Tuning Your Rifle To Work With A FRT

I came across the video below on using different strength recoil springs and different weight of buffers to tune an AR so the FRT works. And the very next day, I saw a post from Big Country Expat dealing with the same issue. So this seems to be an issue with the FRTs, resulting in too light of primer strikes to set off a round and just the overall cadence and operation of the weapon if the weapon is not correctly tuned.  

 VIDEO: "So you bought an FRT... But it won't work, now what?"
Juicey Media (14 min.)

Ceuta--The Citizens Strike Back

From the European Conservative: "More Violence In Ceuta: Clashes With Residents, Ambush On Soldiers." After the Spanish government did nothing to stop tens of thousands of invaders bum rush the border of the Spanish enclave, the citizens are fighting back. The article reports:

    More than 2,000 Ceuta residents took to the streets again on Wednesday to demand a solution to the crisis that began with the mass entry at the end of July. Some of the demonstrators later broke away from the march and headed towards El Trampolín, the beach where dozens of invaders remain despite previous evictions and the opening of temporary reception facilities.

    Once there, they attempted to dismantle part of the encampments themselves. The Police Intervention Unit deployed a large number of officers and riot-control equipment to prevent a direct confrontation between the two groups.

Translation: the Spanish government is aiding and abetting the invaders. The article continues:

    The police intervention against residents has added another source of irritation in a city where a growing part of the population accuses the state of enforcing public order only when Ceuta residents themselves decide to take matters into their own hands.

    The problem is not a complete absence of police action, but an increasingly reactive response to a crisis that continues to generate new outbreaks of violence.

    The most serious incident came at around 5:30 a.m. in Benzú.

    According to police sources, a group of between 30 and 40 immigrants surrounded a vehicle carrying four soldiers from the 54th Regulares Group towards a surveillance post and began attacking it with large stones. The soldiers were forced to abandon the vehicle and flee on foot towards Calamocarro while being chased and continuing to come under a barrage of stones. All four were injured. 

However that didn't stop some of Ceuta's residents from setting fire to part of an illegal immigrant beach encampment and blocking the Red Cross from resupplying the invaders. Meanwhile, the invaders are acting like ... well ... invaders:

A local woman in Ceuta has described how she and her mother rescued a 12-year-old girl from being raped by five Moroccan illegal migrants, as the confirmed number of sexual assaults has risen to 16 since the mass invasion at the end of July.   

(Although another source says it was a 10-year old girl).  

Military Uses Laser To Shoot Down Cartel Drones At Border

The Hill reports: "Laser used to shoot down cartel drones near Mexico border." The article indicates the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser system was used to shoot down three cartel drones on Tuesday and early Wednesday this week. 

    Officials described the drones, though exact locations were not disclosed, as “hostile” and that they posed a “physical threat” to U.S. service members and Customs and Border Protection personnel.

    “Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” said Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, who serves as the commander of the border task force, in a statement. 

Weekend Reading #71

Some longer or more involved reading:

• Greg Ellifritz has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump at his Active Response Training blog.  Some of the more notable items:
• Greg links to the most recent Range Master newsletter, which itself has several items of interest including the drill of the month, some comments about the importance of institutional memory (i.e., history of techniques), and why 00 buckshot is the best buckshot size for self defense.
• Speaking of institutional memory, Greg notes that over the course of his career, he has "seen how the events encountered in historical police gunfights have completely changed training doctrine and equipment use for both police and armed citizens alike," and indicates that he is going to start a series discussing some of the most important law enforcement shootings and events that changed police training, gear and doctrine. In that vein, he links to an article about the Norco Bank Robbery. 
• Something that we may need to think about is whether to get involved in the defense of a stranger. Greg links to a piece that raises the issue of whether we are best serving our family if we do so.
• A historical article on combat using a Bowie knife. In the 19th Century, there were schools of fencing across the United States that specialized in teaching how to use this weapon.
• A review of Federal Punch in .22 LR as a defensive round. Short take: "But the .22 LR Federal Punch round stands above [other .22 LR rounds] in terms of performance and delivers penetration approaching the levels of .22 Magnum or even .380 ACP."
• Lucky Gunner's testing of ballistics from varying barrel lengths shooting .300 BLK. The testing didn't show much gain from using a longer 16" barrel over the short barrels. Conclusion: "The real advantage of .300 Blackout is flexibility rather than raw ballistics. You get solid performance inside 150 yards, it’s easy to run in a suppressed, short barreled rifle, easy to switch between subsonic and supersonic ammo without changing anything else about the gun, and there’s no shortage of factory loads for either." 

• John Wilder muses about "The Passing Of The American Empire?" First he lays out his case that the United States really does preside over an empire. Then he provides thoughts on whether we are in an empire in decline and where we are at on that path. 
• A long video (41 min.) rather than a read: "How cartel drug smuggling actually works, according to a trafficker"--Business Insider. 
• "Jim Corbett: Eradicator of Man-Eating Tigers & Conservationist"--Shooting Times.  If you like reading about the great dangerous game hunters, you've probably heard of Jim Corbett. If not, Corbett was tasked with hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in colonial India and became a bit of hero. But he also championed preservation of the big cats, with a national park in India named after him. And his caliber of choice was the 7x57mm Mauser (aka, .275 Rigby)--something that would probably be considered underpowered for hunting the big cats in this era. This article give a short biography of his life.  A couple more articles about Corbett:
• "Edward James Corbett - Hunter Turned Conservationist"--Nature Safari India. 
• "Inside Hunter Jim Corbett’s Legendary Showdowns With History’s Scariest Man-Eating Big Cats"--All That Is Interesting. 
• "Inside the disappearance of Hollywood starlet Jean Spangler that saw Kirk Douglas dragged into investigation... after mysterious note bombshell"--Daily Mail. An interesting article if you like true crime stories:

    In Hollywood's golden age, Jean Spangler was just one of countless young starlets dreaming of a fairytale rise to fame.

    With her porcelain doll looks and willowy 5ft8 frame, along with a resume of film bit parts, Spangler seemed destined to make some kind of mark in Tinseltown - even if it was not with her name in lights alongside darlings Betty Grable or Olivia De Havilland. 

    Tragically, the fame Spangler would so desperately seek would not come from her onscreen appearances, but her haunting disappearance in 1949.

    All Spangler left behind was a ripped purse, a mysterious note and a young daughter who never knew why her mother failed to come home. 

    The vanishing of the 26-year-old even saw megastar Kirk Douglas dragged into the fracas.

    Theories swung wildly - from her death during a botched abortion to Spangler leaving LA with gangsters.  

The article also notes that "Spangler disappeared just two years after the heinous murder of Elizabeth Short, who is immortalized in true crime history as the Black Dahlia. Spangler's striking resemblance to Short, combined with her work at Florentine Gardens, owned by Short's acquaintance and murder suspect Mark Hansen, saw police wonder if she was another victim of the killer." Unfortunately, Spangler's case has never been solved and remains open.

The Good News Story Of The Day

 “ICE arrested 50,000 people in July – quietly the biggest month in Trump’s second term”—The Guardian. 

Birds of a Feather…

 “Police raid home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's son as guns and ammunition are seized”—Daily Mail. 

Law enforcement sources told Alpha Newsthat a search warrant was carried out at the home of Omar's son Adnan on Tuesday night. 

According to the outlet, they recovered guns and ammunition from the home and arrested his roommate Abdulrahman Abdi, 22.

No Surprise Here

From the New York Post: “Shocking study shows link between transgender ideology and left-wing violence.” The article indicates that the researchers found “that those normalizing transgender beliefs were more likely to be supportive of political violence.”

This Is Funny

 And it illustrates why the wealthy are opposed to immigration enforcement: “Hamptons yacht club forced to cancel restaurant service after kitchen staff kicked out of US.”

A Practical Axe Manual

Happened across a useful resource: "An Ax to Grind: A Practical Ax Manual" published by the U.S. Forest Service. It covers the basics of using an axe, including chopping techniques and cuts, as well as covering topics of felling a tree (just the axe use, though, not correctly judging how a tree will fall and other safety issues), limbing a log, cutting pinned down saplings, bucking (cutting a log into usable lengths), splitting wood, and hewing (shaping a log). 

Safest Countries To Hide From The Apocalypse?

The researchers that looked into this issue, according to the Daily Mail, were looking only at global disasters, which fell into three broad categories: 

    First are 'Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios' (ASRS), in which events like volcanic eruptions, nuclear winter, or asteroid impacts suddenly block out the sun with dust.

    Second are events known as 'Global Catastrophic Infrastructure Loss' (GCIL), which lead to mass disruptions to electricity, transport, and food production systems.

    These could come from powerful geomagnetic storms caused by solar flares, high–altitude electromagnetic pulses from nuclear weapons, or massive cyberattacks.

    Finally, the researchers identify Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs), where natural or man–made biological hazards lead to mass casualties and disruption on a continental or global scale.

I find it interesting that they do not consider a full-scale nuclear exchange. It would have been at the top of the list when I was a teen.

    In any event, the safest countries: 

    Different countries have a range of factors that make them more or less resilient to each category of risk.

    Likewise, a factor that can be a bonus in resisting one challenge can actually make a nation more vulnerable to another.

    For example, being an island makes it easier for Australia to shut itself off from the world and isolate against pandemics.

    But this isolation can also make a country more vulnerable to global supply chain disruptions or fuel shortages.

    However, in the overall assessment, Australia still comes out on top as the most resilient against the widest range of threats.

    Other resilient nations include New Zealand, Japan, Switzerland, and Argentina, but all of these are exposed to specific threats.

    New Zealand, Japan, and Argentina all have long coastlines which are exposed to tsunamis caused by asteroid impacts. 

    Likewise, all of these nations besides Switzerland are dangerously close to one of the several volcanoes that could erupt in Southeast Asia and South America. 

What I don't see is any consideration of refugees or even invasion subsequent to a global disaster. For instance, Australia is only a short distance from Indonesia, population 288 million; the population for the whole of Southeast Asia is 706 million; and just a bit farther is India, population 1.47 billion. And since the Australian government has disarmed its people, that population would be helpless in the face of a massive influx of refugees and/or invasion a la "the Sea Peoples".