Gun & Prepping News #91

 Some links that may be of interest: 

• "Violence of Mind & Action: Combat Marksmanship"--Breach Bang Clear. 

    Combat marksmanship (CMMS) is the ability to place lethal precision fire on a threat target in all environments under the stress of combat in order to reduce a threat to a point that it is no longer viable.

    CMMS principles differ from those of marksmanship (MMS) because with the former, an enemy is either actively firing at you or has just been firing at you. In the latter, the Gunfighter has all the time to make a shot count. In CMMS, the Gunfighter has limited time to perceive a threat and then eliminate the threat. That time is literally the rest of their life.  

He goes on to discuss topics of preparedness, mental rehearsal, determination, passion, and speed in order to achieve violence of action:

Violence of action is the execution of actions with surprisingly overwhelming force. It is a culmination of all the passion, determination and speed needed to realize victory. When faced with violence of action the assailant must reevaluate the situation. Violence of action also diminishes the bravado of the assailant and increases the bravery of the Gunfighter. Violence of action is the one aspect that criminals use to surprise victims and totally dominate the situation. By dominating the situation, they control the victim. The Gunfighter must use all the aspects of the combat mindset to be the one that dominates the situation, eliminates any threats with the appropriate level of force and be prepared to go to that level of force.  Thereby controlling the situation and being victorious. 

• "Your Hunting Bullet Choice is Too Small: The Case for a .30 Caliber All-Around Rifle"--Shooting Times. The author's perspective is addressing a single rifle for hunting big game in North America, with his pick being either the .30-06 or .300 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM). He explains:

I recommend that most people wanting to be one-gun hunters focus on .30-caliber cartridges. Those can handle 180-grain to 200-grain bullets for black bears and big nondangerous game like elk and moose, where lighter, smaller-diameter bullets may be less effective.

However, he does recommend larger calibers for dangerous game (e.g., brown bear). 

• Speaking of .30 caliber hunting rifles: "Lightweight AR-10: Building a Hunt-Focused Backcountry Rifle (Part 1)"--American Hunter. The author begins:

AR-10 rifles are a lot of things, but “lightweight” typically isn’t one of them. That is, until the Ruger SFAR was released. But since that rifle is being discontinued, and the guns were somewhat scarce as it is, I thought I’d try my hand at building a lightweight AR-10 and getting it even lighter, if possible. I wanted to stay within a reasonable budget, though. That said, I observed diminishing returns in weight versus cost—it could be lighter by shaving off a few ounces (maybe as much as half a pound depending on the optic you pick), but it would be ridiculously expensive.

The first part focuses on the lower receiver, while the future part 2 will focus on the upper (including optic) and part 3 will cover tuning the rifle. The author used a Nemo Arms receiver set that is made of "billet 7075-T6 aluminum, it’s skeletonized in some places and has lightening cuts in others, minimizing weight." When I built mine, I used a Roam lower receiver made of magnesium which is listed as having a weight of 7.3 ounces. (I also used a Roam upper). 

Related:

• "Is an AR-10 a Good Hunting Rifle?"--Battlbox.  

Quick Answer: Yes, the AR-10 is an excellent hunting rifle. It is most effective for medium to large game like whitetail deer, feral hogs, and elk due to its semi-automatic action and chambering in powerful cartridges like .308 Winchester and 6.5 Creedmoor. 

• "How to Build an AR Hunting Rifle"--Peterson's Hunting.  Some discussion of building an AR-10 for hunting.
• "Building a Lightweight AR-10 on a Budget"--Shooting Illustrated.  

• On the subject of lightweight receivers (albeit for the AR15 platform): "33% Weight Reduction: New 1791 Industries LiteRaider MMC Receivers"--The Firearm Blog. Pricey, but here is the basics:

The weight race for AR platform receivers just shifted, and this is of interest for anyone who’s running & gunning a lot. 1791 Industries is introducing its LiteRaider line of ultra-lightweight uppers and lowers built from Metal Matrix Composite, a material engineered to sit 33 percent lighter than aluminum while matching the strength profile of 7075-T6. That's not a marketing-thin claim; it's built on an actual material science play, one that could reshape how builders approach the sub-eight-pound rifle conversation.

• If you are just looking for a lightweight hunting rifle, it is hard to beat a lightweight bolt action: "Howa Superlite: The Most Affordable Ultralight Hunting Rifle on the Market"--The Truth About Guns. The rifle, sans scope, is only 4.7 lbs. And as to price:

... Most of those ultralight rifles carry price tags north of $2,000, often $3,000 or more, before a scope ever touches the rail. The Howa Superlite in 6.5 Creedmoor breaks that pattern. At a street price that is typically under $1,000, you can easily build a complete rifle-and-optic package that comes in well under the price of other ultralight rifles. After putting rounds downrange from 100 yards out to 750 yards, it’s clear this mountain rifle backs up the affordable price tag with real performance.

• "I Want a Good Defensive Bullpup Shotgun…Is That Too Much to Ask?"--Shooting News Weekly. A quick look at the various bullpup shotguns on the market, including problems or downsides he sees to the different designs. He seems to lean toward the KSG-7 because he believes the extra tubes (and ammunition) just complicate the designs. And although the bullpup shotguns are slower to reload than standard layouts, the author does not believe this is a problem:

But I don’t think most people using a shotgun defensively will ever need to reload. I’ve looked, and I can’t find a single example of a civilian defensive shotgun encounter that required a reload. Even John Correia of ASP hasn’t seen a civilian defensive encounter that required a reload across the entire spectrum of civilian defensive firearms use. 

But, he also adds, "[a]t the end of the day, if having higher capacity and faster reloads is one of your must-haves, a shotgun probably isn’t going to be the weapon you’re going to pick anyway." 

• "KelTec KP50 Review: 100 Rounds of 5.7x28mm in a Compact, Folding Platform"--Guns America.  Another weapon you probably would not need to reload in a defensive context:

 KelTec completely reworked its original P50 concept, replacing the awkward top-loading design with a drop-free magazine, machined receiver and far more practical controls. We put the new KP50 through a high-volume range session, with and without a suppressor, to find out whether the unusual 5.7x28mm pistol is more than a novelty.

The review is very detailed--much more than most firearms reviews. However, the conclusion is:

    The KP50 is not for everyone, and KelTec clearly did not design it to be.

    It is heavier and larger than a conventional handgun. It lacks a last-round bolt hold-open, and its unusual internal arrangement requires the shooter to learn a different manual of arms.

    Ammunition cost will also discourage casual shooters from treating it like a rimfire plinker, no matter how mild the recoil feels. A 50-round box costs us $29, so it’s not ridiculously expensive but also not cheap like 22 LR.

    Within those limitations, however, the KP50 is a remarkably successful redesign.

    The new bottom-loading magazine corrects the original P50’s most awkward feature. The machined construction feels substantial. The folding brace, flat magazine orientation and uninterrupted top rail produce a compact package that is easy to configure and transport. Recoil is almost nonexistent, practical accuracy is excellent and the 9.6-inch barrel produces a meaningful increase in velocity compared with shorter 5.7mm pistols. 

     Most importantly, the KP50 is enjoyable to shoot.

    That may sound like faint praise, but it is not. Firearms do not always need to imitate existing service weapons or satisfy a narrowly defined tactical requirement. There is still room in the market for a well-built, mechanically interesting gun that is accurate, reliable under reasonable conditions, and genuinely fun on the range.

    The KP50 is strange, but it is not strange merely for the sake of attracting attention. Its unusual shape follows an unusual mechanical solution: fitting 50 or 100 rounds of 5.7x28mm into a compact firearm without hanging a large magazine underneath it.

    KelTec took an intriguing but awkward concept and turned it into a much more mature platform. The KP50 remains unmistakably KelTec, but this time the unconventional engineering is paired with unexpectedly good execution.

• "How the Kentucky Rifle Turned Frontier Hunters into America’s First Snipers"--Outdoor Life. A reprint of a 1948 article. An excerpt:

     It was in response to the demands of obstinate frontiersmen that the famous Kentucky model evolved. It hit its stride by about 1730 but underwent steady change for many years. Most rifles were built to the buyer’s specifications or according to the maker’s latest experiments, and the resulting new ideas were eagerly seized upon by competing smiths. For this reason, surviving examples show wide variations in detail. 

    No frontiersman wanted to carry a heavy weapon on his long treks in the wilderness. The weight was steadily reduced until the average Kentucky hunting rifle weighed between 9 and 10 pounds. (Those made for match shooting averaged about 19 pounds.) Similarly, using a large-caliber rifle meant that the lone pioneer had to carry a heavy load of bullets. So the caliber was reduced from the .65 and .70 common in Europe to about .45. The pound of lead that once yielded sixteen .70 bullets now gave forty-eight .45 balls — three times as many shots. 
    
    Simultaneously the front sight was enlarged and the trigger guard strengthened while it was stripped of its old bulk. But probably the most distinctive change came in the barrel, which on previous rifles had been uniformly short and heavy.

    Now it was lengthened, ranging in the early Kentucky models from 51 to 77 inches, or up to more than triple the length of the average big-game rifle of today. This meant that less powder was needed than before, because it burned cleaner. In the opinion of several authorities, this long barrel which gave great accuracy at the same time that it deadened the noise of the firing was the main factor in the success of the Kentucky rifle. 

    Coupled with this was the novel “patch” method of loading invented by some unsung genius. Thanks largely to this discovery, rifles could be reloaded in one fourth the time it took before, and eventually backwoodsmen were getting off their second shot in less than half a minute after the first.  

• "Butterfield Effect Hits ‘The Trace’ Hard as They Try to Reconcile Lower Crime, Higher Gun Ownership"--Shooting News Weekly. It's hard for gun haters and cowards to understand how gun crime can be declining at the same time as gun ownership continues to climb. 
• "Separate outbreak of diarrhea parasite with dozens of cases not related to recalled lettuce identified"--Daily Mail. 

    Health officials are tracking another outbreak of the 'explosive diarrhea' parasite as the disease runs rampant across the US.

    The FDA said 72 people had been infected with cyclosporiasis, a disease transmitted by food or water contaminated with human feces, in a separate cluster than the one with thousands of suspected cases potentially linked to lettuce and Taco Bell. 

• "How to survive the apocalypse, according to the world's best doomsday preppers"--BBC Science Focus. This article is mostly about the booming underground shelter business in the UK and the different survival needs a shelter must address. But there are some tips on storing food and water.
• "Why 20 Million Americans Now Identify as Preppers—and What They’re Buying"--Inc.  The article itself is not significant as it is just another piece on how the underground shelter business is booming--this time focused on the U.S.--but I was somewhat surprised at the statistic of 20 million Americans identifying as preppers, a number that has doubled since 2017 according to the article. 
• Perhaps more realistic for many Americans: "How to prepare for a huge disaster when you live in a tiny apartment"--Vox. An excerpt of an interview with Anna Maria Bounds, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York, and the author of Bracing for the Apocalypse: An Ethnographic Study of New York’s ‘Prepper’ Subculture. (There is a link to the podcast with the full interview). It has some useful advice on storing food and water when living in a small space. For instance, Bounds related:

    ... Another myth about prepping is that people think that that means that you have to have a whole room dedicated to stacks of toilet paper and rice and spaghetti sauce. Absolutely not. You just need to think carefully about how you live in order to learn how to manage your space.

    In the living room in the corner, I had a white freezer, which looked absolutely ridiculous. So I applied wallpaper to it, and I think it looks really cute. The things that I keep in there are varied. I keep several different types of meat. I have some uncooked, and then I have some that are cooked and sliced and that I’ve cooked and ready to go, and I’ve packaged them. We have vegetables, we have pasta, and we have soup. We have pot pies and extra bottles of water because in the event of a blackout, our food will stay colder longer because we have the frozen bottles of water in there. If we get an injury and I need to place something cold on our leg or on our back, we could use that. 

• "CPAP Battery Solutions" (Part 1) (Part 2) -- Blue Collar Prepping. The author discusses her solution for powering her CPAP is the power should go out. Her solution involved the Rockpals Freeman 600 power bank (which can be charged by solar) and some cords so she would power the CPAP using a 12 V output rather than AC. 
•  "How Long Do Firestarters Typically Last?"--Modern Survival Online. This is discussing ferrocerium rods. There are a lot of variables, not the least being the composition and hardness (or softness) of the rod. However, the author states they generally last between 5,000 and 15,000 strikes. However:

    The rule of thumb is that harder alloy compositions last much longer but they don’t produce as many sparks from a typical strike. That’s because less material is physically being consumed.

    Conversely, your softer alloy blends produce a much larger and more intense shower of sparks but they wear out much quicker due to greater consumption.

The Diversity Report #34

 A selection of articles showcasing the benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion: 

• "Trump’s Science Report: Visa Migrants ‘Sideline’ Many American Scientists"--Breitbart. An excerpt:

    Nationwide, at least 1.5 million white-collar jobs are held by non-immigrant foreign contract workers, most of whom arrived via the H-1B program. The universities’ foreign scientists get their work permits via the controversial H-1B, J-1, and Optional Practical Training programs.

    The science sweatshops financially exclude roughly 50 percent of young American technology and science graduates. The Americans, unlike most foreign students from poor countries, need to get well-paid 9-to-5 jobs to pay off their college debt, live a normal life, get married, and have kids.

    One side result is large-scale discrimination against non-white Americans in favor of Asian migrants.

    Amid this replacement migration, foreigners on visas now comprise more than 40 percent of the PhD students in the hard sciences, and roughly 25 percent of students in “applied life sciences,” the Kratsios report says. This critical population includes many students from China and India who bring their own national loyalties and home-country economic ties with them. 

• "Sanctuary California: Biden-Released Illegal Alien Accused of Raping 6-Year-Old Girl at Daycare"--Breitbart. 

    An illegal alien released into the United States by the Biden administration is now accused of raping a 6-year-old girl at a daycare in Sacramento, California, a sanctuary jurisdiction.

    Last year, illegal alien Gokhan Bagci of Turkey was arrested by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office and charged with lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged a detainer against Bagci that same day.

    According to police, in July 2025, Bagci was working at the Mather Childcare Center when he allegedly lured a 6-year-old girl into a closet pretending to play hide-and-seek with her. Once in the closet, police allege that Bagci sexually assaulted her.

    Following the sexual assault, police allege Bagci took the girl into a bathroom where he raped her. Police have said there may be more child victims. 

• "ICE, FBI Agents Arrest Illegal Alien Accused of Attempting to Rape Girl in Indiana"--Breitbart. 

Javier Cereque-Perez, an illegal alien from Mexico, was arrested by ICE and FBI agents before being turned over to the Fishers Police Department to face two counts of attempted rape, one count of sexual misconduct with a minor, and one count of sexual battery. 

• "A New, Fungal STI Is Quietly Emerging: Everything You Should Know About TMVII"--Yahoo.

    Vasilios Papapitsios noticed a scaly, itchy rash on their buttocks after a shower on March 13, which raised alarm bells for the long-time STI awareness advocate. Papapitsios, a South Carolina resident who uses they/he pronouns, usually stays up to date on the latest on sexual health news. He had been reading about an emerging sexually transmitted illness (STI) just a few weeks prior: a fungal infection, with the largest known cluster of cases reported in Minneapolis in July 2025, colloquially called TMVII.

    "I just showed up [at my local health clinic] and said, 'I think I have a fungal infection that's a new STI,'" Papapitsios tells Them. "They didn't even know what I was talking about. My doctor had to look it up."

[snip]

    According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC), TMVII is a fungal infection that can spread through sexual contact, but also by sharing towels and linens or any skin-to-skin touch. Patients and experts alike are concerned about the lack of response to TMVII, given that most of its cases have presented in men who have sex with men. The U.S. government has a track record of mishandling, ignoring, and actively cutting research funding of infectious diseases that disproportionately impact queer people. Coupled with the fact that it can take weeks to run a test for TMVII, some experts are concerned that the fungal infection has silently been spreading to epidemic proportions without intervention. 

• "FBI captures fugitive on ‘Most Wanted Fraudsters’ list who allegedly led $547M Medicare scheme"--New York Post. 

Khalid Satary, 54, was cuffed in the Middle East on Monday after more than three years on the lam for allegedly orchestrating a scheme to defraud Medicare of over $547 million, the US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday. 

• "Illegal Migrant Trucker from India Arrested for Allegedly Stealing $2.8M in Chemicals"--Breitbart. 

    Officials say Deepak Kumar, 31, illegally picked up the cargo in Pennsylvania on June 25, then drove off with the toxic compound.

    Tungsten oxide powder is used in armor-piercing bullets, ceramics, lasers, optical products, and high-tech windows, according to the New York Post.

    After the theft was reported to police, investigators used a Flock camera system to track Kumar’s semi and the vehicle was located in Indiana traveling on Interstate 70 near Greenfield.

• "Road rage driver who allegedly killed boxing star Hannah Rapp is career criminal with lengthy rap sheet"--New York Post.

Charles Eric Medina, 31, was arrested on manslaughter charges for fatally striking Rapp, a 26-year-old up-and-coming featherweight fighter, with his car while she was cycling with her boyfriend, Will Pollalis, in Brazos County, Texas, on Saturday.

• "California’s Fourth of July plunges into hell as stores looted, police horses charge and fires break out"--New York Post.  

    Fourth of July descended into mayhem across parts of Southern California as unruly crowds overwhelmed packed-out fireworks displays, looted stores, ignited fires and saw cops charge on horseback.

    The worst unrest erupted in Newport Beach, where Independence Day revelers poured into Orange County, choking traffic and triggering a police response as disorder spread near the pier.

    Authorities ultimately shut down businesses from the Newport Pier to Pacific Coast Highway as officers moved in to restore order.

• "Hasan Piker Calls Mao ‘One of the Great Leaders’"--National Review. From the lede:

    Hasan Piker, the leftist influencer, has millions of followers across Twitch, YouTube, and other platforms. And so it is not without interest that he has described Mao as “one of the great leaders of this world” and that, when challenged about this, he conceded that “there was a lot of f***ing excesses, let’s be real, but. . . .”

    Ah yes, there is always a “but.”

    The “but” in this case was that “the People’s Republic of China would not exist without Mao Zedong.”

    True enough. Then again there were tens of millions of Chinese who would have existed for quite a bit longer were it not for Mao or his republic. And many of those did not meet their deaths because of yet another catastrophic communist “reform,” but because they were, in one way or another, murdered.

 Reminder: Hasan Doğan Piker is the son of Turkish immigrants. 

• "Mystery as Democrat nepo-baby lands $411k-a-year council job over 400 other applicants... including THREE who scored better than her during selection process"--Daily Mail. 

    Questions are being raised over how the daughter of a congresswoman landed a $411,000-a-year council job over three other candidates who reportedly scored better than her in interviews. 

    Erica Lee Carter, 46, the daughter of late Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, was appointed as the Harris County Administrator earlier this year in a hotly contested hiring process with over 400 applicants. 

    The role is one of the best paid government jobs in Harris County, which covers over five million people including the city of Houston, with applications coming from CEOs and politicians across the country.  

• "Woke activist group says State of New York must offer reparations to ALL black people living there"--Daily Mail. 

    Civil rights groups in New York have released a report demanding reparations for black residents, arguing that decades of deliberate racial inequality must be amended. 

    The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) released a report last week titled, The Other New York: The Legacy of Slavery and the Case for Reparations Now. 

•  "Dr. Oz claims NY Medicaid program is being ripped off by Chinese crime syndicate"--New York Post. 

    Federal Medicaid czar Dr. Mehmet Oz said New York’s overblown $110 billion spending on medical bills is sickening — as he claimed Chinese crime syndicates are ripping off the Empire State.

    The TV doctor-turned-Trump administration official, blasted New York’s Medicaid program as rife with fraud in an interview Sunday as he outlined an alleged scheme that included millions of dollars in fraudulent medical bills.

    “Social safety net programs are being defrauded. They’re being hurt oftentimes by foreign governments or foreign-run criminal syndicate organizations,” Oz, administrator of the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said Sunday on 77 WABC ‘s the “Cats Roundtable” program. 

Gunman Walked Into LDS Church

The three videos below all pertain to an incident where a man, dressed all in black, walked into an LDS church somewhere in Utah with a revolver (unloaded as it turned out) and sat down in the foyer. The building was evacuated and police arrived and arrested the man without incident. If you just want the bare bones facts, I would recommend skipping the first two videos and go straight to the third video. 

    The first video is the host of the "Send Me" YouTube channel interviewing someone that was attending church when the incident occurred, and describes what happened.

    The second video is a follow-up to the first video, with the host of the "Send Me" channel explaining why he did not provide information as to the location where this incident occurred and why there weren't any news reports.

    The third video, from the Christian Warrior channel, provides commentary and analysis from someone who has helped train church security teams, albeit for other churches and not the LDS church; and, in fact, he is not affiliated with the LDS church. 

    As far as I can tell from my own interactions with other members, as well as comments I've read or heard, the Church's policy prohibiting the carrying of concealed carry weapons (unless a current LEO) seems to be largely ignored by those who regularly carry firearms. Individual bishops can try and organize a security team, but it would necessarily need to be current law enforcement officers per the policy. Not all congregations ("wards") have active LEOs; and some law enforcement organizations prohibit their officers or agents from participating in such teams. So, essentially you are on your own until police arrive, which is what the Church's active shooter training film basically tells you. 

    I understand why the Church has done this even if I disagree with the policy: many of the Church policies are driven by its risk management and legal departments. In this case, the Church faces less legal exposure by leaving the flock defenseless than if it permitted members to be armed or allowed security teams to be formed.

    But even if the Church did authorize teams, there are some practical considerations that would make it difficult to secure the buildings from someone getting in: that there is no single "main entrance". The typical LDS church building in the United States will have two "main" entrances on either side of the chapel and one or more "main" entrances at the rear of the building; and larger buildings will have additional entrances. For instance, up until recently I attended church at a building that had 8 entrances. Not all of these will be unlocked for activities during the week, but all will be unlocked on Sundays. 

    In addition to the aforementioned entrances, there will be one or more additional outside doors that will typically be locked--generally an outside door to the kitchen and possibly additional access or emergency exit doors depending on the design and layout of the building and code requirements.  

    These design considerations are because, on Sunday, there will typically be two or more wards (i.e., congregations) meeting in the same building plus people coming and going to other meetings for specific organizations (e.g., choir) or that have appointments with leaders. In short, the buildings are not designed for security; they are designed for easy ingress and egress.

 VIDEO: "EVACUATE! - Gunman in LDS Chapel"
Send Me (20 min.)

 

 VIDEO: "UPDATE - Gunman at the LDS Chapel"
Send Me (16 min.)

 

 VIDEO: "Armed Man Walked Into A Packed Church And Nobody Stopped Him"
Christian Warrior (19 min.)

Shilo Hendrix Found Guilty Of Using Racial Slur

MPR News reports: "Rochester jury finds woman who hurled racial slurs at a Black child on a playground guilty." Guilty of what? One count of disorderly conduct toward Sharmake Omar, the man who filmed her; but she was acquitted on a second charge of disorderly conduct for her conduct toward the kid that stole her baby's food. "She was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, was placed on probation and ordered to complete community service," the article relates. Since she isn't facing jail time unless she violates probation, it is doubtful she will appeal the case, which is probably what the judge is counting on since the conviction rests on very shaky Constitutional grounds as this article from FIRE explains: "Shiloh Hendrix’s conviction can’t be squared with the First Amendment."

    Unless the trial record contains some critical fact absent from public reporting, that conviction cannot stand under the First Amendment.

    The video merely shows a heated verbal exchange between Hendrix and Omar. No threats. No violence. Nothing beyond words. However much offense they caused, that simply does not justify the government imprisoning, fining, or otherwise punishing the speaker. A public argument does not become a crime because a speaker used a particular word.

    The jury reportedly was instructed on the quaint “fighting words” doctrine. Although still technically an exception to the First Amendment, the Supreme Court recently threw cold water on “fighting words,” observing it “has not upheld a conviction under the fighting-words doctrine in 80 years.” That case was 1942’s Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, involving a man who had choice words for a police officer. It’s a good thing the fighting-words exception has been sharply limited and arguably erased by the Court’s subsequent speech-protective decisions. Violent individuals shouldn’t have a veto over what others can say.

    Even if the “fighting words” doctrine still has a pulse, it’s very hard to see how it applies to Hendrix’s comments. The doctrine is, at most, confined to a tiny category of face-to-face insults that, under the circumstances, are likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction. But courts have made clear that even the most taboo racial slurs are not fighting words per se. And, as the video shows, Omar solicited Hendrix — who was walking away while carrying her child — to repeat the slur so he could capture it on video and shame her. She did so and then continued walking away. Nothing about the interaction suggests Hendrix’s words were likely to provoke an immediate violent response.

What this case is really about is punishing an uppity white woman. If the races had been reversed and she had been calling out "cracker" at a white kid, the prosecutor would have laughed at the mere suggestion that a criminal offense had occurred. 

    But perhaps the deeper lesson here is that we need to deport people like Omar. The kid's father obviously wasn't that upset about the incident. So why was Omar following a white woman around in a park and filming her? Had he been filming her before this incident? Or did he manufacture this whole incident in order to make money (he has raised over $40,000 on SpotFund)? 

Weekend Reading #66

 Some longer or more involved reading:

• Up first is Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump.  Some of the links that caught my eye in particular:
• Near the bottom is a link to an article called "Dark Arts for Good Guys: Break on Through to the other side," which is about how to ram a roadblock. The author of that blog did security and investigation work, including some that took him oversees. As such, he has a bunch of other articles on "dark arts" that cover topics useful if things go FUBAR. Here is a link to the page listing these other articles. He also just has a generally interesting blog, so check out other posts.
• An article on starting a rucking exercise routine/training program. Probably a good idea for anyone who thinks they might need to bug out on foot.
• A link to a video with tips on concealed carry in hot weather.
• An article with some advice on using tactical pens for self-defense; but if this interests you, probably the better course is to simply read and follow Greg's advice in his comments concerning the article.
• An article on why you should use "target depth training"--i.e., have your targets are varying distances. 
• The second part in a series entitled "Defeating the Covert Accomplice" because robbers rarely work alone. 
• For those willing to do some of their own basic gunsmithing work, an article on some simple upgrades and modifications for the AK you can do at home.
• A couple articles warning about how you dress, the bumper stickers on your car, and more, can make you stand out as a gun owner--it's no different than how other types of clothing, hair styles, makeup, etc., can identify you as belonging to certain "tribes". 
• In the event that you are in need of a chuckle or two, be sure to check out John Wilder's latest: "64 Or So Pieces Of Very Bad Advice." I can envision a leftist going down the list and thinking "sounds alright to me". 
• "The DSA's Plan to Remake America"--The Everyman Commentary.  The DSA has released a manifesto which reads:

 “For the working class to govern, we need a new political system. End political corruption and legalized bribery: get rid of lobbyists, dark money, and Citizens United, and publicly finance all elections. Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

Replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.”

The article explores what each of the elements of this communist wish-list entails, together with this warning:

    Our republic was created to tame the appetites of would-be autocrats, making tyranny unlikely, if not impossible to implement. Communists, by contrast, consolidate power.

    Lenin, for one, was notoriously unwilling to share power. He led a small faction of the Russian Social Democratic and Labor Party—Democratic Socialists’ presumed namesake—called Bolsheviks, or the majority. He labeled his opponents, usually in the majority, Mensheviks, as being those in the minority and it stuck. It’s not that his ideas weren’t attractive to the majority of socialists—they weren’t—but the future dictator deliberately cobbled together a cell of dedicated yes-men.

    Even after the coup, Lenin was unwilling to share power with fellow socialists which earned him criticism from old school Bolsheviks like Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev and the famed socialist writer Maxim Gorky. He survived an assassination attempt by the Socialist Revolutionary party member Fanny Kaplan who felt that the mastermind of the government takeover betrayed the revolution.

    After Lenin’s passing, Stalin placed his henchmen in local party cells and purged the opposition, starting with Lenin’s acolytes like Mikhail Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinoviev and the sometimes acolyte Lev Trotsky. Successive waves of repressions followed. By these and other methods, the population of the Soviet Union was successfully terrorized into obedience.

Reading this about the DSA brings to mind the famous quote from Rafał Gan-Ganowicz, a Polish anti-communist activist, mercenary, and writer. When a journalist asked him what it felt like to take a human life, he replied: "I wouldn't know, I've only killed communists."

VIDEO: China's Population Is Collapsing

China Uncensored's latest video returns to the topic of China's demographic collapse evidenced by the dramatic decline in the number of pre-schools and kindergartens, as well as some discussion of failed efforts by the CCP to increase birth rates. His thinking on why the Chinese refuse to have more children tracks my thoughts on the general decline in fertility rates: children have become a luxury that most young people can't or won't pay for. 

    On the other end, China is seeing deaths outpace births. The Rhodium Group published a paper earlier this year that predicts that China's population will decline by more than 60 million people in the next decade--roughly the population of France.  The report goes on to note that:

The headlines are bad, the regional breakdown is worse. The country’s most developed provinces are seeing falling populations, which will impact overall consumption and the future productivity of the labor force. The impact on household consumption is obvious, but the larger problem for Beijing may be the hit to social security funds. The fiscal subsidy to social security funds rose to a record 2.9 trillion yuan last year, or 10.1% of general budget spending, and appears set to rise in the future. 

It also states:

    The drop in China’s birth rate in the 2020s has been shocking, even in the context of continuous declines since 2018. The ratio of new births to total population reached only 0.563% last year, compared to 1.199% a decade ago in 2015. The total of 7.92 million new births for the full year was the lowest level since 7.57 million in 1939, when China’s population was closer to 400-500 million people.

    Admittedly, the number of women of child-bearing age has declined by 13% over the past decade to 213.7 million, but new births more than halved over the same interval. This reflects changes in behavior and preferences, as policy is now pro-natalist and has been far less restrictive since 2016, when the one-child policy was formally abandoned.

    Chinese citizens’ decisions to marry and have children later in life are the main reasons behind the collapse in new births. The average age of people married rose to 34 years old in 2024, from 32.4 in 2018. As a result, the number of marriages declined by 40% from 2018 levels to only 6.1 million in 2024 (Figure 2). The average age of women bearing children increased to 30.1 years old in 2024, from 28.4 in 2018. These trends correlate well with additional education and economic advancements in other countries, and these factors are likely having an effect in China as well.

    Another more recent factor that may be depressing births is the change in employment conditions. Alongside weaker economic growth, more workers have shifted to the gig economy, which does not provide security nor stable incomes. Additional discussions of potential AI-related job losses may be contributing to popular insecurity and uncertainty, which feed back into the birth rate as well. Social phenomena such as “lying flat,” “letting it rot,” or other societal trends developing within China’s youth also may be contributing to reductions in stable relationships and willingness to have children.

It doesn't help that China is an atheistic country as there is a strong correlation between religiosity and birth rates. (See also, "China’s Population Decline – The Impact on Business, the Economy, and Labor Markets" from China-Briefing). 

     China faces its own pension crises as well because of fewer workers to support a growing population of retirees. The Diplomat goes over this in a Feb. 11, 2026, article entitled "As China Ages, a Pension Crisis Looms." A key point:

    By 2040, roughly 402 million people in China are expected to be over the age of 60, more than a quarter of the population. By comparison, the total population of the United States is expected to reach around 379 million by that time. This shift marks a turning point for China, signaling the erosion of its long-standing advantage in abundant and affordable labor while presenting a formidable financial challenge in caring for an aging society. 

    These demographic pressures prompted China to begin a gradual adjustment of its statutory retirement age in 2025, the first such change in more than seven decades. The retirement age for men will gradually increase from 60 to 63 over a 15-year period while the retirement age for women will rise from 55 to 58, with adjustments varying by occupation. While delaying retirement may ease fiscal strain, it does little to alter the underlying demographic arithmetic driving the crisis. 

VIDEO: "China's Population is Collapsing"
China Uncensored (7 min.)

Some More Iranian War News

• "US beefs up military might in Middle East after unleashing powerful B-1 bombers to attack Iran"--New York Post. The headline is misleading as the article indicates that only a single B-1 was deployed. It also reports that "[m]ore than 150 medics have also been sent to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany — the military’s primary hospital for wounded troops from the Middle East," and that additional special forces are being sent to the region.
• "House adopts Iran war powers resolution as four Republicans join Dems to rebuke Trump "--New York Post.  Four Republicans joined all 210 Democrats to pass a resolution calling on Pres. Trump to “to remove the use of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, including potential ground forces in a combat role or used for occupation.”
• "Brent crude oil surges to $100 a barrel for first time since May after reports of Red Sea attacks"--The New York Post.  "Reports of fresh strikes in the Red Sea raised new fears that a second critical shipping route through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which carries about 7% of global oil supplies, could also be compromised – multiplying what is already the world’s worst-ever supply disruption," the article states. 

Israel To Sit Out The Rest Of The War?

Zero Hedge reported on some comments from Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich--the second most powerful cabinet member according to the article--with the article relating (bold in original):

    “The State of Israel has no interest in joining the contained confrontation between Iran and the United States," far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a session at the Katif Conference for National Responsibility, which endorses Jewish settlement in Palestinian territories. "The current situation is the best one for us.”

[snip]

    In his latest remarks, Smotrich candidly acknowledged that Israel and the United States have different goals vis a vis Iran, but said America's continued military engagement furthers the Israeli agenda. “[We] must remember that the ultimate goal of Israel, and not necessarily the United States, is to undermine and weaken the regime in Iran – to the point of overthrowing it,” Smotrich said. 

    Disregarding the widespread victimization of innocents that the strategy entails, Smotrich said destruction of Iran's economy will help precipitate the Iranian government's collapse. "Currently, inflation in Iran is at 85 percent, food inflation of over 134 percent in a total of four months, and the Iranian rial is trading at an exchange rate of 1.9 million to the dollar - and it's going up." He then reiterated that "the current situation is good for us, and there's no point in pushing ourselves inward."  

That might work if the economic collapse was not clearly the result of outside agents; but, as Germany and Japan illustrated during WWII, economic woes will not spark a rebellion when there is a clear enemy to blame. 

    The article also recounts comments from an Israeli journalist opining that Israel staying out of the fight makes it less of a target for Iranian attacks, allowing daily life to continue and saving the country billions of shekels for air operations or interceptions of incoming missiles. 

    Larry C. Johnson at Sonar21 suggests another reason for Israel pulling back is because both of its oil refineries were damaged earlier in the conflict and now Israel faces a shortage of diesel and jet fuel; and any further damage to the refineries would severely limit Israel's ability to continue military operations in Gaza or Lebanon. And yet another source, quoting the Wall Street Journal, indicates that the U.S., under pressure from Arab states, asked Israel to sit out the war in hopes that doing so will keep Iran from striking more of the Arab states' energy infrastructure, and make it politically easier for those states to join in attacks against Iran. 

    I think this is a good example of the maxim "countries do not have friends, only interests". Israel's interests were to (i) destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, which the United States has pretty much already done for it; and (ii) eliminate the Palestinians, which is easier to do if (a) the United States is distracted with Iran and (b) Israel can concentrate its efforts on Gaza and Lebanon. Besides, it increasingly appears that we are moving toward having boots on the ground in Iran; and there was no way that Israel was ever going to be part of that effort if for no other reason then it would outrage Muslims around the world. The best we can hope for is a limited invasion to capture the territory adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz, followed by an extended occupation of that territory by a coalition of Arab states. 

    The question that needs to be asked is what are the United States' interests? I would say that our interests are limited to keeping open the Gulf of Arabia and the Strait of Hormuz to the free transit of oil, which was the situation before the war but is now impossible because of the war. And the reason we are in this situation is because our leaders lost sight of our interests and/or believed that Israel's interests were the same as ours. 

NY Post: Ethiopian Immigrant Murders Three, Hates American System

The New York Post reports that Tsegaab Binessu has been arrested for murdering three of the staff at the apartment complex where he lived after the landlord refused to terminate his lease of a garage. But he also told investigators that he hated the American system for not allowing him to bring his wife and children to the U.S. from Ethiopia. "The prolonged immigration process, he said, led to his divorce and separation from his kids. He claimed he quit his job as a truck driver due to the stress of the situation, the document states." He also complained that he was treated unfairly because he was an immigrant and black. "When he was arrested, he had newly purchased camping gear, his US passport, his Social Security card, an empty handgun magazine and his permit to carry a weapon, according to the complaint."

He could have renounced his citizenship and gone back to Ethiopia at any time.  

I Want

 If you can't get an American 180, this might be the next best thing. 

VIDEO: "THE TIPPMANN FRT - THIS 22LR SHOOTS FAST!"
22plinkster (11 min.)