July 19, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Celox Granules"--SkinnyMedic (5 min.)

A hemostatic agent useful for areas where you can't put a tourniquet, such as the shoulder area or hips.

Firearms/Self-Defense:

• "Nightstand Gun: Three Must-Haves"--The Truth About Guns. The three listed are: (1) a full size striker fired handgun or full-sized revolver; (2) night sights; and (3) a sound suppressor or electronic hearing protection. Some personal comments: 

       First, I don't see why other semi-auto pistols  sporting a hammer, whether single action or DAO or DA/SA are not acceptable. For various reasons, unless it was a revolver or a DAO or DA/SA (with the hammer down), I don't keep a round chambered in a "nightstand" gun. The last thing I want to do is grab a cocked gun in the middle of the night when I've been startled awake and still groggy. 

       Second, I agree with night sights. However, while the author notes that you can turn on lights, so a weapon mounted flashlight is unnecessary, I would still advise keeping a flashlight handy, in case you have a power outage, a light bulb burn out, or, for some reason, you need to check outside the home (but still within the curtilage). I've been woken many times by crashes or other noises outside due to raccoons or neighborhood cats, neighbors, or other instances that don't automatically warrant a call to the police, but still require some investigation. 

       Third, while hearing protection is always a good idea, especially if you have to shoot in an tight, confined space such as a hallway, your house is probably very different than an indoor shooting range: there is a surprisingly large amount of sound absorbing material in your average room. A 9 mm pistol, for instance, fired inside a house will not necessarily leave you deafened or your ears ringing.

• "Breaking In Or Breaking Bad? What To Expect When Breaking In Your Pistol"--Concealed Nation. It was not so many years ago that it was expected that with a new semi-auto handgun that it would take at least 100 to 200 rounds run through it before it could be trusted to run reliably. And prior to that--the 1980s and earlier--true reliability in a semi-auto (especially the Colt 1911s) required work by a gunsmith. The author of this article still recommends thoroughly testing out a new handgun before relying on it for self-defense, and provides information on making your break-in successful (e.g., clean and lube the firearm!), and tips on determining whether reliability issues are due to you, your magazine, your ammunition, or your firearm. One thing he notes is that your firearm may be sensitive to the type of ammunition you feed it. The author relates:

       But if you’re someone who likes to carry, for example, over-pressurized jacketed hollow points (+P JHP), you want to know that what you carry will reliably work in your gun.

        The reason I bring this up is because not all ammunition is shaped the same way. For instance, I was recently switched from Winchester 124 gr Rangers (FMJ) to Hornady Critical Defense 135 gr +P. I noticed that in my Glock 43, this caused a few rounds to get stuck nose down underneath the feed ramp of the barrel.

        This was more than a little annoying.

       It wasn’t anything I couldn’t quickly correct by either ejecting the magazine and reinserting it or manually pulling the slide back. But, in a life or death scenario, that’s the last thing I want to deal with.

       I ended up switching to Speer Gold Dot 124 gr GDHP +P. That ended up working well. I have a friend who carries a Ruger and he uses Hornady and he has no issues with the Critical Defense rounds. In this particular case, I got lucky and traded him the rest of mine for the Gold Dots. That worked out. But, in general, I’d never recommend carrying a round that doesn’t reliably work in your everyday carry handgun.

      This also brings up another point: not all guns of the same make and model work the same.

• "100k+ U.S. Army Surplus 1911’s On Their Way Home! Maybe . . ."--The Truth About Guns. The author reports that this past Friday, "the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2810, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2018. Included in the bill is a provision that would make U.S. Army surplus 1911 .45 ACP pistols available to the American public through the Civilian Marksmanship program (CMP)." Unlike the previous bill authorizing the transfer of the pistols to the CMP, this one will require that the DoD transfer the firearms without further authorization, and all 100,000 will be released at once, rather than 10,000 per year.
• "The Importance of 'Why'--Proactive Reloads"--Gabe Suarez. He comments that it not only necessary to know how to perform a technique, but why you perform it or do it in a certain way. 

[If] it appears that the fight is over - we accept that appearances may be mistaken - we move to cover and reload the weapon just in case the fight is not in fact over.  Irrelevant in a sporting event, it is imperative in a real fight.  And since you are alone, retaining rather than discarding your equipment makes sense.  Those three rounds left in your magazine may become a life changer if your perception about the end of the fight was totally wrong.

•  "Unorthodox Disabling Technique"--Anonymous Conservative. He relates:

       Basically it is a way to finish someone who has fallen to their back under you. If the person has any MMA or grappling experience, I would not use it, because it opens you up to losing the top position. If your opponent falls to their back, and like lightening pivots around so their feet are pointing toward you, then you have a bigger problem with them, and you should worry about maintaining top position and moving slowly, rather than finishing them quickly with this.

       But if you and your opponent are clinched and go to the ground, and your opponent begins trying to just fight with you without pivoting his feet toward you, getting his legs around your waist and putting you in the guard, you can move to this.

        The technique basically comes down to putting your knee as low on your opponent’s sternum as possible. There is a lever-like aspect to your use of the sternum, so you want your knee right at the bottom edge of it. You then grab the shoulders, and pull them up toward you as hard as possible as you drop all your body weight on the sternum, and drive it in and angle the force upward a little, up toward his head. This will usually mean grabbing the clothing at the front of the shoulders, and pulling, but as with wrestling, it could involve grabbing the arms if your opponent is shirtless, though you’d need a wrestler’s grip. You pull the shoulders, and because of your knee position, you are pulling the shoulders forward, and slightly downward from your opponent’s perspective. It is designed to curve the back forward, and simulate caving the chest inward, as you are dropping all of your weight on the lower edge of that sternum, driving it in and a little up.

        At the peak force position, you should be in a mechanically advantageous position, where your weight is being driven down, with all the pulling force generated by your trapezius muscles and your straightening back, as you straighten your knee down into his sternum.

       As it was taught to me, this causes the ribs to push through the flesh, causing some sort of deep tissue bruise that takes days before you can breathe again. My own impression from when it was done to me is it takes the “joint” structures, where the ends of the ribs meet and join to the sternum, and it places a stress on them which the structures are not designed or adapted to bear.

       So as the end of the sternum is being driven down, the ribs, which are attached by ligaments and buffered by cartilage, are being flexed so that the ends of the ribs want to rip free from the sternum and spring up out of the chest. At the same time, the ends of the ribs on each side are being pressed together, inward, over the sternum as the chest is caved in. So the ends are probably getting pressed into the cartilage around the sternum, crushing it as well, and the structure may be designed to see them slide upward as they are forced to slide inward, amplifying the stresses on the ligaments holding the ribs in against the sternum.

       It is that damage to the sort of “joint” structures linking the ends of each of the ribs to the sternum that causes an inability to move the rib cage at all after it – something you have to do all the time when you breathe. ...

       The real upside over a stomping kick to the neck, or jaw, or ribs, or an armbar or choke is that since it damages ligaments and crushes cartilage in small structures overlooked on physical exam, and it doesn’t leave a bruise, abrasion, or other mark, it will be missed if they seek medical attention. The main symptom should basically approximate multiple broken ribs and an inability to comfortably move the ribcage at all. However from what I was told, there would be no issues on X-rays or other tests, so a physician cannot independently confirm the injury. But again, I have no idea how much testing was done by those who passed the technique down to confirm that.

      ... [A]ssuming you did it quickly, and video evidence was lacking, it could just have happened accidently as you fell to the ground. Because of that, and the fact there is no medically diagnosable injury, I was told not to expect any major legal repercussion like you might get with a broken arm or cracked jaw. For all the Police know, your opponent could be making up his physical complaint.

Other Stuff:

• Black on white violence: "Two men and a woman 'murder a 23-year-old mother and dump her body on the side of the road in Alabama'"--Daily Mail. 
• Diversity + Proximity = War: "Nearly 900 Cars Burned in France After Trump’s Bastille Day March"--PJ Media. A tradition started by, and carried on, by disaffected Muslim youth. The article notes that "[t]orching vehicles has become a Bastille Day tradition in France, with 855 cars burned in 2016 and 577 people arrested last year. In 2015, 951 cars were burned." 

• Related: "I've Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe's Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Boggling."--The National Interest. From the article:

       But there was one development that had not been expected, and was not tolerable: the large and growing incidence of sexual assaults committed by refugees against local women. These were not of the cultural-misunderstanding-date-rape sort, but were vicious, no-preamble attacks on random girls and women, often committed by gangs or packs of young men. At first, the incidents were downplayed or hushed up—no one wanted to provide the right wing with fodder for nationalist agitation, and the hope was that these were isolated instances caused by a small problem group of outliers. As the incidents increased, and because many of them took place in public or because the public became involved either in stopping the attack or in aiding the victim afterwards, and because the courts began issuing sentences as the cases came to trial, the matter could no longer be swept under the carpet of political correctness. And with the official acknowledgment and public reporting, a weird and puzzling footnote emerged. Most of the assaults were being committed by refugees of one particular nationality: by Afghans.

       After dismissing a few theories, including that they misinterpret dress or behavior of the victims--many of the victims were young mothers out with their children--the author arrives are a more likely theory in light of their culture and religion:

       This brings us to a third, more compelling and quite disturbing theory—the one that my Afghan friend, the court translator, puts forward. On the basis of his hundreds of interactions with these young men in his professional capacity over the past several years, he believes to have discovered that they are motivated by a deep and abiding contempt for Western civilization. To them, Europeans are the enemy, and their women are legitimate spoils, as are all the other things one can take from them: housing, money, passports. Their laws don’t matter, their culture is uninteresting and, ultimately, their civilization is going to fall anyway to the horde of which one is the spearhead. No need to assimilate, or work hard, or try to build a decent life here for yourself—these Europeans are too soft to seriously punish you for a transgression, and their days are numbered.

• Just celebrating diversity: "Authorities describe 'frenzy of violence' in MS-13 gang slaughters where victims were lured to a park by girls and hacked and beaten to death with machetes, knives and clubs"--Daily Mail. From the article:

       Prosecutors said in a recent court filing that four young men found slaughtered in a Long Island park last April were lured to the site by two female associates of the MS-13 street gang, which was hunting for rivals and perceived enemies.

       Once there, the youths - some still in high school - were surrounded by more than a dozen gang members who attacked them with machetes, knives and wooden clubs 'in a horrific frenzy of violence,' according to the court papers obtained by Newsday.

       A fifth young man who had accompanied the victims to the park ran for his life and escaped, the court memorandum said.

• We've been lied to: "We’re All Guinea Pigs in a Failed Decades-Long Diet Experiment"--Tonic. Detailing how the advice to avoid high fat foods and instead encouraging the consumption of low-fat, high carbohydrate foods has led to the current epidemic of obesity. Not only was the science flawed, but it appears to have been manipulated by the American Heart Association and the sugar industry.
• Does this even require a comment? "Climate Scientists Move Global Meltdown from 2018 to 2168"--Conservative Tribune. 
• Good riddance: "Brigham Young University professor fired for Facebook post supporting LGBT rights after one of her colleagues at the Mormon college complained"--Daily Mail. The article notes that "Ruthie Robertson, 22, wrote the status to her social media page on June 5 in honor of Pride Month. In the post, she also expressed her opposition to the strict religious practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she is currently a member."