March 23, 2017--A Quick Run Around the Web

"Shuttlecocks On Grenades Dropped By Drones"--The Firearms Blog.

Firearms/Self-Defense:

• "Blue Force Gear Releases Micro Trauma Kit NOW"--The Firearms Blog. The complete kit includes: QuickClot combat gauze; HyFin vent chest seal (2); Cleer medical trauma bandage 4” Flat Pack; decompression needle; six 2” x9” Frog Tape; size 28 Nasopharyngeal airway; and 1 pair heavy duty medical gloves. MSRP is $200 for the complete kit.
• "Oops" is generally not the word I've used: "DoubleStar Debuts the Oops! Replacement Kit"--Ammo Land. The Oops! Replacement Kit includes: Four takedown detent springs; four takedown detents; two buffer detent springs; two buffer detents; two firing pin retaining pins; two extractor springs with bumper pads; two selector springs / ejector springs; and two selector detents. MSRP is $15.99.
• A couple days ago, I published my own analysis of the cost versus benefit of firearms. Apparently inspired by the same story, but relying on other studies as to the cost of crime, Dan Zimmerman at The Truth About Guns made a similar analysis. Although the numbers are different, the conclusion is the same: the costs saved by use and possession of firearms to prevent crime overwhelmingly outweigh the costs of firearm deaths and injuries.
• "NICS Checks Increase for February 2017"--The Firearms Blog. Per the article, "February NICS checks hitting over 2.2 Million last month represents almost a 10% increase over January 2017. That number for February is only slightly lower than the number of checks performed in October 2016." 

Other Stuff:

• There apparently was a Russian proverb that went something like this: "The most difficult thing to predict is not the future, but the past." Such as what we are seeing in regard to the entrenched bureaucracy's attempt to besmirch President Trump. For instance, just a day ago, The Independent reported that "'No evidence' to back up Donald Trump's wiretapping claims, says FBI Director James Comey." Yet that very afternoon, we had multiple news sources reported House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes admitting that members of Donald Trump’s transition team, possibly including Trump himself, were under inadvertent surveillance following November’s presidential election: Politico, Los Angeles Times, BBC News. That is, the Trump's and/or his team's communications may have been inadvertently intercepted as part of an effort to collect intelligence on other targets. However, given the deceit that we constantly hear from the intelligence community, how can we trust that it was an accident? As the Anonymous Conservative has noted, "if you want to surveil a target, but can’t get approval, you find somebody nearby who you can do surveillance on and then you do it broad enough you catch your original target incidentally."

• Related: "WikiLeaks Vault 7 Leak Claims CIA Bugs ‘Factory Fresh’ iPhones"--Heavy. Apple and the CIA, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G....

• Rivers of blood... "Westminster ISIS attacker is named as UK-born Khalid Masood - a 52-year-old married father of three who was probed by MI5 'some years ago' over links to 'violent extremism'"--Daily Mail. 52 years in Britain, and he still had not assimilated. As Katie Hopkins acknowledges:

       This place is just like Sweden. Terrified of admitting the truth about the threat we face, about the horrors committed by the migrants we failed to deter — because to admit that we are sinking, and fast, would be to admit that everything the liberals believe is wrong.

       That multiculturalism has not worked. That it is one big fat failure and one big fat lie.

• Related: When seconds count, the police are only minutes away: "Bridge of death: A mother crushed on the school run, terrified children mown down, and a panic-stricken pedestrian who would rather jump than die – three minutes of carnage on Westminster Bridge"--Daily Mail. Back when Britain was civilized, in those halcyon days when Sherlock Holmes figuratively strode the streets of London, an attack like this would have been impossible for no other reason than that one or more gentlemen would have been armed with a pistol or revolver and able to stop the carnage. 

• Monkey see, monkey do: "French-Tunisian is arrested after trying to drive a car loaded with liquid gas, assault rifle and knives into shoppers in an attempted terrorist attack in Antwerp"--Daily Mail.
• They can be taught! "Reality Check: Germany rules terror suspects have no birth right to remain"--BBC News. Now if we can only do the same in the United States to those that have illegally invaded our land, or are mere visitors to our soil.
• "Is the "Deep State" at war with itself?"--Bayou Renaissance Man. He cites a piece written by Charles Hugh Smith that argues that a "'rogue Deep State' quietly aided Donald Trump (by subtly undermining Hillary Clinton's campaign) as the last best chance to save the nation from the neocon's over-reach that the Establishment's Wall Street-funded leadership (Bush, Clinton, Obama, et al.) has overseen--including granting the CIA and its allies virtually unlimited powers unhindered by any effective oversight." The attempts to undermine Trump and his team via "leaked" intelligence data is the establishment's response, according to Smith. And Vault 7 represents the "rogue Deep State" striking back.
• "With budget boost, Trump shifts NASA's gaze from Earth to Mars"--Christian Science Monitor.  The article reports:

Among other measures, it maintains NASA’s long-term goal of sending humans to Mars by the mid-2030's, and continues to fund development of the Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule that will get them there. It also calls for continued support of robotic missions already underway, like a Europa probe and the James Webb Space Telescope.