VIDEO: Results of IQ Tests in Nigeria

The host of this video had heard from Westerners about the low IQ's of Sub-Saharan Africans, so he assembled a team, obtained funding, and went out onto the streets of Nigeria to select random people and have them take IQ tests to refute what he'd heard. The results, as the host puts it, were "very disappointing." The average score was 73 while the median was 69. I don't know if this was the high score or not, but he said only 3% scored 102 which is the average for whites; while 52% scored below 70. The host even took the test himself just to check that there wasn't something wrong with the test.  

Failing to show that Sub-Saharan Africans have comparable IQs to other peoples, the host then goes on to argue that I.Q. does not fully represent an individual's overall intelligence or potential and, so, it is "essential to highlight that this should not be a reason to mock or insult Africans." 

Whatever IQ measures, it is related to the ability to function and positively contribute in an advanced economy. And low IQ has a strong correlation to low time preference, impulsivity, and criminality.   

So when you hear or read that IQ is dropping in Western countries, realize that this is not because Westerners are getting less intelligent, but reflects immigration from the Third World.  

 VIDEO: "We Conducted an IQ Test in Nigeria, Africa"
BantuCityDiaries (6 min.)

VIDEO: Individual Skills For Reacting To Contact

This video goes over the individual skills and actions for reacting to contact as well as an introduction to what a team leader would do. By individual skills, the video is discussing things such as how you should move, taking cover or at least getting low to the ground, different types of fire, etc. 

 VIDEO: "How to Survive a Gunfight"
Echo Mike (12 min.)

VIDEO: Everyone Going To 6.8mm?

This video from Cappy Army discusses how the Russians and the Chinese are developing 6.8mm rounds for combat rifles, with both apparently aimed at developing rounds capable of penetrating body armor. He notes that the Russians already have issues with this because most Ukrainians soldiers have body armor. The Russian cartridge will feature a tungsten-steel penetrator intended to not only defeat body armor, but also light vehicle armor. It is also supposed to offer substantial improvements in range over current or past military rounds. 

The Chinese round appears to be a near copy of the U.S. 6.8x51mm, except that the case is 1mm shorter. Not much on it, but what little there is suggests that their focus is on defeating U.S. body armor.   

 VIDEO: "Why Everyone is Switching to a '6.8mm NGSW' for WW3"
Cappy Army (15 min.)

Illegals Who Vote, Birthright Citizenship, And More

From the New York Post: "Illegal immigrants from Africa, India and China are voting in US elections — here’s how they’re doing it." An excerpt:

    As the issue of election security ramps up in Congress with the SAVE Act, Sacko’s arrest was one of nearly a dozen uncovered by The Post of non-citizens allegedly voting in US elections, sometimes for decades, with many remaining listed as active voters on state rolls, even after their convictions.

    “The reality is aliens are voting in American elections,” J. Christian Adams, president of Public Interest Legal Foundation, who has spent decades working on election integrity, told The Post, noting no one is quite sure how widespread the problem is.

[snip]

    Adams said the main problem is aliens being invited to register to vote, usually through the mail, at the DMV or via third-party groups.

The article also covers several specific examples of illegals that have been caught voting in the U.S., and some are still registered to vote.

    In the long term, though, birth right citizenship and its abuse is the greater problem: "US territory turned tropical maternity ward has produced thousands of ‘American’ babies for parents living in China."  

    Pregnant Chinese women have turned a tropical paradise into a maternity ward — pumping out babies who automatically become US citizens daily.

    The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US territory northeast of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, has been flooded with so-called “birth tourists” since 2009 when then-president Barack Obama introduced a visa-waiver program for Chinese nationals.

    China-watchers estimate about 1,000 companies offer birth tourism to the Northern Mariana Islands, other US overseas territories and even the US mainland. They claim a gob-smacking 1.5 million American babies are being raised in China by Chinese parents who’ve participated in birth tourism.

All of those mothers and babies are subject to the jurisdiction of China, not the U.S., and so none should be considered U.S. citizens. 

    And more chicanery from the enemies of this country: "Left-Wing Activist Group Teaches Liberals How To Get Through Jury Selection and Vote 'Not Guilty' on Trump DOJ Prosecutions, Recordings Show." 

    A left-wing activist group is teaching liberals in Washington, D.C., and "across the United States" how to increase their chances of serving as jurors on cases brought by the Trump Department of Justice so they can undermine its chances of securing convictions, training materials reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

    Freedom Trainers, whose fiscal sponsor is the George Soros-funded group Community Change, is working to make "jury nullification"—the practice of voting against a conviction even if the defendant broke the law—a go-to legal weapon for the Left. Its sessions and training materials, reviewed by the Free Beacon, show how the group teaches "committed people" to gum up federal prosecutions.

     Leftists like to tell themselves that they are making a better society, but they are really just creating a hell on Earth: "*No Shame: The descent of modern society into Depravity." The article begins:

 When did it start? What was the first inkling that what was previously forbidden behavior, was now going to become not only accepted, but celebrated. What happened that now, if you don’t celebrate vulgar, depraved behavior, you are mocked and ridiculed? My guess is this started back in the 1950s and 1960s, with the discovery and heavy marketing of the birth-control pill. That one invention started a cascade of unpleasant changes in society, when sex became detached from procreation. Feminism was the motivator; that every woman was expected to go to college, be launched into the working world, and treat sex not as an act of love leading to marriage and children, but as just good fun, for only one night if she wanted.

The author then draws the line from female promiscuity possible because of the birth control pill and abortion on demand, to homosexual rights, to "gay" marriage, to the transgender movement, and the author's prediction of where it will go from there. 

    Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together: "Censored, Dismissed, Confirmed: History of Blood Clots & COVID Vaccine Debate"--Legal Insurrection. Also: "Leaked Report to Federal Advisers Calls for Urgent Recognition of Covid Vaccine Injuries"--Brownstone Institute. An excerpt:

    The report focuses on what it calls Post-Acute Covid-19 Vaccination Syndrome, or PACVS.

    The term refers to symptoms that persist for at least 12 weeks after vaccination and cannot be explained by another medical condition.

    Patients with PACVS often present with complex, multi-system illness. Symptoms may involve the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system, and the autonomic nervous system.

    The clinical picture varies widely. Some people develop severe fatigue, cognitive impairment, neuropathy, or dysautonomia.

    Others experience chest pain, immune disturbances, or endocrine problems. Symptoms often fluctuate and evolve over time, making early diagnosis difficult.

    Clinical features frequently overlap with long Covid — including fatigue, cognitive impairment, dysautonomia, neuropathy, chest pain, and immune disturbances.

    Yet many patients fall into a diagnostic no-man’s-land, particularly in the early stages of illness.

    Some eventually meet criteria for recognised conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), small fibre neuropathy, or ME/CFS.

    But even then, the path to recognition can take years.

    The workgroup argues that these difficulties do not necessarily reflect the absence of disease. Instead, they reflect the limits of the systems used to detect and classify illness. 

VIDEO: ATF Continues To Insist That Pistol Braces Are Illegal

According to the video below, the ATF indicated in a recent court filing that, despite the pistol brace rule being struck down, the reasoning behind the rule was still valid and it still considers pistols with braces to be short barreled rifles.  

VIDEO: "ATF: Pistol Braces Are Felonies AGAIN!"
Tom Grieve (10 min.)

Mars Pyramid?

From the New York Post: "Mysterious ‘three-sided’ pyramid on Mars fuels speculation about advanced alien civilizations." Some good photographs of the feature in the article. It has three sharp ridges leading to the peak, which are fairly straight but not as straight as you would expect from an artificial structure. Unusual, but I doubt it is artificial. 

Weekend Reading #48

Some longer and more involved reading for weekend:

• First up this week is Defensive Pistolcraft's latest newsletter.  Jon Low starts with some words of wisdom:

     Combat, the self-defense incident, the criminal violence that you can't talk your way out of, is not like sparring in the Dojo.  It's not like anything we could safely simulate in training.  Striking to do injury is entirely different from working with a training partner at full speed full force, as Ralph Mroz puts it.  Sorry, but that's just reality.  

     So we do the best we can in training with the understanding that combat is different.  It is unlikely that you have ever shit or piss on yourself or vomited or shaken uncontrollably or laughed hysterically during an USPSA match.  So don't delude yourself into thinking that you have placed yourself under stress.  Under the debilitating stress of combat your muscles will tense.  If you survive, you'll be sore for days afterwards, even if there was no injury.  That's how tense your muscles will be under the stress of combat.  (No, it's not like the soreness after running a marathon.  You may get cramps and have to stretch in ways you had never stretch before to get those muscles that you didn't know existed.)  

     Your self-defense instructor should be teaching you how to avoid the lethal force encounter.  That is self-defense.  

     So we do the best we can in training.  Hopefully the training and practice will allow us to avoid panic, avoid freezing.  It might not.  But we do the best we can.  

     If you don't get your perceived optimal outcome, don't beat yourself up.  Don't feel ashamed.  We often cannot control what happens to us.  We often cannot control how we react.  Sometimes different parts of our brain takes over and we are just along for the ride.  [I have heard people say, you can't control what happens to you, but you can always control how you react to it.  Unfortunately, under life threatening stress, that is not always true.  Ya, training can mitigate, but as Sara Ahrens tells us, in the several lethal force incidents that she was involved in while a police officer, she had different and unpredictable reactions to the stress.  Maybe you think you're tougher than she was.  Maybe, but probably not.  That is reality.]  

     I have seen persons running their mouths at full speed, even though they were trained to keep their mouths shut.  Sometimes you lose control of yourself.  Take deep breaths.  Believe that God is with you.  

     I have seen a person beat another into a bloody pulp and continue long after the other was dead.  He just couldn't stop himself.  Stop!  Look around.  Assess the situation, the environment.  There may be other threats.  You don't want to get hit from behind while beating a corpse.   

He has a lot of good linkage and tips/advice, plus a list of upcoming training classes, so read the whole thing. Especially check out the section on "tactics" and "techniques". And, on a note particular to one of my posts from a couple weeks back--"VIDEO: 9mm Ammo Quest Roundup"--I'd noted that the testing in the video (which was 6 years ago) did not include some newer offerings, including the Federal Punch. Jon comments: "I have used and tested the Federal Punch.  I have found it to be reliable.  Much less expensive than the winners of this competition." He's not kidding. I pay $18/box (20 rounds) for the 9mm Punch locally while the prices on the ammo that scored well in the competition is typically hovering around $35/box from what I've seen. I watched a lot of ballistic gelatin tests on the 9mm Punch before starting to invest in it, and it generally performed very well. What you give up with the Punch is performance through hard barriers such as glass or a car door. But that is what makes it less expensive then, say, Federal HST. 

• Next up is the latest Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Lots of good links, as always (including a few you might have seen here) but the main one I want to direct you to is on eyewitness misidentification and Greg's account of such a mistake that almost sent a man to prison for murder. Some other links that caught my attention in particular:
• "Things Manufacturers Need to Stop Doing with Shotguns" (mostly looking at the tactical and defensive market) which includes things like too long of length of pull, too small of bolt releases on semi-auto shotguns, poor sights, etc. 
• "Situational Awareness for Everyday Life." This article is good in that it moves beyond the basic "stay alert" or "pay attention" but, like most situational awareness articles, still fails in that it doesn't describe for what you should be watching or paying attention to. Like pre-attack indicators, common behavior of criminals (including thefts), and so on.
• And related to situational awareness: "If You Go to Guns You Failed." A reminder that a firearm is a last resort and that if you had to go to your gun, you probably failed in situational awareness or avoidance. 
• "The Post-Shot Logistics." Some advice on what to do after a shooting.
• "Canadian Man Fights Moose To Save His Mom." Yelling didn't work. The moose shrugged off a punch to the jaw. It wasn't too impressed with the shovel or the headlock. But the .22 LR finally worked ... after 15 or 16 rounds.  
• "What’s Wrong With My Grip?" Some tips on why your grip on your weapon may be causing your problems. Not listed, unfortunately, is that your gun just might not fit the shape of your hand. 

These are just articles that were new to me and that I found interesting. There is a lot more, so check it out.

•  "The Housing Mess of 2026: At Least We Have Ramen"--Wilder Wealth & Wise. A deep dive into why the housing market is such a mess. Nonetheless:

    This type of mess always sorts itself out.  The cure for high prices is default and deflation.  If the market is too far cooked, well, look out below.  The United States doesn’t have magic dirt to turn Somalis into Americans, and houses aren’t magic wealth machines.  When enough locked-in owners and over-leveraged banks finally crack, inventory floods, prices reset, and affordability returns.

    It won’t be pretty.  Foreclosures will spike.  Portfolios will bleed.  Credit markets may lock up.  The Google® searches for “can’t sell my house” will turn into actual sales at prices that make sense again.

    A housing crisis wouldn’t be big for the country, would it?

    Nah. Just trillions in pretend wealth gone, generational transfers halted, and the kind of reset that makes 2008 look like practice.

• "March, 16-19: diplomatic impunity"--The Burning Platform. A long-time reader of this blog recently shared a couple articles with me, including this one. It covers a lot of ground--mostly the economic consequences of the attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, but it starts off by noting that Israel has over the past two years systematically sabotaged any attempts by the U.S. to negotiate the end of the Iranian nuclear weapons program while also killing anyone with authority to negotiate an end to this current war. And that brings me to the second article that was shared with me--"Things Go Haywire as Israeli Escalation Throws Iran Conflict into Dangerous New Phase" from Simplicius. It notes that Iran's response to the Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field was an attack Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas hub--the largest LNG terminal in the world, apparently. The Israeli attack did not set well with Trump and there are some rumors of a falling out between Trump and Netanyahu. This second article then goes on to discuss the economic fallout. 

    What interests me, though, is this observation:

    Israel is obviously escalating the conflict deliberately in order to ensure no off-ramp exists, and that US—and preferably its Gulf allies—commit to a total and decisive destruction of Iran.

    Israel is doing this via two simultaneous strategies: first by eliminating all the “moderates” and rational people within Iran’s leadership to ensure that only hardliners remain who will push for maximum punishment against the region. And second, by crossing Iran’s “red lines” in hitting its most sensitive economic and energy sites in order to spur Iran’s retaliation against equally critical sites throughout the region to ignite as big a firestorm as possible which can engulf everyone and coerce the entire world into “finishing off” Iran once and for all. 

This agrees with the timeline in the first article of the systematic elimination, by Israel, of anyone with authority to negotiate on behalf of Iran. 

RIP: Chuck Norris Dead At 86

It seems like it should be a sign of the End Times: it has been announced that "Chuck Norris, 'Walker, Texas Ranger' star and martial artist, dies at 86."

VIDEO: Overview Of New M8 Rifle

Well that was quick. It appears that the M7 is already being shuffled off the stage for an upgraded version: the M8. 

    What upgrades?

    According to the video, the weapon is about 1 lb. lighter than the M7. This was made possible by shortening the barrel from 13 inches to 11 inches; making the handguard lighter by shortening it and removing some material; removing the folding stock feature (so the M8 will just have a collapsible stock); and using a shorter silencer. (There is a thermal cover for the silencer also to reduce thermal signature and prevent contact burns). 

    The weapon is supposed to be slightly more accurate as a result of the shorter (hence, stiffer) barrel, now capable of sub-2 MOA using commercial ammunition. And it will be issued with 25-round magazines instead of the 20-round magazines that are standard now. 

    The downside is that there is some loss of velocity. The SIG representative downplayed this, saying the M8 was an 800 yard rifle. But the M7 had been represented as a 1,000 yard rifle. That seems a significant difference when the primary purpose of the M7 program was to overmatch the Soviet machine guns used by the Taliban.

    It may be that, in the end, this turns out to be a fine weapon. But it feels like we are still in the Beta testing stage.  

 VIDEO: "Did the Army Replace the Sig M7… Already? Meet the New Sig M8"
TFB TV (12 min.)

Richard Mann Tests Four "Apocalypse-Ready" Rifles

Richard Mann is probably the most vocal apologist of Jeff Cooper's Scout Rifle concept in the firearms media. As I've noted before, the Scout Rifle concept seemed to have grown out of Cooper's own thoughts on the ideal post-SHTF survivalist rifle. So it always catches my attention when Mann delves into the topic of survivalist or prepping rifles--a fun topic even if (we hope) it is theoretical. 

    In any event, I recently came across a 2018 article that Mann wrote for Shooting Illustrated entitled "4 Apocalypse-Ready Rifles: Which One is Best?" The four rifles considered are: (i) Century Arms RAS47 (i.e., a pretty stock AKM style rifle) shooting, of course, 7.62x39mm; (ii) a Marlin 336 lever action in .30-30 Win.; (iii) a Savage 110 Scout, a bolt-action rifle shooting .308 Win. from a 10-round detachable box magazine; and (iv) a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 shooting 5.56 NATO, representing a fairly stock AR with a 16-inch barrel. Each of the rifles mounted some form of optic: the AK had a red-dot while the other three rifles all had a magnified rifle scope. 

    Mann devised a course of fire to test the weapons which he describes:

    By running the rifles through this course, I compared their friendliness and effectiveness. There were five stages, and at each I conducted a snap shot on a torso target and a precision shot on a 6-inch target. Engagement distance varied from 60 to 160 yards, and time stopped when both targets had been hit.

    On stage one, I engaged the targets across-cab, while seated in a UTV. For stage two I exited the UTV, kneeled and used its hood for support. Stage three started standing, before engaging the targets from the prone position. For stage four, I moved from standing to sitting, and at the last stage, both shots were fired standing, using a tree for support. Ten hits were required to clean the course and scoring was simple. Both targets had to be hit to stop the clock at each stage. I added total shots fired to the total time, and the lower the number, the better the rifle and I performed. Additionally, three, three-shot groups were fired with each rifle from a sandbag rest at 100 yards. In total, 100 rounds were fired with each carbine.

Unsurprising, the AR scored the best at 49.23. Interestingly, though, because of its limited magazine capacity requiring it to be topped off, the lever action had an almost identical score to the AR at 49.45. There was a 9 second jump to the score for the bolt action rifle--58.68. And the AK finished last at 65.93 although, Mann pointed out, "the lack of magnification made precision shots challenging". He also made some general comments that expanded on this:

Most notable [of points that don't show up in the raw scores] was the inferiority of the red-dot sight. For snap-shooting it was fast, but hindered the ability to deliver precision shots with speed. This was partly due to the lack of magnification, but also due to the optic’s inability to deal with varied light conditions. On a pristine range these sights can work like magic; in the field—woods—they can be problematic. Had the AK been fitted with a magnified optic, it would likely have performed on par with the others. The red dot is also battery powered, which may not be wise for a rifle kept in storage until the world happens to fall apart. 

On the other hand, in a course geared more at CQB (and even the shortest distance in this course was beyond what is generally considered CQB) the red dot probably would have been at its best. He used a very inexpensive red dot, as well, and I have to wonder if a different red dot with different features might have worked better.  

    Mann has some more points that he raises concerning each rifle and other topics such as ammunition, appropriateness for different locations or environments, whether the speed differences are really that determinative, and when you might want a more powerful rifle than the 5.56 (or 7.62x39, for that matter), so be sure to read the whole thing.