January 29, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Is Your Grip Why You Miss? | Shooting Low Left?"--Geauga Firearms Academy (15 min.)

• A new Woodpile Report. 
• Jon Low at Defensive Pistol Craft published his monthly roundup last week. Check it out.
• "6 PISTOL READY POSITIONS YOU'D BETTER KNOW"--Wide Open Spaces. The author begins by explaining:

        Ready positions are methods of holding the gun to maintain safe muzzle awareness before and after engaging a square range target or a deadly force attack. Square range etiquette and real world problem solving drive the two schools of thought on pistol ready positions. For the most part, deadly force encounters don't happen at the artificial training environment of the shooting range.

       There are dozens of ready positions that go by dozens of different names. Having an understanding of a few of the basic positions provides a foundation of safe gun handling options for real world problem solving.

She then goes on to explain and illustrate through photographs the different positions: (1) Position Sul; (2) traditional low ready; (3) modified low ready; (4) high ready; (5) compressed ready; and (6) temple index.

• "Why Do We Teach: “Sul” Position"--Cutting Edge Training. The author explains that the Sul position is not and was not intended as a combat ready position. 

        “Sul” is Portugese for “south,” and was originally developed in Brazil.  The original intent was to provide a safer way to move with a handgun in-hand through a crowd or past a person without muzzling anyone. 

       How it works:  From a practical ready position with the handgun in a one- or two-hand hold, muzzle directed toward the threat area, the Sul is performed by bringing the weapon to the torso with the muzzle directed downward, or south, and pointed off to the side of the support-hand’s leg (if in the right-hand, the muzzle is directed down and just to the side of the left-leg).  As the muzzle moves downward into the Sul, the support-hand either comes off the grip and flattens naturally, palm down on the torso (ready to quickly move into a two-hand grip), or it comes up over the weapon, covering it.

        The support-hand is available to reach out and grab a subject if the situation demands (never the first choice with a firearm in-hand, but being forced to go hands-on with a threatening or resistive subject happens far too often to be ignored or simply dismissed by saying, “Never touch anyone with a gun in your hand”).  Your support-hand may reach out and touch a person you are moving past, ensuring you know their position, to let him know you are moving past, and making sure he doesn’t move unexpectedly.

       If moving through a crowd, the weapon moves into a safer muzzle position against the body, and the support-hand moves to cover the weapon as the first line of defense against weapon retention threats.  The support-hand comes off the handgun as needed to guide others, creating a path to quickly move through the crowd while still having the handgun in-hand.  As quickly as the support-hand moves from the weapon to reach out, it comes back, covering the weapon as the shooter continues to move. 

      When the shooter is past the individual or through the crowd, the muzzle comes up and the weapon again floats away from the mid-torso, pointing wherever the shooter needs it for quick response to imminent threat.  

Position Sul (source)

• "Position SUL Revisited" by Ron Yanor. The author discusses some things he sees in training that people do wrong with the Sul and discusses some training issues. An excerpt:

Both thumbs touching are a proper characteristic of SUL. Some operators say the middle finger knuckle [strong hand] and crook of the index finger [support hand] are the only points of contact. Yes, they become an articulated pivot point, but the thumbs play a role in a correct position. Shooters with pistols having mechanical safeties say they must keep their thumb on the frame to engage the safety. This is a training misstep. Occasionally we see this with M9 shooters using the de-cocking lever as a safety, which requires a ‘thumb/lever up’ manipulation. For 1911 shooters, the thumb sweeps the safety off as pistol comes up.

This author doesn't care for the "retention" version of the Sul where the off hand is covering the pistol as his testing has not shown that it increases retention, but it does slow the transition to a firing stance. The author also explains when it should be used:

         When should Position SUL be employed? This is another often misinterpreted factor. According to Direct Action Group, SUL is used in three fundamental situations: First, when you are in transit and not when you are the cover man. In a team environment, operators often move in a stack configuration. The first operator in that formation may present his/her weapon, but it is imperative the others orient their pistol safely.

         Second, when officers or other friendly persons are crossing into your sector of fire or arc of coverage. When holding a part of a room or covering a suspect, other officers may move into your area of responsibility. Going to SUL keeps your muzzle off back-up personnel or teammates.

         Third, during domination of crowds.There will be situations where officers are holding a perimeter, controlling occupants, or similar tasks that require the pistol to be in hand, but not pointed at persons. SUL is a ‘non-offensive’ position that can mitigate citizen complaints or negative media commentary. At the same time, it provides a quick presentation if needed and good weapons retention.

• I've seen a couple sites linking to this article: "The Telephone Game and the Training Industry"--Tactical Professor. You are probably familiar with the Telephone Game, but if not, it involves a line of people. The first person whispters a message to the person behind him or her, and it continues down the line, until the last person reveals the message to everyone and its compared to the original message. Often there are extreme (and humorous) differences between the original message and the final one. The game is often used to illustrate the dangers of gossip and/or the fallibility of human memory. The Tactical Professor sees a similar process in the firearms training community concerning certain theoretical concepts, statistics, intellectual concepts and so on. Common ones are explanations of the Jeff Cooper's color codes, John Boyd's OODA loop and so on. His recommendation is to take second hand information with a grain of salt, and try to go back to the original source. 
• "How to Get Started Reloading Rifle Ammo"--The Truth About Guns. 

• Related: "Hodgdon Announces the 2019 Reloading Roadshow"--Ammo Land. Hodgdon representatives are going to travel the country to put on training seminars at local Hodgdon dealers to teach consumers how to reload.

• This is a great read for those interested in military history or the history of the AR system: "Behind Enemy Lines With The CAR-15 Rifle"--American Rifleman. The author relates not just his experience with the weapon, but its use in Vietnam more generally, and some of its development history (plus lots of great photographs). Interestingly, the original version used a 10-inch barrel, but it was too loud and incapable of launching a rifle grenade, and sometimes had extraction problems. "To address these issues, Colt developed the CAR-15s final version, the XM177E2, dubbed by Colt the Model 629. First, the barrel was increased to 11.5", which notably reduced muzzle blast and sound signature; the chamber was chrome-plated to eliminate extraction problems; and a ring was installed behind the moderator to allow the firing of rifle grenades. This final version had a slightly longer overall length, adding 1.5", and a weight increase of about half a pound."
• "How the Providence Non Semi-Automatic Pistol Works, Shot Show 2019"--Ammo Land. It makes use of a bolt with a fixed firing pin.

"Earth Catastrophe Cycle | Ice Age"--Suspicious Observers (7 min.)

• To the Left, the end justifies the means: "The Atlantic’s Dick Polman: Democrats Need ‘a New Massacre’ to Make Gun Control Push ‘a First-Tier Story’"--Breitbart. 
• "The Clinton campaign sought dirt on Trump from Russian officials. Where’s the outrage?"--Marc A. Thiessen at The Washington Post. He writes about the actual Russian collusion:

By contrast [to the Trump campaign], the Clinton campaign proactively sought dirt on Trump from Russian government sources. They did it through cutouts. In April 2016, Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias retained opposition research firm Fusion GPS to compile incriminating information on Trump. Fusion GPS in turn hired Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 operative with sources among Russian government officials. The result was the salacious dossier, whose sources included “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” and “a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.” Steele’s work was paid for by Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. That means a paid agent of the Clinton campaign approached Russian officials for damaging material on Trump.

• Rod Dreher sees what is going on, but just can't admit it: "Library Liberals Gaslighting Whitey"--The American Conservative. He cites from a passage about Robin DiAngelo, who contends that "racism—especially antiblackness—is a system that forms the bedrock of our entire society," and has advanced such terms as "white fragility" to explain away why whites may object to being called racist. Dreher writes:

        Do you see what’s being done here? She is redefining racism as something of which individuals are only guilty insofar as they are white, on the grounds that “our entire society” is constructed on a foundation of “whiteness.”

      And if you, as a white person, object to that? Well, that just goes to show how mentally and emotionally fragile you are. In other words, you’re crazy, and don’t have to be taken seriously.

     This is ideological gaslighting of the first degree. 

Unfortunately, Dreher thinks that if white Christians keep their heads down and be quiet, this will somehow blow over.

• "What Will It Take To Make You Understand And Accept That They Hate You?"--Kurt Schlichter at Townhall Magazine. Schlichter has some thoughts on what the attack on the Convington students means:

       Do you think that a leftist Supreme Court majority won’t construe the First Amendment to exclude protection for “hate speech,” by which I mean any thoughts you might wish to express that they object to?

       Do you think they won’t turn the federal bureaucracy – including law enforcement – against their political enemies a thousand times harder than before, having been rewarded for the last decade of doing so?

      Do you think they won’t start tossing dissenters into prison? They do in England. You can go to jail for a tweet there – and do you think the left thinks that’s a bad thing, or a creative European innovation that needs to be imported?

      How about the Second Amendment? Are you kidding? The idea that our citizenry maintains the ultimate veto over tyranny drives them bonkers.

      Do you think they won’t use violence to make you conform? Hell, Democrat presidential candidate Eric Swalwell is willing to nuke you for not giving up your guns. We know that because he said so.

     It’s time to stop pretending that people who hate our guts don’t hate our guts, and that given the chance they won’t act exactly like people who hate our guts would act.

• "EXTERMINATING WHITEY: The end game of identity politics"--Mark Tapson at Front Page Magazine. An excerpt:

       What all this comes down to is identity politics, the Marxist-inspired ideology of divide-and-conquer. It shrewdly posits that the dynamics of Western society can be reduced simply to the conflict between oppressor and oppressed, and thus the most effective way to resist and ultimately overcome the oppressor is to define and categorize people not by their individual character but collectively by the immutabilities of race and sex. In America as well as elsewhere in the Western world, the oppressor is seen as the Christian white male, and all other identities belong to one or more categories of the oppressed. The end game is not unity of the body politic, not e pluribus unum, but the overthrow of the oppressor.

* * *     

      But for all the left’s obsession with victims, the demographic facing far-and-away the most open bigotry today is the oppressor class, white Christian men. Nowhere is this more evident than in the indoctrination mills of our universities, where entire Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies departments extol the righteous victimhood of the oppressed classes, alongside proliferating programs on “deconstructing whiteness” and “toxic masculinity.” In response to the Covington controversy, Kevin Allred, a white man and purported educator who teaches a course in “Politicizing Beyoncé,” tweeted that “white people really are terrorists. whiteness is terrorism.” Substitute "blackness," "Jewishness," or "Muslims" for "white people" in that tweet and there would be a flood of hate speech accusations and a Twitter ban. But because the left has made it culturally acceptable to spew hatred at whites, Allred will face no consequences. Whites who object to this are dismissed by the left as whining snowflakes – proving the point that blatant bigotry against them is acceptable.

• "BRACKEN: COVINGTON GIVES A GLIMPSE OF CIVIL WAR TWO"--American Partisan. He explains:

         The Covington confrontation points to an ironclad historical pattern. Every previous genocide in modern times was preceded by a similar pattern of public demonization of state-designated scapegoats. But is correlation causation? Does the American Left intend to eventually commit genocide against white heritage American males? In my opinion, yes. Scapegoating is part of a clear pattern of conduct seen during every socialist power grab from the French Revolution until now. In the case of German national socialists, European Jews were the scapegoats of the Nazis during their climb to power. In the case of international socialists, AKA Communists, class enemies were usually but not always the designated scapegoats. Examples of class enemies would include the Kulaks in the Soviet Union, “landlords” in China, and “intellectuals” in Cambodia. But in other cases ethnic groups were targeted as scapegoats by Communists, to include the Ukrainians, Crimeans, Latvians and others.

        So, are today’s Democrats already planning to load their white heritage American enemies into boxcars for trips to a new Gulag? Probably not many at this time, but Barack Obama’s political mentor Bill Ayers certainly considered it. Ayers believed that so many Americans would bitterly resist Communism that 25 million would have to be “eliminated.”

      Today in the United States, a possible future genocide remains far down the track and around the curve, well out of sight, and beyond the power of most Americans to even imagine. But the historical record is clear. Broad social approval of class- or racially-based scapegoating is a necessary precursor stage to eventual genocide, and a combination of both variants was clearly seen in the Covington case.

• "Starbucks’ Howard Schultz: America Exists for Immigrants, Not Americans"--Breitbart. Schultz is in favor of open borders and unlimited immigration, and that there is no downside to open immigration:

The perspective is common among bankers and investors, such as Schultz, because they gain economically when the federal government imports welfare-aided consumers and cheap workers. Overall, investors tend to prioritize economic growth above Americans’ concerns about wages and salaries, crime and real estate costs, civic harmony, and government priorities. 

• "HOW DID KAMALA HARRIS GET AHEAD?"--Powerline Blog. She slept her way to the top.

• Related: "Willie Brown: So What If I Dated Kamala Harris and Gave Her State Jobs?"--Breitbart. Well, it might indicate that her only job skills are those shown in the Kama Sutra.

• "Waters: More Diverse Financial Institutions Needed, Particularly in Management"--PJ Media. Among other things, the article reports that "Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, said she 'probably' would support the effort to study reparations for descendants of slaves."
• This is what the Left calls global warming: "Killer vortex: Dangerous 'life-threatening' subzero temperatures that can kill in minutes are set to strike the Midwest and Northeast this week with over a foot of snow forecast in some parts"--Daily Mail. 

• Related: "The Coldest Days Ever In Chicago: This Week’s Temps Come Close"--CBS Chicago. May break records set in the 1980s.

• Related: "Deadliest freeze in a generation has 110 million people across U.S. bracing for record-breaking extreme low temperatures - as forecasters warn frostbite and hypothermia could occur in SECONDS"--Daily Mail. 

• "Global property markets on the turn"--DW. Chinese investors are pulling back from the real estate markets in Sydney, Bangkok, London, Vancouver, and Singapore, causing market down turns. 
• "The Supreme Court may kill Roe v. Wade as soon as this week"--Think Progress. The headline is a bit of an exaggeration, as there would be no explicit or implicit revocation of the "right" to obtain an abortion. Rather, the court is expected to decline to hear an appeal of the case June Medical Services v. Gee which sought to overturn a Louisiana law which requires doctors performing abortions to have hospital privileges at a hospital not more than 30 miles from where the abortion is being performed and which hospital offers obstetrical or gynecological health care services. 
• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Elon Musk: Why I'm Building the Starship out of Stainless Steel"--Popular Mechanics. He's going to replace the carbon-fiber skin with stainless steel, explaining:

       The thing that’s counterintuitive about the stainless steel is, it’s obviously cheap, it’s obviously fast—but it’s not obviously the lightest. But it is actually the lightest. If you look at the properties of a high-quality stainless steel, the thing that isn’t obvious is that at cryogenic temperatures, the strength is boosted by 50 percent.

       Most steels, as you get to cryogenic temperatures, they become very brittle. You’ve seen the trick with liquid nitrogen on typical carbon steel: You spray liquid nitrogen, you can hit it with a hammer, it shatters like glass. That’s true of most steels, but not of stainless steel that has a high chrome-nickel content. That actually increases in strength, and ductility is still very high. So you have, like, 12 to 18 percent ductility at, say, minus 330 degrees Fahrenheit. Very ductile, very tough. No fracture issues.