January 23, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Knowing When To Draw Makes All The Difference"--Active Self Protection (5 min.)

An off duty police officer in Brazil is robbed at gun point. Unfortunately, he tried to draw his firearm while already at gun point. Pulling a trigger is faster than drawing a firearm. It didn't end well for the officer.

• I've been looking for more information on the new .350 Legend cartridge from Winchester and, specifically, whether it would work out of an AR style rifle. The only article that says anything about the topic (and the answer is "yes") is this one from Military.com, which states: 

      It will work in a variety of platforms, from bolt action to AR-style rifles.

     "We designed this cartridge to work in many different guns ... we anticipate a lot more guns to be available in the future," Gibson [a Winchester rep.] said.

• "Shots in the Dark: A Low Light Qualification"--Sensible Self Defense. The article is primarily about shooting qualification courses in low-light. But the author also discusses flashlights, including this tid-bit: "We have discovered that a powerful light (300 lumens and up) overpowers a weaker light and permits the shooter to identify and engage targets that would otherwise be hidden from view." He also discusses flashlights that he uses.
• "Rift Over NRA Highlights Fundamental Divide among Gun Owners"--David Codrea at Ammo Land.  He notes: "Longtime readers of my stuff know I’m in the camp that says criticizing the NRA's leadership statements and decisions is no more an indictment of the association than criticizing a politician as un-American. As the slogan says, 'I’m the NRA.' And I reserve the right to criticize when I feel it warranted not only because it’s a duty people of conscience have, but also because I’ve done my part to support the association over the years."
• "Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Gun Rights Case Stemming From New York Restrictions"--The Captain's Journal. He has a very lengthy selection of links to cops (the one's that gun grabbers believe are the only ones that can be trusted with guns) behaving badly while using guns.
• "Surviving in a Venezuelan City: 'You have no clue about how people really are when they are faced with hunger'"--Organic Prepper. One point he raises is how the criminals gather intelligence on what you have: 

      ... Families are usually large and that includes those with black sheep in their herd, too. Therefore, collecting intelligence information about who to steal from is easier for those lazy MFs.

       Usually they sent in small kids, in teams, around 9-12 children, or women with babies, to beg for anything, and they will eyeball flatscreen TVs in your living room, or if your furniture is fancy, main air conditioning or any general indications of wealth, how many cars, bikes, or whatever goodies their older relatives could steal… usually at gunpoint.

• "Montie’s Law of Self-Defense"--Wim Demeere's Blog. Excerpt:

      ... a long time ago, he explained his strategy for fighting and spoke the words I now call Montie’s law.

       “It’s never the other guy’s turn. He doesn’t get a turn. It’s always my turn.”

       He swarms his opponents with constant attacks and uses overwhelming force to get the job done. If the opponent is lucky, he might get in a first shot, but after that, it’s never his turn again. I liked that a lot and expanded that idea into what I use it for now.

* * *

         ... As soon as that first punch lands, the victim is groggy and has a hard time standing up. He isn’t knocked out, but – and this is the critical point – he is no longer able to defend against the next attack. When that next attack comes, it doesn’t matter if it is less effective than that first blow because it still does enough damage to lower the capabilities of the victim. This progressively diminishes his ability to stop the aggressor and so each next blow lands as well. The result is a vicious circle the victim can’t get out of.

Read the whole thing.

"The NAA Mini-Revolver: You Can Do Better"--Lucky Gunner Ammo (12 min.)

The author discusses why the NAA mini-revolvers are not good choices for a primary concealed carry weapon, even if your options are limited due to weight or size. 

• TANSTAAFL: "Thousands in Venezuela Join Protests Against Maduro"--New York Times. The people have grown disillusioned with Maduro's government:

         Discontent has deepened across Venezuela’s socioeconomic classes as hyperinflation has rendered wages worthless. Citizens of what was once one of the region’s wealthiest nations have starved to death and died from preventable diseases.

       More than three million Venezuelans have left the country in recent years, and those who stayed behind have struggled to find food and medicine while contending with water shortages and rampant crime.

       Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who was a close friend  of the leftist strongman Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro’s mentor and predecessor, said the government could no longer count on its traditional bastions of support to overpower opposition movements, which in the past were led by wealthy and middle-class Venezuelans.

      “The difference this time is that the discontent is not just opposition,” said Ms. Golinger, who wrote a memoir called “Confidante of ‘Tyrants,’ ” about her ties with Venezuelan and other leaders. “In fact, it’s mainly poor people who are tired of going without basic products and earning decent wages.”

Frankly, after reading the whole article, I doubt that the people in Venezuela have learned the lesson that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. In any event, Reuters reports that the military is still standing strong behind Maduro.

• Speaking of disillusionment, take a look at the Affordable Care Act (aka, Obama-Care) in action: "U.S. insulin costs per patient nearly doubled from 2012 to 2016, study finds"--NBC News. Per the article, "[t]he figures represent the combined amount paid by a patient and his health plan for the medicine and do not reflect rebates paid at a later date." No reason is given for the increases, other than "[d]rugmakers say they periodically need to raise U.S. list prices of their medications to help offset steep rebates they must offer to get them covered by insurance plans." In other words, the companies are raising prices to protect profits, and the actual price depends on what insurance plan you have. This is a textbook example of price discrimination by a monopoly. One of the complaints leveled against drug firms is that they employ price discrimination on an international level--one of the reasons why medications cost nearly twice as much in the United States than in Europe, and drugs are even cheaper in third world countries.
• "It Is Later Than You Think" by Bill Reader, posted at According to Hoyt. A discussion of the growing disconnect between the ruling elites and the common people and how this is undermining our representative form of government. Key point:

      ... Now that the opinions of the people—in Germany, in England, in the United States, and now in France—have become inconvenient, the governments are finding they would like to dissolve the people and elect another. And they will do anything to achieve that end—”we let our servants drug our strength with lies”. France and England sound poised to commit to these brave new social experiments in their own ways, and the US won’t be far behind if the Democrats ever get enough funding to run a few more fraudulent investigations.

        So look around you, while you still can. The sun is high in the sky. The last day of rule by the people—by the actual people, rather than by a “bolshevik” (literally, majority) minority— is half gone already. We’ve all been living in a very pleasant world, but it’s one that’s enabled us to relatively disregard politics, and that has let some very unsavory characters slip in while we were living in a dream. “The pleasure and the poison had its way”.

      It is later than you think.

• "The British road to Dirty War: analysis by David Betz & MLR Smith"--The Bruges Group. This is a similar analysis to that above, but focused on what is happening in the U.K. The authors first spend time discussing the new ruling elites and conclude:

With the rise of the new political classes, a different political dynamic is emerging. Drawn from similar backgrounds (often middle-class, university educated, with little prior career experience outside politics itself), members of parliament increasingly sound alike, think alike and act alike. The evolution of a monochrome political establishment is producing a radical disconnect, which the Brexit denouement is throwing into stark relief. What we appear to be witnessing is the corrupt mutation of the notion of the representation of the people in parliament, into the substitution of the will of the people by the interests of the political class. We are entering the realms, no less, of state capture.

This is coupled by a belief (or "gamble" as the authors put it) that "the public, kept compliant by political spinning, a constant diet of soaps and reality television, debt, social media pap, welfare dependency and the like, will not work themselves up into any state of anger of the sort anticipated by Nigel Farage if their political preferences are dishonoured. Or at least not enough of them will to make a difference." But this is where the authors beg to differ.

There is a dominant theory of the cause of revolutions, analysed by those like Ted Robert Gurr in Why Men Rebel (1970), according to which people rebel not so much when they are materially deprived or when they are repressed but when a significant gap materialises between the future they have been promised and expect and the reality of their actual circumstance.

The authors then go on to argue that overturning Brexit will inflame voters and begin Britain down the road to more political violence. 

• "Anti-Christian Ideology Is an Emerging Aspect of White Progressive Populism"--David French at the National Review. French is a cuckservative and it shows in this article, starting with his shibboleth that populism on the right is inherently racist, and cumulating in his description of the anti-Christian bias in current American politics and law as part of a "white progressive populism," rather than an earmark of the elite stretching back to the post World War I era, if not earlier. Nevertheless, he does make an astute observation:

        ... According to Pew Research Center data, 72 percent of white Republicans believe in the God of the Bible. Only 32 percent of white Democrats share that belief. That’s a stunning gap, especially considering the historical dominance of the Christian faith in the United States.

        Our culture war is also a religious conflict, and that means progressive populism will almost certainly continue to trend against conservative Christianity. And as this happens, it will be increasingly difficult to confine our differences to the political realm. The fear and loathing will extend to individuals. It will mean more attempts to destroy lives and limit individual liberty. And when it does, our divide will only grow.

      Hostility to traditional, orthodox Christianity is no longer confined to the white progressive elite. It’s now popular in the white Left. Liberal elites who attack traditional Christian beliefs and express contempt for traditional Christians aren’t demonstrating their disconnect from America, they’re giving their constituents exactly what they want.

(Underline added).

• And another gap that continues to grow: "Super Rich Americans Are Getting Younger and Multiplying"--BloombergQuint. From the article:

       A survey of U.S. investors with $25 million or more finds their average age dropped by 11 years since 2014, to 47. These fabulously rich Americans, whose ranks have more than doubled since the depths of the Great Recession, are younger than less wealthy millionaires. The average age of those with at least a mere $1 million is 62, a number that hasn’t budged in years. 

       The finding suggests a “vast generational transfer of wealth” is “just beginning,” said George Walper Jr., president of the Spectrem Group, which conducted the study. The sample size was small—185 Americans with more than $25 million in net worth—but the findings are consistent with other economic research on the top 0.1 percent.

• "The War Over ‘Toxic Masculinity’"--The American Conservative. The American Psychological Association recently released its “Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men.” The Guidelines make the contention that "that many of society’s ills—homicide and other violent crimes, suicide, misbehavior in school, declining life expectancy, even attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—stem from traditional masculinity." Or, "[i]n other words, traditional masculinity is the product of bad societal customs, which need to be reformed so boys and men can be reconditioned to become, essentially, more feminine and hence less troublesome to society." 
• "The Feminine Mistake"--Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. John Wilder comments on the APA's new guidelines, feminism and its link to Marxist thinkers, and how feminism is key to destroying the traditional family, all with his usual wit and satire. An excerpt:

Dear reader, it is clear that men are different.  Why else would Gillette© have an entire commercial telling men how awful we are, which happened just last week?  Clearly, we don’t have a commercial from Playtex™ telling women not to kill their kids by drowning them in a car which would be equally as valid, but it’s still not there.  So, men and women are different, in that men are evil.  Men are so evil that a razor company, which theoretically sells to men, can spend nearly two minutes telling men how awful they are.

• A long read but worth it: "A PRIMER ON THE GEOPOLITICS OF OIL"--Anand Toprani at War on the Rocks.