Happy New Year -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"How to make a staff-sling - in possibly too much detail"--Lindy Beige (43 min.) 

• "The Color of Crime, 2016 Revised Edition"--American Renaissance. I saw that the Western Rifle Shooters Association had linked to this the other day. This appears to be in reference to the same report I linked to in April 2016, which analyzes data concerning race and violent crime. You can get a PDF of the full paper here.

• Speaking of the color of crime: "Texas cafe owner wrestles gun away from would-be robber and then fires multiple shots at him"--Daily Mail. The perpetrator and two accomplices--all black--were arrested shortly after fleeing the scene. According to the article:

'The guy's an idiot,' the owner remarked. 'He even told the cop..when the cop grabbed the gun from the counter and he brought it into the car, he said the suspect said: "Can I have my gun back?"' 

•  "Leaked: GLOCK 19X Due Out Jan 22"--The Truth About Guns. The weapon apparently uses a G19 slide/barrel on a G17 frame. It also features no finger grooves, and the ambidextrous slide release. 
• "Customs & Border Protection RFI Published Requesting New Sidearm"--The Firearms Rack. They are also dumping the .40 S&W in favor of the 9 mm.
• ".22 Magnum Ammunition for Survival and Personal Defense"--Ammo Land. The reason for choosing it for survival purposes is that it offers enough energy to take larger game, but not so much that it destroys small game (and the meat and/or hide of said animals). The case for use a a self-defense round may not seem as clear cut because of the smaller diameter. The author of this particular article notes, however, that the muzzle energy of the .22 Magnum is more than a .380 or .38 Special, and nearing that of a 9 mm. And there are manufacturers that have crafted reasonably good .22 Magnum rounds specifically intended for self-defense.

• Related: "What about the .22 Magnum?"--Buckeye Firearms Association. In this 2013 article by Greg Ellifritz, he explains:

      I've never been able to explain it, but the .22 Magnum has always performed better than it really should. ...

      The famed Rex Applegate also opined that the .22 magnum would make an ideal hideout handgun. He pressured Smith and Wesson to make a J-frame snub in that caliber, stating that he would prefer the performance of the .22 magnum over the .38 spl out of a snubnose revolver. Unfortunately the 351 wasn't developed until after Applegate's death.

       In my stopping power study, I wasn't able to come up with many shootings with the .22 Magnum. I have 9 shootings with that caliber in my database. Each of those incidents had only one round fired and five resulted in an immediate incapacitation when hit. That 55% immediate incapacitation rate rivals the 9mm and the .38 spl. I caution you that the data isn't really comparable because the number of shootings with the .38 and 9mm is much higher than with the .22 magnum. The round still seems to offer decent performance.

       ... Richard Mann did some ballistic gelatin testing for American Rifleman Magazine and reported some good findings as well. In his tests, the 45 grain Hornady Critical Defense round expanded to .36 caliber and penetrated 15″ of gelatin. That's as good or better than most .38 spl defensive loads out of the snub revolver!

        The .22 mag has essentially no recoil, but has similar performance as compared to its .38 cousin. It does, however, hold two more rounds [in the S&W 351]. I can see why Rex Applegate liked the idea!

• "Triggers Explained, More than a Bangswitch"--Strong Side Tactical. A good overview of the different types of AR triggers, including the difference between mil-spec versus improved trigger groups versus drop-in trigger groups; single-stage versus two-stage; and flat versus curved. The author also explains anti-rotation and anti-walk trigger pins (which I consider a must with a drop-in trigger unit).
• "What is Worth Fighting For?"--Angry Staff Officer. Given the seemingly interminable conflicts in the near- and middle-east, the author poses the questions: 

What is worth fighting for?

And further, what is worth dying for?

Home? Family? Religion? Way of life? Economic pursuits? Safety and security?

How about this one: what is worth killing for?

It is an important question. A hundred years and a few weeks ago, in the Battle of Caporetto, the Austro-Hungarian troops were routing the Italians ... to a point. The Great War channel notes that after the route, and as Austro-Hungarian troops threatened Venice, the morale of the Italian troops actually rose as they were now fighting for their homeland.  The question reminds me of the portion of the Book of Mormon dealing with Captain Moroni raising the Title of Liberty which answered the same questions: "And it came to pass that he rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it—In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children—and he fastened it upon the end of a pole." (Alma 46:12). His answers seem to pretty well answer the questions posed by the Angry Staff Officer.

• "2018 Starts With Record Cold In Parts Of The Midwest"--Associated Press (via AT&T). From the article:

       Temperatures plunged below zero elsewhere in the Midwest, including in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where the mercury dropped to a record-breaking minus 32 (-36 Celsius). The previous New Year's Day record had stood for 99 years.

        In Nebraska, temperatures hit 15 below zero (-26 Celsius) before midnight Sunday in Omaha, breaking a record low dating to 1884. Omaha officials cited the forecast in postponing the 18th annual New Year's Eve Fireworks Spectacular that draws around 30,000 people.

        It was colder in Des Moines, where city officials closed a downtown outdoor ice skating plaza and said it wouldn't reopen until the city emerged from sub-zero temperatures. The temperature hit 20 below zero (-29 Celsius) early Monday, with the wind chill dipping to negative 31 degrees (-35 Celsius).

       In northeastern Montana, the wind chill readings dipped as low as minus 58 (-50 Celsius). And in Duluth, Minnesota, a city known for its bitter cold winters, the wind chill dipped to 36 below zero (-38 Celsius).

       Plunging overnight temperatures in Texas brought rare snow flurries as far south as Austin, and accidents racked up on icy roads across the state. In the central Texas city of Abilene, the local police chief said more than three dozen vehicle crashes were reported in 24 hours.

         It's even cold in the Deep South, a region more accustomed to brief bursts of arctic air than night after night below zero. Frozen pipes and dead car batteries were concerns from Louisiana to Georgia as overnight temperatures in the teens were predicted across the region by Monday night.

• Diversity is our strength: "Parts Of Britain Now No-Go Zones For Whites And Women"--Anonymous Conservative. AC notes that there is research indicating that "long-form DRD4 alleles are not rabbit genes per se, but rather that they are adaptable genes, which confer an increased flexibility which may include an increased ability to go even more K under conditions of K, as well as an increased ability to go r, under conditions of r." Thus, he foresees that a lot of people that are now r-selected will become hyper-K when resource restrictions occur. 

        Zooming out to the population level, I think people are going to be surprised at the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the West one day. Yes, when we look back, we will see the West exhibit pathological altruism as now. But we are the same people who hunted entire species extinct, and killed entire cultures in colonized lands. We laugh today when Ann Coulter says we need to invade their lands, kill their leaders, and convert them all to Christianity, but there was a time when that was policy. That will return.

        I don’t think humans as a whole in the West have changed that much. I just think a lot of them have adapted to exploit the glut. And I think when they adapt back, somebody will be rendered extinct in Europe – either the migrants or the natives. What will determine survival will be IQ and the ability to function in a large group cohesively. I do not expect the highly in-bred, clannish-to-the-point-of-corruption, low IQ r-strategist Muslim refugees to have either ability.

        And once they are taken out, I would not want to have been a collaborator. Once that ball is rolling downhill, it will continue to roll for a while after the migrants are gone.

       Lots of people will be going extinct. Hopefully it will be the right ones.