Practical Eschatology: The Docent's Memo (November 28, 2022)

VIDEO: "How Deadly is a Flintlock Rifle? The British hated this thing"--Garand Thumb (13 min.)

Devastating.

Firearms & Self-Defense:

Greg Ellifritz at Active Self Protection published his weekly Weekend Knowledge Dump this past Friday, but he also had a couple guest posts last week by Darryl Bolke on the issue of revolver reliability (part 1) (part 2). The gist of the matter is this, from the first part:

   ... With a clean, properly functioning revolver with quality ammunition, they are incredibly reliable in actual street shootings through the initial load and likely the reloads typically carried. That means it will likely fire it’s first rounds under typical use while engaged with a criminal, and should have no issues with another pair of reloads if they are even possible. It does not matter if the gun has been sitting in a drawer for ten years or carried a lot.
   A proven quality service level revolver that is clean, lubricated and loaded with quality ammunition is in my experience far less likely to malfunction than a semi-automatic pistol in the conditions we find in street shootings. That means, non-locked wrists, poor grip, asymmetric firing positions, interference from clothing or barriers, body contact, disturbance to the gun during firing, impacts, improper administrative handling, etc. They are consistent in their performance in those conditions, which is what reliable is.
   Where they are not reliable is when subjected to tests of ruggedness. They do not work well when dirty and full of debris. They do not work well when abused, neglected or exposed to foreign matter. They do not work well when poorly maintained. They do not work well with modifications made by unqualified individuals, or used outside of the limits of the modifications. If these are factors, their consistency will suffer. They also tend to require a trained individual and tools when they break or stop working.

He also notes that because revolvers use a magazine (the cylinder) integral to the gun, they don't suffer many of the issues that come with a semi-auto magazine such as reliability issues from a damaged magazine (e.g., bent feed lips) nor is there a problem with a magazine popping out such as the author had with some deep concealment rigs. He also notes that the reliability issues that might pop up with a semiauto are magnified when using a small semiauto. Basically, then, the author recommends a semiauto pistol for a duty or primary concealed carry weapon, and a revolver for a backup or deep carry handgun.

Even new shooters will pick up on the fact that caliber designations often don't actually match up to the caliber of a weapon, sometimes by quite a bit. Some of this is due to marketing. "30 Super Carry," for instance, rolls off the tongue easier than would ".312 Super Carry". Some of it derives from differences in how the bore diameter is measured: i.e., whether the distance is measured between opposing lands (used in most of the rest of the world) or between opposing grooves (most common in the United States). And then there are firearms like the .38 Special (which uses a .357 bullet) or the .44 Magnum (.429). This article from Mass Gun Ownership, "Why do they call it a 38 when it's really a 357?" addresses this issue and it comes from the transition from percussion cap firearms to firearms using a metallic cartridge. The author explains:

   After the Civil War, metallic cartridges took over. As you probably know, a metallic cartridge was a case of brass or copper, with a primer replacing the old percussion cap. The case was charged with powder, and a bullet was seated in the mouth and crimped. The early cartridge revolvers were simply modified cap and ball designs with the chambers drilled through so you could load from the breech end, a hinged loading gate on the recoil shield, and a hammer reshaped so that the nose would set off the primer. There was no longer a need for a rammer (that was used to pack in the loose powder on a cap and ball revolver), so this was removed, and an ejector (to eject the spent cartridge cases) was put in its place.
   There were now some new problems:
   The bullet must go inside the case, and the case must go inside the chamber. So the dimensional relationship between bullet, chamber and barrel is now out of whack. If the bullet was to fit inside the case, it would have to have a smaller diameter than the bore, and that wouldn't work. This problem was temporarily solved by using what were called "heeled" bullets (see below). A heeled .38 caliber bullet features a smaller .357" diameter base that is inserted in the cartridge, with a wider .38" bearing surface to fit the bore. This way, the dimensional relationship could remain the same as it did for a cap and ball revolver.
   Heeled bullets are still used today in .22 caliber rimfire rounds. Heeled bullets had their advantages. Revolver cylinders for heeled bullets were easier to manufacture because they could be drilled straight through, and didn't need a smaller diameter "step" to form the throat. also, when heeled bullets are used, you can fire cartridges of varying lengths with no loss of accuracy caused by freebore space (think about revolvers that can fire .22 short, long and long rifle).
   This left an unanswered question: How do you lube the bullet?
   At first, lube was simply was smeared on the exposed portion of the heeled bullet. This was called an outside lubricated bullet. Unfortunately, the lubes of the day were easily rubbed off, and were also sticky enough to pick up dirt, grit, and other contaminates that would harm the bore. An inside lubricated bullet (like we use today) would solve these problems, but simply putting a lube ring on the base of the bullet inside the case would not work because the base had a smaller diameter than the bore, and therefore the lube would not touch the barrel. The solution was to use a non-heeled, inside-lubed bullet that could be seated deeper in the case.
   To accommodate such a bullet, the revolver manufacturers had two choices: they could keep the bullet and bore the same diameter, then make the case larger, the chamber larger, the cylinder larger, and the frame larger... or they could simply make the bore and bullet smaller and add a bore-diameter throat in each chamber. The manufacturers chose the latter because it was more work to redesign and manufacture new larger frames than it was to redesign and manufacture smaller barrels and throated cylinders. The "new" .38s were made with the bore shrunk by twice the thickness of the case wall; which meant about .357" (.360 for the .38 S&W). Because of familiarity, the manufacturers kept the cartridge designation- .38 caliber - the same. The early loads for the "new" revolvers were made with soft lead bullets with hollow bases that when fired, would expand to fill the larger bore on older guns; so they would shoot fairly well in the older barrels as well.

The same happened with the .44 caliber handguns.

"Learn to Search Slow & Carefully" by Sheriff Jim Wilson, Shooting Illustrated. We're always told to not search our home for an intruder but the reality, as Wilson acknowledges, is that most of us will do so; partly because we often won't know whether that crash that wakes us in the middle of the night is a burglar or the cat knocking something over. He writes:

   First of all, let’s not just assume that it is the cat; take your defensive firearm with you. Secondly, you need to be able to see, so take that flashlight with you. In light of that, if I were designing a new home, I would have a master light switch installed in the bedroom that turns on every light in the house with one flip of the switch. You have to be able to see and if all that light scares the burglar away, you just won.
   Secondly, no one should be surprised in their own home. No one else knows the layout of your house the way that you do. You just have to make sure that you have checked everything in your immediate vicinity before moving on. And you’d be amazed at the places a burglar can hide when he is afraid of capture. I’ve found them in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, wedged between the refrigerator and the wall, and other places that you would swear no human could go.
   As you begin to clear a room go very slowly. Fast will get you hurt. Examine the room for every place a person could hide before going to the next room. Work on open doorways first, but don’t forget to come back and check those closed doors. Learn the safest way to open a closed door. Learn to cover a room, from the doorway, by pieing the area. And never just stop in an open doorway.

And he suggests practicing--even going so far as playing "hide and seek" with someone to test where someone could hide from you as you search the house. I use to play a lot of "hide and seek" with my kids and I can't tell you how many times I could successfully hide just by standing behind a partially open door or standing in the bath tub with the shower curtain partially pulled closed.

"All About MIM–Part Three"--Revolver Guy. In this third part of a series, the author turns from MIM technology and to the history of Smith & Wesson's adaptation of MIM and why it didn't go with other casting technologies such as used by Ruger.
"DeSantis N.Y. Undercover Shoulder Rig: Comfortable, Reliable Concealment"--The Mag Life. The author begins:

   Sometimes it’s good to embrace methods that deviate from the standard that we are used to. In this case, we are talking about holster options for concealed carry. I’ve recently tried shoulder carry, and the DeSantis N.Y. Undercover Shoulder Rig meets a few needs in my life.

   First, when I carry my Glock 19X Outside The Waistband (OWB), my hip hurts after a while. It’s just a little too heavy for my comfort sometimes. Carrying full-sized handguns in a shoulder rig takes the weight off the waist and distributes it higher, making carry more comfortable in many cases. This holster gets the weight off my hip and distributes it amongst my shoulders and upper body.

   Second, during the cooler/colder months I can wear the rig under a flannel shirt or underneath my coat and it’s perfectly concealed. And lastly, on rare occasions when I wear a suit, it is difficult to conceal a handgun on my waist. For such times, the shoulder rig works perfectly.

   Despite the fact that I’ve been carrying a concealed handgun of one sort or another since the late 1980s, I never really used a shoulder holster before, having always carried on my waist. This has been a new experience and it does take some getting used to.

"Why Choose A Double Action Only Pistol?" by George Harris, Shooting Illustrated. Unfortunately, the article doesn't actually address the question raised in the title, but instead discusses converting a DA/SA handgun to DAO.
"Guest Shot: Ready vs. Prepare" by Dave Spaulding, Tactical Wire. A look at different ready positions (for a handgun) and a study by Force Science on the impact on speed for different finger placement and ready position. An excerpt:

It is essential for the reaction/response time from ready be as fast as possible for obvious reasons. Recently the Force Science Institute undertook a study looking at various trigger finger and ready positions to see if one was faster than another. Their results were quite interesting. Here are the main points from this study. If you want to read the entire report, it can be found through their website.
Force Science reported the results of the study in their newsletter. Their findings?

1. That trigger finger placement off of the trigger matters when the index finger is positioned to rest on the pistol slide- that’s slower, according to their study samples, than other options (index finger straight alongside the trigger guard, the same with finger bent against the trigger guard front, above the trigger guard along the frame and “high register” – finger straight resting on the slide.

2. Tactical ready positions were studied, including the following: pistol held behind the leg (“bootleg”), “belt tuck” where the gun is at navel level and pulled into the body, close-ready -where the gun is higher than the belt and pulled in with muzzle downward, high ready (slightly depressed muzzle), low-ready (aimed down at a 45° angle and “temple index” (high-guard, one-handed next to the head.) High ready was fastest, “bootleg” and “high-guard” were contrastingly slower – when aiming. Without aiming (!), the fastest was low-ready. Researcher Lewinsky noted, "the handgun timings indicate that the closer the ready position is to a final firing position, the faster the officer is likely to be in getting off his first round."

3. He also noted that “more important than improving the mechanics of weapon craft is teaching officers to read potentially hazard scenarios early on, so they can detect threat cues quicker and better anticipate an adversary's actions, thereby getting ahead of the reactionary curve before the crisis point. "Without that skill," he says, "they're likely to end up so far behind the action that things like the most desirable finger indexing and ready positioning won't really matter."

As always, Force Science has done a thorough job but some of their muzzle positions do not differentiate between a ready and prepare which is of critical importance. What they call The Boot Leg (something I have never taught but seems to occur with many police officers regardless of training) is certainly a preparatory position and if I am reading it correctly so is the “Belt Tuck” which seems to be similar to SUL. Their “Close Ready” I call a Compressed Low Ready while their High Ready is also known as the Guard Position as made popular by Jeff Cooper. Their Low Ready is aptly named and is the most popular/utilized position while The High Guard I have always known as The Temple Index and is also considered a preparatory position.

The rest of the article discusses the different between preparatory positions and true ready positions.

VIDEO: "How Would a Nuclear EMP Affect the Power Grid?"--

Practical Engineering (17 min.)

Prepping & Survival:

"How to Charge Your Phone When the Power is Out"--Modern Survival Blog. The author recommends the ANKER brand power banks for charging your phones and devices and, specifically, the ANKER Ultra-High Capacity Power Bank 20,000 mAh. And for charging the power bank when off-grid, he recommends the Big Blue – 28 Watt Folding Solar Panel Charger.
And another from Modern Survival Blog: "Vacuum Seal Rice and Beans For Long Term Storage." The article is a how-to guide but I was struck by the author's use of plastic storage bins to store the vacuum sealed bags. This would probably be a great idea for someone in a small house or apartment with little storage as it would allow you to more easily store the rice or beans under beds, in closets, and so on, than trying to store the more common 5-gallon buckets.
And a third from Modern Survival Blog: "Red Feather Canned Butter – Shelf Stable Butter In A Can."
"The Survival Knife in your Pocket – Cold Steel Pendleton Mini Hunter"--Jerking The Trigger. A small (3" blade), inexpensive fixed blade knife for everyday carry.

Related: "Small Knives for Field And Defense"--Mason Dixon Tactical.

"How To Decrease The Cost of Use By 98% While Also Increasing The Brightness of Your Existing Tactical Flashlight"--ConcealedCarry.com. The author notes that the majority of tactical flashlights use the CR123a battery. He recommends switching those out with their rechargeable version--the 16340 battery--because it has a higher output (resulting in a brighter light from most flashlights) and, because it is rechargeable, has a lower cost over the long run.
It's going to be a cold winter both in North America and in Europe: "Snow Extent in the Northern Hemisphere now Among the Highest in 56 years Increases the Likelihood of Cold Early Winter Forecast both in North America and Europe"--Severe Weather EU. The headline gives the basic information, but here is the author's summary:

Snow extent in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of November represents an important parameter for the early winter forecast. This year snow extent is running much higher than average and according to existing global estimates, it is now beyond the highest ever observed so far. Winter forecast, especially in its early phase and in Europe, might be strongly influenced by such a large snow extent, although many other factors need attention.

For you science nerds, the article goes into quite a bit of detail on the snow extent and its correlation with how cold a winter in Europe and North America could be, including discussion on albedo and the impact of snow cover on ground temperatures, the Siberian High, how snow forms, and more.

VIDEO: "NASA's Artemis 1 Orion capsule entering lunar orbit"--CBS News (4 min.)

From a few days ago.

News & Analysis:

Last week, as Covid cases surged, China decided to lock down Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities. (See also here noting that these lockdowns represent 1/5 of the Chinese economy). However, this resulted in immediate protests in China’s industrial metropolis Guangzhou where protestors clashed with police. (See also here). Unfortunately for the CCP, the protests spread after a fire on Thursday that killed 10 people in a high-rise building in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region, with many Chinese blaming the deaths on residents not being able to escape the building because it was partially locked down. As the protests spread across the country, "Videos shared on social media showed protestors openly calling for President Xi Jinping and the government to step down as pressure ramps up on the Chinese leader." "Many are now referring to the protest to as 'white paper revolution,' 'blank sheet revolution' or “A4 revolution.'"
Meanwhile, back in the U.S.: "Thanks, Joe! 41% of small businesses can't pay their rent this month."
"Highways to Utopia" by Roger Kimball, American Greatness. Kimball argues that the country is at a crossroads of sort, with one of the choices facing us being between, as Kimball labels it, "Dynamism and Deviancy." It's a long read, but worth it. A short (relative to the length of the article) excerpt:

   ... Perhaps this self-canceling aspect of the West is part of what James Hankins and Allen C. Guelzo had in mind when they noted in the first chapter of Where Next?: Civilization at the Crossroads that “Civilization is always threatened by barbarism, and the greater threat often comes more from within than from without.” The political philosopher James Burnham made a similar point when he argued that “Suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization.” That the pathology may be self-generated is more an admonition than a consolation.
   The historian Arnold Toynbee spoke in this context of the “barbarization of the dominant minority.” When a society is robust and self-confident, Toynbee suggested, cultural influence travels largely from the elites to the proletariats. The elites furnish social models to be emulated. The proletariats are “softened,” Toynbee said, by their imitation of the manners and morals of a dominant elite. But when a society begins to falter, the imitation proceeds largely in the opposite direction: the dominant elite is coarsened by its imitation of proletarian manners. Toynbee spoke in this context of a growing “sense of drift,” “truancy,” “promiscuity,” and general “vulgarization” of manners, morals, and the arts. The elites, instead of holding fast to their own standards, suddenly begin to “go native” and adopt the dress, attitudes, and behavior of the lower classes. Flip on your television, scroll through social media, look at the teens and pre-teens in your middle-class neighborhood. You will see what Toynbee meant by “barbarization of the dominant [or, rather ‘once-dominant’] minority.” One part of the impulse is summed up in the French phrase nostalgie de la boue. But it is not “mud” that is sought so much as repudiation.
   The social scientist Charles Murray, writing about Toynbee in the Wall Street Journal back in 2001, noted how closely the historian’s analysis fit developments in contemporary America. To a large extent, it is a matter of failed or discarded ideals. “Truancy and promiscuity, in Toynbee’s sense,” Murray writes,

are not new in America. But until a few decades ago, they were publicly despised and largely confined to the bottom layer of Toynbee’s proletariat—the group we used to call “low-class” or “trash,” and which we now call the underclass. Today, those behaviors have been transmuted into a code that the elites sometimes imitate, sometimes placate, and fear to challenge. Meanwhile, they no longer have a code of their own in which they have confidence.

What we are talking about is the drift, the tendency of our culture. And that is to be measured not so much by what we permit or forbid as by what we unthinkingly accept as normal. This crossroads, that is to say, is part of a process, one of whose markers is the normalization of the outré. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan described this development as “defining deviancy down.” It is, as the late columnist Charles Krauthammer observed, a two-way process. “As part of the vast social project of moral leveling,” he wrote, it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized. The normal must be found to be deviant. . . . Large areas of ordinary behavior hitherto considered benign have had their threshold radically redefined up, so that once innocent behavior now stands condemned as deviant. Normal middle-class life then stands exposed as the true home of violence and abuse and a whole catalog of aberrant acting and thinking.
Hilaire Belloc espied the culmination of this process in Survivals and New Arrivals (1929):

When it is mature we shall have, not the present isolated, self-conscious insults to beauty and right living, but a positive coordination and organized affirmation of the repulsive and the vile.

Also:

This racial spoils system is one giant totem looming over the crossroads we face. Another is the anti-sexual sexual hypertrophy that has become such a curious feature of our cultural landscape. In 1994, Irving Kristol wrote an important essay called “Countercultures.” In it, he noted that “‘Sexual liberation’ is always near the top of a countercultural agenda—though just what form the liberation takes can and does vary, sometimes quite widely.” The costumes and rhetoric change, but the end is always the same: an assault on the defining institutions of our civilization. “Women’s liberation,” Kristol continues,

is another consistent feature of all countercultural movements—liberation from husbands, liberation from children, liberation from family. Indeed, the real object of these various sexual heterodoxies is to disestablish the family as the central institution of human society, the citadel of orthodoxy.

In Eros and Civilization (1966), the Marxist countercultural guru Herbert Marcuse provided an illustration of Kristol’s thesis avant la lettre. Railing against “the tyranny of procreative sexuality,” Marcuse urged his followers to return to a state of “primary narcissism” and extolled the joys of “polymorphous perversity.” Are we there yet? “Be fruitful, and multiply,” the Book of Genesis advised. Marcuse sought to enlist a programmatically unfruitful sexuality in his campaign against “capitalism” and the cultural establishment: barrenness as a revolutionary desideratum. Back then, the diktat seemed radical but self-contained, another crackpot effusion from the academy. Today, it is a widespread mental health problem, accepted gospel preached by teachers, the media, and legislators across the country. ...