November 16, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around The Web

"Is .22 LR Too Unreliable for Self-Defense?"--Lucky Gunner (8 min.)

This video is a continuation of Lucky Gunner's series on using mouse guns for self-defense. The point of this video has to do with reliability in functioning--loading and discharging--rather than whether it can reliably stop an attacker. I suspect that anyone who has shot a number of different .22 weapons is aware that some weapons can be finicky about what they like, so test your ammo with your particular firearm. .22 LR, as a rimfire, is also more likely to produce duds that simply won't fire. The question is how big of a problem is that. The author abuses some Blaser .22 ammunition, but found no failures when he tested it. And while I would normally agree that modern .22 ammunition has reliable ignition, I also just recently had a box of .22 that was giving me multiple duds per magazine, sometimes two or three in a row (and yes, I tried some of the ammunition in different firearms and it was truly non-functioning). 

• TGIF: This week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Lot's of good stuff, as usual, so check it out.
• "Precision Rifle Data for Long-Range Shooting: Building Range Logs"--Ammo Land. The author notes that there can be many reasons that your shots may not match up exactly with what your ballistic calculator is telling, including the obvious of GIGO--you may not be feeding it correct atmospheric data--or small variances in your equipment. He explains how to use range logs to fine-tune your distance shooting.
• "Managing Recoil: Three ways to reduce the kick."--All Outdoor. This 2013 article covers the basics of recoil pads, muzzle brakes, and mechanisms to absorb recoil. Its by Oleg Volk, so it has nice photography as well.
• "Kyle Defoor Speed Shooting Drill"--Active Response Training.  Greg Ellifritz includes a video showing how to do Defoor's drill, and then offers up his modification of the drill. Ellifritz uses a 6 shot string, so you revolver shooters can use this one.
• "BEST SURVIVAL FIREMAKING METHOD | USE COTTON BALLS, VASELINE AND FERRO ROD"--Survival Common Sense. Or use the cotton balls/vaseline with a lighter or match.
• "The M1 Garand — Ready for Defense of Ranch and Farm"--USCCA. The author explains:

       Here in the Midwest, a “ranch rifle” can be something like the Ruger® Mini-14™, the M1 Carbine, a quality AK, an AR-15 or a manual repeater.  Most of these guns will do the job at 200 yards or more.  We don’t have the same vast, wide open flat spaces that one finds in the West or in the Southwest where the intermediate rounds run out of gas.  Midwest farmers and ranchers don’t encounter heavily armed members of drug cartels crossing through their fields to ply their trade.  For those living in the Southwest Border States, a ranch rifle with a bit more power and range might be in order. One rifle up to the task is the M1 Garand.

       For those of you not familiar with this amazing rifle, it was our primary battle rifle during the Second World War and the Korean War.  General George S. Patton called the M1 rifle the “greatest battle implement ever devised.”  The M1 held eight rounds of potent .30-06 ammunition in the “En-bloc” loading system vs. the five round capacity of the bolt action rifles used by Germany and Japan.  The M1 could dominate threats out to 400 yards or more in skilled hands.  The M1 Garand dominated the battlefield until our forces started facing mass suicide charges during the Korean War.  The eight round capacity just wasn’t enough, which is why the U.S. military adopted the twenty round capacity M14 in the 7.62x51mm cartridge in 1957.

      So, why I am suggesting that the M1 is still good to ride the range with?  There are several reasons. First, it is available and affordable. The Civilian Marksmanship program has M1’s available and used M1’s can regularly be found on gun dealer shelves.

      Second, the M1 will stand up to abuse (and dirt and dust) that might stop an AR from working. The design simply makes the gun more reliable, even if neglected.

      Third, the Garand is quick to reload. It can be kept in “Condition Three” – empty chamber, seven rounds in the magazine and the safety off.  To bring a Condition Three M1 into action, pull back the charging handle to chamber a round and let go.  It’s immediately ready to fire.

       Fourth, the .30-06 cartridge blows away the intermediate cartridge competition. At 400 yards, the .30-06 has more kinetic energy than the 5.56mm round has at the muzzle.  Plain ball will fulfill most Southwestern ranch rifle missions, (there are good expanding rounds available too) and the M1’s semi-automatic action and ten pound weight tames the recoil of the mighty .30-06, making it a pleasure to shoot.

I would add that because of the numbers made and its continued popularity, there are still plenty of parts available, whether surplus or newly manufactured, including barrels and stocks.

• Joseph Tainter's book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, is probably one of the most important books you can read and study about how and why nation-states can and do collapse. While it is not a complete answer, in my opinion, it definitely fills a huge gap that is not covered by other well known researchers on this issue. I posted a lengthy 6-part review of Tainter's book ( Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6). But if you don't want that long of an explanation, Anatoly Karlin has posted a shorter, but still excellent review over at the Unz Review. Or, if you want to read the whole book, this link has links to free downloadable versions of the book.

"HOW TO—Use Powdered Milk to Make Three Staple Ingredients" (2-1/2 min.)

Using powdered milk to produce your own  sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and buttermilk (with other ingredients).

• I am seeing a lot of links to Sasha Issenberg's piece, "Divided We Stand -- The country is hopelessly split. So why not make it official and break up?" at New York Magazine. The author suggests that with deepening political divisions, the country will break up, and even suggests how it will happen: states resorting to interstate compacts to spread the burden of health care costs. But he also warns:

History gives us few examples of successful peaceful secessions. In the ones we do have, national identity rather than ideological differences seem to be at the root of the fissure. (The Confederate States of America would have been a notable anomaly.) When states split in the 20th century, the Australia-based scholars Peter Radan and Aleksandar Pavkovic have pointed out, there were always deep underlying fault lines of language, religion, or ethnicity. None of the three multinational states created between the two world wars — the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia — survived until the end of the 20th century.

I can guarantee that, ultimately, at the root of fissure in the United States will be issues of national identity: MAGA vs. Refugees Welcome.

• "We Were Made for Civil War"--Michael Vlahos at The American Conservative. A look back at past civil disturbances and insurrection, and what may be coming. An excerpt:

         Ruling elites famously overthrown by history—like the Ancien Régime in France, Czarist Russia, and even the Antebellum South—were fated by their insatiable selfishness, their impenetrable arrogance, and their sneering aloofness from the despised people—“the deplorables”—upon whom their own economic status feasted.

          Today’s Blue elite represents the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the United States. Moreover, such wealth is scattered across a mosaic of pristine, manicured, gated communities physically and socially divorced from the realities of normal American life—glittering bubbles of sovereign privilege. This is the very oligarchy Founders like John Adams so feared. While both Red and Blue elites represent themselves as the people’s champion, Blue’s protests ring the most false.

        America is divided today not by customary tussles in party politics, but rather by passionate, existential, and irreconcilable opposition. Furthermore, the onset of battle is driven yet more urgently by the “intersection” of a culturally embedded kinship divide moving—however haphazardly—to join up with an elite-people divide.

        Tragically, our divide may no longer be an outcome that people of goodwill work to overcome. Schism—with our nation in an ideological Iron Maiden—will soon force us all to submit, and choose.  

• Apparently White House press passes are a property right: "Federal judge restores CNN's Jim Acosta's White House press pass as he humiliates Trump saying claim reporter 'placed his hands' on female intern was of 'questionable accuracy'"--Daily Mail. The decision was based on the court finding that Acosta was not provided with sufficient due process. I think such passes are a privilege, akin to a license, that can be revoked at any time, and the White House should simply ignore the judge's ruling.
• Refugees Unwelcome ... in Mexico: "'Go home!': Residents in an upscale Tijuana neighborhood throw rocks at the migrant caravan and order them out of Mexico while US troops put MORE barbed wire up to stop hundreds arriving at the border from climbing the wall"--Daily Mail. According to the article, "One migrant said: 'We are not criminals. Why do (they) treat us like this if everywhere we have traveled in Mexico they treated us well?'" I can answer that: it is because elsewhere in Mexico, you were simply passing through; but if you can't get across that fence into the United States, you will probably settle down in Tijuana.

• Related: "Violence breaks out as first group from migrant caravan arrives in Tijuana"--The Hill. From the article:

        Members of a migrant caravan currently in Mexico clashed with residents in Tijuana on Thursday night after residents demanded that the migrants leave public spaces and report to shelters.

        USA Today reports that Tijuana police were forced to separate groups of migrants and local residents, who were marching through city streets demanding police action, according to the newspaper.

       At least 750 migrants from a thousands-strong caravan of Central American migrants bound for a U.S. port of entry are currently in Tijuana as groups of families from the caravan break off over issues of security and qualms about the caravan's slow pace through Mexico.

      Local officials called on migrants to obey local laws and regulations, adding that they could only provide assistance to the caravan if members followed guidelines.

      “The message to the migrant population is very clear,” Francisco Rueda Gómez, secretary of government of Baja California, said in a statement according to USA Today. “We are providing them with humanitarian support, health care and food, however the need to take into consideration the rules of the shelters so they can coexist in harmony with the local population.”

       At least three journalists were injured in fistfights and other violence after midnight, according to the newspaper, which occurred after residents gathered to demand the migrants vacate a public beach.

        Some members of the caravan likened local shelters to prisons, explaining that it was more comfortable for them to avoid the shelters entirely.

        “For this reason — because this is oppression — we prefer to be in the streets, in the cold, rather than in a jail,” immigrant activist Irineo Mujica, who is working with the caravan, told the newspaper.

• More election recount news:

• "Disguised 'illegal' voters cost Republicans midterm victories: Trump"--Yahoo News. The President seems to be aware of some evidence showing that illegal voters voted, left the polling place, put on a disguise, and went back in to vote.

• "Embattled election chief in Broward County left red-faced after massive recount is thrown out because she submitted the results TWO MINUTES LATE"--Daily Mail.

• Liberals were claiming, not too many years ago, that snowfalls would be a thing of the past because of global warming: "Icemageddon on the East Coast: Brutal first winter storm of the season brings up to six inches of snow, shuts down ALL New York buses and kills at least EIGHT across the US."
• "Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’"--Science. From the article:

         A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

        Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.