Snapping Cylinders Shut And Slamming Slides--Just Don't Do It

Massad Ayoob discusses the wear and tear that can result from snapping a cylinder shut on a revolver or letting a slide slam shut on an empty chamber of a semi-auto pistol. With the semi-auto pistols, the problem generally arises in regard to pistols with metal frames using cross pins:

     A cross-pin pistol is something like a 1911, CZ-75, Browning Hi-Power, or Beretta 92. All of these use a transverse pin or slide stop that passes through the frame and often supports the barrel. Sometimes by way of a swinging link, like in the 1911. In these systems, the pin is under some direct stress when the slide slams forward.

     Snapping the slide once probably won’t hurt anything. But snapping it every day over time can start to peen that pin or oval out the holes it rides in.

    On a 1911, especially, you might start to see premature wear in areas that weren’t meant to be load-bearing in that way. Eventually, that damage spreads. I’ve seen peened frames, cracked locking lugs, and loose lockups; all from repeated “dry slamming” of a 1911.

 Thus, "[a]s a rule, when running a cross-pin gun, drop the slide only when you’re feeding a round off a magazine. Otherwise, ease it forward and respect the mechanical design."

    As for revolvers, he writes, "[w]hen you snap a cylinder shut, what you’re doing is forcing a rotating, precision-fit piece of metal into a detent by inertia. Every time that cylinder slams home, something has to absorb the shock. And depending on your revolver’s action, different parts are taking the hit." The parts that take that shock or start to wear depend on the type of revolver: Colt, S&W, and Ruger are all a bit different in how they lock up and so the impact of snapping the cylinder shut depends on which design we're talking about. He explains it all, so read the whole thing. 

Wilder: The Poor Get Hit First

In his latest piece, "The Poor Get Hit First," John Wilder points out signs that money is tightening and prices are starting surge all across the globe. This will be a problem in the third world and those living on the margins:

    Let’s talk basics.  Even if the price of rice tripled, I wouldn’t notice much.  Rice is still cheap for me.  If I have to give up steak, I can just eat some rice, right?  But that’s not a universal truth.  If all a person in some third-world hellhole can afford is rice, and the price doubles, welcome back, world hunger.

    What a lot of people missed is that world hunger was a solved problem.  People just didn’t starve anymore, except in Hollywood®, and that wasn’t real starvation, it was just skinny starlets mainlining Ozempic® and calling it a diet.

    Global food production had climbed so high that famine was basically extinct outside of war zones and socialist experiments.  Now the dominoes have started falling.

    I expect revolutions popping up like mushrooms in Africa.  Hungry people turn into angry people, and angry people with AK-47s equals a revolution. ...

But, he predicts, it won't stop there, but will hit India and poorer parts of Asia.  It will strike Europe as well: limiting grandma to just one small meatball a week isn't enough to save the system. The refugees that have flooded into Europe will get restive. And here in the U.S.? I've been seeing local news stories featuring farmers complaining of not having enough illegals to work the farms and the high price of diesel fuel--and, if you don't know, almost all the equipment on a farm relies on diesel. But Wilder continues:

    Inflation didn’t hit the hedge-fund guy first.  It hammered the guy stretching a paycheck from one tank of gas to the next.  Fast-food prices doubled, rent climbed, and the folks at the bottom discovered that “essential workers” are only essential until the margins get squeezed then they can be easily be replaced by illegals or H-1B Indians.

    The poor lose first because they have no cushion, no skills that the market values, and no margin for error.  When times get tight, luxury items like $272,000 non-profit jobs disappear, and even the mid-level grift starts to evaporate.

    This culling isn’t random.  Societies have always had layers.  The top layer produces, saves, and innovates.  The bottom layer consumes more than it creates.  When the pie stops growing, the bottom layer gets the smallest slice first.

    The credentialed political-grifter class is about to get the same lesson.

And, according to Peter Turchin, these are exactly the type of people that will resort to revolution or civil war.  

A Few On The Decline Of Civilization

• "EU country ‘punishing’ the elderly with crazy meat restriction of just 2.8 ounces per [week] — because they ‘screwed up’ the climate"--New York Post.  The politician is a liberal white woman, of course. 

    Birgitte Kehler Holst of the left-wing green Danish party The Alternative was also accused of saying old people in nursing homes should be “punished” by restricting their meat intake in comments made in a meeting of Copenhagen’s City Council on April 30.

    She was speaking against plans to exclude nursing home residents from guidelines in the Danish capital that restrict meals at government-run sites to just 2.8 ounces (80 grams) of beef, lamb, or veal per week.

    That is less than the amount of beef in a standard McDonald’s Big Mac, which contains two 1.6-ounce beef patties — for a total of 3.2 ounces.  

 Malte Larsen of the populist Danish People’s Party pointed out the hypocrisy:

    “According to a politician from The Alternative, it’s because our elderly have been the biggest climate sinners throughout their lives. And therefore, they must be punished,” he added.

    Larsen also ripped the rhetoric of “self-righteous climate fanatics” as “grotesque,” adding that it was a pointless gesture.

    “No, we’re not saving the entire world by having our elderly eat only 11.4 grams of beef per day. Denmark emits 0.1% of the world’s human-caused CO2,” he added, taking aim at the hypocrisy of many climate activists.

    “Many of these climate fanatics who implement this kind of draconian climate measure have no problem flying back and forth to attend irrelevant climate conferences,” he said. 

This has nothing to do with saving the environment and everything to do with saving money. The welfare state is running out of money and the foreigners from the Middle-East and Africa which were supposed to work and pay into the system have instead merely increased the burden on social services. But rather than get rid of the foreigners, the leftists want to kill off the elderly white people that actually contributed to the system. 

• "Guess Why a Chicago Alderman Wants to Charge Walgreens With Crimes"--Townhall. Chicago Alderman William Hall wants to punish Walgreens for shutting down stores. The stores are being closed because the out-of-control shoplifting by Hall's constituents means that they lose money hand over fist. Hall says that Walgreens should be charged with "corporate abandonment". It's not a crime, yet. But this probably reflects ideas being circulated among leftists. This is probably a test to see how people react to the idea. 
• The usual suspects: "Violent teens clash with cops at NJ carnival — prompting officials to cancel beloved yearly event." The article reports:

    Unruly teens violently overwhelmed a New Jersey community carnival, sparking several fights and cursing out police officers, forcing organizers to prematurely shutter the beloved annual event.

    A large gathering of “unsupervised juveniles” descended on the Maple Shade Tigers Youth Football Carnival at JFK Memorial Field in Maple Shade, NJ, on May 1, inundating the yearly gathering that raises funds for the youth sports organization, according to township officials.

    “Officers on scene, along with event organizers, directed those involved and other unruly individuals to leave the carnival grounds in an attempt to restore order and maintain public safety,” Maple Shade officials said.

    “As a result of the incident, the carnival was closed for the remainder of the evening.” 

Interesting, If True

A CIA psy-ops? From the Daily Mail: "Religious leaders told 'prepare now' for UFO disclosure to unleash Bible-changing revelations." The article relates:

    Perry Stone, a well-known evangelist, author and Bible teacher from Tennessee, warned that fellow pastors were recently invited to a secret meeting with US intelligence officials to prepare for the release of secret files on extraterrestrials.

    According to Stone, the officials warned a small group of pastors with a large reach in the Christian community that the government was about to release reports and possibly videos of aliens and spacecraft which were not from this planet.

[snip]

    Last week, Trump said that the first files would be released 'very, very soon' and would contain some 'very interesting' things for the public.

    However, officials in this secret meeting allegedly said the information on its way may cause some Christians to question how the universe was created and even lose faith in religion.

    Stone said: 'You're going to have people who are going to say if there are galaxies and there are allegedly other creations in the galaxies, then the whole creation story is a myth, and you're going to have people that's going to apostatize and turn from the Christian faith because they have no answer for what they're about to hear.'

That Carjacker Shot Dead In Texas? He Was An Illegal Alien

From the New York Post: "Illegal immigrant ID’d as attempted carjacker gunned down by Texas dad protecting his family of 8." 

    An illegal immigrant from Mexico was identified as the suspect who was fatally shot when he tried to carjack a Texas father who was defending his family.

    Jose Ramirez, 30, is accused of trying to steal several cars off Highway 66, about 18 miles outside downtown Dallas, before he was shot and killed on Sunday, according to Fox 4 Dallas. 

    Investigators told the outlet that Ramirez was a Mexican national living in the US illegally and wasn’t a Garland resident. It is not known when or where Ramirez entered the US.    

The article adds that the father fired more than 10 rounds at Ramirez. 

F-18 Fires On, Disables Iranian Oil Tanker

The New York Post reports that "[t]he US military fired on and disabled an Iranian-flagged tanker that tried to break the naval blockade around the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday[.]"

“After [the M/T] Hasna’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings, US forces disabled the tanker’s rudder by firing several rounds from the 20mm cannon gun of a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet launched from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72),” CENTCOM wrote on X. 

In other news, France has deployed its sole nuclear aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, and its battle group to assist with peacekeeping operations should the U.S. and Iran reach a peace deal. The carrier and its retinue of ships is en route to the Red Sea. 

Tips For Bugging Out To The Country

I'm not a big fan of bugging out because home is probably where your supplies are located, you know your neighbors and hopefully have friends and family nearby, and you likely know the area and resources near at hand. Unless you have a cabin or vacation home somewhere, you are leaving behind your greatest advantages in order to become a refugee, subject to the whims of other people. And even if you have a cabin or second home, you still have to get there ... and hope someone else hasn't already taken over the place. 

    A couple things that come to mind on that last point, one fictional and one real. The fictional one is from the novel Lucifer's Hammer.  One of the main protagonists, who is moderately wealthy, and another character are fleeing Los Angeles to get to our main protagonist's cabin/private observatory because it is isolated and there is food. They get there, though, and the caretaker and his wife won't admit them, claiming there is not enough food. Deciding not to push the issue, the two journey on. 

    The second was a news story from 60 Minutes or similar from back when I was a kid. It was mostly about how motorcyclists and other people operating off-road vehicles were tearing up the fragile ecosystem of the Mojave Desert. But some of these people were also breaking into houses and cottages. And one item that stuck with me through the years was the account of a family that had come out to their vacation home one weekend to find it had broken into with dozens of motorcyclists still there. Walking in, the homeowner was offered a beer--one from his own refrigerator--by a trespasser. 

    The point of these is that you cannot guarantee that if you are going to a second home or cabin somewhere that it will still be available to you. If you don't have someone there, it could easily be taken over and claimed by strangers who got there before you, or even someone living in the area. If you do have someone living there, in a widespread SHTF event, there is no guarantee they will allow you to stay there. 

    And what if you don't have a vacation home or cabin to go to?  Then what? Are you going to set up a tent in the nearest state park or national forest with thousands of other people and slowly starve? 

    More likely, if you have to bug out, you are probably going to try and make it to a rural community or hope some farmer or rancher takes you in. If you are better prepared, you might have even planned ahead and have some agreement with a farmer or rancher to take you in. In that regard, The Survival Mom has some thoughts on making things run more smoothly in her article, "10 Tips For Bugging Out to the Country." But she also has some words of warning:

    "Farm” does NOT mean remote or isolated or even self-sufficient.  Farmers live pretty much like you do, but with more elbow room.  We go to the grocery store.  We have jobs.  We have neighbors.  And we have towns nearby.

    Okay, granted those towns can be pretty small by urban standards, but they’re just as full of unprepared people as anywhere else.  That means if the manure hits the rotating device, we’re going to have our hands full dealing with them.

    Bear in mind that most people in the country may not be much more prepared than you are – which is to say, perhaps not at all.  Unless rural folks already have a preparedness mindset, they’re just as susceptible to societal interruptions as your average city person.

    Our only advantage is we’re farther away from the masses of people, city folks who will take to the road in times of disorder, or so some survival experts believe.

    Or, are we really that far away and safe from thousands of straggling refugees? In our case, we live within a very short drive (as in, four minutes) from a town of 1000, many of whom are on welfare and are just as dependent on government checks as anyone in the inner city.  This means they will certainly go “foraging” when they get hungry.

    A rural “survival” retreat may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

    Many people don’t realize that the Greater Depression has already impacted rural areas. Hard. Jobs out here are as scarce as hen’s teeth (as the saying goes) and unemployment in our county hovers around 20%. Most of us are poor to begin with, especially by urban standards.  That means we don’t have a lot of money to pour into elaborate “prepper” projects.

    So does this mean you should give up your idealized little dream about bugging out to the country?  Yes and no.  It depends on how realistic you’re being about your bug out plans.

She then lists and expounds on 10 points:

1. Don't come unannounced.
2. Prepare the way.
3. Clarify your baggage.
4. You're not the boss.
5. Prepare to work.
6. Don't be wasteful.
7. Bring skills.
8. Clarify by contract.
9. Shut your mouth.
10. Practice forbearance.  

And just to be clear because no one else is saying it is, if you are bugging out to the country because of some civilization shattering disaster, prepare to enter a new era of feudalism where if you are lucky you will be a servant or farmhand on a small farmstead or the peasant (or slave) to a larger ranch or farm owner. More likely, at least until those farms run out of fuel for equipment and need the physical laborers, you will be turned away to either starve or join the ranks of raiders or warlords. 

Wilder: The Movie "Falling Down" Was Anti-White Male Propaganda

Falling Down was a reasonably popular movie released in 1993 starring Michael Douglas as William "D-FENS" Foster, who Wikipedia describes as "a disgruntled, unemployed defense worker who abandons his car in the middle of a traffic jam and goes on a violent rampage trying to reach his family for his daughter's birthday." But as John Wilder explains, "Falling Down [Is] A Movie You Should Hate, Because It Hates You." John goes through the subtle means by which the movie propagandizes you, but the answer to why "the movie" hates you is summed up by this quote from its writer, Ebbe Roe Smith:

“To me, even though the movie deals with complicated urban issues, it really is just about one basic thing:  The main character represents the old power structure of the U.S. that has now become archaic, and hopelessly lost.  And that way, I guess you could say D-FENS is like Los Angeles.  For both of them, it’s adjust-or-die time–that’s what the movie is about.”   

And by "adjust-or-die" he meant that white guys need to adjust or die. Because that is what the ending of the move was about. Or as John explains it:

    If you’re a white guy and thought that this movie was about you, from your frustrations with fast food to the epidemic of divorced dads who couldn’t see their kids, notsofastguido.  The author hates you.  The director hates you.

    They hate you and want not only to replace you but to eradicate you from memory.  In the end, D-FENS is shot to death in front of his ex-wife and kid.  Erased from history just like he was erased from his job and erased from his family.  His life, his dedication, turns to dust.  Even the lines, “I’m the bad guy?  How’d that happen?  I did everything they told me to,” are meant to demoralize you.   

In that way, no different from the theme (yes, singular) that plays out in the Knives Out movies by Ryan Johnson, except that Johnson's propaganda is about as subtle as a MOAB going off. 

The Federalist: The Real SPLC Scandal Is Their Use By The FBI

 Nicholas Giordano, writing at The Federalist, argues that "[t]he real Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) scandal isn’t just the indictment. The deeper scandal is that the FBI used a highly partisan activist group as an unelected, unvetted intelligence wing of the federal bureaucracy." He adds:

For years, the bureau didn’t just consult the SPLC. It folded the group’s ideology into its threat assessments and other work products, then used those products to brand Americans as hateful or flag them as potential domestic violent extremists.  

How did this work out in practice?

    The FBI’s Richmond memo, better known as the anti-Catholic memo, showed exactly what that pipeline looked like in practice. The FBI used the SPLC’s analysis to define so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholics” by their opposition to abortion, LGBT ideology, and adherence to traditional family values. Sen Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed that one Richmond analyst produced a slide presentation that equated Catholic beliefs in “[c]onservative family values/roles” with ideas “[c]omparable to Islamist ideology.” 

    Despite former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s claim that the anti-Catholic memo was the work of “a single field office” with limited distribution, the records tell a different story. Multiple field offices were involved, the memo was distributed to more than 1,000 agents and employees, and congressional investigators uncovered at least 13 more documents using similar SPLC-driven “anti-Catholic terminology.” Ideological narrative laundering became the FBI’s standard practice.

    FBI officials themselves recognized the problem. In an internal FBI email exchange, one official asked, “Is anyone really asking for a product like this?” and complained that “[a]pparently we are at the behest of the SPLC.” Another FBI official admitted the FBI’s “overreliance on the SPLC hate designations is … problematic.”

Read the whole thing. 

Black South Africans Protest Illegal Aliens

 A young black woman they interviewed had this to say:

Anyone just wakes up in the morning and decides that they're having problems in their own country. "Oh, let me look for greener pastures" and it's South Africa. And if we don't say anything about it or if we say something about it, we're told that it's black people. This is not a skin color thing. It's about us protecting our country, which is a sovereign state. We love our African brothers and sisters, but it's time now that they also fix their own countries for their own children and their own future. We're making it very clear to you guys, we don't want you here. 

 VIDEO: "South Africa anti-migrant protests: Thousands march, demanding illegal immigrants to leave" -- Al Jazeera English (2 min.)