Weekend Reading #44

Longer and more involved reading:

• Jon Low has a new Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter.  He includes some thoughts from John Murphy on how dealing with terrorists is different from other criminal threats:

     "Get this straight in your head.  Terrorists are not criminals out to support their drug habit, or a drunken bully looking to throw you a beat down.  This isn’t a parking lot dispute, a road rage incident or a conflict you can solve with de-escalation.  These are ideologically committed killers determined to use violence to achieve global religious/political change.  Killing as many as they can to maximize the terror impact of their acts is their goal.  Do NOT underestimate these people.  Take careful note not of just the mass beheadings that were once in vogue overseas, but the artful way they were staged and recorded, with high production values throughout.  That is highly evolved messaging leveraging modern technology with ancient terror tactics.  More recent attacks from various evil parties have even been “livestreamed” to an eager international audience.  Remember that dying for their cause is considered the ultimate reward.  They won’t be dissuaded and they won’t be bargained with.  They will be heavily armed and adequately trained for their task, which is to slaughter unarmed innocents to further undermine governmental authority.  Unlike your typical criminal crew, a few shots won’t send them into flight.  They’re on a mission."  

     "So, with that in mind, the rules change.  Back shoot them without hesitation or warning.  The cheaper the shot, the better.  To ensure there’s not a threat from behind as you move past their bodies, “anchor” shoot them through the brain and from a position of advantage.  While these methods of engagement are illegal and inappropriate for a criminal encounter and would likely see you charged with murder in that context, I suspect a citizen acting this way against a terrorist threat will be given a pass.  (Differentiating between the two, at that time could be difficult.  Choose wisely.)  This will essentially be participating in no notice infantry combat in your hometown."   

While he suspects that a citizen acting this way against a terrorist threat will be given a pass, I have my reservations--particularly if this were to occur in a Democrat controlled jurisdiction. To them, you would not be killing a terrorist, but an ally. Moving on, commenting on an article encouraging women to take responsibility for their safety, Jon adds:

     In the real world, no one is coming to your rescue, not the bystanders, not the police, not even your friends and relatives who are with you.  I know this is a horrid depressing thought, but it's true.  Accept it and prepare accordingly.  Because gouging the bad guy's eyes is not something that you will do automatically, unless you have practiced, a lot.  The highly trained will not gouge and pull their hand out.  Rather, they will drive their fingers through the eyes into the brain, curl their fingers to grab the cheek bones from the inside, and drive the bad guy's head to the ground, hard in order to crack the skull.  As Tim Larkin says, the ground is your best impact weapon, and it is always available, and gravity is always helping you.   

Jon has a lot more, so be sure to check out his newsletter. 

• Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump. His linkage includes, but is not limited to, cover and concealment around vehicles, examining your target to try and analyze shooting errors, levels of eye contact (and what they mean),  info on the AK and shooting one, advantages and disadvantages to having a weapon mounted light on a concealed carry pistol, and advice as to concealed carry belts. I'm glad that the author mentions that is possible to have too stiff of a belt. Given my experience with several gun belts with the stiffened cores, I've gone back to just wearing a good leather belt. 

    And special mention goes to the video "Crazy Oakland Pawn Shop Gunfight Caught on Camera" where a group of thugs is admitted through a locking security door, then tried to rob the place. When the owners of the pawn shop got weapons and start shooting, the criminals turned to hightail it out of the place ... but couldn't because the security door had locked behind them. Consequently, they feel obliged to enter into a gun battle with the owners of the pawn shop in which at least one of the owners is wounded. During the gun battle, the criminals found at least one weapon that the pawnshop owners had stashed, fully loaded, in the event of a break in. I think that the primary lesson here is that sometimes it is better to give criminals an opportunity to flee than risk a prolonged fight.

• "A Polar Bear Tried to Eat My Neighbor — and Other Close Calls With Nanuq in Alaska’s High Arctic"--Outdoor Life. 

During the time we called Alaska’s North Slope home, from 1990 to 1997, Native hunters killed approximately 110 polar bears annually in Alaska, with most being taken in the dark winter months. Male polar bears are active throughout the winter, unlike pregnant females that seek dens to enter their deep winter sleep and give birth. That year in Point Lay, the pack ice created an open lead very near shore. Seals hauled out on the edges of the open water. During winter in the Arctic, where there are seals, polar bears will be nearby. 

• "A City Cast in Concrete, Trapped Under Unbearable Heat"--The MIT Press Reader.  How rapid urbanization and loss of green space turned Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, into an unbearable heat island.

In a collaboration between Rajarata University of Sri Lanka and the University of Tsukuba in Japan, researchers used LANDSAT data to examine surface temperatures in Colombo at different moments during the decades-long process of rapid urbanization. Using temperature measurements from 1997, 2007, and 2017, the study tells the story of a cooler city by the sea, and how it went from a pleasant 25–27°C (77-80.6°F) to a staggering 31°C (87.8°F), or more. The heat maps created by the authors for 1997 are dominated by calming hues of green, but by 2017, a sprawling fungus of red heat spreads its tendrils in every direction. The old-timers weren’t just being nostalgic; in their time, it would indeed have been much, much cooler. 

• "Most normal matter in the universe isn’t found in planets, stars or galaxies – an astronomer explains where it’s distributed"--The Conversation. 

In the new study, published in June 2025, a team of astronomers from Caltech and the Harvard Center for Astrophysics studied 69 fast radio bursts using an array of 110 radio telescopes in California. The team found that 76% of the universe’s normal matter lies in the space between galaxies, with another 15% in galaxy halos – the area surrounding the visible stars in a galaxy – and the remaining 9% in stars and cold gas within galaxies.