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

"7.62x39mm gel test: 154 gr TulAmmo soft point"--The Chopping Block (1-1/2 min.)

• "Photos of illegal TEC-9 submachine gun factory operating in Montreal"--Impro Guns. The factory was shut down in 2014, but these photos only recently (April 2018) were released. The firearms appear to have been nicely made. Of course, the reason that submachine guns are often the weapon of choice for blackmarket guns is that they are the easiest repeating weapon to manufacture.
• "QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN MODIFYING YOUR GEAR"--American Partisan. The author begins by asking:

How many times do you talk to a buddy who is into Survivalism, or militia type activities, and he tells you he bought a new piece of gear, simply because “Fill In The Blank” (a tactical gear authority, don’t you know), said it was the shiznit of all shizum, when it comes to that type of accessory. When I hear this, I usually ask, “What was wrong with the setup you had?”, and I usually get a blank stare, indicating that it was an impulse buy, and not meant to fill a glaring gap in their gear setup.

He recommends that you ask yourself five questions: 

1. Do you need to upgrade your gear and why?
2. What's available and what is its reputation?
3. What's the price and availability?
4. What is the minimum to accomplish my task or meet my need?
5. Does it meet the requirements and is it worth the money?

• "Blast from the past. Don't let the horror of war be washed away...."--SNAFU. He writes: "Don't let them wash away the horror of war.  History is to be embraced.  It might not be lovely.  It might be disturbing in ways we don't want to think about but it must be faced."
• "LONG GUNS:Trijicon TA01NSN-308 and Century C308"--SWAT Magazine. A review of the Century C308, which is a Frankengun: a combination of CETME C, HK G-3 furniture, and a new navy style HK lower.
• "GUN CULTURE GENOCIDE"--Zelman Partisans. Discussing how the indoctrination kids receive in schools, combined with the ridicules zero tolerance policies that have kids punished for making a vaguely gun shaped toy, is intended to make children afraid of guns and consider them to be evil.
• It appears that the Santa Fe school shooting was the result of a jilted kid who decided to be evil. "Texas Shooter Killed Girl First Because She Turned Down His Advances, Embarrassed Him In Class"--The Daily Caller. I wondered. I knew kids that dressed like this back when I was in junior high school and high school. The insignia (the Iron Cross, the Communist symbol, etc.) served the same purpose as the yellow and black stripes on a bee or wasp: don't mess with me. The constant wearing of a coat was a psychological and physical shield, generally to cover something embarrassing, such as poor body shape, old or ratty clothes, and so on. In this case, the boy was teased by his coaches about his body odor, so that was probably part of it. But something had to have gotten past the armor and warnings and really embarrassed him. And now we know.

• Related: "'If he kills me I'll haunt him forever': Murdered teen who spurned besotted Texas school shooter's advances predicted he would try to hurt her"--Daily Mail. 

• Related: "Texas Shooting Suspect Says He Avoided Shooting Students He Liked To ‘Have His Story Told,’ Affidavit Says"--Weasel Zippers. 

• As you sow, so shall ye reap: "After Texas school shooting, how can we inoculate ourselves against the next one?"--Glenn Reynolds at USA Today. He begins by noting the germ theory of memes:

         Geneticist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to describe self-replicating information that passes from one person’s mind to another. Genes are self-replicating information — a human is your DNA’s way of making more DNA — and so are memes. Memes are just ideas that “infect” someone who then spreads the idea to others. Genes use your body to make more genes — and, for that matter, viruses are self-replicating information that uses your body to make more viruses. (There’s even a book about memes entitled, aptly enough, Virus Of The Mind.)

        Memes can be about anything, from popular jokes all the way up to big complexes of self-replicating ideas, like Nazism, communism and most religions. People believe them, and spread them, and become increasingly resistant to entertaining critical thoughts about them. Some are benign and even beneficial — like many of the germs that live in our body, they may even help protect against more dangerous memes. Others are dangerous, and can ruin or even end the lives of those infected by them, or the victims of those who are infected.

And although Reynolds recognizes that the number of school shootings are going down, he suggests that such shootings are a type of meme:

         We had plenty of kids with guns 50-plus years ago, but none of them shot up a school in this fashion. What changed?

         For one thing, they probably didn’t think about it. Now, everyone has.

         Shooting up schools has become an idea spread far and wide by saturation news coverage, and more recently by social media as well. Now no kid has to think of shooting up a school on his or her own, because the idea is inescapable. And every time another copycat shooting takes place, it becomes more so.

But how to inoculate kids against this type of meme? Reynolds suggests teaching kids morality. In the past, kids knew that murder was wrong and they would go to hell over it. Today, God has been taken from the classroom, and everything is morally ambiguous and relative. 

• True colors: "Okay, Now I Actually Do Want To Take Your Guns"--Esquire. Since an AR wasn't used in this past shooting, liberals have been forced to remove their masks and hoist their Jolly Rogers. The author of this piece proclaims: "It’s happening. We tried it your way, and it really did not work. The ground is shifting. Get ready." There is a storm coming.

• Related: "Celebs Blame Republicans for Santa Fe School Shooting: ‘Go F**k Yourselves’"--Breitbart. 

• Strange. I haven't seen any calls to ban automobiles: "Ex-cop father, 62, 'intentionally' rams his car into a crowded restaurant and kills his 26-year-old sheriff's deputy DAUGHTER and his son's wife in shocking mid-brunch domestic row"--Daily Mail. 
• Too little too late: "End of the birth-control policy: China 'plans to abolish all limits on the number of children a family can have'"--Daily Mail. It's too expensive and inconvenient to have and raise children for most people, so the people that choose to have multiple children are those that do so out of faith: the religious communities. Communities that China has attacked and stigmatized. So, China won't be able to reverse its demographic decline, and the children it will produce under these more open policies will be enemies of the state.
• I can remember being taught in grade school that there were no confirmed accounts of mountain lions having attacked and killed people: "PICTURED: Mountain biker mauled to death by emaciated cougar and his friend who barely survived vicious attack during morning ride in Washington State"--Daily Mail. On a side note, the article kept referring to the victims being men, but looking at the photos I was pretty sure that they were women--ugly, to be sure, but still women. But then I noticed this from one of the captions: "Brooks ... was an avid biker, who co-founded Friends on Bikes Seattle to create a bike community where women/trans/femme/non-binary people of color could come together and have fun on bikes." The article reports: "Authorities said the two men did everything right, getting off their bikes, making noise and trying to scare the animal off. One even smacked it with his bike after it charged." No, they didn't do everything right. They should have had a gun.
• Time for a new Church Committee: "The Hunter Becomes the Hunted"--Richard Fernandez at PJ Media. The revelation that the intelligence agencies had been spying on the Trump campaign has suddenly altered the landscape. Quoting Andrew McCarthy:

The FBI, lacking the incriminating evidence needed to justify opening a criminal investigation of the Trump campaign, [in contrast to the Clinton campaign, he adds elsewhere] decided to open a counterintelligence investigation. With the blessing of the Obama White House, they took the powers that enable our government to spy on foreign adversaries and used them to spy on Americans — Americans who just happened to be their political adversaries.

Now Trump has ordered an investigation into the domestic spying. As Fernandez notes:

         In response to Trump's demand, Rod Rosenstein has asked the DOJ inspector general to review the possible infiltration of the Trump campaign. The hunters have themselves become the hunted. For better or worse, two major American political factions are trying to jail each other. The outcome of their struggle may determine not only who occupies the White House, but what future role the intelligence agencies play in public life.

        The specifics of the individual accusations may be fake, but the struggle over the control of the bureaucracy is frighteningly real.  Concern over the independence of powerful bureaucracies has long been paramount for a reason. The biggest problem with weaponizing intelligence agencies is it CREATES a pathway for the foreign takeover of the system. If a once hostile power takes over the White House and that president corrupts the agencies, an unfettered secret police will have the ability to remain in power indefinitely.

Remember that the one spy identified was actually a CIA and MI6 asset, so more than just the FBI are implicated in this whole mess. Anyway, Fernandez concludes:

         When a system is undeniably confronted with deceitful lawlessness it is like finding the dealer was cheating at cards. Trump, by officially demanding an answer into whether the previous administration engaged in political spying, is effectively accusing them of cheating at cards. As everybody knows, once you ask this question at a table, the surface game stops and a deeper game begins. Suddenly the little cardboard rectangles don't matter anymore.

        The King vs. King battle appears to be moving into a new phase. The smaller players have skirmished and been cleared away.  Now the clash between the heavier units is about to begin.

• Related: "Here's How Much The Federal Government Paid Alleged Trump Campaign 'Spy' In 2016"--The Daily Wire. "According to public records, Stefan Halper, a 73-year-old American-born professor at Cambridge University with ties to both American and British intelligence stretching back decades, received $282,000 and $129,000 in 2016 and 2017, respectively, from the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment, the internal think tank that reports directly to the secretary of defense (then Ash Carter)." 

• Related: "Strzok Text on FBI Investigation of Trump/Russia: 'The White House Is Running This'”--Weasel Zippers. 

• Related: "Devin Nunes doesn’t rule out possibility of multiple FBI informants in Trump campaign"--Washington Times. 

• Related: The New York Times and Washington Post have gone into full spin mode, contending that the mole in the Trump campaign was to protect the integrity of the campaign. And this: "James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, said it was a 'good thing' if former President Barack Obama's administration spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Real Clear Politics reported Friday."