Weekend Reading #48

Some longer and more involved reading for weekend:

• First up this week is Defensive Pistolcraft's latest newsletter.  Jon Low starts with some words of wisdom:

     Combat, the self-defense incident, the criminal violence that you can't talk your way out of, is not like sparring in the Dojo.  It's not like anything we could safely simulate in training.  Striking to do injury is entirely different from working with a training partner at full speed full force, as Ralph Mroz puts it.  Sorry, but that's just reality.  

     So we do the best we can in training with the understanding that combat is different.  It is unlikely that you have ever shit or piss on yourself or vomited or shaken uncontrollably or laughed hysterically during an USPSA match.  So don't delude yourself into thinking that you have placed yourself under stress.  Under the debilitating stress of combat your muscles will tense.  If you survive, you'll be sore for days afterwards, even if there was no injury.  That's how tense your muscles will be under the stress of combat.  (No, it's not like the soreness after running a marathon.  You may get cramps and have to stretch in ways you had never stretch before to get those muscles that you didn't know existed.)  

     Your self-defense instructor should be teaching you how to avoid the lethal force encounter.  That is self-defense.  

     So we do the best we can in training.  Hopefully the training and practice will allow us to avoid panic, avoid freezing.  It might not.  But we do the best we can.  

     If you don't get your perceived optimal outcome, don't beat yourself up.  Don't feel ashamed.  We often cannot control what happens to us.  We often cannot control how we react.  Sometimes different parts of our brain takes over and we are just along for the ride.  [I have heard people say, you can't control what happens to you, but you can always control how you react to it.  Unfortunately, under life threatening stress, that is not always true.  Ya, training can mitigate, but as Sara Ahrens tells us, in the several lethal force incidents that she was involved in while a police officer, she had different and unpredictable reactions to the stress.  Maybe you think you're tougher than she was.  Maybe, but probably not.  That is reality.]  

     I have seen persons running their mouths at full speed, even though they were trained to keep their mouths shut.  Sometimes you lose control of yourself.  Take deep breaths.  Believe that God is with you.  

     I have seen a person beat another into a bloody pulp and continue long after the other was dead.  He just couldn't stop himself.  Stop!  Look around.  Assess the situation, the environment.  There may be other threats.  You don't want to get hit from behind while beating a corpse.   

He has a lot of good linkage and tips/advice, plus a list of upcoming training classes, so read the whole thing. Especially check out the section on "tactics" and "techniques". And, on a note particular to one of my posts from a couple weeks back--"VIDEO: 9mm Ammo Quest Roundup"--I'd noted that the testing in the video (which was 6 years ago) did not include some newer offerings, including the Federal Punch. Jon comments: "I have used and tested the Federal Punch.  I have found it to be reliable.  Much less expensive than the winners of this competition." He's not kidding. I pay $18/box (20 rounds) for the 9mm Punch locally while the prices on the ammo that scored well in the competition is typically hovering around $35/box from what I've seen. I watched a lot of ballistic gelatin tests on the 9mm Punch before starting to invest in it, and it generally performed very well. What you give up with the Punch is performance through hard barriers such as glass or a car door. But that is what makes it less expensive then, say, Federal HST. 

• Next up is the latest Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Lots of good links, as always (including a few you might have seen here) but the main one I want to direct you to is on eyewitness misidentification and Greg's account of such a mistake that almost sent a man to prison for murder. Some other links that caught my attention in particular:
• "Things Manufacturers Need to Stop Doing with Shotguns" (mostly looking at the tactical and defensive market) which includes things like too long of length of pull, too small of bolt releases on semi-auto shotguns, poor sights, etc. 
• "Situational Awareness for Everyday Life." This article is good in that it moves beyond the basic "stay alert" or "pay attention" but, like most situational awareness articles, still fails in that it doesn't describe for what you should be watching or paying attention to. Like pre-attack indicators, common behavior of criminals (including thefts), and so on.
• And related to situational awareness: "If You Go to Guns You Failed." A reminder that a firearm is a last resort and that if you had to go to your gun, you probably failed in situational awareness or avoidance. 
• "The Post-Shot Logistics." Some advice on what to do after a shooting.
• "Canadian Man Fights Moose To Save His Mom." Yelling didn't work. The moose shrugged off a punch to the jaw. It wasn't too impressed with the shovel or the headlock. But the .22 LR finally worked ... after 15 or 16 rounds.  
• "What’s Wrong With My Grip?" Some tips on why your grip on your weapon may be causing your problems. Not listed, unfortunately, is that your gun just might not fit the shape of your hand. 

These are just articles that were new to me and that I found interesting. There is a lot more, so check it out.

•  "The Housing Mess of 2026: At Least We Have Ramen"--Wilder Wealth & Wise. A deep dive into why the housing market is such a mess. Nonetheless:

    This type of mess always sorts itself out.  The cure for high prices is default and deflation.  If the market is too far cooked, well, look out below.  The United States doesn’t have magic dirt to turn Somalis into Americans, and houses aren’t magic wealth machines.  When enough locked-in owners and over-leveraged banks finally crack, inventory floods, prices reset, and affordability returns.

    It won’t be pretty.  Foreclosures will spike.  Portfolios will bleed.  Credit markets may lock up.  The Google® searches for “can’t sell my house” will turn into actual sales at prices that make sense again.

    A housing crisis wouldn’t be big for the country, would it?

    Nah. Just trillions in pretend wealth gone, generational transfers halted, and the kind of reset that makes 2008 look like practice.

• "March, 16-19: diplomatic impunity"--The Burning Platform. A long-time reader of this blog recently shared a couple articles with me, including this one. It covers a lot of ground--mostly the economic consequences of the attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, but it starts off by noting that Israel has over the past two years systematically sabotaged any attempts by the U.S. to negotiate the end of the Iranian nuclear weapons program while also killing anyone with authority to negotiate an end to this current war. And that brings me to the second article that was shared with me--"Things Go Haywire as Israeli Escalation Throws Iran Conflict into Dangerous New Phase" from Simplicius. It notes that Iran's response to the Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field was an attack Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas hub--the largest LNG terminal in the world, apparently. The Israeli attack did not set well with Trump and there are some rumors of a falling out between Trump and Netanyahu. This second article then goes on to discuss the economic fallout. 

    What interests me, though, is this observation:

    Israel is obviously escalating the conflict deliberately in order to ensure no off-ramp exists, and that US—and preferably its Gulf allies—commit to a total and decisive destruction of Iran.

    Israel is doing this via two simultaneous strategies: first by eliminating all the “moderates” and rational people within Iran’s leadership to ensure that only hardliners remain who will push for maximum punishment against the region. And second, by crossing Iran’s “red lines” in hitting its most sensitive economic and energy sites in order to spur Iran’s retaliation against equally critical sites throughout the region to ignite as big a firestorm as possible which can engulf everyone and coerce the entire world into “finishing off” Iran once and for all. 

This agrees with the timeline in the first article of the systematic elimination, by Israel, of anyone with authority to negotiate on behalf of Iran.