New Defensive Pistolcraft Post

 Jon Low has published a new Defensive Pistolcraft post rounding up defensive and firearms oriented articles and videos. For those of you interested in church security, he has collected several articles and offers some nuggets of wisdom on this topic with several focusing on protecting against theft of donations from collection plates. 

    Since the LDS church has never used a donation plate within my memory (they probably did in the 19th Century), it was an interesting look into how other churches collect funds from members. Jon discusses the security arrangements with one church that essentially used strong boxes as collection boxes and arranged for an armored car to collect and deliver donations to a bank. Conversely, there is very little security against theft on a ward level within the LDS church (most people donate electronically now, but even before there was very little in the way of cash donations with most people writing checks). When I've served as a financial clerk I would always make sure to be armed when assisting with the counting and depositing of donations, but I was probably in a very small minority in that regard.

    Jon has linked to numerous articles from Tom Givens in the Rangemaster Newsletter. Be sure to check them out. 

    Jon relates:

     I am right-handed.  I wore my pistol left-handed (at 9 o'clock) and dry practiced left-handed for two months before shooting the USPSA match left-handed this past July.  Try it.  All you need is a left-handed holster.  Everything else should be ambidextrous.  If you can't operate your pistol with your left-hand, time to get an ambidextrous pistol.  A small injury will make you left-handed.  Just because you are right-handed does not mean you will be right-handed in combat.  Strange unpredictable things happen in combat.  Shooting around the left side of a barrier is much safer when done left-handed.  

     It's an experience you ought not to miss.  

It reminds me of a discussion that I had recently with a couple friends, one of whom is considering getting another small revolver for concealed carry. I was mostly staying out of the conversation but then one friend said something to the other about a semi-auto, to which the second (the friend wanting a revolver) mentioned that he hated to carry a semi-auto with a round chambered because he just thought it too big of a risk (because I had only been half listening up to that point, I wasn't sure if he was concerned of an accidental discharge or someone grabbing it and using against him or what was the concern). My thought, which I expressed, is that I didn't want to be in the position of having an injured hand or having someone grab one of my hands, and not be able to rack the slide. My point being that we may not have the use of both hands if we have to defend ourselves. Which brings me back to Jon's comment: even if you don't shoot an IDPA match with your non-dominant hand, you should practice both shooting and weapon manipulations with your non-dominant hand. And you should practice shooting and weapon manipulation with just one hand. Because you may not always be in a position to use both hands. 

    And some interesting statistics on criminals and their capabilities with firearms scattered throughout Jon's post:

• Citing Greg Ellifritz: "Nearly 40% of the criminal attackers in this study had received FORMAL firearms training (mostly in the military).  More than 80% of the criminal attackers regularly practiced with their firearms, with an average number of 23 Practice Sessions Per Year.  They conducted these practice sessions in trash dumps, wooded areas, back yards and 'street corners in known drug trafficking areas'.  What that means is that the practice sessions were taking place in realistic environments, under conditions similar to those the attackers were likely to face in combat."
• Quoting from another article: "'16 of 43 offenders had received weapons training'" Hit rate offender on officer: 68%; Hit rate officer on offender: 39%; Most common offender shooting method: point shooting.
• And from a study on the firearms capability of Dallas police officers, after noting that about half of officers could hit what they were aiming at in a gun fight: "However, on a 'bullet level' basis, they found that out of 354 shots fired, there was only a 35% hit rate. One half of all officers missed with every shot they fired, including one officer who fired 23 misses and no hits. This means that six out of every ten shots fires was a miss."

VIDEO: "Best Distance to Zero a Hunting Rifle"

 

VIDEO: "Best Distance to Zero a Hunting Rifle"--Backfire (13 min.). 

The author explains why he uses a 100 yard zero.

    For as long as I can remember, the standard advice to hunters using a scoped rifle was to sight the rifle at its maximum point blank range--"the distance over which a shooter can hold his sights dead on the center of the target and hit it"--so that there was no need to do on the fly adjustments in the field.  Or, as one author describes it: "The MPBR method is a compromise between precision shooting and getting off a quick shot, so it is not perfect, but it is a method that will help put bullets in the kill zone if you understand the method and use it within specified distances." If done correctly, you can put the crosshairs of the scope over the vitals of a deer or elk and be able to strike within the vitals, whether slightly high or slightly low from your actual point of aim, out to 250 or 300 yards. 

    The MPBR is going to vary according to different calibers, bullets and velocities, but for common hunting calibers, it is probably going to be about 250 yards if hunting deer (figuring about a 10 inch wide vital zone, allowing you to hit up to 5-inches above and below the point of aim and still strike the vitals). The normal process of determining MPBR involves verifying shots at various ranges, but because many hunters did not have access to target ranges allowing shots beyond 100 yards (or a chronograph), it became common advice to sight the the scope so you struck the target 2 to 3 inches above the point of aim at 100 yards. Today, with ballistic calculators, you can calculate your offset at 100 yards much more precisely. (Here is the link to Hornady's online ballistic calculator. A tip: sight height over the bore is pretty important. The default on this calculator is 1.5 inches, but that would be for a scoped bolt action rifle and obviously depends on your particular set-up. Other types of rifles will vary. The height over bore for an AR, for instance, using a standard height mount is in the range of 2.5 to 2.75 inches or thereabouts. It pays to measure it).

    But scopes have changed. Exposed turrets have made it much easier to adjust a scope on the fly. Zero stops make it easier to bring it back to its original zero. Reticles that incorporate bullet drop compensators or other means of adjusting your point of aim are now very common. A few companies (e.g., Leupold) even offer custom turret caps marked with the adjustments needed for specific distances for your rifle and load. 

    And that is where the author of the video above seems to be coming from. He recommends a 100 yard zero because it is more precise (i.e., less subject to the bullet being driven an unknown distance off target due to wind) than trying to sight in the rifle at 200 yards, for instance; and then adds that in the field you can quickly adjust your scope up the number of clicks necessary for taking a shot at a longer distance.

    I suspect that this is one of those issues where the proper answer is "it depends." If you are hunting in dense woodland where it is rare to take a shot over 100 or 150 yards, a 100-yard zero might be all you need. Someone hunting in open country or where the trees are not very close might see a deer or elk ambling along and have time to adjust his scope before the animal disappeared behind a copse or some brush. It might be different if you are in an area where you have longer shots, but because there is more cover, you have less time to take the shot. And, obviously, the on-the-fly adjustment isn't going to work for someone that has to unscrew caps and use a coin or screw driver to adjust their scope.

What Happens When You Break Rules On Safe Gun Storage

 Two of the top rules of gun storage is don't store your weapons in your car and don't leave a firearm unattended around a crazy person. The police in this case broke both rules:

VIDEO: "Woman escapes handcuffs while detained, fires AR-15 from patrol car that injures deputy, civilian" (5 min) (h/t Law Enforcement Today).

VIDEO: Massad Ayoob On Why You Shouldn't Use Handloads For Self-Defense

 

VIDEO: "Massad Ayoob and Bill Wilson discuss hand loading ammunition for self-defense. Critical Mas ep39"--Wilson Combat (11 min.)

The Docent's Memo (Aug. 22, 2022)

 

VIDEO: "Bowie, Big Knife & Bayonet Fighting: TAKE THE HAND! Lessons from Biddle WW2"--Scholagladiatoria

Firearms & Self-Defense:

• First off, Jon Low published a new Defensive Pistolcraft roundup of articles and commentary this past week, which you can find here. Be sure to check it out.
• Also, be sure to check out Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump.
• "If You Could Only Have Two: Selecting Survival Firearms." The "if you could only have one" debates aren't really all that interesting to me because they are too limiting, but the "if you could only have two" can be useful because it really forces you to think about what you would want or need out of a long gun and a handgun. The considerations, of course, are largely driven by what is meant by "survival"--survival deep in the wilderness is a different creature altogether from an urban survival scenario post economic collapse. The author, here, defines his as the former scenario:

Here’s the scenario: You’re about to be thrust into a survival situation for an extended period of time. You’ve had to take to the wilderness. Say, a couple of weeks to a couple of months. You can only have two survival firearms; a rifle and a handgun. Which would you choose?

The author begins by going delving deep into the different types of rifles and them moving on to shotguns and handguns before moving to considering for what the weapons will be used and restrictions you will likely have as to size and weight. This probably makes the article more interesting to readers, but it is backwards of the proper way of analyzing the situation which should be for what you will be using the weapon and restrictions on size and weight, and then considering the weapons that will fulfill these requirements. In this case, the author decided on his scoped Savage MK II FV-SR .22 rifle for all around hunting needs (although he acknowledges that the Ruger 10/22 is another good choice) and a .357 Magnum revolver for defense against dangerous critters (whether using snake loads on one hand, or something suitable for bear defense on the other) or on the off chance he comes across larger game. Under the scenario that the author offers, and assuming that the "wilderness" is in the lower-48 states, I pretty much agree with the author's selection. I could see substituting a polymer framed .45 ACP, 10mm, or even a 9mm with 142-grain deep penetrating bullets, if you didn't need to be able to shoot snake loads, as that would lighten your load considerably.

• From the same author as the preceding article: "Savage Mark II FV-SR — A Yute-Sized Sniper Rifle." These are youth sized bolt-action .22 rifles that come with a 5-round detachable box magazine, but Savage also makes a 10-round that works with them. Most of my experience with this rifle mirrors that of the reviewer. The primary problem I had with the rifle was that the stock is shaped for shooting with iron sights with the result that the comb is far too low for an optic. As I described in a 2018 post, I wound up using the Voodoo Tactical Cheek Rest to get the right comb height rather than replacing the stock as many have done. I think the rifle might benefit from a bedding job, but haven't done so on my rifle.
• "Point Shooting: The Untold Story." At one time, almost all of the top gunfighters relied on and taught point-shooting techniques for up-close encounters. One of these, who had developed his own unique style, was Col. Rex Applegate. This article goes into the history of point shooting with particular focus on Applegate's system. An excerpt:

    When Colonel Applegate was personally recruited by the legendary “Wild Bill” Donovan (director of what began as the Coordinator of Information (COI) and later became the Office of Strategic Services OSS), he was initially paired with another close-combat icon, William Ewart Fairbairn. With decades of experience with the Shanghai Municipal Police, Fairbairn already had a highly evolved curriculum of armed and unarmed combat to offer. The system — including the point shooting system he developed with his Shanghai colleague Eric Anthony Sykes — therefore became a significant turnkey part of the OSS curriculum. However, it wasn’t the only influence on Colonel Applegate’s approach.

    Those familiar with the Colonel’s history know he also conducted extensive personal research into combat shooting — including research into the methods of Western gunfighters. In the course of this study, he discovered a letter written by the legendary Wild Bill Hickok in which Hickok explained the secret of his gunfighting success. Specifically, he revealed during his gunfights he always took the time to raise the gun to eye level before firing. That revelation really resonated with Colonel Applegate and became a key element of his preferred shooting method.

    A somewhat lesser-known fact is one of the Colonel’s earliest shooting influences was his uncle, exhibition shooter Gus Peret. Like most exhibition shooters of the early 20th century, Peret had uncanny eye-hand coordination and performed feats including both incredible kinesthetic/point shooting and the amazingly precise use of the gun’s sights. Through Peret the Colonel learned at a very early age both the advantages and limitations of both approaches to shooting. He also learned there is a huge difference between the skills of a naturally gifted shooter with an unlimited supply of practice ammo and the capabilities of the common man. That understanding would later serve him and his students very well.

    When you combine these influences and compare the WWII era Applegate technique with Fairbairn’s technique, there is one major difference. While Fairbairn acknowledged that shooting from eye level was preferable, he placed a heavy emphasis on what he called the “Three-Quarter Hip” position, in which the gun hand was only raised to center-chest level. The Applegate technique, however, reflected his own research and experience and adamantly advocated raising the gun to eye level. In fact in his classic Kill or Get Killed he specifically warns against hip shooting and other below line- of-sight methods and clearly separates the from his recommended method of combat point shooting.

• "Your Tactical Training Scenario…Attacked While Doing Yard Work." Greg Ellifritz, in this article, recounts a news report about a man whose wife was attacked by a naked man while the couple was working in the yard. The husband pulled the naked man off his wife, was attacked by the naked man, who then returned to assaulting the wife. The husband had to retrieve a gun in order to dispatch the attacker. Ellifritz then discusses some points and issues about what to do in such scenario. Of course, the first is to carry a weapon: Greg recommends a .38 snub-nosed revolver, but also suggests a knife or prepper spray, or, since you are doing yardwork, a machete or ax. I always carry some sore of knife, and frequently will wear a handgun, when doing yard work--especially if working in my unfenced front-yard. Greg also recommends you think of improvised weapons that might be available. In that regard, don't underestimate the value of a shovel or spade as a defensive weapon.

    Other considerations that he raises are whether you carry a communications device (I will have my cell phone on me), use headphones (that reduce your ability to hear), and whether you secure your house while you are outside. As to the latter issue, he remarks: "It makes a lot of sense to shut and lock exterior doors to your house whenever you are not in their direct line of sight or are mentally preoccupied." I agree. My wife and I have always been conscientious about keeping exterior doors locked, even when home, and I think it has made a difference. 

    The one thing I would add to Greg's comments is to take the time to look up and around you periodically to see what is going on. 

    Another situation, which is similar, is self-defense when working in your garage. If you are like me, for most of the year when you are working in your garage the garage door will be open in order to let in light and to keep it cooler. The advantage to working in the garage is that there are probably lots of improvised weapons around you from screwdrivers and hammers to large wrenches and crowbars.

VIDEO: "DESERT TECH TREK- 22 - 10/22 BULL-PUP"--22Plinkster (8 min.)

This looks like it would be great for a backpack gun.

Prepping & Survival:

• Daisy Luther at Organic Prepper points out that "The SHTF Is Happening RIGHT NOW." The basic gist is that what with inflation and the job situation and continued shortages, we are--right now--in an economic crises. She observes, for instance:

    A lot of folks think that jobs are easy to find right now. They cite the signs that are up everywhere, announcing that businesses are hiring. As the mom of someone in her early 20s who is out there looking for a second job to increase her household income, I can tell you that just because there’s a sign out doesn’t mean the business is actually hiring.

    A lot of places are required by their corporate headquarters to put these signs out to make it look like they’re thriving, but they aren’t actually hiring. Go in with a resume, and you’ll soon find out this is true. Obviously, it’s not the case with all businesses posting such signs, but it’s very much the situation in urban North Carolina right now.

    Places that hire minimum wage workers are operating with skeleton crews, leaving too few frazzled employees to handle long lines and unhappy patrons. Have you been someplace like Walmart or Target lately? At least at our local stores, there’s generally one register with a human operating, and quite often, the line winds down the front aisle with dozens of customers.

    Wages haven’t matched the increase of inflation. If you’re still making what you made a year or two or three years ago, you’re able to pay for far less with it. ...

• "Developing a Flexible Team Communications Setup." Some ideas from Everyday Marksman on putting together radio and headphone sets for communications on a budget. An excerpt:

    My flexible comms system is built around the idea that there are many ways you might want to use the radio. That could mean full on “tactical” use, completely by itself, or something in between. I want to tailor communications to many situations, both high and low profile, and also not cost a huge amount of money.

    My idea started when I noticed the number of electronic ear pro options on the market that included an aux-in audio jack. The Howard Leight Impact Sports, for example, have this feature and most people only talk about in terms of hooking it up to a phone for music. This little feature is an obvious answer for listening to a radio, but it doesn’t really help when it comes to talking.

    The next light bulb moment happened while researching speaker mics, as seen on the shoulders of law enforcement officers for generations. The key benefit of the speaker mic is that it allows me keep the radio itself on the belt line or attached to a pack. The speaker mic allows me to both talk and listen without touching the radio itself. The downside is that the speaker mic is still a speaker, which means if you can hear it then so can other people. That’s not very “tactical.”

    Then it hit me while reading the spec sheets. Most quality speaker mics have an audio-out jack for routing to a pair of headphones. That gave me an idea. By  running a speaker mic somewhere close to the mouth, like the chest or shoulder, and then a second audio cable from the speaker mic to hearing protection, I get the same basic benefit as a high-end tactical headset for a fraction of the cost.

• "15 Handyman Kits the Self-Sufficient Prepper Needs" by Fabian Ommar, Organic Prepper. Ommar, who apparently has published a couple books on prepping, has made a very helpful list of tool kits and their basic contents for specific categories of tasks for repairs and such including a woodworking kit, plumbing kit, sewing kit, bicycle repair kit, leather kit, lubrication kit, and so on. Now these are very basic kits. The sewing kit, for instance, represents just the bare minimum for attaching buttons or some limited hand sewing. But I like how the article is organized because it allows someone to think of a task which they might want to prepare for and provides a list of simple tools. 

    And if these lists represent all that you plan on gathering (e.g., you don't plan on doing large leatherworking projects or a seamstress), it appears that most everything in a given category would fit into a small storage bin which could be labelled and stacked on shelves. Thus, for instance, if your bike tire went flat, you could go to your storage area, look for the bin marked "bicycle repair kit" and it would have most of the tools you would need in that one bin.

•  "Hunting With The Ancient Atlatl." If you don't know what is an atlatl, it is a type of spear thrower that uses a relatively short shaped wood piece to hold a lightweight spear or dart and, effectively, lengthens your moment arm when throwing the spear. The article discusses the history of the device (as best as we know), it uses, the science and ballistic information, and efforts to expand legal hunting opportunities with an atlatl. 

VIDEO: "Explaining America’s Nine Nations part 1"--WhatIfAllThis (46 min.)

News & Headlines:

• Saber rattling: "US deploys nuke-capable B-52 bombers to UK." This contingent of bombers is from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and apparently adds to a number moved to Europe earlier this year. The article also indicates the Sweden and Norway provided fighter escorts for a B-52 exercise. 
• Ditto: "Russia Deploys Hypersonic Missiles Along Baltic Sea." From that article:

    Russia has deployed aircraft armed with hypersonic missiles along the Baltic Sea, a move that inches the country's forces closer to its NATO border, The Associated Press reported.

    In a Thursday announcement, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed that it moved three MiG-31 fighters brandishing Kinzhal missiles to Chkalovsk air base in Kaliningrad — a Russian enclave north of Poland and south of Lithuania.

    Moscow asserts that the Kinzhal missiles, which have already been used in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, have a range of up to roughly 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) and fly at ten times the speed of sound.

    The ministry's stated purpose for moving the weapons is to shore up "additional measures of strategic deterrence," with the aircraft on constant alert for immediate orders.

    Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ivan Nechayev said on Thursday that the country fears a coming confrontation with the West, emphasizing that "Russia, as a nuclear power, will continue to act with maximum responsibility."

• "New WHO guidelines: Monkeypox could be classified as an Sexually Transmitted Infection."

    Monkeypox may be reclassified as a sexually transmitted infection by the World Health Organisation (WHO), The Telegraph understands.

    The virus is transmitted almost exclusively through the sexual networks of gay men but can also spread through other forms of close contact.

    As a result, there has been a reluctance to formally recognise the virus as an STI by public health officials, with only the WHO able to re-categorise the disease.

    Now, the WHO received a formal proposal to change the classification and not "turn a blind eye" to the spread from Prof Rossi Hassad, an epidemiologist at Mercy College in New York and a statistician.

    He argues there is now "compelling evidence" that the virus is spread through sex and that, although there are also other means of transmission, it would be "more precise to say monkeypox is also a sexually transmitted infection".

• Related: Nothing to see here--move along: "New York records first pediatric monkeypox case - just as officials fear return to schools this fall will cause surge in infections among children."
• "China’s Property Sector Approaches The Brink." From the lede: "China’s real estate crisis took one more step toward the abyss this week, as new numbers showed property investment dropping, new construction slowing to a crawl, and foreign analysts showed the cash flows of property developers have turned to a trickle."
• One of my favorite topics and one I've posted about quite a bit: "The Unexpected Future"--Quillete. That the West--well, actually, almost the whole world--is facing a dangerous demographic decline has been known for a long time by demographers. The first signs of this actually appeared even before the now thoroughly debunked Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb was published in 1968. One of the first popular books to challenge the overpopulation canard was The Birth Dearth published in 1988. If anything, the situation has only grown worse as population decline has set in much faster than expected throughout the third world. This article does a good job of summarizing the issue even if the author dishonestly suggests that this is something only just discovered. It begins:

    We are entering an unanticipated reality—an era of slow population growth and, increasingly, demographic decline that will shape our future in profound and unpredictable ways. Globally, last year’s total population growth was the smallest in a half-century, and by 2050, some 61 countries are expected to see population declines while the world’s population is due to peak sometime later this century.

    This kind of long-term global demographic stagnation has not been seen since the Middle Ages. World population has been growing for centuries, but the last century has dwarfed previous rises. About 75 percent of the world’s population growth has occurred in the last hundred years, more than 50 percent since 1970. But now, population growth rates are dropping, especially in more developed nations, according to the United Nations (all subsequent references to UN research in this essay are drawn from these data).

    It’s not a matter of if but when global populations will start to decline. Under the UN’s medium variant projection, the world’s population will peak in 2086, while under the low variant, the peak will occur in 2053, and by 2100, the population will be about a billion below today’s level. Demographer Wolfgang Lutz and colleagues project a global population of between 8.8 and 9.0 billion by 2050 falling to between 8.2 and 8.7 billion by 2100. The projected declines are concentrated in countries with high fertility rates, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, we will inhabit a rapidly aging planet. In 1970, the median world age was 21.5 years. By 2020, it had increased to 30.9 years, and the UN projects that it will be 41.9 years in 2100.

    We are well past the time when we need to concern ourselves with Paul Ehrlich’s long-standing prophecy that humanity will “breed ourselves to extinction.” On the contrary, we need to worry about the potential ill-effects of depopulation, including a declining workforce, torpid economic growth, and brewing generational conflict between a generally prosperous older generation and their more hard-pressed successors. The preponderance of low fertility in wealthier countries also presages a growing conflict between the child-poor wealthy countries and the child-rich poor countries.

The article also explains:

    Generally, countries with severely low birth rates will eventually experience reduced economic growth, as has been the case in Japan for decades. Japan’s long economic slowdown reflects a labor force that has been declining since the 1990s and will be a third smaller by 2035. China faces a similar dilemma. The senior population there is expected to have more than tripled by 2050, one of the most rapid demographic shifts in history.

    As the employment base shrinks and the demands of the elderly rise, countries like Germany are raising taxes on the existing labor force to pay for the swelling ranks of retirees. For the OECD as a whole, “the dependence ratio of older people (i.e., those aged 65 and over as a proportion of those aged 20–64) will rise from the current figure of 22 percent to 46 percent in 2050.” Given the higher costs of housing, the current generation will not be able to count on pensions to maintain their post-retirement living standards, even in well-managed countries like Singapore.

    For its part, the United States already faces a massive public pension crisis and security reserve funds are expected to be depleted by 2035. As in other countries, this stems largely from the reduction of new entrants into the labor force due to low birth rates. US population growth between ages 16 and 64 has dropped from 20 percent in the 1980s to less than five percent in the past decade. In 1970, there were 19.1 persons aged 65 and older for each 100 aged 20 to 64. By 2020, this had increased to 28.4 and is projected by the UN to increase to 40.4 by 2050 and 54.1 by 2100.

And this:

    Birth rates may never—and probably should never—reach 1950s or 1960s levels, but we need to consider ways to reverse or at least slow rapid depopulation. This is as much a civilizational or spiritual crisis as an economic one, and it requires a shift in values, including perhaps religious ones. As Eric Kaufmann, professor at Birkbeck College in London, explains in his important book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, secular people or members of the progressive faiths have fewer children than adherents of evangelical Christianity, orthodox Judaism, or fundamentalist Islam. And as a Japanese professor told the Wall Street Journal, basic attitudes would also need to change if we want to become “a society where people have fun working and raising children.”

    Economics will play a critical role. People tend to have children if they are able to envision a better economic future for themselves and their potential offspring. Pew has noted that, “the U.S. birth rate dipped in 2011 to the lowest ever recorded, led by a plunge in births to immigrant women since the onset of the Great Recession.” What happens during the emerging recession may not be pretty. Birth rates cannot be expected to recover as long as economic prospects are bleak for the young and child-raising is devalued and even denigrated.

Although the article touches on a lot of good issues, it doesn't really delve into any one topic in enough detail. For instance, while mentioning the economic issues, the article does not discuss, for instance, how the costs of having children have increased over time while real wages have largely been stagnant since the 1970s, or the role that our current rent-seeking economic system has played in that stagnation. It doesn't address how government programs and edicts--everything from the current family court system to child seat laws--have driven up the costs of having children. It only briefly mentions the role of strong religious faith in family formation and having children, and doesn't really address how more education of women leads to lower fertility rates--something that has been observed since at least the 19th Century.

• The Anthropic Principle at work: "Get above 30 degrees latitude on Mars and you can find ice everywhere." It's like God intended for us to settle the solar system.

New Bombs & Bants (Streamed 8/17/2022)

 

VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 48" (44 min.)

John is tardy, Liz Cheney and a meteorite burn up, and lots more.

The Realist: CountryComm Titanium wrenches

Editor's Note: A hearty welcome to another guest post by The Realist.

The CountryComm 4-inch adjustable wrench, weighing 24 grams

(top), and the 4-inch forged steel wrench I have been carrying as part of my EDC

for many years, weighing 40 grams (bottom).

    Disclaimer: All products mentioned in this article were purchased by myself. I did not receive samples, evaluation models, or other compensation from any manufacturer or retailer. I have no formal relationship with any manufacturer or retailer mentioned in this article - I have only been an arms-length customer. All brand names and product names used in this review are the trade names, service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners. This article reflects my unique circumstances and subjective opinions with regard to performance and other characteristics of the products being discussed. Your mileage may vary.

    If you are into emergency preparedness, I'm sure you have heard of CountryComm, a company that sells many interesting gadgets. Recently, I discovered that they were selling titanium adjustable ("Crescent") wrenches. I initially purchased their 4-inch titanium adjustable wrench (https://countycomm.com/products/adjustable-wrench-titanium-4-inch-nsn-pending). Liking what I saw, I subsequently purchased their 8-inch titanium adjustable wrench
(https://countycomm.com/products/8-inch-titanium-adjustable-wrench-nsn-pending).They also sell a 6-inch titanium adjustable wrench (https://countycomm.com/products/adjustable-wrench-titanium-6-inch-nsn-pending).

    For several years, I have been searching for a light-weight adjustable wrench that could go into my emergency get-home bag. Some may argue with my desire to have a wrench that large in my get-home bag, but I have carried a 4-inch adjustable wrench on my key chain since I was in drivers education in high school - a long time ago. I have used that wrench innumerable times to perform various tasks. It has been almost as useful as a pocket knife. Seeking a larger adjustable wrench reflects my desire to overcome some of the limitations I have encountered with the four-inch wrench.

    CountryComm says their wrenches are made from grade 4 titanium. Grade 4 titanium has excellent corrosion resistance, and is commonly used in aerospace, industrial and medical applications where high strength is required. (https://continentalsteel.com/titanium/grades/cp1-grade-4/) CountryComm also says their titanium wrenches are machined from a solid billet of titanium. My careful examination of the wrenches indicates that is true. While the wrenches are well finished, with a matte grey appearance, there are many little details indicating they were indeed machined, with the outside edges being laser cut.

    The wrenches are completely non-magnetic. Even the pin that holds the thumb screw in place is non-magnetic, and it looks to also be titanium.

    The fit and finish of the wrenches is excellent. I see none of the minor/cosmetic defects I see with traditional forged steel wrenches. My only complaint is that the moving jaw on each wrench is a little looser than I like. However, given the overall excellent fit and finish, the looseness of the jaw is probably by design. A loose jaw is less likely to jam or bind with dirt or other crud during normal use.

    The 4-inch titanium wrench weighs 24 grams (0.85 ounces), and the jaws open to 14.03 mm (0.55 inches). In comparison, the 4-inch forged steel wrench I carry on my key chain weighs 40 grams (1.4 ounces), and its jaws open to 14.67 mm (0.58 inches - a little larger than a 9/16 inch bolt).

    The 8-inch titanium wrench weighs 130 grams (4.6 ounces), and the jaws open to 28.81 mm (1.13 inches). In comparison, the traditional forged steel 8-inch adjustable wrenches I have weigh from 200 to 315 grams (7.1 to 11.1 ounces), and the jaws open from 24.9 to 33.0 mm (0.98 to 1.30 inches).

    These titanium wrenches are not for everybody given their price. At the time of this writing, the 4-inch wrench sells for $64.95, the 6-inch wrench sells for $119.00, and the 8-inch wrench sells for $174.95. However, CountryComm frequently has discount codes available that can be applied to take a little bit of the pain out of the price.

The CountryComm 8-inch adjustable wrench, weighing 130

grams (top), and the 8-inch Lobster forged steel adjustable wrench, weighing 175

grams (bottom).

Lighter Weight Affordable Alternatives

    If you feel $175 is a little much for one wrench, but you like the idea of a reduced weight wrench, there is a forged steel Japanese adjustable wrench that weighs 175 grams (6.17 ounces) - 45 grams more than the 8-inch titanium wrench. This wrench is the Lobster UM30X available at the time of this writing from Amazon for $21.39 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00762IKEI). The Lobster wrench has a thinner profile than most forged steel wrenches combined with a skeletonized handle to achieve its reduced weight. The one downside of this wrench is that the jaws cannot close completely - no closer than 6 mm (0.24 inches). This may not be a problem if you happen to put a 4-inch wrench on your key chain. The jaws open to a maximum of 31.3 mm (1.23 inches). For the record, this wrench is very high quality - much better quality than the name-brand wrenches sold at the big-box stores.

    If you shop carefully, you should be able to find an 8-inch forged steel wrench weighing 200-220 grams. The defining characteristic of the lighter weight wrenches is a thinner handle.

    Manufacturers have started making the handles thicker on many of their wrenches, which dramatically increases the weight. For example, the current made-in-China Craftsman 8-inch adjustable wrench weighs 290 grams (10.2 ounces), compared to 200 grams (7.1 ounces) for a 1980s vintage 8-inch made-in-USA Craftsman wrench.

Conclusion

    I am constantly amazed by the light weight characteristics of titanium items. These wrenches are no different - amazingly light weight.

    If you live or work in an urban or suburban environment, a light weight wrench might be a worthwhile addition to your get-home-bag or EDC gear. I have carried a 4-inch wrench for many years, and have found it to be extraordinarily useful. The limitation of the 4-inch adjustable wrench is that its jaws do not open much beyond a half-inch. It is my opinion that an 8-inch adjustable wrench, whose jaws can open to over an inch, adds to my ability to improvise or fix things in an emergency situation. Titanium and reasonably light weight forged steel wrench options exist and should be considered.

    Note: The manufacturers' specifications are generally more conservative than the measurements taken from my samples. The one exception I have encountered is the weight of the Lobster wrench, with my sample being 5 grams heavier than the manufacturer's specification.

Mini-Review Wheeler Upper/Pic Rail Vise Block and Tipton Ultra Gun Vise

I built a lightweight AR10 earlier this year. I had been out shooting it a few times, but recently, when out shooting it, the accuracy suddenly all went to crap, and it was because the barrel nut had loosened.  I suspect that it was because I had sufficiently torqued down the barrel nut: what with the supply chain issues and such I hadn't been able to find an AR10 vice block in stock and had resorted to (carefully) clamping it in a vise with padding and trying to be careful with it. This time around, although I couldn't find anything local, Primary Arms was carrying the Wheeler Upper/Pic Rail Vise Block which they sell for $34.99 (but I got on sale for $31.99).

    This is a hefty bar of steel milled out so that the pin blocks on the upper receiver fit down into a slot, and then two included pins slide through holes to hold the upper in place. There are holes to fit either the AR15 or AR10/DPMS uppers. It worked great and I didn't have to worry about applying to much force to the sides of the receiver to hold it in place. 

    Although Wheeler recommends using this with a bench vise with at least 6-inch jaws, my vise with 4-inch jaws held it just fine. Since the forces I was applying were perpendicular to the jaws (z-axis), I didn't expect any issue. Perhaps it would have made a difference if I had been applying a linear force parallel to the direction of the jaws (x-axis) or one straight up or down that could push one side of the block up or down (y-axis). 

    The slot in the block, in addition, is also milled so that you can slide a Picatinny rail into the top of it if you need or want to work on the upper with it upside-down, which came it handy when tightening down the screws for the gas block (if you are not familiar with the AR platform, you have to remove the gas block and gas tube to work with the barrel nut).  

    In short, this block was worth every penny I spent on it. And since I'm sure to have additional AR projects, it will be used again.

    Another relatively recent purchase is the Tipton Ultra Gun Vise, which I picked up through Amazon. This is not a replacement for a bench vice--at least not for heavy duty work. Rather, it is just to hold your rifle (or shotgun or what have you) while you perform maintenance or minor assembly. It has padded, textured feet so you can use it on the kitchen table or counter without worrying about marring the table- or countertop. Nice if, like me, you would rather work in a temperature controlled environment like a kitchen or dining room instead of in a hot (!) garage in the summer time. 

    In the past I have used a pretty basic gun cleaning stand (something very similar to this one) to hold a rifle while working on it: something that has a couple of "forks" with large, rubber padded V-notches that are a fixed distance apart and fixed height and you just sort of scoot the rifle around until it is somewhat steady. It works well enough for cleaning, but it a little more problematic for other tasks like holding the rifle while trying to mount a scope or bore-sight said scope, or anything else where you need to keep the weapon absolutely steady.

    I saw a review a couple months ago on the Ultra Gun Vise and decided to pick one up. The heart of the system is a pretty stable base with two parallel metal tubes, held together with a couple braces, that fold over on the ends to accept the adjustable feet. You can then clamp to the tubes a couple pieces that hold risers/arms and a piece with a magazine block for an AR. All of these pieces can be moved around (or removed) as needed and, of course, clamped into place. In addition, there are two plastic trays that clip over the tubes to hold small parts or whatever. Again, you can move them or remove them as you wish.

    The risers to vises with rubberized or soft plastic jaws. The risers can be adjusted up and down and locked into place. Each jaw can be tightened separately, and each jaw is fitted over a ball allowing it to angle or rotate as needed to better conform to the shape or angle of an object. Furthermore, there are thin strips of the same padding material below the jaws on the riser so you won't scratch your firearm if it were to contact the riser. The bases for the risers, the risers, and the jaws are made of a heavy duty ballistic type plastic. The blocks holding the risers and the risers themselves are reinforced with thick sheet steel fittings. So, all in all, the vise is pretty sturdy (and it feels that way--it is no lightweight). 

    So far I've used it to hold a rifle while installing and leveling a scope and it worked as needed. I was able to level the vise so it didn't rock on the table. I was able to adjust the risers to hold the rifle as needed and tighten down the vise jaws to keep the rifle from moving as I installed the scope rings and scope. I didn't need the trays or the piece with the magazine insert, so I removed those before starting on my project (which also allowed me to move the risers pieces closer together). So, all in all, a good piece of kit. 

    Now, I will point out that this is not for holding a rifle or receiver when applying a lot of torque to it such as installing a barrel or muzzle device. For that, you will need something like the Wheeler vise block discussed above. And it is not a substitute for a shooting rest. But it holds a rifle or shotgun steady for maintenance and cleaning tasks. 

    I've read some of the negative reviews at Amazon on this product, and I suspect a lot of the problems are people applying too much force: either overtightening the various clamps and jaws, or putting too much force on a firearm or crossbow on which they are working--i.e., some job that is probably better suited for a bench mounted vise. And perhaps it is the user's expectation that is the problem. I bought this as an upgrade for my gun cleaning stand, not as a substitute for a bench vise.

The Docent's Memo (8/15/2022)

 

VIDEO: "The M1D Sniper Rifle, the most lethal version of the M1 Garand"--Garand Thumb (22 min.)

This was one of the later sniper versions of the M1 Garand that, according to the video, was a post-Korean War development. Based on the testing, it appears that the M1 Garand was really its maximum effective range at 500 to 700 yards.

VIDEO: "5 Signs Someone Is Secretly A Sociopath"--Charisma on Command (12 min.)

  Firearms & Self-Defense:

• "Ayoob Files: Going For A Gun: The Jarrett Jones Case." His short take:

    Situation: Snarling homicidal threats … A big man lunges for your gun and then appears to go for his own. You perform the indicated response … and end up tried for murder.

    Lesson: Too few people, even in the criminal justice system, understand the concepts of disparity of force, disarming attempts and furtive movement shootings.

This is a case in which Ayoob served as an expert witness, so the article goes into a great deal of detail about the lead up to the shooting, the shooting itself, the aftermath, and the testimony and evidence at trial. Fortunately the armed defender was acquitted, but not until after spending $300,000 in legal bills. It's an interesting article and a good reminder of what happens when a father abrogates his duties as a father. You see, the attacker was one Joe Schumacher and boyfriend to the daughter of the defender, Jarrett Jones. Ayood gives the background that led up to the night of the fateful shooting:

    Jon Schumacher and Jarrett Jones had a history. Jarrett, 48, was a prosperous farmer and real estate developer. Jon, 28, owned an excavating business. Two years before, Jon had started dating Jarrett’s then 17-year-old daughter. She had fallen in love with the tall, handsome Jon, who could be charming when he wanted to be, and she enjoyed acting as stepmom to Jon’s three young sons. Jarrett was an indulgent dad despite instinctive disapproval of the relationship and wanted his daughter to be happy.

    Jarrett referred work to Jon and often helped him with manpower and equipment. Even so, Jon wasn’t making a go of his excavation business. Word was Jon was a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt. There were stories of jobs unfinished and people Jon hired going unpaid. Much of that debt was owed to Jarrett, who couldn’t say no when his daughter asked him to stake the boyfriend she loved.

    It wasn’t long before the daughter discovered another side of Jon. She told Jarrett Jon beat her and, on one occasion, raped her. Jarrett had a “come to Jesus” meeting with him. Jon was meek and contrite, wanting to keep the beautiful young girl and the money Jarrett sent his way. He promised to be better.

Who the hell lets a 26 year old man with at least one failed marriage (and three children) date their 17 year old daughter? And who would allow the relationship to continue after allegations of beatings and a rape? Self-defense begins by making correct life choices--it is mostly a matter of lifestyle. If you don't do stupid things with stupid people in stupid places and at stupid times, you probably will never have to defend yourself. 

• "Recoil and Effective Sight-In of Big-Bore Revolvers" by Allan Jones. First, he explains:

    In big-bore revolvers, much of the recoil force is a vertical component: pitch. The muzzle comes up, often rising with the bullet still in the barrel. Vertical sight correction accommodates this effect.

    Some motion may also translate to roll, a twisting force that corkscrews the revolver, often to the left for right-handed shooters. Commonly attributed to the forces a big bullet exerts on the rifling, roll requires a combination of vertical and horizontal sight correction.

    The third directional component is yaw, a flat, left-right shift around a vertical axis that puts the front and rear sights out of line with the target. Yaw is a sure sign of grips that are too large and/or a weak grasp on the handle. Training and better grips, not sight adjustment, best eliminate yaw.

    Understanding these directional forces will help you more effectively sight your big bruiser. Learn to embrace this complex recoil arc rather than fight it. 

    Sight the way you plan to hold the revolver in actual use. Sighting for one-handed target shooting will produce a different POI than sighting with a two-handed field or defensive grip.

    The revolver must be free to move under recoil without contacting anything other than your hands. It should be a comfortable position. Even a sophisticated machine rest with recoil compensation will not duplicate the way your revolver recoils in your hand. Nothing on or around your test bench should interfere with the revolver’s natural recoil arc.

    You must grip the revolver consistently. Shifting your hand on the grip between shots will introduce undesirable variations.

    This critical relationship between your hands and the revolver means it will do little good to ask someone else to sight-in your handgun.

His secret?

    To best accommodate the motion of big revolver recoil, I offer the simple system I’ve used for decades. I use a triangular or round piece of upholstery foam as a rest, not for the revolver but for my forearms; the revolver hangs in air in front of the foam block. For comfort I prefer something about 10 to 12 inches high with a 30-degree to 45-degree bevel for resting my forearms.

    Extend your arms close to the extension you use in the field, and that will help determine the bevel angle. I shoot a basic Weaver stance for defense and in the field, so a steeper angle works. If you shoot the “isosceles” stance, shallower is better. The grip I have on the revolver while resting my forearms on foam lets the revolver move without touching anything but me. In the field I let my elbows act as a recoil-absorbing “hinge,” and the bench technique allows for this. Any between-shots repositioning seems to have less effect.

• "What Makes Premium Gun Metal? Breaking Down Gun Metal Basics." An excerpt:

    4140, also known as ordnance steel, was one of the early high-alloy steels, used in 1920s' aircraft frames and automotive axles in addition to rifle barrels. It has about 1 percent chromium, 0.25 percent molybdenum, 0.4 percent carbon, 1 percent manganese, around 0.2 percent silicon and no more than 0.035 percent phosphorus and no more than 0.04 percent sulphur. That leaves most of it, 94.25 percent, iron. 

 

    The "big" difference between 4140 and 4150? The 4150 has 0.5 percent carbon in it. That extra 0.1 percent makes the 4150 alloy so much harder that it becomes a lot more difficult to work with, but the U.S. Army wants the extra wearability that 4150 offers and is willing to pay for it.

    Most rifle makers realize that their customers won't pay the extra costs and find that 4140 is more than good enough. After all, if a .30-06 hunting rifle already has a barrel that will shoot accurately for 5,000 rounds—which is like three lifetimes of hunting—who will pay twice the barrel cost for one that lasts 7,500 rounds?

    However, the SAE standards are merely a list of ingredients. When, and at what temperatures you add the alloying constituents also can change the final properties. AR-15 bolts, for instance, are made of a steel known as Carpenter 158. It is a product of the Carpenter steel company, the sole maker, and you won't find it on the SAE list (although if you did it would probably be known as 3310). It's Carpenter's secret, proprietary steel, and if you want it, you buy it from Carpenter.

• "270 Winchester: Better Hunting Cartridge Than 6.5 Creedmoor and 30-06?" Ron Spomer discusses the .270 Winchester: its history, ballistic performance, performance in the field, and compares it against other cartridges included, as the title suggests, the 6.5 Creedmoor and .30-06. As Spomer relates:

... Long ago O’Connor proved what could be taken with the 270 Winchester— pretty much everything. Sheep, elk, moose, caribou, even brown bears. That was the kind of hard evidence hunters needed to put their trust in what was considered a fairly small cartridge/bullet at the time, a round Elmer Keith claimed was adequate for coyotes. But if O'Connor could take elk and moose with the original 270 Winchester in the 1940s and 50s, by golly so can we in the 2020s.

And on that point, he explains: 

 

A 150-grain AccuBond Long Range, B.C. .591, flung 2,900 fps from a 24-inch barrel and zeroed 3 inches high at 100 yards hits no higher than 3.5 inches at its maximum ordinate (150 yards) and doesn’t drop 3.5 inches below point-of-aim until 335 yards. At 400 yards it’s just 14 inches low and at 500 yards 31 inches low. Remaining energy at 500 yards is 1,559 foot-pounds, more than the 1,500 f-p often cited as benchmark terminal energy for taking elk. Deflection from a 10 mph right angle wind at 500 yards is a mere 14.5 inches. Does the 270 Winchester need heavier bullets? Not according to these calculations. At the more reasonable long range hunting distance of 300 yards that 150-grain AccuBond Long Range will be hauling 1,988 foot-pounds of energy. 

    A few years ago, my oldest son started thinking of what he wanted in a good, all-round hunting cartridge for North American game and this was one of the three or four calibers that I suggested. Although I have never owned one--I own a couple .30-06s which is basically in the same class--my reading on the subject has always placed the .270 as one of the best hunting rounds out there, and this seems supported by its enduring popularity as well as what I heard from people that used the .270. In fact, as I told my son, if I had started with a blank slate into hunting, I probably would have picked the .270 over other calibers. But my mother passed her .30-06 on to me in my teens and my father had much invested in loading equipment and supplies for the .30-06, so that is the direction I went. But now that my father-in-law has given one of my kids a .270 (and his dies, brass and bullets), I may have a chance to do some reloading and shooting with it as we get it set up for him.

• One of my favorite pistols: "Beretta 84 Review | A Pistol With a Stellar Grip-Angle For Excellent Aiming"--Sharpshooter Society. The one reviewed here is the 84FS which has the squared off trigger guard (similar to that on the modern 92 models) and a combination safety and decocker, which is mounted to the frame rather than on the slide as with the later 84 models. Mine is the earlier 84BB model with the sleeker, curved trigger guard and a frame mounted safety (no decocker). The author says that his trigger pull (I assume in single-action) is 7.5 lbs and heavy. I haven't measured the trigger pull on my pistol but I don't believe it is anywhere near that heavy in single-action.
• The author of the foregoing article noted that the grips on the Beretta 84 are a bit thick and suggested the slimmer Beretta 85 (which uses a single stack magazine) for those with smaller hands. Here is a review of the Beretta 85, "The Beretta 85F: Fixing a Problem the Industry Won’t," from Progun Millennial. The "problem" of which he speaks is the lack of a metal framed, single-stack, DA/SA firearm in 9 mm with a frame mounted safety. Although the Beretta is in .380 (9mm Short), the author decided it was close enough, especially since it met all of his other criteria. An excerpt:

After I bought the 85F, I began a period of testing before I started carrying it. My first range trip I fired 100 FMJs and 25 hollow points through it with no malfunctions. The recoil from the straight blow back system is stout, more so than you would expect from a .380. But, because of the light open top slide the recoil is very flat, even for new shooters. For the second range trip I bought four different brands of hollow point ammo (about 125 rounds total) and shot them all, I had three failures with 99 grain Federal HST. Further testing would lead me to avoid heavy for caliber rounds as I believe the extra bullet length is what causes problems with feeding. After the hollow point test I ordered a 350 round pack of 95 grain Blazer Brass. I shot all 350 rounds in one range session, at one point having to take a break because the gun was too hot to hold comfortably. There were no failures at any point in that session either. Around this time Caleb Giddings (of recent Paul Harrel-drama fame), was posting on Instagram about his Beretta 84, and mentioned that a Wilson Combat GP100 mainspring dropped right in. The Beretta 84 is the double stack version of the Cheetah, and the two have a great deal of parts commonality. I ordered a GP100 spring set and installed the 12# mainspring, and it fit! This cut the double action trigger pull by about 6 pounds (that’s a guess, I don’t own a trigger gauge). After installing this mod I ordered a 250 round case of Hornady American Gunner Hollow Points. I decided on the American Gunners as my carry load because in Shootthebull410’s videos, rounds loaded with Hornady XTP bullets performed the best, and American Gunner was plentiful at my local Academy Sporting Goods, and gun stores. The new mainspring caused no problems igniting primers, the 85 went over 1000 rounds with only three malfunctions, and I decided it was suitable for carry. (For anyone who actually tries this nonsense on their 84/85, Beretta recommends changing the recoil spring every 500 rounds if you have a lightened mainspring.) After this I also shot the 85 in an IDPA match with my actual carry gear, video of that be seen here. I finished 26th out of 76 shooters despite my equipment handicap and deliberately taking penalties on the one stage with movement. Not bad for a little pocket pistol.

• However, if you are looking for a more modern design (i.e., polymer) in .380, Guns & Ammo has you covered with this review: "Walther CCP M2 .380 Pistol: Full Review." Probably one of the more interesting features of this weapon:

    ... At the heart of this 19-ounce semiautomatic pistol is Walther’s Softcoil gas operating system. (Softcoil was also used in the original CCP 9mm.) Unlike the more common recoil-operated autoloader, Softcoil utilizes a gas piston to assist slide operation. A small amount of gas from a fired round travels through a small port to drive a piston under the barrel. When the pressure drops, the slide moves rearward to cycle the action.

    The Softcoil system has a few distinct advantages versus the traditional recoil operation. First, the pivoting gas-piston design slows the motion of the slide, which, in turn, reduces felt recoil. Hence, the CCP is one of the softest-shooting handguns on the market. The system also abates the rearward impact on the slide, which reduces fatigue to the moving parts of the pistol. Therefore, a lighter spring was used to operate the action, which makes it easier to work the slide.

    Another advantage to this system: The barrel is pinned to the gas block and remains in a fixed position — and the slide rides on the barrel instead of rails. The serial number is on the gas block, which means the lower grip is just a polymer shell. Most recoil-operated pistols have barrels that have to move to unlock the slide and then maneuver back into position to lock and fire again. The barrel must return to exactly the same position every time for a consistent point of impact. With the CCP, however, having a fixed barrel that doesn’t move suggests that it’s easier to realize the gun’s accuracy potential.

• "Bump stock ban upheld by federal court." Upheld by the DC Circuit Court. From the article:

    The gun rights advocacy groups argued that guns with bump stocks do not qualify as machine guns because, unlike with traditional machine guns, the user must maintain pressure on the trigger and barrel. The court rejected that argument. 

 

    "By this logic, we would no longer characterize even the prototypical machine gun as a 'machine gun,' given the extent of rearward pressure on the trigger required to operate it," Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins wrote in the court’s opinion. "That cannot be right."

I don't know if that is an accurate summary of the argument; but if it was, it was a terrible argument. The argument we most have heard and used is that there is a separate trigger action each time the gun recoils, taking it outside the ATF's definition.

• "How the FBI Undercounts Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers, and Media Play Along"--Real Clear Investigations. 

    The Bureau reports that only 11 of the 252 active shooter incidents it identified for the period 2014-2021 were stopped by an armed citizen. An analysis by my organization identified a total of 281 active shooter incidents during that same period and found that 41 of them were stopped by an armed citizen.

    That is, the FBI reported that 4.4% of active shooter incidents were thwarted by armed citizens, while the CPRC found 14.6%. 

• How long until the parents start to show up with guns? "Arizona Police Taze Desperate Parents Outside Elementary School During Lockdown."

    With the Uvalde police response fresh on their minds, parents showed up in El Mirage, Arizona after the elementary school was locked down.  Apparently, an armed man tried to gain entry to the school.  The police were following their lockdown protocols and would not let the arriving parents into the building.

    Scuffles with law enforcement began breaking out as desperate parents wanted to protect and save their kids.  Subsequently, police opened fire on the parents with tasers then began arresting them.

VIDEO: "China Military Blockade of Taiwan is Worse Than You Think" Task & Purpose (13 min.)

A look at the consequences of Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan. I detest Pelosi, but it would be dangerous to let China believe it could dictate whether an American leader or politician could visit Taiwan. And I suspect that we learned far more about Chinese systems than any advantage China gained from attempting to blockade Taiwan. 

VIDEO: "HydroPod Water System Revealed! 3 Minutes to Better Gear!"--Coalcracker Bushcraft (5 min.). This is more of a camping gear than survival, but it is a system that can be pressurized to give you some pressure behind your water for camping needs for washing dishes, spraying yourself (or another down) for bathing or cooling off, etc.

 Prepping & Survival:

• "13 Must-Have Survival Items for Emergency Prepping." This is from a site called Man of Many, which appears to be an Australian men's magazine. The article is aimed at people that are not preppers, being more of what to put into a 72-hour emergency kit in the event of a brushfire, flood, or some other natural disaster. The 13 items are: (i) a reliable, quality torch (flashlight to the rest of us) with the author recommending a head lamp; (ii) at least 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water per person for a 3-day period (this is actually a bit low since most experts recommend at least 1 gallon, or 4 liters, per day); (iii) canned and long life food; (iv) heavy duty backpack, in case you have to evacuate; (v) a radio with quality batteries (the author recommends Energizer, with which I also concur--Energizer even makes some designed for long storage); (vi) batteries; (vii) charged power banks for cell phones; (viii) a Swiss Army Knife of multitool; (ix) a first aid kit (including stuff for managing burns and broken bones, so more than you standard automobile or household first aid kit); (x) sleeping bags; (xi) waterproof bags for storing batteries, cell phones, matches, etc.; (xii) lighter and matches; and (xiii) a deck of cards. 

    Overall, this is actually a pretty good list of items for a basic emergency kit. I would add copies of important documents and identification; a backup of a computer, or, at the minimum, electronic copies of family photos and videos and whatever else you could put on a thumb drive; baby wipes or something for cleaning up; extras of medications or other health devices if possible; dust masks; and some extra clothes (especially socks and underwear).  

    If you think of each of these items as representing categories of supplies it even is pretty good guide to building out prepping supplies. For instance, going down the list, we have: (i) lighting; (ii) water; (iii) food; (iv) transportation and cargo; (v) communications; (vi) and (vii) power generation and storage; (viii) tools; (ix) medical; (x) protection from the elements; (xi) storage gear; (xii) fire/heat; and (xiii) recreation/education. 

• "Prepping for a possibility of survival challenges" by Lisa Brody, Downtown Magazine. A positive article about prepping and explaining it to the non-prepper audience. An excerpt:

    Once referred to as survivalism, the prepper movement is a social movement of individuals or groups of people who proactively prepare for anything that can happen, any kind of emergency, from natural disasters, to social, political or economic disruptions. Those who proactively prepare for any kind of disruption work to anticipate both short-term and long-term disaster scenarios, which could impact them and their families. Arrangements can be to anticipate short-term disruptions of services, such as losing power for a couple of days, to preparing for an international or global catastrophe. Preppers can, and do, prepare for personal emergencies, such as a job loss or to being stranded in the wild, or to adverse weather conditions related to where they live.

    Their emphasis is on preparation, upon self-reliance, on the stockpiling of necessary supplies and having survival knowledge and skills while still living their everyday lives. Part of their preparation goes beyond first aid kits and water – it can include acquiring medical and self-defense training, stockpiling food and water, building structures such as survival retreats or underground bunkers, all in order to be self-sufficient in the event they need to be.

• "The Baby Formula Shortage and the Rise of Rational Disaster Preppers." This article, from The New Republic, analyzes prepping through the lens of stockpiling or hoarding. It begins by looking at Covid panic and how people began by stockpiling toilet paper (which it describes as having been ridiculous) and hand sanitizer (which it characterizes as cruel) before shifting to the baby formula shortage and the sympathy it evoked. 

    Coming hard on the heels of other kinds of stockpiling where hoarding was easily condemned, the formula crisis feels a bit different. The desperate parents featured in news stories and Twitter threads who spend hours searching stores throughout their state and buying up any formula they can find have, for good reason, received public sympathy. Where toilet paper hoarding felt ridiculous, and hand sanitizer price-gouging cruel, the formula shortage raises two pressing—and traditionally opposing—questions: How can the government ensure that everyone has access to basic goods and, with them, a fundamental sense of safety? And how, in the absence of such guarantees, should people prepare for the worst?

    If stockpiling often seems immoral, that’s in part because an unconscionable number of people have always grappled with genuine scarcity. In 2020, while supply chain whisperers like Jeff Bezos were riding unprecedented market highs, at least 37 million Americans were living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But the pandemic—or, perhaps more importantly, the mainstream media’s account of the pandemic—has democratized the feeling of lack and validated a certain set of responses: “Stockpiling is a normal behavior that many people practice in preparation for a known or anticipated shortage,” Carol Mathews, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Florida, wrote in a widely circulated November 2020 op-ed. While experts agree it should be discouraged to ensure roughly equal access to essential goods, stockpiling is now deemed “natural” in the face of uncertainty. (That uncertainty is the natural state of human existence often goes unsaid.)

    Legitimate responses to such hardship can feel hopelessly limited—become a survivalist or sit around waiting for the next disaster to befall you. But while doomsday “preppers” get all the attention, preparedness is for everyone, says Luis Rodriguez, a self-identified leftist prepper, known to his 3,500-odd Instagram followers as @prepperpig. That’s why Rodriguez started his account: to share practical, pro-social advice for emergency preparedness, self-defense, gardening, and more. Though nuclear fallout and solar flares capture some people’s attention, he focuses on more common chaos. “The number one calamity you’re likely to face is a house fire or an apartment fire,” Rodriguez tells me, yet, even among preppers, “I know a bunch of people that have all this gear and don’t have a fire extinguisher—or have one and haven’t checked it in five years.”

    Crucially, Rodriguez also believes that preparedness isn’t only individual but communal. In 1989, when Rodriguez was 11 years old, Hurricane Hugo ripped through his South Carolina town. A tree went through his parents’ house, and neighbors had to cut them out. They were without electricity for three weeks and without water for three days. “I thought, man, I don’t want to be caught off guard like this again,” he says.

    But Rodriguez remembers the experience also came with moments of uplift. As the items in everyone’s freezers were defrosting without power, the neighborhood decided to do a cookout, with barbecues as far as the eye could see. It raised important questions for a young Rodriguez: “Is my community going to have enough food? Are we going to take care of one another?” It’s this vision he takes forward with him into adulthood. “I really am driven to create a community of people who are knowledgeable and who are flexible,” he says.

    While every prepper has their own philosophy—and few, if any, align on all of the finer details—it’s clear that preparedness can look less like a bunker for two and more like a mutual aid organization. Instead of running for the hills, individuals can share their time, money, and, yes, stockpiles (ideally secured before a shortage strikes) to help themselves and their neighbors meet their basic needs.

The article then discusses the spontaneous online communities and assistance that sprang up to help families find formula, or donate and distribute breastmilk. 

 

    Unfortunately, and probably because The New Republic is a leftist magazine, it then quickly starts to call on the government to stockpile essential items, such as formula, and devise a system for distributing it when needed. Something like those vast stockpiles cheese which were a subsidy for dairy farmers, and the stockpile ultimately was sold? The Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies and equipment that so underperformed during the Covid panic? Or the national corn and wheat reserves that no longer have reserves of corn and wheat but "now instead holds cash and commodities contracts, which it occasionally sells for foreign humanitarian purposes"? What the author doesn't seem to understand is that the government is as often, or more, the author of problem, not a solution. As Ronald Reagan quipped, “The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” 

• Anonymous Conservative pointed to this article, "Why Investors Should Minimize Exposure To Semiconductors," as a warning that if you are planning on buying anything with a microcontroller or microprocessor (which seems to be almost anything electronic anymore) you better be ready to buy it as soon as China acts. Deep down in the article, it relates:

    And all of this is even before considering China is conducting extensive military drills around Taiwan which the island nation says are preparations for an invasion of its shores followed by forced reunification. And that is coming on the heels of China threatening “military action” if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi followed through on her now-concluded visit to the island.

    Presently Taiwan-based TSMC manufactures 92% of the most advanced sub-10nm semiconductor chips used by the world, and sold by companies such as those discussed above. The US does not manufacture any sub 10nm chips domestically. And there have been persistent rumors that Taiwan, in a mutual agreement with the United States government, has rigged all domestic semiconductor manufacturing facilities to self-destruct and slag their equipment, in the event of an invasion by China. That would prevent China from gaining the most sophisticated chip-manufacturing technologies of makers such as TSMC, which are viewed as a mixture of vital national security secrets and capabilities.

    Any sudden disruption of Taiwan’s ability to produce semiconductor chips, combined with some sort of retaliatory global sanctions regime applied to China for invading the island nation, would be catastrophic for the entire sector.

    The entire industry could be one surprise move by China away from years of disruption, before US chip factories came online, and other manufacturers in South Korea, Japan, and Europe were able to ramp up production to try and meet the demand currently being satisfied by TSMC.

    And as we have seen the semiconductor industry affect considerably more than just computers and personal electronic devices. Everything from washing machines to automobiles are dependent on semiconductors. In turn each of those industries generates the very jobs which pay for everything bought in the economy.

    The limits of the economic effects of such an event as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan are likely barely imaginable.

• "This Prepper Is Building a Post-Apocalyptic Internet"--Vice. I think that I've linked to this article before, but it dovetails quite nicely with the article just above. The article is about an engineer, Mark Qvist, who has developed the Reticulum Network Stack: "a streamlined communications tool that can be quickly deployed in the case of systemic telecom failure, with minimal lift and a heavy focus on encryption and privacy. All of it is built on the back of an entirely new protocol that aims to be more resilient than IP, or Internet Protocol, which is a set of software rules that govern the flow of information on the internet." The article continues:

    Reticulum can run on just about anything, including the teensy Raspberry Pi Zero. According to Qvist, people with minimal telecom and computer knowledge could put together a long-range messaging system for their community in about an hour using Reticulum, communicating over any number of available channels to network peers. 

    “Want to extend it to the next town over VHF radio?” Qvist said on Reddit. “If you already have a modem and a radio, that's 5 minutes to set up. I really tried to make this as flexible as possible while still being very easy to use if you have a bit of computer and radio experience.”

    Qvist isn’t the first person to build community oriented internet replacement. In New York City, the NYC Mesh project is building a mesh network that delivers broadband to people across the city. But what Qvist is building is different. While many mesh projects exist to ultimately connect users to the regular internet, Reticulum is designed to be a support in essentially a post-apocalyptic scenario. It’s built with encryption and privacy in mind, is open source, and is primarily designed to to route digital information between peers without going through a server or service provider.

    “Reticulum is an effort to build an alternative base-layer protocol for data networks,” Qvist told Motherboard in an email. “As such it is not one single network, but a tool to build networks. It is comparable to IP, the Internet Protocol stack, that powers the Internet, and 99.99% of all other networks on earth. In essence, it solves the same problems that the Internet Protocol stack does, getting digital data from point A to point B, but it does so in a very different way, and with very different assumptions.”

    “The real strength of the protocol is that it can use all kinds of different communications mediums, and connect them together into a coherent mesh,” he added. “It can use [long-range] transceivers, modems, ham radio, ethernet, WiFi, or even a roll of old copper wire if that is what you have.”

    For Qvist, the circumvention of central control and privacy are just as important as resilience to disaster. “Without such an effort, our communications infrastructure (even if it runs entirely in private overlay networks) will always be at the mercy of various control complexes,” he said. “The power to simply disconnect the entire civilian population of an area from the Internet, for example, is readily available, and has been exercised many times.”

There is a manual (here) and you can get the files (here). 

• Europe has been hit hard this summer with drought and--for them--high temperatures: "'It's like an apocalypse': France forced to call in hundreds of fire fighters from six other countries as 'monster' blaze spreads amid drought ravaging crops, melting glaciers and drying up rivers across Europe." The article reports that "Hundreds of firefighters from Germany, Poland, Romania and Italy are heading to Gironde, near Bordeaux, to help tackle a blaze that began burning in early July as Europe's record-breaking summer heatwave got underway before reigniting several days ago - forcing 10,000 people from their homes and burning 7,000 hectares of pine forest." That is roughly 17,300 acres. The article also reports that "[m]ore than 60,000 hectares (230 square miles) have gone up in flames so far in France this year, six times the full-year average for 2006-2021, data from the European Forest Fire Information System shows." By comparison, California, alone, has had 181,252 acres (73,350 hectares) burned due to wildfires just this year. And just a single fire in eastern Idaho has burned more than 58,168 acres (23,540 hectares). 

    In any event, the article also goes on to summarize some of the impact the drought and heat is having across Europe, including this: "The water level along Germany's Rhine River was at risk of falling so low that it could become difficult to transport goods - including critical energy items like coal and gasoline." This doesn't bode well for a country trying to stockpile fuel for the winter.

VIDEO: "Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?"--PBS Eons (9 min.)

From the description: "There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the monkeys of Africa and Asia, the apes, and us." Alpha-gal is used to communicate to the immune system that a cell is not an invader. The reason why most primates no longer produce alpha-gal, it is hypothesized, is that primates were hit with some pathogens that either produced their own alpha-gal or used alpha-gal to target cells. In either case, the survivors had a mutation that allowed their immune system to attack cells with the alpha-gal marker.

VIDEO: "Bishop Sheen Predicts 2022 ½ A Century Ago"--Catholic 365 (18 min.)

Signs of the times.

News & Analysis: 

• Laws are for the little people: "Not very gentlemanly! Secret Service detail blocks off handicap parking for 20 minutes while Kamala Harris' husband Doug Emhoff shops at Whole Foods in Los Angeles." They should have been ticketed and the cars towed off to the impound yard.
• Just a coincidence: "Judge who signed off the FBI raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago mansion donated $2,000 to Barack Obama's campaign and represented Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Express pilots, his scheduler and 'Yugoslavian sex slave'." My understanding is that the judge had been working for the prosecutor's office investigating Epstein and then, after he quit that position, started representing Epstein. 
• Related: "How Do We Get Rid of the FBI?" by Adam Mill at American Greatness. The obvious way is for the Congress to simply refuse to fund it (or revoke the 16th Amendment and starve the government, as whole, of cash). But that isn't going to happen, so Mill suggests ways to weaken it: (i) end it's counterintelligence work (which he thinks would limit its ability to link political opponents to foreign governments); (ii) eliminate elected officials' fears of the FBI; (ii) increase transparency by requiring the FBI to be more responsive to FOIA requests and limiting its ability to use the excuse that a matter is under investigation; (iii) end or limit its use of stings and other set-ups; (iv) do not let the FBI or DOJ investigate their own misconduct, but have an outside investigator conduct all investigations of misconduct by the FBI; and (v) end the FBI's ability to fund itself through forfeitures. I would agree with Congress creating its own investigative arm to conduct criminal investigations of the DOJ and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies which could then be referred to special prosecutors. The problem is that any such Congressional agency would be compromised from the beginning because it would likely draw the majority of its personnel from the very same agencies it is tasked with investigating. 
• More: "Eric Trump tells DailyMail.com what REALLY happened in FBI raid: President's son says 30 agents REFUSED to hand over warrant, kicked lawyer off property, rifled through clothes - and how Mar-a-Lago staff refused to turn off security cameras." 
• More: "Wait—Those 'Classified’ Docs FBI Sought in Trump Raid Were Already Declassified." From the lede:

    On Monday, the FBI executed a search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home that was approved by a magistrate judge who is not only linked to Jeffrey Epstein but was also an Obama donor. According to CNN, the raid was “part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents, that may have been brought there.” 

 

    If that is the case, then this further proves that the raid was an abuse of power, because we’ve known for months now that the documents in question were already declassified by then-President Trump.

    “Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves,” Kash Patel, a former top Trump administration official, told Breitbart News in a phone interview in May. According to Patel, the classification markings just had not been updated.

    “The White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings, but that doesn’t mean the information wasn’t declassified,” Patel added. “I was there with President Trump when he said ‘We are declassifying this information.’” 

 

    On this note, Gateway Pundit is reporting that the FBI was there to get copies of documents from the Crossfire Hurricane operation (the investigation into the now debunked Russia collusion) that were declassified and which the DOJ was ordered to publish in the Federal Register, but never did. On the other hand, the FBI's pet newspaper, the Washington Post, is suggesting that the raid was to recover top secret documents on nuclear weapons, although "[t]he Washington Post claimed in a report that those familiar with the matter did not offer any specific details on whether the alleged documents on nuclear weapons were about weapons that were possessed by the United States or a foreign nation, and they did not disclose what was recovered during the search." Trump has denied that he had any documents on nuclear weapons and compared this allegation to the Russian collusion hoax perpetrated by the FBI in conjunction with the DNC. Given the FBI's history of lying when it comes to Trump, I have no choice but to believe Trump on this one. 

 

    While part of the motivation for the raid was to protect the FBI's power, that is probably not all: CNBC is crowing that "Trump likely to be criminally charged in DOJ election probe along with other former White House officials, Obama AG Holder says." From this latter article:

    Former President Donald Trump “probably” will be indicted on criminal charges along with officials in his White House as part of a Justice Department investigation of efforts to reverse the 2020 election results nationally, ex-Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview Thursday.

    But Holder suggested that before that happens, Trump is more likely to first face possible criminal charges from the Georgia state prosecutor who is investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to undo President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020.

 The article continues:

    Madison asked Holder whether he would seek to indict Trump if he still were attorney general.

    Holder demurred, saying he did not have access to all the material that the Justice Department currently has regarding Trump.

    But he told Madison that, based on his experience as a federal prosecutor who filed public corruption cases against elected officials, as “more evidence is elicited, you will see people start to cut deals.”

    ″My guess is that by the end of this process, you’re going to see indictments involving high-level people in the White House, you’re going to see indictments against people outside the White House who were advising them with regard to the attempt to steal the election,” said Holder.

Note the reversal here: Trump had accused the Democrats of stealing the election, and now Holder has flipped that script and is accusing Trump of attempting to steal the election because he questioned whether the election was on the up-and-up. To me this is a tell or reveal: the Democrats and RINOs (and, by extension, the Deep State) are very concerned about anyone poking into how they helped voters arrive at the correct decision in the 2020 election and they want to make sure that no one ever questions them on this issue again. Not because they fear that the 2020 election will be overturned--even if that was a possibility that chicken has long flown the coop--but to maintain the illusion of legitimacy.

    William Lind's writings about fourth generational warfare discusses how the greatest threat to a government is for there to be a crises of legitimacy. Many times, however, when governments act to preserve the façade of legitimacy, their actions tend to actually aggravate the legitimacy crises. That is what we are seeing in this situation.

    I still don't understand why the Washington elites so hated and feared Trump that they went to such great lengths to try and impeach him and, failing that, subvert the 2020 presidential election. I believed before his election in 2016 that Trump would win because he was the only moderate candidate, and I still believe that is why he won in 2016. But for some reason, Trump put the fear of God into the elites. 

    And so the elites (and their useful idiots on the Left) went all in to cheat in the 2020 election. I don't know how coordinated was the effort, and I doubt we ever will know. But whether it was top down or the overlapping efforts of national, state and local political organizations, powerful corporations and NGOs, all acting independently, there is no doubt that there were substantial irregularities in how the election was conducted and counted. 

    I don't know whether those responsible just thought that nobody would care, or if they were so desperate that they did not consider the consequences, but the end result was that there was and continue to be a widely held belief that the elections were rigged. That is, the conduct of the election created a legitimacy crises.

    If we were talking just about the election, the legitimacy crises could have been limited to just the Biden Presidency. But in combination with the misconduct by the FBI and CIA, the Democratic Party and Hillary Campaign, and the constant impeachment attempts and, yes, the Covid panic and coddling of the BLM/Antifa rioters, the result was a legitimacy crises aimed at almost the whole of the federal government. And, to top that off, we are now in a period of inflation driven by a combination of outrageous amounts of government spending and supply chain problems constricting supplies.

    Like most governments faced with a legitimacy crises, the U.S. government decided that the best way to address questions of its legitimacy was to crack down on dissent. And so we saw the expanded censorship on social media, the increased focus on so-called "right wing" domestic terrorists (even beyond the absurdities under the Obama Administration), the arrest of the January 6 protestors on the flimsiest of grounds, the legal harassments of Trump officials and supporters, the public vilification of  anyone opposed to "the narrative" and, now, the raid on Trump's home in Florida. 

    And if these crackdowns do not tamp down discontent?  As the old joke goes, "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

• More: Howie Carr writes about the endemic corruption of the Boston FBI office ... and its implications for the state of the FBI overall:

    Sometimes it seems like the Boston office of the FBI — dumpster fire of breathtaking corruption and incompetence that it is — serves as a field laboratory for the Democrat briefers in D.C. whose mission it is to crush any opposition to the Deep State.

    All week long, since the FBI’s Stasi-style raid on Mar-a-Lago, it’s been deja vu all over again for anyone who’s been paying attention to the decades of multiple messes that our local on-the-take G-men have been diving headfirst into.

    Everything corrupt, illegal or unethical that the FBI does nationally, they did a dry run here first — just to see just how much they could get away with.

    The answer is: Plenty, especially now in Brandon’s Banana Republic.

    Remember how this week the D.C. Gestapo told us the raid was a matter of national security? Trump left office in January 2021, almost 19 months ago. Yet the jackbooted wokesters only now figured there’s a “national security” problem?

    It’s foot-dragging reminiscent of the feds’ hunt for Whitey Bulger, the serial-killing brother of the most powerful Democrat politician in the state.

    Whitey took it on the lam in December 1994, with his gal pal Theresa Stanley. She couldn’t take the fugitive life, so she came back to Boston. The feds didn’t get around to interviewing her about Whitey’s aliases until the summer of 1996.

    By then he’d been stopped at least twice by local cops — in Wyoming and Mississippi — for minor traffic infractions. But the cops didn’t know that they were dealing with a mass murdering cocaine-dealing registered Democrat, because the feds couldn’t be bothered debriefing his moll.

    It’s in the FBI handbook. Wherever investigating a fellow Democrat, a G-man must leave no stone unturned — except the one that the comrade, in this case Whitey, is hiding under (for 17 years).

    The FBI went after Whitey almost as hard as they’ve since gone after Hunter Biden, or Hillary Clinton, or antifa, or BLM, or … Democrats.

    Then there was the timing of the Mar-a-Lago warrant. The feds got it on Aug. 5, a Friday, but it was so damn imperative that they get into Melania’s wardrobe that they took the weekend off before commencing the raid at dawn Monday morning, Aug. 8.

    Anyone remember Gary Lee Sampson, a bank robber from Abington? Back in 2001, he wanted to turn himself in to the FBI. It was, again, a summer Friday afternoon. He called the Boston office and told them who he was, where he was, and that he wished to surrender. The feds hung up on him — it was Friday, Date Night Number One. Who could be bothered driving to Abington?

    Sampson waited around for a couple of hours, but no FBI appeared to make the collar. So he went on a murder spree that weekend.

    After he was arrested for the three killings, Sampson told local cops he’d called the FBI office. But everyone in the Boston office denied that Sampson had called — they lied, in other words, just like they did on those FISA warrants on Carter Page in 2016.

    Boston’s also long been setting the pace for payoffs. Whitey Bulger’s partner, Stevie Flemmi, said their mob had six local FBI agents on the payroll. Six!

    But hey, during one of the rare internal investigations of fed corruption back in 2017, the inspector general reported that in D.C., they’d discovered 50 agents were taking “gratuities” — also known as bribes — from assorted bad actors.

    The FBI — Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. And free lunch. And free booze.

    The Boston office was just setting the pace for other corrupt American KGB-types to follow. There was John “Vino” Morris, a very special agent, who was paid off with $7,000 in cash and cases of wine by Whitey and Stevie. They got him so drunk one night they had to drive him home. That evening, in his drunkenness, he left behind one of the feds’ bugging tapes from Mafia headquarters on Prince Street.

    Long before corrupt agent Peter Strzok (another Boston alum) was chasing Lisa Page around the Xerox machine on the seventh floor, Vino Morris was doing his secretary. Whitey and Stevie gave him a grand so she could visit Vino at a Georgia “training” session for some closed-door dictation.

    Of course, with inflation, it’s gotten much more expensive to buy a G-man. Take Andrew McCabe — the disgraced ex-director who like all the rest lied under oath. When he was running the Hillary Clinton espionage “probe,” Clinton operatives funneled $700,000 to his wife’s state Senate campaign. . . .

    Maybe someday we’ll find out just what went down last week at Mar-a-Lago. But I doubt it. “Mr. White” made his call to Vino back in 1995. Earlier this year, the feds coughed up to this newspaper the 302 report that was filed after Bulger called his fed hireling.

    It’s part of the historical record. The call has been discussed in federal court, books, documentaries, etc.

    So we finally get the official FBI report and it begins with words to the effect of: “What follows is a transcript of the conversation:

    And then there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just a blank page.

    Because … FBI. Because … Democrats. It’s the Boston way.

    FBI – Famous but Incompetent.

• Speaking of out-of-control bureaucrats: "Trudeau’s intelligence agencies spying on politicians, opposition MP says." An excerpt:

    Conservative MP Martin Shields is ringing the alarm bells after it was revealed that the RCMP and Trudeau’s other intelligence agencies are using spyware to spy on elected officials.

    Shields said that the Ethics Committee has been meeting over the last two days to discuss the recent revelation that the RCMP uses spyware to monitor Canadians — even elected Members of Parliament — through their devices.

    “What is spyware? Spyware is a technology that’s recently been developed in the last few years; even Canadian companies are developing it. It allows someone who’s using spyware to be able to turn your cellphone on, listen to what you’re saying, and all the other things that might be part of your cellphone,” Shields began.

    “What we found out was yes, the RCMP have been using it. Yes, there were smaller numbers [of use cases] to begin with, but as the Committee went on, the numbers grew to the number of people.”

    Shields continues, saying there appears to be no privacy protocol for utilizing this technology, and the Privacy Commissioner said he was never consulted about the use of spyware by Canada’s federal agencies. In fact, the Privacy Commissioner says that he didn’t know about it until the media revealed it.

    He adds that when the Committee got to the final witnesses yesterday, some indicated that other agencies are using the same spyware technology.

The technology to remotely turn on and use cell phones as a "bug" has existed since before smart phones--smart phones just make it easier. It would be naïve to believe that the agencies or departments that have access to this technology would limit itself to only employing this technology against foreign spires or drug cartel leaders. I would assume that any intelligence or law enforcement agency that that has the money to afford this type of spyware has been using it to monitor actual and potential political opponents in order to safeguard their power. 

• I've noted several stories over the past several weeks about black activists trying to track down and get Carolyn Bryant Donham arrested and tried for the death of Emmett Till. Donham was the white woman that was accosted by Till ("She accused him of making lewd comments and grabbing her while she worked alone at a family store in Money, Mississippi"), which event led to his murder by Donham's husband and another relative. Black activists recently discovered that arrest warrants had been issued for Donham back in the 1950s, but never served, which set off the recently flurry of activity against her. The Daily Mail reports that a grand jury has refused to indict her in Till's death. The article relates that "[a]fter hearing seven hours of testimony, they determined that there was not sufficient eveidence [sic] to indict Donham. Charges of both kidnaping and manslaughter were considered."
• Mass shootings only happen in America: "Queensland shooting: Three killed on remote Australian property." There was at least one other person injured, which means that this incident would qualify as a "mass shooting" by most definitions. But, per the article, a "mass shooting" is "defined in Australia as those resulting in at least four deaths, excluding the perpetrator."
• Liberals bitterly disappointed: "Prime suspect in Albuquerque serial killing of Muslim men 'is a Sunni Muslim furious his daughter married a Shiite Muslim': Cops found him in same silver sedan spotted at murder scenes." For that matter, Muslim groups are also disappointed. NBC was just reporting the day prior to the arrest: "The spate of murders has stunned the city and shaken the small, close-knit Muslim community, fueling fears of a racist serial killer on the loose." And from the same NBC story:

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said it was offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of whoever is behind the killings.

    President Joe Biden decried the murders, saying in a tweet Sunday that his "prayers are with the victims’ families, and my Administration stands strongly with the Muslim community."

And from Salon:

The killings have deeply shaken the Muslim community in Albuquerque. Ahmad Assed, the president of the Islamic Center of New Mexico, said in a statement that "we are incredibly sickened with the idea that someone has this much hate against innocent people." 

And more on Biden's statement:

    The murders have drawn national attention, with U.S. President Joe Biden writing in a social media post Sunday afternoon that he is "angered and saddened by the horrific killings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque."

    "While we await a full investigation, my prayers are with the victims' families, and my Administration stands strongly with the Muslim community," Biden wrote. "These hateful attacks have no place in America." 

Except when you import people with a history of tribal and religious violence.  

• Black lives matter. Everyone else? Not so much. "ICU nurse, 38, who killed six people, including pregnant mother, her unborn baby and 1-year-old son, in fiery 100mph LA crash is in custody and being held on $9 million bond after being discharged from hospital."  
• Ditto: "Moment group of teens crash a stolen car and run off Minnesota highway after 'How to Hotwire' TikTok trend showed users how to steal new Kia and Hyundai models with a single USB cable." 
• I can't believe how racist is the mayor of New York: "TWO MORE buses carrying 95 migrants arrive in NYC a day after Mayor Eric Adams threatened to 'send busload of New Yorkers to Texas' to unseat Gov. Greg Abbott." What's funny is that Adams is getting so upset over mere dozens of illegal aliens arriving in his state while Texas is expected to put up with literally thousands arriving everyday. And I hope that Adams does ship people to Texas to vote so that Texas can issue a warrant for Adams' arrest for conspiracy to commit election fraud. 
• Speaking of aliens: "Beware of Overclass Immigrants Who Want to Dispossess White America" by Pedro De Alvarado. The author warns that "One reason legal immigration is particularly dangerous: It is creating an 'overclass' of skilled immigrants who will leverage their professional success and financial power to greatly hasten white dispossession, and bring about the Great Replacement." It's not theory. While the author focuses on specific, high profile examples, I've pointed out several times over the history of this blog stories of Indian or Chinese managers in the tech sector that mostly only hire or promote fellow Indians or Chinese and work to force out white programmers and engineers. In fact, Indian managers have been accused of discriminating favor of members of their own caste. 
• Remember the line from The Christmas Carol where Scrooge talks about the "surplus population"? "WEF Adviser Yuval Harari: ‘We Just Don’t Need the Vast Majority of the Population’ in Today’s World." 

    Yuval Noah Harari, historian, futurist, and World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser, said, “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population” in the early 21st century given modern technologies’ rendering human labor economically and militarily “redundant.”

    Harari’s remarks were made in an interview with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, published on Tuesday. He assessed widespread contemporary disillusionment among “common people” as being rooted in a fear of being “left behind” in a future run by “smart people.” Such fears are justified, he added, given his projection that emerging technologies will displace economic needs to many categories of existing work:

    A lot of people sense that they are being left behind and left out of the story, even if their material conditions are still relatively good. In the 20th century, what was common to all the stories — the liberal, the fascist, the communist — is that the big heroes of the story were the common people, not necessarily all people, but if you lived, say, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, life was very grim, but when you looked at the propaganda posters on the walls that depicted the glorious future, you were there. You looked at the posters which showed steel workers and farmers in heroic poses, and it was obvious that this is the future.

    Now, when people look at the posters on the walls, or listen to TED talks, they hear a lot of these these big ideas and big words about machine learning and genetic engineering and blockchain and globalization, and they are not there. They are no longer part of the story of the future, and I think that — again, this is a hypothesis — if I try to understand and to connect to the deep resentment of people, in many places around the world, part of what might be going there is people realize — and they’re correct in thinking that — that, ‘The future doesn’t need me. You have all these smart people in California and in New York and in Beijing, and they are planning this amazing future with artificial intelligence and bio-engineering and in global connectivity and whatnot, and they don’t need me. Maybe if they are nice, they will throw some crumbs my way like universal basic income,’ but it’s much worse psychologically to feel that you are useless than to feel that you are exploited.

• "President Biden claims more kids are dying from guns than cars. That’s not the whole story." NBC notes that Biden's "kids" include adults under 25. When looking at 17 and under, automobile crashes were still a higher cause of death than firearms, even when considering the truly massive decline in automobile related deaths over the past 10 years.
• Related: "U.S. traffic deaths reached a 16-year high in 2021, according to government estimates." Per the article, "NHTSA, a federal vehicle safety watchdog, estimates 42,915 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year, a 10.5% increase from 2020." That is just crashes.
• Only police can be trusted with guns: "Alabama boy, 12, who fabricated story about an intruder killing his mother admits to cops that he accidentally shot her dead in their home." The dead woman is Ayobiyi Cook. Her husband, Jarvis Cook, is a Birmingham police officer.  The boy was playing with a firearm when he shot his mother, according to the article. 
• "Denmark bans COVID vaccine for youth under 18." The reasoning is because those under 18 only rarely get COVID. But as others have noted, there has to be more to this than the vaccines being ineffective; otherwise, the vaccines would have been optional but not required.
• "Could THIS be the way to reverse blindness? Pioneering cornea implant made from PIG'S SKIN restores sight in 20 visually-impaired people in promising trial." 

    A corneal implant created from pig's skin has successfully restored the sight in 20 blind or visually-impaired people as part of a promising trial.  

    The implant is made from collagen protein from the animal, and resembles the human cornea - the transparent part of the eye that covers the iris and pupil.

    Scientists at Linkoping University and and LinkoCare Life Sciences AB have developed the implant as an alternative to donated human corneas, as well as a less-invasive surgery for implantation.

• "Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition." 

    A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California.

    Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.

    Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars: heavy hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they fuse together to form a helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy as a by-product. Once the hydrogen plasma "ignites", the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusions themselves producing enough power to maintain the temperature without external heating.

Also:

In this latest milestone at the LLNL, researchers recorded an energy yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) during only a few nanoseconds. For reference, one MJ is the kinetic energy of a one tonne mass moving at 100mph.

• "Making oxygen with magnets could help astronauts breathe easy." On the ISS, the story explains, oxygen is created through an electrolysis process, but, due to the lack of gravity, the bubbles of oxygen have to be separated using a centrifuge which is complex and heavy--to much so to be efficient for a Mars mission, for instance. 

    Enter the Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) in Germany. There, Brinkert, who has ongoing research funded by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), led the team in successful experimental tests at a special drop tower facility that simulates microgravity conditions.

    Here, the groups have developed a procedure to detach gas bubbles from electrode surfaces in microgravity environments generated for 9.2s at the Bremen Drop Tower. This study demonstrates for the first time gas bubbles can be 'attracted to' and 'repelled from' a simple neodymium magnet in microgravity by immersing it in different types of aqueous solution.