Weekend Reading #68

 Time has gotten away from me this week, so this will be brief:

• Jon Low has a new Defensive Pistolcraft news letter posted at his blog.  There is too much to summarize it here, but one item that caught my attention in particular are Jon's comments concerning the incident/video of the guy that shot himself in the groin while drawing his weapon. (to find it, ctrl-F for "testicle"). Jon notes that he does not carry AIWB. 
• Also, Jon has some comments about a fellow who was right handed but left eye dominant and having an occasional issue of totally missing the target because, for that shot, his dominance changed. If you are one of those whose dominant eye does not align with your dominant hand, you might want to read it. (ctrl-F for "dominant"). 

•  Greg Ellifrtiz has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump. Like I said, my time was short so I have only had time to glance at a couple articles:
• The piece on irons vs. optics reminds me of the caliber debates. I don't particularly like concealed carry of my optic equipped pistol because the optic is just added bulk and a lint collector. Besides, as this article acknowledges, "Pistol optics probably don’t provide a huge accuracy advantage at close range…but a high level of accuracy likely isn’t needed at extreme close ranges. They do provide massively better accuracy at longer ranges (say 15 and further)." So really, they will be of most use for a target or range gun anyway. 
• Even though your odds of being killed by a bear are less than being killed by lightning, I still like to read articles about bear defense. The article in question this time is on whether the AR15 in 5.56/.223 would make a good bear defense weapon. A couple things that came to mind reading the article: (1) an AR15 is more powerful than most handguns people choose for bear defense, so I don't know why it wouldn't work unless it was loaded with varmint ammo that will violently disintegrate in the first few inches of gel; (2) there is an episode of "Monster Hunters" where they are investigating claims of brown bears in Alaska mating with polar bears and producing hybrids, which episode included a couple accounts of close encounters with bears. In one of the accounts, the hunter was using a large caliber rifle (a .375 if I remember correctly) who was only able to get off one shot before an attacking brown bear started to maul him (he survived but not without serious injuries); and the other was an Inuit hunting with a select fire M16 (!) who was also attacked by a brown bear and dropped it in its tracks with a magazine dump on full auto. 
• I don't have a long read for this weekend, but here are some articles I came across today that seemed interesting:
• They will never willingly tell us the truth: "Trump releases new UFO footage as files expose silent 500ft triangle over US base and mysterious body with indecipherable markings"--Daily Mail. 
• The decline of civilization: "Pack of Wild Coyotes Takes Over Abandoned Condo Complex in West Hollywood"--Legal Insurrection.  
• Tyranny never sleeps: "Arrests Made After Three Nights of Protests Against ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Homes Being Forced on Small English Town"--Breitbart. 
• Isn't this the second time in the past couple weeks we've heard of something like this? "Meta AI Model Escapes Testing Environment and Hacks External Service"--Breitbart. It will be interesting to see what AI models do once they are safely ensconced in orbital data centers. 
• "One-Way Attack Drone Found At Major German Airport: The Threat Has Arrived"--Zero Hedge. One of them had an explosive device attached. Believed to have been done by the Russians. 
• "Mysterious discovery near Egyptian pyramid reveals how ancient structures were really built"--Daily Mail. A canal system including dams, a diversion canal, and a triangular spill way. 

In-N-Out Shooting: More Video

The New York Post has an article with photos and an embedded video showing more of the shooting. The video is from security cameras at the In-N-Out store, so it shows more of what happened inside the restaurant and in the drive-thru lane. It includes footage showing the off-duty Idaho State Police officer with a small handgun helping herd employees out of danger and moving through the kitchen area of the restaurant, apparently toward the drive-thru window where he engaged the gunman.  

Mass Shooting ... In Thailand

The New York Post is reporting that a teen in Thailand killed his grandparents and then went to the Debsirin Nonthaburi School in Bangkok where he killed 6 more people, plus himself.  Fifteen people were injured. It appears that the teen used a semi-auto pistol, which is strange because in Thailand you have to be at least 20 years old to obtain a permit to possess a firearm; and you have to undergo a thorough background check in order to get a permit. It is also illegal to carry in public without a permit with heightened penalties for carrying at certain locations such as schools. 

    The Post goes on to relate: 

    It is the second school shooting in Thailand this year after a teacher died and a student was injured in the south of the country in February.

[snip]

    Gun ownership and gun violence are not uncommon in Thailand, which has seen a series of deadly shootings in the past six years, with children among the victims.

    Thailand’s worst mass killing by a single perpetrator in its recent history took place in 2022, when a former policeman ran amok in a three-hour gun-and-knife attack in the northeast that killed 36 people including 22 children stabbed as they slept at a daycare center.

    A gunman killed five people including security guards and a vendor at a Bangkok market in July 2025 before turning the gun on himself, while a teacher died in the southern city of Hat Yai in February this year when a shooter opened fire at a school where she worked.

    In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a shooting rampage in Nakhon Ratchasima. 

    And in 2023, a 14-year-old used a modified handgun to kill two people and wound five others at a luxury Bangkok shopping center.

    After the 2023 shooting, Anutin, who was then serving as interior minister, ordered a raft of gun control measures, including a short-term ban on new licenses, import restrictions, and banning of people under 20 years from shooting ranges.

    Longer-term measures also included a medical certificate assessing the mental health and psychological condition of gun owners as well as a specified validity period for some gun licenses.

And, of course, the knee-jerk response from politicians is to impose even more gun laws.  The thing here is that gun laws will not stop someone intent on killing others--they will obtain firearms through other means (avoiding the permitting process) or select a different means of killing (which is why we see more knife/machete attacks and vehicular attacks in Europe). Rather, all the laws do is disarm the victims. 

The Truth Shall Set You Free--Unless You Are James Comey

From Matt Margolis at PJ Media: "Bombshell Declassified FBI Document Blows Up Everything We Ever Heard About Russiagate." From the lede:

    For years, Democrats and their media allies swore up and down that the FBI's investigation of Donald Trump was a serious national security investigation, launched only because of grave concerns about Russian collusion. Newly declassified FBI records tell a different story. It turns out that the bureau formally opened its full counterintelligence investigation into Trump back in 2017, and used his firing of FBI Director James Comey as the justification.

    The president exercised his constitutional authority to fire an FBI director, and the FBI responded by opening a counterintelligence investigation into him.    

Prototype Infrared Glasses

From TechXplore: "Prototype glasses can turn infrared into color vision." Chinese researches claim to have produced a light weight (23-gram or 0.8-ounce) pair of glasses that allow a person to see into the infrared spectrum.

    The prototype device uses microscopic particles called mercury telluride colloidal quantum dots. When infrared light strikes them, they absorb it and convert it into electrical charges.

    These charges flow into an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), a type of light-emitting display that contains a red and a cyan color zone. Low-energy, or weaker, infrared signals carry enough charge to light up the red zone, while higher-energy infrared signals generate enough charge to activate both zones.

    "We redefine infrared vision by transcending the monochrome paradigm, translating infrared spectral and intensity signatures into discernible color variations rather than mere brightness changes," wrote the study authors in their paper.

Prototype glasses

    The scientists built a lightweight, 23-gram (0.8-ounce) prototype pair of glasses and tested it by shining infrared light through different shapes and moving objects. The results showed that the device projected sharp, color-coded images of these objects while still letting normal light pass through. This means a user can see the regular world and the infrared world at the same time. The team also measured electrical responses in human eyes, showing that the converted light triggered normal responses in the retina.

    Although the technology is still at the prototype stage, the researchers believe their innovation could have applications far beyond infrared vision.

    "By surpassing the evolutionary boundaries of biological photoreception, this technology paves the way for next-generation visual prosthetics and human-integrated sensory expansion."   

More: "Infrared glasses could push the boundaries of human eyesight"--Popular Science.  

More On Elite Overproduction

Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction being behind revolutions shows up in another article. In his Breitbart piece, "Peter Schweizer: One Third of Democrats Now Call Themselves Socialists," Sage San Martin writes:

    Besides being overwhelmingly white, the DSA’s voters are “largely Millennials who don’t remember history and did not grow up during the Cold War,” he says. “They grew up with prosperity, and they have no understanding of the failings of socialism, whether it’s the Soviet variety, the Cuban variety, the Venezuelan variety, or the Angolan variety,” Schweizer says.

    Schweizer also mentions the theory of “elite overproduction,” which an academic first theorized in the 2010s. “When revolutions take place, they are generally led by people who think they belong in the elite. So, they get the training, they get the education, and they have the family background. And then, when they try to get into the elite, they realize that they’re not going to make it and they get angry,” Schweizer says.

    “So, they blame the American system. They blame capitalism, and they take their anger out politically on the system, rather than maybe engage in some self-reflection and realize that they’re all not all that they think they are,” he adds.   

Interesting times. 

Number of Americans That Carry Concealed Continues To Rise

The Crime Prevention Research Center reports: "New Survey on the Rate that People Carry Concealed Handguns: Percent of Americans Carrying Continues to Increase from 24.3% in December 2024 to 29.8% in May 2026 to 30.9% in July 2026." Note that this is not a general population survey, but a survey of likely voters.

In the survey, 15.7% carry all/most of the time, with another 15.2% carrying sometimes/rarely. The percent who carry all or most the time increased from 13.0% in December 2024 to 13.2% in May 2026 to 15.7% in July 2026. But total percent who care increased from 24.3% in December 2024 to 29.8% in May 2026 to 30.9% in July 2026.  

Or, from the other side of the coin, the number of people that never carry a concealed handgun decline from 73.0% in December 2024 to 66.6% in July 2026. 

Dinosaurs May Have Been Incinerated By Heat Trapped By Dust From Asteroid Strike

Science News reports on a new study that suggests that after the Chicxulub asteroid struck the Earth, creating a 200-km wide crater, the land dwelling dinosaurs not killed immediately from the impact would have been incinerated by heat trapped under the dust kicked up into the atmosphere. 

    When the asteroid hit, it vaporized the surrounding rock, creating the 200-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater underneath the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the vapor cooled in the atmosphere and condensed into droplets of molten rock. The rest became a cloud of fine dust.

    What happened next has been a long-standing question, says planetary scientist Brandon Johnson of Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. Using deposits of asteroid material from North Dakota, Johnson and his collaborators simulated what would have happened as this dust spread around the globe.

    The results painted a frightening picture. Molten rock would have rained down with the force of a bullet, generating a lot of heat. Instead of escaping into space, that heat would have been trapped by the dust cloud and radiated back to Earth’s surface. The air would have warmed rapidly, turning the sky red, while any creature that couldn’t take shelter received 17 times the lethal dose of thermal radiation for humans. About an hour later, the radiation would have dissipated, and the dust cloud would have blocked out the sun. The only light would have been from global wildfires spontaneously ignited by the heat.    

And, per this article from the Guardian, the Chicxulub asteroid may not have been a one-off:

    Detailed scans of an underwater crater off the coast of Guinea in West Africa suggest that it was created when another large asteroid smashed into the planet around the same time at the end of the Cretaceous period.

    The violent impact between 65m and 67m years ago produced a crater more than five miles across, the scans reveal, with scientists estimating that the asteroid measured a quarter of a mile wide and struck Earth at nearly 45,000mph.

    Though smaller than the asteroid that sparked the mass extinction, it was still large enough to leave scars on the face of the planet. “The new images paint a picture of the catastrophic event,” said Dr Uisdean Nicholson, a marine geologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who first discovered the Nadir crater in 2022. At the time, the details of the impact were unclear. 

[snip] 

    The researchers cannot pinpoint when the asteroid struck Earth, but the discovery of the crater and its approximate age have prompted speculation that it may have belonged to a cluster of impacts at the end of the Cretaceous period. The asteroid linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs was far larger than the rock that produced the Nadir crater. It left a crater 100 miles wide in what is now Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. 

Traitors: Retired U.S. Generals Consulting For China

Natalie Winters writes about "Top American Generals Joined a CCP Spy Front's Backchannel Pushing China’s Military Agenda in Washington. Some Ended Up on China’s Payroll." As she points out: 

    The Chinese Communist Party did not need to penetrate the Pentagon to gain access to America’s military leadership.

    It built a private network around it.     

The program, she reveals, was called the Sanya Initiative (and, later, the “U.S.-China Military-to-Military Dialogue”); and it brought together "some of the most powerful retired officers in the United States participated in closed-door meetings with senior Chinese military leaders" to discuss "Taiwan, the South China Sea, missile defense, cybersecurity and the future of relations between the two militaries." She names names, which include a bevy of former top generals of the various branches of the military as well as chairmen or vice-chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But it didn't stop there:

According to the foundation’s own brochure, they met:

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen

• Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell

• Rep. Rick Larsen

• Rep. Mark Kirk

• Adm. Timothy Keating

• Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle

CUSEF published a photograph of the Chinese and American generals meeting Clinton in Washington.

 And it appears that lasted, with only a few years skipped, between 2008 and 2024. 

Federal District Court Rules Portions Of NFA Illegal

From Shooting News Weekly: "US District Court in Texas Rules That With $200 Tax Gone, NFA Registration is Unconstitutional." Since the justification for the NFA was that it was to collect taxes, the removal of the $200 tax stamp on certain NFA items, such as SBRs and sound suppressors, left Congress without Constitutional authority to regulate those items. However, the ruling only applies to the plaintiffs in the case and would not extend to NFA items that are still, in theory, taxed. The Mr. Guns & Gear channel has more:

VIDEO: "Breaking: The NFA Ruled Unconstitutional - What You Need To Know"
Mrgunsngear Channel (15 min.)