Issues with Gender Ratios

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

--Isaiah 4:1

The implication behind this verse is that the gender ratios will be skewed, probably because of the number of men that will die in the wars preceding the Second Coming. And what happens when gender ratios are skewed so the number of women outnumber men?

From the Daily Mail:

A Chinese city has recently come under fire for its culture of polyamorous relationships and kept men.

In Dongguan, southern China, a man with several girlfriends who pay to 'keep' him is now the norm, reported People's Daily Online.

Most of the young women involved are low-paid factory workers who are hoping to get married to the men in the near future.

Chinese media recently published a set of pictures showing many men in Dongguan are holding, kissing or lying in bed with more than one woman.

* * *

The culture of polyamorous relationships has given rise to another phenomenon - that of kept men.

This problem is so widespread that it has even given rise to a local saying: 'It's not easy for a male factory worker to find a job but a female worker cannot go without a boyfriend.'

Women who share a boyfriend are said to lavish attention and money on the men in order to become the favourite.

* * *

For the boyfriend, there was no need to ask for money - his girlfriends are more than happy to give it to him to win favours.

Dongguan's problem stems from the huge gap between its male and female population.

While the rest of China has more men than women, Dongguan has just 89 men for every 100 women.

This is because female factory workers are preferred, which in turn encourages more female migrant workers to move to the region for work.

A similar effect has also been reported in other cities with a similar skew.

Coupled with societal pressures for women to marry by 27, the problem of boyfriend sharing and kept men has intensified.

 Update (9/9/2015): "Why College-Educated Women Can't Find Love" at the Daily Beast. "The current college class breakdown of women to men is 57:43, which means that there will be about one-third more women than men with college degrees when graduation arrives." Because of hypergamy, women refuse to "marry down," and so are stuck competing for an ever smaller pool of acceptable men.

Vickers Tactical: "Inside the AK 74"

Here's an interesting video that a friend recommended to me by Vickers Tactical. It includes slo-mo shots of an AK 74 firing full auto, with and without its top cover and gas tube. It is especially interesting because, although there is a small flexion of the barrel when the gun fires, it is significantly less than seen with the older AKM rifles. Also, the compensator on the rifle used in the video seems to work quite well in dampening muzzle climb.

Who Do Police Protect?

(Source)

Glenn Reynolds posted the cartoon pictured above today, with the comment that the cartoon gets it backwards: "Police don’t actually protect law-abiding citizens from criminals so much as they protect criminals from the much-rougher justice they’d get in the absence of a legal system." Robert Farago at The Truth About Guns thinks Reynolds is wrong, claiming that police are hardly the bad guy's champion.

I don't think Reynolds intended to suggest that police are the champions of criminals, but that an active police force protects criminals from a system of mob justice/vendetta by subjecting them to an impartial justice system that uses a system of laws and rules to evaluate evidence and met out punishment largely without input from crime victims. It is the neutral position of the state--acting as the Leviathan--that acts as one of the greatest mitigators of violence according to Steven Pinker, exactly because it short circuits the cycle of revenge killings.

Reynolds is correct that police do not protect law-abiding citizens from crime in the direct sense suggested by the political cartoon. As knows anyone that has been a victim of a crime, police intervention is after-the-fact. Moreover, it is well-established law that police have no duty to protect any one person. Their duty runs to the public generally (i.e., to the body politic) and not to any particular individual. See, e.g. Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981). And Reynolds seems particularly vindicated when you read headlines like these: "Businessman tackles two thieves after catching them red-handed on his property . . . now HE'S one on trial for assault," or "Life for farmer who shot burglar," both stories from the UK; or "Man faces jail after protecting home from masked attackers" in Canada. In the latter case, the masked men had just fire-bombed the man's house when he confronted them with a gun.

Farago claims that police protect the public through deterrence of crime. And it appears to be true that people are deterred from committing crimes when the odds of being apprehended are high. (Although I would question how effective this is outside the realm of the enforcement of traffic laws). But, again, Reynold's point wasn't that policy don't deter crime, but that they also keep law breakers safe from retribution or vendetta. Certainly, with insufficient law enforcement, people will eventually resort to self-help not only in apprehending criminals, but in punishing them. This leads to incidents such as this report from Venezuela:

When a man they believed to be a thief sneaked into their parking lot in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, angry residents caught him, stripped him and beat him with fists, sticks and stones.

They tied him up and doused him in gasoline, according to witnesses, in one of what rights groups and media reports say are an increasing number of mob beatings and lynchings in a country ravaged by crime.

Or this incident from China:

Video of a pregnant woman being tied up and brutally beaten has recently emerged on Chinese social media.

A woman was seen with her hands bound behind her back to a telephone pole as a man kicked her, reported People's Daily Online.

The incident took place on August 29 in a village near Taizhou city, eastern China.

Reports suggest the woman, who is only identified as Ms Lu, was brutally assaulted because the residents of Hengshan village believed she was a regular thief in their community.

She had been caught stealing from the village in the past. When residents saw her appearing again last week, they thought she has returned to steal again and decided to punish her.

So, yes, our system of law enforcement does protect criminals from street justice.

A Quick Run Around the Web--August 30, 2015

Exo exterior

Exo interior

• "The Exo is an innovative solution to one of humanity's most basic needs: shelter. An Exo housing unit provides private living and sleeping quarters for up to four people within a climate-controlled environment. It is durable enough to be stored on a long-term basis and stacks for efficient storage and transportation. The Exo's design allows for numerous configurations to meet any need or deployment condition." More information at Wired.
• "China and Russia are using hacked data to target U.S. spies, officials say"--Los Angeles Times.
• "Islamic State fights Syrian rebels and 'moves closer to central Damascus'"--The Telegraph. "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) battled Syrian rebel forces in a Damascus neighbourhood on Monday, bringing the extremists closer than ever to the centre of the capital, a monitoring group said."
• "EXCLUSIVE A family brutally murdered, secret police threats and deadly booby traps: Treasure hunter who spent 40 years searching for Nazi gold train reveals its dark secrets"--Daily Mail.
• "The 'Birmingham Koran' fragment that could shake Islam after carbon-dating suggests it is OLDER than the Prophet Muhammad"--Daily Mail. From the article:

It is believed that the Birmingham Koran was produced between 568AD and 645AD, while the dates usually given for Muhammad are between 570AD and 632AD.

Historian Tom Holland, told the Times: 'It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged - and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.'

Keith Small, from the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library, added: 'This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven.

• "Gun Review: Ruger Precision Rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor"--The Truth About Guns.

Another Massive Explosion in China

From the International Business Times:

Another massive explosion rocked China on Monday night. Local reports claim that eyewitness saw and heard a loud explosion at the industrial zone of Lijin, Dongying City of Shandong. 

People's Daily China said on its official Twitter account that the explosion took place at around 11.25pm in the industrial zone of Lijin. There are no reports yet of any causalities or injuries. 

The impact of the blast reportedly was felt in the 2km radius of the industrial zone.
Images shared by eyewitnesses show the blast lighting up the night sky, followed by mushroom-like thick black smokes filling up the air. 

Videos of the incident shared on Weibo shows a massive fireball, followed by the huge explosion. 

The accident comes weeks after the deadly Tianjin blast which left nearly 150 dead and 800 injured. The blasts at a chemical warehouse in the Tianjin port city earlier this month is one of deadliest industrial accidents in China.

A Review of Katrina

There have been a number of articles over the last week or so revisiting the floods and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, now at its 10th Anniversary. Glenn Reynolds has a summing up at USA Today entitled "Lessons in disaster for the next Katrina." He raises five major points:

1. The press did a lousy job. Which is putting it mildly. They outright lied and fabricated stories to make their reporting more dramatic, and to provide a basis for partisan attacks against President Bush.
2. Crying wolf is dangerous. Reynolds notes that the media had sold so many storms as the "storm of the century" that people had stopped listening; thus delaying many from evacuating.
3. Be prepared, because basically you are on your own. "When roads are flooded, washed out, blocked by trees and power lines, etc., it takes a while to get them back in order. That means you need to be prepared to get by for at least a few days — and, much better, at least a couple of weeks — on your own. That means having extra food, water, medications, fuel, batteries, etc. on hand. It also means getting along with your neighbors. For a few days at least, and maybe longer, they’ll be all the help you have."
4. Really, when they tell you to evacuate, listen. 
5. This will all happen again. 

There has also been linkage to older articles. For instance, this 2011 NPR article entitled "The Key To Disaster Survival? Friends And Neighbors." From that article:

Because of his own experience in Katrina, Aldrich started thinking about how neighbors help one another during disasters. He decided to visit disaster sites around the world, looking for data.

Aldrich's findings show that ambulances and firetrucks and government aid are not the principal ways most people survive during — and recover after — a disaster. His data suggest that while official help is useful — in clearing the water and getting the power back on in a place such as New Orleans after Katrina, for example — government interventions cannot bring neighborhoods back, and most emergency responders take far too long to get to the scene of a disaster to save many lives. Rather, it is the personal ties among members of a community that determine survival during a disaster, and recovery in its aftermath.

When Aldrich visited villages in India hit by the giant 2004 tsunami, he found that villagers who fared best after the disaster weren't those with the most money, or the most power. They were people who knew lots of other people — the most socially connected individuals. In other words, if you want to predict who will do well after a disaster, you look for faces that keep showing up at all the weddings and funerals.

"Those individuals who had been more involved in local festivals, funerals and weddings, those were individuals who were tied into the community, they knew who to go to, they knew how to find someone who could help them get aid," Aldrich says.

In other words, the public are the first responders.

Michael Grunwald has taken a look at the real culprit of the disaster, at least in New Orleans--the Army Corps of Engineers. One of the stories he points to is a Washington Post article from September 21, 2005, which noted that the flooding was because of faulty levees.

And, yesterday, I noted this article on "Katrina: What the Media Missed," which discusses not only the lies perpetrated by the media, but that the media missed one of the greatest stories of all: how the National Guard and Coast Guard worked very effectively to save thousands of lives.

A Cry for Attention

Fox News reports that Shannon J. Miles, a young black man, was arraigned for capital murder on Monday morning in the Friday shooting of a Texas Sheriff's Deputy, Darren Goforth.  While fueling his patrol car, the Deputy was shot 15 times by Miles, execution style. No motive has yet been released. But it is not hard to guess one: Breitbart reported on Friday (Aug. 28) that earlier last week, black activists had been calling for the killing of white people and cops on a radio show. From the news report:

Members of the #FYF911 or #FukYoFlag and #BlackLivesMatter movements called for the lynching and hanging of white people and cops. They encouraged others on a radio show Tuesday night to “turn the tide” and kill white people and cops to send a message about the killing of black people in America.

The recording of the podcast has since been taken down.

Why the sudden push for race war from black activists? Or, more importantly, why are such views suddenly resonating beyond a small group of extremists? I can think of several factors that may be contributing:

1. First, and foremost, the job market is in terrible shape, and most particularly for blacks, notwithstanding having a black man in the White House. I suspect that there are a large number of blacks that voted for Obama that cannot bring themselves to admit that they were betrayed by Obama, and are looking for a scapegoat. And the ready-made and ever-present one is "white racism."
2. The influx of illegal aliens over the last several years. Net job growth since 2007 has gone to immigrants (legal or otherwise), and illegal aliens mostly threaten the jobs held by blacks. Rising numbers of Hispanic voters threaten black power bases in Harlem and California, and Hispanic gangs are even using threats of violence to drive blacks out of traditionally black neighborhoods in L.A. Thus, I suspect that there is a fear among some blacks that there is only a short window of opportunity to get what they want politically or in the form of welfare before they become increasingly politically irrelevant.
3. Social media. Just as the rise of social media and video recording has led to anger about the growing militarization of the police, it also allows those in black communities,or sympathetic to their cause, to see video or read accounts of police response to black crime that seem overly violent.
4. Playing hardball. I've seen increasing calls for reparations for slavery. In the past, black leaders have used the threat (and actual occurrence) of black unrest to gain concessions in the way of money and increased political power for blacks (or, at least, their leadership). Reparations will represent the ultimate concession, and would therefore require some significant threats of unrest to make it happen.
5. Idleness. The people (white and black) attending and participating in the protests, riots and looting are the products of a decadent culture, with nothing useful to occupy their time. 

Of these, the greatest fear for blacks should be irrelevance. Via another blogger, I recently came across a piece written by the AntiDem, entitled "I Don’t Care About Black People," which makes the important point that the opposite of "love" is not "hate," but "indifference." The authors says:

... In order to hate something or someone, you must care about them deeply. Hate is a serious, long-term emotional investment, and one must actually care very much about the object of one’s hatred in order to make it. As is often said, hate is not the opposite of love; indifference is. And I have come to be very indifferent about the fortunes of blacks.

I don’t care about black people. Their problems are not my problem. Their enemies are not my enemy. Their concerns are not my concern. I feel no need to understand them or their ways, and I don’t care whether or not they understand me or my ways. I wish them well – in fact, I know not a single white person, no matter how outwardly racist, who does not wish that blacks were doing better than they are, if for no other reason than that we must all live with the effects of their failures. I hope that the issues that seem to ceaselessly dog their community all get solved somehow. I have no desire to do them and theirs injury, except as punishment for injury done by them against me and mine. But I don’t care about them – there is nothing more I want from them other than to simply leave me alone, and in exchange, I will gladly leave them alone as well.

Lest one think that this is all motivated by sheer meanness and lack of charity, there is another reason for my lack of enthusiasm for the cause of helping black people. The truth is that I don’t know how to help them, and I don’t know anyone else who does. For at least fifty years (more like a hundred and fifty, really) whites have been trying to find a way to solve the problems of black people. We must now be realistic and admit that all of these attempts have failed miserably. Fifty years into the War on Poverty, drive around a black ghetto (if you dare) and note what you see. It is indeed certain to look like there has been a war there, but it is equally certain to not look like any victory over poverty has been won. What you’ll find there is the result of whites having tried everything they could possibly think of to uplift blacks, and of it all having either not worked at all or having actually made things worse. As evidenced by the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Americans are notoriously slow to understand that their plan hasn’t worked and to accept defeat, but at some point, reality asserts itself in a way that is undeniable.

So here is the undeniable reality: when it comes to whites trying to solve the problems of black people, none of our plans have worked, and we’re pretty much out of ideas. I, certainly, have nothing new to add on the issue – believe me, if I did, I would. I have no secret, sadistic desire to see blacks suffer, and I, too, must live with the results of their failures. But like everybody else, I don’t have any more solutions to offer.

* * * 

Thus, to black people, my message is simply this: Good luck, but don’t call me for help.

A Quick Run Around the Web -- August 30, 2015

• "Citigroup braces for world recession, calls for Corbynomics QE in China"--The Telegraph.

China has bungled its attempt to slow the economy gently and is sliding into “imminent recession”, threatening to take the world with it over coming months, Citigroup has warned.

Willem Buiter, the bank’s chief economist, said the country needs a major blast of fiscal spending financed by outright "helicopter" money from the bank to avert a deepening crisis. 

Speaking on a panel at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, Mr Buiter said the dollar will “go through the roof” if the US Federal Reserve lifts interest rates this year, compounding the crisis for emerging markets.
Professor Zhiwu Chen from Yale University told the same event that China will be doing well if it can contain its slow-motion crisis to mere stagnation for the next 10 years, given the dangerous levels of debt in the system. 

“If the Chinese government is able to manage a Lost Decade with very low growth - or no growth - without an economic crisis, it will be a policy achievement,” he said. 

Prof Chen said a Western-style financial collapse in China is “highly unlikely” since the banks are largely government-owned and losses will be absorbed by the state. 

There is a loose parallel with Japan, where the economy slid into a deflationary quagmire and lost its economic dynamism but never suffered a full-blown financial crash. In Japan’s case the denouement was averted by keeping "zombie banks" on life-support. 

The colourful Mr Buiter - a former UK rate-setter - said China has bungled both fiscal and monetary policy, and is now “sliding into recession”. This would be fall in growth to less than 4pc on the “mendacious” figures published by Beijing, but in reality lower. 

 “They will respond too late to avoid a recession, which is likely to drag the global economy with it down to a global growth rate below 2pc, which is in my definition a global recession,” he said.

• An estimated 347 million firearms in the United States in 2012--Gun Watch. "The numbers do not account for reduction of the gun stock due to wear and tear, loss, destruction or illegal exportation; or increases of the stock from illegal importation, individual or illegal manufacture, or acquisition from military sources," nor those produced for the military. Probably one of the reasons that the U.S. is well below Europe and the U.K. when it comes to rates of violent crime.
• "Spy found dead in a bag 'had infuriated his MI6 bosses by illegally hacking into secret US data on Bill Clinton'"--The Daily Mail. I'm always amazed at the number of people associated with the Clintons that have conveniently ended up dead. 
• "Katrina: What the Media Missed"--Real Clear Politics. What the media missed, according to this story, is that the National Guard (which operated out of the Super Dome) and Coast Guard saved tens of thousands of lives, and did an excellent job. On the other hand, pretty much everything from the MSM was distorted if not completely fabricated.
• "Thoughts from the Ammo Line"--Powerline Blog. How the government controls us like a pimp controls his prostitutes. Plus this: "I believe one of the reasons that the super-rich, especially of inherited wealth, are so often leftist is because they REALIZE that they have not earned their wealth. That it is just a result of the “lottery” Dear Leader speaks of. And he should know."
• "Confirmed, LMT to supply NZDF with CQB16"--The Firearm Blog. Basically, New Zealand is replacing its AUG bullpup rifles with ARs. Just a few days ago, I was discussing with a friend how its seems that the bullpup combat rifle, in any iteration, has not fared very well. And the number of countries to be using a bullpup drops again.
• "Gear Review: Primary Arms 6X ACSS .22 LR Scope"--The Truth About Guns. A very favorable review of Primary Arms .22 rifle scope employing PA's Advanced Combat Sighting System (ACSS) reticle/range estimation system.
• "Hiker, 62, who went missing for NINE days in the Sierra Nevadas is found alive and reveals she crawled for days on broken bones in search of water"--The Daily Mail. She'd been hiking with a group from the Sierra Club. The article does not explain whether or how she became separated from the group, or why they had left her.
• "Improving The Deadliest Rifle In The World: The M1E Series (Light Rifle, Part III)"--The Firearms Blog. Describing attempts during WWII to improve the M1 Garand and transform it per the "light rifle" concept.
• "How to Build a Space Elevator From Scratch"--IEEE Spectrum. "Such a system, ISEC researchers believe, could eventually slash the cost of raising a kilogram of payload into geosynchronous orbit from roughly US $25,000 to $300 or less."

Book Review: "Islands of the Damned" by R.V. Burgin

(Source)

R.V. Burgin's Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific (2010) is his memoirs of serving in the U.S. Marines during WWII. Burgin joined the United States Marine Corps in November 1942 and became a mortar-man in K-Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division (K-3-5). Although his book relates portions of his life from both before and following WWII, the majority of the book concerns his service in the Corps in Australia and the Pacific Theater, including the battles for New Britain, Peleliu, and Okinawa. Burgin earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Okinawa. If his name is familiar, it may be because he is one of the characters portrayed in the HBO miniseries, The Pacific.

Large portions of his narrative seem rather bare of details--probably because it was written so long after the war--and it is only because of generous use of spacing that it reaches 285 pages (not including the bibliography and index). However, there are plenty of incidents that Burgin describes clearly.

One thing that stands out from Burgin's narrative, and the bare statistics of the Pacific conflict, is that the Japanese forces on the islands did not fare very well in infantry combat. It certainly was not a discrepancy in technology since the two sides had comparable weapons and munitions. It may have been because the Japanese lacked air superiority (or much of any significant aerial presence) during the battles. Perhaps they simply lacked battle experience. But, in any case, I'm left with the impression that the Japanese forces were formidable mostly because they were willing to engage in suicidal attacks, and, literally, fight to the last man. Perhaps Japanese Army troops with experience in China or Southeast Asia would have fared better.

A few things that stuck out, particularly as to Burgin's baptism to fire at New Britain. Burgin was a member of a mortar crew, and responsible for carrying the heavy base plate for the mortar, so he initially did not carry his rifle. He describes one of his first encounters with Japanese forces. His unit was digging in for the night, when a group of Japanese commenced a "banzai" charge:

I had been carrying the mortar base plate and didn't have a rifle. I dropped the plate ad pulled my .45 out quick--I don't even remember drawing it--and fired, catching one of them in the chest. He was about thirty-five or forty feet away from me, still running when he went down. Other Marines were firing right and left and more Japs were stumbling, going down. The rest turned back to the woods. I don't think more than one or two got away. 

That was the first man I killed. I didn't feel anything but relief. He didn't get me. I got him. 

After that episode, I always carried an M1 and my pistol. A pistol is fine if somebody's up close, but I didn't want anybody getting that close again. That attack broke me in right away.

(pp. 72-73).

However, he would have an even closer encounter days later:

About an hour and a half past midnight, they came screaming at us through the rain, hollering "Marine, you die!" I was in a foxhole with Jim Burke. I'd had bayonet drill in boot camp alone with everyone else, but I'd made up my mind that as long as I had ammunition I wasn't going to let anyone get close enough to use my bayonet. But I saw a Jap silhouetted at the edge of the foxhole. I was on my knees with my rifle pointed at him and I shoved my bayonet into his chest as hard and deep as I could, right beneath the breastbone. In one motion I leveraged him off the ground and swung him over my shoulder, pulling the trigger all the way. I don't know how many shots I put into him--four or fie anyway. 

He was dead when he landed.

(pp. 76-79). Later during the campaign, he wrote about how you could smell the Japanese and they could smell American troops--each had their distinctive smell (probably based on diet). Burgin wrote:

When we went on patrol we'd take along war dogs that could sniff out Japs. After a while I realized that I could smell the Japs, too, if they were in the area and the wind was right. It was just like hunting in the woods back home, when I could smell a squirrel or a deer. But the smell of Japs was completely different from anything I'd ever smelled. They told us they could smell us, too. They said we smelled like goats. 

We'd have a dog with us, and the Japs would be sleeping in these A-frame lean-tos they made of palm leaves. And the dog would get you in real close, like a bird dog. Japs would be inside, napping or just lying around. 

We'd go in both ends at once and bayonet them or slit their throats. We didn't want to shoot them and let anybody else in the vicinity know we were around.

(pp. 85-86).

Sometimes the Japanese would attack in one's or two's. Burgin described one of the incidents:

There was no way to dig two-man foxholes, so once again we piled up rocks and hoped for the best. Normally we'd stay about six feet apart, almost at arm's length so we could reach out and touch one another. Through the night we'd take turns sleeping. I'd watch and the next man over would sleep. The man beyond him would watch and the next one would sleep, and so on. 

When the Japs came calling at night they wore these rubber-soled canvas shoes, a little like sneakers. They didn't make a sound. You'd look out and not see a thing. You'd look the other way for a second and turn back. And there'd be a Jap right in front of you. Twenty feet away, where there was nothing at all before. 

The fourth man down the line from me was sleeping. All of a sudden I heard this scuffle, these grunts, and then a long, drawn-out scream.  

The guy had been sleeping flat on his back when he felt a weight on his chest and woke up with fingers around his throat. Afterward, when he was able to tell us what happened, he said he found this Jap sitting on him, choking him. He said he could feel himself going under, losing consciousness. He knew the man was going to kill him.  

"Everything I was ever taught in training about judo, jujitsu, how to defend yourself ran through my mind like a streak of lightning," he told us. "I just went through everything." 

"I knew what I was going to do. I reached up and put my left hand behind his head and with my right hand I poked two fingers in his eyes. Hard." 

The Jap instantly released his hold and fell back. 

"I grabbed him by the neck and the seat of the pants and threw him off the cliff." 

I heard that Jap screaming all the way down, from the second his eyes were gouged until he hit the bottom. I've never heard such a bloodcurdling sound in my life.

(pp. 151-52).

In short, it is an easy read, and should be of interest to anyone interested in military memoirs, the Pacific theater, or combat from the point of view of the grunt.

Ghost 3.5 Trigger Connector

I purchased a new Glock 34 earlier this summer and was disappointed to discover that I could not shoot it anywhere near as accurately as my older Glock 26. The first issue was that I had initially installed a larger backstrap, which, while feeling comfortable, was just a tad too large for me to get a good grip on the handgun. The second, and probably more serious issue, was that the trigger pull was just too heavy--much heavier than my G26.

To address this issue, I ordered a Ghost 3.5 Trigger Connector. This is a drop in connector intended to lighten the trigger pull. Installation is pretty straight forward, and the company has a decent set of instructions at its web site. The only issue I had was with replacing the locking block pin (the last part of the reassembly process).

The issue was the tail end of the spring for the slide lock. (See photograph below).

In the photograph, the red arrow points at the tail of the slide stop spring. Just above it is the locking block pin, which fits transverse the frame. I had not paid attention to the exact position of the spring. When you have replaced the slide stop, the tail of the spring will extend across the hole for the locking block pin, and it is not apparent whether the tail of the spring should go above or below the pin. It goes below, as pictured above. If it is above the pin, the slide stop will engage whether or not the magazine is present.

Other than that issue, the installation was not difficult. And dry firing the handgun made it clear that the new trigger connector made a significant difference in reducing the weight of the trigger pull. It still is not as light as I would like, and perhaps I should have replaced the springs as well, but now I'm confident that I can get better accuracy.