Weekend Reading #67

Some longer or more involved reading:

• First is the Weekend Knowledge Dump from Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training. These posts are generally collections of articles related to self-defense or firearms articles with a self-defense bent, but also articles on other topics such as prepping, first aid or trauma care, travel, and self-improvement. Some of the links that grabbed my attention in particular this week were:
• The August 2026 Rangemaster news letter. These generally feature one or more drills to practice, a couple/few articles of interest to concealed carriers or trainers, reports on one or two classes, and the like. For this reason, I try to read the Rangemaster newsletter when it comes out. If Greg doesn't mention it in his Weekend Knowledge Dump, Jon Low will link to it in his bi-weekly newsletter. In any event, one of the articles in the August issue is distances in self-defense shootings. Typically the statistics we see for this are actually derived from police shootings, not civilian self defense. This article instead look at FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) statistics whose agents generally wear plain civilian clothing, with concealed pistols. The hope is that it more generally represents what a civilian would face. The FBI/DEA statistics are roughly 70% at 0-7 yards, 20% at 7-15 yards, and the remainder at over 15 yards. But the article also notes:

In the case of our students who had to shoot in self-defense, the distances involved were:
Contact distance 4%
3-7 yards 91%
Beyond 7 yards 4%

The 3 shootings beyond 7 yards were at 15,17 and 22 yards, so some work at that sort of distance is needed, but not a lot. 

• You may have heard about changes to the Post Office's rules on mailing firearms, which now allow firearms to be mailed. But the important part to remember is that the rule does not do away with other firearms laws and their requirements. The article Greg links to explains:

    ... The Gun Control Act of 1968 still generally requires that handguns transferred between unlicensed individuals across state lines go through a Federal Firearms Licensee in the recipient’s state. What the USPS rule change does is remove the additional federal mailing prohibition that sat on top of that framework — a prohibition that applied even to fully lawful FFL-to-FFL shipments, FFL-to-customer shipments where permitted, and other transfers that were otherwise completely legal under the GCA but could not move through the Postal Service specifically.

    In practical terms: an FFL shipping a handgun to another FFL for a customer transfer, a manufacturer shipping a pistol back to a customer after warranty service, or an individual shipping a handgun to a licensed dealer for consignment or sale — all of these transactions were legal under the GCA before April 2026, but could not use USPS. Now they can. The universe of handgun transactions that require an FFL has not changed. The shipping options available for those transactions have expanded significantly.

•  An article discussing pocket carry, including this observation: "A small pocket pistol can be easily slipped into a pocket regardless of weather conditions and takes virtually no time to don. The convenience of pocket carry means you'll probably carry your gun more often." IMHO, everyone that conceals carry should at least have a handgun and holster for pocket carry even if they don't intend it to be their primary carry gun. 
• Lucky Gunner trashes the Walther PPK as a carry gun. He notes that it was actually quite groundbreaking when it came out in the 1930s--and frankly it would still have been a good option in the 1960s when the original Bond films were made--but there are far better options today. Which is probably why Walther pulled it from the market with the intent to update it. 
• Greg included an article from The Truth About Guns on selecting the correct barrel length for your .300 BLK pistol, carbine, or SBR if you intend to silence it. You can't go wrong with a 9" barrel for either subsonic or supersonic loads. However, I wish now that I had gone an inch or two shorter just to make it easier to put into a pack. 
• A great article on managing the grip and manual safeties on a 1911 style pistol. 
• An article reminding us that criminals do not think like most of us--at least in the West. They suffer from antisocial thinking patterns, with many sociopaths and psychopaths among them. 

Criminals think in such selfish all or nothing terms because believing themselves omniscient and knowing everything, they sense no need to evaluate a situation at any length (unless casing out a place to commit a crime). For the criminal mind, just thinking something makes it so. If a person is certain of his omniscience and infallibility, he has no reason to engage in the rational mental processes that are necessary for making decisions, like defining the problem, establishing a realistic objective, suspending judgment, gathering facts, evaluating alternatives, and selecting a rational, thought-out solution. If criminals want something, they obtain it very quickly, one way or the other without rational decision-making and concern for their victims. 

•  And an article on first aid for animal bites, useful for anyone in the outdoors, but also for SHTF which might see feral or scared animals. And, frankly, there are some urban areas that have problems with feral dogs. 

•  "The Cost of America's Broken Immigration System" by Ken Salazar, Time Magazine. I include this, not because I agree with or value Salazar's opinions (I don't), but as an example of leftist propaganda. It starts with a personal story of tragedy--specifically focusing on a single female migrant and her son injured when the trailer they were riding in rolled over in an auto-accident--in order to create a sense of sympathy and disarm your critical thinking skills. He wants you to think "this poor woman...she deserves an opportunity to come to the United States" and then expand that sympathy to include all of the hordes trying to breach our borders. 

    And then the switch from sympathy to guilt (Western societies are unique in being driven by guilt). This he does through these two sentences: "This incident, and countless other tragedies like it, is what inaction looks like. And for decades, both American political parties have been responsible for it." No, our country and our politicians were not the one's that told that woman to get into a trailer packed with dozens of other people, nor did we cause the accident. The woman did something stupid and suffered consequences. 

    Salazar continues: "As U.S. ambassador, I urgently and passionately made the argument to people in the White House and the halls of Congress that we needed to fix our border and find durable solutions. I warned Democrats that if we did not address this, it would contribute to defeat in the November 2024 elections. I’m sorry to say I was correct." Well, this seems reasonable. We need to fix the borders. But here is the reversal:

Trump was right that the border was broken and needed to be fixed. But his plan of enforcement, tearing families apart, terrorizing communities with mass ICE raids, and pitting nations against nations is not the solution. 

In other words, he is saying that if you don't want illegals to remain here and believe they have to go back--because sending them back will require arrests--you are no better than a terrorist.

    So at this point Salazar hopes the reader will be nodding his (or more likely, her) head in agreement, waiting with baited breath for Salazar to offer some reasonable solution. And that is?

I propose the creation of a New American Alliance, a North America where the borders, migration, and our nation's deep economic and cultural ties are fixed to create an untapped opportunity rather than a manufactured crisis. It is a truer expression of who we are as Americans—people who achieve greatness when we are united and when we work together toward common goals. 

In other words, his idea of fixing the border is to simply do away with borders. Just let them all in and f*** all you lessor mortals that will actually have to live with the consequences.  

    And we have an example of this right now from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the North Africa coast, with the New York Post reporting:

    An unprecedented wave of 60,000 illegal migrants from Africa has flooded the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, prompting Spain to deploy its military – as locals liken the invasion to an “apocalypse.”

    Harrowing local media reports reveal residents and business owners in Ceuta – a Spanish territory located on the north African coast – are terrified to open their doors amid the rush of migrants, many of whom arrived wearing nothing but swimwear without a penny or possession to their name.

    “Businesses closed. Shops shut because if you open a business, it gets overrun … We’re scared. The streets are packed. There are no measures in place. It’s every man for himself. They’re not giving us any help,” a terrified downtown restaurant owner who didn’t want to give their name told state-owned Spanish media outlet RTVE. 

• "Discover the Mysteries of Italy’s Park of Monsters, a 16th-Century Garden Filled With Strange, Colossal Stone Creatures"--Smithsonian Magazine. From the lede:

    Visiting the Sacro Bosco (Italian for Sacred Grove), a 16th-century garden in Bomarzo, Italy, is no ordinary walk through the park. The seven-acre site’s sculpted monsters, open tombs and dramatic depictions of supernatural combatants make the experience more akin to braving a Renaissance version of a haunted house. Visitors can wander through a tilted building, run away from a giant gaping mouth and—if they manage to get past Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld—descend into hell.

    The Sacro Bosco’s colossal stone statues are frightening to behold. But what makes this garden extra eerie is that no one knows for sure why monsters haunt these woods. “No receipts, account books or commission documents survive to tell us about the Sacro Bosco’s creation,” says John Garton, an art historian at Clark University and the co-author of an upcoming book about the garden. Pier Francesco Orsini, the duke who commissioned the Sacro Bosco in the mid-1500s, left no explicit clues.

An interesting read and lots of photos.