October 8, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Regular Clothing vs. Knife Slashes - Didn't Expect That..."--Skallagrim (8 min.)

Skallagrim had previously tested a  cut resistant sleeve and wanted to see how normal clothes would compare. The dummy is dressed in a light jacket and long sleeve shirt. Although he tried various knives, none of them actually were able to actually cut through the sleeve of the jacket and shirt and cut the fake arm. Skallagrim was surprised by the result, and believed it was because of the fabric of the jacket being able to bunch up and redirect the edge of the blade. Something to think about if you are relying on slashing with a knife for self-defense.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• To start off, we have this week's "Weekend Knowledge Dump" from Active Response Training. Articles on common trees you should be able to identify in North America, the different types of locks used on lock-blade knives, packing wounds, a few methods that burglars use to case rural houses, and more.  
• "The AR-15’s Creedmoor? .224 Valkyrie vs. .22 Nosler and 6.5 Grendel (Modern Intermediate Calibers 025)"--The Firearms Blog. Nathaniel F. discusses a new caliber (.224 Valkyrie) that appears to offer much of the same performance as a 6.5 Grendel, but in .22 caliber. It's parent case is the .30 Remington/6.8 SPC.  As would be expected for a long range round, the advantage comes from being able to shoot a longer bullet.
• "Canned Butter For Deep Pantry Preparedness"--Modern Survival Blog. The brand they are testing is Red Feather Creamy Butter from New Zealand. It looks like they are running just under $7 per can, with each can containing 12 ounces of butter (about the same as 3 sticks of butter). Shelf life is at least 2 years according to the seller, but a reviewer indicated opening 5 year old cans and finding everything to be fine. This is much better than most vegetable cooking oils, some of which are only shelf stable for 6 months (although coconut oil can be stored for 2 years). 
• "Five Tips for Keeping Your Feet Warm in Cold Weather"--Survival Common Sense. Main point is to keep your feet dry, which requires a good boot and moisture wicking socks, and maintain circulation--i.e., make sure that your boot is sized large enough to accommodate your socks. Also, I would mention the old saying: if your feet are cold, put on a hat. 
• "Emergency Cell Phone Charging"--Blue Collar Prepping. The author experiments and finds that you can use a standard auto recharger hooked up to a 9 volt battery to provide a bit of a charge. 
• "Murdered in the Amazon: When Survival Fantasy meets Survival Reality"--Modern Survivalist. A woman from the UK went to the Amazon for some adventure, apparently ignored a warning or threat that her boat would be stolen and she be killed, and would up being killed by robbers. As FerFal notes: 

       This woman had lived a sheltered life. She had gone on adventures in the 3rd world before, she hadn’t lived in them though. For her it was living out what she otherwise saw in Discovery Channel. She saw the amazing jungle (and it is amazing) but she didn’t see the drug smugglers, slavers, pirates, the illegal gold miners, the jungle natives that have a VERY different concept of right and wrong. Not to mention the dangerous animals and diseases.

       The danger in these places is extremely real. They are places of amazing beauty and fantastic people too, but also very dangerous.

        I don’t mean to insult the memory of this poor woman. In fact I congratulate the courage to go live life in her own terms. But these are the kind of mistakes you only get to make once in those parts of the world. They don’t care about political correctness. They don’t care if you mean them no harm. All they care about is that they have someone to steal from, rape and kill, and some of the most brutal people will do all three without a second thought.

Or, as I would sum it up: the real world is not a Disney movie. The peace and safety that we take for granted in the West is the exception, not the rule, and is, itself, the product of centuries of conditions unique to the West.

• "Bug Out Pants"--SHTF Blog. Despite the title, the author is looking at pants that will last you a long time and protect your legs when doing hard labor or hunting. The author says to forget the blue jeans and get solid work pants from Duluth Trading, Carhartt, Tractor Supply’s Schmidt, or Northern Tool’s Gravel Gear. 
• "Train at Home, Train for Free: Dry Fire Fit"--Load Out Room. "Dry Fire Fit" is apparently the title of a set of cards, where each card has a different cardio or body weight exercises together with something requiring manipulation of a practice firearm. The idea is not to just improve your physical condition, but to force you to engage in dry fire type practice while tired and/or in awkward positions.
• "Outlaw 'Bump Fire' Stocks? Here Is Why You Should Care…"--Ammo Land. The author essentially makes the slippery slope argument. He argues from the standpoint of this being the "low hanging" fruit and that it will encourage the gun grabbers to go after other "low" and "medium" hanging fruit. I would note that once you accept that it is "reasonable" to ban a device that makes it faster/easier to pull the trigger so as to increase the rate of fire, you also have opened the door to accepting the ban of other attachments or features that make it faster and easier to use a weapon. Charlton Heston was prescient about the NRA--he always proclaimed that the government would only take his gun from his cold-dead hands ... as he held a Kentucky Long Rifle. And that apparently will be where the NRA draws the line: when the government come after our flintlocks.
• "The Lessons of Las Vegas"--Gabe Suarez. He writes:

       The solution is to accept that we live in a time of war.  We have enemies in the Islamic Terror groups, we have enemies in the rising indigenous communist militants such as Antifas, and we have enemies of happenstance, otherwise known as crazy people with violent minds.  Accepting that reality is half the battle because then most of us would not elect to attend an open air concert inside a fenced area with large building looming over us that may contain snipers.  

        And we would not go out into a public place unarmed.  While the presence of a pistol would not have changed anything in Las Vegas, it most certainly would have in San Bernardino, Orlando, Fort Hood, Nice, the Bataclan, and elsewhere.  The solution to rifle fire from an elevated position some 300 yards away is simple – don’t be in the kill zone in the first place.

Other Stuff:

• "Hurricane Nate slams into the Gulf Coast leaving thousands without power and bringing up to 11-feet of flooding along low-lying areas... but New Orleans is spared a direct hit"--Daily Mail. 
• I guess they don't want to wait for November 4? "Antifa Group Plans Nationwide 'Deface Columbus Day' Actions for Monday"--PJ Media. 
• You might want to start saving your favorite You-Tube videos: "BREAKING: YouTube Bump Fire Stock Video Producers Face Permanent Ban"--The Truth About Guns.
• "'They're coming out with their hands up – full scale surrender': US General says ISIS fighters in Iraq are giving up after not being fed or paid"--Daily Mail. The article indicates that current estimates put the number of remaining ISIS forces at 3,000. My question is: what is going to happen to these prisoners? Because if allowed to return to the civilian world, they will return to being terrorists.
• Diversity + Proximity = War: "Migrant Youth Gangs Turn Berlin Area into Borderline No-Go Zone"--Breitbart. "The situation around Alexanderplatz has rapidly deteriorated due to the ongoing fights between rival migrant gangs from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and North Africa."
• Cartels, welcome! "California Turns Itself Into A ‘Sanctuary State’"--Huffington Post. The article explains:

The California Values Act, otherwise known as Senate Bill 54, blocks local police from “using resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes.” The prohibited acts include detaining individuals solely at the request of federal immigration officials, making arrests on immigration warrants and inquiring into someone’s immigration status. While many California cities have already adopted such policies, the new law extends those parameters to all law enforcement in the state, including school police.

However, the acting director of ICE has responded, stating: "ICE will have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at worksites, which will inevitably result in additional collateral arrests, instead of focusing on arrests at jails and prisons where transfers are safer for ICE officers and the community." 

• "Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had government jobs, bought 33 weapons last year"--Fox News. From the article:

        As a timeline of Paddock's professional life comes together, officials also disclosed Wednesday he had been collecting weapons since 1982, and bought 33 firearms in the last year alone.

        Jill Snyder, the special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, told CBS News early Wednesday that Paddock purchased 33 firearms, mostly rifles, between October 2016 and Sept. 28 -- three days before the attack.

The ones he bought in October were because he thought Hillary would win and he'd make a profit; the ones after were probably because Trump won.

• Officials think the "note" left by Paddock were ballistic calculations, according to this Sacramento Bee article. From the article:

       A law enforcement official says investigators believe a note found in the Las Vegas shooter's hotel room contained a series of numbers that helped him calculate more precise shots.

       The official says Saturday that the numbers found on a note on a nightstand included the distance between the high-rise hotel room that Stephen Paddock was using as a perch and the concert the victims were attending.

• "Las Vegas Police: 'No Evidence' of Political or 'Radical Ideologies' Motivating Shooter"--PJ Media. The more interesting part from the article is this:

        It was revealed that Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos was checking a door alarm on the 32nd floor when he discovered Paddock's location during the shooting. The door alert is automatically sent to the security office when a guest room door is left ajar, and Campos was dispatched up to check it. He was shot in the leg when Paddock spotted the guard on camera and fired more than 200 bullets through the door into the hallway.

        "If it was a coincidence, it certainly was a lucky coincidence for us," McMahill said, clarifying the ajar alarm was triggered by a door to which Paddock didn't have a key. "I don't believe the killer left that door open."

       Campos' actions "led the police to that location and allowed us to neutralize the suspect more quickly."

Well, Paddock neutralized himself, but he probably did so because he thought police were about to rush his room.

• "ISIS: Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock Became Muslim Six Months Before Massacre"--Newsweek (via Yahoo). Many are pointing out that ISIS has given no proof, but a New York Times reporter that has covered ISIS extensively also notes that ISIS is pretty careful about not claiming responsibility where it had none.
• "Football’s decline has some high schools disbanding teams"--AP.  From the article:

        Participation in high school football is down 3.5 percent over the past five years, according to the annual survey by the National Association of State High School Federations, or NFHS.

        The decline would be much steeper if not for a handful of states in the South and the West. Throughout the Northeast, the Midwest and the West Coast, in communities urban and rural, wealthy and working-class, fewer kids are playing football.

The article suggests (but doesn't present statistics showing) that kids are shifting to other sports, such as cross-country running. The article also mentions the increase concern over brain injuries due to concussions occurring during football.

• "India jobs: The signs point to a bleak outlook for employment"--BBC. The gist of the article is that India's job market has become stagnant and there are no signs of improvement. The article ends by noting that India is not attracting the low end manufacturing or textile jobs that has propelled many another Asian country into sustained growth and development. 
• "Nothing Makes Liberals Angrier Than Us Normals Insisting On Our Rights"--Kurt Schlichter at Town Hall.  He begins:

       I don’t agree with liberals often, because I’m not an idiot and because I love America, but when they once again say, “We must have a conversation about guns!” I still couldn’t agree more. And, since all we’ve heard is you leftists shrieking at us all week, I’ll start it off.

       You don’t ever get to disarm us. Not ever.

       There. It sure feels good to engage in a constructive dialogue.

        Now, we should have this conversation because in recent years we’ve seen a remarkable antipathy for the fact that normal Americans even have rights among those on the left. We should have this conversation to clear the air before leftists push too far and the air gets filled with smoke. But we really don’t need to have a conversation about our rights to keep and bear arms. They’re rights. There’s nothing to talk about.

• "There Is No Middle Ground On Gun Control"--Anonymous Conservative. Noting a comment by Tom Brokaw that there ought to be a discussion between gun rights advocates and those who believe "There ought to be a more reasonable middle ground," the Anonymous Conservative explains:

        No. The conversation is between people who want to defend themselves and their loved ones, and other people who think a valid middle ground is for the capable to risk being unable to defend themselves and their loved ones.

* * *

       The reason there is no middle ground is simple. You are talking about the safety of my family. It is like saying you are going to screw up the brakes on my car, and though it will stop eventually, it won’t stop as fast as it could, but I probably won’t need to stop fast anyway, and it will make you feel better if I do it. Or you are going to add chemicals to food which will increase the risk that my kids will get cancer, but it will only do it a little bit, and they probably won’t get cancer, and it will make you feel better. Or we should add a little poison to the water we drink, so you can feel less bad about feeling sick yourself. And if we oppose the reasonable middle ground of a little poison for our loved ones, somehow we are irrational and intransigent.

• "Why We Need More Men With Guns, Not Less"--The Federalist. She writes: "A man who buys a gun to save a life, to protect the weak, is a strong and good man, just as a man who uses a gun to take a life is despicable and evil. The issue here is not the gun or even masculinity, but the character of the individual wielding the gun."
• "A Theistic Explanation for Why We Can’t Find Any Extraterrestrials"--PJ Media. Interesting read.