Weekend Reading #76

 Some longer or more involved reading:

•  This week, we are starting out as usual with Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump for this week. Some of the links that caught my attention in particular:
• Part 3 of a video series on terminal ballistics and tactical anatomy.
• An article discussing what is called the violin technique to reloading a shotgun, given directions for both right handed and left handed shooters.
• An explanation of the blank paper drill and how to shoot and score it--as well as its dry fire equivalent, the blank wall drill. The idea is to remove a specific target point so you can concentrate on sight alignment and consistency. 
• An explanation of height over bore and why your rifle shoots low at close distances.
• And a piece from the Daily Mail on protecting yourself from pickpockets and how pickpocket teams work.  
• In my long ago article, "Concealed Carry--No Elegant Solution," I noted that most of the concealed carry articles I saw in gun magazines were written by then-current and former law enforcement whose experience with concealed carry was working as a plain clothes officer, and concluded that "[p]eople with law enforcement backgrounds have little useful to say about concealed carry for the average person." I didn't mean this as a disparagement, but that the circumstances of being a plain clothes sworn police officer was different enough from that of private civilian carrying a concealed weapon that a lot of what they had to say just wasn't applicable to the normal concealed carrier. I guess I didn't expressly state it in my article, but I remember from the time I was first learning about concealed carry that the occasional article from someone that worked as a body guard or an undercover police officer were far more useful. So, with that long winded background, Greg has linked to an article entitled "Concealed Carry Considerations for the Law Enforcement Officer tasked with Close In Protection"--i.e., officers acting as body guards--that covers many of the aspects that you as civilian carrying concealed or wanting a weapon to protect your family will need to consider. I recommend reading it.
• I've seen a lot of recommendations for videos on the SKS pop up on my YouTube feed recently, so it was interesting to see that Greg links to an article from Guns America about the SKS discussing a bit of its history, the countries that produced it, and issues with parts interchangeability. However, there was a point that was so wrong that I have to comment, and that is the comparison with the M1 Carbine. This is incorrect on two levels. First, the SKS was intended to replace the Mosin-Nagant as the primary infantry weapon, unlike the M1 Carbine which was intended as a weapon for support troops. Second, the SKS is not small and lightweight such that it cannot easily be pressed into the same role as the M1 Carbine. 
• Speaking of the M1 Carbine, Greg links to an article that has an in-depth look at the M1 Carbine cartridge and what makes it so enjoyable to shoot. 
• Greg also has a new "free books" column with links to Kindle books that are (or were at the time he published it) available at no cost at Amazon with an emphasis on prepping and self-defense related non-fiction and thrillers for the fiction. 
• "In France And Britain, Multiculturalism Is Leading To Authoritarianism"--The Federalist. The article mostly focuses on the fact that "[t]he leaders of France and Britain are calling for censorship regimes because enforcing multiculturalism requires suppressing freedom." The author begins, of course, by noting the riots and protests in France, explaining:

    The rioters are not calling for education reform or protesting poor classroom conditions, despite what the corporate press has reported. These are not “school protests” but rather an intifada. The rioters themselves are the footsoldiers of a “Red-Green alliance” between the radical left and pro-Palestinian Islamist activists, whose shared goal is to clear the ground for a “New France” that will replace the actually existing French nation.

    This “New France” is largely a Third World horde, imported in successive waves beginning in the 1970s, when France scrapped its immigration regime and adopted a family reunification system similar to the United States’ Hart-Celler Act of 1965. In the ensuing decades, and especially since 2000, France has seen a massive influx of migrants from its former colonial holdings in North Africa and the Middle East. These people have for the most part refused to assimilate, and instead have formed discrete Muslim enclaves, retaining the ethnic and religious identity of their homelands. They are not French in any meaningful sense, and do not wish to be.

    The consequences of this failure of assimilation and acculturation are now apparent on the streets of French cities. For more than a week now the unassimilated children and grandchildren of migrants from the Third World have been  attacking police and firefighters (and teachers in some cases), burning schools and public buildings to the ground, and calling for the overthrow of the French Republic. They have done so in many cases while waving Palestinian and Algerian flags, and chanting Antifa and pro-Hamas slogans. 

    However, they are not doing this all on their own. French authorities said last week the riots were being organized by proxies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”), or LFI, which is, in addition to being a communist front organization, is also France’s “Great Replacement” party. Indeed, Mélenchon, who is running for president in next year’s national election, has been rather explicit in his desire to erase the French people and replace them with foreigners. On a recent panel, echoing remarks from Britain’s Jacob Rees-Mogg on how the English are a “mongrel people,” he derided the very concept of “native French people,” declaring that a “process of creolization has already taken place” in France, and that those wanting a “static world” are dreaming of something that is gone for good.

    No wonder, then, that Mélenchon has publicly supported the unrest, or that LFI politicians have been notably visible during the riots, in some cases appearing at the barricades around schools and urban centers, even as the party has officially denied fomenting violence. Simply put, there is broad crossover between radical-left political activism and pro-Palestinian, Islamist mobilization in France.

But, and this is the point of the article, the author then asserts:

    What is less well known is that mass immigration on this scale doesn’t just destroy a country and a people, it also ushers in forms of authoritarian government that become necessary as a way to manage the problems that arise from a population that includes significant unassimilated ethnic enclaves.

    This is why we now see the political leadership of western countries making hard turns toward authoritarianism, and especially against free speech. Freedom of expression is the one thing you cannot tolerate if the state is going to enforce multiculturalism and impose a large foreign population on a native one. Indeed, managing tensions between disparate ethnic groups, and each group’s relationship to the state, is a hallmark of imperial rule, not republicanism. It’s how the millet system of the Ottoman Empire operated.

He concludes:

    In the end, multiculturalism and authoritarianism are a package deal, and the global leftist leadership of the West is foisting it their native populations. There is only one way to avoid such authoritarianism, and it requires a total rejection of multiculturalism.

    What that means, in concrete terms, is mass deportations, denaturalization, and remigration. Anything less will not be enough to save these countries, assuming it’s not too late already.

•  And on that topic: "Virginia State University gave preferential treatment to Muslim student group while persecuting Christian one, lawsuit alleges"--Daily Mail. 

Shigella Infections Becoming An STD

From the "color me unsurprised" department, we are facing yet another new STD as a result of a certain demographic. The New York Post reports that shigella infections--which can cause life threatening diarrhea--are increasingly showing up as a sexually transmitted infection. The article explains that "[t]he bacteria spreads through infected poop that gets into the mouth because of ill-washed hands, or swallowing tainted food or water." And you can probably guess where this is headed:

But the population that’s experiencing one of the fastest rises in shigella infection are gay and bisexual men, and other men who have sex with men. Experts say shigella is “endemic” to these communities, meaning it’s constant and regularly present.   

But that is not all. The article adds:

    As shigella spreads rapidly, it’s also becoming harder to manage. The CDC reports that drug-resistant strains of the infection skyrocketed from 0% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2023.

    “This disease has gone from being relatively treatable with off-the-shelf drugs to being close to untreatable over the course of the last decade or so,” Baker said.    

And:

    The CDC reports that most drug-resistant shigella cases affected adult men. The strains of shigella spread through sex are serious. Research shows that those who contracted shigella through sex were hospitalized for four to five days, on average.

    “This isn’t just one form of sexually transmissible diarrhea,” Baker told Science Alert.

    “This is multiple overlapping variants emerging that are all quickly becoming resistant to the drugs we use to treat them. It’s highly likely that if you contracted your Shigella through sex, you require different treatment to someone who contracted it through travel.” 

There is an evolutionary psychological reason why people of this certain demographic have historically been viewed with disgust.  As this Psychology Today article notes:

    Evolutionary psychologists refer to the system that produces such disgust in response to such stimuli as the "Behavioral Immune System" (see Schaller, 2006). This system is behavioral in nature, but it acts very much like our physiological immune system. It works to keep pathogens out of our bodies to benefit our health.

    This will sound a little gross (sorry!), but imagine if someone had a strong preference for the smell of vomit and feces. And that person then sought out such stimuli at any opportunity. (Gross, right?!)

    Well, feces and vomit are filled with bacteria that can cause all kinds of illnesses. So such a preference would, in the parlance of evolutionary psychology, not be very adaptive. In fact, a preference for feces and vomit would likely lead to adverse health outcomes, and across large-scale evolutionary time, any genes coding for such preferences would die a Darwinian death.

    We are the products of thousands of generations of people who were generally grossed out by the right things. That is to say that our ancestors who were grossed out by parasites, maggots, feces, and vomit were more likely to survive compared with their icky parasite-loving contemporaries, and were, thus, more likely to become our ancestors in the first place. And this is partly due to the health benefits of the behavioral immune system (which is, in short, being grossed out by stimuli that are likely to be full of pathogens and stuff that could kill you!). 

And, unsurprisingly, liberals have a lower disgust response than conservatives. Which is probably why they exhibit so many disgusting behaviors.  

Communist Protests Spread In Europe

 Like many of you, I've been trying to follow the news of the widening "student" protests in France. It was clear from the start that the protesters--or the vast majority of them--were not ethnically French. And, in fact, this video confirms that they are mostly second and third generation invaders migrants. But just as the leftists in the U.S. have determined that the path to power means aligning with Muslims, so seems to be the case with the French protests. In this article from Fox News--"Behind France's student riots: Communists, unions and a global propaganda network"--we see a similar strategy and some of the same names. An excerpt:

    From France to the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Greece and India, adults with deep pockets are tapping France's school protests and turning a domestic education dispute into a platform for broader political and ideological confrontation. BreakThrough News is a pro-communist propaganda outlet based in New York City, funded by an American-born, Shanghai-based communist tech tycoon, Neville Roy Singham, who has financed a network of communist and far-left groups in the U.S. that have capitalized on grievances to stoke similar street unrest for almost a decade.

    A Fox News Digital investigation traces how a movement that the media is mostly framing as students protesting deteriorating school conditions is actually part of an extensive infrastructure of unions, communist activists, far-left political parties and international media organizations that are organizing demonstrations, calling strikes, mobilizing supporters and broadcasting the unrest around the world with "BREAKING" alerts.

    In a digital analysis of scores of news articles, social media posts and public statements, Fox News Digital has identified 50 organizations in the French student protest movement and its wider network of supporters and international amplifiers, revealing an activist ecosystem extending far beyond the students who launched the demonstrations.

    Of the network of 50 groups, 15 are student or youth groups, including several communist youth movements and a Muslim student association.

    The remaining 35 adult groups include a dozen labor unions; eight communist or socialist organizations; five groups spanning other issues from taxes to parental advocacy, environmental activism, economic justice, international media and diaspora organizing; five civil-rights or human-rights groups; four political parties, including La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, and the French Communist Party; one Palestinian advocacy group that complete the "red-green" alliance of leftists with Muslims. 

There is a reason that communism is also referred to as international socialism.  And not well this observation: "The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: far-left activist networks amplify protests around the world, then package the unrest as evidence of a growing global uprising." In any event, there is a lot more in the article, including further discussion of the ties to Muslim groups, so read the whole thing.

    It appears that this protest movement is spreading, with violent protests having been staged in Belgium. Le Monde reports that "Brussels' riot police clash with protestors against backdrop of student protests," relating:

    Hundreds of people faced off with riot police in the streets of Brussels on Friday, October 9, in chaotic scenes on the sidelines of a workers' march. Some 30,000 people turned out for a national day of action against government austerity measures, police said, with tensions running high after days of student protests.

    Police said the main trade union rally in the city center went ahead peacefully but that "groups of troublemakers were responsible for serious incidents before and after the march." Officers deployed water cannon and tear gas after being targeted with sticks, bottles, paving stones and incendiary devices, police said.

    Gangs of youths were playing cat-and-mouse with police in the streets around the main international rail hub at Gare du Midi in particular, lighting fires and vandalizing bus stops across the area. Two buses were attacked – their windows smashed and seats ripped out after the passengers were evacuated – while youths set fire to trash cans, rental bikes and scooters.

And Axios reports that there have been calls for similar protests across Europe, including in Greece, Italy, Ireland, and Austria, although the article disclaims any connection or organizing force behind the protests. 

Wow: ATF Applies Suppressor, SBR Ruling Nationwide

From Weekly Shooting News: "ATF Extends Jensen Ruling on Suppressors, SBRs, SBSs and AOWs Nationwide." Gun owners have been waiting for the ATF to release its guidance concerning the application of the Jensen ruling which found that the NFA's regulation of sound suppressors, short barrel rifles and shotguns, and any-other-weapons was unconstitutional as to the plaintiffs in that case. Well, that guidance has been issued and its a boon to gun owners. From the article:

Here are some of the highlights:

• As of today, ATF is extending the ruling nationally, beyond the named plaintiffs and their members. In other words, law-abiding Americans no longer need a Form 1 to make a suppressor, SBR, SBS or AOW and they no longer need a Form 4 to transfer one. These items will be covered by the Gun Control Act, meaning 4473s and NICS background checks. 

• There are 15 states with laws on the books that require Form 1 and Form 4 processing by ATF for these items. ATF will continue to process these for people living in those states so that they can continue to make and own those items. 

• The serial number engraving requirement for home made suppressors, SBRs, SBSs or AOWs is no [sic] waived. 

• Keep in mind that the Gun Control Act and other provisions of the NFA are still in place. That means the GCA’s restrictions on interstate travel with SBRs and SBSs are still there. You’ll have to continue filing a Form 20 when you want to cross state lines with those.  

An additional note as to SBR and SBS weapons. Concealed Carry notes:

The GCA bars dealers from selling SBRs and SBSs unless the Attorney General specifically authorizes it. The NFA approval process used to satisfy that. Since that process is no longer required, ATF says there’s currently no mechanism to authorize those sales. ATF is writing new rules and forms, and until they exist, it won’t enforce that restriction. So for now, a dealer can transfer an SBR on a 4473. That could change once the new rules land… so now is the time to buy a SBR to be sure.

Here is the ATF's news release which links to the letter and FAQ on this subject. 

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.