Lucky Shot

I finally got a chance to try out the Shield Arms red dot sight that I mounted on my Glock 43x MOS. I think I'll keep it. 

 

 

The Rainbow Fish and Buffalo Gill

I hated this book because of its socialist/communist messaging, but the host of this video points out that it is far worse than just that.

VIDEO: "The Rainbow Fish is a Dystopian Nightmare"
The Children's Literature Podcast (10 min.)

Video: Update on Thai-Cambodia Conflict

 This video has some updates on the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia which has seen Thailand capture some strategic territory and mobilize it air force and navy; while Cambodia apparently shelled Laos for reasons that are not clear. Outside of that the area, the video mentions fighting between Iranian forces and some sort of internal rebel group; and some notable updates from the Russian-Ukraine war.

 VIDEO: "BREAKING: Thailand MOBILIZES Full Military Force; Iran ATTACKED By Armed Insurgents | EnforcerNews" (21 min.) 

The Thai-Cambodian Conflict

 It seems that Thailand and Cambodia may be on the verge of war. The casus belli in this case are accusations by Thailand that Cambodia has been laying land mines along the border, but this appears to be a continuation of old disputes over the border. PBS News reports:

    The Southeast Asian neighbors have longstanding border disputes that periodically flare along their 800-kilometer (500-mile) frontier and usually result in brief confrontations, only sometimes involving the use of weapons. The last time a major armed confrontation over the issue took place was in 2011, causing 20 deaths.

    But relations have deteriorated sharply since a confrontation in May that killed a Cambodian soldier, and Thursday’s clashes were far bigger in scale and intensity than usual.

    The first clash Thursday morning happened in an area near the ancient Ta Muen Thom temple along the border of Thailand’s Surin province and Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province. It caused villagers to scurry to shelter in concrete bunkers.

    The Thai army and Cambodia’s Defense Ministry each said the other side deployed drones before advancing on the other’s positions and opening fire. The two sides later used heavier weaponry such as artillery, causing greater damage and casualties, and Thailand said it responded to truck-mounted rockets launched by Cambodia with airstrikes.

    Thailand’s air force said it deployed F-16 jet fighters in two attacks on Cambodia. Nikorndej, the Thai Foreign Ministry spokesperson, called it “an act of self-defense” in response to the Cambodian rockets.

    Cambodia’s Defense Ministry said the Thai jets dropped bombs on a road near the ancient P reah Vihear temple, which has been a site of past conflicts between the countries.

    Cambodian authorities distributed photos they claimed showed damage caused there, and the country’s Culture Ministry said it would pursue justice under international law, since the temple was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural organization, and is a “historical legacy of the Cambodian people.”   

However, an article from Time Magazine suggests that it may be more than just territorial disputes at play here:

    For one, the Cambodian economy is not doing well, and Hun Sen may spy an opportunity for his unpopular son to demonstrate his leadership chops. Additionally, Hun Sen may want a diversion from recent scrutiny on Cambodia’s illicit businesses—including casinos, human trafficking, and scam centers—which according to some estimates account for up to 40% of GDP. Hun Manet’s failure to deal with the “scamdemic,” as the U.N. has dubbed it, has even led to calls for Cambodia to be added to a U.S. visa blacklist.

    Compounding matters, Paetongtarn’s government was making moves towards legalizing gambling in Thailand, which would undercut a key revenue stream for the Hun family and Cambodia more broadly. (Though such moves have been mooted for many years and never caused friction previously.)

 But Thailand has its issues:

The country only has an acting Prime Minister and acting defense minister, meaning authority over border matters has effectively been handed to an aggrieved and wounded armed forces. “This is a dangerous recipe,” says Thitinan. “On one hand, you have the Thai Army in charge. On the other hand, you have Hun Sen, who is going to keep provoking things.”

In the meantime, "[t]he Thai Health Ministry on Friday said more than 58,000 have fled from villages to temporary shelters in four affected border provinces, while Cambodian authorities said more than 23,000 people have evacuated from areas near the border."

Young Men Are Less Democrat Than Any Other Age Bracket

This is interesting. David Strom, writing at Hot Air, reports on a recent Pew poll showing that 52% of men 18 - 29 are Republican or lean Republican versus only 34% that are Democrat or lean Democrat. This is almost the mirror image of women in the same age bracket. (While Gen X and Boomer men have a higher percentage of Republicans, they also have a higher percentage that are Democrats). The author notes:

The numbers look really bad for Democrats, no matter how you slice and dice them. While many national polls show Trump's popularity cratering--Gallup shows him grossly underwater--Republicans seem to be making progress based largely on the fact that Democrats are repulsive to many people.    

The author also points out: "As women have taken the lead in college attendance, pay, and all sorts of measures of well-being, they have grown to despise men more and more. And the male backlash just keeps growing." He has a lot more to say about this ideological split between the sexes, so read the whole thing.

The Birth Dearth Continues

Vox Day takes note of China's continued population decline due to a shrinking birth rate. Although the article he cites apparently does not have the actual birth rates, it focuses on a proxy: the number of children entering kindergarten, which "have declined by 12mn children between 2020 and 2024" and the number of kindergarten schools, which "has also fallen by 41,500 from a high of nearly 295,000 in 2021." Vox notes that the Chinese government is (finally) taking steps to try and reverse this course by making it more difficult for couples to divorce. However, that won't be enough. As I've mentioned before, declining birthrates are linked to women's education--the better educated women are, overall, the less likely are they to have children. Thus, Vox suggests, "if the birth rates don’t turn around quickly, China is going to start cracking down hard on permitting young women to pursue higher education, given that education has proven to be the most efficient way to render women barren."

    While there is definitely a correlations between education and declining birthrates, I doubt that even forbidding women from higher education will do much to increase birthrates (although it would probably do wonders for increasing marriage rates) because it doesn't effect the basic issue of children being a luxury, and a particularly unaffordable one when living in high density urban areas. When children are a luxury, the only people that will have them are the well-off and those particularly committed to having children; which is why, in industrialized countries, we see the highest birthrates in the strongly religious communities. 

    The United States is not immune to this either. As I noted the other day, if the U.S. were to halt all immigration, its population would decline by 2100 to levels not seen since the 1980s. Zero Hedge reports today that the U.S. birth rates have hit an all time low. It relates:

    The fertility rate among females aged 15 to 44, on the other hand, declined by 1 percent in 2024 to 53.8 births per 1,000.

    That’s down from 64.7 births per 1,000 females in that age group in 2010 and 118 per 1,000 females in the population in 1960.

    The new fertility rate is the lowest on record, sinking from the previous low of 54.5 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 44 in 2023.

    It equals less than 1.6 children per female of childbearing age. Worldwide, the fertility rate is 2.2 children per female, according to the World Bank. 

The article notes a new law providing $1,000 accounts for newborns, but that pittance will do nothing for birth rates. Other countries have tried even larger subsidies to no avail. 

VIDEO: Buffalo Cartridges

The Chambered in History YouTube channel covers some of the big Sharp's buffalo cartridges. Winchester later produced cartridges that were about the same size and power, but I expect the host of this channel will get to those soon.  

VIDEO: "The Sharps Big 50’s: 50-90, 50-100, And 50-110"
Chambered In History (25 min.)

Gun & Prepping News #39

Just some gun and prepping related links that I thought interesting or useful: 

•  First up, Greg Ellifritz's most recent Weekend Knowledge Dump. Articles on such diverse topics as old time advice on gripping a handgun that is still applicable today, the best scope magnifications for hunting (which obviously depends on environment), some good advice on "the gray man" concept, a report that Antifa is starting to check the IDs of people showing up at their protests, understanding the mindset of criminals, and more. Here is a little nugget of wisdom the mindset article:

Unlike many of us whose lives are governed by laws, ethics and empathy, criminals often grow up in an entirely different moral ecosystem—where violence is normalized, manipulation is survival, and victim selection is a tradecraft.

• Magic Prepper has a new video up where he apologizes for having recommended--even pushed--the Sig P320 as a prepper handgun given the release of the FBI report and death of an airman from an uncommanded discharge. My initial thought watching the video is "why should he apologize, he didn't know." There was a warning: the drop safe issue when the P320 first released which Sig was forced to by the military to correct, but to which Sig never admitted anything being wrong. Perhaps its no longer taught in marketing classes, but back when I was in collage, Johnson & Johnson's response to the Tylenol poisonings in the early 1980s was used as an example of how to correctly react to a product issue (see, e.g., this case study). But the gist is that after several people died from consuming cyanide laced Tylenol capsules, Johnson & Johnson not only told the public to immediately stop using Tylenol until the matter could be investigated, but quickly issued a recall for all of its products. As the case study notes: "By withdrawing all Tylenol, even though there was little chance of discovering more cyanide laced tablets [sic--capsules]; Johnson & Johnson showed that they were not willing to take a risk with the public's safety, even if it cost the company millions of dollars." Sig has done the opposite, both initially and with the latest issues.
• Apparently knowing of my fondness for the Beretta 84 pistol, a reader sent me this link: "Travis Pike’s Review of the Beretta 80X .380." Pike's video review is embedded at the link. This line sort of sums up his opinion: "It's an Italian sports car in a field of Honda Civics."
• "ONLY ACCURATE (REVOLVERS) ARE INTERESTING…"--Civilian Defender. The article is mostly a comparison of the accuracy he was able to achieve with a handful of revolvers commonly used by police back in the day. But the subject was prompted by his decision to enter a shooting competition:

I recently entered a weekly pistol league at my local gun range. I decided to enter the revolver division, since I enjoy revolvers, and also because the competition is good, but the pool isn’t necessarily as deep as the more-common semi-automatic pistol division. I also believe that if you are a competent revolver shooter, you are probably competent with most any self-loading pistol, whether it is striker-fired, double action-single action or double action only of course.  ...

•  "Dragon’s Breath Shotgun Ammo: Cool as Hell, But Not for Everyone"--The Truth About Guns. An overview of the Dragon's Breath ammo and some considerations if you have ever been tempted to try it out. If you are not familiar with Dragon's Breath ammo, it is a boutique incendiary shotgun ammo that spews out burning magnesium powder or pellets. There are tons of videos of it on the internet if you want to see what it is capable of. It is, nevertheless, a novelty round and not something for serious self defense. Because of the high potential to start a fire, it is illegal in several states, which the article discusses. It may also be illegal to use in smaller jurisdictions or on public land. For instance, it would be prohibited under the BLM fire protection order in place here in Idaho. 
• "Preview: Wyoming Sight Drifter"--American Rifleman. From the article:

    Adjusting the fit of iron sights in their dovetails typically requires complex jigs or a hammer, punch and gun cradle, which can be awkward to handle or take to the range. The Wyoming Sight Drifter helps avoid such complications and is not much larger than a common ink pen.

    The ingenious design uses a simple extension spring attached to steel sections that feature finger grooves and end pieces of nylon and brass. Simply hold either end against the side of a dovetailed sight with one hand and use the other hand to momentarily pull up on the spring, then let go. Once the stored kinetic energy is released, the two steel sections will collide, impacting the end in contact with the sight and drifting it. The force is easily controlled by how far the spring is stretched, and the nylon and brass are non-marring. 

•  "The Soulis Incident, and the Myth of Center Mass"--Tactical Anatomy Systems. Some lessons from a gunfight between a police officer and a criminal. From the article:

To summarize: bad guy in a car, cop decided he was a suspicious person and went to investigate; stuff went sideways, lots of shots were fired, cop was hit 3-4 times, bad guy was hit 22 (Twenty-Two) times with 40 caliber bullets and eventually succumbed. 

Also:

    ... Saying “Center Mass” sounds cool… it has the sound of the expert about it, I guess. But these terms are ANYthing but meaningful. They are not clearly defined, not clearly understood, and the result of this is that good people are getting injured and killed.

    That’s right, I said it: if you persist in teaching your people to shoot “center mass”, YOU are contributing to a training scar that is going to get good cops/armed citizens KILLED.  

 * * *

    Center Mass isn’t a place, or an anatomic structure, or a physiological zone of incapacitation. Center Mass is a bullshit police trainer term that means nothing more than “shoot them somewhere in the middle”. People use it to sound cool, like they know what they’re talking about, like they’re experts. It’s not just a bullshit term, folks: it’s a term better suited to use by posers than by actual trainers. 

•  "The Deadliest Marksman’s Cold, Brave Stand"--Narratively (via Get Pocket). An article about Simo Häyhä, the famous Finnish sniper that fought against the Soviets. Somewhat like Carlos Hathcock, his serious injury was the result of being pulled from his element and doing regular soldier work. For Hathcock, it was going on a mechanized patrol which was ambushed. For Häyhä, it was part of a squad counterattacking against the Russians. 

... After the Russians had been pushed back for a time, they reemerged with a furious charge. A shot rang out, and suddenly Häyhä was on the ground, bleeding profusely from his face, the grisly victim of an exploding bullet that had been banned by most nations. According to one account of the battle, while unconscious, with his left upper jaw blown away completely and his left lower jaw cut in two, Häyhä was placed in a pile of bodies killed in action. Later, a fellow soldier, looking for Häyhä on orders from his commanding officer, noticed a leg twitching among the grim grouping. So began Häyhä’s 14-month-long recovery from the wound that, even after 26 surgeries, would leave his face disfigured for life.  

• "Upgrading The AK Rifle: A Critical View" (Part 1) (Part 2)--The Firearm Blog. Part 1 is somewhat disappointing. It ostensibly covers upgrades for ergonomics and the technical capabilities of the rifle, but it just lists some upgrades without any real discussion and recommends that such upgrades be done by your unit's armorer and recorded. Part 2 covers sighting systems and lights. While there are no specific recommendations, he does cover some issues with lights (barrel shadow and cable management) and a couple issues that can arise with sight mounts.
• "A Common Weakness: One-Handed Shooting"--Shooting Illustrated. This article discusses why you should practice one handed shooting, but doesn't discuss any techniques. Since one handed shooting was the default technique prior to the popularization of two-handed techniques in the 1960s and '70s, this is where going back to older books and articles could prove useful. Having done a bit of fencing, I like shooting one handed in a fencing stance, the body bladed toward the target. But this is a poor position if you are using body armor because you are presenting an unarmored part of the body toward the target.
• "Police Use of Face Recognition Continues to Wrack Up Real-World Harms"--Electronic Frontier Foundation. The article discusses the problem of "police claim to use FRT just as an investigatory lead, but in practice officers routinely ignore protocol and immediately arrest the most likely match spit out by the computer without first doing their own investigation" leading to mistaken arrests. 
• "The Ancient Persian Way to Keep Cool"--BBC Future (via Get Pocket).  A look at a Persian architectural feature called the wind catcher, or bâdgir in Persian, an open tower or projection rising above the main part of a building. The article explains:

There are two main forces that drive the air through and down into the structures: the incoming wind and the change in buoyancy of air depending on temperature – with warmer air tending to rise above cooler, denser air. First, as air is caught by the opening of a wind catcher, it is funneled down to the dwelling below, depositing any sand or debris at the foot of the tower. Then the air flows throughout the interior of the building, sometimes over subterranean pools of water for further cooling. Eventually, warmed air will rise and leave the building through another tower or opening, aided by the pressure within the building.  

A Study In Politics

The Daily Mail reports: "Rings of steel placed around Canary Wharf and Epping asylum seeker hotels after second night of anti-migrant protests outside four-star venue." Basically, the story is about police erecting barricades around a former luxury hotel--The Britannia International Hotel in London's Canary Wharf--which has been turned into a shelter for migrants. What touched off the protests is a planned shift from sheltering migrant families at the hotel to sheltering single male migrants. The article relates:

    Guards kitted out in black uniforms and wearing face masks were seen manning the barriers this morning, as security was tightened. 

    Meanwhile, more than a dozen officers from the Metropolitan Police have gathered outside the building. 

    The heightened protective measures come amid fresh fears of further protests exploding tomorrow and over the weekend.  

Why would police expect protests "exploding" Friday and over the weekend? Perhaps the same way that they expected protests in Epping, Essex, to turn violent: their bussing in the counter-protestors (See, e.g., "Police take pro-migrant protesters to asylum hotel"--The Telegraph). The police, and by extension, their bosses in government, want these protests to turn violent. Why? I don't know, but I would expect that it is so they can portray anyone opposing open borders as unhinged. So the news can broadcast footage of moms and dads being dragged off to jail as a warning to anyone else that opposes their immigration plans. And, perhaps, as an excuse to further crack down on any expression of discontent among the populace. What they don't want is for these protests to spread.  

Bombs & Bants #161

 Speaking truth to power....

 VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Episode 161" (54 min.)

Gunsite Has Banned the Sig P320

The Tactical Wire reports that Gunsite has banned students from using the Sig P320 in classes, except for law enforcement and military personnel where it is their issued weapon. And, even in those cases, they are discouraging students from using it.

Gates of Vienna Back Up And Running

The Baron explains it all in "Five Days in Cyber-Limbo." Following up on the topic of foreign tech workers, I found this part of his discussion educational (bold added):

    Most of the time I had to talk to representatives in India or Bangladesh, with those thick Bengali accents that are so hard to understand. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I got to talk to an American. And the Hispanics were OK — their English was very good, with just that mild south-of-the-border accent that we’re all used to, and they seemed knowledgeable and intelligent. But mostly I had to talk to Bangladesh.

    During the last such call, I put the representative on notice that if the site wasn’t back up today, I would demand that the ticket be escalated so that I could talk to someone whose native language was English, and who could really fix the problem. Thank the Lord, that didn’t become necessary, and I think I may finally be out of Tech Support Hell.  

It helps your customer service if the tech support is from a country that doesn't define "merit" as cheating better than the other students and whose primary qualification is more than just being the manager's cousin. 

How The Government Decides Health And Nutrition Guidelines

In "LBJ Fights Inflation One Egg At A Time" (2011) it relates (bold added):

Shoe prices went up, so LBJ slapped export controls on hides to increase the supply of leather. Reports that color television sets would sell at high prices came across the wire. Johnson told me to ask RCA's David Sarnoff [RCA was then a major TV manufacturer] to hold them down. Domestic lamb prices rose. LBJ directed [Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara to buy cheaper lamb from New Zealand for the troops in Vietnam. ... When egg prices rose in the spring of 1966 and Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman told him that not much could be done, Johnson had the Surgeon General issue alerts as to the hazards of cholesterol in eggs.  

It was a lie, of course, because it was politics not science: "New study vindicates eggs, says they don't hike bad-cholesterol levels"--UPI. 

(H/t Instapundit). 

Wilder: Cast Over Competance

John Wilder's latest, "Caste Over Competence: Globalism Is Economic Suicide," explains how selling off manufacturing and jobs to China and importing workers from India has destroyed this country and its prosperity. As John notes:

This [the chasing of the lowest cost labor] is a strategy for hollowing out the West’s economy, stripping our skills, and handing our jobs to foreigners who don’t play by our rules at all, transforming our country into Albania on the Atlantic.  Globalism is not just bad economics, it’s a betrayal of the West.  And politicians love it. 

Read the whole thing. 

Related: 

• "Data on How America Sold Out its Computer Science Graduates"--Kevin Lynn. At the same time as large corporations claim they need foreign programmers because of a shortage of American graduates, unemployment among programmers and computer science majors is well above the national unemployment rate. If you want to know why the unemployment rate among computer professionals is so high (bold in original):

In 2023, American colleges graduated 134,153 citizens or green card holders with bachelor's or master's degrees in computer science. That same year, our federal government handed out work permits to at least 110,098 foreign workers in computer occupations through just three major guest worker programs. That's equal to 82% of our graduating class who are guaranteed jobs even before any Americans walk across the stage for their diploma. 

As the author points out, "[t]his isn't competition. This is systematic displacement, dressed up in the language of diversity and global talent acquisition. And it's destroying the future we promised our own students." And our own kids. 

• "Data on Why American Engineering Graduates Are Losing Ground"--Kevin Lynn. Although not quite as bad as the situation for those with degrees in computer science, the outlook for engineering majors is not so good, with unemployment up and wages down. Lynn notes (bold in original): "In 2023, while America graduated 137,237 citizen engineers with bachelor's or master's degrees, the federal government simultaneously approved at least 33,836 foreign guest workers with engineering backgrounds through just three major guest worker programs."

• "US signals intention to rethink job H-1B lottery"--The Register. Will this help? I don't know. From the article:

    The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) intend to reevaluate how H-1B visas are issued, according to a regulatory filing.

    The notice, filed on Thursday with the US Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), seeks the statutory review of a proposed rule titled "Weighted Selection Process for Registrants and Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions."

    Once the review is complete, which could be a matter of days or weeks, the text of the rule is expected to be published in the US Federal Register.

    Based on the rule title, it appears the government intends to change the system for allocating H-1B visas the current lottery to some system that will favor applicants who meet specified criteria, possibly related to skills. 

The should just shut down the whole H1B program.  

• "Did Microsoft Outsource DoD Data To China?"--Battle Swarm Blog. Yes, yes they did. 
• "Microsoft’s Use Of China-Based Engineers Could Be Leaving Pentagon Tech Exposed To Hackers"--Daily Caller.  

Let Them Eat Nutraloaf

Outkick reports that the illegal aliens being detained in the Alligator Alcatraz are complaining about their ham sandwiches not being served on toasted bread. Perhaps they would prefer nutraloaf.

This Is The Dumbest Thing Ever

Rich Lowry, writing at the New York Post, argues that Epstein could not have been a Mossad asset because "[c]learly, it would risk an enormous black eye for the state of Israel to connect itself to a known sex offender whose lifestyle was a flamboyant and ongoing crime scene." Almost as big of a black eye if Israel employed a spy to steal the National Security Agency's ten-volume manual on how the U.S. gathers its signal intelligence, and disclosed the names of thousands of people who had cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies; blackmailed President Clinton into releasing the aforementioned spy from prison; used influential Jewish entrepreneurs to spy on the U.S.;  and established an espionage network in the U.S. (including the "dancing Jews" that were briefly investigated after the 9/11 attacks and subsequently fled back to Israel). Moreover, there are witnesses that say otherwise. In addition to the allegation that the U.S. Attorney in Florida giving Epstein a plea deal because Epstein was with intelligence, Wikipedia notes (footnotes omitted):

The US journalists Dylan Howard, Melissa Cronin and James Robertson linked the Mossad to American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in their book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales. They relied for the most part on the former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe. According to him, Epstein's activities as a spy served to gather compromising material on powerful people in order to blackmail them. There is also a possible connection to the Mossad via Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father Robert Maxwell is said to have had contacts with the Mossad. Epstein's victim Virginia Giuffre also alleged Epstein to be an intelligence asset, linking on Twitter to a Reddit page, that alleged Epstein being a spy, running a blackmail operation.   

No, Epstein's flamboyant lifestyle made him a good candidate to use as a spy. His life as an "ongoing crime scene" merely turned him into a liability should he decide to talk in order to avoid prosecution. Unfortunately we will probably never know: Epstein is dead and it is very likely that incriminating documents and video have been destroyed or dropped into an even bigger black hole. 

VIDEO: Review Of The Baofeng DM32 DMR Ham Radio for SHTF

A review of the Baofeng DM32 DMR portable radio. The video mentions that Brushbeater was having a sale on these radios, but the video description now indicates that Brushbeater is completely sold out. While not as low of a price, Amazon nevertheless is offering them for 23% off the MSRP, bringing them down to $85 apiece. The review covers the items included with the radio, and goes over the features of the radio. He notes that "this radio has more features and more options than any other low cost consumer radio that I have ever tested" and comes close to what the Motorola XTS can do. He notes that the radio is unlocked, meaning it "can transmit on some of the hams radios frequencies as well as on GMRS, MRS and LMR frequencies." It can also receive commercial FM radio, AM airband from 108 to 136 my gigahertz, VHF 136 to 174 and 220 to 260 gigahertz, UHF 350 to 390 and 400 to 520 gigahertz and NOAA weather alerts. Notably, per the review, the digital broadcasting offers encryption. 

VIDEO: "I Review The Baofeng DM32 DMR Ham Radio for SHTF"
NotaRubicon Productions (18 min.)

Air Force's Global Strike Command Pulls Sig Pistols After Death

Another incident of what appears to be an uncommanded discharge involving an M18 pistol, the military version of the Sig P320. The Warzone (via Yahoo) reports that "U.S. Air Force’s Global Strike Command (AFGSC) has ordered an indefinite 'pause' in the use of M18 pistols following a recent fatal incident at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming" while an investigation is conducted.

“Air Force Global Strike Command has paused use of the M18 Modular Handgun System, effective July 21, 2025, until further notice,” AFGSC spokesperson Charles “Moose” Hoffman has now confirmed to TWZ. “This decision was made following a tragic incident at F.E. Warren AFB, WY, on July 20, 2025, which resulted in the death of a Security Forces Airman.” 

Although unconfirmed, it is believed that "the airman assigned to the 90th Security Forces Squadron died after their M18 went off without the trigger being pulled. The individual in question is claimed to have removed the pistol, still in its holster, from their belt and put it on a table before it went off." The article also mentions that, based on this incident, U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) may also be considering withdrawing the M18, although this, too, is unconfirmed. Security airmen will be issued M4s in the interim. 

    This is reminiscent of Remington having to recall millions of rifles due to a possible trigger issue that could result in the rifle discharging without the trigger being pulled. 

    The recall notice specifies that the culprit is the Remington trigger assembly known as the X-Mark Pro. It turns out that the X-Mark Pro triggers assembled between May 1, 2006 and April 9, 2014 could have been put together with too much bonding agent, according to Remington. Owners have reported that the gun can fire when switching the gun’s safety on or off.  

* * *

    ... Owners claimed that built-up grease or grit could push the trigger connector out of alignment, causing the sear to get stuck in the firing position. This means that the trigger itself was bypassed altogether, causing the gun to go off as soon as the safety was switched off.

Remington had long denied that there were any problems with the trigger, but was forced into recalling the firearms after losing a class action lawsuit. 

The Spectre of Secession In Canada

Alberta, and to a lesser extent, Saskatchewan, appear to be moving closer to a political split with Canada. The first concrete sign of this is a recent memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan to build new energy and trade infrastructure, including a new oil pipeline, independent of the Canadian government. Although media reports are couching the agreement in terms of the three provinces freeing themselves of dependence on the U.S. for exports, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had strong words for the Canadian Prime Minister:

    Smith called upon the federal government and Carney to remove “federal barriers” for pipelines, rail lines and other infrastructure projects. The Alberta premier listed Bill C-69, the oil and gas emissions cap, the tanker ban, the net-zero vehicle and net-zero electricity mandates.

    “Removing these anti-resource, anti-development laws will allow Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario to attract the investment and project partners we need to get shovels in the ground, grow industries and create jobs,” said Smith.    

Smith separately stated in an interview that if Alberta can't work with Canada's federal government it will have to work with the U.S.; at the same time as support within Alberta for secession from Canada grows (see the video, below).  

VIDEO: "Alberta Just Announced Its Intent To Become The 51st US State!"
Canadian Reporter (12 min.)

The Ghost and the Darkness and .303

The Ghost and the Darkness is a 1996 movie starring  Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. It is ostensibly the story of John Patterson (played by Kilmar)--an engineer sent to design and oversee the construction of a railroad bridge in 1898 over the Tsavo River in what is today Kenya--and his efforts to hunt and kill a pair of man-eating lions that were feeding on the workers. The movie was good and, since I first saw it, I had been interested in tracking down Patterson's book. 

    A couple months ago I watched the movie again and afterward found that his book was available for the Kindle. Notwithstanding the title, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, the book actually covers much more of Patterson's experiences in East Africa while working on the Uganda-Mombasa railway than just the story of the two-lions. The story of the two man-eaters is only about the first third of the book and, unsurprisingly, very different from the movie. The movie, in fact, is pretty much fiction. The lions were a problem--according to Patterson they took and killed pretty much one worker a day during the times they were around the work crews--but labor disputes threatened the project more than the lion attacks. 

    The movie character Charles Remington (played by Douglas) was apparently made up whole cloth. The railroad financier that berates Patterson in the movie also makes no appearance in the book--it appears that Patterson had no issues with higher-ups. 

    Other events portrayed in the movie are sensationalized or taken from events that occurred after the two lions were killed. For instance, one of the creepier scenes in the movie is when Patterson and Remington, while attempting to track the lions, stumble across a cave used by the lions as a den or shelter. In the book, Patterson did stumble across the lions' cave, but this was by accident and after the two lions had been killed. He did note that it was filled with many human bones--apparently bodies that the lions had dragged back to the cave to consume, some still with native jewelry on the bones. 

     While the movie was intended to be a somewhat creepy, disturbing story, the book was quite different in tone. It is obvious from the book that Patterson had two great loves: engineering and big game hunting. The book is mostly about the latter--and Patterson seems to hunt almost all of the dangerous game Africa has to offer--but offers descriptions and mention of his work designing and overseeing construction. And it is a type of travelogue as well, even ending with recommendations and advice (and prices) for someone wanting to travel to East Africa to hunt big game.  

    As a firearms aficionado, I was interested in the weapons used by Patterson, his compatriots, and the African and Indian workers and assistants. My biggest surprise is that, other than a couple occasions when he borrowed a larger double rifle or made use of a shotgun, almost all of his hunting--including the lion hunting--was done with a .303 Enfield bolt-action rifle.  I've read of other hunters of that era using smaller, high velocity calibers, but I was nevertheless surprised. 

    Patterson's willingness to use the smaller bore rifle also seems to fit into his character and the general attitude at the time (at least in East Africa): danger and risk seemed to be welcome and even a source of humor, and death and injury was too common to mourn or obsess about.  

    Anyway, if you've seen The Ghost and the Darkness or like books on big game hunting, the British Colonial period in Africa, or just a good memoir, I think you would enjoy Patterson's book.  

This Again? Revisionist Speak Out Against the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Next month will mark the 80th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. And just has happened ten years ago on the 70th Anniversary, there are those that will maintain that the bombings were unnecessary and cruel. One that I've already come across is a piece by Robert Billard at the Brownstone Institute entitled "Hiroshima at 80: Setting the Abhorrent Precedent," in which he concludes:

It is difficult to put into words the weight that atomic warfare brought to the conclusion of the Second World War. It served as a horrifying and needless bookend to the worst catastrophe in the history of mankind. Senior leaders of the day recognized that in the dying embers of WWII, such weaponry was reckless and not needed to secure victory. Japan no longer had a functional navy or air force. Its army was depleted and demoralized after over a decade of war. Many of its senior political leaders were ready to end the war, and only sought minimal face-saving measures to do so. When viewed through the lens of nearly a century of clarity, it is hard to come away from any conclusion other than that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cruel signaling tools, with hundreds of thousands of innocent souls placed squarely in their experimental crosshairs. 

It is amazing that anyone still peddles these lies and half-truths, but here we are a decade on since the last set of this revisionist propaganda and the same tired arguments are still floating around like the little turd in a public toilet that refuses to be flushed down.  

    Billard begins his op-ed with the assertion that Truman's post-bombing justification that "Operation Downfall"--the invasion of Japan--would have cost over a million U.S. casualties was unsupported and that there was "no pre-Hiroshima literature can be found that would back up these claims." Perhaps the specific claim of 1,000,000 casualties was unsupported, but it was obvious that the U.S. expected substantial casualties prior to the bombing. For instance, Michael Barnes, in his paper "Arguments Supporting the Bomb" observes: "A sobering indicator of the government’s expectations is that 500,000 Purple Heart medals (awarded for combat-related wounds) were manufactured in preparation for Operation Downfall." And he also points to various pre-bombing studies predicting American casualties between 1 and 2 million, and deaths in the hundreds of thousands including "[o]ne by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April 1945 resulted in an estimate of 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities." In "Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Correcting the Record" published at Real Clear Defense, the authors relate that "the Navy Department estimated America casualties at 1.7-4 million with 400,000-800,000 deaths." So while there may have been no estimates specifically saying there would be 1 million casualties, there were estimates that the number of casualties would be greater! 

    Billard next contends that senior military leadership, including luminaries such as General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz believed the bombing was unnecessary, including quotes or partial quotes from each. However, when going to his source ("The Atomic Bombings" by Ian W. Toll) Billard seems to have lost the nuance and otherwise obfuscated the issue of whether these generals and admirals were truly opposed to the bombing. Reading through the quotes more carefully, we see a couple leaders who believed it was unnecessary because, they incorrectly believed, the war in the Pacific had already been won (Leahy and Eisenhower), that the decision to drop the weapon was made by political leaders (Nimitz), or wary of the power of such weapons (MacArthur). One of the quotes, from John J. McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, doesn't even argue against the bomb, but only that the U.S. should warn the Japanese about the weapon before using it. 

    Billard's final argument is that the Japanese were ready to surrender and just needed a face saving means to do so. This is not supported either by the resistance shown in the battles most recently fought before the bombings (e.g., the battle for Okinawa where both the Japanese military and civilians fought the Americans) or the internal records of deliberation among the Japanese leadership. As the Real Clear Defense article mentions:

 Revisionists also regularly take the communications from internal Japanese debates—late in the war—cherry pick a sentence or two and suggest that a final decision to surrender was made in months before the bombs were dropped. In fact, after the bombing of Hiroshima, the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War had a majority of its members who favored continuing the fight. It was only after the bombing of Nagasaki that Emperor Hirohito made the decision to capitulate. Even then, young army officers tried to overthrow the government and continue fighting.  

Barnes also notes in his paper "even after the first two bombs were dropped, and the Russians had declared war, the Japanese still almost did not surrender." Barnes further contends that it was the bombings that gave the Japanese leadership the face saving means to surrender: 

In the end, the military leaders accepted surrender partly because of the Emperor’s intervention, and partly because the atomic bomb helped them “save face” by rationalizing that they had not been defeated by because of a lack of spiritual power or strategic decisions, but by science. In other words, the Japanese military hadn’t lost the war, Japanese science did. 

    But in considering Billard's arguments (and the similar arguments made by others) we should also consider the unstated proposition. Some of you may already be familiar with this concept from reading Mark Twain's story entitled "The War Prayer". In that story, on the eve a great war, a minister prays for the safety and success of the troops; and, after his prayer is concluded, a stranger approaches the pulpit and utters the heretofore unspoken prayer of death, destruction and misery upon the enemy. So too, we must recognize what is the unspoken argument advanced by Billard: that it would have been better to sacrifice millions of lives in bloody combat than to have used the atomic bombs. Paul Fussel points this out succinctly in his August 1981 essay in the New Republic entitled "Thank God for the Atom Bomb."

“What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?” The recruiting poster deserves ridicule and contempt, of course, but here its question is embarrassingly relevant, and the problem is one that touches on the dirty little secret of social class in America. Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was “wrong” seem to be implying “that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs.” People holding such views, he notes, “do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots.” And there’s an eloquence problem: most of those with firsthand experience of the war at its worst were not elaborately educated people. Relatively inarticulate, most have remained silent about what they know. That is, few of those destined to be blown to pieces if the main Japanese islands had been invaded went on to become our most effective men of letters or impressive ethical theorists or professors of contemporary history or of international law. ...

In other words, Billard's argument rests on a contempt for the common soldier, Marine, seaman, or airman--the people that would be doing the bleeding and dying--and, by extension, the common people. In the end, Billard is revealed as nothing more than an elitist prick. 

Prior posts: "70th Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima" 

Will Native British Become A Minority In Their Own Country?

 That's the question raised by David Ben-Basat in an op-ed published in the Jerusalem Post. He begins:

    In one of the most provocative speeches heard in the British Parliament in recent years, MP Andrew Bridgen claimed that “over the past 100 years, approximately 250,000 women and girls have been raped in Britain, with 90% of the perpetrators being Muslim.”

    His remarks triggered an immediate uproar, but also ignited a deeper debate about immigration failures, the silencing of issues in the name of political correctness, and the influence of ideologically driven minority groups on British governance.

    The harrowing revelations from Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and other cities – where thousands of girls were sexually exploited by organized gangs, some of Pakistani-Muslim descent – exposed a particularly dark chapter. Official reports confirmed that local authorities failed to intervene for fear of being labeled racist. This wasn’t ignorance, but institutional fear.

Fear, or a growing sign of the political clout wielded by Muslims in the UK? 

    While it is common for preppers to focus on natural disasters, disease, economic collapse, or nuclear war, when deciding how to prepare for SHTF this is not how most cultures or peoples disappeared historically. Instead, most cultures or peoples disappear because they are invaded (quickly through war or more slowly through migration) and replaced. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire very obviously fell to the Muslim conquests, even if it tenaciously held on to some minimal territory into the 15th Century. And whatever its other problems, one of the key issues faced by the Western Roman Empire was the migration from various outside tribes and groups. As historian Peter Heather observes:

However you line up the different factors involved, there’s no doubt that immigration played a major role in the unraveling of the western half of the Roman imperial system. By the end of the fifth century AD, from Anglo-Saxons north of the Channel to Vandals and Alans in North Africa, the vast majority of the ex-western imperial landmass was ruled by dynasts at the head of warrior groupings who had lived outside its borders when the century began. ...

While Heather thinks modern migration is not so bad because of (supposedly) positive economic benefits--including the all important purpose of obtaining new workers to support retirees on public pensions--that doesn't change the fact that one people is being replaced by another, even if the borders remain the same and the water of the metaphorical pot is only slowly being brought to a boil. 

    It is telling that a review by Dr. Thomas Patrick Burke of Heather's book on immigration and the Roman Empire points out Rome had always generally been open to immigration so long as the immigrants assimilated, including having "to disperse throughout the empire’s territory and not insist on remaining in their own groups or maintaining their own culture, but adopt Roman ways of living," but that this broke down in the 5th Century:

Armies were sent to the Middle East to counter a hostile, newly invigorated Persia, leaving the West open.  The Germanic tribes were allowed in, but once inside the empire they were not assimilated but retained their cultural and political identities, eventually combining to form armies within its borders that the Romans could no longer overcome. 

This is where the West finds itself. The "armies" may be voting blocs and protestors rather than infantry, but the result will be the same. 

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold

I'm sure that you have seen the news stories of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard indicating that she was going to to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for falsifying an intelligence assessment to be used to undermine President Trump during his first term. As the Guardian sums up the matter:

    Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.

    She said Obama and senior officials in his administration had “[laid] the groundwork for … a years-long coup” against Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton by “manufacturing intelligence” to suggest that Russia had tried to influence the election. That included using a dossier prepared by a British intelligence analyst, Christopher Steele, that they knew to be unreliable, Gabbard claimed.

    The post-election intelligence estimates contrasted with findings reached before the election, which indicated that Russia probably was not trying to interfere, she claimed. 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a press release that has a succinct timeline of the key events. Essentially, however, prior to the 2016 election, the intelligence community was clear that there was no Russian interference in the election process. However, after Trump's win, on December 9, 2016, a meeting was held among key members of the National Security Council including, among others, James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe. 

After the meeting, DNI Clapper’s Executive Assistant sent an email to IC leaders tasking them with creating a new IC assessment “per the President’s request” that details the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” It went on to say, “ODNI will lead this effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.” 

The press release also points out that "this new assessment was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured i.e. the Steele Dossier or deemed as not credible." 

This was politicized intelligence that was used as the basis for countless smears seeking to delegitimize President Trump’s victory, the years-long Mueller investigation, two Congressional impeachments, high level officials being investigated, arrested, and thrown in jail, heightened US-Russia tensions, and more. 

DNI Gabbard appeared on Fox News on Sunday (video here)  to discuss the findings. Key was this statement:

Creating this piece of manufactured intelligence that claims that Russia had helped Donald Trump get elected contradicted every other assessment that had been made previously in the months leading up to the election that said exactly the opposite, that Russia had neither the intent nor the capability to try to "hack the United States election." 

She also confirmed that multiple whistleblowers, including some who helped prepare the fraudulent assessment, are preparing to hand over affidavits to the Department of Justice.

    The Democrats, of course, are not going to take this sitting down as this is a far bigger scandal than Watergate. The Gateway Pundit reports that "Democrat Congressman Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, went into full-blown panic mode, demanding that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stop releasing documents that expose Obama-era Deep State collusion and abuse of power." Himes apparently went so far to justify his demand by claiming that it put former commie and CIA director John Brennan in danger from MAGA "mouth-breathers". I'm sure that Himes' derogatory reference to MAGA supporters was intended to generate the violence that he ostensibly decries, but secretly hopes will happen. 

    Trump, in the meantime, is having fun with it: he has released a video on Truth Social showing a bunch of top Democrats, including Obama and Biden, all stating that "no one is above the law" before ending with an AI generated video showing Obama being arrested and jailed, set to the song "YMCA". 

The Diversity Report #31

 A selection of articles and video showcasing the benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion: 

• Hear, hear: "America Is Not A ‘Nation Of Immigrants’"--The Federalist. In a repeat of the 1986 amnesty deal (which gave illegals amnesty but whose promised border security never materialized), a Republican--Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar--has proposed a bill that would provide amnesty for any illegals that have been in the U.S. for 5 or more years. And just as Reagan did in 1986, Salazar is spewing the old nonsense about the U.S. being a nation of immigrants. But the author of this piece, John Daniel Davidson, is having none of that:

This is wrong. We’re not a nation of immigrants, we’re a nation of settlers. The people who founded America came to settle it, and settle it they did. They were not immigrating to an established nation, they were forging a nation out of a vast, largely unpopulated wilderness. Those who came after, in subsequent waves throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most often pushed west, further into the wilderness, expanding the frontier of our nation and settling it along the way. Indeed the phrase itself, “nation of immigrants,” is nonsense. Immigrants by definition don’t create a nation, they become part of an established nation by assimilating into it.

• Wealthy elites most butt-hurt: "Bloomberg: ‘Golden Age’ of Mass Migration Ends for Business"--Breitbart.  Quoting from the Bloomberg article:

For as long as most of us can remember, business has been able to call on a ready supply of foreign workers. The giants of Silicon Valley, farmers and food processors, hotels and restaurants, housebuilders and megastores: All have dealt with labor shortages by recruiting immigrants. One result has been an astonishing demographic transformation: 16% of the British population, 20% of the Swedish population, 19% of the German population and 14.3% of the US population were born abroad. 

"Labor shortages" my a**. It would be more accurate to state that they have successfully stagnated American wages for the past 50 years "by recruiting immigrants" and firing Americans. 

• "Illegals Have Been Stealing American Jobs for Decades—but One ‘Trick of the Trades’ Could Change Everything"--Revolver. From the article:

    Construction, agriculture, and food service were once the bedrock of our nation’s workforce. Today, these industries have been overtaken by a shadow labor force of undocumented workers who undercut wages. It is not that Americans refuse to do the work. Rather, they are pushed aside by a system that allows rampant fraud, fosters exploitative employment practices, and leaves honest citizens shouldering the burden. For too many Americans, especially those starting out or working in blue-collar jobs, the American Dream has been slipping out of reach.

    A key culprit is the widespread misuse of fraudulent Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TINs), which are intended to ensure that people working in the United States report income and pay taxes correctly. For years, previous administrations looked the other way as special interests benefited from this blatant fraud. The result has been stagnant wages and a workplace culture where the rule-following employee is at a disadvantage.

    Consider the construction industry, which was once a source of national pride. Skilled trades were passed from generation to generation. Now, these same industries frequently rely on a workforce that uses fake or stolen TINs or Social Security numbers, making it easy for unscrupulous employers to dodge taxes and skirt labor regulations. Meanwhile, Americans who want these jobs face language barriers, intimidation, and lowered wages. It is no wonder that our youth are discouraged from pursuing the trades when they see so few opportunities that offer a fair wage and basic protections. 

• No nation for white men: "Job Search - Part 6"--James M. A very personal look at how white men are discriminated against in the job market, locked out by "woke" female HR managers and administrators that know nothing about the jobs they are attempting to fill. 
• I'm sold: "With No Immigration, US Population Will Fall Over 30% by 2100"--Real Clear Politics. That would return the U.S. to population levels last seen in the 1980s. 
• "How ‘charities,’ funded by your tax dollars, helped break immigration law"--New York Post. An excerpt:

    When violent riots erupted across Los Angeles in defiance of President Trump’s efforts to enforce federal immigration law, the uprising was not as spontaneous as open-borders politicians would have you believe.

    Far-left non-governmental organizations, including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), helped provide transportation and services to those going to the protests in support of illegal immigration, many of which quickly devolved into brutal attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    As it turns out, CHIRLA received nearly $34 million in California state grants from June 2022 to June 2023.

    From October 2021 to September 2024, under the Biden-Harris administration, the group also received $450,000 in grants from the Department of Homeland Security.

    But this pattern of incentivizing lawless behavior at taxpayers’ expense isn’t an isolated case — it is an example of the extensive partnership of open-borders activists and their allies in the Biden-Harris administration, and Americans are still paying the cost.  

• Committing the cons that Americans won't: "Distraught family claimed beloved mom had been kidnapped by ICE...but now the sinister truth has emerged"--Daily Mail. Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon--an illegal immigrant from Mexico living in Los Angeles--was caught having faked her own abduction by ICE agents in order to raise money on GoFundMe. 

    [After the allegations surfaced] The DHS launched an investigation into the 'kidnapping,' during which they spent days looking for Calderon and even had ICE agents searching 'detention cell to detention cell,' officials said. 

    Ultimately, agents said they found Calderon in a shopping plaza parking lot in Bakersfield on July 5. She allegedly continued to insist that she had been kidnapped and held 'with others'. 

• "Illegal migrant, 15, gets probation and must go to school after killing Colorado rehab worker, 24, in high-speed crash"--New York Post.
• Doing the jobs Americans won't: "Cartel ‘sicarios’ crossed into US soil in murder-for-hire scheme, prosecutors say"--News Nation. Related to drug trafficking, of course.
• "Expert Highlights Illegal Alien Gang’s Threat to Rural Americans"--PJ Media. A look at a South American rival to the infamous Tren de Aragua gang known as Anti-Tren, which is distinguishing itself by being both more violent than TdA, but also setting up shop in rural areas.
• "Elite Economist Admits: Trump’s Deportations Push up Citizens’ Wages"--Breitbart. I would hope so since it is basic Econ 101 type stuff. 
• "Millions of Americans don’t speak English. Now they won’t be warned before weather disasters."--Grist. Complaining that the National Weather Service will be ending Spanish language weather warnings. 
• Then go home: "Minneapolis Mayoral Candidate Says Somalia Is His ‘Home’"--The Federalist. 
• This is the way: "Trump’s Deputies Use Medicaid Data to Help ICE Find Migrants"--Breitbart. As the article notes, "Millions of illegal migrants have shared their identities and addresses to use the taxpayer-funded Medicaid system, often via emergency rooms and state-funded clinics."
• "Justice Dept. Fines Company for Favoring Foreign Visa Workers Over Americans"--Breitbart. Per the article, the company is "H2A Complete II Inc., a Mississippi firm that specializes in funneling foreign H-2A visa workers to United States farms[.]"
• "'Love Island' revives conversation about racial bias in dating"--NBC News. NBC is shocked to discover that men prefer white women over black women when it comes to dating. Of course, no one calls out discrimination by women, such as the preference women have for taller men such that many (most?) will not consider a man less than 6' tall. [I'm sure you can appreciate the irony of this: "According to the dating app Badoo, the top keyword for men to get matches was '6ft' (perhaps surprisingly, for women, it was 'love')." So men look for love but women look for shallow physical characteristics].
• "New Yorker stabbed in neck by African migrants during Italian vacation: ‘It’s a playground for terror, for the vicious’"--New York Post. The Africans were robbing people on a commuter train--it sounds like the victim was stabbed for no other reason than his Arabic speaking attackers are vicious animals. 
• "German mayor says Syrian migrants groped, sexually harassed, young girls in pool due to warm weather"--American Thinker. "The men touched the [nine] young victims’ hair, thighs, and breasts while they were in the water," but the mayor of the town where it happened blamed the attack on the warm weather. I have to wonder if that mayor is unable to control his urges just because the weather gets warm? If not, why would he say that?
• "Migrant clashes erupt in northern France with rocks launched at riot cops and fires blazing in the street as police try to stop launch of small boat bound for Britain"--Daily Mail. This is what invaders do. 
• "Israeli settlers accused of killing 117 sheep in West Bank attack against Palestinian Bedouins"--Jerusalem Post. This is also what invaders do. 
• Why does the British government hate the British people? "Revealed after the Daily Mail's two-year battle against superinjunction, the Government's £7billion secret airlift as 18,500 Afghans are brought to Britain"--Daily Mail.
• "WTF Headline Of The Day: Convicted Pakistani Pedo Avoids Deportation From UK Because He's An Alcoholic"--Zero Hedge. 
• What happens when you let foreigners buy up critical manufacturing: "Britain becomes only G7 country unable to make new steel"--The Telegraph.

    British Steel has announced plans to close its two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, making Britain the only G7 country unable to manufacture its own steel.

    Jingye, the Chinese steel group that owns the plant, blamed Donald Trump as it announced plans to shut key operations, putting up to 2,700 jobs at risk. It said the “imposition of tariffs” had made the blast furnaces and steel making operations “no longer financially sustainable”. The closures signal the end of steel production in the UK after more than 150 years. 

• "The Enduring Relevance of Enoch Powell"--Eternal England. The piece posts a condensed version of Powell's "Enemy Within" speech from 1970. An excerpt:

    ... Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold, are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as "controversial", "extremist", "explosive", "disgraceful", and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends on preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

    The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions, being introduced into this country. If they do, they are "prejudiced", "racialist" "un-Christian", and "failing to show an example to the rest of the world". A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable, but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. 

    Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as "spouting the fantasies of racial purity" to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution, or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong, what they thought was real is unreal.

The Dishonesty Of The Left When It Comes To Birthright Citizenship

My example is a an article from Time Magazine entitled: "History Shows Why Birthright Citizenship is so Important". The gist of this article is that the purpose of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was to ensure that freed black slaves were considered American citizens, which is amply supported by the debates over the Amendment. But the article then suddenly asserts that import of the clause goes well beyond that goal. Specifically, the author asserts that the 14th Amendment "only made three exceptions to the ironclad guarantee of birthright citizenship: children born to foreign diplomats in the U.S., children born in U.S. territory occupied by enemy soldiers, and Native Americans." 

    This is, of course, a lie. The citizenship clause provides: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." There is no express exception for children of foreign diplomats, invaders, or American Indians, nor is the exception provided limited to only those three classes. Rather, those are recognized exceptions derived from the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" language because they were classes of persons still subject to the jurisdiction of other governments. As would be citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, or any other foreign country who for whatever reason, legal or illegal, found themselves upon American soil. The Time article tacitly recognizes this reasoning, because it explains that "[t]he exclusion of Indigenous people was out of deference to their citizenship in their own Native nations." 

Why The WSJ Ran The Trump/Epstein Story

The Wall Street Journal is breathlessly reporting that Trump wrote a note to Epstein for his (Epstein's) 50th Birthday which apparently included a hand drawn picture of a nude woman. This is before Epstein's run in with the law. Moreover, Trump has denied it was his and the Wall Street Journal has no independent verification of its authenticity. At least one pundit believes that Maurene Comey (James Comey's daughter, one of the attorneys that headed up the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell and who was just fired by the DOJ) is behind this story. But it is interesting that the WSJ article came out at the same time as the Trump Administration released a cache of documents showing that "the Obama Administration 'manufactured and politicized intelligence' to make it appear that Russia and criminal actors impacted the 2016 election." 

    So, is this just a case of sour grapes by James Comey's daughter? Intended to distract from "Russia, Russia, Russia" hoax? Both? Or something else?  

Feds Give Up Defending Pistol Brace Rule

Guns.com reports that the federal government has dropped all further appeals of a decision in Mock v Bondi where the court had overturned an ATF rule banning pistol braces, giving a win to gun owners. 

The Natives Are Getting Restive

The natives are getting restive, as they say. On July 12 a brand new Mosque in Piera, Catalonia, Spain, was burned to the ground. The quislings have come out to support the invaders, including a Catholic bishop that condemned the burning of the Mosque and offered church resources to assist the local Muslim community. Although I have been unable to statistics on the number of Christian churches attacked in Spain, it is notable that in January there were two arson attacks within just days of each other against the 15th-century Church of San Miguel in Jerez de la Frontera. And this was against a backdrop of an increasing number of attacks on Christian churches in Western Europe. This 2024 article, for instance, notes that according to a company that insures churches, there had been over 200 incidents of arson against churches in England in the prior 5 years; and in France "[t]here were 102 arson attacks on churches reported in the five years 2018-2022 classed as 'hate crimes', according to data from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which reveals that Christianity is usually the most targeted religion in France in any given year." So, one mosque versus probably hundreds of churches in Spain--it is pretty easy to see who is winning.

    While we are still on the subject of Spain, Paul Joseph Watson has a video about anti-immigrant protests in a small town in Spain where natives are tired of being afraid of going out at night because of migrant crime:

VIDEO: "They're Sick Of It" -- Paul Joseph Watson (8 min).

    Turning to the UK, several days ago, residents of a small British town, Epping, began protesting outside a hotel used to house migrants after a newly arrived illegal sexually assaulted young girls. (More recent articles indicate he has only been charged with assaulting a single girl). Those that support sex crimes being committed against children showed up to counterprotest, causing some violence to break out. But that was not enough to discourage locals from showing up again for a second protest. This time, as the video below shows, the police resorted to running over protestors with police vans and have otherwise brutalized the locals protesting the crimes. Nevertheless, in true Orwellian fashion, the media is reporting the incident as police being attacked by protestors; e.g. "Officers attacked at hotel protest, say police" (BBC), "Epping protest: Police hunt thugs after officers injured amid violent scenes outside migrant hotel" (London Evening Standard). The latter article notes that police are already combing through security footage to identify people to arrest. No doubt cell phone records will also be used. 

VIDEO: "Furious UK locals clash with police after asylum seeker charged with sexual assault of schoolgirl"--Sky News Australia (4 min.)

VIDEO: What Is A Pocket Pistol?

In this video, Paul Whaley (who writes for Primer Peak) discusses what is a pocket pistol, what characteristics he looks for in a pocket pistol he would use for concealed carry, and why a pocket pistol works so well in a non-permissive environment, even if you intend to carry somewhere other than the pocket. 

    I had recently written a bit about pocket pistols in my Gun & Prepping News #35, and I was glad to see Whaley mirror one of those comments: that just because you can stuff a gun in a pocket does not make it a pocket pistol. 

VIDEO: "What is a Pocket Pistol Anyway? (a Discussion of Small Handguns)"
Paul W. (9 min.)

What Trump Is Overlooking About The Epstein Records

 Miranda Devine authored an op-ed for the New York Post today on "How Trump can fix the Epstein mess that’s ripping his party apart." In it, she notes that "the Epstein scandal is symbolic of the absence of accountability for past crimes against the American people," but "[t]he president, who won in part by echoing deep distrust in the institutions and stoking legitimate grievances, hasn’t delivered heads on pikes." I think she is correct and that the President has grossly misread the room, so to speak, in believing that the Epstein controversy is unimportant. Moreover, MAGA did not back the President just to try and right the ship--they want revenge on those who persecuted and, in some cases, prosecuted them. But even some justice will suffice.

    It may be true that in the grand scheme of things--the border, expelling illegals, dealing with Russia, China, and Iran, trade negotiations, cutting the size of government, etc.--that the Epstein issue is but a minor distraction. But, if nothing else, it has a strong symbolic importance. Devine notes in her piece a Rasmussan poll showing that "[r]oughly two-thirds of every political category — 68% of Democrats, 66% of Republicans and 69% of unaffiliated voters — reject the idea that the Epstein case is closed and instead believe that there are dozens of powerful and wealthy offenders who need to face justice." So what is at issue here is government legitimacy. Not a trivial issue. 

    While we will always live in a society where there are different rules for the elites and the common people, legitimacy in a modern Democracy requires that the people at least believe that the elites are broadly subject to the same laws. Refusal to prosecute Epstein's clients (or visitors or whatever you want to call them) only emphasizes that the elites enjoy different rules. 

    Even worse for purposes of maintaining legitimacy, the failure to prosecute plays into the speculation that Epstein was an intelligence asset working for Mossad, the CIA, "Management" or some other organization, to collect blackmail on powerful people in government, finance, and industry in order to control them and, by extension, shape U.S. policy. Does Trump really want a super-majority of the American people wondering if Israel is controlling U.S. policy by blackmailing key figures? I don't know. Maybe he does.

    And who knows? Maybe the speculation is true and a proper investigation and prosecutions would free the United States from the clutches of tyrants?  

Bombs & Bants # 160 (Streamed 7/16/2025)

 In this latest Bombs & Bants, we discuss (of course) the Epstein list. Also, President Trump's first nomination for "Jackass of the Week" for his comments about people that want to see the list released (he lost to a commie from the National Education Association trying to whip up members in a Nuremberg style rally), and my "Two Minutes Of Guns In One Minute". Enjoy! 

 VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Episode 160" (55 min.)

Gun & Prepping News #38

 Just some gun and prepping related links that I thought interesting or useful: 

• First up, Jon Low has a new Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter. I'm still going through it so I don't have a list of articles or advice that especially piqued my attention, but at the top of the newsletter and in the email he sends out to subscribers, Jon linked to an article entitled "The Second Amendment:  Understanding The Militia Clause" by Alex Ooley. 
• For those that handload, or are interested in learning how to handload, RCBS has a "Reloading Hub" with various articles and tips on handloading ammunition.  
• "Seeing Red – Red Dot Drills to Master Your Pistol"--Ammo Land.  For those of you new to using a red dot on a handgun, Travis Pike has some drills to help you practice the transition; especially learning how to pick up the dot reticle when you first draw and present the firearm.
• And another drill, but for a group of people: "My Favorite Pressure Testing Drill"--Tactical Professor. 

    It’s called ‘Everyone shoots against everyone.’ Using an execution matrix, I have every student shoot a short bout against every other student. Not consecutively, though. It’s not a mystery, I just run down the matrix and pair up names.

    Logistically, all that’s required is two pepper poppers and two shoot boxes. The shooting is static. The drill is simple. Two shooters, two poppers, one signal. First to drive his/her popper down is the winner.

    Where it gets difficult for the shooters is ramping their focus up and down over the course of an hour or so. Shooters do a lot of standing around and then get quickly called to shoot while the poppers are being reset. I do that timing deliberately. 

• "Straight Talk About Reloading In Gunfights"--Revolver Guy. Boiled to its essence, the author reminds us that reloading in a gunfight is not like reloading at the range or what you see in action movies: you can't just stand in the open and do a quick reload, you need to get to cover where you will have time to reload without being shot.
• A couple from The Firearm Blog on less-than-lethal defensive tools:
• "Concealed Carry Corner: Importance Of Less Lethal Options". A "look at some of the benefits of carrying less-than-lethal and why, legally, it may be better to have a less-than-lethal option rather than just solely relying on your gun."
• "Concealed Carry Corner: Types of Non-Lethal Items". A look at pepper spray, flashlights, collapsible batons, and knives, and why and how the batons and knives (even small pocket knives) can be "lethal" weapons. 
• "A Better Way to Zero and Sight in Your Rifle"--Outdoor Life. This is a detailed article. The author's method uses only 20 rounds. And the reason it is so high is because the author advocates for using groups larger than 3 or 5 rounds, but says we need to fire at least 10 rounds, and preferably 20 rounds, to get a real ideal of what our firearm is doing. 

    Getting 20-shot group data is easier than you might think. You simply shoot a series of [3 to 5 round] groups at different aiming points without adjusting your scope and then break out your first-grade art skills to plot them on a single piece of paper around a single aiming point.

    Once you have all your dots on the paper, you can use the group analysis tool in the Hornady 4DOF app to calculate the group size, mean radius, and where the center of the group is in relation to your aiming point. This last bit allows you to make one accurate adjustment to your scope to truly zero your rifle. The basic 4DOF app is free, but the group analysis upgrade costs $4.99. The Ballistic X app also does this and can be purchased for a reasonable fee of $7.99. 

There is a video included in the article, as well as links to targets to download to use in this process. Be sure to read the whole thing if you intend on trying this out. In fact, you probably will want to print it out. 

• “Safety? Who Needs a Safety?”--Tactical Wire. The author reviews Ruger's new version of the LCP Max sporting a manual safety. But he does briefly address the issue of whether a safety is needed:

    Of what import is a safety lever? On a gun to be regularly carried in close concealment (this LCP is supplied with a nylon pocket holster), the safety can “take the worry out of being close.”

    The general complaint about manual safety levers is “You’ll never remember to take it off when you need to shoot.”

    Cool story. But the chances are greater that something will encroach on the trigger when trying to place the gun in deep concealment, with loud and embarrassing consequences. 

• For those that like the unusual: "Tech Wisdom: A New/Old Manual of Arms"--Shooting Illustrated. The author educates the owner of a rare and obscure handgun--the Lignose Einhand--on its manual of arms including dissassembly and reassembly. 
• "Loaded Guns Left Behind In Vacation Rentals, Hotels, And Gas Station Restrooms: Really?"--Concealed Nation. A reminder that when you stay at a hotel or vacation rental, or use the restroom and remove a gun from your holster, you need to check you have everything--including your firearm--with you when you leave. He relates instances of loaded handguns being left in side-table drawers at rentals or shoved under hotel mattresses.
• Speaking of firearms being left behind: "Gun Thefts From Cars Up 31%: That’s What Happens When Gun-Free Zones Proliferate"--Shooting News Weekly. From the lede:

A new report from the Council on Criminal Justice revealing an increase in firearms thefts from parked cars over a five-year study period (2018-2022) overlooks one major component of the problem: the necessity for legally-armed citizens to leave their firearms before entering so-called “gun-free zones,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms observed. 

• And another from Shooting News Weekly: "Things Get Messy Fast When You Dig Into the Numbers Behind the Gun Control Industry’s Favorite Talking Points." The article goes over the damn lies misleading statements and statistics vomited forth by the anti-gun groups and useful idiots. An excerpt:

This is how it works: Step one, acquire statistics on firearm-related deaths among children ages 0 to 14. Step two, combine that relatively low number with the far greater number of firearm-related deaths involving juveniles and young adults ages 15 to 17, 15 to 19, or even ages 15 to 24. Step three, present the resulting data as the shocking number of “children” (ages 0 to 17, 0 to 19 or 0 to 24) who are subjected to “gun violence” each day/week/month/year. Step four, use the disingenuous statistic to advocate for pre-determined gun control policies by claiming “gun violence is the leading cause of death of children.” 

• "Why Squirrel Hunting is Better Suppressed"--American Hunter. Basically the same concept as when hunting wild pigs: the suppressed shot is less likely to scare away other squirrels. Also a good overview of suppressors for .22 and a couple recommendations. 
• "Why Every American Should Own a Plate Carrier (And Plates)"--SOFREP.  Ajita Sherer boils it down to this simple reason: for the modern militiaman, or anyone fearing civil unrest, your load-out starts with a rifle and armor. But if you plan on being a militiaman, you also need to include a helmet. In any event, Sherer also briefly goes over different types of loadouts and the pros and cons of different types of hard armor. Unfortunately, he doesn't discuss the composite ceramic and polyethylene armor that we are seeing for lower priced Level III+ and IV armor. 
• "Prepping isn’t just for preppers anymore—it’s time to get a go-bag"--Popular Science.  The article describes "[h]ow to pack a go bag, a shelter-in-place bag, an emergency car kit, and an everyday carry." A pretty decent article (complete with graphics) on basics to include in various types of kits or bags. But the author also tries to explain why everyone should at least try to have some minimal preparations:

    The very idea of a “prepper” being some societal outlier would have been laughable to our ancestors. I’ve learned, in my two decades studying how human communities react to stress and even disasters, that prepping used to be built into our cultural practices. What changed? Our modern Western, market-integrated lifestyle puts forth the illusion that we don’t need to be prepared. We all drank that collectively comforting Kool-Aid that said there was no need to have supplies on hand in case of an emergency—you can just go to the store. Nor would you need to consider what you’d do in the event of a fire or a flood—insurance will take care of the damage, and surely FEMA or some other government agency will take care of you and your loved ones in the wake of a disaster.

    But not only is it unwise to depend on institutional power to manage risk on our behalf, it also deprives us of something fundamental to who we are: managing our own individual risk and participating in collective risk management, which are things we have done for as long as we’ve been human. In other words: humans are good at taking care of each other, and my research shows that we come out of hard times happier and healthier when we do so. 

• "A doomsday prepper’s survival skills for women have gone viral. Here’s why"--The Independent. A look at prepping "influencer" Sari Sanchez who, according to the article, "has amassed more than 50,000 followers and millions of views on her TikTok account @prettyinprep by sharing her top survival guidance, self-defence tips and emergency essentials." The article also mentions:

Sanchez’s advice is tailored to women, including how to use a steel pen or hot coffee for self-defence, the dangers of driving with a claw clip in your hair and a recommendation for a portable toilet which can fit in your purse. 

•  "‘All of his guns will do nothing for him’: lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday"--The Guardian. The article mentions that "[l]iberals make up about 15% of the prepping scene, according to one estimate, and their numbers appear to be growing," adding that "[o]ne private Facebook group dedicated to preparedness for liberals has more than tripled in size since the election." The article also helpfully explains:

 Liberal preppers differ from their rightwing counterparts because the calamities they anticipate have different characteristics. Rightwing bugbears like civil unrest and globalist tyranny lead to a focus on the stockpiling of weapons to defend one’s property and family from hostile adversaries. But concerns about global heating point to different notions of readiness. Climate breakdown – the destabilization of the entire ecological system on which our lives depend – is not a fleeting crisis one can ride out with a well-stocked arsenal and a few pallets from Costco. As Margaret Killjoy, who launched the prominent anarchist-prepper podcast Live Like the World Is Dying at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, put it: “There’s not much preparedness you can do for the end of the world.”

Rather than shake our heads at their ignorance and surprise when someone steals their food and rapes and murders their families, we should look to see if they have anything useful to offer:

    For Steffen and other preppers on the left, threat analysis begins with an understanding of network effects: how various social and economic systems work together to support our ongoing survival, or undermine it. Bald and bespectacled, with headphone wires dangling from his ears, he explained that the effects of climate collapse will be experienced as a series of localized disasters – flooding here, wildfire there – each requiring planning and forethought.

    “Every piece of infrastructure, every home, every community, every business, every industry, was built to work in a world that no longer exists,” he told us, adding that this ever-widening gap will be “ripping through every single person’s life”.

    Steffen’s prescription was “ruggedization”, a term borrowed from the military. Ruggedization, he explained, was “the design of a system such that it can take unexpected punishment and retain its core functions”. Its opposite he termed brittleness – “the condition of a thing being subject to sudden failure”. Our primary goal ahead of climate chaos was to recognize brittleness in the systems around us – from failing infrastructure to political ineptitude – and either remedy it or avoid it altogether.