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Wednesday, February 21, 2018

February 21, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Source: "What the world would look like without people: Shopping malls, houses and even a Ferris Wheel are reclaimed by nature after being abandoned"--Daily Mail.  The photograph shown above is of the railroad tracks running down the center of an abandoned rail station. The article has photographs of many different buildings and locations across the Eastern United States.

Australia made it extremely difficult to buy a new gun as it instituted a gun buyback. This means that in 1996, there were 17.5 guns per hundred people and in 2016, the number was only down to 13.7 per hundred people. So Australia’s big accomplishment was to decrease the number of guns in its nation by 22 percent. How much of a difference would that make in America where there are 101 guns for every 100 citizens and open borders that would allow illegal weapons to stream in if there were ever a large-scale demand for them?
  • A couple for from Gabe Suarez on dealing with police after a self-defense shooting:
  • "Killing Within The Law: Managing the Initial Police Contact". Suarez takes issue with those that say you should not talk to the police after a shooting. He notes that there are two reasons you want to do so: (1) to help establish in the responding and investigating officers' minds that you were the victim and acting in self-defense; and (2) to point out evidence that support's your recitation of events, or at least motivate the police to look for corroborating evidence. 
  • "Killing Within the Law: Be The Gentleman Killer". The gist of this article is that the police will treat you according to how you present yourself. Act and talk like a foulmouthed brute, and the police will treat you (or ignore you) accordingly; but act and talk like a gentleman (or at least a decent, upstanding citizen) and the police will more likely consider and listen to what you say.
  • At one time, twist rate was (mostly) a non-issue because the manufacturer would generally make barrels with a good all-round twist rate for the particular caliber--although there are a couple spectacular examples where the manufacturers got it wrong. However, with more people wanting to shoot bullets that are long for the caliber, whether because they want a heavy bullet for long distance shooting or are using non-lead bullets, twist rate has gained more attention in recent years. It also is an issue because milspec ARs use a 1:7 twist which is really too fast for the common bullet weights used by most AR aficionados. In any event, a couple good articles on twist rate from Shooting Times. I believe that I have linked to the first one before, but it is worthwhile to mention it again:
  • "The Importance of Twist Rates". This is a good discussion on twist rates, and discusses a simple formula to determine the best twist rate for a given caliber and bullet:
The Greenhill Formula for most standard cartridges is T=150(d/r), where T is the twist rate, d is the bullet diameter, and r is the bullet length to diameter ratio (bullet length divided by its diameter). For cartridges with a muzzle velocity of more than 2,800 fps, substitute 180 for 150.
  • "Practical Considerations On Twist Rate". This article is a good follow on to the one cited above. It goes into a deeper discussion of over-stabilized and under-stabilized bullets, spin velocity (including that the 1:7 twist on your favorite AR rifle is probably too fast for thin-walled varmint cartridges, which can literally come apart from the centrifugal force).
  • Some really dumb ideas are being fielded in relation to gun control. For instance, Ross Douthat (the New York Times' token "conservative") has proposed that different types of firearms should have different minimum ages for buying them. He suggests that the minimum age for buying an AR should be 30 years old. This, less than 6 months after a 64 year old man committed America's worst mass shooting. In any event, Sean Davis at The Federalist notes that:
            Since the 1966 shooting at the University of Texas, an incident which many believe touched off the modern phenomenon of mass shootings (defined as a public shooting in which 4 or more people were killed), there have been 150 shootings involving 153 individuals, according to a detailed database published by the Washington Post. Of those, 150 were men, and the ages of 148 of them are known.
              The average of those male mass shooters is just over 33 years old. 
      • "Is The Second Amendment Worth Dying For?"--John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist.  The author argues that some things are more important than safety, even if it means that we may personally be put at risk in order to protect those ideals. He observes that, notwithstanding the nay-saying from leftist politicians, "[i]f we’re going to regulate firearms like cars, we’re going to have to decide that owning a gun will no longer be a constitutional right but a heavily regulated privilege. If we do that, we’re going to have to be honest about what that means: changing the very nature of the constitutional system America’s Founders designed." He continues:
               Here it must be said that the Second Amendment was not meant to safeguard the right to hunt deer or shoot clay pigeons, or even protect your home and family from an intruder. The right to bear arms stems from the right of revolution, which is asserted in the Declaration of Independence and forms the basis of America’s social compact. Our republic was forged in revolution, and the American people have always retained the right to overthrow their government if it becomes tyrannical. That doesn’t mean that private militias should have tanks and missile launchers, but it does mean that revolution—the right of first principles—undergirds our entire political system.
                 That might sound academic or outlandish next to the real-life horror of a school shooting, but the fact remains that we can’t simply wave off the Second Amendment any more than we can wave off the First, or the Fourth, or any of them. They are constitutive elements of the American idea, without which the entire constitutional system would eventually collapse.
                   In this, America is unlike the European nations that gun control advocates like to compare it with. Germany can restrict the right to bear arms as easily as it can—and does—restrict free speech. Not so in America. If we want to change that, it will involve a substantial diminishment of our constitutional rights as we have known them up until now. After last week’s school shooting, some Americans are okay with that, especially those families who are grieving. But I suspect most Americans are not willing to make that trade-off, and might never be—unless they suffer the same of kind personal loss.
                    Returning to Wallace’s thought experiment, we might rephrase it like this: is the Second Amendment worth dying for? That’s another way of asking what the American idea is worth. It’s not an easy question, and I don’t pose it lightly, as I’m sure Wallace didn’t.
                       But it’s one we need to ask, even in the face of heartbreaking and devastating loss. Is ours a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices of our personal safety in order to preserve our democratic way of life? If we will not sacrifice some measure our personal safety, are we willing to sacrifice something like the Second Amendment? If so, what else are we willing to sacrifice?
              • "Ban Secularism and Fatherlessness, Not Guns"--PJ Media. There are many who have tied mass shootings to SSRI drugs, but there are other similarities between the teens that have become mass shooters: a lack of a father in their lives. From the article:
                        The break-up of the traditional family and the rise in fatherless boys have woven themselves into the natural, narcissistic consequences that result from free and unfettered sexuality. With that freedom, though, comes pushback when one person's freedom is another person's prison. In moments of conflict, what recourse do those steeped in the moral vacuum of secularism have other than to lash out?
                         Wilson concludes his short article by poetically pointing out that when confused, fatherless, godless boys lash out, "they find a gun, left around from simpler times, and do their bloody work. Our proposed solution is to ban all reminders of those simpler times."
                           Douglas Wilson's article is a needed reminder that the answer to gun violence is found in Christianity. Instead of banning guns, we need to ban godlessness and fatherlessness. Sadly, as Wilson knows and alludes to, secularists will never cede their gains in society, even if that means sacrificing children.
                    • For some perspective, even with this shooting in Florida there are nations that suffer through much worse, including our neighbor to the immediate south. Just in the past week:
                    • Something is rotten in Germany: "Germany's lack of military readiness 'dramatic,' says Bundeswehr commissioner"--Deutsche Welle. The article notes that "[t]he call on politicians to double-down on reforms and increase funding came in the same week a Defense Ministry paper revealed German soldiers did not have enough protective vests, winter clothing or tents to adequately take part in a major NATO mission." The article also points out other problems demonstrating an increasingly hollow German military, including a lack of officers (27,000 unfilled positions), and that "[a]t the end of 2017, no submarines and none of the air force's 14 large transport planes were available for deployment due to repairs."
                    • Related: "German War Planes Grounded By Eco-Gas"--The Washington Free Beacon. Germany is trying to go "green" on its jet fuel, including using biodiesel in its fuel. Problem is, the mixture has to be precisely tuned or it will gum up the jet engines. It was not precisely tuned, and now Germany's air force is grounded until fuel tanks can be flushed. Political correctness will be the death of Europe.
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