The Docent's Memo (December 19, 2022)

 

VIDEO: "Short Barrel Shotgun SBS vs. Birdshead Grip for CQB CQC"--

Demonstrated Concepts LLC (8 min.). The author makes his argument for why the birdshead grip shotgun is superior to the SBS.

Firearms & Self-Defense:

• "The Practicality of the 4-Inch Revolver"--Mason Dixon Tactical. He discusses his experience and choices in revolvers in .22, .38 Special/.357 Magnum, and .44 Magnum. His conclusion:

Are there better pistols out there for specific tasks, such as defense, or hunting/field use? Sure. Are there many pistols out there that are as versatile as the three, 4″ barreled models and calibers mentioned in this post? Not really.

• Some firearms history: "The Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1 Rifle"--Shooting Illustrated. This model of the Lee-Enfield was still in development when the British Expeditionary Force was surrounded at Dunkirk and had to abandon their rifles--some 200,000--when evacuating. Combined with the formation of a Home Guard in Britain that also needed rifles, the No. 4 Mk 1 began being produced in the United States by Savage. "U.S.-made Savage/Stevens No. 4s numbered 1.2 million, with Long Branch contributing another 910,000, Fazakerley 619,000, Maltby 737,000 and Shirley with 665,000 for a grand total of 4.1 million produced."
• "When It’s Not A Gunfight"--Shooting Illustrated. Sheriff Jim Wilson discusses less than lethal weapons, mentioning blackjacks, saps, walking canes, and pepper spray. Be sure to check you local and state laws to determine what is legal to use and whether it is considered a deadly weapon: I seem to remember coming across some federal case law suggesting that keys held between your fingers in order to rake someone's face or eyes could be considered a deadly or dangerous weapon. 
• "Don’t Use Bird Shot for Self Defense"--Active Response Training. Key bit:

    People stop their attacks for a variety of reasons after they have been shot.  Some stop because of pain.  Others stop because of shock.  Still others are physically incapacitated by blood loss or organ damage.  We can’t rely on shock or pain to stop an attacker who is exceptionally motivated, mentally ill, drunk, or on drugs.  We must achieve physical incapacitation.  That happens either by hitting the brain or upper spinal cord (causing death or paralysis) or by doing enough damage to organs and blood vessels that the bad guy collapses from blood loss. 

 

    Birdshot doesn’t reliably penetrate deeply enough to hit those vital targets, especially if your target is wearing heavy clothing or behind a piece of cover.

Remember that then-Vice President Dick Cheney shot a hunting buddy in the face with a shotgun loaded with birdshot that caused only minor damage.

• Speaking of shotguns: "3 Tips That Will Make You a Better Wingshooter"--American Hunter. The body of the article refers to them as 3 steps rather than tips. They are: (i) tune or adjust the shotgun to fit you and then practice; (ii) learn to correctly mount the shotgun; (iii) follow through (i.e., don't stop swinging the shotgun when you take the shot). 
• "The Surefire DSF vs The Nightstick SLF"--The Mag Life. A comparison between two combination fore end/weapon lights for shotguns. Most of the differences between the two seem rather negligible but the set up of the controls are different enough that they warrant consideration:

    Both setups offer an ambidextrous option for activating the light as well as a momentary and constant mode. However, the lights differ a fair bit in how they execute this. The Nightstick SFL offers you one big ambidextrous button. It’s large, easy to find with your hand, and it provides a tactile, clicky design. The constant mode is a single press, the momentary is a long press, and the light shuts off when released.

    On the flip side, the Surefire DSF offers you four buttons to activate the light. Each side of the DSF has two buttons. The forward button is the momentary option, and the rearward button is the constant On. Both buttons are larger and heavily raised for a natural press. The fifth smaller button allows you to swap between 200 and 600 lumens.

• "Bad Survival Math: Fail to Recognize Assaultive Behavior + Denial =Throat Cut"--Active Response Training. Greg Ellifritz analyzes a news story of a New York City woman who had her throat slashed by a homeless man. As he notes, the woman ignored pre-attack indicators (the attacker made a bee-line at her), had a bad feeling about what the attacker was going to do and ignored it, and just screamed thinking others would protect her.
• "How To Use A Door Security Bar For An Extra Layer Of Protection"--Modern Survival Blog. The author is discussing an adjustable bar with a U-shaped piece on one end to fit around the stem on a door handle and a flat piece on the other to rest against the floor. There was a handle on the side that would loosen or tighten the piece to allow easy placement or removal from the door. I've used them and they seem to work well as long as the flat piece doesn't slide on the floor; we never had problems with linoleum or carpet but had issues when we moved into a place with wood floors. 
• "CDC removed stats on defensive gun use over pressure from gun control activists: report." Anti-gunners don't want people to know that the CDC found that people used firearms to defend themselves between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year.
• "NY Times Says Most Gun Owners are Law-Abiding, AR-15s are in Common Use, and Confiscation is Futile…Then Calls for 1st Amendment Limits on Gun Makers."

VIDEO: "The Bleak Midwinter of the 1430s"--

The History Guy (13 min.)

News & Headlines:

• "'People were turned into hamburger': How Putin's arrogance turned the war into a slaughterhouse for his troops." Essentially it describes troops sent into combat without training or sufficient equipment after being told that they were not going to be seeing any combat, and then puts the blame on Putin for not involving some of his top aids in his planning and taking the position that "[n]o matter how many Russian soldiers are killed or wounded on the battlefield, Russia will not give up." I'm not so sure that it describes arrogance as much as a leader that surrounded himself with yes men.
• Global warming in action: "US could face coldest Christmas in YEARS as temperatures drop 'much below normal' and arctic air mass blitzes southern states: Freezing onslaught will bring major snowstorms and holiday travel chaos for millions." Just remember that climate scientist were telling us twenty years ago that our children wouldn't even know what was snow.
• Well this explains a lot. The ADL is bragging on Twitter: "Did you know ADL trains every new FBI agent on their role as protectors of the American people and the Constitution?"
• Related: "‘An Atmosphere of Lawlessness’: Attacks on Churches Nearly Triple in 4 Years, New Report Finds." 

    A Christian leader has blasted the Biden administration for “creating an atmosphere of lawlessness” by ignoring attacks on churches and houses of worship nationwide, which have nearly tripled over the last four years, according to a startling new report.

    These assaults ranged from deadly to defacing, covered every region of the country and denominational background, and often sprang from pro-abortion domestic terrorism or other forms of left-wing enmity against biblical morality.

    Offenders committed at least 420 acts of hostility against 397 separate churches in the United States between January 2018 and September 2022. These cases include everything from arson and gun-related violence to vandalism and bomb threats, the copiously documented, 84-page report specifies.

    The attacks show the comprehensive nature of anti-Christian violence. Assaults against churches occurred in 45 states and the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Victimized congregations span the theological gamut from evangelical, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, mainline Protestant, non-denominational churches, Seventh-Day Adventist, to Unitarian-Universalists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (formerly known as Mormons). Assailants targeted parishes primarily attended by white, black, and Asian (specifically Korean and Taiwanese) Christians, as well as multiethnic congregations.

    The report documents one homicide, numerous arsons, bomb threats (real and fake), and a pervasive desecration of holy items. Vandals regularly smashed crosses, statues, and headstones in cemeteries; vandalized carvings of the Ten Commandments; set fire to a Nativity scene; and smeared feces on a statue of the Virgin Mary. They tore up a Bible and desecrated an American flag in a Primitive Methodist church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Denver’s Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church suffered two drive-by shootings this August. Smashed windows and spray-painted doors became ubiquitous. The number of assaults peaked this May through July but has remained elevated compared to historical figures, which usually number in the single digits.

• Related: "FBI Arrests Two Pro-Life Advocates for Protesting Abortion, Ignore 160 Attacks on Pro-Lifers." The article notes that "in 2022 alone, under the Biden/Garland DOJ, there have been at least 22 peaceful pro-life activists indicted under the act — with the first case involving pro-life advocate Mark Houck, whose family was raided after an altercation at a Philadelphia abortion business last year where he accidentally pushed down a man who was verbally accosting his 12-year-old son."
• Related: "Head Of Twitter’s Censorship Operation Was A Former FBI, CIA Operative."
• Related: "Twitter Files Part 6 reveals FBI's ties to tech giant: 'As if it were a subsidiary'."
• Related: "Revealed: FBI pushing Americans to sign away their 2nd Amendment rights."
• Related: "Hunter Biden laptop repairman details 'chilling' warning from FBI agent."
• Related: "FBI reached out to Twitter, sent trove of docs hours before Post broke Hunter laptop story."
• Related: "SHOCKER! WaPo Update About Mar-A-Lago Raid Doesn't Fit the Narrative."

    Remember when the FBI raided Trump’s home supposedly looking for “nuclear secrets” a few months back? Guess how that turned out?

    I’ll let the quislings at the Washinton [sic] Post spell it out:

Federal agents and prosecutors have come to believe former president Donald Trump’s motive for allegedly taking and keeping classified documents was largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos, according to people familiar with the matter.

In other words, Trump was keeping souvenirs, as everyone else does.

• Related: "Feds Had Informants In Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for J6."
• Related: "The Federal Bureau of Dirty Tricks."

    This month’s bombshell indictment of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who is charged with lying to the F.B.I. and whose work turns out to have been the main source for Christopher Steele’s notorious dossier, is being treated as a major embarrassment for much of the news media — and, if the charges stick, that’s exactly what it is.

    Put media criticism aside for a bit. What this indictment further exposes is that James Comey’s F.B.I. became a Bureau of Dirty Tricks, mitigated only by its own incompetence — like a mash-up of Inspector Javert and Inspector Clouseau. Donald Trump’s best move as president (about which I was dead wrong at the time) may have been to fire him.

    If you haven’t followed the drip-drip-drip of revelations, late in 2019 Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, published a damning report detailing “many basic and fundamental errors” by the F.B.I. in seeking Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to surveil Carter Page, the American businessman fingered in the dossier as a potential link between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

    Shortly afterward, Rosemary Collyer, the court’s presiding judge, issued her own stinging rebuke of the bureau: “The frequency with which representations made by F.B.I. personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other F.B.I. applications is reliable,” she wrote.

    Here a question emerged: Were the F.B.I.’s errors a matter of general incompetence or of bias? There appears to be a broad pattern of F.B.I. agents overstating evidence that corroborates their suspicions. That led to travesties such as the bureau hounding the wrong man in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

• Heh. "Office For Civil Rights Investigates Judge Judy's Women-Only Scholarship Program At New York Law School." Excerpt:

    The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating New York Law School to determine whether Judge Judy Sheindlin’s scholars program violates Title IX.

    In January, Sheindlin gave a $5 million legacy gift to NYLS to establish the Judge Judy Sheindlin Honors Scholars Program, open to women who primarily have financial need and who have the credentials to merit the scholarship. ...

    Mark Perry, professor emeritus of economics at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan, contacted the OCR to allege that the scholars program is “illegal,” since it is only for women, according to his Twitter page. ...

    Reached late Monday, Sheindlin responded to Law.com’s request for comment with some choice words for Perry. ... “Professor Perry’s assault on scholarships for 10 academically gifted women who can’t afford law school is petty. He says he has filed 700 such actions. He has too much time on his hands.”

I'm always fascinated by how the Left is always is upset when anti-discrimination laws are used against them.

• "'Comply or it's going to be a serious backlash:' Activist demanding $800,000 for every black resident issues warning to California's reparations task force." The article is about the debate over slavery reparations. The proper response will be a demand for blacks to pay reparations for the generations of crime they have committed. 
• Related: "'We're not asking, we're telling you:' Business owner demands black people receive $350,000 EACH in reparations since 'we worked for free' during slavery - at public hearing of California reparations committee."
• "Washington State education board wants a ‘cultural shift’ to ‘indigenous pedagogy’." From the article:

    Fox News reports Governor Jay Inslee’s hand-picked Professional Educator Standards Board also informed its sister agencies at the November 30 Governor’s Equity Summit that it wants a “cultural shift” towards an “indigenous relational pedagogy.”

    According to the PESB, in contrast to “white supremacy culture,” “indigenous relational pedagogy” includes things such as “slowness and deliberateness,” “humility and gentleness” and “responsibility and reciprocity.”

Don't forget other indigenous traits such as de facto enslavement of women and excessive violence. 

• Related: "The One Island Where You'll Definitely Die If You Set Foot on the Beach." The noble savage in all his glory:

    Located in the Bay of Bengal, North Sentinel Island was a national news story in 2018 when a Christian missionary John Allen Chau attempted to bring the word of Christ to these people, who he considered lived on Satan’s Island. He knew the risks, and after bribing some fisherman to get him within sight of the island’s shoreline, he met his maker—literally. The Sentinelese butchered the missionary and buried Chau on the beach where it remains today as multiple efforts from local authorities to retrieve the body proved unsuccessful—the natives kept showing up in force.

    In 2006, two Indian fishermen were illegally fishing in the waters around the island and got intoxicated, crashing their ship into the surrounding reefs. Witnesses from other fishing boats in the area witnessed Sentinelese men emerging from the dense jungle with weapons and butchering the two men. They later displayed their bodies like scarecrows on the beach as a warning.

Unlike us, they take border security seriously.

• We knew they had to be hiding something: "Some offspring of Moderna mRNA vaccine test rats born with skeletal deformities: Judicial Watch."
• The tech restrictions on China appear to be working: "China bans export of its Loongson CPUs to Russia." Russia isn't depending on chips from China, yet, but now it has been cut off as an alternate source.
• And this is how the sausage is made: "Prominent homosexual Republicans pushed GOP senators to pass Democrats’ same-sex ‘marriage’ bill." Reagan brought social conservatives into the GOP, but the GOP has pretty much crapped on them since.

    It has come to light that the 12 Republican senators who threw their support behind the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” (RMA) were swayed by cash and political clout wielded by a group of prominent donors, several of whom identify as “gay.”  

    At least ten GOP senators were needed to join Senate Democrats to reach the required 60-vote threshold for passage of the bill, which mandates that all 50 states must recognize same-sex “marriages,” even in the event that the Supreme Court overturns its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.   

    The New York Times reported:   

    Behind the scenes, a group of influential Republican donors and operatives, including some of the party’s most prominent gay leaders with long experience prodding their party to embrace L.G.B.T.Q. rights, banded together with the bill’s proponents in Congress for a coordinated, $1.7 million campaign to persuade G.O.P. senators that backing it would give them a political edge. 

    Their quiet work helps explain how a bill to ensure recognition of same-sex marriages across the country went from being the subject of an election-season political maneuver that few expected to be enacted to an initiative embraced by a decisive majority of senators, and an unexpected victory for the gay rights movement that will be one of the final acts of the Democratic-controlled Congress. 

•  "6 Republican Lies Behind the ‘Respect for Marriage’ Act." From the lede:

The recent, lamentable vote over the so-called Respect for Marriage Act revealed a new breed of Republican: The “personally pro-marriage, but” Republican. Like their spiritual forebears, the “personally pro-life, but” Democrats, they strenuously present themselves as people of deep moral conviction, who have equally compelling reasons to lay aside their views and act on other people’s convictions for political reasons. Here are six such explanations offered by Republican senators who supported the Disrespect for Marriage Act, and the reason their rationales fall short.