August 11, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Dead Men Tell No Tales"--Paul Joseph Watson (4 min.)

How convenient. 

• "Red Flag Laws, or, How To Repeal The Second Amendment Soviet-Style Without A Pesky Vote"--Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. One of the best explanations I've read about the danger posed by red-flag laws. It isn't just an issue of a spiteful ex- siccing law enforcement on a past spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend, but the fact that psychology and psychiatry have long histories of being abused by tyrannical governments. 
• "SELF-DEFENSE MINDSET | WHEN IS “GOOD ENOUGH” ACTUALLY GOOD ENOUGH?"--The Mag Life. The author begins:

     Imagine, for a moment, that you’re completely new to guns.  You had an incident that scared you, so you went to the gun store and purchased a handgun. You’re signed up for a concealed carry class and are doing some research on the internet to see what you need. You see things like this:

CARRYING A GUN IS NOT ENOUGH.

TRAIN EVERY DAY.

WHY YOU NEED TO PRACTICE BJJ.

FITNESS FOR SHEEPDOGS: INCORPORATING CROSSFIT INTO YOUR RANGE TIME.

WHY YOU NEED TO TAKE A CQB COURSE.

THIS MAN IS TRAINING EVERY DAY TO KILL YOU (accompanied by a menacing picture)

       What these things have in common is that a very large percentage of them are messages from people or organizations trying to sell you things.  Because their businesses and their livelihoods depend on selling their product, they will do their best to convince you that the product is necessary.

      I have zero problems with this, by the way; it’s the entrepreneurial spirit.  You gotta respect the hustle.

       Is it all really necessary, though?  In most cases, no, it isn’t.  A study of real-world incidents will quickly demonstrate that people with modest, little, or even no training successfully prevail in violent encounters thousands of times every year.  How can this be?  The answer, I think, is multifaceted.

He goes on to discuss the self-defense mindset, and the fact that firearms can be a great equalizer, allowing the weak and the feeble to prevail against stronger, more violent attackers. The author also makes it clear that he is not saying that one should not take classes or training, learn martial arts, or become fit. He just recognizes that it isn't going to be realistic for everyone.

       I think someone absolutely new to firearms needs to have someone show them the ropes, whether or not it is through a formal class. But perhaps more important is to approach the subject humbly and conscientiously. I know people that have taken classes (at least basic firearms classes), yet have atrocious safety habits, mostly because they are unwilling to take constructive criticism. 

• "How to Clean Your Firearms"--The Survivalist Blog. The author notes:

     The good news is that most modern guns require only simple and infrequent cleaning to perform at a high level and these operations can be performed with minimal in the way of specialty tools.

     The bad news is that years and years of ingrained tradition, folklore, institutional inertia and outright falsehoods and pigeon religion has cemented improper, unnecessary or even outright harmful cleaning techniques as dogma.

* * *

    You will service any given firearm in three phases: clean, wipe-down and lubricate. In a pinch, you can simply re-lube your gun and expect it to start working again most of the time since a lack of lubrication is a leading cause of misbehavior.

Remember that if you are shooting old surplus ammunition using corrosive primers, or blackpowder, you need to clean your firearms fairly promptly after shooting.

• "To make a modular workbench / ammo loading bench"--Surviving Urban Crises. A good article for someone interested in putting together a relatively compact reloading bench. 
• "9 Military Poncho Survival Shelter Confirguations: How To Set Up A Military Poncho Shelter"--Willow Haven Outdoor. 
• "Gabe White…KING of the kydex SLAP!"--Civilian Defender. An excerpt:

Because of my almost daily repetitive work involving the forceful removal of human teeth from people, my wrists, elbows and shoulders take a literal BEATING that has transferred, somewhat unconsciously, into my shooting habits, and how I handle the gun.  One of the things that has suffered has been my draw speed.  Even when I think I am moving quickly to the gun, I am NOT.  Gabe noticed this and told me that if I could speed up my draw, and get to the gun quicker, I would knock a good chunk of time off of my presentation.  The exercise he showed me to get up to speed was to start from the ready position of my choice, and then swat my hand to the gun, quickly, like a karate chop (remember the audible SLAP when Gabe gets his hand to the gun?) and then acquire the firing grip.  He had my try this several times, without drawing, and just quickly slapping my hand to the holstered pistol.  After about the fifth time, he said, “NOW GET TO THE GUN THAT FAST.”  I did, and HOLY SMOKES, it worked! 

I'm going to have to try this.

• "Here Comes The “Fatal Funnel”….?"--Mason Dixon Tactical. The author reminisces about lessons learned from the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban (AWB), muses about what might be coming down the pike, and discusses the recent shootings. On the latter, issue, he repeats something that I've seen from other self-defense instructors:

     During a convo with friends and associates the other day, one of them asked why no CCW holders engaged and fired on the shooter in the Texas Walmart, with Texas being the firearms mecca that it is. The implication was that if you can carry it and have it on you, you should engage the bad guy. I mentioned that I have one prerequisite in that instance, to get those I care for, and am responsible for, to safety.

      I will not draw my weapon until I see the shooter and he appears to be a DIRECT threat to me and mine. As a civilian I will not run to the sound of the shooting if I have others in my charge. If I don’t have them with me, I definitely will not run around with my weapon drawn and possibly be engaged by LEO’s or Armed Security and/or be labelled as “Shooter #2”. I don’t like it, but this is common sense in the day and age in which we live.

• A site about booby traps used in the Vietnam War (H/t, The Modern Survivalist). If man traps interest you, Richard Grave's book, Bushcraft, discusses how to make a few. The book has long been out of print, but a fellow by the name of Chris Molloy has posted an HTML version of the book, including the chapter on traps and snares. 
• "People in the Aftermath"--Blue Collar Prepping. The author discusses the four types of people that show up in the aftermath of a natural disaster: (1) first responders; (2) gawkers; (3) looters and scam artists; and (4) helpers (e.g., friends, family, neighbors, insurance adjusters, etc.).
• "Bulletproof Backpack Inserts: What You Need to Know"--Loadout Room. The primary thing to look at is whether it has a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) rating and what is that rating. Most of the inserts or panels will probably be Level II or IIIA, which means that they are only rated to stop handgun rounds or buckshot. Wouldn't have been any use in the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Also, as CNBC reports:

     But buyer beware. The backpacks may be tested against the standards of the National Institute of Justice, but the government agency itself does not certify or test ballistic-resistant backpacks. The standards are used at independent testing facilities.

     “The National Institute of Justice — the research, development, and evaluation agency of the Department of Justice — has never tested nor certified ballistic items, such as backpacks, blankets, or briefcases,” according to DOJ public affairs specialist Kelly Laco. The only products it does certify in this category are body armor for law enforcement. “Marketing that claims NIJ testing or certification for such products is false.”

• "Can Organizer For Pantry Food Storage | What Works Best?"--Modern Survival Blog. The problem that a lot of preppers probably face, and non-preppers for that matter, is getting canned or boxed good pushed to the back of the cupboard or pantry shelf, and be forgotten about for years. This article looks at some products that can be used to organize a pantry so you use the oldest cans first (a first in, first out--FIFO) system.
• "SELCO: The Myth of Stopping Power & What REALLY Stops Attackers"--Organic Prepper. No surprise, but Selco's experience was that shot placement was more important than caliber.

"The Tactical Reload"--Max Velocity Tactical (10 min.)

A discussion and demonstration of not only how to perform a tactical reload, but also when and why you would want to do so.

• It's like everything coming from the FBI is a lie. Just a week ago, we were told that the FBI views white supremacists public enemy #1. Now we find out: "FBI Ranks 'Black Identity Extremists' Bigger Threat Than Al Qaeda, White Supremacists: Leaked Documents"--Newsweek (via AT&T). 

The 2018-19 "Threat Guidance" documents describe black identity extremists (BIEs) as those who "use force or violence in violation of criminal law in response to perceived racism and injustice in American society." The files claimed some BIEs acted in hopes of "establishing a separate black homeland or autonomous black social institutions, communities or governing organizations within the USA."

• "They Will Still Hate You Even If You Disarm"--Kurt  Schlichter at Town Hall. Schlichter notes that for liberals, the solution to every problem involves you having less freedom. He continues:

      One of their tactics is exhaustion - to exhaust the weak among us and get them to say, “Gosh, if we just give in we can put this unpleasantness behind us.” But you can’t put anything behind you with these people, because there is nothing to put behind you. It’s all a lie. You are not a racist. Your guns won’t hurt anyone but criminals and aspiring tyrants. And the leftists know it. They know they are spewing skeevy slanders, and if you give in on this one - handing over your AR-15 and hanging your head over prejudices you don’t possess - the libs and their newsprint lackeys will just club you with another set of grievances that you can only atone for through further submission.

     It will never end. They will always hate you. Always. Nothing you can do will change that. Nothing. So get used to it and invite them to pound sand.

Schlichter may be preaching to the choir since Americans have not responded too well to gun control efforts as outlined in this article, "Tighter Gun Laws Will Leave Libertarians Better-Armed Than Everybody Else," from Reason.com. 

     That gun restrictions are widely disobeyed is a well-documented fact. I've written before that Connecticut's recent "assault weapons" registration law achieved an underwhelming 15 percent compliance rate, and New York's similar requirement resulted in 5 percent compliance. When California imposed restrictions on such weapons in 1990, at the end of the registration period "only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state have been registered," The New York Times reported. When New Jersey went a step further that same year and banned the sale and possession of "assault weapons," disobedience was so widespread that the Times concluded, "More than a year after New Jersey imposed the toughest assault-weapons law in the country, the law is proving difficult if not impossible to enforce." That's in states with comparatively strong public support for restrictions on gun ownership.

     Across the Atlantic, despite varying but generally tight laws on gun ownership, "Contrary to widely-accepted national myths, public gun ownership is commonplace in most European states," according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. How can that be? "Public officials readily admit that unlicensed owners and unregistered guns greatly outnumber legal ones," possibly because of "a pervasive culture of non-cooperation with public authorities" in many places.

      Just a thought, but existing examples of defiance of gun laws in the United States might be an indication that "a pervasive culture of non-cooperation with public authorities" is exactly what we should expect in response to any future successes gun controllers might achieve legislation-wise.

Moreover, the author warns, gun restrictions will merely act to further polarize the body politic:

     In the United States, gun ownership and opinions on gun laws tend to divide rather starkly along tribal political lines. In last year's presidential election, gun-owning households voted overwhelmingly for Trump, while non-gun households went for Clinton. When polled, Republicans tend to be much more supportive of concealed carry, and Democrats much more supportive of restrictions, even in polling conducted after highly publicized and emotionally wrenching shootings. Unsurprisingly, surveys find that Republicans are more than twice as likely to own firearms as Democrats (49 percent vs. 22 percent), and conservatives almost twice as likely as liberals to own guns (41 percent vs. 23 percent). Less data is available for libertarians, but as you might expect the available results put us among the most overwhelmingly supportive political factions for the right to bear arms, and the most opposed to restrictions—to the point that the Public Religion Research Institute uses such opposition as part of its definition of libertarianism (along with opposition to domestic spying, support for noninterventionism overseas, low-tax and free-market views, advocacy for marijuana and pornography legalization, and more). As Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight puts it, "The U.S. Has Never Been So Polarized on Guns."

     That has strong implications for a country in which political factions now view each other with undisguised contempt. "Democratic and Republican voters… despise each other, and to a degree that political scientists and pollsters say has gotten significantly worse over the last 50 years," fret Emily Badger and Niraj Chokshi at the New York Times. "Democrats and Republicans hate each other more than they hate the Russians," marvels Reihan Salam at Slate. "More than half of Democrats (55%) say the Republican Party makes them 'afraid,' while 49 percent of Republicans say the same about the Democratic Party," according to Pew Research.

       So, in an America that has an established history of widely defied firearms restrictions, how likely is it that people will voluntarily comply with laws that are intended to disarm them, and that are primarily sponsored by politicians they fear and despise?

Further gun control restrictions will merely act to further undermine government legitimacy and increase contempt for the law.

• Related: "Beto O’Rourke Calls for Federal Gun Licensing"--Breitbart. Spoken like a true communist.

• Related: "Mitch McConnell: ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban ‘Front and Center’ in Senate"--Breitbart. 

• Of course, we all know how effective gun control is at reducing crime, as these articles about countries with strict gun control laws attest:

• "Second Explosion in Danish Capital Damages Police Station"--Breitbart. 

• "Birmingham: Machete Attack, Drive-by Shooting in Two Nights of Violence"--Breitbart.

• "A Big BOOM! In Landskrona"--Gates of Vienna. "Last Wednesday a powerful IED was detonated in front of City Hall in Landskrona, [Sweden] doing considerable damage to the building, and also to surrounding buildings."

• "Vigilantes, mob justice grow as violence mounts in Mexico"--AP. From the article:

      Prosecutors in the northern state of Sinaloa said Thursday five young men have been murdered in recent days, and in all five cases toy cars were carefully placed atop their corpses. The men were apparently car thieves, and the toys indicated both the reason they were killed and served as a warning to other thieves.

      The latest such murder came Wednesday. Prosecutors said the victim had been identified as the same man seen on security camera footage earlier that day stealing a pickup truck at gunpoint from a woman outside her home in the state capital, Culiacan.

      That same day, a total of seven suspected kidnappers were killed by townspeople in the largest mass lynching in recent memory in the central state of Puebla. Some were beaten, some hanged.

• Evolution in action: "At least 62 people are killed in fuel tanker explosion 'triggered by cigarette-smoking looters trying to steal truck's battery' as petrol poured out of the trailer in eastern Tanzania"--Daily Mail.
• "The Coming Migration out of Sub-Saharan Africa"--National Review. From the article:

     The population pressures emanating from the Middle East in recent decades, already sufficient to drive the European political system into convulsions, are going to pale beside those from sub-Saharan Africa in decades to come. Salvini owes his rise — and his party’s mighty victory in May’s elections to the European Union parliament — to his willingness to address African migration as a crisis. Even mentioning it makes him almost alone among European politicians. Those who are not scared to face the problem are scared to avow their conclusions.

      Last year Stephen Smith, an American-born longtime Africa correspondent for the Paris dailies Le Monde and Libération, now a professor of African and African-American studies at Duke, published (in French) La ruée vers l’Europe, a short, sober, open-minded book about the coming mass migration out of Africa. The most important book written until then on the subject, it quickly became the talk of Paris. It has now been published in English.

      Smith begins by laying out some facts. Africa is adding people at a rate never before seen on any continent. The population of sub-Saharan Africa alone, now about a billion people, will more than double to 2.2 billion people by mid-century, while that of Western Europe will fall to a doddering half billion or so. We should note that the figures Smith uses are not something he dreamed up while out on a walk — they are the official United Nations estimates, which in recent years have frequently underestimated population shifts.

      The closer you look, the more disorienting is the change. In 1950 the Saharan country of Niger, with 2.6 million people, was smaller than Brooklyn. In 2050, with 68.5 million people, it will be the size of France. By that time, nearby Nigeria, with 411 million people, will be considerably larger than the United States. In 1960, Nigeria’s capital, Lagos, had only 350,000 people. It was smaller than Newark. But Lagos is now 60 times as large as it was then, with a population of 21 million, and it is projected to double again in size in the next generation, making it the largest city in the world, with a population roughly the same as Spain’s. 

      Sub-Saharan migration across the Mediterranean is still new and relatively small — some 200,000 people a year. But keeping it at that level has required years of extraordinary efforts by European governments, including under-the-table negotiations between Italy and the North African power brokers who control the remnants of Libya’s Coast Guard. In the case of Salvini, it involves a willingness to stand almost alone against scorn from Italy’s newspapers and threats of prosecution from its magistrates. That is why voters have brought him to the brink of the premiership. Italian elites snicker at Salvini’s supporters, too, for imagining that a peacefully intentioned migration from a distant continent could somehow wipe out an entire ancient culture. Americans who snicker along with them have perhaps not spent enough time studying their own country’s beginnings.

      The tricky thing is figuring out how many of these Africans will want to come, and how many Europe can accommodate. Smith lays out several ways to estimate the size of the flow. For the sake of comparison, he notes that between 1850 (when Europe had 200 million people) and World War I (when it had 300 million), Europe sent 60 million people abroad, most of them to the United States. Mexico had 30 million people in 1955, saw its population double to 60 million by 1975, and sent 10 million people to the U.S. in the generation that followed. Today, 37 million Mexican Americans make up 11.2 percent of the U.S. population. So what will happen in the next 30 years, as Africa’s population doubles to 2 billion? It is anyone’s guess, and Smith uses figures cautiously. But he notes that if Africa’s development were to proceed on Mexican lines, Europe’s African-descended population might reach 150 million by mid-century.

Read the whole thing.

• "121 migrants have been stranded at sea for 8 days. Europe won't offer safe harbor"--USA Today. From the lede:

      The Spanish humanitarian ship Open Arms remains stuck in the Mediterranean Sea off Italy's southernmost island for an eighth day, with no European government offering safe harbor to the 121 migrants on board and the vessel facing a fine of up to 1 million euros if it enters Italian waters.

      The ship's dilemma is becoming the new normal as European governments increasingly shut their doors to migrants. The move is led by Italy's firebrand Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who this week has plunged Italy into political crisis in an apparent power ploy largely buoyed by popularity gained for his hard-line stance against migrant arrivals.

• Africans still selling each other: "West African slavery lives on, 400 years after transatlantic trade began"--Reuters. The British eliminated slavery, but only as long as they had control over their colonies. The article explains:

Africa has the highest prevalence of slavery, with more than seven victims for every 1,000 people, according to a 2017 report by human rights group Walk Free Foundation and the International Labour Office. The report defines slavery as “situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power.”

• A couple days ago, Michael Yon wrote: “Tonight I talked for about an hour with a ‘Google Snowden’ who will soon go public. A deep insider. Fascinating stuff. I cannot say much now other than pay attention to what is coming out starting in a week or so from now. Source said many interesting things about how Chinese are flooding into tech companies like Google, and some of the incredible techniques they can use to brainwash or at least mislead millions of people.”

• Related? "Sebastian Gorka: High-Level Obama DOJ Officials Will Be Charged With Very Serious Felonies, Be Patient"--Real Clear Politics. From the article:

      Sebastian Gorka, former strategist to President Trump, takes aim at Google over its work in China. Gorka told FBN host Lou Dobbs that Google sees America as the problem and like to help nations that are against U.S. interests. 

      Gorka said according to Chris Farrow at Judicial Watch he can predict that high-level Obama-era DOJ officials like Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr will be charged with serious felonies.

• And more? "Report: Donald Trump Will Use FCC, FTC to Fight Social Media Censorship"--Breitbart. The article reports:

The draft order, a summary of which was obtained by CNN, calls for the FCC to develop new regulations clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites when they decide to remove or suppress content on their platforms. Although still in its early stages and subject to change, the Trump administration’s draft order also calls for the Federal Trade Commission to take those new policies into account when it investigates or files lawsuits against misbehaving companies.

• "The European Threat"--The Dignified Rant. The author explains that without America's presence in Europe, it is likely that Europe will turn to autocracy. He writes:

     The unofficial reason for NATO after World War II was to "keep American in (Europe--unlike after World War I), keep the Russians (Soviets) out (of Western Europe, after the Soviets advance to the Elbe River), and keep Germany down (after starting two world wars)."

     The modern purpose of NATO is to keep America in Europe, keep Russia out, and keep European autocratic impulses down. The third reason is a real threat that is easy to forget in the post-World War II time frame that we remember as the normal state of European affairs. And the first reason is the means to achieve the third.

He continues:

      The Euro elites wrongly claim that the European Union itself has given Europe its long peace since World War II. They despise NATO and America so much that they actually believe their own BS.

      The sad fact is that without America, the USSR would have conquered Western Europe.

      And without America's continued influence Europe will revert to its norm of autocracies and intra-European violence. 

For that reason, the author opposes drawing down the number of troops in Europe, particularly Germany. He notes that "Our troops there are not a gift to Germany. They are an insurance policy for America."

• Renewable energy in action: "Fury at power cut that brought Britain to its knees: Government launches probe into mystery simultaneous failure of wind farm and gas-fired power station as officials insist there is 'no evidence' of a cyber attack"--Daily Mail. The problem caused outages all across the nation for hours. 

      Both plants were back running within 15 minutes, but the impact of the lack of supply lasted several hours, leaving many commuters stranded or facing long delays. 

      Julian Leslie, Head of National Control at the National Grid Electricity System Operator said: 'We had an unplanned near simultaneous event on our network. This event was the loss of two generators which connect to the national grid network in order to export their power.

      'As a result of this, this rare event, the system needs to protect itself. What was happening was as the frequency was falling, the system could see this and unfortunately the way the system protects itself is to lose some demand. You would have seen this in a temporary and short power cut.'

     Mr Leslie confirmed the system was working a short time later.