Weekend Reading #78

Some longer or more involved reading:

•  First up is the latest Weekend Knowledge Dump from Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training. Lots of good links, but here are a handful that caught my attention in particular:
• The Concealed Carry's article on Halloween safety which I linked to yesterday--my thoughts haven't changed overnight.
• You've probably read that you are legally responsible for every bullet you send downrange, and Greg includes a sad example of a man who was found justified to shoot an attacker in his doorway, but then convicted of discharging a firearm into a habitation because a couple of shots struck a couple of houses across the street, earning the man prison time. Unfortunately, his conviction was probably because his attorney failed to raise the issue of transferred self-defense in the trial and didn't request a jury instruction on that issue.
•  An article from Massad Ayoob with tips on shooting micro pistols make a correlation I hadn't thought of before:

    I associate with a lot of genuine gun experts, and don’t know a single one who carries an optic-sighted pistol in their pocket. This is not to say that you can’t effectively carry such a gun concealed; it simply means that pocket carry and to some degree ankle carry are contra-indicated.

    It is not a coincidence that the increase in carry optics and the increased popularity of appendix inside the waistband (AIWB) carry occurred at the same time. When the gun is made higher top-to-butt with an optical sight, the broad expanse of the abdomen is a logical place to carry it, since there is more fabric draping down from the wearer’s chest.

•  On a related topic, Greg linked to an article on an article entitled "Carry at the Office," which begins with the author noting: "There are many options for concealed carry in everyday 'street' clothes, but the work environment limits the options for concealed carry in the office." After discussing how concealed carry entails trade-offs, the author makes another important point:

Active-shooter incidences are extremely rare, so that scenario should not be your primary concern. Rather, consider more common (but still potentially deadly) crimes like the armed mugger in the parking lot or an angry customer who chooses to commit life-threatening violence. 

•  An article discussing the five worst defensive rounds on the market. One of the rounds he mentions is full metal jacket (FMJ) pistol rounds. I would note a caveat with this which is that with certain low power pistols such as the .32 ACP, you can have either expansion but shallow penetration, or penetration but little or no expansion; and if the latter is your choice, you might as well used FMJ.
• The Tactical Professor discusses "Failing The Interview" with the interview being the evaluation that professional criminals make in picking a victim. 
• Greg has linked to the "James Bond Night School Reading List" which contains books to help you learn to be a "competent man" of action. I have to sadly admit that I've only read a handful of the listed books (but I consider each of them to be among the best on their particular craft or skill, which bodes well for the remainder of the books on the list).
• Greg links to a post entitled "A Glaring Evidence Gap" of which he warns: "Only click on this link if you are prepared to dig deep (170 pages deep) into the current prevailing conflicts regarding how best to teach the skill of gunfighting." It appears to address neurological based training systems for teaching shooting, which brings back thoughts of the system that Marcus Wynn (who sadly passed way several years ago) developed. 
• Another piece from this past week from Greg: "A Brief Encounter with Evil." An excerpt:

    He brought his eyes up to meet mine and grinned with a facial expression that exuded pure evil.

    I was a cop for 25 years.  I arrested murderers, rapists, psychopaths, armed robbers, and child molesters.  I encountered my share of evil in my former career.  Few of the seriously bad men I arrested in my police career had a countenance that was even remotely close to that of the young man I encountered on the trail this afternoon.

    His smile was so shockingly hateful that I actually caught myself recoiling slightly away from him.  That wasn’t the reaction I wanted to portray, so I stopped, narrowed my gaze, and gave him stronger eye contact without the normal friendly smile. 

•  For a change of pace, don't forget to check out John Wilder's latest: "It Came From . . . Halloween." John explains:

    Movies are our modern campfire tales.  Yeah, I know, not as good as real campfire tales, but here we are.  Given that, one of the things that humanity has shared around the fire since we first discovered fire was scary stories.  Sure, we heard about the events of the day, but the stories, the old stories that were passed down of tragedy and the supernatural were the ones that the kids really listened to.

    We’re not so different in 2026, we just lack the campfire and are distracted by the shiny objects that get put in front of us, like movies.  Since tomorrow is Halloween, based on publishing date, I thought I’d just run through a list of some of the Halloween movies that I thought were especially good.  As far as rules, I have once big one:  no more than one from a particular creator, otherwise my list would mainly be John Carpenter movies and Alien. 

As a general rule, I don't like horror movies, so I was surprised to see that I'd actually seen the majority of the movies on John's list. And to be clear, some of them are more fun than scary, such as the original Ghostbusters, The Addams Family, and Fright Night.

•  From the New York Post: "The AI jobs bloodbath is grabbing headlines — but there’s a hidden boom unfolding." The author reminds us that while AI is bringing downsides, there is a less discussed upside as well. An excerpt:

    That leaves two possible futures, and both are already underway.

    In one, AI helps established players like Amazon, Walmart and Google do more with fewer people.

    Productivity soars, profits accumulate among the richest, and the rest of us become better-equipped employees. Or we are laid off and hope for a basic income grant of some kind.

    In the other future, AI lowers the cost of expertise so far that one person with an idea can do what used to take a design firm, a factory relationship, a marketing agency and a warehouse to achieve. 

• "The Spy Who Exposed the Secrets of the Black Chamber, One of America’s First Code-Breaking Organizations"--The Smithsonian. The article notes: "In 1931, Herbert O. Yardley published a tell-all book about his experiences leading a covert government agency called the Cipher Bureau."

Long before the creation of the National Security Agency in 1952, the United States opened a top-secret Cipher Bureau known in government circles as the Black Chamber. Founded in 1919, the covert organization spied on American citizens and foreign nations alike. Its employees held no civil service status and were paid in cash from secret payroll accounts. Officially, the Black Chamber didn’t exist until 1931, when its founder, Yardley—bitter after an abrupt dismissal—decided to expose it to the world in a tell-all book titled The American Black Chamber. Eighty-two years before the infamous 2013 security leak by government contractor Edward Snowden, the U.S. was on the precipice of one of its first major intelligence scandals. 

 The surveillance state has existed for a long time.