VIDEO: The Cowboy Canvas and Blanket Bedroll

A quick video showing how to put together and use (i.e., sleep in) a traditional canvas tarp and wool blanket bedroll. 

 VIDEO: "How to make a Cowboy Canvas & Wool Bedroll"
SensiblePrepper (7 min.)

Some Interesting Statistics On Handgun Ownership

Shooting News Weekly (h/t Instapundit) has an article with some interesting statistics on handgun ownership: "We’ve Seen the Handgunization of America Over the Last Half Century." Using data from General Social Survey, the author was able to show that "[f]om 1973 to 2024, the proportion of gun-owning households with at least one handgun rose from 40.9% to an all-time high of 80.4%, fitting a single 50-year trendline almost seamlessly (r-square = 0.91)." A few points that are interesting:

• First, you will notice a surge in handgun purchases between about 1984 and 1990, which I would correlate with the popularity of the "wonder-9" pistols and people afraid because of drug gang and cartel related violence (the "Miami Vice" effect would probably be as good of a moniker for this as any).  
• Second, there was a plateau between 1996 and 2008 (actually 2005 looking at the graph) where handgun ownership hardly grew.   The author doesn't give an explanation for this period, but if I were to hazard a guess, it likely was the result of the decline in violent crime rates that happened about that time.
• Third, handgun ownership began to climb again after 2005 (or 2008 if you are looking when it recovered from the post-1996 plateau), although there is another bend showing a slightly greater increase starting in 2016. The author of the article suggests that this post-2005/2008 climb "mark[s] the consolidation of Gun Culture 2.0 as the core of American gun culture — when personal protection firmly supplanted hunting and recreation as the primary basis of firearm ownership." That might be true, but it doesn't explain why. I suspect there were multiple factors. First, there was a jump in violent crime in 2005-2006 that might have restarted interest in owning handguns for self-defense. Second, by the early 2000s the majority of states had adopted "shall issue" concealed carry permit laws. Third, 2010 saw the beginning of the trend of states adopting "Constitutional carry" gun laws. Fourth, Obama was elected president in 2008--and there is a reason that he has been called the greatest gun salesman in history. Fifth, we started seeing more and more racially motivated violent protests starting in 2014. Sixth, I suspect the further bend upward in 2016 was probably a result of Sandy Hook and fears of increased gun control legislation that followed.

Wilder: Truth, Beauty and Good

John Wilder's latest explains that there are universal standards of beauty, truth and good no matter what the ugly, lying, leftists tell us. But the leftists reject objective standards of truth "because before Evil can rebuild, it has to refute that there is something True." It's one of the reasons that leftists are constantly prattling on about their feelings. 

Going After Traitors

CNBC reports: "U.S. suspends Microsoft, Adobe from green card labor program in foreign worker crackdown." The article indicates that the U.S. Department of Labor announced it was suspending Microsoft and Adobe from its Permanent Labor Certification program due to multiple federal investigations. 

    “Since 2009, just these companies alone have requested almost 3 million foreign workers. They’ve received over 230,000 H-1B visas approvals and over 100,000 permanent labor certifications. That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,” Sonderling said.

    Vice President JD Vance criticized Microsoft specifically, pointing to the firm’s 6,000 layoffs in 2025. Vance claimed that the company “replaced” those workers with people on H-1B visas.

    “So we’re going to continue to support Microsoft and have a great relationship with Microsoft, but we’re also going to deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show that they are going to get serious about putting American workers first,” Vance said.   

Microsoft and Adobe are not the only companies coming under scrutiny. Labor Secretary "Sonderling also said the Labor Department won’t accept or process any new applications under the program for a host of companies, including Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL."

The Latest Wilder: Marinating In Collapse

    I've heard from various sources that the average Roman wasn't aware that the Empire was collapsing even while living through it--they just assumed that the Empire would always be there because it always had been. But that doesn't mean that all Romans were ignorant of what was happening: there were complaints about the decline within the Empire and it is my understanding that many Romans even emigrated from the Empire to surrounding barbarian controlled areas to avoid the punitive taxes. 

    John Wilder's latest piece--"Collapse, You’re Soaking In It"--shows that he is perfectly aware of what is happening, and that we are currently living through the collapse of Western Civilization and, perhaps, even that of the United States.  And to illustrate that collapse, he casts his eyes on such diverse topics as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, feminism, unbridled immigration, and the riots in France. 

    A point to keep in mind is that collapse is rarely instantaneous. In retrospect, Rome's decline took roughly two to three centuries, generally marked by the Third Century Crises as the beginning and ending with the sack of Rome and, a few decades later, the deposing of the last Emperor in the 5th Century. The more dramatic Late Bronze Age Collapse is generally considered to have taken place over a period of 50 years for its acute phase--but while some empires disappeared completely, Egypt continued to limp along and some of the smaller powers actually prospered after the more generalized collapse. The British Empire began its collapse with WWI--over 100 years ago now--and accelerated in the decade after WWII, and appears to still be continuing as we see both separatist movements growing in Scotland and Wales, and the UK being overrun by invaders from the third world. I guess my point by all of this is that even if we are in a general collapse of the West, we must still continue living our lives, for we do not know what course events take and what will be the end.

Flock Cameras And The Surveillance State

    Flock Cameras and similar seem to invite abuse. For instance, the Daily Mail reports on a man who recently won a lawsuit against the Bexar County Sheriff, in Texas, for violating his right against an unlawful seizure. The man was subjected to a 76 minute stop and search of his vehicle. The deputy who stopped him claimed that the reason for the stop was that the vehicle had crossed the center line, which was later disproven by dashcam footage. The deputy ultimately admitted that he made it up as an excuse to search the man's car. But this is where it gets interesting:

And through the lawsuit, the Houston resident would discover the real reason he was pulled over: A series of Flock surveillance cameras had caught him making a one-day trip to the US-Mexico border. An anonymous law enforcement agent had flagged it as suspicious.    

    A separate article from Slay News, "Florida Officials Discover Mysterious Network of Flock AI Surveillance Cameras with Unknown Operators," is more unsettling. The article relates that after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered all Flock surveillance cameras to be removed across the state, St. Lucie County moved ahead with the request. According to their records and the permits that had been issued for Flock cameras, there were 52 in the county. But a sweep discovered another 14 being operated without permits. Three of these turned out to be operated by the Sheriff's Department (which raises its own issues of why the department had failed to get the necessary permits) but the remaining 11 are still unaccounted for--the county has no idea who operates them. Per the article:

    Flock offered to help review the cameras.

    A company spokesperson told The Washington Post that Flock often handles permits “where required, but permitting requirements vary by jurisdiction and are not necessary in every location.”

    The company said it had contacted St. Lucie County and was “happy to work with them directly to review the cameras in question and address any discrepancies.”  

In other words, we will never know who was operating those cameras or why. 

Exaggerate Much?

Exaggerated language is a hallmark of Middle Eastern cultures, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see this op-ed at the New York Post: "Oct. 7 sadly taught Jews that we stand alone" by Andrea Peyser. Yup. Stood alone except for billions in American tax dollars, munitions, and who knows what other military assistance, as well as the 80 percent of registered voters who said they supported Israel in the war against Hamas. But Peyser's editorial doesn't even register any of that. Because "fly over" country means nothing to her. All she cares about, it seems, are the opinions of the Hollywood leftists who have turned against Israel. So in her mind, Israel stands alone because the average American is irrelevant and a no one. 

Import the Third World, Become the Third World--Ceuta Edition

The latest in the migrant invasion of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta is that Spain is in the process of removing the beach encampments housing many of the invaders. But unsurprisingly, the beach has been heavily fouled by the invaders:

    Though the government was able to clear the nearby Benítez beach of a smaller migrant camp of around 250 last month within two days, the operation on Trampolín is likely to be more complicated, given the number of migrants and precautions needed to prevent the spread of disease.

    Indeed, it was announced on Friday that the waters surrounding the beach were “contaminated” with E. coli, representing a health risk to those who come in contact with the water. The Ministry of Health said that samples taken during the last week of September found “very high concentrations of intestinal enterococci and Escherichia coli, clearly exceeding the established limits for coastal waters regarding bathing water quality management.”

    This is believed to be as a result of the thousands of illegals using the water to bathe and wash their food dishes and utensils. There have previously been reports of migrants being infected with diseases such as tuberculosis, while health officials warned of infections breaking out as a result of migrants defecating on the beach. 

This is in addition to an estimated 200 tons of waste and debris removed from the beach. And Gates of Vienna makes the following observation about that 200 tons:

    The photo above shows police in the process of removing “migrants” from the camp on Trampolín Beach in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave/exclave on the coast of North Africa, ahead of next week’s planned visit by King Felipe VI. Notice that the poor wretched refugees aren’t clothed in rags, but in nice warm new-looking hoodies. Some of them are carrying backpacks, which are also new-looking. They all have cell phones. The tents they are being forced to abandon seem to be of good quality, with lots of extra bedding spread over them, also of good quality. If this were a true shantytown, all the shelters would be made of scrap wood, battered sheet tin, and cardboard, and their bedding would be tattered rags.

    The operation at Ceuta is a well-financed invasion. Who paid for all that stuff? 

Morocco supported the invaders, but did they pay for all this stuff? Or did the money come from the taxpayers of the nations being invaded? 

VIDEO: "Surviving The Rain"

You're in the woods. It's raining--or has been raining--and you are soaked through and getting cold. The producer of this video offers some tips on what to do next before things get worse. 

 VIDEO: "Surviving The Rain: Don't Make This Mistake"
Instinct Survivalist Wilderness Skills -Bill Reese (6 min.)

Anti-Gun Groups Want To Turn Your Pastor Into Your Enemy

From Shootings News Weekly: "Anti-Gun Orgs Urge Clergy to Use Red Flag Laws to Grab Their Congregants’ Guns." The article relates:

In September, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions published a tract titled “Extreme Risk Protection Orders: A Clergy Resource Guide” (extreme risk protection orders are the gun control advocates’ preferred term for red flag gun confiscation orders). The document was authored alongside groups including Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence, Faith Leaders for Ending Gun Violence, and Jewish Women International.  

By their fruits, you shall know them.