September 13, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around The Web

"Clean your SKS with me"--The Hunting Gear Guy (42 min.)

This is a real time demonstration on tearing down and cleaning the weapon.

• This week's Hump Day Reading List from Grant Cunningham. Articles on arthritis and shooting, OPSEC for preppers, testing your plans and preparations, why prepping is beneficial even if nothing ever happens, and more.
• With Florance striking the East Coast, this article may be of value: "Three Disaster Preparedness Tips for Gun Owners"--The Truth About Guns. (1) If you are going to try and ride out the storm, open carry in and around your home (if legal) and keep holsters and ammunition handy; (2) know the laws of surrounding states and locals in the event you need to evacuate with your firearms and ammunition; and (3) if you have to leave firearms behind, try to waterproof your gun safe or move the firearms to the highest point in your home and secure them as best you can against theft. Although too late for this storm, I would review your insurance policy and make sure that you have coverage for your firearms, even if it requires you to obtain a separate rider--generally the extra premiums are not that much. And, of course, document your firearms (on paper and with photographs/video) in the event you have to make a claim.
• "What the Hell is 8.6 Creedmoor?"--Guns America Blog. It is the .300 Blackout's bigger brother, based around a 6.5 Creedmore/.308 case that has been cut and necked up to accept .338 bullets. It is intended to shoot heavy bullets at subsonic velocities, but with enough power to take medium game out to a couple hundred yards. I suppose that with the growing popularity of hunting with silencers, it was inevitable that we would be seeing more powerful rounds intended for the same purpose. By the way, the name of the cartridge is not fixed. So, it may be released as .338 Blackout or similar.
• "One Handed Pistol Shooting Drill"--Active Response Training. Something to try before you break your arm or a finger, or sprain your wrist.
• "BACK SHOOTING AND THE FLOWCHART"--Gabe Suarez. Gabe uses his deadly force flowchart to discuss when it might be legal to shoot someone in the back, noting an instance where an active shooter actually move backward toward an armed citizen in order to close the distance. One of many good points:

Look, I get it. American Gun Culture has become a culture of fear thanks to those who profit from that fear and have a greater capacity for getting their message out than I do. But consider that for you to take a proactive shot on a bad guy's back, certain things must have already happened. One is that the bad guy must have already used deadly force against someone else. And the total picture of the event has given you a certainty that this is a continuing threat to everyone. In other words, others are likely to also be killed or seriously injured if the bad guy is not "made safe".

One situation that I could see this coming to play is a perp who is holding someone hostage, such as gun to head or knife to throat.

• "Myth Of Firepower and Winning A Fight"--LDS Gunsite. A good read, but this sorta stuck out:

       Often we needlessly turn solvable problems into mountains. Running out of ammunition, stoppages, being wounded, they’re all just speed bumps. Get over or around them quickly and move on. Don’t count yourself out of the fight until you really are. Don’t spend time looking for excuses to lose. Get out of self-defeating thinking and focus on ways to win! Outcomes are often determined by who gives up first.

        To win, you have to overwhelm the attacker with so much precise force that he can’t deal with it and he is defeated. You eliminate his options until he has none left but surrender, or running away.

       Often this can be done without a shot being fired. That’s the ideal. Establish control early on. Don’t hesitate in applying your best justifiable force option to shut down resistance fast. Have more than lethal force in your bag of tricks. A less than lethal weapon can often stop a fight. Once you seize the offensive, don’t give it up. Stay in control and carry through to completion. The longer the fight goes on, the likelier you are to get injured. Don’t drop your guard if the threat stops being a threat. A strong finish is as important as a strong start. A threat can just as easy become a threat again.

• "The Eye of the Predator"--U.S. Concealed Carry Association. The author relates:

       Take the case of convicted murderer Eric Smith. I frequently discussed his case in my college criminology classes because the facts were so disturbing. Smith, who is currently 38 years old and still serving a life sentence in prison, murdered a 4-year-old boy named Derrick Robie in Steuben County, New York, when he was only 13. In an extremely calculated move, Smith lured his 4-year-old victim into a wooded area near his home, promising the boy that it was a shortcut to the park to which he was headed. Once in the woods, he beat Derrick in the head with a large rock and then sodomized him with a stick. He eventually killed him. His only explanation for committing this horrendous act was that he “had to get his anger out on him” and that Derrick was “younger and practically helpless.” Smith was given a sentence of nine years to life in prison for his crime.

       Smith also selected Derrick as his victim because of the child’s natural innocence. I firmly believe that child predators are attracted to the innocence of children and wish to stamp out that innocence by killing children or committing acts of sexual abuse against them, essentially ripping their innocence away forever.

Murderers and molesters can come in all sizes and ages. So, watch how people, including other kids, are interacting with your children.

"China Is Secretly Taking Over Zambia"--China Uncensored (10 min.)

China is doing this to a lot of countries--getting them to borrow a lot of money from China for constructing infrastructure projects, then, when the nation defaults, taking control of that or other critical infrastructure or resources. China has taken control of a couple ports this way. Another trick is for China to provide the trained individuals that run an infrastructure project, but then not teach the locals how to do the jobs, leaving them dependent on the Chinese.

• Project much? "US gun owners are holding the country hostage – and I fear for my family’s safety"--Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman. Although Hasan doesn't state that he is Muslim, we know he is, not only because of his name, but also because he mentions his halal butcher. There is a certain irony of a man who belongs to a religion and culture that espouses jihad and violence against unbelievers, asserting he is afraid of white Americans (yes, he makes it clear that whites are the group of whom he is most fearful). Consider this:

Seven percent of Muslims in America told Pew researchers that violence against civilians is “sometimes” justified in the name of Islam, and 1% said “often.” Whoa! This means there are more than 100,000 Muslim adults living in this country who could justify a suicide bombing in the name of their religion.

But this guy isn't afraid of his fellow Muslims, but is, instead, afraid of the most peaceful people on the face of the earth. It is especially insulting that he posted this the day after the anniversary of his co-religionists having killed thousands of Americans. What a prick.

• The first step to getting out of a hole is to stop digging: "Identity politics, tribes, and nations"--Bayou Renaissance Man. Peter Grant recently had authored a blog post asserting that identity politics was a form of tribalism that posed an existential threat to the nation. I don't disagree. But the issue is how to react to it, inasmuch, as Vox Day has noted, the other groups are not going to give up their identity centered politics. Grant argues that we must subsume other identities (religious, ethnic, race, etc.) to our national identity, and quotes extensively from a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, which decries anyone with a hyphenated identity--e.g., Italian-American, Japanese-American, Irish-American, etc. 

          However, Vox Day notes that Grant must not have carefully read the quote, as Roosevelt states: "The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American." (Underlines added). Does Grant really support the purging and expulsion of hyphenated Americans?

• "In their own words: Guard members tell personal accounts of 9/11"--National Guard Magazine. Interesting:

       Air Force Brig. Gen. Carol A. Timmons, director of the Delaware National Guard joint staff, and a pilot for a major airline, said, "That morning I was scheduled to take off from Kennedy Airport at 9 a.m. flying a Boeing 767 to Los Angeles.

* * *

       At about 9:20 a.m., Timmons and the captain were told by the traffic control tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport that the airport was being evacuated and all planes on the flight deck were on their own to find a way back to their departure gates.

      "When we turned to taxi back to the gate, I could see that the Twin Towers were on fire," she said. "I can still se that pretty clearly."

      Shortly after arriving at the gate, Timmons said one of flight attendants called up to the cabin with some disconcerting news.

       "She said, ‘We've got some guys back here that are very agitated that we're going back and that we're not taking off and they look Middle Eastern,' and the captain said there was really nothing that he could do but to let operations know about them," Timmons said.

       As soon as we got to the gate and got the door open, those guys were off, she said. "It was total chaos at the airport and they just disappeared into the crowd and there was nothing we could do."

      Some believe that Timmons' plane was intended to be the fifth to be hijacked that day. After searching the plane, investigators found evidence of ties to al Qaida in the bags of the men who disappeared.

       "They locked down the airport so we couldn't go anywhere," she said, "and you couldn't even got off of the island of Manhattan unless you were an emergency or first responder vehicle."

 And yet those men apparently were able to disappear without difficulty. (H/t Anonymous Conservative).

• "Sweden: The Latest Nationalist Domino"--American Conservative. This last weekend, Sweden held parliamentary elections--the Sweden Democrats, who are promising to put controls on immigration and crime, came in third, with 17.6 percent of the vote. The Sweden Democrats have been portrayed as both right wing and as Nazis, although they would probably be considered as liberals in the United States. Apparently, in Europe, anything to the right of communism is "right wing". In any event, the author of this piece ascribes the growing power of the Sweden Democrats as the consequence of the violence and costs mass Muslim immigration becoming too much to hide from the Swedish public. As the author writes, "We might step back and observe that many populist uprisings begin just this way—when the people figure out that their government has been lying to them. And once the populists get going, there’s no telling where they will go."
• "Earliest known drawing found on rock in South African cave"--The Guardian. The markings are believed to be 73,000 years old. "The simple red marks adorn a flake the size of two thumbnails which appears to have broken off a grindstone cobble used to turn lumps of ochre into paint powder. The lines end so abruptly at the fragment’s edges that researchers believe the cross-hatches were originally part of a larger design drawn on the cobble." 
• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Young blood an elixir that prevents age-related diseases, study reveals"--Sky News. The vampire treatment of using the blood of younger specimens to improve the health of older specimens isn't new--it's been shown and researched in mice for years. Rather, this appears to be human trials confirming what the mouse studies had already shown. Interestingly, they already have a cost developed for the treatment: "Ambrosia currently offers teenage blood plasma to older customers at a cost of $8,000 (£6,200) for two and a half litres." I am guessing that this will further spread the practice of smuggling children across the border.