September 14, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Taurus Judge Part IV and Gun Fight Statistics Part II"--Paul Herrell (13 min.)

Herrell shoots a couple different types of "multi-projectile" (i.e. buckshot) through a Taurus Judge into his meat target, comparing the results versus a .357 Magnum revolver, and a standard 12 gauge shotgun ... and demonstrating why the Taurus Judge (and similar weapons) are not very good defensive weapons.

• TGIF: This week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Lot's of good articles, so go check it out.
• "PSA: Don’t Shoot 300BLK Out Of An AK47"--The Firearm Blog. No damage to the firearm, and no one was injured, but the case ruptured and jammed the weapon.
• "AR Accuracy Testing At 10,000 Rounds"--The Captain's Journal. This isn't cited as best practices, but Herschel directs our attention to an article in which the gun owner decided to not clean his barrel for 10,000 rounds, and tested the accuracy. Results? It didn't seem to make any difference--accuracy was still good.
• "Processing Wild Harvested Venison"--Aussie Hunter. Cleaning the carcase and breaking it down into usable cuts.
• An ode to the defensive shotgun: "RIOT GUNS"--Gabe Suarez. The roles for the police or defense shotgun:

• Close Range Urban Confrontations

• Facing Multiple Advancing Attackers

• Rapidly Evolving Situations Precluding traditional Marksmanship

• Limited Down Range Effect of Missed Shots

• Reduced Visibility Due To Atmospheric or Man Made Effects (smoke, fires, gas)

• Limited Penetration Through Mediums, Living or Static

• Increased Physical Damage from Hits

• Ability To Hit Massed targets With One Projectile

• ".308 Win. vs. 7.62 NATO: What's the Difference?"--Shooting Illustrated. 7.62 NATO has slightly thicker case walls to assist with ejection; the .308 Win. (especially in hunting loads) may be loaded to higher pressures which could damage a semiautomatic military style rifle. (You may remember about 10 years ago when there was a glut of Chilean 7.62x51 on the market, but there were warnings about using them in FALs or M1A1s because they could damage the weapons due to being higher pressure loadings).
• "Small indoor greenhouses let apartment dwellers grow veggies"--Associated Press. From the article:

       One of these indoor greenhouses — or automated growing systems, as they’re referred to — was created by six engineering students at Rice University. Aside from planting the seeds, the greenhouse does pretty much everything. It’s about the size of a small bookshelf and operates anywhere indoors.

       “We didn’t want it to take up too much space in an apartment,” said Harrison Lin, a student who worked on the project. He said they wanted to “make it not intrusive, but it could still grow a useful amount of plants.”

       There are push buttons on the device to designate how much light and water the plants get, and to determine the temperature inside it. If you’re feeling extremely hands-off, there are three pre-set options: leafy greens, roots and herbs. Select what you’re growing and go about your business.

• Flashback: "Active Shooter Response for the Armed Citizen"--Active Response Training. In this 2013 article, Greg Ellifritz addresses some of the statistics of these incidents--including that they are generally over before police arrive, so you will likely be on your own. He also discusses topics such as whether you should engage, and points out the weaknesses to certain types of firearms commonly carried for self-defense. But if you do decide to intervene, he has some pointers, including this one which I think is of paramount importance to the citizen responding to a shooting:

– How do I conceal my gun when working my way to the shooter?  If you don’t conceal it, you may be mistaken for the shooter by a cop or another CCW permit holder.  It’s difficult balancing the competing needs of staying low profile, yet ready at the same time.  In the Arizona shooting, one of the men who responded was armed.  When he heard the shots being fired, he unholstered his 9mm pistol, and put it in his pocket (with his hand still on it) as he made his way to confront the shooter.  That was a very smart move.  He had instant access to the gun, but no one else saw it.

• "Officials: Park employee falsely claimed she was hit by car, loses job"--Austin American Statesmen. Why you might want to take 911 calls with a bit of salt. The park employee was angry at a man that had made a wrong turn into the park entrance and was trying to turn around. She called 911 and started screaming into her phone that the driver was trying to kill her and was running her over. Fortunately, the driver had also recorded the encounter, so he was quickly cleared of any wrongdoing.
• You may have heard of the recent shooting of a black man, Botham Shem Jean, in his Dallas apartment, by police officer Amber Guyger. David French calls it the worst police shooting yet. Guyger contends that she entered Jean's apartment, which is one floor below hers, by mistake thinking it was her own apartment. Supposedly she put her key in the lock and pushed the door open. Confronted by a Jean, whom she believed to be a burglar and who refused to follow her instructions, she shot him in self-defense. Except that facts are beginning to pop up that don't jive with her story. For one thing, "One witness reported hearing a woman yelling, 'Let me in! Let me in!' before the gunshots and a man’s voice saying, 'Oh my God. Why did you do that?' after them." Some other inconsistent facts are that the doors are designed like fire-doors, and automatically close and latch, a red light will flash if the wrong key is inserted into the lock, and the apartment numbers are next to the door and lit up. Also, "Guyger had made noise complaints about Jean, 26, to the building management in the days before his death."
• "Is it Stupid to Train on a Body Opponent Bag (BOB)?"--The Martialist. The author says "No." He explains:

       Put simply, there is no such thing as full-contact training. Training always involves a level of simulation — even that which we call “full contact.” You may have used the phrase before; I know I have. But if we look at the letter of the meaning of the term, it is impossible. A truly full-contact sparring session isn’t sparring at all; it’s fighting another person with the intent to do them serious harm. The only full-contact fight simulation that actually fully replicates full contact is… well, getting into a fight with someone.

      Recognizing this, students of combatives — of reality-based self-defense, and of expedient, realistic self-defense methods — have long relied on Body Opponent Bags, or B.O.B.s. The term has come to be a catch-all for any torso-shaped punching apparatus. The idea is that you can better target your techniques on a freestanding torso dummy than you can a heavy bag. Both allow you to hit as hard as you are able without injuring yourself, yet the BOB lets you better visualize your attacks and their effects.

While it is true that it isn't completely realistic--the bag can't hit back--it does allow you to practice full power strikes. And training full power strikes against a living partner is also unrealistic--it simply can't be done without an unacceptable level of risk, as the author discusses. 

        Although the article discusses striking, I would note that even ground fighting requires you to hold back. I remember training some maneuver that ended up with the guy on top being thrown to one side and his arm being placed in a lock. It was my first time learning the technique, but I was partnered up with someone who was already experienced with it. We started ... and suddenly I was on my back and my arm was in the lock and the suddenness so surprised me that I was a bit slow to tap out. Fortunately, nothing was broken, but I sure let out a yell! 

• "One killed and 12 injured after 60 properties EXPLODE in flames across three Boston suburbs in unexplained gas main meltdown - with families evacuated from hundreds of unsafe homes overnight"--Daily Mail. Electricity was shut down in three towns in an attempt to prevent more explosions and fires.
• "LESSONS FROM THE WINTER WAR: FROZEN GRIT AND FINLAND’S FABIAN DEFENSE"--War On The Rocks. Some interesting background on the war before focusing on the hit and run tactics used against the Soviets:

        The Finns proved singularly adept at leveraging their homeland’s harsh environmental conditions and geography in the course of their struggle for national survival. Finnish troops were nearly all highly experienced skiers and possessed a degree of mobility Soviet soldiers could not match. Silently gliding out of pine forests, bedecked in snow capes often haphazardly assembled from bed linens, Finnish ski troopers continuously surprised, circumvented, and harassed their beleaguered opponents. Despite the earlier warnings of a few isolated voices within the Soviet Commissariat of Defense, the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers catapulted by their thousands into the frozen taiga had received little to no arctic training. Few could effectively use snow shoes, let alone ski. Easily detectable in their khaki uniforms, countless Soviet troops vanished into the frozen wilderness, never to be seen again. When reading about the truly astonishing levels of attrition at the hands of ski troopers, one is reminded of the maneuverability “overmatch” Mongol horse archers enjoyed over their foes for much of the 13th century.

        Perhaps some of the most useful insights into this unique way of war can be gleaned by perusing the writings of Finnish veterans later recruited as winter warfare advisors for the U.S. Army. In their view, it was not sufficient to adapt to a harsh geography. Rather, the goal should to develop new forms of operational art that enable one to leverage that same geography against an ill-adapted foe. ... With much of the landscape blanketed under heavy layers of snow, ski troopers could afford to explore multiple axes of approach, whereas Soviet infantry and armored units were confined to narrow forest roads and logged tracks.

Read the whole thing. A couple other good articles are "Got Sisu? Essential Guerrilla Tactics from the Finnish Winter War" at The Art of Manliness, and "Finnish 'by the book' tactics in the Winter War."

• "Perfect is the Enemy of Good Enough and Problem Admiration"--Total Survivalist Blog. Key point: "Finding the perfect answer isn't realistic. There are inherently compromises which must be made. We have to find the best answer that we can. This means looking at where we are willing to cut corners or accept risk."

"Serena Williams: Victim of Sexism or Sore Loser?"--America Uncovered (9 min.)

Williams suffers from what I term "black privilege" which means that you are not allowed to criticize her and, if you do, she is allowed to retaliate by physically threatening you and calling you a racist. There is a similar female privilege as well. You can see something similar occurring in this story, "WATCH: Cheerleader Pummels Girl Who Challenges Her to a Fistfight," from Breitbart where an angry black woman gets into an exchange of words with a young white woman (the cheerleader) and resorts to physical violence to win her argument.

• The ghost of Chief Justice Warren Burger: "The Second Amendment is a Fraud"--The Truth About Guns. The article notes that Burger once stated that the claim of an individual right to own firearms is “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Burger, as you may remember, also championed the practice of treating the U.S. Constitution, not as law, but as more of a guide or list of suggestions (i.e., "lode star").
• "Dysgenics and Low Creativity: Why China Can’t Save Civilization"--Unz Report. Intelligence isn't the only inheritable trait needed for a technological advanced civilization, but also a spark of creativity and originality. The majority of the article describes that, just like the West, mean IQ has been dropping in China, likely due to the "Ideocracy" effect--the more intelligent men and women (especially women) having few or no children, while the non-Han minorities are having a relatively larger number of lower IQ children. But there is more (there is always more):

       This decline is made all the more perilous due to research, led by a Japanese psychologist called Kenya Kura, which has shown that Northeast Asians are genetically less intellectually creative than Europeans. [Why do Northeast Asians Win So Few Nobel Prizes?, By Kenya Kura et al., Comprehensive Psychology, 4: 2015] Northeast Asians, compared to Europeans, have higher gene frequencies of polymorphisms which make people collectivist, socially anxious, and fearful of anything novel. Kura and his team argue that this is adaptation to a particular ecology, where it is vital to stay in a tightly-bonded group.

       However, they note that scientific innovators tend to combine very high IQ with an optimally low level of collectivism, low social anxiety and low fearfulness of the new. In other words, they have high “Openness-Intellect”, as psychologists term this trait. This psychological profile means that they can think outside the box and don’t care about the offence to vested interests which their new idea will almost certainly result in.

       This is why, maintains Kura, it is the West that generated the Industrial Revolution, rather than more intelligent Northeast Asians. The West is indeed the Goldilocks Zone for genius.

• How scientific consensus is actually formed: "Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole"--Quillette. The paper looked at the well-documented difference between males and females where the male cohort is more likely to produce members of both the highest IQ and the lowest IQ when compared to females (basically, you can think of two graphs of male and female IQ over the same mean, but the male curve is slightly flattened and protrudes slightly past the female curve on both ends of the curve). The paper was attempting to address how this could have arisen. But after it was accepted for publication and pre-print posted online, SJWs started to complain and the acceptance was withdrawn. These same SJWs further defamed the author in order to keep his paper from being accepted by any other journal.
• More support for Red Pill philosophy: "'It's none of his business who I date!' Single mother admits her children's dad has NO idea she's supplementing her income by getting wealthy SUGAR DADDIES to pay half of her bills"--Daily Mail. A couple telling remarks:

       'I decided if I was going to date again, then I might as well start looking for someone already well enough off that I could eliminate that stress,' she explained. 

       Ashley still works full-time, but she said the extra financial support allows her to do more for herself and her children.

       The mom estimates that half of her income — including gifts and bills that have been paid for her — comes from being a sugar baby. 

And, most damning, in my opinion:

       Ashley hopes that being a sugar baby will help her find Mr. Right, but if it doesn't, it isn't something she plans on doing forever.   

       'I will only do it till I'm able to go back to school and find a job that will pay enough to make it in this world by myself with my kids,' she explained. 

In other words, she is just stringing the guy along for as long as he is willing to support her. This is one of the reasons that the number one cardinal rule of dating is to never date a single mother.

• The Deep State in action: "John Kerry Admits He’s Secretly Working With Iran To Salvage Iran Deal"--Victory Girls Blog. Sounds like a Logan Act violation to me.
• The insanity of the left: "Hambach Forest: Battleground for climate action"--DW. The Hambach Forest covers a large coal deposit that Germany companies would like to exploit, but which is opposed by environmentalists. Why is Germany--which supposedly was going to go "green"--needing new sources of coal? Because the environmentalists convinced the government to shutter all of its nuclear power plants.
• The headline says it all: "National Data | August Jobs: Native-born Lose, Immigrant Workers Take All—And Illegal Infiltration Surges."--VDare.
• My LDS readers might appreciate this one: "Genetic links to Siberian and Eastern Asian horses found in wild herd in North Dakota"--Horse Talk. Although the article discusses different mechanisms by which the genes might have wound up in the North Dakotan herd, the obvious implication is that horses were not hunted to extinction in North America by early human hunters.