December 26, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"What To Do After a Shooting: The First Five Minutes"--Personal Defense Network (16 min.)

We are familiar with the advice to refrain from talking to police concerning a defensive shooting without consulting an attorney. I've cited to several articles and videos that discuss this point, and I've warned of some of the deceptive questioning to which you may be subjected if you decide to talk to the police. However, in this video, the interviewer and interviewee take a slightly different position: that you need to talk to police at least to the extent to claim that you were the victim of a crime, and to direct the officers' attention to evidence or potential witnesses.

• A new Woodpile Report is out.
• "The Shotgun’s Greatest Weakness"--Priority: Performance. The author has been looking at shotguns as a defensive weapon. In this article, he discusses the greatest strength and weakness of the shotgun:

        The greatest strength of the shotgun is that it fires multiple projectiles with a single press of the trigger. Generally, most 00 buck loads are 8 or 9 pellets that are .33″ in diameter. Being shot by a full load of 00 buck is, at least on a conceptual level, similar to being shot with 8 or 9 rounds of 9mm from something like an MP-5, except it all happens at once.

        The shotguns ability to end fights so quickly, and in essence hit the target 8 or 9 times with a single trigger press negates the capacity issue. A shotgun that holds 4 or 5 rounds is not that big of a deal because most fights don’t require 4 or 5 rounds to be fired from a 12ga shotgun. In addition, the shotgun is one of the few types of firearms that can be reloaded without being unloaded. So even though the gun only holds 4 or 5 rounds at a time, I can put more rounds in it as I go if needed.

        So what is the greatest weakness of the shotgun? In my opinion (which is worth what it cost you to read this), it is the limited range of buckshot.

• Keeping with the shotgun testing: "Pattern Testing #4 Buck Loads"--Priority: Performance. Buckshot loads of less than 00 buck shot have been suggested at times because of the larger number of pellets (and thus, wounds) that can be created by a single round. Of these smaller loadings, #1 is the preferred option. But many people will try the #4 buckshot, which the author of this piece believes lack the terminal performance (specifically, penetration) necessary to be effective. The author brings up some other points, including that a lot more effort has been invested in creating effective 00 loadings than the #4. Part of this is the wadding and/or buffer material to keep a tight group. Consequently, after pattern testing, the author concluded that 10 yards was about as far as he would be comfortable using #4 buckshot, which makes it less than ideal for a defensive load. 
• Word is that Vickers has introduced a +2 magazine extension for the Glock 42.
• "Practice smarter: Information is key to improving shooting"--Multi-Brief. This article addresses a topic that has been raised by numerous firearms and self-defense trainers, including Greg Ellifritz: that practice that doesn't yield information against which you can measure any improvement is not useful. That is, rather than going through mindless practice--i.e., high repetition without being mindful of what we are doing--we should engage in deliberate practice. For instance:

        Where should you place your thumbs on the pistol as you solidify your grip during the draw stroke? How do you reduce excessive dwell time and break the shot as you come to full extension? Where should you stop as you move into a new firing position?

        We discover the answers to these questions through the process of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is often slow and involves careful, correct repetition of small and specific elements of a skill instead of just pushing through.

        Deliberate (or mindful) practice is a systematic and highly structured activity that consists of an active and thoughtful process of hypothesis testing where we constantly seek solutions to clearly defined problems.

* * *

        Decades of research into human performance indicate that obtaining information to identify error is critical to learning and improving motor skills. Feedback information regarding performance errors is critical to learning and improving your skills.

        The process of observing and obtaining feedback on your performance is a critical component of deliberate practice.

       We incorporate feedback into our deliberate practice through monitoring our performance — observing our performance in real-time and via video recordings — continually looking for new ways to improve. This means being keenly aware of exactly what you are doing so that you can determine precisely what went right or wrong.

Read the whole thing.

• "Brushbeater Talks Practical Rifle Accuracy"--Mason Dixon Tactical. The author begins:

There’s a lot of confusion even among longtime shooters between what a rifle is capable of doing off the bench on a nice controlled square range and what’s actually practical for a serviceable combat weapon. The two really aren’t the same. While tight groups are definitely a plus and a goal to be attained, having a precision weapon in the general purpose role is not always completely necessary to make one combat effective. There’s a happy medium to be found, and getting there is not always hard or expensive. Above all else, it’s the fundamentals of the shooter that make a weapon deadly, no matter what.

He goes on to discuss some specific considerations, including the mean distance you expect to engage a target (for instance, dense woodland doesn't require anywhere near the range that open country may necessitate); how heavy a rifle can you realistically carry on foot (and the distance or type of terrain that you think you will need to cover); practice under conditions similar to that in which you will use the rifle (i.e., square range practice is not enough); and "if you can't do it with irons, don't bother with optics." 

• Black Lives Matter: "In A Year With 200-Plus Slayings, Most St. Louis Victims Are Black Men In Unsolved Cases"--Weasel Zippers. "Most of the victims were in their 20s, though eight were 16 or younger and four were 60 or older. Nearly all, 165, were black males. The remaining victims were: 25 black females, 10 white males, two white females and one Hispanic male. And nearly all died in shootings."
• White privilege: "The Squirearchy: Prologue"--Anti-Dem. Some history of the Soho district in Manhattan:

... in the late nineteenth through mid twentieth centuries, this place was among the most poverty-ridden slums in the nation; these same brownstones were occupied almost exclusively by penniless immigrants fresh off the boat, many of whom had come through Ellis Island with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Here they toiled in backbreaking and often terribly hazardous conditions. Some (including more than one of my own ancestors) dug the subway tunnels under the city with shovels or moved rock with their bare hands, others labored in sweatshops where fourteen to sixteen hour days, six or even seven days a week, were the norm. Many were crippled, maimed, or killed in accidents like the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911, in which 146 workers, mostly women, burned alive or were crushed in a panicked stampede after a fire broke out at a garment factory and those inside found that the owners had locked the exits in an effort to keep them from taking unauthorized breaks. After their long days of work, the immigrant laborers came home to these tenements, which in those days were kept in a horribly dilapidated condition. The very poorest among them were consigned to the basement apartments, where they lived and slept in an inch or two of water that perennially covered the hard stone floors.

• "We All Live in Bangladesh Now"--Sultan Knish. Daniel Greenfield discusses the case of Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi Muslim living in Brooklyn who attempted to detonate a pipe bomb in a subway station. Ullah was in the United States due to the chain migration rule--one of his family got into the United States, and so he was, in turn, allowed to immigrate. Greenfield notes: "Bangladeshi immigration means that we all live in Bangladesh now. Pakistani migration means we all live in Pakistan. Iraqi migration means that to a certain degree we all live in Iraq."

• Related: "DHS Calls Pennsylvania Capitol Shooting A ‘Terror Attack’ By ‘Chain Migrant’"--Weasel Zippers. The shooter, "'Ahmed Aminamin El-Mofty [who specifically targeted police] was a naturalized U.S. citizen who was admitted to the United States from Egypt on a family-based immigrant visa,' Houlton said."

• "Betrayed by time"--Richard Fernandez writes at PJ Media Obama's deal with the devil, to provide Hezbollah with operational capacity in exchange for Iran delaying its nuclear weapons program:

        By canceling the Cassandra operation, Iran was allowed to form a Western Hemisphere criminal network unimpeded (in addition to all the other financial incentives offered to Tehran) in exchange for time. As the Brookings Institute noted, Obama wasn't preventing judgment day, simply paying to defer it. "The deal will only delay and not prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. Key restrictions on enriched uranium- and plutonium-production expire after 10 and 15 years, permitting Iran to expand its nuclear capacities and greatly reduce the time it would need to produce nuclear weapons, if it chose to do so in the future."

         Time without nuclear war is precious, worth perhaps all Obama paid for it. Unfortunately, all the benefits of his deal are ultimately in the future. By contrast, the actual costs have already been incurred. The United States knows to the penny what it paid for the historic UN agreement. The mystery is what it will get in exchange. Possibly nothing. The greatest fear of former Obama administration officials is that Donald Trump will somehow mindlessly ruin the deal by provoking the ayatollahs, thus preventing the delivery of the peace which the former administration paid Tehran to deliver.

         What went wrong with the Obama deal?

         In hindsight, the success of the Iran nuclear deal implicitly hinged upon the hidden assumption of a third and possibly a fourth Obama term through Hillary Clinton. Her defeat not only exposed the huge costs of the deal but undermined the future payoffs themselves. The eagerness of the Resistance to bring down Donald Trump stems from one single fact. He threatens to ruin their meticulously crafted multi-year plans.

•  Related: "Feds: Hezbollah Recruited American to Be Sleeper Agent"--Daily Beast.

        Ali Kourani was an alleged sleeper agent recruited by Hezbollah’s external terror arm, the Islamic Jihad Organization, or IJO.

         It is claimed that his Hezbollah handler ordered him to surveil facilities belonging to the FBI and Army National Guard in New York City. He took detailed notes on security protocols at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

         In interviews with the FBI after being “deactivated” from the terrorist group’s external operations wing, Kourani allegedly told the feds he was recruited because of Hezbollah’s interest in obtaining dual-citizen sleeper agents who could be activated in case of an emergency.

• The Religion of Peace in action: "Hundreds of Muslim demonstrators storm Egyptian Coptic church and call for it to be demolished"--Daily Mail. This occurred last Friday.
• While I have never personally seen a flying object that I couldn't readily explain, I was fascinated with UFO's as a kid and young adult ... that is, until I dug into some of the more famous accounts and discovered that many of the people that had experienced "close encounters" (alien abductions and the like) also were involved in the occult. (I also began to notice that many of the elements common to an face-to-face alien encounter or abduction were similar to European folk lore regarding elves, trolls, and fairies). In any event, there are some accounts that remain unexplained, although they most likely involve aircraft or weapons tests rather than extra-terrestrials. Anonymous Conservative quoted from a Popular Mechanics article some more information about the 2004  F-18 UFO encounter that I posted about recently, which makes that incident even more interesting: 

        FAST EAGLES (110/100) COULD NOT FIND UNID AIRBORNE CONTACT AT LOCATION GIVEN BY PRINCETON. WHILE SEARCHING FOR UNID AIR CONTACT, FAST EAGLES SPOTTED LARGE UNID OBJECT IN WATER AT 1430L. PILOTS SAW STEAM/ SMOKE/CHURNING AROUND OBJECT. PILOT DESCRIBES OBJECT INITIALLY AS RESEMBLING A DOWNED AIRLINER, ALSO STATED THAT IT WAS MUCH LARGER THAN A SUBMARINE.

         WHILE DESCENDING FROM 24K FT TO GAIN A BETTER VIEW OF THE UNID CONTACT IN THE WATER, FAST EAGLE 110 SIGHTED AN AIRBORNE CONTACT WHICH APPEARED TO BE CAPSULE SHAPED (WINGLESS, MOBILE, WHITE, OBLONG PILL SHAPED, 25-30 FEET IN LENGTH, NO VISIBLE MARKINGS AND NO GLASS) 5NM WEST FROM POSITION OF UNID OBJECT IN WATER.

        CAPSULE (ALT 4K FT AT COURSE 300) PASSED UNDER FAST EAGLE 110 (ALT 16KFT). FAST EAGLE 110 BEGAN TURN TO ACQUIRE CAPSULE. WHILE 110 WAS DESCENDING AND TURNING, CAPSULE BEGAN CLIMBING AND TURNED INSIDE OF FAST EAGLE’S TURN RADIUS. PILOT ESTIMATED THAT CAPSULE ACHIEVED 600-700 KTS. FAST EAGLE 110 COULD NOT KEEP UP WITH THE RATE OF TURN AND THE GAIN OF ALTITUDE BY THE CAPSULE. 110 LOST VISUAL ID OF CAPSULE IN HAZE. LAST VISUAL CONTACT HAD CAPSULE AT 14KFT HEADING DUE EAST.

         NEITHER FAST EAGLES 110 OR 100 COULD ACHIEVE RADAR LOCK OR ANY OTHER MEANS OF POSITIVE ID. FAST EAGLE 100 WAS FLYING HIGH COVER AND SAW THE ENGAGEMENT BY FAST EAGLE 110. FAST EAGLE 100 CONFIRMS 110 VISUAL ID; 100 LOST CONTACT IN HAZE AS WELL.

The article also notes that the object ("capsule") that was recorded by the gun cameras "was not only more maneuverable than the Hornets but also much faster —for it to have reached the CAP point ahead of the Navy fighters it would have had to have flown in excess of 2,400 miles an hour." 

• "Where The 'Last Jedi's Grosses Would Be If It Performed Like A Normal 'Star Wars' Movie"--Forbes. From the article:

       If the Rian Johnson-directed picture had parlayed that $220 million into the typical 2.36x multiple that the median previous Star Wars picture enjoyed by the end of its second weekend, The Last Jedi would now be sitting on a cumulative domestic haul of $520 million.

        If it had matched the average multiple of the 2nd film in each previous trilogy—The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones—it would have multiplied that $220 million start by 2.72x and would now be luxuriating in $598 million in domestic box office riches.

         And if all it had done was to match the average 2.12x multiple of the last three movies—Rogue One, The Force Awakens, and Revenge of the Sith—it would be looking at a cumulative gross of $468 million.

        But The Last Jedi isn’t coming close to approaching those kinds of returns. As of Friday it had huffed and puffed its way to $321 million, and by the end of this weekend it will land somewhere in the $365 million to $370 million range.

• "That We May Be Homosexualists"--Standard of Liberty. The LDS Church has tried to split the baby when it comes to homosexuality: loving the sinner (and allowing them full fellowship if they refrain from engaging in homosexual conduct) while condemning the sin. However, the author of this article argues that the Church's strategy is not working:

         Apart from what everybody heard from the pulpit, how is this happy-gay-celibate-Mormon tactic working? It's not. What it's doing is encouraging homosexualism, making those who are all-the-way-pro-gay mad, and confusing and/or dismissing the deeply-held beliefs of everybody else. 

         In an effort to placate or stall off both sides of a very controversial issue, the Mormon Church is disaffecting people on both sides of the homosexual juggernaut. It has previously bought into, big time, the false idea that LGBTQI+ is natural and permanent. See mormonandgay.org. But in a stunningly intellectually dishonest leap, it insists on, at least in some obscure handbook, prohibiting homosexual behaviors. Yes, it's perfectly delightful for gays to desire same-sex sex, but a huge no-no to actually do that perfectly delightful stuff they fantasize about. And yet any disciplining is left up to local leaders (who are untrained lay people and may well be leftists) on a case-by-case basis. The way things are going, this amounts to homosexuality in all its outward forms being welcomed and highlighted and celebrated in wards and stakes, and orthodox, traditional family values members having to shut up and endure all this nonsense. And watch it proliferate. 

Part of the problem is that the Church is relying on science when it reaches the conclusion that homosexuality is a matter of "nature" over "nurture"--that homosexuals are born that way. However, the author of a recent article from the BBC discussing the history of "heterosexuality" notes:

Researchers aren’t sure what “causes” homosexuality, and they certainly reject any theories that posit a simple origin, such as a “gay gene.” It’s my opinion that sexual desires, like all our desires, shift and re-orient throughout our lives, and that as they do, they often suggest to us new identities. If this is true, then Ward’s suggestion that we can cultivate sexual preferences seems fitting. 

(The article is terrible at its reading and interpretation of the Bible, so it may be just as bad at interpreting the latest research on homosexuality). But the problem with putting faith on science to find "truth" (as opposed to facts) is that the conclusions and consensus of science is always changing, like the shifting sands. If the BBC article is correct, however, and sexual preferences can be cultivated, then that suggests that homosexuality can be treated as a sin--i.e., missing the mark, but something of which the sinner can repent and correct.