Another Leftist Lie About Guns Debunked

A persistent lie from the Left is that 99% of women with guns will be disarmed and the firearm used against them. But in "The '99 Percent' Myth About Women and Their Guns," the author digs into the statistics. The most relevant portion:

    The best place to look for this kind of question is the National Crime Victimization Survey, or NCVS. It’s the country’s main source for how often people get hit by crime, paid for by the Bureau of Justice Statistics within the Department of Justice and run by the Census Bureau. The survey doesn’t just count crimes reported to police. Researchers gather accounts straight from those who were victimized, covering incidents whether or not police ever heard about them, plus facts such as the victim’s gender, any weapons that came into play, and whether the person was hurt.

    A study in the Journal of Criminal Justice by Lawrence Southwick — “Self-defense with guns: The consequences” — analyzed that NCVS data to see what happened when crime victims tried to defend themselves. Southwick’s core finding on women is that women who resisted an attack without a gun were about four times more likely to be seriously injured than women who resisted with a gun. Slone’s own read of the Southwick data goes a step further: among women who used a firearm defensively, she calculates that 98.75 percent were not injured, for an injury rate of just 1.25 percent.  

So, as usual, the Left have inverted the facts: it being that 99% of women who use a gun defensively will not be injured.  

The Male Pelvis Is Especially Adapted To Bipedal Locomotion

The article, "The Wonders of the Male Human Pelvis," discusses research analyzing and comparing 91 modern human pelvises (both men and women) and two Neanderthal pelvises, noting that the modern male pelvis has some unique features from the Neanderthal or female pelvises:

    Walking has been described as a series of controlled falls. When you walk, you destabilize your center of gravity, then interrupt an embarrassing trip to the ground by swinging your leg forward to catch yourself, and so on. During these controlled falls, your body drops downward, which both stresses your joints and requires energy to recover from. 

    Per the team, the unique architecture of the human male pelvis means we do a better job of dealing with both of these issues. Because our legs are positioned slightly more forward, our quads both absorb the shock of stepping and spring our bodies back upward. This more energy efficient gait may give men an advantage over long distances. Because they were constrained by the demands of childbirth, women’s pelvises weren’t able to develop these modifications, researchers say. 

VIDEO: Houses In Ancient Egypt

An interesting video describing three common types of houses found in ancient Egypt (and remaining relatively unchanged up to the Roman period). The three are: (i) small row houses built for workers and craftsman; (ii) a town house; and (iii) a rural or suburban home for the wealthy. 

VIDEO: "ANCIENT EGYPT HOUSING: How a house revealed your place in society"
The Order of Architecture (11 min.)

Weekend Reading #74

Some longer or more involved reading:

• For those interested in gun and self-defense topics, Greg Ellifritz has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump available. Some of the links that caught my attention in particular:
• First up, it looks like Trump has come through again with the DOJ now taking the position that the ban on the sales of handguns to 18-20 year olds being unconstitutional. This is a great start to nibbling away at the Gun Control Act of 1968.
• A piece from SWAT Magazine on lubricating the AR.
• A video from Spyderco with advice for left handed people (some 10% of the population) about selecting and making use of folding knives with, obviously, an emphasis on Spyderco products. 
• Just because I have posted about this topic in the past, a Q&A with Giles Stock about the Scout Rifle and what Cooper intended. Interestingly, he recommends against anyone trying to custom build one today "as the Steyr Scout does it better out of the box."
• A great article from Guns Magazine on the use and practicality of using a strobing flashlight, including the history of the strobing technique. Notably, the original technique was not built around a strobing light; rather, it was two or more officers taking turns to quickly turn on and off a flashlight to distract a suspect while allowing the other officer to move. 
• A video with tips on hardening your doors.
• A couple articles on the importance of concealed carry guns needing to be truly concealed--i.e., no printing or inadvertently peeking out at times. 
• Attaining combat accuracy, with "a good standard to aim for; 4" group at 25 yds with a pistol and 4 MOA at either 100 or 200 yds. with your carbine."
• And an article that argues that locked classroom doors don't have any effect on reducing the number of victims killed in school shootings and may actually make things worse, with the author noting:

    During the two high fatality school shootings of the past decade, lockdowns and locked doors made the situation worse. In Parkland, students were trapped in the hallways with the gunman because they couldn’t get back into their classrooms after the doors locked behind them.

    In Uvalde, students and staff who were following lockdown procedures instead of evacuating from the campus were hit by bullets that went through the walls and doors. Just the idea that the classroom door was locked cause police officers to wait outside for more than an hour. 

There's more, so be sure to read the whole thing. Also, Greg has a recent post linking to some free (at the time, at least) Kindle e-books from Amazon.  

• "Cheap Prosperity Or A Logistics Trick? Time Will Tell."--Wilder, Wealthy & Wise.  A look at supply chains and fragility. For instance, John points out:

Right now, gasoline and diesel demand are dropping because their costs are going up in a painful way.  This is impacting the cost of every physical good, from water to steak, and not in the good way.  There are only two results from this situation:

1.     Recession, or,
2.     Inflation.

We have gone far beyond the time when politicians will allow a recession.  At any sign of those, the money printer goes brrrrrrrrr.  The result?  Huge inflation in things like wheat in poor countries, which leads to revolutions and uprisings.  People can’t eat, governments can’t govern.  

• A brand new report from Pew Research: "Tradition and Change Among Latter-day Saints in the U.S." An excerpt:

    Several of Pew Research Center’s surveys dating back to 2007 have found that Latter-day Saints are, on average, among the most religious adults in America.

    For example, about seven-in-ten Latter-day Saints surveyed in the Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) say that religion is very important in their lives. This is roughly on par with evangelical Protestants and members of historically Black Protestant churches – and far higher than the shares of U.S. Catholics (44%), Jews (27%) and Buddhists (21%) who say religion is very important to them.

    Latter-day Saints also have remained overwhelmingly attached to the Republican Party over the past several decades. About three-quarters of the church’s members identify as Republican or lean toward the Republican Party, as of 2023-24.1 Previous Center surveys conducted in 2007, 2011 and 2014 also found that Latter-day Saints were, on the whole, among the country’s most politically conservative groups when asked about their ideology.

    Amid these signs of stability, however, are indications of change within the church. ...

Some of the areas of change noted in the article is that the Church--in the U.S.--is becoming more ethnically diverse, slightly less religious, and "modestly" more liberal. However, some of the declines stopped over the past 5 years. 

VIDEO: Old School Street Fighting Techniques

Techniques of distraction, deception, and surprise--things to look for, or perhaps even use.  

 VIDEO: "7 OLD-SCHOOL Street Fight Tricks That Still Work"
Fight SCIENCE (6 min.)

Canada's Cost Cutting Measures

"Assisted suicides now makes up more than 1 in 10 deaths in parts of Canada — and rates are rising," reports the New York Post. In some areas, it is even higher: "Lanaudière — a mountainous region of Quebec just north of Montreal — had 13.4% of its deaths come from Canada’s medical assistance in dying program (MAID) in 2025, official records showed." 

This Is The Future If Dems Win The Mid-Terms

Being a bar that caters to mentally unhinged, woke leftists is not a good business model per this New York Post article, “Massachusetts lesbian bar nearly bullied out of town after lifting mask mandate — for one night a week." The gist of the story is that a lesbian bar--The Last Ditch--has been struggling financially, with the owners in debt and having difficulty paying themselves or their employees. So, in order to try and boost business, the bar--which up to now still required patrons to wear the stupid Covid face masks--announced it would go mask-optional one evening per week. The patrons went berserk:

    Some critics dramatically likened the decision to a “mass disabling event,” a “eugenicist” attack and a host of other hot-button terms that escalated to threats of violence.

    “I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic],” one commenter wrote on the western Massachusetts bar’s post announcing the change, the Boston Globe reported.

    “People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience,” wrote another, while a third said, “Just say you’re being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with.”

There's more, but you get the drift. On top of this, a group of patrons organized a boycott of the business.  

    The business soon found its divey barroom bare on what used to be busy nights, as irate customers banded together to boycott.

    Sales had already been slumping due to the bar’s floundering business model that includes rules like, “Nobody will be barred from entry due to lack of funds,” and “Poor and unhoused people are welcome in the space.”

 [snip]

    Metallian [one of the owners] has fallen behind on rent, and the bar’s landlord was demanding $3,900 by the end of September.

    And the fateful mask-optional Saturday nights haven’t helped, with the barroom all but empty each weekend despite drink deals and DJs that used to attract dozens of customers. 

 So, soon, the disaffected will have no where to go when the bar shuts down and the space becomes filled with another vape shop or pay-day loan business. But consequences don't matter to liberals. 

     The problem for normal people is that the people destroying this bar are cast from the same mold as those increasingly running the show for the Democrats. Which is why a poll from the Center for Strategic Politics recently conducted a poll showing that 59% of Democrats support a military coup against Trump,  68% believe we need “more immigrants”, and 69% want the Democrats to pack the Supreme Court. But they won't be just going after Trump, as the author continues:

     All of these are proxies for you personally, Dear Reader. When they say they want to see Trump die on television, when their rank and file celebrates the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s brutal livestream assassination, it’s just a proxy for Republicans more generally. Given the opportunity, they’ll fill the gulags with Wrong Thinkers like you and me, take our wealth, and give it to an army of third world immigrants.

    I don’t think Curtis Yarvin was even slightly exaggerating when he forecasted what a 2028 loss to Democrats would look like during a recent appearance on the Michael Malice podcast.

    “Number one, they’re going to do a full January 6 assembly-line prosecution of everyone. There will be some random bullshit charge,” he said. “Everyone they can find, just massive, massive prosecutions.”

    “And then you’re going to see mass migration,” he continued. “8 figures and up. Per year. Very very easy to work the system so they’re allowing 20 million third worlders in every year.”

    “Of course they won’t be citizens right away, but then the Democrats are going to be doing everything possible to facilitate ballot stuffing and all of their favorite little, undiscoverable things.”

• Related: "Leftists’ masks are coming all the way off — revealing the ugly truth"--New York Post.

Article: "Your Qualification Score Doesn't Predict Gunfight Performance"

In its article "Your Qualification Score Doesn't Predict Gunfight Performance," Tactical Science digs into the statistics showing the qualification scores don't measure whatever it is that makes you effective in a gunfight. The reason? According to the article:

    The data here and in other places suggest that firearms qualification does not relate to performance in the field. In science terms, firearms qualification is not a valid measure of field shooting performance.

    This is not surprising given that this is a case of far transfer. Meaning that we are practicing something very different from the thing people are expected to do in the field. The research here is very clear and consistent. Far transfer essentially does not exist. Some of my firearms trainer audience is already grumbling, but let me explain.

    In the field, an officer must interact with people, use movement and spacing to keep a tactical advantage, attempt to de-escalate, decide that force is needed, implement that force in a way that is effective and legal, assess the outcome, alter course if needed, and then deal with the aftermath.

    On the range, a trainee hears a timer beep or sees a target turn, and then fires a set number of shots at a piece of paper, which often only vaguely looks like a person, in a certain amount of time. Then they have to swivel their head because maybe the instructor is walking behind them holding up a random number of fingers.

    You should be able to see that while a gun is used in both environments, the perceptual cues that control the use of that gun and the actions surrounding that use are very different. As I have discussed in depth here before, perception and action are so intimately linked that if you change the perceptual cues, you automatically change the action. This means if you are not practicing with cues that are close to the real thing, then the actions you practiced will not show up in the field. 

Although the article is aimed at law enforcement, the conclusions should apply to civilian defenders as well. I don't take the article as saying that you don't need to train or practice on a square range--obviously you need to learn how to handle and use your firearm--but that you also need other training or practice.  

More On Possible Threat To Estonia

Another article from PJ Media on Estonia and Russia: "Will the U.S. Send Troops to Die for Estonia? Putin Doesn't Think So." A few points from the article:

    It's eerie how Putin appears to be rerunning Adolf Hitler's playbook of bombast, bluff, probe, and testing the adversary before unleashing his armies. Like Hitler, he has spent years conducting a "shadow war" or hybrid/gray-zone warfare to weaken NATO's resolve. This has included directing arson attacks against warehouses, defense production plants, and logistics hubs servicing supply chains to Ukraine across Poland, Germany, Britain, and the Baltics, as well as the physical disruption, arson, and signal tampering along critical transport corridors, such as Polish rail lines transporting aid and civilian traffic. Russia is also suspected of severing undersea cables and sabotaging underwater pipelines.

    There have been Russian airspace violations of Poland, Lithuania, and Romania. There have been strategic overflights, "accidental" missile or drone crashes near border areas, and fighter jet incursions testing NATO air-defense response times. NATO's feeble responses have emboldened Putin to the point that he now appears ready to stage the ultimate test in the alliance's 80 years.

    Putin now has 100,000 troops massed on Estonia's border and will attempt to call up another 300,000 reservists. Putin has manufactured a crisis about "ethnic Russians" being oppressed in the border city of Narva. He wants Estonia "to grant regional autonomy to the “Narva People’s Republic” — a breakaway statelet purportedly declared by Estonia’s Russian minority, but which in reality has been invented by the Kremlin, then mercilessly promoted on social media," writes UnHerd's Michael Kranz.

[snip]

    Like any good performer, Vladimir Putin has read the room and already knows NATO's response. Donald Trump is not going to ask American boys to die for Estonia, no more than he asked American boys to die for Ukraine. He will not send troops to defend Poland, Lithuania, Romania, or any European country, seeing the defense of Europe as a European matter. 

Although the U.S. is looking at pulling 25,000 troops from Western Europe, I suspect that Putin may have misread the room. It is notable that Lithuinia is receiving a new rotation of American troops--an armored battalion, so not a huge number--but not nothing. Nevertheless, the Russian threat is likely more nuanced than a full-out invasion of the whole country. Rather, as Stars & Stripes, reports, "Russia could test NATO’s bedrock collective defense pledge by sending a small number of troops to seize a sliver of Estonia, forcing allies to decide whether they want to risk taking it back, a new assessment says."

     The aim would be “breaking the alliance by causing it to fail to activate and act appropriately on its Article 5 commitments,” the Institute for the Study of War said in an analysis published Monday. 

    According to NATO’s founding charter, an attack on one member country is considered an attack on all of them. Invoking Article 5 is designed to trigger a collective military response by the other 31 countries in the bloc on behalf of the one under attack. 

    “A number of NATO states will likely be very hesitant to invoke Article 5 over a limited incursion, fearing the consequences of appearing to launch the alliance into a full-scale war with Russia,” the report said. 

    Such an operation around the Estonian border city of Narva could unfold without the major buildup that NATO might expect before an invasion, according to the Washington-based think tank. 

    Instead, Russia could position drone units inside its own territory while operatives seized key locations in Narva and declared a breakaway enclave.

I Can Believe This

Yesterday's Anonymous Conservative news brief linked to this Daily Mail article: "I investigated 700 UFO abductions. I started believing in God after survivors claimed two words saved them from 'demonic' entities." Key part: "Jordan told the Daily Mail he has investigated roughly 700 abduction cases, finding that those who called out to either Jesus or God claimed the supernatural incident immediately ended without further harm."

    I used to have a great deal of interest in UFOs and the like until I read a book that went into more detail on abduction cases than most accounts, and I realized that almost all of the accounts made some reference to the "abducted" person having involvement or interest in the occult. Sometime thereafter, I happened to pick up a book collecting myths of fairies and dwarfs and I noted a lot of similarity between the stories of people that encountered fairies and close encounters with UFOs, but with the odd recurrent mention that fairies could not abide the name of Christ nor being reminded that they did not have souls that could be saved. Thus, if UFO abductions are the modern versions of fairy stories, then it makes sense that mentioning God and Jesus would be just as upsetting to the "aliens".