editorial

Male privilege

Posted on by Caleb

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You’re probably wondering what’s up with the title of this post, because last time you checked, you were reading Gun Nuts Media, not Jezebel. Well, just bear with me for a minute, because this is a topic that has popped up on my radar in the gun/military community quite a few times recently.

To ask some people what “male privilege” is, they’d tell you that it’s how men have unfair advantages in western society. Maybe that’s true, I don’t have a degree in Women’s Studies, so I wouldn’t know. What I do know is what male privilege looks like to me. If you’d like to see “male privilege” through my eyes, all you have to do is visit Arlington. Or Normandy. Or any of the national cemeteries full of young men who had the privilege to lay down their life for their country.

Male privilege is freezing in Valley Forge, a member of a ragtag army with little supplies and small of hope of victory. Yet still they stand in the face of the most powerful empire in the world and say, “we will be free.”

Male privilege is huddled at the Alamo, outnumbered and outgunned, while a despot who fancies himself the Napolean of the west prepares to overrun your defenses.

Male privilege is a bloody war between the States, where outdated tactics put thousands of men in the ground as they charged en masse into rifle fire far more accurate than the muskets of a bygone era.

Male privilege is impaled on a Sioux spear and scalped, body bleaching in the sun because your commander took a short battalion out against 2500 well equipped and experienced fighters.

Male privilege is freezing in a trench in a French town you don’t know the name of, because you volunteered to fight The War to end All Wars; all the while praying they don’t attack with mustard gas again.

30 years later, male privilege is flaming out in the skies over England, dying in job lots in Stalingrad, fighting brutal jungle battle in the Pacific, and storming the beaches of Normandy.

Male privilege sits in the Chosin Reservoir, again cold, again outnumbered as the enemy pours troops at you in human wave assaults, and yet you never quit. You keeping fighting, and eventually break out of the trap.

Male privilege is at Ton son Nhut airbase in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, when 5 airmen held their post against a massive attack by the NVA, with all but one having the privilege to pay the ultimate price for their courage.

Male privilege is in the desert of Iraq as unarmoured Hummvees filled with Recon Marines race across the desert ahead of the main line of assault, with the simple mission to find ambushes and engage the enemy. It’s in the mountains of Afghanistan, and it’s in hundreds of places you and I will never hear of.

Now they’re talking about opening up combat arms fields to women. I’m all for it. My AFSC is open to females, and some of them have enjoyed the ultimate privilege that their brothers in arms have through the centuries. Everyone is equal in Arlington, after all.

editorial

The police aren’t the bad guys

Posted on by Tim

Today there is news of yet another police officer murdered, this time in Fox Lake, Il. This follows news of Deputy Goforth, a father of two, being straight up executed a couple of days ago.

All of this is happening, of course, in an environment of some truly ridiculous rhetoric about law enforcement and the most idiotic bunch of hashtagging douchebaggery you can imagine in the form of the “Black Lives Matter!” movement. Which is a complete and utter fraud…but we’ll get to that load of bollocks in a bit.

Let’s start with a bit of straight talk: There are some problems in American law enforcement. I’ve personally ranted about some of them in this space. I’m familiar with a number of problems that have occurred in a number of different agencies across the country. Some are public knowledge, some are not. Some of these problems are indeed serious and deserve serious consideration.

…but nobody is really talking about those problems. Instead we’re getting a steady stream of absolute crap from “activists” intent on selling a lie. If you listened to the press you’d think that police in the United States run around shooting innocent black people for sport. Hence the protesters, the chanting, the threats to kill police officers in revenge, etc. When you look at objective facts, however, you find it’s a much different story. The Washington Post actually put together a very useful little website that examines fatal police shootings. I strongly encourage you to go check it out.

When you do you’ll notice something quite unexpected given the tenor of the activists on TV and the protesters: This year so far police in the United States have killed 169 black people. This year so far police in the United States have killed 324 white people. Out of the 659 deaths the Washington Post has information on, the deceased was in possession of a deadly weapon in 517 instances. In other words, in roughly 78.5% of fatal police shootings in 2015 the subject killed by the police was armed with a deadly weapon. Toss in the 36 subjects who used a vehicle (which is a lethal weapon, too) and the 23 people who had a realistic looking toy weapon and the percentage boosts to 87.4% of deadly police shootings taking place in circumstances where the most basic facts make a prima facie case for the justified use of lethal force.

So 87.4% of deadly police shootings have taken place in conditions which are objectively dangerous by any reasonable standard…and more than twice as many white people have been killed under these dangerous circumstances than black people.

Only .96% of deadly police shootings have been against what the Washington Post labels “unarmed” people. If you’re a keen reader of this space, you’ll understand why I take issue with the description of someone as “unarmed” due to multiple articles I’ve written here about the danger of fists. It’s worth repeating here that in many years the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that hands and feet (called “personal weapons by the FBI) are a more popular instrument of lethal criminal violence than rifles and shotguns combined. Put bluntly, more people are beaten to death with bare hands and feet than are shot to death by rifles and shotguns combined. An “unarmed” person is not necessarily a harmless person.

When we run the numbers we don’t see anything close to the situation alleged by the “activists” setting cities on fire.

If we look past police shootings and examine lethal violence more generally, we find that most black lives are actually taken by other black people. 90% of black murder victims in 2013 were killed by other black people. After the ridiculous riots in Baltimore, the violence in that already beleaguered city has skyrocketed…but it’s not the police who are killing people in the streets. The trend seen in the 2013 FBI UCR is playing out in Baltimore, causing even people like Elijah Cummings to have a rare bout of common sense:

“I hear over and over again, ‘Black lives matter, black lives matter.’ And they do matter. But black lives also have to matter to black people.” 

…and that quote gets to the heart of how ridiculous all this hashtagging idiocy actually is. Ponder this:

 

That’s a dude being sentenced to life in prison for robbing, torturing, and then murdering two teenagers. A liar. A thug. A sadistic murderer.

The deputy in the view of the camera looks somewhat unimpressed by this display of “activism” by a murderer.

It’s not terribly hard to determine who the good guy is in that shot. What applies in this particular bit of footage applies more generally, too. It’s not hard to tell who the good guys are in this environment of ginned up controversy either. While there are some problems in American policing that should be addressed, the simple truth of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of police officers on duty are the good guys.

The hot zones of criminal violence in this country are not hot zones of criminal violence because the police are running around murdering people. In fact, when you look into those areas you find that police are often hampered from doing their job because of stupid political concerns. When you willingly reject common sense and give criminal scumbags “space to destroy”, or insist that the guy who executed a police officer was out shopping with his mama despite loads of evidence to the contrary, it creates an environment where criminal scumbags thrive. The end result of that kind of willful embrace of stupidity is the murder rate you see in Chicago, and the spikes in violence seen in Baltimore, New York, and other areas…or what the world saw in Roanoke almost a week ago.

The truth, though, isn’t politically useful to the right sort of people…so we’re treated to the spin instead. Police and media figures are murdered and what do the self-proclaimed enlightened insist is the problem? The NRA. I’m deeply saddened by what happened to Allison Parker, but I’d like to politely point out to her father that it wasn’t Ted Nugent that murdered Allison. It was a perpetually aggrieved racist who talked the same kind of nonsense as the sadistic murderer in the video clip above that killed Allison and Adam. The Department of Homeland Security puts out leaflets warning about the “danger” posed by returning veterans but you’ll notice a conspicuous absence of the people DHS says to be afraid of shooting up recruiting centers, setting fires in Baltimore, torturing and murdering teenagers, killing police officers, or murdering reporters on live TV.

I’m sick of it, frankly…and the only antidote to this bullshit is the truth. Countering the completely fabricated narrative with fact, reason, common sense and resolve.

So to those of you out there trying hard to convince America that the police and the NRA are the problem with America, I have this to say:

To hell with you and your lying, criminal coddling bullshit. Everyone in this nation hasn’t willingly taken leave of their senses. Every time you idiots insist on rooting for the villain it’s pretty bloody obvious what is going on. Every time you idiots burn a city over some criminal piece of filth in some stupid “protest”, a bunch of honest decent people go out and buy guns. You won’t see them marching in the streets or setting stuff on fire. They’ll go apply for a concealed carry permit. They’ll attend training. They will stop police officers they see in public and thank them for doing a thankless job.

…and if one of your special snowflake violent felons breaks into their neighbor’s home or tries to kill the police officers protecting their community, they will sit on the juries. And they will remember all the lies you’ve told and the carnage you’ve cheered.

Good luck, assholes. You’re going to need it.

 

 

editorial

The Grudge

Posted on by Tim

I had plans to write about something else but yesterday’s events have left me unable to think very much about anything else. If for some reason you haven’t been paying attention to the news, yesterday during a live TV interview reporter Allison Parker and her camera man Adam Ward were murdered by a former employee of their television station. After murdering them he fled in a rented car and was active on social media while on the run, making the ridiculous claim that Allison and Adam were “racists”…which is something of a pattern for this pile of human garbage. His favorite pastime seems to have been blaming his shortcomings and difficulties on racism and hostility from other people. In a new twist on this sort of horror, he used his cell phone to record video of the murders and posted the videos to his twitter and facebook pages. The video is…horrible.

I should say at this point that I actually interacted with Ms. Parker in previous years. When I saw video of her murder I wasn’t merely shocked…it triggered an unusually visceral reaction that I didn’t quite understand at the moment. It took me a bit to realize that I actually recognized Ms. Parker from having met her in person while she was still a college student. When I shook her hand that day I had no inkling that she was going to become the target of a malevolent narcissist who would delight in murdering her in front of as many people as possible.

Beyond the sheer repulsive horror of what was done to Allison and Adam, there were some surprising aspects of this heinous act that spurred a lot of discussion online. I’m not going to link to the video the malevolent narcissist (As usual, I refuse to use that thing’s name) took because it’s horrible. The video shows the murdering bastard approaching the in-progress interview without notice and actually drawing his handgun and pointing it right at Allison…and even then nobody noticed.

The murderer points his weapon directly at Allison Parker without notice.
The murderer points his weapon directly at Allison Parker without notice.

The murderer actually saw that the camera man was getting a background shot and waited almost ten seconds with his weapon out for the camera man to get Allison back into view before he opened fire. He wanted to murder her on camera on live TV, you see.

This bastard had a grudge and he was going to make sure the world knew.

A lot of people are puzzled by the fact that this bloodthirsty bastard was able to approach, pull a gun, and stand there for an extended period of time with no notice. There’s nothing really puzzling about it. The human mind is only able to focus on so many things at one time. A reporter conducting a live interview has a great deal going through his or her head, and may well be listening to feedback from the studio or control van through an ear piece.

Merely maintaining a real conversation requires a good deal of mental processing power. There is some research that suggests that drivers engaged in conversation experience a drop in driving performance almost equivalent to drunk driving. Violent criminal actors who specialize in street assaults will often take advantage of this by trying to engage you in conversation with a ruse or request to degrade your processing power enough that they can close distance on you and spring the trap.

In the moment pictured, Allison Parker is engaged in a conversation with the interviewee in addition to keeping track of a number of other things important to someone conducting an interview on live TV. Adam Ward is looking through the viewfinder of a camera (which severely restricts his field of vision) and is likely thinking about getting the shot in addition to listening to feedback from the producers in an earpiece of his own. Adam is visible on the right of the picture in the navy blue shirt. The gunman is literally inches away and later will actually start shooting over Adam’s shoulder without notice until the sound of the first shot.

Allison and Adam were task loaded. Busy trying to do their job, their mental and visual focus was narrowed to the point where the murderer was essentially invisible to them until he opened fire. This is a standard feature of human nature. Everybody does it. If you are task loaded or task fixated, you are truly unable to see potential threats in the environment until the ongoing violence directed at you arrests your attention. What you see in the picture is the reason why competent defensive instructors warn against having your head buried in your cell phone when you are out in public or walking to your car in the parking lot. When you are task loaded or task fixated you are every bit as vulnerable as what you see in that picture. As much as it pains me to use that screen grab, as repulsive as I find it, if it helps someone else avoid becoming a victim it’s worthwhile to show it.

To quote William Aprill, the violent criminal actor strikes at the time of his greatest advantage and our greatest disadvantage. In this interview the murderer saw all sorts of opportunity. He had the chance to execute two people who had become the focus of his irrational rage on live TV, and he knew they would be so focused on trying to do their job well (something he could never quite pull off) that they wouldn’t be able to react effectively to preserve their lives.

This pile of filth had a grudge, primarily against the world. He was terrible as a reporter but blamed his shortcomings on “racism” and bigotry by others. Not just at WDBJ7, but at previous workplaces as well. Everyone was out to get him because he was a gay black man, you see. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with being terrible at his job or the fact that he had a history of acting out like an angsty teenager. He swallowed the special snowflake kool-aid and kept gulping it down to the point where he was admiring mass killers at Columbine and Virginia Tech. For a guy obsessed with supposed racism and bigotry of others, he didn’t seem to take much notice that the Virginia Tech shooter murdered black people, too. Expecting reasonable behavior out of a special snowflake is pretty pointless.

I’ve heard many times over the years that the people who act out in bluster and anger like this pile of filth did prior to yesterday’s murders are “all talk”. There are certainly people in the world who will use display in an attempt to intimidate others into submission, (a pretty common tactic in the animal kingdom, especially among primates) but the mindset behind those displays is not simply “all talk” in many cases. I’m reminded of an occasion where I had to interact with an individual who had a reputation for angry displays that most people were either intimidated by or chalked up to being “all talk”. This individual got heated over a trivial matter in a heartbeat and actually threatened to physically assault me. At that point I calmly assured him that if he raised a hand to me I would teach him the meaning of the word “pain”. This calmed him down considerably and I reported his behavior to his superiors…who largely tried to ignore it. A short time later he actually did become physically violent with another person over a trivial matter and they had no choice but to fire him. His displays were not the full extent of his capacity…they were a hint at his willingness to resort to violence to get his way.

The murdering pile of filth who killed Allison and Adam had a history of angry and borderline violent outbursts that eventually led to his firing at WBDJ7. On the day he was fired he had to be escorted out of the building by police. The angry, perpetually aggrieved personality poses a significant risk of violence because they will invent evil on the part of others. When I met Allison some years ago I didn’t get the slightest hint that she harbored any bigotry. If you were to talk to her friends, family, and other people she worked with they would think such an assertion was absurd…and yet this murdering pile of filth felt entitled to execute her because of ridiculous claims like disappearing watermelons and supposedly racist comments that nobody else on the planet ever heard.

We can take a couple of lessons away from this horrible event. Firstly, we can learn why we want to limit the situations and circumstances where we become task loaded and task fixated because it severely degrades our opportunity to perceive and deal effectively with a threat. Secondly, we can look at the behavior of this murdering pile of filth and recognize the signs and the danger of the perpetually aggrieved malevolent narcissist. There is a reason why people around this jackass felt uncomfortable and threatened and it had nothing to do with the color of his skin or who he liked to have sex with. If you feel uneasy about a personality like this asshole odds are it’s not because you are a bigot. It is because you are recognizing, even on a subconscious level, that this person poses a threat.

 

 

 

editorial

Welcome to the Jungle

Posted on by Tim

“Welcome to the jungle it gets worse here every day
Ya learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play
If you hunger for what you see you’ll take it eventually
You can have everything you want but you better not take it from me“

Welcome to the Jungle by Guns ‘n’ Roses

In the English language when we wish to convey a situation that is outside the boundaries of what we consider to be civilization we often compare it to “the jungle”. The picture that forms is of a place that is wild and untamed by human hands, where only the strong survive and kill or be eaten is the only rule to the game. Human beings pretty quickly realized that the law of the jungle wasn’t terribly beneficial for the development of our species and developed what we think of as civilization and associated rules of civilized conduct to allow people to live together without smashing each other’s head in on a regular basis.

The trouble is that the conditioned expectations of civilized people don’t work in the jungle…and there are a fair number of our fellow men who reject the expectations of civilization altogether.

Let’s say that you see someone scattering litter in a public space. In a civilized society that is a socially unacceptable behavior that warrants some form of intervention. Civilized people, you see, do not scatter garbage all over the place and so one civilized person may approach another reasonably civilized person and use the tools of shame and social convention to cause the offending litterer to clean up their garbage and not repeat this behavior.

This approach only works, though, with another reasonably civilized person who lives more or less by the expectations of civilization. Someone who outright rejects these social expectations is not likely to interpret a well meaning attempt to prevent litter as someone performing an act of good citizenship. A couple visiting Denver found this out the hard way a couple of days ago.

“Mitch” and his fiance saw some teenagers littering and, according to the reporting, tried to convince the teenagers to “do the right thing.” This used to be a pretty common thing in America’s past. Communities were often small and people knew each other well enough that misbehaving kids/teenagers involved in minor mischief were often called on the carpet by other adults in the community. Note the term, there…used to be.

These days if you are about to interact with a stranger who is behaving in a socially unacceptable manner, even if they are a juvenile (often especially if they are a juvenile) it’s rather dangerous to assume that they accept the same code of civilization you do. While you might never react to someone challenging you about littering by trying to beat them to death, you cannot make the assumption that the other guy has the same reluctance to use violence on you. In fact, it’s a pretty fair bet that if the person performing the socially unacceptable action is in a group of peers participating in the same action or cheering it on, it’s highly likely that good natured attempts to get them to “do the right thing” will be met with…well:

….and then they will try to kick your head in.

We don’t live in the world as it should be. We live in the world as it is. In a perfect world obnoxious punks littering and causing trouble would be educated in the error of their ways, and if they got violent:

That isn’t how the world we live in works.

There is an old Polish proverb that translates roughly to “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” In other words, it’s not my problem. A group of rough looking teenagers littering is not your problem. Making it your problem may well invite far more trouble into your life than you can possibly handle, and for what reward? If things get violent and you lose the fight, you face the possibility of death or grave injury. If things get violent and you win the fight, you get to be the guy who punched/stabbed/shot a teenager over “littering”.

In this case, “Mitch” lost the fight and while he was laying on the ground bleeding he discovered that police response was 15 minutes away…a large chunk of that because dispatchers apparently mishandled the call. He likely thought he was in a popular tourist area in Denver…but when the wrong crowd shows up it’s not a popular tourist area in Denver anymore. It’s the jungle.

Do you know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby!

I would advise against trying to bring civilization to the jungle on your own. Your chances of success are pretty low, but your chances of screwing up your future (assuming you get to have one) are pretty high. It is, quite simply, not worth it.

Beretta/Carry Gun Comparison/concealed carry/gun stuff/handguns

Ernest Langdon and the Beretta PX4

Posted on by Baxter

Way back when, a guy bought a SIG P220ST at a local gunshop.  He then took that double action/single action (DA/SA) .45ACP and famously “tore down the house that 1911s built” at the 2003 IDPA National Championship and won the CDP title.  Never an organization to be so inflexible enough to not ban pistols other than 1911s in the CDP division, IDPA changed the rules, making the P220ST illegal for the CDP division due to new weight restrictions (a newer, lighter P220ST was released shortly thereafter by SIG coincidentally).  Personally, this ranks right up there with the time the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU) showed up at Camp Perry and used M16s to beat the Marines’ M14s handily as “a moment in time in which I wish I could have been there to laugh with much gusto.”  This guy’s name is Ernest Langdon and he is one of those oddballs in the firearms world in that he is a combat veteran and a shooting champion, proving that the tactical and competitive worlds are not mutually exclusive.

Getting a bit closer to the subject of our article, DA/SA handguns are making a comeback in competition and elsewhere.  The last five USPSA Production National Championships were won with DA/SA guns, three times with a Beretta and twice now with a Stock II.   The noted 1911 manufacturer Wilson Combat is even selling custom Berettas.  CZ 75 variants abound in my local USPSA matches.

Finally circling in and landing upon the subject of our article, Ernest Langdon recently found himself in a quandary:  he wanted the desirable combination of size, shootability, and magazine capacity that the Glock 19 offers albeit in a DA/SA pistol.  I’ll let Ernest tell the rest in his own words, as taken from his original Pistol-Forum post.

The newest handgun on my radar screen is the Beretta PX4 Compact. I’ve never really given it a second thought even though it has been out and available for years. Some people really love the PX4. Some people don’t. I have heard great things about its accuracy and there are still a few police departments carrying the PX4 as their issued side arm. That being said, why is it a gun that almost no one considers as a personal carry option?

I started asking myself this when I was working in the Beretta booth at the NRA Show this year. I was talking to customers about the new handguns from Beretta, like the M9A3, Wilson Combat Brigadier Tactical, and the full 90 series product line. I am fully familiar with all of them, but I was contemplating getting a smaller gun for daily carry. I carry the full-size M9A1 now and while I have become accustomed to it, summer was right around the corner and I wanted something smaller and lighter.

Of course, most would say “get a 92 Compact” and while that was an option, there were a few things that have stopped me from carrying it full-time:
1) No front sight options. You get what you get unless you send it off to Tool Tech and have a night sight put in. No front dove tail!
2) No G model available, or at least not currently. Of course, I could send it down to Wilson Combat and have it converted, but that’s an added cost.
3) 13 round magazines. Not a big deal, but in my opinion, a gun that size should have 15 rounds of 9mm.
4) Hard for me to load with the standard mag. I can do it really well with a full size mag in the compact gun, but a quick reload with the standard 13 round mag often ends up with some of my skin between the frame and floor plate of the magazine. The grip on the 92 Compact is about a ¼ of an inch too short for my hands.

So, this brings me to the PX4. I started playing with the PX4 Compact and realized it had the features I was looking for in a smaller, lighter compact carry gun. The PX4 also has has 15 round mags (17 with extension), dove tail front and rear sights, the safety converts to a G configuration easily and it has the same manual of arms as my full size 92s. Most importantly, I can load it full speed without catching the heal of my hand with the magazine floor plate. Not to mention, the trigger is smooth and shootable out-of-the-box.

The PX4 was feeling like a great option, but there were some other factors to consider. Right off the bat, those huge safety levers! They were way too big for my liking and have some really sharp edges on them. The ambi slide stops are bigger than they need to be and seem to make the gun wider than it should be.

So I started asking the questions…
Ernest: What about those huge safety levers?
Beretta: “We make stealth levers that are much smaller. ”
Ernest: Really? What about those huge ambi slide stops?
Beretta: “We make a smaller single side one.”
Ernest: Really? What about that really little mag button?
Beretta: “We sell a kit with three different size buttons.”
Ernest: Really?

I mean why did I not know this stuff? I consider myself a gun guy and a Beretta guy, but I did not really know anything about the PX4 at all. I knew the safety lever could be converted to G and that it was a rotating barrel design like the Cougar, but that was really about all I knew.

So, when I got back from the show I continued looking into the PX4 with more detail and finally broke down and picked one up from my favorite gun shop, Virginia Arms in Manassas. I drove straight to the range to make sure I wasn’t going to have buyer’s remorse. I put 200 rounds through it right out of the box. Easy to shoot, very flat shooting for the size and weight. (Surprisingly flat shooting, actually). It also hit to point of aim and was very, very accurate!

I liked it, but, of course, I headed home to take it apart and swap out the hammer spring to a 12 pound chrome silicon spring for the 92 (thanks to Bill Wilson for that tip – he likes them too). The DA pull weight decreases quite a bit and I decided to start the 2,000 round-test with this thing. I clean it, lube it, black out the rear sight and add some orange paint to the front dot, slip a piece of bicycle inner tube over the grip and we’re off to the races.

2,040 rounds later and I had no issues; so, 2,240 total at this point and I’m liking my decision so far. (Shot 147 SXTs, 147 grain reloads, 115 AE, 147 AE, 124 AE, 124 Winchester FMJ, 115 grain WinClean, and even some 90 Grain Frangible stuff.) Not a single malfunction.

So, now what? If I am going to carry this thing there are some things that need to be addressed. To start with, I need those “Stealth Levers” I was told about. A call to my buddy Eric Stern at Beretta had those sent my way. I also ordered up as set of Trijicon HD sights and a holster from Custom Carry Concepts. When the sights came in, I did a little bit more trigger work (it’s basically just like a 92 in that respect – lucky for me). I also did a little stipple work on the frame (got rid of the inner tube) and changed out the smaller magazine button for the medium mag button to make it slightly larger.  Lucas Gun Oil is what I use for lubricating these pistols.

So here I am, a couple months later and many trips to the range, and I really like this gun. Not kidding! It is almost exactly the same size as a Glock 19, the trigger is now under 7 pounds DA and right at 4 pounds SA. I really like the Trijicon HD Sights. In fact, I now have over 4,000 rounds through this gun with no problems. The only failure I have had with the PX4 was in firing with the 115 WinClean, but it went bang on the second hammer strike by pulling the trigger again. (I don’t blame the gun for that, however, as I have seen lots of FTFs with WinClean.) I like it so much that I am carrying it all the time now and used it to qualify as my off-duty carry gun with the Sheriff’s Department.

The “Stealth Levers” make it a ton thinner. My my measurements the compact is about 6mm thinner with the small levers, but most of that comes from getting rid of the right side slide stop. I don’t have a standard PX4 to measure. The safety levers are about 5mm thinner than the stock ones. So that should do it if that is the widest part of the gun. If the standard PX4 does not have the ambi slide stops, then the safety levers are likely the widest part of the gun.

I have two more PX4’s that I am playing around with and changing things up to see how it performs with different features. I have modified another one, which also has Trijicon HDs, “Stealth” levers, medium mag button, stippling on the grip, G conversion, and more aggressive trigger work. The DA on this one is just over 6 pounds and the SA is 3.5 pounds. I only have about 300 rounds through this gun, but so far, it is just as good as the other one and the better trigger makes it more fun to shoot. I now have one to carry and one to practice with.

I am going to use the third PX4 as a gun to experiment with to see what can really be done with the trigger. So far it has been really easy to get the DA down and I think I can go a lot lighter on the hammer spring with a bit more work. I would not be surprised to get a sub 6 pound DA on this third gun with 100% reliability if I set it up correctly – I’ll keep you posted.

OK, so I now have just a little over 2K through the second gun. A 1,000 of that was Winchester WinClean (known for not being the most reliable ammo) and now a second PX4 has passed the 2,000 round test. So far the best hammer spring is the Cougar “D” spring. Gun has proved to be super accurate with everything I shoot in it and how I have a little over 6K through two guns and they have both been 100% reliable. Interestingly they both run the Winchester WinClean better than my 92 does. The WinClean gives me fits in the 92 pretty often. The PX4 Compact not only runs it well, it seems to shoot it very accurately also.

I have also heard that there are even more parts for the PX4 than I knew about. Turns out Beretta Italy has spent quite a bit of time developing some accessories for these guns. There are 4 different versions of the safety levers in different sizes. There are steel guide rod kits and even an improved trigger group. Basically it is a whole hammer and sear group that just drops into the frame that includes a better hammer spring. Both DA and SA are improved with this kit. I am trying to see if I can get my hands on one to try. This kit includes a stiffer cage that houses everything as well as plated parts for a smoother action.

All-in-all, I don’t know why this gun is not way more popular. If you are like me and prefer a DA/SA Traditional Double Action gun for carry, this is a great option. I carry AIWB, therefore, I prefer an external hammer gun – this PX4 is treating me well.

Here are a few comparison photos for you:

 

news/Trijicon

Trijicon® Inc., Launches the New MRO™-A Brilliant Aiming Solution™ For Red-Dot Optics

Posted on by Caleb

August 13, 2015

Wixom, Mich. – Trijicon® takes the science of the red dot sight to the next level with the Trijicon Miniature Rifle Optic or MRO™, a red-dot sight tough enough for combat, the mean streets of law enforcement, competition shooting or hunting in the harshest of environments. Light and rugged, the Trijicon MRO mounts easily, zeros quickly and adapts to almost any shooting scenario.

 With its large objective lens and shortened optical length, the MRO virtually eliminates the “tunnel vision” or tube-effect common to so many red dot sights. The 2 MOA dot is bright and crisp, and is perfectly sized for fast target acquisition at CQB distance out to extended ranges.

 The MRO features eight brightness settings, including two that are night vision compatible, plus one extremely bright setting for use with lights or in very bright outdoor conditions. And, it gets an amazing five (5) years of continuous use on a single 2032 battery!

 Half-minute adjustments with 70 MOA total travel allow for zeroing in most any configuration on a variety of platforms. What’s more, no special tools are required-windage and elevation adjustments can be made even with the rim of a 5.56mm casing. The brightness control atop is ambidextrous, so your shooting hand need not leave the fire control area. The MRO is parallax free, with infinite eye relief for quick and accurate engagement no matter your position. 

 Trijicon engineers built-and tested-the MRO to operate in temperatures ranging from -60F to +160F. Waterproof to 100 feet, chemical and corrosion resistant, and housed in 7075-T6 Aluminum, the MRO can withstand the rigors of combat, sub-zero mornings on an ice-encrusted hunting stand or bouncing between stages during a competitive shooting event.

 The MRO. A compact and rugged aiming solution, perfect for real-world operators who need to get the job done-fast and accurately.

 MSRP: $579 without mount; $629 with mount. 

 

editorial

Don’t be an idiot

Posted on by Tim

 

It’s time for another rant.

Some time ago I got together with my brother and a friend of his because he asked me to do a bit of training with them. We drove out to the range and had a pretty productive session with the public range all to ourselves. As we were nearing the end of the session other people showed up. By this point I’ve spent enough time on the range to know pretty quickly if someone is going to be a problem…and this group was going to be a problem. I kept a careful eye on them as we were finishing up. Of the four of them, at least two had never touched a gun before and the third was certainly very inexperienced. The fourth was, I suppose, the “gun guy” of this group as the guns appeared to belong to him…though sadly he didn’t seem to have any more sophistication in the way he handled weapons than the rank newbies.

The exact moment when an inexperienced shooter accidentally fires a .500 S&W magnum into the air. These kind of powerful firearms and fully automatic weapons should NEVER be handed to an inexperienced shooter without sensible familiarization and safety precautions. Doing so courts disaster.
The exact moment when an inexperienced shooter accidentally fires a .500 S&W magnum into the air. These kind of powerful firearms (and fully automatic weapons) should NEVER be handed to an inexperienced shooter without sensible familiarization and safety precautions. Doing so courts disaster.

He pulled out a big blue S&W case and my heart rate instantly jumped at least 30%. I had a bad feeling that he was about to pull out a .500 S&W Magnum from that case, and that he was going to hand it to someone who had no firearms experience. Sure enough, the case contained one of the big X frame revolvers. I told my party to pack up because we needed to exit the range ASAP. I approached him and asked if he thought it was really a good idea to hand a weapon like that to someone who had no clue what they were doing. Naturally he was completely resistant to any input and was quite offended by what I assume he considered my “meddling.” Short of actually beating this guy unconscious…and believe me: the thought crossed my mind…there was nothing that could be done to stop this train wreck from happening.

My guys were packed up by the time this **CENSORED** idiot had loaded all five chambers and handed it to the smaller male of the group who had clearly never fired a shot through a handgun before.

I positioned my guys well back from the action and told them to watch carefully.

“He is going to fire two shots. One will land somewhere in the berm. Then under the massive recoil of that revolver he is going to fire a second one wildly up into the air completely by accident. And Hacksaw Jim Dumbass over there is too stupid to realize it.”

Some of you may share Mr. Dumbass’ incredulity. “Silly gun-writer! Revolvers can’t double!” On the contrary:

 

I want you to notice the description of that video: “SKINNY LITTLE BOOM BOOM GIRL CANT HANDLE THE RAW POWER OF A 500 S&W!!!!”

…as if what you see in that video is her fault. It isn’t. What you see right there is a failure on the part of all the dudes watching the spectacle rather than intervening to prevent it.

The .500 S&W Magnum is an absolute BEAST of a handgun. Some .500 loads have muzzle energy comparable to those of a 12 gauge slug. The recoil on this revolver is absolutely brutal. In the following video Jerry Miculek, who has the grip strength of a silverback gorilla, has to completely change his grip because the violent recoil of the weapon drove the hammer spur into his hand:

 

Because Jerry is an accomplished shooter with decades of experience, he knows how to handle the weapon safely. Most people do not have Jerry’s experience or strength and have no hope of controlling the weapon. When the recoil hits the weapon almost flies out of their hand, moving far enough to reset the trigger. They grab at the gun purely out of reflex and in the process pull the trigger a second time. When this second shot happens the muzzle is most certainly not pointed in a safe direction. In the first video you can see that the muzzle is just shy of being straight up when the second round is fired.

Where did that bullet land? 

…and that, folks, is the best case scenario. The worst case is as bad as it gets:

“Corredor-Rivera died of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Ralls County Sheriff Gerry Dinwiddie tells WGEM-TV that the woman was shooting a .500-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun when the strength of the gun’s recoil caused her to lose control. She was visiting family in the area. The sheriff said the gun spun around in her hand, leading to a second fatal shot. No charges are expected in the case.”

Stop for a moment and ponder what a point-blank gunshot wound to the head from a .500 S&W Magnum looks like…then realize that happened because some stupid bastard thought it would be funny to watch a newbie shoot a powerhouse revolver.

People seem naturally inclined to perform this sort of asinine stunt and now the possibility of “lulz” on the web and in social media seems to further encourage the idiocy. It’s not just big revolvers, either. People seem inclined to hand automatic weapons to inexperienced shooters with insufficient consideration, too. Sometimes with tragic results. I have had to personally grab someone and point the muzzle of the fully automatic weapon they were firing back towards the berm because they had no control and the muzzle was about to sweep everybody at the benches on the range. Someone thought it was a splendid idea to hand this person, who had no experience with firearms, an AR with a 100 round drum attached to it. The young woman in question had no idea how to control the weapon even with one shot at a time, and certainly did not have the presence of mind to release the trigger when it started going pear-shaped on her.

Nobody else seemed to understand the potential danger or notice as things were getting bad. Had I not intervened at least two people would have taken a bullet because they were too busy filming this on their cell phones to notice that they were about to capture some excellent footage of their own death.

For the love of God, stop handing these extraordinarily dangerous weapons to newbies. It’s not funny to watch a potential new shooter ruined by a bad experience with heavy recoil, and it’s really not funny if someone is injured or killed because you gave them a weapon they weren’t prepared to control. If you see something like this shaping up, intervene. Try the nice approach first. If that fails, try the not-nice approach.

Returning to the incident with Hacksaw Jim Dumbass, while he was standing there with a stupid look on his face (more stupid than the look he normally has on his face, anyway) wondering what just happened, I stepped into the vacuum and explained what just happened, why it was his fault, and how he should immediately put that weapon away before he was responsible for getting someone killed. Sheepishly, he complied.

For the love of John Moses Browning, stop this nonsense.

 

editorial/Uncategorized

Why I’m buying a Gadget

Posted on by Tim

A few weeks ago Baxter wrote a piece on the release of The Gadget, a device that allows someone using a Glock pistol to block the striker mechanism when holstering the weapon. I ordered two Gadgets through the IndieGoGo campaign and in the future I intend to keep a Gadget on any Glock pistol I’m using.

I first started carrying Appendix Inside the Waist Band several years ago after being asked to shoot an HK45 that Todd Green was running an extended test on. The HK45 is a big pistol but to my great surprise I was able to comfortably and effectively conceal the gun when carrying in a good AIWB holster from Custom Carry Concepts. Immediately after that I ordered my first AIWB holster from CCC for the M&P 9 I was carrying and I started training with the new carry setup. I found I was able to more comfortably and more effectively conceal my pistol, too, which meant I carried it more frequently. There were a number of occasions where I would have ordinarily carried a J frame where I could now easily conceal a lot more gun. I was a convert.

Over the next several months I continued to work on my presentation from the holster and I even took a couple of classes. One of the classes took place on one of those hot, humid July days that are typical of summertime in the south. Nearly 100 degree temperatures, humidity in the high 90% range. It’s worth noting that when those conditions struck Europe some years ago tens of thousands of people died as a result. That’s one of the reasons why we are big fans of air conditioning down here…it gets lethally hot at least a few weeks every year. By the end of the second day of class I was sunburned (SPF 30 doesn’t cut it for me), mildly dehydrated, and just plain tired. I had just fumbled a reload and I was pretty ticked off at my performance as I reholstered my pistol. I performed this reholster FAR too fast. Immediately after the gun was seated in the holster I knew I’d messed up. The little voice in my head that keeps me out of trouble spoke up “You’re lucky you didn’t just shoot yourself, moron.” 

I was pretty familiar with the dangers of inattentively reholstering before this moment due to experience and training. I had actually been in a class with a police officer who experienced an unintentional discharge of his striker-fired pistol when reholstering. He was part of a task force looking for a violent criminal. He and two other officers were in plain clothes setting up surveillance on the bad man when the guy walked right into one of the other officers. This led to a foot chase. When the officer I trained with arrived on scene he found the first officer trapped on the ground taking blows to the head. He reholstered his sidearm in his department-mandated plainclothes holster and BOOM. The retention snap on his holster had found its way inside the trigger guard of his Glock and as he attempted to reholster under the influence of adrenaline he didn’t notice any extra resistance. In the moment he didn’t even realize he had been shot. He told me he thought at the time that the officer taking the beating had fired to stop the vicious beating. It took those three police officers and two more uniformed police officers to get that guy subdued. It wasn’t until the fight was over and everyone was taking inventory of the injuries that anyone noticed that “Bob’s” jeans were bloody and had a hole in them…and that a chunk of the holster was wedged into the trigger guard.

I have personally experienced a similar close call (thankfully without a loud noise) at a low light class when the lanyard from a flashlight I was carrying found its way into my holster. It was pitch black and I was reholstering my M&P and something felt wrong. I stopped immediately and had another student use his flashlight to see what was going on. We moved to a berm and I contorted myself so that if the weapon did fire I wouldn’t end up with a racing stripe down my leg and I slowly and carefully backed the gun out of the holster so I could sort out the problem.

All of this was flashing through my brain after that bad reholster…and that was when I made the decision that I would acquire a pistol with a hammer I could block with my thumb as quickly as possible. I could have tried to convince myself that I was being paranoid, or even patted myself on the back for probably being more aware of the potential for problem than many others would have been…but that would have been foolish. I had been lucky a couple of times. I did not plan on being lucky anymore.

With dangerous machines, bad things happen fast. Even the most well trained person is capable of a moment of inattention with a dangerous machine and that’s all it takes to produce a negative outcome. Like this:

That clip features Randy Probst, a professional driver who has set a number of records at various race tracks in addition to being an instructor who has taught a lot of people on tough tracks like Laguna Seca. He’s also a professional racer, in that clip racing a Nissan GTR up Pike’s Peak. Randy and his team had worked on that car for months and had done a fair bit of testing on the actual Pike’s Peak run…but even with all that training, experience, and preparation he was still human enough to make one mistake at speed. One little mistake and his car is launched off of an embankment, placing him in grave danger. I’ve had the personal experience of being a passenger in a powerful car driven by a professional racer, spinning at triple digit speeds because he made a little bit of a mistake in his approach to a corner on the track.

Even the most well-trained pilot in the world goes through a checklist before flying. Even the most highly trained, highly skilled orthopedic surgeon in the world will ask the patient he is working on to actually mark the limb being operated on before a surgery. Why? Because there is no amount of training or skill that completely eliminates the human factor. In every risky profession from a helicopter pilot to being an engineer at a nuclear power plant you will see every possible approach adopted to minimize the risk of a negative outcome. I used to work in a manufacturing plant with some very dangerous machinery that occasionally had to be repaired or maintained. We had to do a procedure known as lock-out, tag-out on this equipment to work on it. This required powering down the equipment, ensuring that there was no stored energy left in the equipment, and engaging multiple redundant mechanical safety mechanisms to prevent maiming or killing the people crawling around in these powerful machines. Some people at the plant complained about the time it took to perform these tasks…but I never did. If I was going to stick my arm into a press capable of tearing it completely off my torso, I wanted to engage every mechanical safety I could find on the damn thing.

I’m human enough to make a mistake. The training I’ve obtained over the years has not made me invincible…it has merely familiarized me with the limitations inherent in being a human creature.

The Gadget is a risk mitigation tool. It allows me to have one more layer of separation between a mistake and a gunshot wound.

I’ve had a pre-production Gadget for a couple of years now, and I’ve never needed The Gadget when reholstering one of my Glocks. Careful reholstering procedure observed every time has worked to this point in the same way that careful driving has kept me from needing the airbags in my car. That doesn’t mean, though, that I’m incapable of screwing it up the very next time I try to reholster.

I’m not depending on a Gadget to keep me from experiencing a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I am just damn glad to have one as a last layer of defense against it in case everything else fails.

 

editorial

Hard lines

Posted on by Tim

Last week an interesting story with some important lessons on self defense received significant media coverage:

“When a woman in Charleston, West Virginia, opened her front door to greet a stranger she had arranged to meet through an escort ad she had placed with Backpage.com, she knew instantly she was in mortal danger. The man said just three words – “Live or die” – then held a gun to her stomach…’I was telling him to please just let me breathe, but he wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘He said, ‘I’m going to call the shots and you’re going to be quiet.’ As he was dragging her through the kitchen, she grabbed a rake and prepared to hit him with it. To stop her, he put his gun down, and she pounced. ‘I grabbed the gun and just shot it behind me,’ she said. ‘It hit him.”

When police arrived on the scene they looked in this man’s trunk and found “an array of handcuffs, two axes, a machete, a bullet-proof vest and – the most disturbing items – a shovel and a bottle of bleach.” The man’s exact intentions are unknown, but it’s a pretty safe bet that a guy who pulls a gun on a woman and says “Live or die” didn’t have all that stuff in his trunk for a scavenger hunt. Like Harry Calahan said:

The criminal assailant wanted to establish control with sub-lethal violence and threats of lethal violence to gain compliance from his victim. Instead, his intended victim fought back enough to cause him to make a mistake and then capitalized on that mistake…killing the bastard deader than disco.

In the writeup on the sections of The Unthinkable taught by Greg Ellifritz I covered his presentations on escaping restraints, but I did not mention his brief coverage of what I will call “hard lines” on being restrained in the first place. Simply put, Greg stated that he would not allow himself to be put on his knees, restrained, or moved to another location absent some truly extraordinary circumstances. If someone attempted to do these things, Greg would fight.

His “hard lines” are the result of knowing that the chances of surviving the event diminish significantly if he allows the criminal attacker to establish that kind of control. A criminal who wants to restrain you and/or move you to another location likely has every intention of killing you. There is absolutely no reason to cooperate with this intention. 

Fighting is not a risk free endeavor by any means, but the risks that go along with fighting are vastly preferable to the risks inherent in letting a violent felon establish control over you. If you pay enough attention to the news you will see plenty of evidence to back this up:

“Ronald Cassler was working at the Kangaroo station Thursday night when a robber in a black ski mask with a black revolver entered. Montrell T. Smith, 22, of Ransom Drive, allegedly entered the store and demanded Cassler, Millard Johnson, who is another Kangaroo employee, and a customer to lie on the floor. Johnson and customer complied. Cassler was walking around the counter to do so when Smith allegedly grabbed his shoulder and pointed the gun at Cassler’s head. ‘The suspect then pulled the trigger twice but the gun failed to go off,’ MPD Sgt. Joel Davis reported.”

If you have decided that you are willing to use violence to defend your life or the lives of loved ones, it is crucial that you develop similar hard lines of your own. Doing so is not just bravado. It means you are creating what William Aprill calls a “mental parking spot” for the possibility of that situation, facing up to the reality of that situation, and introducing a mindset of resisting it with all the violence you can possibly bring to bear. Embedding the hard line into your thinking changes that situation from one where you wonder exactly how the violent felon is going to execute you to the guy pulling out restraints being a cue to tear him to pieces.

You may not always win…but if somebody means to kill you then resolve that by god they are going to have to work damned hard to do it. Most predators are not looking for a fight and will be scared off when someone resists. Some will not. Either way, your odds are much better if you respond to a violent criminal assault with an immediate, unflinching violent counter assault. Do not let evil men establish control over you. Fight.

editorial

It’s not “senseless” violence

Posted on by Tim

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that last week four Marines and one Sailor were fatally wounded in what a large chunk of the political and media “mainstream” has labeled a “senseless” attack. It has become rather common place to hear political figures and people on TV describing acts of violence as “senseless”, especially when the act has arrested the attention of the nation or the world. It’s almost rote at this point…someone commits some heinous crime or act of barbarism and immediately “senseless” gets glued to every description of the act that goes out over the air waves or the web.

The dictionary defines “senseless”, at least in regards to violence, as being without discernible meaning or purpose. There are certainly some acts of senseless violence. The “Miami Cannibal” attack would be an example of truly “senseless” violence, as it was perpetrated by a completely deranged man against a completely unrelated victim. The attack in Chattanooga, however, was not “senseless”.

Earlier this year two terrorists attacked the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Charlie was one of two publications in the entire world to re-publish a series of “controversial” cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed, and since then had put out a number of cartoons with unflattering depictions of Islam and Mohammed. Charlie regularly printed cartoons with unflattering depictions of Christianity, Judaism, and Jews in general, but it wasn’t until they reprinted the Danish Mohammed cartoons that they began getting death threats. In November of 2011 the offices of Charlie Hebdo were firebombed, stopping production of the paper for a short time. Despite this, the paper continued to publish their material. Interviewed in 2012 after publishing cartoons relating to the controversy over the “Innocence of Muslims” film (which our domestic leadership initially blamed the Benghazi attack on) the chief editor of Charlie Hebdo told Al Jazeera:

The man in the video is Stephane Charbonnier. He and several others along with a French policemen were murdered in the January 7th attack. Cameras caught multiple dimensions of the attack’s aftermath:

This attack was called “senseless” by the usual suspects, including the President of the United States. As you can hear from the mouths of the terrorists themselves, though, it was anything but “senseless”. There was a very clear meaning and purpose behind the slaughter.

This attack was purposeful and effective. The new editor of Charlie Hebdo announced that their magazine would no longer have any Mohammed cartoons:

“We have drawn Muhammad to defend the principle that one can draw whatever they want. It is a bit strange though: we are expected to exercise a freedom of expression that no one dares to. We’ve done our job. We have defended the right to caricature.”

Keep in mind that the man making that statement was wounded in the attack and survived only by pretending to be dead as he listened to the two terrorists murdering his coworkers and friends.

The Charlie Hebdo attack was most definitely not “senseless”…nor was it an isolated event in some far away country, as we learned in Texas where two more terrorists attempted to turn a Mohammed-themed cartoon contest into a slaughter.

The political and media “mainstream” has been trying very hard to paint the attack in Chatanooga as “senseless” to deny a fundamental reality that they also tried very hard to deny in the aftermath of the Fort Hood attack. In the immediate aftermath of that attack we were treated to all manner of possible explanations of why the traitor Nidal Hassan killed his brothers in arms from it all being based on disagreements with others, not wanting to be deployed to Iraq, and even a cockamamie claim that he somehow had second hand PTSD. Further investigation revealed Hassan had been chummy with Anwar al-Alwaki…a figure who had been hanging out with several of the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing to Yemen immediately after the 9/11 attack. (Where he was later killed by a US air strike)

…and I could go on literally all day listing one “senseless” attack after another that had a pretty clear point to it.

Words mean things, and using the right words is important. “Senseless” attacks are discussed almost like a tornado or some other natural disaster that comes out of the blue to destroy people’s lives…at least until someone senses the opportunity to maybe spin it into a “narrative” that gives them political advantage:

But these are not random events. They are not “senseless”. They are calculated. They are deliberate. And they are, unfortunately, effective:

“Following the Chattanooga shooting that took the lives of five servicemen, officials have shut down several recruiting facilities and warned Marine recruiters not to wear uniforms in public areas.”

Years ago I took a college course taught by a former member of the CIA’s Osama Bin Laden unit who had been working in terrorism related intelligence for a couple of decades prior. It was a fascinating class that covered the development of terrorism from Munich until the present day. The final exam was an essay where we were to give our best guess at the future form of terrorism against the United States. In that paper I argued that the spectacular 9/11-style terrorist attack was going to give way to what I termed “franchise terrorism.” Smaller, less coordinated, less sophisticated attacks perpetrated in higher frequency by individuals or extremely small groups (2 or 3 people) with perhaps only a limited amount of technical support from established terrorist networks. They would become radicals and then perhaps seek out information and training on how to carry out an attack, then act. Terrorist networks wouldn’t have to do much actual recruiting…these people would come to them desperate to commit heinous acts of barbarism in the name of their silly faith.

Unfortunately the assessment I made in that paper has proven to be accurate. Unfortunately it is impossible to make this problem go away by slapping the “senseless” label on it and hoping the bad men are sufficiently appeased to stop killing.

Chatanooga, Garland, Oklahoma City, New York, Boston…this is all really happening. Stopping it, defeating it, requires at a bare minimum a willingness to at least describe “it” accurately. These are not “senseless” acts of violence. They are an attempt at conquest by parties willing to die in the effort to endorse their belief in supremacy with the blood of all who oppose them.

Chatanooga will not be the last attempt at this. It would behoove us, then, to prepare accordingly and make the necessary changes. It’s hardly sensible to have Marines (and other service personnel) hiding their uniforms and forcing them to be unarmed when we know these sorts are out there gunning for them. There are guys out there who get orders to go find and kill bad men like Osama Bin Laden but aren’t allowed to have so much as a pen knife on them at their bases because, god forbid, they might hurt themselves. Pardon my French, but that is absolute merde.

Lest you be tempted to believe that it’s just the folks in uniform that have to deal with this problem, remember that civilians are fair game to the global domination set, too. Do you have a good medical kit handy? Do you know how to use it? Have you spent any time considering how you would respond to the Unthinkable?

If not, maybe now’s the time. As I said, these attacks have been effective. The bad men believe that if they kill enough people they’ll get their way. It worked with Charlie Hebdo. Find me a paper or magazine in the western world that will publish a Mohammed cartoon. As the new editor of Charlie Hebdo stated, “…no one dares to.” The heckler’s veto is alive and thriving, ladies and gentlemen…and they’re not going to stop at cartoons. Because they’ve had such great success, expect more of them. And soon.

Be ready.