March 27, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"How to survive a gunfight in a car"--Tactical Rifleman (8 min.)

Notwithstanding the title, this video is on how to fight around or in proximity to a vehicle, including when getting out of the vehicle, and discusses some of the issue like ricochet or changes in trajectory velocity, cover, etc.. 

• A new Woodpile Report has been posted.
• A few weeks ago, I linked to a video testing Federal's 38 Special +P 130 Grain HST JHP ammo, which showed good penetration and expansion both on bare gel and through heavy denim. Here is an article from Guns.com also reviewing the same ammo. They reported velocities of nearly 1,200 fps out of a 1.8 inch J-frame revolver, which several people in the comments questioned. As for expansion, they indicated:

        In ballistics tests, Clear Ballistics supplied us with a synthetic 10 percent FBI block which we duly riddled. Of the five shots fired through the 16-inch long block, two penetrated the entire length and exited into the berm.

        The three bullets retained inside the gel showed controlled expansion between 11.5-15 inches, mushrooming into a six-petaled blossom of distinct lead and copper layers.

• "Why is the AKM’s Muzzle Brake Canted?"--The Firearm Blog. He explains: "When the recoil impulse travels down the rifle and into the shooter, it causes the gun to pivot up and away from the shooter’s support shoulder. The horizontal direction depends on the shooter’s dominant hand. Since the overwhelming majority of people in the world are right-handed, Soviet engineers implemented a compensator that is most effective for them."
• "Thriving Big Game Herds Mean Big Harvests for This Season’s Hunters"--Real World Survival. According to the article, the Idaho Fish & Game Department is reporting much higher than normal survival rates for fawns and elk calves this winter: 88% and 97%, respectively. 
• "Build Your Own Precision Bolt-Action Rifle"--American Rifleman. The author of this particular article still spent $4,463 (which included the optic), but if you were willing to stick with a stock Remington 700 receiver, you could save a considerable amount of money. What makes this possible is the "Remage" barrels mentioned by the author. The common problem with Remington barrels is that they are difficult to install and headspace properly, and it is generally a job for a gun smith. However, the Remage (Remington & Savage) barrels for the Remington 700 employ a barrel nut like that on the Savage rifle, but designed to be used with the Remington 700 receiver and stocks, allowing you to more easily install and headspace a new barrel. 
• "Don’t Overdo It! -- Over Cleaning Can Be As Bad As Neglect"--Guns Magazine. The author discusses some cleaning products--other than the old Hoppes No. 9 standby--and then gets to what the title is about. He writes:

        At ranges over the years I’ve seen a lot of shooters cleaning bores. I still see a lot of cheap 3-piece cleaning rods. Or if the shooter buys a quality 1-piece rod he’ll get one to fit 0.22-inch bores and use the same rod for his 0.308-inch barrels, where it bends and rubs the bore. Not 1 in 20 uses a bore guide to keep the rod centered.

         More than once I’ve winced to see one shooter holding the rifle down on a bench while another pounds on the cleaning rod to dislodge a stuck patch. Another ploy is to use an aggressive copper solvent and leave it in the bore far longer than the manufacturer’s directions, or getting it on exterior surfaces and damaging blued finishes.

        Frankly without the right tools and technique constant bore cleaning does more harm than good. But I realize I won’t change any minds. I’ve had friends call my character into question for not cleaning my rifle bore until the end of hunting season saying, “I couldn’t sleep without knowing my rifle is clean, lubed, and ready to go.”

        Well, a freshly cleaned and lubed firearm is ready to go into storage, not into service. I’d never consider taking a rifle out hunting without firing a couple of groups to check point of impact, to foul the bore, and to be certain the rifle feeds, chambers, extracts and ejects cartridges reliably.

• Democrats are really pushing for disarmament of Americans. First, we have Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in the Senate and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., in the House, pressing legislation requiring background checks to purchase ammunition under some theory that "bullets" are not "arms." And, second, we have Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens calling for the abolition of the Second Amendment.
• On a related note--the disenfranchisement of Americans--California has sued to stop the Census Bureau from including a question on citizenship in the next federal census. The Daily Caller reports:

[Secretary of Commerce] Ross explained that the citizenship question helps provide a more accurate understanding of congressional districts. California, however, is concerned that the citizenship question may discourage illegal immigrants from participating in the census, resulting in an undercount and the possible redrawing of political districts, a loss of political representation on the national level, and increased benefits for the Republican Party as power shifts from the cities to rural America.

California has reason to be concerned--it is one of the states with the highest rate of out-migration of citizens. If they can't paper over this loss of population with non-citizens, they could lose seats in Congress.

• "NC Sheriff Candidate: Kill Gun Owners Who Won’t Give Up Their Guns"--The Truth About Guns. Democrat Sheriff candidate R. Daryl Fisher recently appeared in front of a Moms Demand Action meeting at the West Asheville, North Carolina. In his remarks, he joked about taking guns from the cold, dead hands of gun owners that resisted civilian disarmament. Of course, that is exactly where this is all going.
• "Why The March For Our Lives Is A Disaster For Hoplophobes"--Anonymous Conservative. AC notes that, at least to him, the appearance, demeanor and words of the March For Our Lives speakers just antagonize most Americans and make them feel threatened.
• "Here's Why Antibiotics May Give Viruses a Leg Up"--Live Science. Antibiotics can kill gut bacteria that would otherwise help fight off viral infections. I think I had this happen to me this year. I had just finished a round of antibiotics to deal with a sinus infection, when I caught the flu.
• Diversity kills: "Elderly Holocaust Survivor Killed By An Islamist She Knew Since He Was Seven"--The Daily Caller.  From the article:

         Mireille Knoll, 85, was killed Friday in Paris. Two men were charged in the murder. They allegedly stabbed Knoll and then set her apartment on fire. One was a Muslim neighbor that she had known since he was a seven-year-old boy, The Times of Israel reported. The assailant, 21, spent time in the elderly woman’s building the day of the attack, The New York Post reported.

        Authorities are investigating the attack as an anti-Semitic incident.

        Knoll’s family members expressed their shock at the incident. “My mother accepted everyone. Even the neighbor who murdered her, she has known since he was seven years old. When he was a boy, he helped her,” said Daniel Knoll, her son.

       She was “always happy to see [the neighbor]. It’s unbelievable that it ended like this,” said Noa Goldfard, her granddaughter.

       The assailants also wrecked the woman’s home and set fire to her belongings. The neighbor was found in possession of the woman’s phone. He was previously arrested for sexually assaulting her former caretaker’s 12-year-old daughter, Reuters reported.

At least she had the police to protect her, right?

        Knoll previously warned police that her neighbor threatened to kill her. The elderly woman also suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

Too bad she couldn't have bought a firearm to defend herself.

• "Demand For White American Sperm Surges In Brazil"--The Daily Wire. The article explains:

         Women are importing the sperm of American men at unprecedented rates, says a report from The Wall Street Journal, and blue-eyed Caucasian males are the most sought after donors.

* * *

        "The vast majority of what we have and what we sell are the Caucasian blond-haired, blue-eyed donors," Fredrik Andreasson told the Journal. Andreasson is the CFO of Seattle Sperm Bank, a bank that procures about a fourth of the country's sperm imports.

* * *

         But why are Brazilian women yearning for the sperm of blonde, white males in a country where so much of the population is mixed race or black? The reasoning is seemingly economic, but also social, being tightly tied to the country's racial history.

        Race is perceived as an indicator of wealth and prosperity in the country; it is estimated that over 80% of the wealthiest top 1% in Brazil are white.

        "More than 50% of Brazilians are black or mixed-race, a legacy of Brazil having imported more than 10 times as many African slaves than the U.S.; it was the last Western country to ban slavery, in 1888. The descendants of white colonizers and immigrants — many of whom were lured to Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the ruling elite explicitly sought to 'whiten' the population — control most of the country’s political power and wealth," explains the Journal. "In such a racially divided society, having fair-skinned offspring is often viewed as a way to provide a child with better prospects, from a higher salary to fairer treatment by the police."

       Brazilian women are reportedly requesting blue-eyed donors specifically to up their probability of having a child with fair skin.

• Diversity + Proximity = War: "The Collapse of Racial Liberalism" by Nils Gilman at The American Interest. Although the article is a paean to the rise of black power and the denouement of whites, it nevertheless raises some interesting points. From the article (bold added):

         By racial liberalism, I mean the basic consensus that existed across the mainstream of both political parties since the 1970s, to the effect that, first, bigotry of any overt sort would not be tolerated, but second, that what was intolerable was only overt bigotry—in other words, white people’s definition of racism. Institutional or “structural” racism—that is, race-based exclusions that result from deep social habits such as where people live, who they know socially, what private organizations they belong to, and so on—were not to be addressed. The core ethic of the racial liberal consensus was colorblind individualism.

        The racial liberal consensus emerged from the post-1960s struggle over racial integration, in particular through the debates over school busing and affirmative action. One of the Civil Rights movement’s most undisputed successes was in establishing the norm that overt expressions of racial animus were no longer politically or even socially acceptable in the United States. Despite grumbles about political correctness, new forms of racial etiquette and sensitivity training proliferated across the American educational and corporate landscape. At the same time, however, resistance to school busing and the eventual roll-back of affirmative action programs resulted in clear limits on redressing system-level structural exclusions based on what was typically referred to as “the legacy” of racism and slavery.

        Emblematic of this post-Civil Rights Movement racial liberal consensus was the late Reverend Billy Graham, as David Hollinger recently explained in the New York Times. To his credit, Graham made a show of integrating his religious revivals and rallies at a time when such a move was considered “provocative” in much of the South. On the other hand, he offered only weak challenges to ongoing prejudices and injustices, choosing “to represent anti-black racism as a sin of the individual human heart rather than a civic evil to be corrected by collective political authority.” In this estimation, intentions rather than outcomes were the proper basis for measuring racial progress.

        While there were always dissenters from the racial liberal consensus in the post-Civil Rights era, mainstream politicians from both sides of the political divide respected its norms, if only in the breach.3 While racial animus persisted beneath the surface of U.S. civil society, the consensus was not only that overt expressions of bigotry against people of color and celebrations of white supremacy were no longer acceptable, but also that attempts to name and dismantle the institutional bases of white privilege were a political bridge too far. Mainstream politicians were expected to police defectors from their respective “extreme” flanks.

* * *

         The central tenet of racial liberalism, which Obama articulated and embodied better than anyone ever has—namely that everyone wants the same thing when it comes to racial justice—has been exposed as false. To a very large extent, both Right and Left have now dropped the pretense to racial liberalism, and the nation now faces a stark choice.

         For its part, the racial Right, where it does not actively embrace white supremacy, now makes no apology for white privilege and demands, as in Northern Virginia with the Cox Farms protestors, that white supremacist views be treated with respect. Conversely, the racial Left is no longer willing to tolerate the structural exclusions and violence that are the ongoing de facto legacies of centuries of de jure white supremacy, first in slavery and then in southern Jim Crow. Bringing down Confederate statues across the South reflects a firm rejection of the idea that racial reconciliation must mean tolerating public symbols of injustice. It is hard to see how two such radically different views of the nation’s racial future can be reconciled.

       Nor is it at all clear that we should wish for a return to the racial liberal consensus. While a politics of ethno-racial identity have roared into the mainstream of both the Democratic and Republican parties, this parallelism by no means entails moral equivalence. For one side the goal is to complete the march through the institutions in order to end the four-centuries-long legacy of white supremacy. For the other it is about a last-ditch defense of the longstanding privileges associated with that history. What the collapse of racial liberalism means is that Americans of every race no longer can defer the choice between those two visions of the country’s racial future.

• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "NASA to Allow Nuclear Power Systems for Next Discovery Mission"--Space.com. Ever since the United States wound down its nuclear weapons programs, the supply of plutonium-238 available for space missions has been dwindling and carefully hoarded. However, this article reports:

        Citing progress in producing plutonium-238, NASA will allow scientists proposing missions for an upcoming planetary science competition to use nuclear power sources.

         In a statement issued March 17, Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division, said the agency was reversing an earlier decision prohibiting the use of radioisotope power systems for spacecraft proposed for the next mission in the agency's Discovery program.

The Discovery program are interplanetary missions using more specialized, but smaller and less expensive probes. The missions at issue here are the Mars 2020 rover and, possibly, the Dragonfly (part of the Discovery program) which is a proposed lunar probe.