August 3, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Resist or Comply Fully, Do Not Be Indecisive!"-- Active Self Protection (6 min.).

An armed robbery of a convenience store in Mexico goes badly for three of the victims. The clerk fled the scene as soon as she could, but the three men that were customers didn't seem to take the criminal or his threat seriously, and all three ended up being shot and dying of their wounds.

• TGIF: "Weekend Knowledge Dump- August 3, 2018"--Active Response Training.
• For the woodworkers among you: "Training Aids: Barricades"--The Firearm Blog. This article not only discusses why you might want to train using barricades, but also contains plans and instructions on how to build your own.
• On one hand: "Why I Switched to Double Action Semi-Autos"--Lucky Gunner. The author explains:

       First, I carry in the appendix inside the waistband position, so if I do make a mistake when I’m re-holstering, my femoral artery is right there, and… that could be really bad. I use a safe re-holstering technique that greatly mitigates that risk, but I like the extra layer of safety I get from being able to ride the hammer with my thumb while I’m re-holstering.

       Second, I do a lot of shooting. I’m at the range at least once a week and that comes out to thousands of repetitions in and out of the holster and each one of those is an opportunity to make a potentially fatal mistake. Again, the most common accidents at the range are a lot less likely with a traditional double action pistol.

        Third, watching other people shoot has relieved me of any delusion that anyone’s gun handling is always 100% safe. I’ve taken over 300 hours of firearms training from more than 30 different instructors. I know that even experienced and well-trained people can occasionally slip up because I’ve seen them do it. And if they’re capable of getting a little get sloppy on a shooting range, then I’m sure I can do it under the stress of a deadly force encounter. And really, I know I can get careless every now and then because I’ve seen myself do stuff on video I have no recollection of doing. Things like getting my finger on the trigger a just little too early when the gun comes out of the holster. Using a pistol with a double action trigger is not a substitute for trying to correct that behavior, but it’s a good redundancy to have, especially when you consider that we’re often not aware of the stuff we might be doing that is unsafe.

       Finally, I have a really low tolerance for bad triggers. Most factory triggers in striker fired guns are pretty terrible. I can shoot these pistols, but not nearly as well as I would like and really, I don’t know many shooters who are performing at a high level who leave their striker fired pistols completely stock, either. It’s really common to try to improve these guns with different aftermarket parts or custom work to try to make them more shootable. But it’s really hard to do that without compromising the guns in some way that makes them more susceptible to an unintentional discharge.

        With a DA/SA gun, even if I get a really nice custom trigger, I still have the safety of the long length of travel on that first double action shot. I spent most of last year shooting revolvers, so that DA trigger was a natural thing for me to transition to, and that’s a big part of why I chose double action guns rather than a single action or striker fired gun with a manual thumb safety.

• On the other hand: "DA/SA: NOT THE BEST CHOICE FOR NEWER SHOOTERS"--Civilian Gunfighter. The author has two primary points that he raises. The first is that he has seen too many shooters try to re-holster a DA/SA or move while holding a DA/SA, without first applying a safety or decocking the hammer. The second has to do with learning two different trigger pulls:

The other major issue with DA/SA pistols is the fact that the user must practice the two different trigger presses.  That DA first shot, in a self-defense scenario, will probably be the most important shot the user takes.  As Paul Howe said in that article linked above, many shooters of DA/SA pistols throw away that first shot.  The two different trigger presses also means that the user must be able to transition from the one press (DA) to the other (SA) seamlessly.  Many shooters cannot do so.

The flaw with his argument, as to the first point, is pointed out in the comments, which is that SA pull on many DA/SA pistols are not much different from that on striker fired pistols. The author's response? "

1. It’s not just the pull weight, but the pull distance. On a stock Glock, for example, the distance the trigger must travel is more than the SA pull of a DA/SA pistol.

2. No DA/SA pistol has the type of trigger safety we are used to seeing on Glocks with the dingus or the M&P series with the hinge. While they are annoying, I do believe that they achieve at least some of what they set out to do.

So, the mushiness of the striker fire trigger is a safety feature? As for the second point in his reply, the trigger safety on striker fired pistols has nothing to do with preventing the trigger from being accidentally pulled during a reholster, but to keep the weapon from discharging if dropped.

• Cultural enrichment and white knighting in Spain: "Shocking moment street traders WHIP an American tourist with a belt ‘when he tries to stop them hurling insults at a woman pushing a pram’ in Barcelona"--Daily Mail. While I admire the man's bravery to confront the troop of African migrants harassing a woman, he was outnumbered and they easily were able to swarm around him and drive him away. He was lucky to get away with minor injuries. You can't deliver an educational beatdown when its just you against a dozen or more.
• "Gun Review: Smith & Wesson 360J Japanese Service Revolver"--The Truth About Guns. The 360J is the current selection for a service revolver for Japanese police officers. It is a 5-shot .38 Special +P based on the S&W J-frame. This rather lengthy article does not just review the revolver, but also gives a post-WWII history of service revolvers and pistols in Japan and the considerations that went into the testing and selection. The author also attempts to explain why Japan has historically limited civilian ownership of firearms. One thing I thought was interesting was one of the criteria for selecting the revolver was its accuracy over a semi-auto pistol. In this regard, the author notes:

The manual of arms is to cock the hammer during the draw from the holster with the support hand or thumb and fire single action. The double action pull is considered unacceptably inaccurate in a confrontation. This is considered a design issue and not a training issue.

That was the manual of arms most everywhere until the 1930s.

"What If You Detonated a Nuclear Bomb In The Marianas Trench? (Science not Fantasy)" (6 min.)

Of course, no one would do this--they would detonate nukes closer to shore where the vaporized water "bubble" would not collapse back into itself. But still an interesting video.

• It's always good to keep an eye on what the adversary is planning: "Testing Bishops for Skills, Aptitude, and Narcissism"--By Common Consent. The author's expertise apparently is that he was once a bishop, had a nervous breakdown and left the church while undergoing therapy for the next 10 years. Most of his article is about how beneficial it would be to test bishops to determine if they had the skills and temperament to be bishops. But here is where the true motive peeks forth:

If we paid more attention to what a bishop really does and should do and the character traits and training necessary, we would reduce the pool of qualified men.  That has costs and benefits.  At the same time, I believe it would become obvious to everybody that there are qualified women among us. (underline added).

• "The End Game Of The Sexual Revolution Was Always This"--Château Heartiste.  Posters promoting acceptance of pedophilia were spotted, and photograph of one posted to Twitter. Commenting on the poster, CH explains:

       The Fuggernaut doesn’t have an “off” button. It was never gonna stop at [the Pill] [legal abortion] [free condoms] [buttplug usage seminars] [rapefugee welcoming], and go no further.

       Turning back the clock by force is the inevitable conclusion to this tragic, predictable story.

• On a related note, in reading an article by Rod Dreher at The American Conservative concerning the sexual molestation/priest scandal in the Lincoln, Nebraska, diocese, he related the following:

     The Catholic writer Ron Belgau, who leads the “Spiritual Friendship” movement of gay Christians who live celibately, in obedience to Scripture, notes on Facebook that the Diocese of Lincoln was the only diocese in the US to refuse to participate in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ auditing program for the sexual abuse of minors ...

     Exactly so. Conservative Catholics are right to point out the role of secretive, sexually active gay cliques within the Church, and how they advance dysfunction and abuse. 

Of course, that is what a lot of people on the right have been warning about is that there are these "cliques"--conspiracies, secret combinations, etc.--all over.

• Related: "'There's going to be a raid': A Chilean prosecutor forces Catholic Church to give up secrets"--Reuters. The article reports:

       Police and prosecutors were staging simultaneous raids on Church offices less than a mile away from the university and outside the capital, looking for evidence of sex crimes the Church had not reported to police.

       The surprise sweeps, ordered by Emiliano Arias, a provincial prosecutor, marked the start of what experts who track sex crimes in the Roman Catholic Church say is one of the most aggressive investigations ever undertaken by a judicial authority anywhere in the world.

      Since that cold June afternoon there have been five more raids on Church offices to seize documents, phones, tablets and computers, leaving the Vatican scrambling to respond to a rapidly unfolding scandal that is the worst image crisis of Francis’ papacy, now in its sixth year.

(H/t Anonymous Conservative)

• "New York Times Hires Left-Wing Writer With Long History Of Racist Tweets"--The Federalist.  Sarah Jeong really, really hates white people and, especially, white men, and is very public about her hatred. So, of course, she fits right in at The New York Times.
• "Viktor Orbán Is Europe’s Future"--Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. Quoting Orban:

I have formulated five tenets for the project of building up Central Europe. The first is that every European country has the right to defend its Christian culture, and the right to reject the ideology of multiculturalism. Our second tenet is that every country has the right to defend the traditional family model, and is entitled to assert that every child has the right to a mother and a father. The third Central European tenet is that every Central European country has the right to defend the nationally strategic economic sectors and markets which are of crucial importance to it. The fourth tenet is that every country has the right to defend its borders, and it has the right to reject immigration. And the fifth tenet is that every European country has the right to insist on the principle of one nation, one vote on the most important issues, and that this right must not be denied in the European Union. In other words, we Central Europeans claim that there is life beyond globalism, which is not the only path. Central Europe’s path is the path of an alliance of free nations.

• "Carroll Quigley's Conspiracy Theory: The Milner Group"--The Unz Report.

        Academic historians dislike the concept that history is often made by groups of individuals plotting together in confidence, even though one obvious way to get big things done is to make plans with your friends and allies while keeping your rivals in the dark as long as possible.

       One exception is the late Georgetown history professor Carroll Quigley, who in 1949 completed a book rather grandly entitled The Anglo-American Establishment.

      Decades later Bill Clinton was an undergrad student of Quigley (he got a B from him). In Clinton’s 1992 acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, he cited Quigley as an inspiration.

       In reality, Quigley’s book, which wasn’t published until much later, was only very tangentially related to American institutions such as the Council of Foreign Relations. It actually focused on one group of British establishmentarians, the progressive imperialists who set up the British equivalent of the CFR, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (a.k.a., Chatham House), edited The Times of London for most of the first four decades of the 20th Century, and largely controlled the peculiarly influential All Souls College at Oxford.

      Quigley calls them the Milner Group after Alfred Milner (1854-1925), an eminence grise who more or less started the Boer War of 1899-1902, then mentored “Milner’s Kindergarten” of bright young men in running South Africa, and finally popped up again in Lloyd George’s five-man war cabinet in 1917. But Milner mostly served behind the scenes.

       Quigley traces the Milner Group back to the far more colorful Cecil Rhodes’ desire to start a “Secret Society” to promote Angl0-American unity and global domination. In the first five wills written by the mining tycoon of southern Africa, Rhodes (1853-1902) called for his estate to fund a secret society to reunify America with Britain and promote Anglo settlement of the world. 

Read the whole thing. Those that refuse to acknowledge the actions of key men in influencing history, or even contriving outcomes, are being silly. For example, in a diplomatic history of Europe class I took in college, the professor took the position that "great men" did make history, and frankly much of the time frame of the class (from about 1870 to the close of WWII) involved the machinations of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to unify Germany, keep its enemies at bay, maintain peace on the Continent, and how it all fell apart following his eventual removal from office. 

• "Q’s Tripcodes Linked To Books"--Anonymous Conservative. AC explains:

       The summary is, somebody found that if you searched a full list of Q’s tripcodes or User ID’s in Google Books, every one turns out one or more books, and some turn out specific pages of a book.

      It is an interesting find, since some of the books are seemingly related to Q’s topics. One is titled Where We Go One We Go All. Another is titled The Story of Q. It seems unlikely that is by chance. Some are about Trump, others are about conspiracies, others are stories which revolve around mysterious abductions, others cover crimes against children, and several are about extraterrestrial issues, and how the political environment will change if there is disclosure. Behold A Pale Horse is even in there, as is a book by Devin Nunes. Some are on the secret government and the role of the CIA in forming it and manipulating affairs from in the shadows, and there is even a book maintaining 9/11 was actually a ritualistic sacrifice performed by Luciferians.