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Monday, October 17, 2022

The Docent's Memo (Oct. 17, 2022)

VIDEO: "Disturbing Legal Trend with Firearm Training"--Armed Attorneys (15 min.)
In this video, the authors note a disturbing trend of using a defensive shooter's firearms training against them to hold them to a higher standard of care and/or to prove a guilty state of mind. They suggest not discussing on social media what firearms training you have had, not volunteering that information to police, and not displaying your firearms training certificates. 

Firearms & Self-Defense:

  • "Winter Is Coming" by Sheriff Jim Wilson, Shooting Illustrated. Wilson reminds us that with cooler weather comes more clothing and impeded access to our concealed carry firearms. He suggests dry fire practice with our extra jackets and coats to make sure we know what we need to do to access a firearm; and that we check to make sure we can safely operate our selected firearm with the gloves we will be wearing. It wouldn't do to have the firearm go off because of trying to push too fat of a glove into too small of a trigger guard! And, he adds:

And there are just times when it is so cold that we are wearing just about everything that we own. We’ve got our handgun on our hip, but it is under a sweater and a vest and a heavy parka. A fellow would almost need a search warrant to get to that gun. This might be a good time to be carrying a smaller, second gun in a side pocket of that outside garment. Again, practice is the key to getting that gun into play quickly. 

He doesn't make any specific recommendations, but to me this is where something like a hammerless revolver (e.g. a S&W 642) or shrouded hammer revolver  (e.g. a S&W 638) shine. Some people, especially where heavy winter clothing is the norm, will switch to carrying a handgun using a larger caliber (e.g., .44 Special or .45 ACP) due to issues with hollow-points failing to expand when going through heavy clothing.  

  • "Using 'Push-Pull' For Recoil Control" by Jeff Johnston, Shooting Illustrated. The author explains what to do:

         With the strong-side hand (the trigger hand), pull the shotgun into the shoulder pocket just so it’s snug. The goal is to prevent the buttstock from moving in the pocket to keep recoil-induced momentum to a minimum. What you want to avoid is death-gripping the gun as if you were holding onto it for dear life. This is where the “pull” portion of the technique comes from.

         The key, however, is in the support-hand grip. Instead of gripping the shotgun’s fore-end to pull the gun back into the shoulder pocket in unison with the strong hand, the support hand should firmly push the gun forward, toward the target. Basically, the two hands should fight each other as they figuratively try to stretch the gun’s receiver (sometimes described as “try to break the gun in half”). To try another analogy, think of it like shooting a bow: When drawing a bow, the grip hand actually pushes the bow out about as hard as the string hand pulls rearward; and when the bow is held back at full draw, both arms are holding equal tension. It should be the same with the shotgun. 

         In this way, the forward hand pushes directly against the force of recoil, thereby canceling a part of it before it reaches the body. Meanwhile, the trigger hand makes sure the gun is secure to the cheek and shoulder while performing its trigger duties. 

         While the technique seems so simple, the results are dramatic. Some people claim it can decrease felt-recoil by as much as 50 percent, although that’s tough to actually quantify. Certainly, it makes a noticeable difference. If you don’t believe me, go to the range with your shotgun of choice and try it yourself. Record yourself trying both techniques; you’ll feel and even see less muzzle rise and rearward push. This allows faster follow-up shots and makes the shotgun much more friendly to shoot in general. 

        Keep in mind that the shooter does not need to hold the gun like this for long, as it is very taxing on the muscles. Rather, the fore-end hand should push forward only in the microseconds before the shot. Once the technique is learned, practice will allow mastery of it, at which time there will be little reason to return to any other shotgun shooting technique whether hunting, target shooting or practicing for home-defense.

  • Check out the new Weekend Knowledge Dump from Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training (link here). Many good articles and links. Among them is one where Ellifritz links to an article and video about a recent subway attack in New York. You probably have seen the video of this, but if not, let me summarize: A man who could have been Obama's son brutally attacked a black woman. Two men (at least one of which was white) had approached like they wanted to help, but when they saw the attacker, turned tale and ran away. The author of the linked article writes:

    I find it disturbing, but not surprising, that the only two people who could help the women ran away. We certainly don't want to involve ourselves unnecessarily in other people's issues. However, this is one of those incidents that requires intervention. A defenseless woman is getting thrashed by a man and it's clear the attack will cause serious bodily injury.

    Perhaps neither one of these men had the physical ability to stop the man, and it's appropriate to consider the attacker may have a weapon. But I think the failure of men interceding to protect a woman goes beyond just this one incident. ...

He then links to videos of other incidents of male POC attacking women with no one intervening and, finally, one where a white guy did intervene when a male POC was stabbing a woman on a subway platform. He then continues:

    Again, I want to clarify that no one is obligated to intervene, and certainly, in many situations, it's better to stay out of the situation. However, we need to be aware of when intervention is necessary, and when it is, we need to have some skills to help.

    You don't need to be an MMA fighter or a muscular monster to help in time of need. In the video below, an average guy intervened to stop a man from continuing to stab a woman with a knife. He responded, and perhaps because of his action, other people helped and disarmed the attacker. The point is, just like cowardice, bravery can be contagious.

Greg Ellifritz disagreed with the foregoing author, explaining:

    This is a horrible attack and I understand its impact on the victim.  But I disagree with the author’s premise that men should automatically step up to protect female victims in scenarios like this.

    The victim was an adult.  She has the same opportunities that I have to study martial arts and fighting or to carry a weapon (or at least move to a location where she can carry a weapon).  She chose not to pursue those courses of action whereas I have spent many years of my life, many hours in the hospital, and tens of thousands of dollars perfecting my skill set for this very emergency.  Why should she benefit from my training, hard work and lifetime of pain if she is unwilling to do the the same work herself?

    Lots of women crave “equality” with men.  I support that idea.  Women should absolutely be the equal of men.  But that means that I treat the women the same way that I treat the men in my life.  If I wouldn’t step up to save a dude in this situation, why should I be obligated to do so because the victim is female?  Equality is equality.  And I absolutely would not intervene in this attack if the victim was male.

    There is zero personal gain in intervening in an attack like this.  In addition to the physical risks it presents, in today’s world you also risk being put in prison if the prosecutor thinks he can get any political notoriety out of your trial.  You stand to lose hundred of thousands of dollars in a lawsuit if you act.  If you walk away you will suffer no negative consequences.  That makes the decision very clear to me.

Much as it goes against our genetic programming, I have to agree with Ellifritz. Back in 2017 I penned a post called "The Dangers of White Knighting" which were my comments on Ellifritz's analysis of a then-recent incident in Portland, Oregon, where a crazy man on public transit was screaming at a couple Muslim women and "white knights" rode to the rescue with tragic consequences. Three men decided to try to intervene with the consequence that the crazy guy pulled a knife and killed two of the men and seriously injured the third. That was a negative outcome and for what? To impress a couple women. 

    And, even if you successfully intervene and stop the attack, your troubles may only be starting as you could become charged with a crime and/or sued by an injured criminal or, should he die, his heirs. 

    Living out in the country often means much more privacy than in an urban or suburban household.  If your house is out of view of your neighbors, curtains can remain open and you can go about your business without any questions asked. Most of the time, being out of the prying eyes of busybody neighbors is a huge benefit to rural life.

    That lack of visibility, combined with an opioid crisis in many of the most rural populations, leads to a lot of opportunistic petty theft and burglary. On the rural email bulletin in my town, there’s a notice at least once a week that a house was burglarized. Thankfully, the attempts aren’t often sophisticated and they’re usually desperate attempts at a quick buck than well-though-out break ins.

    It’s always quick theft of small items. Inside the house, the medicine cabinet has been rifled through, and any small electronics that were in sight have been taken. Gas cans and chainsaws are often taken, too.

    How does it happen so often? Persistence and a plausible excuse to come to your door.

The plausible excuses include posing as a door-to-door salesman (e.g.: teens selling candy or someone claiming to selling security systems that will offer to inspect yours for free, etc.), pretending to be a repairman looking for a house or address, or even accusing you of having stolen an item (e.g., a cell phone) that they have tracked to your home and demanding entrance to look for it. Not included, and probably still a favorite even in this era of cell phones, is someone claiming they need to use a phone for one sympathetic reason or another.

    Ammunition typically doesn’t go bad unless it’s exposed to oil contamination. Corrosive environments (such as being near an ocean), extreme heat, or perpetual high humidity take many decades to meaningfully erode the reliability of loaded ammo. 
 
    For those of us who store ammo in ammo cans, they do a nice job protecting cartridges from moisture and other issues.

    This past weekend’s experience again proved that ammo will last longer than most people will, even when stored poorly. So don’t be afraid of firing factory-loaded ammo that has a “born on” date older than you on a headstamp.
    M5 shooters will lose 70 rounds and carry another 5 pounds in total weapon, optic and ammo load compared to the M4.

    M250 light machine gunners will give up 200 rounds and add 3.6 pounds compared with the M249 SAW load. The M250 is lighter, but the ammo is heavier and the new fire control adds 2.6 pounds to the system, according to officials.

Hopefully the loss of rounds carried will be made up by more accurate and quicker on target shooting enabled by the new targeting system. The article mentions that the targeting system will have multiple weapon and ammunition configurations included so that it could be mounted and used, for instance, on a 5.56 weapon.
VIDEO: "Panic In Year Zero, part 1" (8 min.)
This is the first part of a 10-part playlist (each part being 8 to 9 minutes long) of a movie from the 1960s following a family that by chance has just left the Los Angeles area before it is hit with an atomic bomb. If you choose to watch the whole playlist, it seems to transition pretty seamlessly between the parts.

Prepping & Survival:

  • "Are we headed for a rail strike after all?" by John Sexton at Hot Air. A railway strike was narrowly avoided last month when unions tentatively agreed to negotiated deals. But those deals had to be approved by union members, and last week the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division rejected one such contract. Sexton notes that even if the other unions agree to their deals, they will still strike in support of the Maintenance union. But this will all happen after the mid-terms, which Sexton believes may have been the plan all along.
  • Yes: "Is the Nuclear Pamphlet 'Protect and Survive' Still Relevant?"--Organic Prepper. Link to the pamphlet in the article. The author explains the background to the pamphlet and that it was intended as a quick and dirty guide to what to do if a nuclear attack was imminent. 
  • "Simple Gas Storage Rotation Plan" by Pat Henry, The Prepper Journal. Although Henry recognizes that fuel requirements will vary, he suggest a minimum of 20 gallons (i.e., a full tank of gas). Henry has six 5-gallon containers for a total of 30-gallons which he rotates through the year. He numbers each container (1 through 6) and at the end of each month when he is down to about a half-tank of gas in his car, he dumps the fuel from whichever container is up in rotation into the gas tank and then refills that container. That way he makes sure that none of his fuel is more than 6 months old. He has other suggestions and tips as well, so be sure to check it out. 
  • "Disasters happen: Make sure you and your family don't go hungry if you have to shelter in place" by Richard A. Marini, San Antonio Express-News. Although the article begins with a snarky statement distinguishing between "preppers" and those that prepare, it has some good advice for someone new to the topic to put together basic preparations for a one to two week period. An excerpt:
    “With the exception of Hurricane Katrina, most large disasters don’t last longer than a week,” said disaster preparedness instructor Creek Stewart, author of “The Disaster-Ready Home: A Step-by-Step Emergency Preparedness Manual for Sheltering in Place.”

    Stewart suggests stockpiling 10 to 20 items you and your family eat regularly that have a shelf life of at least one year. These include pasta, canned goods and dried beans.

    “I tell people to shop the inner aisles of the supermarket, not the perimeter where the produce and meat are,” said Stewart, “and buy foods they normally eat; if you don’t eat Spam, don’t stock up on Spam.”

    Be aware that canned foods are often high in salt, which can be problematic for those with high blood pressure and other medical conditions. Shop for low-salt versions when available. [Ed.: as some of my posts have indicated, most of us already consume less salt than we should and too little salt is generally more dangerous than too much, so I would ignore this bit of advice unless you specifically have been placed on a low salt diet by a physician.]

    While you should focus on foods high in nutrition, don’t forget to include some comfort foods that you or your kids enjoy, like chocolate, candy or chips.

    “You’ve got think about your mental health, too,” Schlegelmilch said. 

    If you don’t have the financial means to buy an extra week’s worth of food all at once, spread out the cost by buying one or two extras of a single item to store away every time you go shopping. In a couple of months, you should have a fully stocked supply of emergency rations.

    You may not have access to your oven or stove during a disaster and its aftermath, so make sure a good portion of your stockpile is food that doesn’t need to be cooked. This can include canned goods such as tuna, chicken, fruits and vegetables. 

    And don’t forget your outdoor grill, if you’ve got one. Always keep an extra propane tank, or a supply of wood, charcoal or grilling pellets on hand. And buy a couple of cheap pots and pans at Goodwill or a thrift store to use over the fire.

It goes on to include a few tips on storing the food and supplies as well as addressing water storage. 

    "When we started the post-apocalyptic and doomsday prepping beliefs project, we thought that holding these hypothetical beliefs might be important for understanding some general everyday behaviors," Adam Fetterman, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Houston, wrote in April 2021 of his pre-pandemic research on preppers. "We did not think that they would be applicable to actual events. Then came 2020. Since we published our work in 2019 we have seen a global pandemic, mass protests for racial justice, a record-setting hurricane season, the storming of the US capitol, and a record-setting freeze in Texas that left millions without electricity or water for days, to name a few." 
 
    Fetterman, who began with the belief that preppers are irrational, grudgingly conceded that events have proven them "sort of" right and that "it is probably a good idea to be prepared to some extent." He was actually a little late to the game; by then, outlets from the BBC to The New York Times had conceded that those who had made preparations for social disruptions had a distinct advantage over those who assumed that good times would go on forever.

    That was all before soaring inflation, war, and the weaponization of energy supplies. ...

The article goes on to discuss how prepping is spreading across Europe and, due to the irrational lockdowns under its Zero-Covid policies, even into China. 

    Channel 2 Action News visited the Fortitude Ranch in West Virginia, which is already accepting visitors. There, we saw shelters, military tents, cabins and tree houses. Underground hallways were stocked with shelves of unperishable food, medical supplies, tools and other necessities. 
 
    During a tour, ranch manager Ari Bailor said the ranch is fully prepared for whatever may happen in the future.

    “Weapons are already there. There’s ammo,” Bailor said. “They’ve got their food, and we have our food and farm animals, chicken, sheep and those things.”
    At her apartment, she led me into her home office, and pointed to something hanging on a wall. It was a small American flag, almost paper-thin, and very old. Judging from the number of stars on its field, I would say from the Revolutionary War era. It was mounted and framed under glass.

    And it was torn from top to bottom, right down the middle.

    “What am I looking at?” I asked.

    She explained that someone had given her that antique flag many years earlier. She had it framed, and it had hung on the wall of every home office she had had since then, wherever she lived. Every day she was home, for years, she had looked at it.

    On this day, however, when she returned from Ground Zero, she noticed that it had been torn right down the middle.

    Nobody else had been home, and if they had been, they would have had to have torn the paper on the back of the frame to get to the flag. It was untouched.

    Both of us were, and are, Christian. The significance of this sign was not lost on us.

    The curtain of the Temple separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple. Traditionally, Christianity interprets this sign as indicating God’s judgment on the religion of His people, the Jews. I can’t speak for my friend, with whom I lost touch after I left New York, but I immediately interpreted the torn flag as a sign that God had withdrawn his protection from America, in judgment.

Vox Day comments (hyperlink added):

    The USA observably ceased to be either a Christian or an American nation after its leaders surrendered to decades of tireless blandishments by judeochristians, led by Emmanuel Cellar, in 1965. But it wasn’t until 2001 that it became undeniable the US government was being ruled by a foreign elite, as the intentional sacrifice of thousands of US citizens for the purpose of engaging in imperialist warfare and eradicating historical American liberties sufficed to demonstrate.

    If Dreher’s instincts are correct, then America was judged for its excessive tolerance, for committing the sins of Jeroboam and for its submission to evil, and was given over to the wicked to rule. And so long as the wicked rule, the suffering of Americans and those who live in US satrapies will continue, and most likely, will continue to increase.

According to John Beaty, in his book The Iron Curtain Over America, there has been a foreign elite in charge of critical posts in the State Department and posts with influence or control over finance and industry since as early as the late 1930s. 

VIDEO: "New Evidence In The Dyatlov Pass Mystery"--Joe Scott (16 min.)
This has to do with the mysterious deaths of a group of experienced hikers in the Soviet Union in 1959. There have been various theories set forth to explain how the group died ranging from avalanche to attack by wild animals to UFOs (due to trace amounts of radioactivity found on the bodies). I had actually published a post about this incident back in 2019. This video goes over the basic facts and then moves into some new studies that support the theory that the group where victims of an avalanche.

News & Commentary:

  • "How Did We Get Here?"--Wilder Wealthy & Wise. He goes over three of the biggest reasons why the U.S. is in its current predicament of decline and autocracy and on the edge of civil war: widespread propaganda and lies on all sorts of issues including that there never was an American culture to the craziness of modern environmentalism; pathological altruism as exhibited by open borders and being lax on crime; and the corruption permitted by a too-powerful federal government. 
  • "Nancy Pelosi Conveniently Has Daughter Filming On J6." There has always been a strange disconnect between what the January 6 protestors did versus the punishments meted out. My suspicion is that a great many people were acting according to a script, anticipating a great deal of violence (as would be expected due to the number of FBI agents provocateur on hand and a mysteriously planted bomb that failed to go off), but which violence did not materialize. Instead of an angry, armed mob shooting up the capital and chasing Congress critters into secure areas, we instead were mostly left with images of unarmed people strolling through the capital like groups of tourists. Nevertheless, a decision was made to proceed with the script, and so we saw the capital fenced off and guarded by thousands of armed troops, the histrionics of the elites, and the absurd investigations, jailing, and heavy-handed sentences being handed out to people that attended the January 6 protests, even if, in some cases, they never set foot in the capital. 
  • Speaking of scripts: "Biden’s HHS and CDC Paid Screen Writers and Comedians To Mock the Unvaccinated."
  • I thought this was supposed to be a conspiracy theory: "Bombshell Dominion 'Error Code' Uncovered in 97% of Georgia Counties." 
  • "James Bond and The Beatles: the 1962 day that changed Britain"--BBC. On October 4, 1962, the Beatles released their first single, "Love Me Do", and the first James Bond film, Dr. No, premiered. 
  • "How the Hollywood Stasi Hypes Conservative ‘Violence’ and Downplays the Left’s ‘Days of Rage’" by Mark Judge. Judge writes how Hollywood is already geared up to film a movie on the events of January 6, 2021, portraying conservatives as evil while ignoring or revising the violence perpetrated by their own. 
    There will be several films about January 6, but none about James Hodgkinson, a former campaign volunteer for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who showed up at Republicans’ practice for the annual Congressional Baseball Game and shot congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA), a congressional staffer, a lobbyist, and two Capitol Police officers. (Hodgkinson had tried to wipe out the entire GOP leadership.)

    Expect no movie about Floyd Lee Corkins, who in August 2012 entered the offices of the Family Research Council in downtown Washington and shot a security guard. Corkins pled guilty in February 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to charges of committing an act of terrorism while armed, assault with intent to kill while armed, and interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition. Corkins was angry that the Family Research Council is against same-sex marriage. “They endorse Chick-fil-A and also Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage, so I was going to use that as a statement,” prosecutors quoted Corkins as telling investigators.

    There won’t a film depicting the acts of Nicholas Roske, who came to Washington in June to attempt to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. ...

    Even while Hollywood makes films about pro-Trump protestors taking selfies, they censor left’s own violent past. In 2002 we were treated to The Chicago 7. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame, the movie dramatizes the violent riots that occurred in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention. The activists in the film are likable people who just want peace. There is no mention of Mao, the Viet Cong, the victims of the Black Panthers, or the bombings of the Weather Underground and other left-wing and anarchist groups.
    Now, newly-released MI5 files have revealed further details about the extent of the espionage operation that was being conducted at the Krogers' home. 

    Unseen photos show the everyday objects - including a talcum powder bottle - that boasted hidden compartments, the American money that was ferreted away in out of sight places, and the trapdoor in the kitchen floor that concealed a powerful radio transmitter. 

    That machine beamed secrets stolen from the Navy's top-secret Underwater Defence Establishment (UDE) in Portland, Dorset to Moscow.

    Also found was a Bible in the couple's bedroom that contained a piece of cellophane coated with a layer of silver bromide, which was likely used to make the film needed for 'microdots' - miniaturised documents containing stolen secrets.

    After they were caught by MI5 and the Metropolitan Police's Special Branch, the Cohens and the other key players were all convicted of espionage and sent to prison. 

    The American couple served just eight years of their 20-year sentences after benefiting from a spy swap deal with Russia.  

    When they left prison in 1969, they received a warm welcome back in Russia, including awards and dinners in their honour.

    Lonsdale, whose real name was Konon Molody, had been given a 25-year sentence but was traded back to the Soviet Union in 1964 to return to his wife and children, and died six years later.

    Houghton and Gee, whose roles in the plot had been fuelled by an affair between them, left prison in 1970 and later married, with Gee always claiming she did everything 'out of love' for him after 'a lifetime of spinsterhood'.
    The space rock orbits a much larger (780m wide; 2,550ft) object called Didymos. Before impact, the time taken for Dimorphos to make one circuit of its sibling was 11 hours and 55 minutes.

    The telescope evidence now indicates this orbital period has been reduced to 11 hours and 23 minutes - a change of 32 minutes. This corresponds to Dimorphos moving closer into to Didymos by "tens of metres".

    Nasa had defined a minimum successful period change of Dimorphos of 73 seconds or more. The results released on Tuesday show Dart surpassed this benchmark by more than 25 times. 

  • "Journeys of the Pyramid Builders: The story of the highly skilled workers who helped build Egypt’s Great Pyramid is emerging from a papyrus cache unearthed at the world’s oldest harbor" by Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine. Construction of the pyramids required large quantities of copper to make the various tools to shape the stones. The bulk of that copper came from mines in the south of the Sinai Peninsula and transported by sea to Egypt. The article relates the archaeology of a large port complex at the tip of the Sinai dating from that period, including records and logbooks related to the operation of the port and cargoes. 
  • "Cryptoanthropology" by Steve Sailer. He includes an excerpt from Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa by Andrew A. Anderson, 1887, that relates an encounter with hominids of "a lower caste. They have no forehead; the wool on their heads comes close down to the eyes, and the head falling back like a baboon; projecting mouth, small nose, a sort of hair or wool all over the chest, arms, and legs; their eyes are small and restless, watching every movement that is going on; the tallest man did not exceed four feet four; their skin was of a reddish-brown. A few old skins, broken ostrich eggs, and bows and arrows, seemed all they possessed of worldly goods." Anderson indicated that one of the women had a baby that was no bigger than a half-grown kitten. Anderson's guides, Bushmen tribesmen, disclaimed that the hominids were of the same race, "and told me there were very few ever seen, it was very seldom they ever came upon any; they eat carrion." Sailer suggests that account was fictional or that the hominid group was a family suffering from a genetic disease, perhaps from inbreeding. 

    Nevertheless, it is interesting that the hominids were of the size and appearance of homo habilis or australopithecus and the encounter was in the right place to meet descendants of the latter species. Australopithecus was first discovered in 1924 in in a lime quarry by workers at Taung, South Africa. Homo habilis was not discovered until 1959 when two teeth were unearthed at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by a team led by Louis and Mary Leakey, with portions of the skeleton coming to light the following year. At the time Anderson wrote his book, the only other hominids known were the Neanderthal, which had first been discovered in 1856 in Germany. And even another widely known hominid species, Homo erectus, was not discovered until 1891 on the island of Java. Although Darwin had speculated that fossils of our species' ancestors would be discovered in Africa, since he postulated we were descended from apes, nothing would be discovered there for nearly 40 years after Anderson's book was published. 

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