Survival Lilly (9 min.)
- "Single-Action Revolvers for Self-Defense"--Shooting Illustrated. Not an optimal weapon for self-defense, but sometimes you make do with what you have. And such revolvers are still popular for hunting, use on horseback, and Cowboy Action Shooting. In days past, when speed was of the essence, the revolver would be cocked as part of the drawing process: that is, as you drew the weapon (or, if already in hand, as you raise it to aim) you would simultaneously cock the hammer. However, this method is not conducive to safe firearms handling! The modern method is slightly different:
The first step is to take a shooting grip on the holstered sixgun, with your trigger finger straight and out of the trigger guard. The second step is to draw the gun straight up and out of the holster. The third step is to rotate the handgun until the barrel is pointed toward the threat.
At this point, the support hand (which has been flat against your body) comes out to meet the gun and a two-hand hold is secured. Make sure your support hand is never in front of the muzzle. Shooting your support hand will certainly ruin your day and nearly always spoil your aim.
With the muzzle pointed down range—or at the threat—and a two-hand hold secured, the support thumb is used to cock the handgun. Throughout the draw stroke, the trigger finger is still straight, out of the trigger guard and along the gun's frame. It is only as the gun is thrust forward and the sights go onto the target that the trigger finger goes to the trigger. Throughout the shooting sequence, the strong hand maintains a secure grip on the sixgun and the support thumb is used to cock the hammer.
- Related: "Single-Action Secrets"--Handguns Magazine.
- "How Many Rounds Should A Pistol-Packer Pack? It’s A Contentious Debate"--Massad Ayoob at Guns Magazine. Ayoob notes that the standard used by most law enforcement officers is two reloads, or 18 rounds total (including what is in the firearm) for revolver, or 52 rounds of 9mm for an officer using a Glock 17 or similar capacity pistol. Ayood also relates a 2008 shooting where the officer "was into his third and last magazine when his 33rd shot and 17th hit finally neutralized the gunman." The officer had been using a .45 ACP weapon, and changed to carrying a 9 mm (with its higher round count) after the experience. But that may represent one end of the bell curve. On the other end are "the millions who do carry, [but] never need to draw against a criminal opponent. Of those who do have to draw, the exhaustive research of Professor John Lott, Professor Gary Kleck, and others indicate they won’t have to shoot anyone: the presentation of the gun by the Good Guy, far more often than not, causes the Bad Guy to surrender or flee. When defensive gunfire by an armed citizen does become necessary, it rarely goes high volume." In the end, Ayoob recommends carrying at least one full reload: a Speed Strip or Tuff Strip of ammo for a revolver, and an extra magazine for someone with a semi-auto.
- "Rifle Inaccuracy: When to Say Goodbye to Your Gun"--Field & Stream. The author explains:
An inaccurate rifle will spray them all over the target, right from the outset. Nothing you feed it will group consistently. If this happens, nine times out of ten it’s not worth what it costs to fool with it. If it’s a high-quality gun or is a good used rifle with no signs of abuse, before you sell it, it’s time to round up the usual suspects.
The "usual suspects", relates the author, are a loose scope mount, loose bedding screw, or the barrel simply being fouled and needing a good cleaning. He also discusses the possibility of trying different ammo (or, if you reload, playing around with powder charges and bullet weights). My experience is that in most instances, it is the ammo to blame. First, there may be an issue of poor quality ammunition with significant variances in bullet weight and charge. I remember many years ago, when surplus .308/7.62 NATO was plentiful, purchasing some Pakistani military surplus that couldn't hold a 4" group at 50 yards, simply because of poor quality control (the same rifle could shoot other 7.62 NATO very accurately, so I know it was an ammo issue). Second, it may just be the wrong bullet weight for the rifle twist. Again, using .308 as an example, I had a bolt-action .308 that basically shot all over the target when using NATO surplus ammunition. I almost got rid of that rifle, but then thought to try some heavier target loads which gave it basically MOA level of accuracy. As a hunting rifle, it had a twist rate intended for heavier bullets, not the relatively light weight bullets in standard NATO ammunition.
- Lucky Gunner recently published a video on You Tube explaining why, in the author's opinion, no defensive revolver should have an exposed hammer (or, at least, a hammer spur). It raises some valid points, but, I believe, may not hold true for a full size revolver such as might be used as a "night-stand" gun or one carried in the forest or field. Bill Jordan, for instance, opined that "[a]t over 25 yards shooting should be deliberate, aimed, single action fire, taking advantage of any rest available or holding the gun with both hands for added steadiness." Certainly, double-action is preferred under most defensive circumstances, but it would be a shame to lose all single-action capability.
- The LDS Church focuses heavily on both financial preparation (including guides to improve employment or grow a business) and self-sufficiency, as well as emergency stores of food. In the latter regard, the Church recommends:
There are three main components of food storage:
- Food supply (three-month and long-term)
- Water supply
- Financial reserve
Store foods that are a part of your normal diet in your three-month supply. As you develop a longer-term storage, focus on food staples such as wheat, rice, pasta, oats, beans, and potatoes that can last 30 years or more. Learn more about a long-term food supply.
- In between rain-storms, I was able to get out to my super-double-secret shooting location in the desert south of town. This was actually the first time I used my DYI PVC target stand I built last October. A lot easier to maneuver around than the heavier steel stand I normally use. There was a brisk breeze when I first got there, but I found an abandoned tire that I put over a couple of the feet, and that took care of having it blow over. I also set up a steel target and took a couple of reactive targets to pop around. I took my Marlin 60 out (which ran perfectly) as well as a few handguns.
I had an interesting malfunction my R51, where it jammed shut on cartridge so hard it took a bit of an effort to pry the slide open. The case apparently had enough of a bulge that it chambered and jammed, but did not close far enough to allow the trigger to engage. Two observations from this: (1) this is a reminder to use quality ammunition for self-defense--you can get away with less for practice or fun, but not when your life is on the line; and (2) it says something about the strength of the extractor on the weapon that I was not able to break it loose over the rim of the cartridge.
Finally, the Lord was watching over me on that trip. I got home, turned off the engine on my truck while unloading stuff, and discovered that I could not get the truck to start: the battery had died. A trip to the auto-parts store remedied that problem. The battery that died was 6 years old, so I think I got more than my money out of it. I'm just thankful that it didn't happen while out in the middle of nowhere.
Black Pigeon Speaks (11 min.)
Other Stuff:
- The surveillance state: "The Whole POINT of the Internet of Things Is So Big Brother Can Spy On You"--Washington's Blog (H/t Western Rifle Shooters Association). Among other things, the author cites to a 2012 article that reported: "at a meeting for the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, CIA Director David Petraeus reportedly noted that 'smart appliances' connected to the Internet could someday be used by the CIA to track individuals." The article also notes that one of the purposes of the surveillance would be to assist in recruiting assets: a rather benign way of saying "blackmail."
- Related: "Over 85,000 Secret Reports Made by Doctors to NYS Police Without Patients Notice"--Ammo Land. Moreover, according to the article, the State won't release the reports or names of the doctors. I certainly would like to know if my doctor were making such reports; if nothing else, a doctor making such reports doesn't take doctor-patient confidentiality seriously.
- Related: "Dennis Kucinich: I Support Trump’s Assertion of Wiretapping – It Happened to Me Too"--Gateway Pundit. Key point: "I was wiretapped in 2011 after taking a phone call in my congressional office from a foreign leader. ... That a secret recording had been made of this call was revealed to me by the Washington Times in 2015, a full two years after I left office." Kucinich, a former member of the House of Representatives, believes that he was surveilled because of his opposition to the Obama/Hillary destruction of Libya.
- "Gunman shot dead at Paris airport"--Portland Press Harold. The article reports:
Yelling that he wanted to kill and die for Allah, a suspected Islamic extremist attacked a French soldier Saturday at Paris’ Orly Airport and wrested away her assault rifle, a French prosecutor said.
Two colleagues on her patrol shot and killed the man before he could fire the military-grade weapon in the busy airport terminal.
Not only do we have another example of the Religion of Peace, but a female soldier that provided the weapon. I have to wonder if he targeted her because he knew she would be weaker than her male colleagues and, thus, less capable of preventing him from getting the rifle.
- Yes. "Is McCain Hijacking Trump’s Foreign Policy?"--Patrick Buchanan at The American Conservative. Progressives go together with war like peanut butter goes with jelly. Buchanan describes how McCain has gone ballistic at anyone questioning his (McCain's) insistance that we should admit Montenegro to NATO: a country that has no value as an ally, and has the potential to drag us into a war if it were able to exercise the mutual defense clause of the NATO treaties. As Buchanan notes: 'But if Montenegro, awash in corruption and crime, is on the verge of an uprising or coup, why would the U.S. issue a war guarantee that could vault us into a confrontation with Russia—without a full Senate debate?"
- Diversity is our strength: "Lower alcohol limit means more people of color will be improperly stopped"--Salt Lake Tribune. The author opposes a bill currently before the Utah legislature that would lower the legal blood alcohol limits for drunk driving. Her reasoning? "The people who are most likely to be pulled over for minor driving infractions that could be interpreted as the result of low-level intoxication — crossing into another lane, forgetting to signal, rolling through a stop sign — are people who are not white." Another reason to build the wall.
- "Are We Raising Racists?"--New York Times. Well, apparently minorities do. From the article:
Parents of black and Latino children have long made thoughtful choices about when and how to engage in difficult and nuanced discussions about difference. Studies show that such parents are two to five times more likely than whites to teach their children explicitly about race from very young ages to counter negative social messages and build a strong sense of identity.
This would explain the narcissism and self-obsession of Black Lives Matter.
- "The Price of Privilege"--Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish. Greenfield discusses a proposal that whites pay a 5% "privilege" tax. He observes that, if there was otherwise a flat tax, a privilege tax would be a boon to whites.
The white student would happily pay that 5% to be allowed to go to college instead of being told that more diverse students with worse grades will cut ahead of him in line because they are “disadvantaged”. It would be easier for the white business owner to calculate in a fixed privilege tax for an otherwise competitive market than the intangible forms of diversity discrimination that rig the game.
A 5% white privilege tax would be far too honest. The real tax is hidden and much higher.
- "30 countries refusing to take back illegal alien criminals"--Rick Moran at American Thinker. Moran points out that U.S. law allows the temporary suspension of travel from countries that refuse to take back their scum--all we have to do is enforce the law.
- Fake American: "Holly Richardson: LDS repent for not voting Trump? That’s not what the apostles say"--Salt Lake Tribune. Richardson is a RINO from Utah, who apparently was told to "repent" for not voting for Trump. She decided to cast the statement in purely religious terms (instead of how it was probably meant: to join behind the Republican candidate), claiming that her standards prohibited her from voting for Trump. My question to her, though: Pray tell, however, how a vote for Hillary Clinton better served your standards? (I realize that she may have voted for a third party candidate, but a vote for a third party candidate was, under the circumstances, a vote for Hillary).
- So those crazy theories about jet contrails might have something to them? "Contrails and Climate Change"--The American Interest. Key point:
NASA’s Richard Moore told the BBC that “[we] know these contrails and cirrus clouds have a warming effect on the Earth’s climate, and it’s currently thought the warming effect associated with those clouds is more significant than all of the carbon dioxide emitted by aviation since the first powered flights began.”
- "How To Be A ‘Woke’ White Person: Join The Alt-Right"--Robert Tracinski at The Federalist. Although Tracinski remonstrates against a Black Lives Matter poster telling white supporters to sit down and shut up, it is really a "Buckley conservative" attack on the Alt-Right. However, his article does bring up one useful point:
The most perceptive and important thing written on the current state of racial politics is Shelby Steele’s White Guilt, which is therefore almost universally ignored. At the close of the civil rights movement, he argues, the issue of racism ceased to be about actual racism. Instead, it became a weapon used to take away moral authority from some people and give it to others.
The Left, which had been looking for a way to delegitimize the entire American economic and political system, seized on it for that purpose. Rather than get caught on the wrong side of this wave of white guilt, white “liberals” adopted ritualistic ways of disassociating themselves from the guilt of racism and shifting that association onto others. The most spectacular example was the overnight transformation of the Democratic Party, in which the party of slavery and segregation suddenly cast off all of those associations and shifted responsibility for the entire history of racism onto the party of Lincoln.
The result was that rejection of racism, instead of becoming a universal creed above partisan bickering, got reduced to a narrow partisan cudgel, a way of beating up people who disagree with you and making you feel good about yourself by comparison.
But now it has gotten out of control, and blacks and other minorities have started to realize the extent to which they were being used as a tool of somebody else’s self-validation. So white “liberals” who thought the system was rigged to make them look like the good guys are now finding themselves cast on the wrong side in an ever-intensifying struggle over who gets to control the fount of moral authority that is racial politics.
- "China Ready to Cross Red Line at Scarborough Shoal"--American Interest. China has announced that it will begin "preparatory work" to build an "environmental research" station on the shoals, which belong to the Philippines. A deliberate provocation brought about by decades of indulgences from the Bushes and Clintons, and the abject weakness of Obama.
- I had referenced an Atlantic article the other day where the author warned that increased secularism was leading to declining civility in political debate. Rod Dreher, writing at The American Conservative, cites to the aforementioned article, and muses that "[i]t’s a confirmation of a line Ross Douthat had a year or so ago, telling the left that if they didn’t like the Religious Right, just wait until the see the Post-Religious Right." Dreher then goes on to relate some anecdotes suggesting a rise in what he terms "white nationalism," contending that "pastors and religious leaders who aren’t preparing their congregations for hard times, even the possibility of persecution, are failing in their responsibilities."
Vox Day has taken note of Dreher's article, but disagrees with the notion that Christians should simply bury their heads and hope for the best (I think that is Day's characterization of Dreher's "Benedict Option"). Speaking to Dreher (or, at least in his direction), Day writes:
The problem is not women, or immigrants, or the government, or the electorate, or anything else. The problem is you. Because you're afraid and you would rather indulge yourself by giving in to despair than pray, fight, and win. It isn't the West or the European nations that have been defeated, only the fake Civic Right who never intended on doing anything but surrendering from the start.
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