Weekend Reading #76

 Some longer or more involved reading:

•  This week, we are starting out as usual with Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump for this week. Some of the links that caught my attention in particular:
• Part 3 of a video series on terminal ballistics and tactical anatomy.
• An article discussing what is called the violin technique to reloading a shotgun, given directions for both right handed and left handed shooters.
• An explanation of the blank paper drill and how to shoot and score it--as well as its dry fire equivalent, the blank wall drill. The idea is to remove a specific target point so you can concentrate on sight alignment and consistency. 
• An explanation of height over bore and why your rifle shoots low at close distances.
• And a piece from the Daily Mail on protecting yourself from pickpockets and how pickpocket teams work.  
• In my long ago article, "Concealed Carry--No Elegant Solution," I noted that most of the concealed carry articles I saw in gun magazines were written by then-current and former law enforcement whose experience with concealed carry was working as a plain clothes officer, and concluded that "[p]eople with law enforcement backgrounds have little useful to say about concealed carry for the average person." I didn't mean this as a disparagement, but that the circumstances of being a plain clothes sworn police officer was different enough from that of private civilian carrying a concealed weapon that a lot of what they had to say just wasn't applicable to the normal concealed carrier. I guess I didn't expressly state it in my article, but I remember from the time I was first learning about concealed carry that the occasional article from someone that worked as a body guard or an undercover police officer were far more useful. So, with that long winded background, Greg has linked to an article entitled "Concealed Carry Considerations for the Law Enforcement Officer tasked with Close In Protection"--i.e., officers acting as body guards--that covers many of the aspects that you as civilian carrying concealed or wanting a weapon to protect your family will need to consider. I recommend reading it.
• I've seen a lot of recommendations for videos on the SKS pop up on my YouTube feed recently, so it was interesting to see that Greg links to an article from Guns America about the SKS discussing a bit of its history, the countries that produced it, and issues with parts interchangeability. However, there was a point that was so wrong that I have to comment, and that is the comparison with the M1 Carbine. This is incorrect on two levels. First, the SKS was intended to replace the Mosin-Nagant as the primary infantry weapon, unlike the M1 Carbine which was intended as a weapon for support troops. Second, the SKS is not small and lightweight such that it cannot easily be pressed into the same role as the M1 Carbine. 
• Speaking of the M1 Carbine, Greg links to an article that has an in-depth look at the M1 Carbine cartridge and what makes it so enjoyable to shoot. 
• Greg also has a new "free books" column with links to Kindle books that are (or were at the time he published it) available at no cost at Amazon with an emphasis on prepping and self-defense related non-fiction and thrillers for the fiction. 
• "In France And Britain, Multiculturalism Is Leading To Authoritarianism"--The Federalist. The article mostly focuses on the fact that "[t]he leaders of France and Britain are calling for censorship regimes because enforcing multiculturalism requires suppressing freedom." The author begins, of course, by noting the riots and protests in France, explaining:

    The rioters are not calling for education reform or protesting poor classroom conditions, despite what the corporate press has reported. These are not “school protests” but rather an intifada. The rioters themselves are the footsoldiers of a “Red-Green alliance” between the radical left and pro-Palestinian Islamist activists, whose shared goal is to clear the ground for a “New France” that will replace the actually existing French nation.

    This “New France” is largely a Third World horde, imported in successive waves beginning in the 1970s, when France scrapped its immigration regime and adopted a family reunification system similar to the United States’ Hart-Celler Act of 1965. In the ensuing decades, and especially since 2000, France has seen a massive influx of migrants from its former colonial holdings in North Africa and the Middle East. These people have for the most part refused to assimilate, and instead have formed discrete Muslim enclaves, retaining the ethnic and religious identity of their homelands. They are not French in any meaningful sense, and do not wish to be.

    The consequences of this failure of assimilation and acculturation are now apparent on the streets of French cities. For more than a week now the unassimilated children and grandchildren of migrants from the Third World have been  attacking police and firefighters (and teachers in some cases), burning schools and public buildings to the ground, and calling for the overthrow of the French Republic. They have done so in many cases while waving Palestinian and Algerian flags, and chanting Antifa and pro-Hamas slogans. 

    However, they are not doing this all on their own. French authorities said last week the riots were being organized by proxies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”), or LFI, which is, in addition to being a communist front organization, is also France’s “Great Replacement” party. Indeed, Mélenchon, who is running for president in next year’s national election, has been rather explicit in his desire to erase the French people and replace them with foreigners. On a recent panel, echoing remarks from Britain’s Jacob Rees-Mogg on how the English are a “mongrel people,” he derided the very concept of “native French people,” declaring that a “process of creolization has already taken place” in France, and that those wanting a “static world” are dreaming of something that is gone for good.

    No wonder, then, that Mélenchon has publicly supported the unrest, or that LFI politicians have been notably visible during the riots, in some cases appearing at the barricades around schools and urban centers, even as the party has officially denied fomenting violence. Simply put, there is broad crossover between radical-left political activism and pro-Palestinian, Islamist mobilization in France.

But, and this is the point of the article, the author then asserts:

    What is less well known is that mass immigration on this scale doesn’t just destroy a country and a people, it also ushers in forms of authoritarian government that become necessary as a way to manage the problems that arise from a population that includes significant unassimilated ethnic enclaves.

    This is why we now see the political leadership of western countries making hard turns toward authoritarianism, and especially against free speech. Freedom of expression is the one thing you cannot tolerate if the state is going to enforce multiculturalism and impose a large foreign population on a native one. Indeed, managing tensions between disparate ethnic groups, and each group’s relationship to the state, is a hallmark of imperial rule, not republicanism. It’s how the millet system of the Ottoman Empire operated.

He concludes:

    In the end, multiculturalism and authoritarianism are a package deal, and the global leftist leadership of the West is foisting it their native populations. There is only one way to avoid such authoritarianism, and it requires a total rejection of multiculturalism.

    What that means, in concrete terms, is mass deportations, denaturalization, and remigration. Anything less will not be enough to save these countries, assuming it’s not too late already.

•  And on that topic: "Virginia State University gave preferential treatment to Muslim student group while persecuting Christian one, lawsuit alleges"--Daily Mail.