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Monday, February 26, 2018

February 26, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"React to Close Contact: Offensive Maneuver"--Max Velocity Tactical (5 min.)

         In a typical handgun injury, which I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ such as the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, gray bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments.
            I was looking at a CT scan of one of the mass-shooting victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?
              The reaction in the emergency room was the same. One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle that delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.
                Of course, this is only one victim, so it is impossible to determine whether or not this was typical of the wounds suffered by the shooting victims. Of course, anyone with an iota of knowledge of terminal ballistics knows that rifles typically produce (or have the potential to produce) more devastating wounds than handguns--that is one of the primary reasons we use rifles when hunting. So, histrionics aside, rather than illustrating why the AR should be banned, this article demonstrates why one might prefer an AR for self-defense over a handgun.
                  I would also note that Martin Fackler published an analysis of the wounds received by children in the 1989 Patrick Purdy school shooting in Stockton, California (PDF here). Purdy used an AK style rifle shooting 7.62x39mm FMJ ammunition. Fackler noted that the AK-47 round will generally penetrate 25 cm before yawing, resulting in wounds that typically are indistinguishable from a handgun wound if the round exits before yawing. Notably, Fackler indicates that the only children that died in the Stockton shooting were those where a bullet had penetrated through a vital organ, and of these, the largest tissue disruption (~3.81 cm) was in the right lobe of the liver. However, Fackler also noted that there was no damage to any organs not directly struck by a bullet. So, in that regard, the author of The Atlantic article cited above has failed to demonstrate that there is anything unique about the AR or the wounds that it can produce.
          • "Musings on Musketry — Part the First"--Large Fierce Mammal (h/t Maajak World). The author reminisces on his first rifle--a surplus Enfield .303--and discusses a bit of the Enfield's history in the Canadian military. 
          • "Basics of Solar Panels: Sizing Your Array"--Blue Collar Prepping. Some basic questions you need to answer before starting to look at equipment.
          • "Two New AK Chassis by Sureshot Armament Group"--The Firearm Blog. As the article describes them, "[t]he MK2 chassis consists of a top piece which provides a rigid top rail platform starting from around the middle of the receiver and going forward to the gas block. The lower piece is a free floated handguard"; while the MK3 "has a full-length top rail which is fixed to the barrel via the barrel nut and the second attachment point is on the stock adapter. This system will require to cut the original AK charging handle and replace the safety selector lever with a different one." Something to note is that they do NOT replace the stamped steel receiver the AK uses, but instead are about providing a stable optic mount and allow you to "free-float" (as much as that is possible) the barrel. However, they apparently replace the gas tube. It is not clear if they include the gas block, but I presume they would. 
          • "When wives beat their husbands, no one wants to believe it"--Los Angeles Times. From the article:
                    Partner violence by women is one of the most contentious subjects in social science. The first large-scale study of domestic abuse, the 1975 National Family Violence Survey conducted by the late University of New Hampshire sociologist Murray Straus and his colleague Richard Gelles (now at the University of Pennsylvania), found that similar numbers of women and men admitted to assaulting a spouse or partner in the previous 12 months. The researchers were skeptical initially, assuming most female violence had to be in self-defense, though in many cases the wife was the self-reported sole perpetrator. Later surveys showed that in mutually violent relationships, women were as likely as men to be the aggressors. These findings have been confirmed in more than 200 studies.
                      Critics have challenged the methodology of much of this research because it focuses on couple conflict and omits post-separation attacks. Yet two major federally backed surveys using different methods — the 2000 National Violence Against Women Survey by the National Institute of Justice and the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey by the Centers for Disease Control — found that about 40% of those reporting serious assaults by current or former partners in the past year were men, and most of their attackers were women.
                        Female-on-male violence is often assumed to be harmless, given sex differences in size and strength. Yet women may use weapons — including knives, glass, boiling water and various household objects — while men may be held back from defending themselves by cultural taboos against harming woman. David Nevers, an Illinois man who went public about his experience as a battered husband 20 years ago, suffered serious, documented injuries — burns, cuts and a broken nose — despite being four inches taller and 100 pounds heavier than his then-wife.
                          Overall, studies find that female-on-male assaults account for 12% to 40% of injuries from domestic violence. Men also make up about 30% of intimate homicide victims, not counting confirmed cases of female self-defense. The 1998 killing of actor/comedian Phil Hartman by his wife, Brynn, who then committed suicide, is just one notable instance of a domestic murder in which the perpetrator with a history of violence was a woman.
                            Discussions of female-on-male abuse have been met with extreme hostility from feminist academics, activists and commentators. Scholars studying the subject have been attacked as apologists for misogyny. Battered women's advocates tend to explain away female violence as almost entirely defensive, despite evidence to the contrary. One reason for this attitude is solidarity with women as victims; another is the dogmatic view that battering is an expression of patriarchal power.
                              Abused men have faced widespread biases from police, judges and social workers, who tend to assume that the man in a violent relationship is the aggressor and to trivialize assaults by women. Much of this prejudice stems from traditional sexism: Battered men violate stereotypical expectations about manliness. Yet feminists perpetuate such sexism when they deny the reality of male victims and female abusers. Equality should include recognizing women's potential for abusive behavior.
                      • Not something you hear about every day: "Parents repel invaders at Oaxaca school"--Mexico News Daily. Who were these invaders? A rival teacher's union which members had been fired 3 years ago. According to the article, 3 parents were injured in the battle.
                      • "Rwanda: Police shot dead 11 refugees in food riot"--Deutsche Welle. Five of the refugees were from the Congo. The riots were not to get food, as the headline suggests, but a protest against the UN refugee agency cutting the amount of food it was providing refugees by 25%. Armed rioters attacked police, who responded with force. 
                      • "Syria war: Who are Russia's shadowy Wagner mercenaries?"--BBC. An excerpt discussing why Russia would want to use security contractors:
                                The mercenaries can be deployed in especially tough ground fighting alongside Syrian government troops. And as the Russian government does not officially recognise the mercenaries' existence it can deny or play down any Russian casualties.
                                  Their role has been compared to that of US military contractors in Iraq, who were deployed on a large scale.
                                    The US suffered heavy casualties in Vietnam, and later the Afghanistan war was very costly for Russia. Those wounds - and the associated public anger - encouraged both countries to privatise war in recent years.
                                      Military sources quoted by RBC said that when Russia helped Assad forces to recapture Palmyra it was the Wagner men who went in first. "First Wagner's guys go to work, then the Russian ground units come in, and then the Arabs and the cameras," an unnamed ex-Wagner officer said.
                                       ... Syria has become a battleground for global and regional powers -- including the United States, Russia, Turkey, Iran and Israel -- who are using the country as a venue for the pursuit of their own interests. The danger of an unintended clash has become extreme. And the conflict has become even more difficult for outsiders to understand.
                                           The various international parties to this war have all, almost simultaneously, launched massive attacks in the past few weeks. For much of the last 28 days, the Turkish army has been attacking the Kurdish militia YPG in the northern Syrian city of Afrin. And the Israeli air force launched a wave of airstrikes, which, it says, destroyed half of all Syrian anti-aircraft capability, after one of its warplanes had been shot down during a response to an Iranian drone incursion on Israeli airspace.
                                            Then there was this mysterious clash near the natural gas field, which some reports have depicted as the deadliest encounter between Russian and American troops since the end of the Cold War. Russian mercenaries were reportedly found among the dead, with some sources claiming that up to 200 Russians lost their lives. Local sources from the main military hospital in Deir ez-Zor indicate the death toll was likely between 10 and 20.
                                             The intervention of foreign powers in Syria is by no means new. But the current intensity of their conflicts can be largely traced back to a single source: Their joint enemy is gone. Since fall 2014, all powers could agree that Islamic State was the primary target. And even if there was room for doubts regarding the sincerity of Russia and Turkey, the fight against IS served to unite all involved.
                                                 Six suspects were arrested following a house robbery and murder at a farm in Charl Cilliers, near Secunda, Mpumalanga police said on Monday.
                                                  The suspects, aged between 35 and 39, and including a woman, were traced and arrested at their different hideouts in Embalenhle and Emzinoni after police acted on information received regarding their whereabouts.
                                                    According to police, on Friday night, at approximately 10:30pm, a 73-year-old man was watching television with his family when three armed men suddenly stormed into their house. They demanded keys to the safe and took the elderly man to the bedroom where the safe was mounted and in the process shot the victim.
                                                      In the classroom where Mackenzie Hill had been hiding, police broke through the door. As the officers were guiding students out, they noticed something odd: One of the students had put on a bulletproof vest.
                                                        The student said he'd been given the vest by his father, a police officer.
                                                          Even in the safest city in Florida, he'd brought it to school with him, just in case.
                                                            Peterson said the initial report was of firecrackers, not gunshots, in the 1200 building, where the killer was shooting his victims. When he reached the building, he heard gunshots, but “believed that those gunshots were originating from outside of any of the buildings on the school campus,” the statement said, in a quotation attributed to Peterson.
                                                               In the event of outdoor gunshots, sheriff’s office training calls for deputies to “seek cover and assess the situation in order to communicate what one observes to other law enforcement,” the statement said.
                                                                “Consistent with his training, Mr. Peterson ‘took up a tactical position between the 700-800 buildings corridor/corner,” the statement said. Radio reports of a victim on the football field reinforced his belief that the shooter was outside, according to the statement.
                                                                   He was the first sheriff’s office deputy to advise BSO dispatch of shots fired and he initiated the code red that locked down the entire campus.
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