a wood-stocked HK G-3. 
• Magpul has announced a few new products for HK weapons, including handguards for MP5s and clones, and a lower receiver (the Navy Style) for HK91s, 93s, and 94s and clones. They are not yet being sold, and prices are still unknown. But soon.

"One in the Chamber is Dangerous!"--Four Guys Guns (6 min.)

I hope that none of you are carrying a semi-auto with an empty chamber. But if you are, this video may disabuse of that notion. As the host/narrator notes, carrying on an empty chamber is like riding in a car without a seatbelt with the hope that you can put it on before a collision. They use moving targets to demonstrate how little time you may have and how hard it is to get the gun out, rack the slide, and fire ... without something going wrong with the firearm.

• Traitors and tyrants: "BREAKING NEWS: FISA Court Says FBI Lied to Them, Illegally Spied"--The Stream. Key part is that the FISA Court's "chief judge has already determined that for more than four years before the election of Donald Trump, there was an illegal spying operation (yes, spying — and, yes, illegal) going on by four FBI contractors to break the law to steal personal electronic information about American citizens and to use it against the Republican Party." Some people should literally hang for this.
• So the other day, I cited to an article about the government dropping cases against pedophiles rather than reveal information about the software used to gather evidence, and wondered if the government was using third parties to circumvent the Fourth Amendment. I think I was on the mark: "How Google is Helping the US Government Violate Your Privacy With Warrantless Searches"--The Mind Unleashed. From the article:

      The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has formally accused Google of scanning billions of personal files of users at the request of the U.S. government. EPIC recently filed a “friend of the court” brief alleging that Google is helping the U.S. government conduct warrantless searches by scanning user files in search of potentially illegal content or evidence of crimes.

     The brief came in response to United States v. Wilson, a case where Google scanned images of billions of users files in an attempt to track images of missing children reported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). After scanning the images contained within users files, Google contacts law enforcement to share information on individuals who may have images of missing children. However, this entire process happens without permission from users or a warrant issued by a court. EPIC’s brief argues that “because neither Google nor the government explained how the image matching technique actually works or presented evidence establishing accuracy and reliability, the government’s search was unreasonable.”

• "'America needs another Vegas event': Feds thwart a 'mass casualties' terror plot in California by Army vet who converted to Islam and wanted retribution for the New Zealand mosque attacks by targeting Nazis, Jews, churches and cops"--Daily Mail. 

       Mark Domingo, 26, a U.S. Army infantryman who fought in Afghanistan and later converted to Islam, was arrested by an undercover officer on Friday after he was allegedly given what he thought was a live bomb to use in the attack. 

        Domingo, who wanted retribution for the recent deadly New Zealand mosque attacks, allegedly had plans to plant the bomb at a Nazi rally on Sunday in the Los Angeles suburb of Long Beach.

       He was charged in a federal criminal complaint with providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists and was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles later on Monday.   

• Related: "Kevin Shipp – Arm Yourself, Dark Left Violence is Coming… Trump Coup Biggest Violation of Constitution in History"--Investment Watch (h/t Anonymous Conservative). He's predicting a lot of violence from the Left as we get closer to the 2020 elections. For some background on Shipp, you can read this article from the New York Times. Short version, though: he is ex-CIA and has sued the government after being posted to Camp Stanley, Texas, when he and his family became sick due to chemical and/or radioactive substances leaking into their home. He was subsequently transferred to Langley, but later left the CIA. The feds invoked "states secrets" as to his claims, meaning that he could not discovery or present evidence, and so his suit was dismissed by the court. Of course, the case is also sealed. This is similar to what happened in a lawsuit against the Air Force leveled by workers at Area 51 that were exposed to hazardous waste. Their suit was also dismissed after the Air Force invoked the states secret doctrine, which dismissal was upheld by the Ninth Circuit. Anyway, whether this makes him any better or believable of a source is up to you.

• "Pirates attack Gulf of Mexico oil rig, lock up crew and loot the contents"--Mexico News Daily. The article reports:

        Witnesses said at least six men armed with guns and knives boarded the rig at 9:30pm and proceeded directly to the third floor to wake up the crew. After locking up workers in the cafeteria, the thieves wandered freely, looting equipment, materials, money and anything of value they could carry.

       The pirates departed at 4:00 am on Monday, when the rig’s captain sent an emergency alert to authorities. The navy responded 4 1/2 hours later. The crew and company lawyers have spent this week in interviews and taking inventory of damaged or stolen items, which have still not been fully identified.

     It was not the first heist of this kind in the Gulf of Mexico, where pirate attacks are becoming a growing threat to oil rigs. On March 12, President López Obrador announced that the navy would maintain permanent operations off the coast of Dos Bocas, Tabasco, to protect against pirates that have in the past attacked Pemex oil rigs.

• Related: The Gulf of Mexico is not the only place where this happens: "Gunmen kidnap a Canadian and Scot from an oil rig in Nigeria - the second abduction there in less than a week"--Daily Mail. 

• "Meet Julio Santana, the world’s deadliest hitman — with 500 kills"--The New York Post. The headline is not quite correct: Santana began killing for hire when he was 17, and logged his kills until he reached 492, and then just stopped keeping further count. "Hitman" also isn't quite the right word either. Santana was more like a hired gun from the Old West, performing vigilante justice (his first hit was to kill a rapist) for a price in a remote part of the Amazon and, later, for the Brazilian government. Most of his contracts came through his uncle, a police officer.
• Clown World: "Judge Finds Father Guilty of ‘Family Violence’ for Not Using Transgender Teen’s Preferred Pronouns"--Breitbart. A British Columbia judge has issued an order authorizing police to arrest a father if he calls his daughter by her given name, refers to her natural gender or uses "her" instead of "he" when referring to her directly or to third parties. 

     In February, the BC Supreme Court ordered that Maxine undergo hormone treatments, against the consent of her father. As a result, the teen has since begun regular testosterone injections at BC Children’s Hospital.

     The teen’s school counselor reportedly urged her to identify as a boy while in seventh grade. When she was 13, Dr. Brenden Hursh at BC Children’s Hospital encouraged her to begin the injections to enable her to gain a more masculine appearance.

Considering what the judge, the doctor, and the counselor have done, Julio Santana doesn't seem so bad.

• "Keynote speaker at Harvard diversity conference says Christians should be ‘locked up’"--The College Fix. The article indicates that the speaker, Tim Wise, has previously written that "[i]f you are basing your morality on a fairy tale written thousands of years ago, you deserve to be locked up...detained for your utter inability to deal with reality..." His talk at Harvard focused more overcoming white privilege. At one point he described his teen daughter as “militant, straight and cis-gendered ally to the struggle against transphobia, cisnormativity, and heterosexism and heteronormativity.” While complaining about Wise's speaking Harvard may seem trivial, you need to keep in mind that for several years now various universities have been canceling speaking engagements featuring conservative speakers, not because of the content of the speech per se, but because of the speaker's previously expressed views. Thus, universities allowing a particular speaker has virtually become an endorsement of the speaker's views, even on topics outside of his or her speech. 

• More: "And then they came for the Christians and the white people"--The New Neo. More on Wise and his presentation at Harvard.

• Related: "Liberal Media Tries to Remake Christianity In Its Own Image"--PJ Media. The Reverend Franklin Graham has been viciously attacked in the media for comments he recently made condemning homosexuality and gay marriage. The author relates several of the comments regarding Graham, but then turns to addressing some of the arguments raised by the left. From the article:

       [I]t is blatantly false to suggest that Graham was cherry-picking verses to condemn homosexual activity, or to suggest — as Joe Scarborough did — that Jesus never spoke about homosexuality, so it must not have been important to Him.

      Jesus wholeheartedly embraced the Old Testament law, and the book of Leviticus clearly condemns homosexual activity as sinful. The Bible defines marriage as the union of man and woman, idealized in the story of Adam and Eve. Jesus upholds this sexual morality by quoting Genesis while discouraging divorce (Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:7).

       If Jesus had departed from the Old Testament sexual morality, it would have been noteworthy and the gospel writers would have commented on it. As it stands, the letters of Paul clearly condemn homosexual activity, suggesting that the early church, just like the Old Testament, considered homosexual activity sinful.

• Related: Like a child screaming "look at me ... look at me ... look at me!": "'I am proud to be a gay son of God': Valedictorian at the Mormon Brigham Young University comes out during commencement speech"--Daily Mail. According to the article, he had already "come out" to his family and friends, so all he was looking for by this announcement was public recognition and adoration.

• Related: "University hosts no-whites-allowed faculty and staff listening sessions — to promote inclusivity"--The College Fix. The school is Wake Forest University. 

• Isn't this cultural appropriation? "Say YESSS to the dress: Oprah Winfrey shuts down Saks Beverly Hills for a bridal shopping spree with graduates from her South Africa school - and bride-to-be nabs $10K couture gown"--Daily Mail. 
• "How Feminism Is Driving The Growing Trend Of Anti-Women Subcultures"--Evie Magazine. An excerpt:

       During the conversation, my buddy explained how despite persuading his friend against becoming MGTOW, he was still sympathetic to his friend’s excuse for doing so. In his words “Men are disgusted with women in almost every way today and are finding happiness in just cutting them out of their lives.” He continues, “And I can’t really argue against anything they (MGTOW) say because I relate to it all myself.”

       I pressed harder to ask if he could elaborate on exactly what he meant by that. “Look around you. Every girl acts like a dude and has to have more guy friends than her actual boyfriend. Relationships are no longer partnerships. They’re just mutual debauchery based on meaningless sex and fickle mind games. And in most relationships, I see the women being an overbearing * constantly humiliating their dudes.”

       I stood in momentary silence because I was unsure of how to respond to that. I wanted to hear the uncensored truth from him because he (unlike the women hating MGTOWs, Incels, and PUAs) had never viewed women in this way before. He was brought up in one of those traditionally wholesome, family oriented, Christian household, whereby the reverence for women was ingrained in him since a young age.

      His father and male relatives were his role models for they knew exactly what it meant to be a protector and a provider. Consequently, the women in their lives (like his mother and grandmother) cherished and respected their men for that. It was then that I realized we’re in a turning point of history where men no longer held a reverence for women like they did in a previous generation.

(Underline added). Read the whole thing.

• Interesting: The U.S. Navy filed a patent for a "Craft using an inertial mass reduction device." Too bad that the Patent Office no longer requires inventors to submit a working model of their inventions. In any event, if you read the description of the device, it seems to include features similar to those of the Em Drive, although much more advanced.
• An inconvenient truth: "A new 200‐year spatial reconstruction of West Antarctic surface mass balance"--JGR Atmospheres. Basic point is that the West Antarctic ice massively increased between 1900 and 2010.
• Spoiler Alert! Some quick thoughts about the movie Avengers: End Game. As you may know, End Game is setting some new box office records, taking in an estimated $1.2 billion in box office sales worldwide during its first weekend. My kids and I helped contribute to that. I took them to a Saturday morning showing which, despite it being fairly early in the morning, was still pretty crowded. All in all, I thought it was one of the stronger Marvel films and worth the time and money to see in the theater if you like the genre. If you have been following the build-up to this movie over the last 6 or 7 years, you definitely should see this movie as it wraps up some of the careers of certain of the Avengers. It is also, on the whole, a very well made movie with good plotting and writing. (Of course there are plot holes--there are always plot holes in super-hero movies). If you've read this far, I'm assuming that you don't mind minor spoilers. So, in the last installment, Infinity War, Thanos snapped his fingers in the Infinity Gauntlet, thus snuffing out half of all living beings in the universe. This movie is about the Avengers (or what remain of them after the snap) attempting to rectify that. But first the film tries to give us a feeling of what the snap did for the common person. The film opens with Hawkeye (he's pretty close to normal) playing with his kids at a family barbecue, when they all suddenly disappear, and he frantically runs around trying to find first his daughter, and then his whole family. Another character, somewhat later in the film, walks through a park where there is a memorial consisting of stones engraved with the names of the missing. Even though there is no action in these scenes, they create an important emotional feeling for the audience.

        The rest of the film pretty much lives up to mood created at the beginning. 

        But there are bad parts to the film, and they are completely driven by the SJW propaganda coming out of Disney. First is the inclusion of Ms. Captain Marvel in the film because she merely serves as a deus ex machina. Worse yet, in order for her to serve that role, the powers of Thor and the Hulk are dramatically reduced in the film. Second, and on a related note, is a short scene showing all the female superheroes grouped together to save the men. Grrl power!

        Third, is the obvious message that POC and women are the future and white men are the past. Thor abdicates in favor of the African "Valkyrie" from Thor: Ragnarok.  Similarly, Captain America passes his shield on to Falcon, who is played by a black actor. And, once again, Wakanda comes to the rescue: apparently the U.S. military is unable to mobilize to fight off aliens, but Wakanda's army is always on hand. And while Valhalla must have black citizens in order to be inclusive, there were still no whites among the citizens of Wakanda.