August 7, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Max Talk 026: Standing Reloads & Dropping Empty Mags"--Max Velocity Tactical (25 min.)

• This week's Woodpile Report is up.
• "357 Magnum vs 9mm For Concealed Carry."--Alien Gear Holster. This article is in line with some videos and other articles I've seen recently that show that, when comparing defensive ammo (i.e., ammo intended for use against another person, not hunting ammunition), there is little difference between .357 Magnum and 9 mm in ballistic gel tests.
• "How to Buy Your First Gun"--The Survivalist Blog. Most important point, in my opinion:

       You don’t have to know the specific model of gun you are setting out to buy, but you should know what you intend for the gun to do: Is it a handgun for defense? Great, so for concealed carry, just at-home defense, or both? If it is for carry, how do you plan to carry it on your body? Those questions will start to determine what size of handgun you need, and what caliber the gun should be.

       Do you need a gun for hunting? What kind of animal? Does it fly, walk or crawl? Will you want a shotgun or rifle for that? Both your game and hunting method, along with state laws, will dictate what type of long gun you should use and what its caliber should be also.

• "This Is What a Nuclear Bomb Looks Like"--New York Magazine. The article claims that a primitive nuke--a gun-type nuclear bomb--could fit in a van, and describes what would happen if such a low-yield weapon (10 kT) were detonated in Times Square. It also briefly looks at the impact of large weapons. Interesting read.
• "Antifa trains for violence. Forewarned is forearmed."--Bayou Renaissance Man. The article describes that "James O'Keefe has captured an Antifa instructor teaching members of the group how to attack and injure their opponents."
• Much as most people hate to admit it, race is a viable warning sign that should be considered when assessing risk or danger of a violent criminal attack: "Stranger Danger + Political Viagra"--The Anatomically Correct Banana. An excerpt:

        [A]ccording to the 2016 NYPD Crime and Enforcement Activity Report, 84.7% of all rapes in the city have a black or Hispanic suspect. The number of black perpetrators is far higher than the number of black victims. There are almost two white rape victims for every one white perpetrator. This suggests that about half of all white rape victims were raped by a non-white.

       This dramatic overrepresentation among blacks in rape rates is even more stunning when you consider the fact that black women are far less likely to report incidents of rape and sexual assault to the police than their white counterparts. In fact, black criminality in general is even worse than the damning statistics; one example, per the same NYPD report:  

       Blacks made up 47.6% of suspects, but only 40.6% of the suspects arrested. For petite larceny, 51.1% of suspects were black, but only 43.7% of the people arrested were black. 53.3% of the people stopped by the NYPD under the “Stop and Frisk” initiative were black. 59.7% of the people who were targeted that turned out to be a suspect in a violent crime were black. Whites and Asians were over-targeted while blacks were under-targeted.[1]

        According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), 27% of all perpetrators of sexual violence in the United States are black; blacks are 13% of the population overall. According to U.S. Justice Department figures over 34,460 white women are sexually assaulted or raped by black males each year, and most authorities believe that the actual rape figures are at least twice the reported number. The number of black female rapes by white men is “statistically negligible” because there are consistently fewer than ten cases nationally per annum. In fact, because white-on-black rape is so statistically insignificant and rare, the FBI has simply stopped tracking it altogether. John F. Gaski reports:

       About 90% of interracial violent crime in our nation is committed by blacks against whites. The black-on-white murder rate in the U.S. exceeds the white-on-black rate by about 2.5-to-1.  The black-on-white assault and battery rate exceeds the corresponding white-on-black rate in this country by at least 10-to-1.

Read the whole thing as it discusses other crime statistics, and looks at how Hispanics, too, are disproportionately represented in violent crime statistics.

• "NICS Firearms Checks"--FBI. The FBI has updated their NICS report to include July 2018. It shows over 1.8 million checks for July which is the second highest July since they started tracking the numbers. Although not all NICS checks lead to a firearm sale, it also doesn't catch sales in states where a CCL holder is not required to undergo a NICS check or person-to-person sales, so it probably is a fairly accurate, if conservative, figure for the number of gun sales. So why the continued high firearms sales? I could understand it for a while as representing pent up demand for anything that wasn't an AR (I think people were buying ARs over what they really wanted in the lead-up to the 2016 election). But you would think it would be over by now. Some of the sales are probably driven by new products: better concealed weapons, pistols capable of mounting red dot sights, inexpensive hunting rifles that shoot better than yesteryear's custom rifles, and so on. I think part of it is that people sense that something is going to come to a head.
• "Remember, You Wanted This"--Misfires and Light Strikes. The author writes:

       Right now, Red State Americans and Blue State Americans both seem hell-bent on starting Civil War 2.0, and there’s no one on either side asking themselves “Do we really want to do such things?”

      Which pretty much guarantees it’s going to happen.

      God help us all.

"Google 'Being Evil' in China?"--China Uncensored (12 min.)

Years ago, Google was raked over the coals for violating its "Don't Be Evil" policy when it attempted to expand into China. It pulled out of China (for several reasons), but last year Google dumped its "Don't Be Evil" policy and simultaneously began developing a version of its search software that would comply with Chinese Communist Party requirements for censorship. Worryingly, to curry CCP favor in the future, Google may expand that to include other countries--and may have already started to silence critics of the CCP.

• I'm not sure whether to categorize this as cultural enrichment or the consequences of living in a disarmed society--probably should be both: "Britain 2018: Record Knife Crime Rates Straining NHS, Depleting Blood Supplies"--Breitbart. The sudden surge over the last several years is being blamed on Theresa May's 2014 decision, when Home Secretary, to force police to reduce their number of stop and frisks because "their overuse was an affront to law-abiding black youths." (H/t Anonymous Conservative).
• "A serial cat killer has killed seven, displaying their mutilated bodies in public, Washington state cops say"--The News Tribune. Strangely, the killer is removing the spines of the animals. At some point, killing the animals won't be enough of a dopamine hit, and the killer will escalate.
• "ALL SIGNS POINT TO ONE MAN AS CHINESE SPY IN FEINSTEIN’S STAFF, AND HE WASN’T A DRIVER …"--The Daily Caller. Russell Lowe has worked for Feinstein for 20 years, when he was dismissed for passing information to the Chinese government. Feinstein originally claimed that Lowe was merely her driver. However, the DC's investigation ha reveled that "he was a staff liaison to the Asian-American community before leaving approximately five years ago." Fienstein is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and was chairman of the Committee from 2009 to 2015.
• "Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States"--Motherboard. Supposedly sales stopped in 2006, but the vendor, Election Systems and Software, won't or can't confirm whether any machines still have the remote access capability. (H/t Anonymous Conservative).
• "The ATF Explains the Law Surrounding 3D-Printed Guns"--The Washington Free Beacon. From the article:

Knight [the ATF spokesman] said it is legal for Americans to build their own firearms without a license so long as they are not prohibited by law from possessing firearms, the firearms are legal to own, for personal use, and not for sale or transfer to others. Whether the gun parts are printed, created by other ways of manufacturing, or legally purchased from a licensed dealer has no impact on whether it is legal for an American to build a gun for personal use, though some states like California have placed additional requirements on the process.

• "China demolishes hundreds of churches and confiscates Bibles during a crackdown on Christianity"--Daily Mail. Part of the issue is that the Churches do not sufficiently worship President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. According to the article, "[t]he crackdown on Christianity is part of a broader push by Xi to 'Sinicise' all the nation's religions by infusing them with 'Chinese characteristics' such as loyalty to the Communist Party."
• "Sex Neuroscientist Says Sex Differences Are Biological, Not A Social Construct"--The Federalist. 
• What the Brady's house really looks like: "Lance Bass says Bye, Bye, Bye to Brady Bunch house: NSYNC star is left 'heartbroken' after being outbid on $1.9million home from iconic TV series and claims he was 'USED' to drive up the value blasting agent as being 'ShadyAF'"--Daily Mail. If you are above a certain age, you probably watched the television show, The Brady Bunch, growing up. The producers used outdoor shots of the front of what they considered a "typical middle-class" house, which in no way resembled the interior sets used in the show. Similarly, the sets used for the back of the house also didn't match what the exterior shots of the front suggested. This article is interesting because it has both interior and rear exterior shots of the actual home. And, as you would expect, it in no way matches the sets.