September 12, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"What that square patch on your backpack is actually used for"--Business Insider (1 min.)

It's a lash tab and can be used to lash shoes or other items to the back of your pack.

• A new Woodpile Report.
• "Kleck Confirmed: Over One Million Annual Defensive Gun Uses in the US"--The Truth About Guns. From the article:

       Kleck revised his conclusion about the BRFSS that it substantiates in itself an average of 1.1 million DGUs annually during the three years it asked about them. It’s clear that with surveys from these few states (none sampled in all three years), there could be substantial variation in their ability to represent the nation as a whole. There could also be substantial differences should they be queried in a year particularly high or low in DGU occurrences.

       There were also a significant number of respondents who either refused to answer or said they didn’t know whether they had a DGU. One suspects that many of those respondents really had, but did not want to go on record. Maybe a few were unsure: in 90% of DGUs, no shot even is fired–the assailant is scared off.

      But all in all, each year of the BRFSS answers led Kleck to varying estimates of total DGUs nationally: 620,648 in 1996, 854,498 in 1997, and 1,940,455 in 1998. For what it’s worth, violent crime was on a steep decline during those three years—not that increasing civilian DGUs necessarily contributed.

• "Why the quickest thing you can do to shoot better is something you shouldn’t do"--Mike Ox. The "quickest thing" he discusses is closing one eye in order to allow you to concentrate on the correct sight picture. The reason it's bad:

       First, the brain wants both eyes open so it can detect threats better in a wider field of view. There’s a paradox here with the fact that people tend to have tunnel vision under stress, but there’s an even bigger reason than peripheral vision at play.

       The second reason is the biggest…The brain processes visual images roughly 20-30 percent quicker with both eyes open than with one eye closed. In a fight for your life, seeing 20-30 percent quicker is huge.

I have to admit that I fall victim to this--particularly when shooting a rifle. For the handgun, at typical self-defense distances, I fall within the "focus on the front sight" crowd. By having a bright, visible front sight, I have been able to learn to focus on the front sight with both eyes open, rather than having to close an eye to better pick up the sight and align it.

• "Body Shields for Home Defense"--The Prepper Journal. The shields that the author is discussing are the ballistic shields rated to stop rifle rounds. The author feels that it is quicker to grab than having to slip into a plate carrier, although the downside is that you are limited to a single arm to hold a weapon. He also looks at some different shields and pricing.
• "Understand Your Ferro (-cerium) Rod"--Dreaming of Sunsets Over Ochre Dunes. Short take: "Now, 30 year later and just marginally smarter, I can not understand why someone would pack a ferro rod but not a BIC lighter!"
• "Gun Review: Wilson Combat 300 Ham’r"--The Truth About Guns. Ostensibly this is a review of a Wilson Combat rifle, but in reality it is a review of Wilson Combat's new cartridge, the .300 Ham'r. This is a serious hunting cartridge, giving ballistics matching or exceeding the .30-30, but out of a cartridge that can be used in a standard AR15 receiver and using a standard bolt and bolt-carrier. The author relates:

This is the shoulder of a boar weighing 300lbs, shot by another hunter using the Speer 130gr FNHC, at about 100 yards away. Note not only the significant wound channel, but that a big chunk of his shoulder bone is smashed through as well. Even after this, it was a complete pass-through of both lungs, exiting just behind the opposite shoulder. Impressive and effective.

• "Marlin Model 70PSS “Papoose”: Small Package, Big Fun, Survival Ready"--Guns America Blog. Back in my college days, I picked up an older version of this rifle that was based on the Model 70, with a standard blued steel barrel. It didn't have the automatic bolt hold open of the newer models, had just a plain front ramp sight, and featured a wood stock. At that time, I was shooting 3 to 4 times a week, and generally went though at least one brick of .22 per week. A couple years later, I picked up a Ruger 10/22, which I also extensively shot (although not to the same degree). Another couple years went buy, and my financial situation was such that I needed to sell a few firearms. After weighing in my mind which of the two I should sell, I decided to sell the Ruger and keep the Papoose. My reasoning was that the Papoose was more reliable, in that it could go longer without cleaning than the 10/22. I also was a better shot with the Papoose, which I believed to be of greater inherent accuracy than the 10/22, but, looking back on it, might have been the result of my greater experience and familiarity with the Papoose.

"Email shows Google tried to help elect Clinton"--Tucker Carlson (5-1/2 min.)

The email was sent by Eliana Murillo (remember to keep names), Google’s Multicultural Marketing department head, the day after the 2016 election, and described how Google had attempted to assist Hillary Clinton's campaign through a "get out the vote" drive to not only use Google ads to encourage Latinos to vote, but also funding transportation to physically carry Latinos to the polls. However, Murillo noted her surprise and dismay that over a quarter of Latinos wound up voting for Trump. Carlson discusses this among the larger backdrop of the incredible power that the social media companies--which are universally supportive of the Democrats--wield.

•  A gun is better than a sharp stick: "'She fought hard': Oregon hiker killed by cougar fought for her life, sister says"--KTVB. From the article: "'She had a sharp object she used,' Alison Bober said. 'She had mace, she had a stick so the evidence is clear she fought hard.'"
• "Pope Francis Compares Vatican Whistleblower to Satan"--Breitbart. This is "Satan" in the concept of "the accuser," and not necessarily Lucifer. In any event, the key point to me is that the Pope did not expressly deny Viganò's allegations, but was upset that they had been publicly revealed:

“It is true, we are all sinners, we bishops,” he said, but the Great Accuser “seeks to unveil sins so that they may be seen, to scandalize the people.”

Viganò didn't act out of motivation to simply scandalize the people, but to force the church to address the fact that a secret cabal of homosexuals were praying on young men and assisting each other to advance within the church hierarchy.

• Related: "THE HUNT FOR VIGANÒ: VATICAN SPIES TRACKING WHISTLEBLOWER"--Church Militant. The author reports that "[a]ccording to sources within the Vatican, the Secretariat of State of the Holy See — under the direction of Pietro Cardinal Parolin — has communicated an instruction to its internal and external security services to use their 'intelligence resources' to locate the physical whereabouts of Abp. Viganò."

• "“Nah, I’m just a White guy”: “Sky King” and White Male Suicide"--The Burning Platform. This article is from a month ago, and is about "Rich Russell, a 29-year-old baggage handler at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, took a a twin-turboprop Bombardier Q400 that had been parked for the night, and flew it 25 miles before deliberately ending his life by crashing it on the sparsely populated Ketron Island." One of the sad points is an exchange between Russell and air-traffic controllers, where Russell asks if the controller thinks Alaska Airlines would offer him a job as pilot if he pulls off his stunt:

Air traffic control: You know, I think they would give you a job doing anything if you could pull this off.  

Rich: Yeah right! Nah, I’m a White guy.

Russell has pinpointed something about the "white privilege", affirmative action, and black lives matter. And that is that rather than being attacks on whites, overall, it is an attack on white men particularly. Many of our "woke" actresses and journalists make comments not disparaging all whites, but call for the death of "white men." If "white men" die, it won't matter to the r-strategist white females because they will have already given their loyalty to the new lords. The fact that so many prominent women feel comfortable in looking forward to the death of white men is because they believe they already know how this conflict will end.

• "Existential threat or ineluctable reality"--Vox Day. He writes:

All "identity politics" means is "inter-tribal competition for power". The African-Americans are not going to stop putting their own self-perceived interests first. The Jews certainly are not. The Hispanics are not; neither are the newly self-discovered trans-Asian alliance. All of these identity groups and more are consciously working together in opposition to white American and heritage Anglo-American interests, so white Americans can either embrace identity politics and pursue their own interests or they can reject identity politics, and in doing so, submit to the various groups willing to do so.

• "Did France’s Gun Control Hurt Its Resistance to the Nazis?"--National Review. A review of Stephen Halbrook's book Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France. The reviewer notes:

A sequel of sorts to Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich, the book drives home the important lessons that gun control is a key element of the oppressor’s toolkit, that guns are incredibly useful for those resisting oppression, and that even the most draconian gun-control measures are far from perfectly effective.

And this was interesting:

       Halbrook acknowledges that there’s a bit of a paradox to reckon with. If there really were 3 million hunting guns in France before the war, the confiscation regime was astonishingly ineffective, netting only about 800,000 weapons (though some guns were ditched through non-official channels, including the waterways of Paris, rather than kept illegally). His correspondents report that it was common to hide guns rather than turning them in, and German authorities fretted about widespread noncompliance, trying everything from executions to amnesties in response. A report in late 1941 contended that “illegal weapons possession still represents the core of criminal activities of the French. It appears almost impossible to get rid of it.”

        And yet the Resistance struggled mightily to find arms. One of the movement’s biggest complaints was that the Allies were failing to supply them enough. And even so, one of Halbrook’s interviewees estimated that 85 percent of the group’s guns came from airdrops, with just 15 percent being guns that civilians brought themselves, often without ammunition.

• Irreconcilable differences: "The Civil War on America’s Horizon"--William S. Smith at The American Conservative. From the article:

       Ultimately what is most disconcerting is that the divisiveness is not just about Trump: it’s deeply rooted in two diametrically opposed civic religions. America is no longer one country. These two groups view their national story through different symbolic mythologies.  

       Since the 1960s, America’s leaders have been educated through an immersion in the culturally radical and postmodernist narratives that dominate the curricula of our best universities. It has become a primary goal of higher education to sensitize the future establishment to issues of race, gender, and class, and to raise awareness of global challenges such as climate change. Elite education is no longer designed to hand down a common cultural tradition and to serve as an intergenerational transmission belt for the American and Western heritage. In elite institutions, it is taught instead that America is a great obstacle to the empowerment of oppressed minorities and the central driver of global crises. A core teaching in the humanities and social sciences is that the Western heritage represents a monstrous oppression myth conjured up by dead European white men, which, of course, has its political expression in the identity politics of the Democratic Party.

       Trump and his supporters loathe this narrative. The delight that they take in his boorish and even thuggish attacks derives from their belief that the elites are responsible for the systematic destruction of the true American civil religion. They believe that the establishment has taken a knee against its own country. Trump supporters, on the other hand, unabashedly embrace traditional American historiography and seek to elevate it by “making America great again.” Globalism and multiculturalism, and their concomitant political correctness, are viewed quite simply as insidious and unpatriotic, an attempt to bleach away the collective memory of the American story.  

The author also observes: "Our elites bring to mind the French aristocracy under Louis XVI, feigning formality yet, behind the scenes at least, corrupt, incompetent, and ruthless."

• Do as I say, not as I do? My oldest son, who recently returned from a mission in southern California, related a conversation with a police officer that I found upsetting, to say the least. The officer is a member of the Church, and had been contacted by the Church to see if he could help provide security for a visiting General Authority after California refused to allow the Church official's normal security personnel to carry their firearms. I don't begrudge the Church officials having armed security, but I do find it to be hypocritical given the Church's stance on concealed carry by members in Church buildings. (See also Policy 21.2.4).