July 2, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Dead creepy: Ghoulish abandoned funeral home still holds dozens of caskets and even an engraved headstone"--Daily Mail.

• "'Lessons Learned From Watching 12,000 Gunfights'…a view from a middle-aged contrarian"--Civilian Defender. The author comments on self-defense training and the lessons learned by the thousands of videos analyzed by John Correia, of Active Self Protection. Certain points raised from all of those videos:

• BADGUYS travel in packs, so be wary of more than one attacker

• MULTIPLE precision rounds, delivered with two hands at eye level to the upper chest region are the best remedy to stopping a deadly threat.

• IF YOU CAN GET TWO, “WTF’S,” FROM A BADGUY, THAT IS USUALLY ENOUGH TO PREVAIL.  You accomplish this through movement, and furtive, quick and efficient retrieval and presentation of your firearm.

• PERPETUAL SCANNING OF THE, “HORIZON,” (“Who is around me and what are they doing? -Tom Givens) WILL KEEP YOU WELL ABREAST OF ANY THREATS YOU MIGHT ENCOUNTER.  WHEN IN DOUBT, LEAVE!

• TRANSITIONAL SPACES ARE DANGEROUS!

• YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO HIT ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE WITHIN 3 CAR LENGTHS OF YOU, WITH YOUR SIDEARM, ON DEMAND, RAIN OR SHINE.

• "PLAYING THE ODDS: TRAINING FOR REAL GUNFIGHTS"--Personal Defense Network. The author laments that there are not a lot of good statistics for gun fights: hardly any information is recorded for personal defense situations involving a firearm, and even for police, the information such as distance, number of shots fired, and so on, is generally only available in incidents where the officer is killed in the line of duty. However, one source is Tom Givens who kept records of incidents involving his students:

Tom told me that 56 of his students have “had to use a handgun to defend themselves or family members.” He said that of the 56 students, two were in physical contact with the attacker. In three cases, the defender was forced to fire at 15 yards or beyond. The longest was 22 yards. Tom uses the length of a typical car as a training distance. He said, “Confrontational distances are conversational distances, for the most part.” This certainly makes sense and matches up with my experience investigating shootings during my law enforcement career.

• "Are You Training For Fads, Fantasy Or A Fight?"--Tom Givens at American Handgunner. Givens repeats the distance information given above, but also gives some other statistics involving his students:

I have good debriefs on almost 70 defensive shootings involving my students over the years. Over 9 out of 10 of these occurred away from home, at convenience stores, shopping malls, grocery stores, ATM’s and other public places. Since they were in public spaces, even at night there was adequate illumination to see and function quite well. Not one shooting involved a flashlight, and not one student indicated they felt a need for one at the time. Over 9 out of 10 occurred between 3 and 5 yards, which is about the length of a typical American sedan. Most involved little or no movement, with a quick side-step being the only movement involved in all but two. Only three fired from other than a standing position and only one incident involved intentional physical contact between the attacker and the defender. The fight was won in all of these cases by the quick application of pretty basic skills.

The majority of the incidents were armed robbery, but rape, road rage, and "respect" seemed to be behind the other incidents.

• Although Givens points out that none of his students needed a flashlight, that doesn't necessarily extend to night sights. As this article at Pistol-Training.com points out, there are plenty of circumstances where you may be able to identify your target, but not clearly be able to see your sights.
• "Shot Timers or No? Metrics and Mediocrity"--another article by Tom Givens, this one at Breach, Bang, Clear. Money quote:

Without a reasonable target (in this case the 8 inch circle) and without a time measurement (stopwatch/timer), there is no way to asses skill, measure progress, or diagnose and address deficiencies. The adult teaching model is Explain, Demonstrate, Practice and Test. Without Testing, there is no measure of learning, and you are only engaging in ballistic masturbation. It may make you feel better in the short term, but you aren’t accomplishing anything.

While a professional shot time, able to measure time to shot, split times, etc., is nice, most drills can be used with a simple stop watch or timer to make sure that you can get a specified number of shots within the "par" time: e.g., you might be looking for 5 shots in 10 seconds at a particular target and distance.

• "TDA Pistols On the Rise? Why We’re Seeing a Return of Traditional Double Action Pistols"--ITS Tactical. The author's take on this is very similar to those I recently expressed:

       Firstly, while this is bound to rustle some jimmies, the long initial pull of a hammer-down TDA pistol is an inherent safety feature and one that’s active regardless of the presence of a manual safety. In the event a wayward finger or foreign object enters the trigger guard, there’s significantly more pressure that must be applied over a longer length of travel to drop the hammer. This is viewed as a fringe benefit by some shooters and I get that. I maintain that this longer pull is more forgiving under the same circumstances that might result in an ND with a striker gun.

        I’m not advocating that TDA pistols somehow prevent negligent discharges. No pistol is idiot-proof and as soon as they make one someone will come along and prove to be a better idiot. No trigger mechanism will stop certain incidents, but a double-action trigger will stop some that could result in bang on a gun with a shorter, lighter pull.

      I can hear some people now proclaiming that they’re well trained, well practiced and never ever let their finger go inside the trigger guard until they decide to fire. I believe you. The sad fact though is that you’re human, make mistakes and run afoul of conditions that may not be entirely your fault. This could be severe stress or fatigue frying your brain and leading you to “pre-position” your finger on the trigger, or simply debris or fabric in your holster impinging on the trigger itself.

       In conjunction with the ability to physically restrain movement of the hammer with the shooting hand thumb when holstering, TDA pistol design amounts to significantly more confidence and safety against those occurrences.

        I believe that this characteristic is the primary reason for the resurgence of TDA guns, especially as appendix carry has come back into widespread acceptance. (By the way, it isn’t new or revolutionary.) The proximity of the muzzle to, “critical anatomical targets” on the carrier’s body and the higher stakes should an ND occur when drawing or reholstering has seen more than a small percentage of shooters turning to a TDA pistol for added peace of mind and confidence. Before you blast my brakes off in the comments, I’m not claiming appendix carry is unsafe, only that for some the added insurance of the long pull makes sense when carrying there.

And, because of the long trigger pull, you can throw one in a pocket without significant worries. I'm not saying to not use a pocket holster, but if you put a weapon in a pocket holster in a coat pocket, it often lays somewhat horizontal, which means that it may slip partly out of the holster; and, there may be times when you need to just slip it in a pocket.

• "Mexico election: historic landslide victory for leftist Amlo"--The Guardian. "Amlo" is Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Most of the articles that I see from conservative writers seem to suggest that Amlo will be similar to Chavez was in Venezuela. However, the Diplomad indicates that Amlo should primarily be considered a Mexican nationalist, which would be healthy for U.S.- Mexico relations because it would finally free the U.S. from the fiction that Mexico is our friend. Like some of my posts in the past, the Diplomad observes:

        It's also a country covertly at war with the US. I have written about that before.

       If an AMLO administration goes openly lefty and anti-USA, I, for one, would welcome that. I am tired of seeing Mexico referred to as a friend. It's not; it's a country with a very great animus toward and resentment for the US. Might as well have an honest opponent than the long line of past "friends" in the Presidential Palace.

       Time to build the wall, end chain migration, close a dozen or more Mexican consulates, and get out of NAFTA. A President AMLO would help us attain those goals.

• Do we really want this in the United States? "In Mexico, rising 'mass crime' defies security forces"--Fox News. From the article:

        Whoever wins Sunday's presidential election will have to face not only Mexico's drug cartels, but a new kind of crime involving whole neighborhoods defying police and military personnel.

        It was on display in the Jalisco state town of Ciudad Guzman — a stronghold of the Jalisco New Generation cartel — in early June, when a crowd of men and women gathered around two pickups carrying armed Mexican marines.

        They taunted the troops, throwing rocks and water bottles at them and kicking one repeatedly as he was helped away by two comrades.

        Purportedly protesting a young man's disappearance, the crowd later spray-painted the cartel's initials on a bashed-up marine vehicle.

        Such "socialized" or "mass" crimes are spreading in Mexico as entire communities empty freight trains of merchandise or steal hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel from pipelines.

        "The logic of the people is that they see politicians and officials stealing big time ... and they see themselves as having the same right to steal as the big-time politicians," said Edgardo Buscaglia, an international crime expert and research fellow at Columbia University. "You begin to create an ethical code in which, 'If the upper-class people can steal and get away with it, we can steal, too, with complete justification.'"

        In May, armed men broke the locks on two supermarkets in the southern city of Arcelia in Guerrero state and allowed local residents in to loot them. Police didn't show up for hours.

        Guerrero security spokesman Roberto Alvarez said the stores' owners had refused extortion demands from a local splinter of La Familia cartel and the looting was punishment for not paying.

        Meanwhile, an average of 42 illegal taps are being drilled into pipelines across Mexico every day and transporting, storing and selling the stolen fuel often represents a major source of employment in some rural communities.

• Speaking of cartels: "James Comey Worked With A Cartel Member Involved With Cartel Murders"--Anonymous Conservative. What's a few lives to stand in the way of the advancement of his career?
• We have recently heard some Senators state that they won't vote for a Supreme Court nominee unless that person was solidly in favor of Roe v. Wade. Thus, it is timely to see this article on "Roe’s Legacy" at Ricochet.com. The author relates: "In the last 43 years, over 60 million fetuses have been aborted in the US alone and, of that 60 million, 18 million were black."
• Beta buck$: "Women are hard-wired to find well-meaning sexist men MORE attractive because they think they will be protected and provided for, finds study"--Daily Mail. By "sexist" it means "sexist" in a well meaning way such as holding doors, paying for dates, etc.
• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Let it rain! New coatings make natural fabrics waterproof"--Phys.org. Generally speaking, you had a choice between breathability of the fabric or water proofing. From the article:

      What this MIT team did, Varanasi explains, is to combine two things: a shorter-chain polymer that, by itself, confers some hydrophobic properties and has been enhanced with some extra chemical processing; and a different coating process, called initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD), which was developed in recent years by co-author Karen Gleason and her co-workers. Gleason is the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering and associate provost at MIT. Credit for coming up with the best short-chain polymer and making it possible to deposit the polymer with iCVD, Varanasi says, goes primarily to Soto, who is the paper's lead author.

        Using the iCVD coating process, which does not involve any liquids and can be done at low temperature, produces a very thin, uniform coating that follows the contours of the fibers and does not lead to any clogging of the pores, thus eliminating the need for the second processing stage to reopen the pores. Then, an additional step, a kind of sandblasting of the surface, can be added as an optional process to increase the water repellency even more. "The biggest challenge was finding the sweet spot where performance, durability, and iCVD compatibility could work together and deliver the best performance," says Soto.

        The process works on many different kinds of fabrics, Varanasi says, including cotton, nylon, and linen, and even on nonfabric materials such as paper, opening up a variety of potential applications. The system has been tested on different types of fabric, as well as on different weave patterns of those fabrics. "Many fabrics can benefit from this technology," he says. "There's a lot of potential here."