Merry Christmas!
Greetings Sheepdogs,
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
-- Thomas Jefferson
In the latter 19th century, Thomas Reed – a Speaker of the House – cautioned,
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope
that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.”
---
Among other issues, mass murderers in countries where they can't get hold of
firearms use alternative weaponry such edged weapons, as vehicles and arson.
It was only Monday that a man in China killed 35 people and injured another 43
in a vehicular attack at a sports complex.
-- Stephen P. Wenger
Table of Contents:
Prevention
Mindset
Situational Awareness
Safety
Training
Practice
Intervention
Strategy
Tactics
Techniques
Postvention
Aftermath
Medical
Survival
Education
Legal
Instruction
Gear
*************************************************************************
***** ***** ***** Prevention ***** ***** *****
Things you can do to avoid the lethal force incident.
Table of sections:
Mindset
Safety
Training
Practice
*************************************************************************
----- Mindset -----
Figuring out the correct way to think.
‟We don’t decide what is necessary to survive a
lethal force encounter initiated by someone else.
That person decides what’s necessary for us to survive.”
– William Aprill
"Mind Over Matter: How Your Mindset Affects Performance Under Stress"
by Dr. Martin Greenberg
Excerpt:
"By viewing stressors as challenges rather than threats,
officers can influence their body’s response to stress and
manage arousal levels, improving their chances of making
clear-headed, effective decisions under pressure."
"High-fidelity, interleaved decision-making training has
been shown to be more effective than traditional
“block and silo” approaches, which, though they may
provide initial skill acquisition, are less effective at
preparing officers for real-world encounters."
"Survival is a mindset, not a skill set."
-- Greg Shaffer
"Good Girl With A Gun: 1, Bad Guy: 0" by Dee Ann DuCote
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"Without a firearm, there is no parity, no safety, and in some cases,
no tomorrow for any law-abiding individual, especially a woman."
‷If you look at someone bigger, faster, and stronger and immediately think,
‶I'm at a disadvantage″,
I have news for you: you are.
But that's only because you just put yourself there for no reason.
The truth is that anyone can do debilitating violence to anyone else.
Your size, your speed, your strength, your gender --
all the factors that untrained people think make the difference when it comes to violence --
all matter far less than your mindset and your intent.‴
-- Tim Larkin
"Prioritize what works." by Orion Taraban, Psy.D., Wednesday, November 27th, 2024
Back when I was an actor in New York, I performed a lot of devised theatre.
Rather than simply performing a script that had been written by a playwright,
my colleagues and I would create original pieces from scratch using a collaborative
process. I learned a great deal from my time in these companies – lessons that
remain applicable even though I've left that life behind.
For instance, these experiences have taught me that it is sometimes necessary
to “kill your babies.” What does this mean? It often happens that – in the course
of a creative endeavor – people can become emotionally attached to certain aspects
of that creation: a line of text, a dramatic action, a character choice. Unfortunately,
not all of these aspects “read”: they don't get the laugh, or make sense to the
uninitiated, or drive the narrative forward. And it could be in the best interests
of the larger production that these components be removed. It's not easy, but
sometimes it's necessary to prioritize what works over what you love.
As a therapist, I often see people struggle in life out of a refusal to kill their
babies. These usually take the form of cherished beliefs that people are loath to
discard, despite their poor evidence base or dismal track record. Their emotional
investment makes it difficult and painful to let these beliefs go. However, just
like a creative artist, it is important to occasionally take a step back and examine
whether these components are helping or hindering the overarching objective.
Fortunately, I've found that effectiveness often takes the sting out of emotional
sacrifice, and what I've lost has been more than offset by what I've received in
return.
-- Orion Taraban
“Willingness is a state of mind. Readiness is a statement of fact!”
-- Lt. Gen. David M Shoup, USMC Commandant 1960-1963
You should read,
"Unskilled and Unaware of It:
How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own
Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"
by Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University.
Published in
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1999, Vol. 77, No. 6, pages 121-1134.
Copyright 1999 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
Executive summary: People in the bottom half of a skill distribution in a population,
grossly over estimate their skill level. People in the top quartile under estimate their
skill level.
---
The "References" section is fascinating. The bibliography of a paper or book will
tell you a lot about the authors.
"Your gunfights will always be anomalies.
So are those of all the instructors you venerate.
It’s useful to keep those facts in mind."
-- Greg Ellifritz
"Violence is Golden" by Jack Donovan
Originally published on November 11th of 2010 A.D. in
Arthur’s Hall of Viking Manliness (now offline).
A lot of people like to think they are “non-violent.” Generally, people claim to
“abhor” the use of violence, and violence is viewed negatively by most folks.
Many fail to differentiate between just and unjust violence. Some especially vain,
self-righteous types like to think they have risen above the nasty, violent cultures
of their ancestors. They say that “violence isn’t the answer.” They say that
“violence doesn’t solve anything.”
They’re wrong. Every one of them relies on violence, every single day.
On election day, people from all walks of life line up to cast their ballots,
and by doing so, they hope to influence who gets to wield the axe of authority.
Those who want to end violence — as if that were possible or even desirable
— often seek to disarm their fellow citizens. This does not actually end violence.
It merely gives the state mob a monopoly on violence. This makes you “safer,”
so long as you don’t piss off the boss.
All governments — left, right or other — are by their very nature coercive.
They have to be.
Order demands violence.
A rule not ultimately backed by the threat of violence is merely a suggestion.
States rely on laws enforced by men ready to do violence against lawbreakers.
Every tax, every code and every licensing requirement demands an escalating
progression of penalties that, in the end, must result in the forcible seizure of
property or imprisonment by armed men prepared to do violence in the event
of resistance or non–compliance. Every time a soccer mom stands up and
demands harsher penalties for drunk driving, or selling cigarettes to minors, or
owning a pit bull, or not recycling, she is petitioning the state to use force to
impose her will. She is no longer asking nicely. The viability of every family
law, gun law, zoning law, traffic law, immigration law, import law, export law,
and financial regulation depends on both the willingness and wherewithal of
the group to exact order by force.
When an environmentalist demands that we “save the whales,” he or she is
in effect making the argument that saving the whales is so important that it is
worth doing harm to humans who harm whales. The peaceful environmentalist
is petitioning the government to authorize the use of violence in the interest
of protecting leviathans. If state leaders were to agree and express that it was,
indeed, important to “save the whales,” but then decline to penalize those who
bring harm to whales, or decline to enforce those penalties under threat of
violent police or military action, the expressed sentiment would be a meaningless
gesture. Those who wanted to bring harm to whales would feel free to do so,
as it is said, with impunity — without punishment.
Without action, words are just words. Without violence, laws are just words.
Violence isn’t the only answer, but it is the final answer.
One can make moral arguments and ethical arguments and appeals to reason,
emotion, aesthetics, and compassion. People are certainly moved by these
arguments, and when sufficiently persuaded – providing of course that they are
not excessively inconvenienced — people often choose to moderate or change
their behaviors.
However, the willful submission of many inevitably creates a vulnerability
waiting to be exploited by any one person who shrugs off social and ethical norms.
If every man lays down his arms and refuses to pick them up, the first man to pick
them up can do whatever he wants. Peace can only be maintained without violence
so long as everyone sticks to the bargain, and to maintain peace every single person
in every successive generation — even after war is long forgotten — must continue
to agree to remain peaceful. Forever and ever. No delinquent or upstart may ever
ask, “Or Else What?,” because in a truly non-violent society, the best available
answer is “Or else we won’t think you’re a very nice person and we’re not going
to share with you.” Our troublemaker is free to reply, “I don’t care. I’ll take what
I want.”
Violence is the final answer to the question, “Or else what?”
Violence is the gold standard, the reserve that guarantees order. In actuality,
it is better than a gold standard, because violence has universal value. Violence
transcends the quirks of philosophy, religion, technology, and culture. People say
that music is a universal language, but a punch in the face hurts the same no matter
what language you speak or what kind of music you prefer. If you are trapped in
a room with me and I grab a pipe and gesture to strike you with it, no matter who
you are, your monkey brain will immediately understand “or else what.” And thereby,
a certain order is achieved.
The practical understanding of violence is as basic to human life and human order
as is the idea that fire is hot. You can use it, but you must respect it. You can act
against it, and you can sometimes control it, but you can’t just wish it away. Like
wildfire, sometimes it is overwhelming and you won’t know it is coming until it is
too late. Sometimes it is bigger than you. Ask the Cherokee, the Inca, the Romanovs,
the Jews, the Confederates, the barbarians and the Romans. They all know “Or else what.”
The basic acknowledgement that order demands violence is not a revelation,
but to some it may seem like one. The very notion may make some people apoplectic,
and some will furiously attempt to dispute it with all sorts of convoluted and
hypothetical arguments, because it doesn’t sound very “nice.” But something doesn’t
need to be “nice” in order for it to be true. Reality doesn’t bend over to accommodate
fantasy or sentimentality.
Our complex society relies on proxy violence to the extent that many average
people in the private sector can wander through life without really having to
understand or think deeply about violence, because we are removed from it.
We can afford to perceive it as a distant, abstract problem to be solved through
high-minded strategy and social programming. When violence comes knocking,
we simply make a call, and the police come to “stop” the violence. Few civilians
really take the time to think that what we are essentially doing is paying an armed
band protection money to come and do orderly violence on our behalf. When those
who would do violence to us are taken peacefully, most of us don’t really make the
connection, we don’t even assert to ourselves that the reason a perpetrator allows
himself to be arrested is because of the gun on the officer’s hip or the implicit
understanding that he will eventually be hunted down by more officers who have
the authority to kill him if his is deemed a threat. That is, if he is deemed a threat
to order.
There are something like two and a half million people incarcerated in the
United States. Over ninety percent of them are men. Most of them did not turn
themselves in. Most of them don’t try to escape at night because there is someone
in a guard tower ready to shoot them. Many are “non-violent” offenders.
Soccer moms, accountants, celebrity activists and free range vegans all send in
their tax dollars, and by proxy spend billions and billions to feed an armed
government that maintains order through violence.
It is when our ordered violence gives way to disordered violence, as in the
aftermath of a natural disaster, that we are forced to see how much we rely on
those who maintain order through violence. People loot because they can, and
kill because they think they’ll get away with it. Dealing with violence and finding
violent men who will protect you from other violent men suddenly becomes a
real and pressing concern.
A pal once told me a story about an incident recounted by a family friend
who was a cop, and I think it gets the point across. A few teenagers were at
the mall hanging out, outside a bookstore. They were goofing around and talking
with some cops who were hanging around. The cop was a relatively big guy,
not someone who you would want to mess around with. One of the kids told the
cop that he didn’t see why society needed police.
The cop leaned over and said to the spindly kid, “do you have any doubt in
your mind about whether or not I could break your arms and take that book away
from you if I felt like it?”
The teenager, obviously shaken by the brutality of the statement, said, “No.”
“That’s why you need cops, kid.”
George Orwell wrote in his “Notes on Nationalism” that, for the pacifist,
the truth that, “Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are
committing violence on their behalf,” is obvious but impossible to accept.
Much unreason flows from the inability to accept our passive reliance on violence
for protection. Escapist fantasies of the John Lennon “Imagine” variety corrupt
our ability to see the world as it is, and be honest with ourselves about the
naturalness of violence to the human animal. There is no evidence to support
the idea that man is an inherently peaceful creature. There is substantial evidence
to support the notion that violence has always been a part of human life. Every day,
archeologists unearth another primitive skull with damage from weapons or blunt
force trauma. The very first legal codes were shockingly grisly. If we feel less
threatened today, if we feel as though we live in a non–violent society, it is only
because we have ceded so much power over our daily lives to the state. Some call
this reason, but we might just as well call it laziness. A dangerous laziness, it would
seem, given how little most people say they trust politicians.
Violence doesn’t come from movies or video games or music. Violence comes
from people. It’s about time people woke up from their 1960s haze and started
being honest about violence again. People are violent, and that’s OK. You can’t
legislate it away or talk your way around it. Based on the available evidence,
there’s no reason to believe that world peace will ever be achieved, or that violence
can ever be “stopped.”
It’s time to quit worrying and learn to love the battle axe.
History teaches us that if we don’t, someone else will.
-- Jack Donovan
‟Fear is an instinct. Courage is a choice.”
-- Rear Admiral Joseph Kernan, U.S. Navy
"I wish more people understood that criminals are generally
not scared of or impressed by your firearm."
-- Greg Ellifritz
[That's why you must get multiple hits in vital organs to get the effect you want
(immediate incapacitation). There is very little chance of a psychological stop.
You must achieve a physiological stop. Which means multiple hits to the heart or
to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). Do you know where to aim
to get these hits? From all angles to the assailant? If not, you better take a class,
because it's not obvious nor easy.
-- Jon Low]
“You need to have the capacity for danger. You need to be ‘dangerous’.
Yet, you need to learn how to not use it except when necessary.
And, that is not the same thing as being harmless.
There's nothing virtuous about harmlessness.
Harmless just means you’re ineffectual and useless.”
-- Jordan Peterson
***** Situational Awareness *****
How to avoid being taken by surprise.
"The Way of the Tijuana Donkey – Ed Calderon’s Gray Man Mindset
How to Educate Yourself on Local Customs to Enhance
Your Safety in an Unfamiliar Environment"
by Ed Calderon
"Jeff Cooper's Color Code exists to help you get your head
around the need to kill someone in the immediate future."
-- John Hearne
---
Jeff Cooper's Color Code of Mental Awareness
UNAWARE - of what's going on around you. (White)
AWARE - of who is around you and what they are doing. (Yellow)
ALERT - to a POTENTIAL threat and taking action to avoid the threat. (Orange)
ALARM - by a REAL threat and taking action to escape the threat,
which might include shooting to PREVENT the attack. (Red)
COMBAT - front sight, press. Shooting to STOP the attack. (Black)
"This article will function as your primer for spotting pre-attack and pre-action
indicators commonly displayed by the bad guys." -- Greg Ellifritz
"How to Spot Thieves, Thugs and Terrorists" by Tim Makay
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"Normalcy bias kills."
"Massad Ayoob’s Tips and Tactics for Staying Alert and Aware"
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpts:
"In the words of my old friend Clint Smith, the master self-defense instructor
who runs Thunder Ranch, “If you look like food, you will be eaten.”
If you think about it, one definition of “predator” would be “an expert in prey selection.” "
"When you get into any vehicle, after you close the door, make sure you can
open it again. Memorize the door handle location and operation, and the unlocking
mechanism location and operation!"
". . . whenever I buckle the seatbelt, I always unbuckle and then refasten it —
partly to make sure the thing will release and partly to remind my hand what to do."
"The guy who jerked your purse or camera off your shoulder left you without a
purse or camera, but the same mugger who did so when it was around your neck
still got your camera or purse, but now left you with a severe neck injury."
[I disagree. I believe the standard taught now days is to have the strap across your
chest, not around your neck. And seeing the purse or camera in such a position
will prevent the snatching in the first place, as the thief is looking for quick and
easy. -- Jon Low]
"It’s amazing how many people walk around wearing earbuds or the headphones
that the buds replaced. These are not only literally earplugs that block ambient
sound—they fill your head with sounds that further occlude perception of nearby
danger signals."
"Situational Awareness Tactics That Help Spot Threats" by Massad Ayoob
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
*************************************************************************
----- Safety -----
How to prevent the bad thing from happening in the first place.
How to avoid shooting yourself, friendlies, and innocent bystanders.
How to prevent unauthorized persons from using your guns.
"How do you do?" by John Farnam
Excerpt:
"However, when one reads the fine print, he discovers that in the vast majority of
“cleared cases,” there was no prosecution, no conviction, no incarceration, not even
an arrest!
When Chicago PD is satisfied that they have successfully “identified” the murderer,
the case is considered “cleared,” even when the DA doesn’t even file on the case.
Suspects are actually arrested in less than twenty-five percent of murder cases."
---
Jon Low's comment --
We are all taught to immediately call 911 to report the incident when we engage in
self-defense. That makes us vulnerable to prosecution. On the other hand, if you just
walk away, . . . Walk away. Do not go to your car and drive away. Your car has a
license plate. I'm not a hypocrite. I would never suggest you do something that I
have never done.
Fleeing the scene may paint you with the brush of guilt, but there are lots of reasons
for leaving the scene. Primarily your safety. "His buddies were attempting to surround
me."
Why didn't you report the incident? Because I feared retaliation from the assailant's
Mafia / gang cohorts. I was protecting my family. If you report the incident, all of your
information goes into the police report, which the police are required to give to the
defense during discovery, which gives the defendant all of the information his colleagues
need to find you and your family; and torture, rape, and murder them. That is reality.
Anyone who tell you differently is lying to you. No, as a matter of fact the police will
not protect you. In truth your information will leak out long before the judge orders
discovery, because there are lots of corrupt cops on the take. They work for the gangs.
They rationalize their corruption by telling themselves that they are doing it for their
families. [In the recent Covenant School shooting here in Nashville, TN
11 police officers were transferred off the investigation for leaking the shooters
writings.]
The amount of time it will take law enforcement to find me, much less make a case
against me, is much longer than a human life time. Statistically speaking. How hard
are the police going to work to find the killer of a criminal scum bag? Are they going
to expend any resources on the investigation? Or, are they going to think,
"Good riddance to bad garbage."
As long as you don't advertise the incident on social media (and claim credit), there is
a good chance no one will ever know. Unless you have the misfortune of defending
yourself against a celebrity (or a person of a favored class), there is an excellent chance
there will be no news report at all. Because it's not news, it's a common everyday event
(actually many times a day in a big city). Nobody cares, unless you call attention to
yourself.
-- Jon Low (Now you understand why no respectable magazine would ever publish
my writing.)
Jeff Cooper′s Rules of Gun Safety
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED.
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING
THAT YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY.
RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER
UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET.
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET.
---
RULE V: Maintain control of your gun. -- Stephen P. Wenger
"Critical Safety Tip: Learn The Four Rules of Gun Safety…Plus One"
by Paul Markel
Excerpt:
"The investigation had determined that the service member in question,
during the live fire M9 qualification course, had fumbled or lost control of his
pistol in the middle of a string of fire. Rather than let it fall to the ground,
he quickly reacted by snatching at the gun. Investigators believe his
thumb — it doesn’t really matter which digit — got into the trigger guard and
pressed the trigger. A single round discharged and passed through the man’s
heart. He was dead before the Corpsmen could get him off of the range to
treat him. Veterans reading this will not be surprised that the officers at the
top of the training command decided that the solution to prevent dropping
or the effects of gravity was to institute an extra ten minutes of dry fire before
the qualification course. I wish I was kidding. What none of the people in
the command structure seemed to realize is that trying to catch a dropped
gun for fear of the resulting ridicule or punishment was a pre-programmed
response built into every service member from the very beginning. The idea
that adding ten minutes of dry fire was going to override years of conditioning
was childishly stupid, but such is the syndrome of institutionalized stupidity . . ."
---
Stephen P. Wenger's comment --
As someone who has sought to extend the recognition of Rule Five –
maintain control of your firearm – outside Arizona, where it was promulgated
as part of the original authorized training program for the Arizona CWP,
for many years, the discussion of Rule Five on my own website's
Firearm Safety page has included: “A caveat to this rule concerns dropped guns.
As suggested above, most modern handguns of good quality are designed not
to fire when dropped and people have shot themselves trying to catch guns that
have slipped from their hands. If you do momentarily lose control of a firearm,
it's generally safer to let it fall to the ground. Unfortunately, as discussed above,
there are still some handguns on the lower end of the price scale - typically
mini-revolvers and inexpensive pistols - that may not be drop-safe.
(Instruction manuals - typically available on the websites of manufacturers - will
usually mention such things as firing-pin safeties. You may also want to do an
internet search for lawsuits and settlements to help determine which brands
have had issues, even with firing-pin safeties - such as those that require
engagement of the thumb safety for full protection.) With those handguns,
it's really a toss-up as to which is the greater risk - try to catch a falling gun or
letting it hit the ground.”
Of note, the 1999 case that first cemented this in my mind involved a
DA/SA SIG P220 that was being transferred between hands without first
decocking. Inasmuch as the Beretta M9 has similar DA/SA trigger system,
I suspect that the pistol in the incident that Markel cites may also have been
in SA mode when dropped. Since loaded pistols generally have most of their
mass concentrated in a magazine inside the grip, they usually turn muzzle up
when dropped.
-- Stephen P. Wenger
---
Years ago I took a class from Tactical Response in Camden, TN, back when James Yeager was alive and running the show. At the start of the live fire portion
of the class, the students were instructed to draw from the holster, point in, and
drop their pistols. The ground was covered with gravel. Those who refused to
drop their pistols were asked to leave the class.
You must have your weapons holstered and concealed when the police arrive. Otherwise,
the police will shoot you. Lots of documented cases.
Flee! Don't engage the bad guy. That's not your job. Your job is to ESCAPE! If you
are responsible for anyone, your job is to help the others to escape.
Don't attempt to disarm the bad guy. If you fail, the bad guy could injure or kill you.
If you succeed, the police might kill you, because now they see you with the weapon
and the bad guy without a weapon. Lots of documented cases.
"Terrifying moment cops shoot and kill father who called 911 for help during a home invasion"
by Melissa Koenig
Hat tip to Stephen P. Wenger
"It's easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble."
-- Claude Werner
"Property Crime: A Homeowner CAN Change a Criminal’s Mind"
by (I could not find an author.)
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
"Pepper Spray Fail - Tim Larkin - Target Focus Training - Self Defense" by PROT3CT
"Pepper spray does not work against determined people."
Only debilitating injury works (destroying eyes, breaking joints and bones, etc.).
Pain does not work.
---
In Marine Corps Military Police training, we were taught that pepper spray doesn't
work on 10% of the population. And even the people it does work on can fight through
it if they want to. Pepper spray could not stop any of the Marines in my Military Police
unit, Provost Marshal's Office, Marine Corps Air Station, New River.
I don't carry pepper spray because it debilitates me (age 65 in good health) and
has not been effective against anyone that I have used it against in the real world.
"THE PRESS CHECK"by Gabe Suarez (Suarez Tactics)
Placing your thumb on the hammer to gently release the hammer to decock the pistol is wrong.
Any pistol that is designed to be decocked has a decocking lever that will block the firing pin and
drop the hammer.
If the pistol is not designed to be decocked, you are supposed to unload the pistol
and then drop the hammer on an empty chamber (as with the 1911).
You should never touch the hammer on any modern semi-auto pistol. Because,
it's not part of the manual of arms, and it doesn't make sense.
Don't let woke get you killed.
“One of the most important reasons for studying history is that
virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before,
and proved disastrous before, time and again.”
-- Thomas Sowell
"Follow the Silence!" by John Farnam
“When people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business
of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important
that the public understand that difference, and choose their news-sources accordingly”
-- Thomas Sowell
John Farnam's rules to keep you out of trouble:
Don’t go to stupid places.
Don’t associate with stupid people.
Don’t do stupid things.
Have a “normal” appearance.
Be in bed by 10:00 PM (your own bed).
Don’t fail the attitude test.
*************************************************************************
----- Training -----
Figuring out the correct tasks to practice.
You need training because:
You don't know what you don't know.
Much of what you know is false.
It's good to the have the answers before the criminal tests you.
-- Claude Werner (paraphrased)
"The Value of Force-on-Force Training" by Marty Hayes, J.D.
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
“Training deals not with an object,
but with the human spirit and human emotions.”
--Bruce Lee
"Have a Plan" by Leo H.
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always
possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Richard Henry Lee
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
"Want To Improve Your Accuracy? Get a Grip.
Get your sights on-target and keep them there."
by Chris Cypert
NO! No. The author and many others are completely wrong. A right-hander
scattering low left or a left-hander scattering low right is due to anticipation of the
recoil and pushing against the anticipated recoil. It is a learned autonomic nervous
system response to a stimulus (the recoil). The solution is the surprise trigger break.
Which Jeff Cooper taught decades ago and is still correct. Even though it is ignored
by the author and many others.
“It may seem difficult at first but everything is difficult at first.”
-- Miyamota Mushashi
"Invisible Palm - TUTORIAL!" by Sean Devine
I once had a student who refused to believe all that crap about false memories,
temporary amnesia, tachypsychia effect, and such. She believed what she saw and had
total confidence in her senses. She thought everything I was teaching was bullshit.
So, I took her to House of Cards. We had dinner, saw a magic show in the auditorium
and sat across the table from magicians doing close up magic (coin tricks, card tricks,
etc.). By the end of the night she was very upset, saying this was all demonic. I
explained that it was not black magic. It was just distraction, misdirection, sleight
of hand, inattentional blindness, and such.
People who believe their senses are in a state of self-deception. They just don't
know it.
One magician kept making cards appear under his tie clip in the front middle of
his chest. She couldn't understand how he put the card there, because she could see
the front of his chest all the time. Being able to see the event, even actually seeing
the event, is not the same as perceiving. You can see a thing, but if you're not focused
on it, concentrating on it, you won't notice it. Just like the gorilla (in the video,
remember?).
"We should not forget that the spark which ignited the American Revolution
was caused by the British attempt to confiscate the firearms of the colonists."
-- Patrick Henry
Tom Givens is no longer shipping his hard copy books. Only the electronic PDF
versions are available.
"The Collected Wisdom of Tom Givens", Volume I, II and III are now available.
(According to Tom's latest Facebook.com post.)
Cost is $15.00 per book, in pdf format.
Tom is only accepting orders paid by personal check or money order.
Put a note with your check as to which volumes and email address.
Shipping might be slow since Tom is on the road so much,
but he’ll get them to you ASAP.
For orders mail check to --
Rangemaster
1808 James L Redman Parkway
Plant City, FL 33563
---
Also available:
Free Educational Resources
Straight Talk on Armed Defense
Concealed Carry Class: The ABCs of Self-Defense Tools and Tactics
Yes, I have them. Yes, I highly recommend them.
By training, education, and practice, you progress through:
Beginner (beginners read, take classes, and practice, especially dry practice),
Apprentice (apprentices attend conferences to become exposed to many different
instructors, read, take classes, and practice),
Journeyman (journeymen strive to perfect their craft through deep study and practice), and
Master (masters teach). Others also teach. But it is only worth your time to take classes
from masters. One has to invest a huge amount of time and effort to get the experience
and knowledge to be able to teach competently. Just as in academia there are research
professors and there are teaching professors (and as a necessary evil, there are teaching
assistants [the graduate school slave labor]), so in the firearms / self-defense industry
there are masters who are competent to teach and there are people who claim law
enforcement, military, or competition credentials. Such credentials do not a teacher make.
Unless, as Mike Seeklander, your job in law enforcement was specifically writing
curriculum and teaching firearms skills.
And if you care for your art and craft, you will write. By writing, you condense and
distill your decades of learning and experience to allow students (not just your students)
and peers to stand on your shoulders.
Some teachers take the time and make the effort to answer questions (usually submitted
by email). Some don't. I have never ignored a question, even if I could only say, "I don't
know." or "That is outside the scope of my expertise." You should never ignore a question.
Don't be someone's dead end. If you cannot answer the question, refer them to other
teachers or books. Be their path to enlightenment.
“Train, Practice, Compete
are the key elements in the development of humans.”
-- John M. Buol, Jr.
"Why the right Self-Defense Tools and Tactics are Vital at any age."
by Ash Hess
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpts:
"There is no magic spell that you can turn to in times of danger to get the skills needed
to win."
"Knife fighting is a dangerous business, and you are simply not going to pull the blade
from your kit and know what to do with it. If you carry a firearm or a knife in a protection
role, you need the skills to go with it."
---
“You can’t truly call yourself ‘peaceful’ unless you are capable of great violence.
If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful, you’re harmless.
Important distinction.”
-- Stef Starkgaryen
---
"Bottled Aggression" by Adam Winch
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"If you are reading this, you are probably one of those who would benefit
by spending some time, effort, and resources in becoming a more dangerous
person than you are now."
---
“You need to have the capacity for danger. You need to be ‘dangerous’.
Yet, you need to learn how to not use it except when necessary.
And, that is not the same thing as being harmless.
There's nothing virtuous about harmlessness.
Harmless just means you’re ineffectual and useless.”
-- Jordan Peterson
“The secret of success is this.
Train like it means everything when it means nothing –
so you can fight like it means nothing when it means everything.”
-- Lofty Wiseman
"The Fundamentals of Shooting with JJ Racaza – Part 1: Stance"
"Safe gun handling and knowing how to operate the gun competently is one thing.
How to fight with the gun is a whole other plane of knowledge."
-- Tiger McKee
"Fast and Accurate, or Careful?" by SLG
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"It’s often been said that the first accurate shot wins the fight."
[It's the hit in a vital area, not the accurate shot that wins the fight.
Have you chosen the correct target to aim at? Do you know the
correct target to aim at? Many target areas will cause death eventually
(which is not our goal), but very few will cause immediate
incapacitation (which is our goal).
Are you wasting your time and ammunition shooting into body
armor? Wrong target!
Are you shooting too quickly to get accurate shots? Wrong shot
process.
Are you shooting too slowly to stop the threat before he kills you?
Wrong shot process. Bad judgment.
-- Jon Low]
"Train and practice so that you can stay in your rational mind,
and force your enemy into his emotional mind. The emotional
mind makes bad judgments which will allow you to win."
-- John Hearne
"I Shoot, Therefore, I Suck." by Kevin Creighton
We had a saying in the software industry, "25 years of experience is entirely different
from one year of experience repeated 25 times."
---
"How to Make Friends
Win Gunfights and
Impress Everyone at the Range" by Kevin Creighton
Cited article,
"Beyond the One Percent (part 1)" by Karl Rehn
“If you are reading this and can’t put your hand on your defensive firearm,
all of your training is wasted.” -- Col. Jeff Cooper
What's the secret? Don't rush. The self induced feeling that you need to shoot
faster is always wrong in training and in combat. But very common among the
untrained. Speed comes with efficiency which comes with practice, not by pushing
yourself to shoot faster.
[The Marine Corps says mishaps are caused by
1) time compression (their term for unnecessarily, self imposed rushing),
2) breaking habits (their term for doing something other than
what you were trained to do), and
3) distraction (as in when piloting an aircraft, PILOT THE AIRCRAFT!;
don't talk to the crew, don't talk to people on the radio, don't be concerned
with enemy fire, fly the aircraft!)]
If you stay in the present, paying attention to the shot process that you are
executing right now, ignoring all past and future shots, you will win.
When you need to avoid hitting the innocent bystanders, talk yourself
through every shot.
Sight alignment.
Sight movie. [Accept your wobble. It doesn't matter. The surprise break
will give you a good hit. Is it magic? Yes, it is magic. All sufficiently
advanced technology appears to be magic to the ignorant. You are God's
masterpiece of creation, extremely high technology. (Yes, there is a
scientific explanation. It's just a matter of what level of witchcraft you
are willing to accept. As Prof. Norman Christ (Physics Dept., Columbia
University) would say, physics is a religion as any other, with many
denominations.)]
Grip. (Push with your firing side hand. Pull with your support side hand.
Pinkie fingers strong.)
Touch the trigger.
Take the slack out of the trigger.
Keep pressing. Keep pressing. Keep pressing. Keep pressing. Keep pressing.
Keep pressing. Keep pressing. Keep pressing. . . . (Striving for a surprise
trigger break.)
BANG!
Trap the trigger to the rear.
Bring the sights back onto the target that you just shot, not the next target.
(You must have 2 sight movies for each shot. One before the shot and
one after the shot.)
Reset the trigger.
That is the end of your shot process. You may now move on to the next target.
Trapping the trigger to the rear and getting your sights back on target
is your follow through. Your sight alignment and sight movie determine
where your pistol is pointed when the sear releases the striker. Your
follow through determines where your pistol is pointed when the bullet
exits the muzzle, a millisecond later.
"But coach, that is a long complex shot process. It will take too long
to execute."
It is only long and complex because you have never done it before and
have not practiced it enough. With deliberate intentional practice, it will
compress in time and become very fast.
If you dry practice the shot process, you will be able to execute it in
live fire. Your subconscious cannot tell the difference between visualization,
dry practice, and live fire practice. So visualize and dry practice. They are
cheaper and more convenient.
Cheers,
Jon
"Those motivated by a desire to improve their
gunfighting skills as opposed to a quest for trophies,
must be willing to bleed ego on the match results
to avoid shedding blood in combat."
-- Andy Stanford
"How to Prepare for a Range Session: A Student's Point of View"
by Jim Gregg
"What Ifs?" by Ken Hackathorn
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"Believe me, if you haven’t given this even the slightest degree of thought,
you sure as hell won’t be able to do it when you find yourself in a fight for your life.
Forget what the action heroes do in the movies; when the action starts most mortals
find it very difficult to use even the smallest part of their conscious mind to make
decisions, discriminate targets, and watch their flanks."
"If you think you can come up with a good plan when the bullets are
buzzing around your head, you’re on Crack."
"Concealed Carriers: 5 Ways You Should Be Like the Police!" by Justin
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpts:
". . . basic malfunction clearance (tap, rack, bang)."
[I disagree. Shooting should never be part of any automatic motor program.
The shooting should always be a separate intellectual decision. Yes, it's going
to take more time. Shooting faster than you can think gives tragic results.
Should be (tap, rack, assess).
-- Jon Low]
"Your firearm IS NOT a general-purpose flashlight, even if it has a light attached."
[Never search with your weapon mounted light. Just about everything you muzzle
should not be shot. Thus, violating Safety Rule II. -- Jon Low]
"In reality, I have found that most cops know little more than the average
gun-owner about firearms . . . and sometimes even less. The “universal” firearms
knowledge of LEOs (Law Enforcement Officer) is a symptom of the symbolic
nature of a cop’s gun."
[I have had a police officer brag to me that in his 30 year career, he never drew his pistol
in a potential lethal force encounter. He was quite proud of the fact. He felt it attested
to his ability to control the situation without the use of lethal force. I thought that was
very interesting and wondered what decisions he had made through his career to be
able to do that. Probably moving into management early in his career had a bearing on that.
-- Jon Low]
------------------------------ Classes and Conferences --------------------------------
Rangemaster Certified Instructors
Map of Rangemaster Certified Instructors
Bullets & Bibles Conference
(The registration should be at this web site after the first of the new year.)
Friday, September ?, 2025 – Sunday, September ?, 2025
(Probably the last weekend in September.)
Living Water Ranch, north of Manhattan, KS
For more information about lodging on site or
if you have any questions regarding the event,
contact our Bullets & Bibles Conference Coordinator,
Vonda Copeland
director@fhftc.org
or call 785-293-2449.
Guardian Conference
September 19th - 21st, 2025 in Oklahoma CityTactical Conference
Rangemaster Tactical ConferenceFriday-Sunday, March 28-30, 2025
Dallas Pistol Club; Carrollton, TX
KR Training
Kari Grayson
Citizens Safety Academy
Carry Trainer
Paladin Training, Inc.
Training schedule --
Course descriptions --
FPF Training
Defensive Training International
Rangemaster
Trident Concepts
Mead Hall Range & Tactics
Apache Solutions
My son, Cameron, served in the infantry with Tim Kelly. Small world.
Harris Combative Strategies
PATRIOT TRAINING
‟Training is NOT an event, but a process.
Training is the preparation FOR practice.”
-- Claude Werner
*************************************************************************
----- Practice -----
How to get proficient at that task.
Why practice?
“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively
tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them
and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or
unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”
-- Winston Churchill
"People rust faster than equipment."
-- John Hearne
‶Practice is the small deposits you make over time,
so that in an emergency, you can make that big withdrawal.″
-- Chesley Burnett Sullenberger, III
‟Be careful what you practice.
Because you will do in combat whatever you have practiced,
no matter how ridiculous.”
-- ‶Shooting in Self-Defense″ by Sara Ahrens
*************************************************************************
*************************************************************************
***** ***** ***** Intervention ***** ***** *****
Suggestions on how to deal with the incident that you failed to avoid.
Awareness, Avoidance, De-Escalation, Escape
Table of sections:
Strategy
Tactics
Techniques
*************************************************************************
----- Strategy -----
Deciding on the end state and how to achieve it,
which tactics to use, which always includes walking away.
“You are no more armed because you are wearing a pistol
than you are a musician because you own a guitar.”
from "Principles of Personal Defense" by Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC,
(1920 – 2006 A.D.)
"Have your affairs in order."
-- John Hearne
“How do you win a gunfight?
Don't be there.”
-- John Farnam
"Having a gun is important. But knowing WHEN to use it is even more important."
-- Greg Ellifritz
"You win gunfights by not getting shot."
-- John Holschen
*************************************************************************
----- Tactics -----
Maneuver and fire in support of your strategy.
"Real fights are short."
-- Bruce Lee
"The Real World Is Multidirectional" by Dave Bahde
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"Practice shooting “on the move” and encourage movement in general,
but don’t “always” move. Movement should be deliberate, period;
nothing you do with a gun should be “automatic.”
It was a huge part of my training for officers and the SWAT team:
Move because it is to your advantage; if not, don’t. Sometimes,
the best solution is to get that gun on target as fast as possible,
maybe from a position of retention, ending the fight immediately."
"You brought a gun to the fight. That doesn’t mean it’s YOUR gun.
The gun belongs to whomever can keep it. Think about that before intervening
in other folks’ problems. When is the last time you practiced your in-hand weapon
retention skills?"
-- Greg Ellifritz
---
". . . if the assailant has a gun, it may actually be the easiest gun for you to access,
if you know how to take it from him."
-- Stephen P. Wenger
---
When was last time you practiced your in-holster weapon retention skills?
Have you taken a class to know such techniques?
“Fortuitous outcomes reinforce poor tactics.”
-- Chuck Haggard
“What’s the number one reason for reloading? Missing the target!”
-- Claude Werner
"You often don't know where the bad guy is who is shooting at you."
-- Phillip Groff
“When you’re in the dark, stay in the dark;
when you’re in the light, light up the dark.”
-- Stephen P. Wenger
"The shorter the fight, the less hurt you get."
-- John Holschen
*************************************************************************
----- Techniques -----
Ways to execute a given task in support of your tactics,
especially when disabled or under stress.
"Use only that which works,
and take it from any place you can find it."
-- Bruce Lee
"Hock's Elbow Hyper-Extension, Grappling Armbar Session" by W. Hock Hochheim
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Notice how he uses the pistol as an impact weapon. Sometimes you don't want
to shoot the other guy. Would the pistol being used as a sap be considered lethal force?
I took a knife class from Hock at Front Sight years ago. Good instructor.
I highly recommend.
YouTube.com channel.
Web site.
[It's important for us to practice these techniques 'with the intention of escaping'.
Which is different from 'with the intention of subduing / forcing a submission /
arresting / etc.' We might not hold on to the bad guy for as long. We might not do the
follow up moves such as stomping / knee dropping / etc. once we get the bad guy
down on the ground. And then again, we might need to incapacitate the enemy.
-- Jon Low]
"The foundations of your grip are established
before you even draw the pistol from the holster."
-- Tanner Denton
I was testing the limits of my range of motion.
When I twist to my left, I have correct binocular vision with both eyes open and
can close either eye to aim my pistol at the limit of my range of motion.
When I twist to my right, at the limit of my range of motion, I do not have correct
binocular vision. My left eye will not turn far enough right to create binocular vision
with my right eye. I can still close either eye to aim my pistol.
Attempting to shoot with both eyes open without correct binocular vision is dangerous,
as you don't get the usual double image in the same field of view. Rather you get two
distinct different images. [The right half of your brain processes the left field of view
from both eyes. The left half of your brain processes the right field of view from both
eyes. With correct binocular vision, the halves of the brain are processing very similar
images. Without correct binocular vision the halves of the brain are processing four
dissimilar images.]
That's why creating the habit of always closing one eye for the fraction of a second
necessary to aim and release the shot is so important. Unlike the bad guys or the
competitors or the soldiers in a free-fire-zone, we must always hit our intended target.
Because we understand that our miss is a hit on something, damaging property, injuring
bystanders, maybe killing them. That's why self-defense combat for the good guy is
orders of magnitude more difficult than it is for the bad guy, competitor, or soldier.
One could argue that our job is even more difficult than the police officer. The
police officer has a duty to engage. We have no such duty. Our goal is to escape.
So what were we shooting for? We must articulate a reasonable justification for
engaging.
Criminally prosecuting a civilian is much easier than prosecuting a police officer.
We have no police union protecting us with attorneys on retainer. Though a good
self-defense insurance policy will help. When a police officer is tried criminally,
it is common practice to bring the bad guy's criminal record into evidence. Not so
easy in a civilian self-defense trial. The civilian defendant has to prove that he had
knowledge of the criminal record of the assailant before the incident. You might be
able to bring the bad guy's criminal record into evidence if you can show that you
knew of the bad guy's criminal record because your instructor told you that the
conditional probability of your assailant having a long violent criminal record is
extremely high given that your assailant was attacking you. Violent crime is not a
first offense. Shoplifting is a first offense. Violent crime is usually learned while
in prison. People who think that prisons rehabilitate or correct behavior are just
stupid.
We will also be held civilly accountable as a defendant in a civil law suit.
We don't have qualified immunity. For a police officer to lose qualified immunity,
he has to be doing something outside the scope of his job description. Have you
ever read an official job description for a police officer?
"Grip first, then press."
-- Mike Seeklander
"THE COVERT DRAW" by Gabe Suarez
Excerpt:
"It's not about speed. It's about timing." [Deep truth. -- Jon Low]
"Sleight of hand." [Misdirection, distraction, inattentional blindness, etc. -- Jon Low]
---
That's why studying theatrical magic is so important. If the magician can place a
card under his tie clip on the front of his chest without you noticing until he calls
your attention to it, then you can draw your pistol and point it at the bad guy without
the bad guy noticing. Yes, you can do it. I've done it. As Penn Jillete says, it's no
more dangerous that sitting in your living room. (Ya, I realize that the context isn't
exactly correct.) -- Jon Low
---
"10 Levels of Deception: The Neuroscience of Magic" by Daniel Roy
Even if you have watched this video before, you should watch it again. It's deeper than
it appears to be at first viewing.
"Best KO Nobody Knows About" by Tim Larkin
The Phrenic & Vagus Nerve
Effective truth never gets old.
"Good Tips for Off Body Concealed Carry Methods" by James Tarr
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"The late Col. Jeff Cooper once wrote that if you couldn’t get a loaded gun
in your hand in five seconds you were unarmed, and I think that’s a great metric
for off-body carry."
---
"relegate" should be "delegate".
"The Importance of the Locked Wrist" by Massad Ayoob
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"The autoloading pistol was designed on the assumption the slide would work
against the rigid abutment of a firmly held frame. When the wrist unlocks, and
whipsaw recoil follows, some of the force running the slide dissipates through
the moving frame and gun hand, impairing cycling function. The result may be
a failure of the next round to go into battery, or an extraction or ejection failure,
perhaps with a stove-piped casing stuck in the ejection port."
[You can explain "locked wrists" and skeletal structural support until you're blue
in the face, and the student still might not get it. Sometimes, the student needs to
practice enough to have the epiphany. Something clicks in their brain and then
everything works. They have that "aha" moment. -- Jon Low]
"8 Things You May Do That Give Away The Fact You’re Carrying A Firearm"
by Brandon Curtis
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
"It's not daily increase but daily decrease - hack away at the inessentials!"
-- Bruce Lee
*************************************************************************
*************************************************************************
***** ***** ***** Postvention ***** ***** *****
Suggestions on how to treat your wounds or the wounds of your loved ones.
Suggestions on how to avoid prosecution, conviction, and prison time.
Suggestions on how to avoid the civil law suit and judgment.
Table of contents:
Aftermath
Medical
Survival
*************************************************************************
----- Aftermath -----
You must be alive to have these problems: criminal and civil liability.
“Your understanding and consent are not required
for someone to take your life, kill your loved ones,
and destroy all you hold dear.”
-- William Aprill
In the right hand column of this web page, click on "Never Talk To The Police"
or use the address,
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him,
but because he loves what is behind him.”
― G.K. Chesterton
In the right hand column, click on the link labeled "Self Defense Insurance".
Or, the link is,
Read this before you buy insurance. You need to make an informed decision.
The various policies are drastically different.
"You need to read the fine print." -- Massad Ayoob
*************************************************************************
----- Medical -----
Tactical Emergency Casualty Care Course - NAEMT Certified, $495.00
"If you prepare for the emergency,
the emergency ceases to exist!"
-- Sherman House
*************************************************************************
----- Survival -----
"If you stay fit, you do not have to get fit.
If you stay trained, you do not have to get trained.
If you stay prepared, you do not have to get prepared."
-- Robert Margulies
*************************************************************************
*************************************************************************
***** ***** ***** Education ***** ***** *****
Table of contents:
Legal
Instruction
Gear
*************************************************************************
"You will never get smarter or broaden your horizons
if you're unwilling to learn from others and read."
-- Becca Martin
"5 Gunfighting Myths Debunked" by Massad Ayoob
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpts:
"In the case just mentioned, Sergeant Gramins began in his patrol car with a 12 gauge
Remington 870 pump shotgun in an overhead rack and an AR-15 patrol rifle in the
trunk, and it happened so fast that he was never able to deploy anything but the pistol
on his hip and the magazines in his belt pouches."
"The history of gunfighting is, when the fast and furious shooting starts,
what we have on our person is all that we’re likely to have to fight with."
"I’ve lost count of how many gunfights I’ve studied where the survivor
said something like, “I was pointing the gun and firing as best I could and
nothing was happening. Then I remembered to aim with my sights, and
the other guy went down and it was over.” "
"Is Combat Shooting a Martial Art?" by Gary J. Glemboski
Rangemaster newsletter, December 2024
Excerpts:
"Austin PD now claiming that 90% of 911 calls
are answered without people
being on hold. That means 1 caller out of 10 is not getting
through to a call-taker
without being on hold. That's better than far worse numbers last year. I
had a
student last year sit on hold for an hour
waiting to report that someone shot at his
neighbor's house in a drive by."
Interview of Tom Givens,
Article, "Primacy Matters!"
Excerpt:
"Under stress, the brain tends to fall back on the first way it learned to
perform a skill,
even if a better way was later learned. Thus, starting
out doing it right is critical."
Article, "Selecting Carry/Duty Ammunition"
Quips by John Farnam
Active Response Training
Weekend Knowledge Dump
The Tactical Professor
Rangemaster Newsletter
ConcealedCarry.com articles
Concealed Carry Corner
"Cogito, ergo armatum sum." (I think, therefore armed am I.)
-- John Farnam
*************************************************************************
----- Legal -----
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other.
-- John Adams, October 11, 1798
"Disparity of Force" by K.L. Jamison, ESQ
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"The court cannot be relied on to take judicial notice of the obvious."
"Gun Law Database" by U.S. Law Shield
"Israel: The Holy Land of Open Carry" by Peter Suciu
Hat tip to Stephen P. Wenger.
Excerpt:
"Israel seeks to have a well-armed society, where "only the right people are armed" –
as in those not opposed to the state in any way. Thus, the Americans who state they
support the Second Amendment but complain about a deep state and don't like the
"woke agenda" would be quickly denied the right to carry a firearm in the Middle
Eastern democracy [Israel]. That is because Israel doesn't care about so much about
"self-defense" as it sees an armed populace (of those who have been carefully vetted)
will help ensure its "national defense." There is another important difference in Israel
that the most ardent supporters of the Second Amendment probably wouldn't like.
Beyond its restrictive gun laws that seek to ensure the right people are armed,
it requires those people to be well-trained in the use of firearms – by the IDF
(Israeli Defense Force)."
"Build A Reciprocity Map:" by Concealed Carry Inc.
"The FBI’s Biden-Era Murder Estimates Are Far Below the
Number of Homicides Recorded on Death Certificates"
by James D. Agresti
"Concealed Carry Laws in America" by CCW Safe
"Andrew Branca: Basics of Self-Defense Law"
The real short version.
"Law of Self Defense" by Andrew Branca
(free book, just pay for shipping so you don't have to go to Colorado to pick it up)
Daniel Penny, the New York City Subway Hero, is on trial for manslaughter
following the death of Jordan Neely. What is the lesson to be learned? NEVER
talk to the police without your attorney present. Penny talked to the police
without his attorney and now everything he said is being used against him.
The prosecution is relying heavily on Penny's statements. (One could argue
that the entire prosecution case is based on Penny's statements.)
Neely was known to police to be a total scum bag violent criminal. The police
certainly did not want to arrest or prosecute Penny. All of the victim and witness
statements were favorable to Penny. So why is Penny being prosecuted? Because
the police don't make the decision. The prosecutor does.
Penny didn't know enough to ask for counsel and invoke his right to remain silent.
Your rights don't go into effect automatically. You MUST invoke them. Ya, as a
matter of fact, that is a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
"America’s Stolen Guns: A Silent Contributor to Gun Crimes in the U.S. (2024)"
by Cassandra McBride
https://www.legalreader.com/americas-stolen-guns-a-silent-contributor-to-gun-crimes-in-the-u-s-2024/
Hat tip to Stephen P. Wenger, http://spw-duf.info
Excerpts:
1,074,022 firearms were reported stolen in the U.S. between 2017 and 2021,
which equates to an average of 200,000 per year.
There were more guns stolen in 2017 than in 2021, despite an increase in gun
sales nationwide in 2021.
85.9% of those possessing a firearm, when they committed their crimes,
purchased or obtained the firearm from somewhere other than a licensed dealer.
However, these figures are estimates, as criminals typically do not report
their illicit activities to law enforcement agencies for research purposes.
. . . only 0.042% of civilian-owned firearms in the United States are stolen
each year. Therefore, it is safe to say that the vast majority of gun owners are,
in fact, taking precautions to ensure thieves do not acquire their property.
Stolen guns in America are used in a significantly higher number of crimes
than legally purchased firearms. However, many stolen guns are never used
in crimes . . . Only 10% of stolen guns are used in crimes annually,
but 43.2% of criminals who used a firearm in the commission of a crime
purchased it from an underground dealer. Furthermore, 20% of inmates who
committed a crime with a firearm reportedly obtained a firearm solely for the
purpose of committing a crime. Despite rhetoric about gun shows, firearms
purchased from gun shows are the least likely to be used in crimes (0.8%),
and those purchased from an FFL dealer by the offender are used in only 1.3%
of crimes. In total, 85.9% of those in possession of a firearm, when they
committed their crimes, purchased or obtained the firearm from somewhere
other than a licensed dealer.
Many claims assume that stolen guns are uniquely a weak gun law problem
or a gun ownership problem. However, when we expand the issue across all
fifty states, gun laws, and ownership rates don’t show a consistent correlation
when you look at the number of stolen guns in an area . . . While areas with
many legal guns tend to have lower crime rates, inner-city areas with higher
rates of crime tend to create a profitable market for stolen guns. When individuals
feel unsafe in an area and have no means to protect themselves lawfully,
they may resort to illegal and stolen guns for protection . . .
“Is there no virtue among us? If there is not, we are without hope!
No form of government, existing nor theoretical, will keep us from harm.
To think that any government, in any form, will insure liberty and happiness
for a dishonorable population represents the height of self-deception.”
-- James Madison, 1788
*************************************************************************
----- Instruction -----
Colonel Robert Lindsey to his fellow trainers:
"We are not God's gift to our students.
Our students are God's gift to us."
"The limited time you spend with students may be the only training they ever receive!"
-- John Farnam
----- Instructors -----
“The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other.
Without collaboration, our growth is limited to our own perspectives.”
-- Robert John Meehan
"Second Amendment:
Train Because You Should
Is Government-mandated Training a Bad Thing?"
by Alan Korwin
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"Be part of history and teach Americans to carry and shoot safely because it’s right,
not because it’s required."
“He who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”
-- Richard Henry Dana
Be careful what you teach.
Because your students will do in combat
whatever you have trained them to do,
no matter how ridiculous.
-- "Shooting in Self-Defense" by Sara Ahrens
"Remember,
the students who require the extra effort
are the ones who need us the most!"
-- John Farnam
"You must teach skill sustainment as part of training."
-- John Hearne
----- Students -----
I know training can be difficult. Let me share some words of encouragement that
my teacher told me, that I believe apply to all training regimens.
"Keep in mind that this is some seriously next level material. It is totally normal
that the first time you see this stuff, you find it confusing. You find it difficult to
understand. So, confusion should not discourage you. It does not represent any
intellectual failing on your part. Rather, keep in mind that it represents an opportunity
to get even smarter."
– Tim Roughgarden, Professor of Computer Science
and other stuff at Stanford University
"What Makes A Good Firearms instructor?" by QuietlyArmedHQ
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
Excerpt:
"That dedication to self improvement will be reflected in a dedication to improving
the skills of their students. A firearms instructor who thinks that learning how to shoot
is a “one and done process” will replicate that process in his or her students. Therefore,
if you’re unsure about the instructor in an upcoming class, ask them three questions:
“When was your last practice session, what did you practice, and why?” "
[My last practice session was yesterday. I experimented to find the limits of my
range of motion, so that I would know how far I could twist left or right and still be
able to make an accurate shot. Because knowing your limitations will allow you to
confidently execute in combat, or to use a different tactic because you know that
this particular situation is beyond your limit. -- Jon Low]
The test of whether or not you understand a thing is whether or you can explain it
to someone else familiar with the field. The test of whether or not you have a deep
understanding of a thing is your ability or inability to explain it to a layman.
-- Norman Christ, Professor of Physics, Columbia University
"It's better to be wrong than to be vague." -- Freeman Dyson
During a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley.
If you are wrong, the instructor can correct you.
If you are vague, no one can help you.
----- Andragogy -----
"The Sisterhood: Do Women Need Female Firearm Instructors?"
by Kat Ainsworth Stevens
"Successes and Failures in Women's Concealed Carry"
"A podcast that is full of very useful information if you train female shooters." -- Greg Ellifritz
‟An instructor should not expect any learning to take
place the first time new information is presented.”
-- ‶Building Shooters″ by Dustin Salomon
*************************************************************************
----- Gear -----
And the safe storage thereof.
“Mission drives the gear train.”
-- Pat Rogers
"Suppressors for Hearing Preservation"
Hat tip to Stephen P. Wenger.
"Sig Sauer Ordered to Pay $11M to Man Shot by His Own Pistol
Man's lawyers say P320 fired on its own, has done so in scores of other cases"
by Newser Editors and Wire Services
Hat tip to Stephen P. Wenger.
---
SIG does sell a variety of holsters but it's unclear whether the plaintiff actually
purchased his holster from SIG. I believe that this article errs in the difference
between the military models of the P320 and those originally sold commercially
and to LE. All the P320's pictured on SIG's website show thumb safeties.
The military versions had an internal upgrade that reduces the risk of dropped-gun
discharges – an issue that SIG initially minimized when it came to public attention.
Then, following Glock practice, SIG did not issue a recall but offered a
“voluntary upgrade” to owners who wanted to ship their pistols to SIG, while
introducing the change to all models. In-holster discharges have been a separate
issue and, in the US military, most pistols are carried with an empty chamber.
I'm told that the smaller P365 differs enough in design that the latter have not
been an issue. As a Revolversaurus rex, I persist in the belief that a DAO revolver
with an enclosed hammer [e.g., S&W Centennial. Ruger LCR, etc.] is the optimal
gun for pocket carry. The caveat with all Ruger DA revolvers is that, due to the
inward movement of the cylinder release, a pocket holster should either provide
enough rigidity or a recess to prevent inadvertent unlatching of the cylinder.
The same caveat applies for pocket pistols that have Browning-style magazine-release
buttons as opposed to much older magazine catches on the heel of the butt.
-- Stephen P. Wenger
---
There are way too many of these cases and judgments for this to be an anomaly.
This appears to be systemic. -- Jon Low
Don't have a couple thousand dollars to buy a safe for your guns? Consider a metal
tool box. They are used at construction sites for storing tools and such. Bolt it into the
floor of your house. Bolt it to the bed of your pickup truck.
“Switch” by John Farnam
---
When I was in Marine Corps recruit training (1981 A.D.), we fired our M-16's
on automatic. The exercise was to convince us that automatic fire is completely
uncontrollable. So, we never used it in combat. Because you're not hitting your
target, so you're just wasting ammunition (and maybe killing innocent persons).
The only time you can control an automatic weapon is when it is mounted.
Military Systems Group makes mounts for machineguns. They supply 5th
Special Forces Group up in Clarksville, TN. So if you happen to have 4 miniguns
or a Ma Deuce . . .
-- Jon Low
"A Case for Grip Safeties" by Dave Luu
I disagree with much that the author says. But I believe that other opinions
should be aired and that you, dear reader, should decide.
True Shot seems to have some pretty good ammo prices. I've never dealt with them.
"Pistol Malfunctions Due to Weak Magazine Springs" by Jonathan Low
I don't know why ShootingClasses.com deleted my reference to Tom Givens.
The truth is that Tom analyzed the problem and gave me the answer.
Thanks to Mike Tobin for the photographs.
"Mounting the Pistol-Mounted Optic" by Erick (I assume this is Erick Gelhaus.)
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
I like that fact that Erick asks for comments and corrections in his article.
No ego.
"TIME TO BUY MORE AMMO" by (I assume Massad Ayoob.)
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
"The Problem With Revolvers For Concealed Carry" by Joshua Gillem
Excerpt:
"For anyone with the mindset of, well,
if I need more than 5 shots I'm screwed anyway, or,
I'm a good shot and don't need more than that,
I can tell you that you're wrong."
---
Comment by Greg Ellifritz --
In my snub revolver classes, I tell my students that the snub is a “one bad guy gun.”
I got this idea from Tom Givens, who calls a 1911 a “two bad guy gun.”
Let’s look at the typical gunfight:
-Police gunfight hit rates average 20-30%. Armed citizen hit rates may be slightly
higher or lower than that.
-On average, it takes two hits from handgun rounds to incapacitate the suspect.
-If the snubby carrier is a decent shot, he may hit with two out of five rounds fired.
-Both of those rounds will likely be needed to stop the bad guy.
-The average gunfight is over in around five seconds.
-A revolver reload with a speedloader is around five seconds for most competent
revolver shooters.
Do the math. You are probably going to be OK if you only face one attacker.
You would have to be a very accurate shooter to effectively hit two different bad
guys with the five rounds in your cylinder. You will quickly run out of bullets and
the gunfight will be over before you get your gun reloaded.
It’s one of the reasons I like the .22 snubs. Having seven or eight shots makes
the little .22 a bit closer to a “two bad guy gun.”
-- Greg Ellifritz
“Your car is not a holster.”
-- Pat Rogers
*************************************************************************
"Fraeulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius
thus far produced since the higher education of women began."
-- Albert Einstein
From whose work all of the physical symmetries can be understood and
all of the conservation laws can be derived.
*************************************************************************
***** ***** ***** Cryptology ***** ***** *****
Cryptosystems are considered "arms" by federal law, ITAR,
International Traffic in Arms Regulations. That means cryptosystems are
protected by the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Never let the
government infringe on your right to keep and bear cryptosystems, to
include home made cryptosystems, to include sharing cryptosystems with
others.
The humans who came before you did a lot of good work, filtered by time and
condensed by others. Sometimes your problem does not require a break through.
It might instead require a literature search.
I. S. Berezin and N. P. Zhidov, Мегоды Вычислений, Том II
(Computational Methods, Volume II) Gos. Izd. Fiz.- Mat. Lit., Moscow (1959),
Chapter 9, Section 9.
Gos. Izd. Fiz.- Mat. Lit. is an abbreviation for
"Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Fiziko-Matematicheskoi Literatury"
which translates to
"State Publishing House of Physics and Mathematics Literature"
Do you understand? I find the missing puzzle pieces and deliver them to you.
That's why I get paid the big bucks. You don't have to tell anyone I gave this to you.
I won't. Information wants to be free. Even the Cold War could not stop this.
"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe,
and preserve order in the world as well as property.
Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of their use."
-- Thomas Paine
"Spooky Data at a Distance" by Simson Garfinkel
"Never memorize anything. Rather, study it until it becomes obvious."
-- Norman Christ
Exponents, logs, and roots.
"Computer science has nothing to do with computers or science."
-- Donald Knuth
And now for some random bits. In hexadecimal, 0 to F.
2831F77FEA CC9246C5D1 10E2ACF0F8 3B55ACBA90 AE4A48CC88
A1EE5DA8DD A5E80DDAB9 DD75270104 DE73E0FBD8 C68D28D46C
In GF(2³³), irreducible polynomial x³³ + x¹³ + x¹² + 1,
which is primitive,
the roots are linearly dependent,
and the roots of the reciprocal polynomial are linearly dependent.
(Yes, from our friend Prof. Peterson.)
That's a 3 tap linear feedback shift register. Pretty good eh?
Pseudo-random number generator in C,
int IV = 34; // length of Initialization Vector
int tap1= 33; // taps of linear feedback shift register
int tap2 = 13;
int tap3 = 12;
int index = 0; // index into array;
unsigned int X[IV]; /* Initialization Vector seeded with crypto key*/
// function that returns a pseudo-random number, 0 ≤ Rand() ≤ UINT_MAX
unsigned int Rand()
{
if (tap1 > 33) tap1 = 0;
if (tap2 > 33) tap2 = 0;
if (tap3 > 33) tap3 = 0;
X[i] = ( X[tap1] + X[tap2] + X[tap3] ); // addition modulo UINT_MAX + 1
i++, tap1++, tap2++, tap3++
return X[i];
}
I know what you're thinking. Why not,
unsigned int IV = UCHAR_MAX + 1; // length of Initialization Vector, 256
unsigned char tap1= UCHAR_MAX; // taps of linear feedback shift register
unsigned char tap2 = β;
unsigned char tap3 = γ;
unsigned char index = 0; // index into array;
unsigned int X[IV]; /* Initialization Vector seeded with crypto key*/
// function that returns a pseudo-random number, 0 ≤ Rand() ≤ UINT_MAX
unsigned int Rand()
{
X[i] = ( X[tap1] + X[tap2] + X[tap3] ); // addition modulo UINT_MAX + 1
i++, tap1++, tap2++, tap3++; // incrementation modulo UCHAR_MAX + 1
return X[i];
}
Or, even more succinctly,
unsigned int Rand()
{
return ( X[i++] = ( X[tap1++] + X[tap2++] + X[tap3++] ) );
// addition modulo UINT_MAX + 1
//post fix incrementation modulo UCHAR_MAX + 1
}
Is the polynomial x²⁵⁶ + xᵝ + xᵞ + 1 an irreducible polynomial in GF(2²⁵⁶)?
Does it need to be? Do you care? Or is it good enough for government work?
Are you willing to deal with 256 byte crypto keys (Initialization Vectors)?
Hey, it's all electronic now days, who cares? They only get transmitted once.
It's Big Oh of a constant.
"Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Life is not easy for any of us.
But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.
We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing must be attained."
-- Marie Curie
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
-- Donald Knuth
"You don't need to memorize theorems,
because you can always derive them from first principles."
-- Sven Hartman
No, really, we "derived" the Laws of Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
from first principles in Prof. Hartman's class.
***** Signals Intelligence and Ground Electronic Warfare, Cyber Security,
(sometimes Air Electronic Warfare too) *****
“Your character is what you do when no one is looking.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Every Cybersecurity List Should Be a Risk-Ranked List" by Roger Grimes
"FBI says hackers are sending fraudulent police data requests
to tech giants to steal people’s private information"
by Zack Whittaker
Crypto-Gram
November 15, 2024
by Bruce Schneier
"A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined,
but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain
a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them,
which would include their own government."
--George Washington
Email from Soldier Systems Daily
I have mentioned the Harding Project quite a bit recently. It is the Army's effort
to encourage Soldiers to offer their expertise to others via professional writing.
I join the Army in hoping that the Harding Project invigorates discourse and improves
operational readiness by sharing knowledge and encouraging debate.
During last week's Modern Warfare Week at Fort Liberty, I met one of the authors
of, "Find, Fix, Commit: How Commanders Will Win The Next Conflict With Software."
CW3 Nicholas Vettore and I had a great conversation about AI, drones, and the industrial
base. He and his fellow author CPT Nicholas Moellering coined a new phrase,
"The Software Development Cycle Is The New OODA Loop" and what they mean
is we have entered an era where how data is processed and how we control systems
must constantly evolve. The better and faster we process information, the faster we
will better our foes. Their example is quite poignant, drone use in Ukraine.
This article is an absolute must read. I hope it inspires you to consider the information
they present and hopefully to share your knowledge with others.
Read it here,
---
As a former Software Engineer with Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, General
Dynamics C⁴ Systems, et al; I understand and wholeheartedly agree.
I like Soldier Systems. But I question their judgment in taking money from
Sig Sauer. The Mexican government sued all of the large American gun manufacturers,
except for Sig Sauer. Sig Sauer supplies the Mexican armed forces with gun.
-- Jon Low
"the 7z rabbit hole is extremely deep. (1000's of crashes)" by Low Level
"When Undersea Cables Get Cut" by Mental Outlaw
Breaking Defense has a weekly newsletter, "Networks & Digital Warfare" at
Crypto-Gram by Bruce Schneier
2600
‟If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it.
The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury.
Therefore what he must fear is his victim.”
-- Col. Jeff Cooper, "Principles of Personal Defense"
*************************************************************************
I'm currently sailing on the Royal Caribbean Anthem of the Seas from Penang to
Singapore in the middle of the Straits of Malacca. Cruising past these hundreds and
hundreds of transport ships makes it clear that we could totally starve China with
just a few war ships blocking these straits, being that 80% of China's oil and 60%
of its cargo moves through here.
-- Sidney Ontai
*************************************************************************
***** ***** ***** Intelligence ***** ***** *****
Gathering, Analyzing, Disseminating
(Not reading other's garbage. We are producers, not consumers. We have no need for
security clearances.)
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
-- Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution
"The Way of the Tijuana Donkey – Ed Calderon’s Gray Man Mindset
How to Educate Yourself on Local Customs to Enhance
Your Safety in an Unfamiliar Environment"
by Ed Calderon
"Naval Air: Modifying Japanese Carriers" by James Dunnigan
November 15, 2024:
For over a year U.S. Marine Corps F-35B vertical takeoff (VTOL) fighters have
operated from one of the two new Japanese aircraft carriers to test their flight decks
for heat resistance to the F-35 B's engines. The two Japanese carriers are called
helicopter destroyers that look like small aircraft carriers, which is what they actually
are. The post-World War II Japanese constitution prohibits Japan from having
aircraft carriers but the helicopter destroyers were modified to use the F-35B stealth
fighter. Japan has 42 F-35Bs on order, thus the need for American F-35Bs to test the
ability of the Japanese carriers to handle this aircraft. The U.S. Navy has modified
several Marine Corps assault carrier-type ships to handle F-35Bs. These ships are
also receiving, by 2025, new smaller vessels to put soldiers ashore.
Japan is making a big investment in F-35s operating from land and seagoing bases.
Land bases are no problem but since 2017 Japan has had two 27,000 ton Izumo class
DDH type ships, called destroyers, operational. These ships look exactly like an
aircraft carrier. These Izumo class ships can carry up to 28 helicopters or up to
twelve F-35Bs. The carriers are armed only with two 20mm Phalanx anti-missile
cannons and launchers with sixteen ESSM missiles for anti-missile defense.
The DDH have powerful engines capable of destroyer-like speeds of over fifty-four
kilometers an hour. There are also more medical facilities than one would expect
for a ship of this size. Izumo does have considerable cargo capacity, which is
intended for moving disaster relief supplies quickly to where they are needed.
Some of these cargo spaces can be converted to berthing spaces for troops, disaster
relief personnel, or people rescued from disasters, as well as additional weapons
and equipment needed to support F-35B fighter-bombers.
Izumo can carry and operate F-35Bs because modifications were made to the
flight deck to handle the extremely high temperatures the F-35B generates when
taking off or landing vertically, like a helicopter. When the first DDH entered
service in 2015 Japan made no mention of buying F-35Bs or modifying the LPH
flight decks to handle the F-35B. The Izumos already have an elevator (to the
hangar deck under the flight deck) powerful enough to carry an F-35B fighter as
well as the lighter helicopters. Japan also has two older, smaller 19,000-ton
Hyuga-class helicopter carriers that could be upgraded to carry and use a smaller
number of F-35Bs but currently just operate 18 helicopters each.
These two Izumo-class fast carriers are a powerful addition to the Japanese Navy,
which is already the second largest in East Asia, second only to China. Its combat
ships are all of modern design with well trained and experienced crews. For example,
in 2022 Japan put into service two of twenty-two Mogami-Class 30FFM multi-mission
frigates. The first two ships, the Mogami and Kumano began construction during
October 2019 but the yard building Kumano took the lead, putting their ship in the
water 11 months later, four months before the Mogami. The rival builder closed the
gap and was ready for service in April, one month after Kumano. The Mogami class
will eventually replace some destroyers as well as existing frigates. Currently six
Mogami’s have been completed and four are under construction. By 2027 Japan
expects to have twelve Mogami’s in service. Each ship costs about $500 million.
Japan, along with China and South Korea, are the largest ship building nations in
the world and produce, in terms of tonnage, over 95 percent of the commercial
shipping built annually. For centuries the major manufacturer of commercial ships
tended to develop and build the most innovative and numerous warships. This is
how the United States became the leading warship supplier after World War II (1945).
European nations rebuilt their shipbuilding industries after World War II and
became and remain major competitors. Later in the 20th century China, Japan and
South Korea became and remain major commercial shipbuilders and that enabled
them all to design and build their own warships. The U.S. is now a minor component
of commercial shipbuilding and having problems building world-class warships and
doing it on time and under budget.
The 5,500-ton Mogami 30FFM ships are an example of successful innovation
and speed in implanting the new concepts The Mogami’s take the multi-mission
angle seriously. They are equipped for mine-hunting as well as mine-laying.
In addition to a 127mm gun, each ship carries eight anti-ship missiles, there are eleven
SeaRAM anti-aircraft/missile missiles with a range of ten kilometers and 16 VLS
(Vertical launching system) cells that will eventually carry larger Chu-SAM anti-aircraft
missiles with a range to 50 kilometers. Some VLS cells can also contain cruise missiles.
There are twelve lightweight anti-submarine torpedoes. There is a ramp in the rear for
launching and recovering two types of naval drones. One is an Unmanned Underwater
Vessel while the other is an Unmanned Surface Vessel. Mogami’s also have several
RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boats) for boarding parties. A helicopter is also carried and that
can be replaced by two or more UAVs.
The Mogami’s are stealthy designs that are difficult to detect with radar. These ships
carry active and passive-heat sensing sensors. There are ASW anti-submarine warfare
and mine-hunting sonars. The active radars can also carry out jamming and other EW,
Electronic Warfare, tasks. All these sensors are integrated into a single fire control system.
There are two autocannon equipped with RWS (Remote Weapons Stations). For defense
there are electronic and chaff decoys to defend against incoming missiles or aircraft.
Top speed is 55 kilometers an hour and crew size is 90 personnel, which is about half
what ships this size normally have. There is a lot of automation on the ship, which
accounts for the relatively small crew. The Japanese automation works because,
as a major civilian shipbuilder, crew automation is a key component of success in
world markets. Japan pioneered many of the earliest ship automation technologies.
The Mogami 30FFM ships were originally designed to be destroyers but while
planning equipment and weapons layout it was realized that these ships could be
multi-mission ships and the designation was changed to frigate. The Mogami’s will
be built in batches, with an initial batch of eight, followed by two or three more batches,
each improving on the earlier batch. The 30FFM already has one export customer.
Indonesia will get four modified to Indonesian needs Batch One ships with another
four built in Indonesia with Japanese assistance.
Currently the Japanese Navy has 155 combat and support ships. There are four
helicopter carriers, 24 submarines, 36 destroyers, six Mogami class frigates, 21 mine
warfare ships, six 240 ton patrol vessels, and three surveillance ships equipped with
towed sonar systems. There are six training ships and dozens of support and logistics
ships.
The current frigates are six 2,600-ton ships delivered in the 1990s. In the 1980s,
when these frigates were designed, 11 were planned. With the end of the Cold War
in 1991 the number was cut to six. Mogami’s are replacing eight 35 year old 5,200-ton
destroyers and six 2,250-ton equally old Destroyer Escorts. Japanese submarines are
very quiet and lethal diesel-electric boats, most with AIP (air-independent propulsion)
that allows submerged operations lasting several weeks.
-- James Dunnigan
🔷 Very Low Space
"Air Defense: Anti Drone Laser That Works" by James Dunnigan
November 19, 2024:
The U.S. Army has developed and deployed four Locust Laser Weapon Systems
at undisclosed locations overseas. The 2.1 by 2.1 meter system weighs 1,540 kg and
the system can be carried on an 8x8 Stryker wheeled vehicle. The laser has a range
of about 800 meters and is used against large drones in places like Syria and now
Ukraine.
While weapons like the GMLRS missiles fired by the HIMARS vehicle are high
tech, the Russians already have similar systems and could, if they wanted to, develop
a GMLRS clone. The Locust Laser technology is a little more exotic and some may
have been sent to Ukraine for more intense combat testing despite the risk of capture.
The Ukrainians will take extreme measures to avoid that because the longer they have
a monopoly on this technology the more damage they will do to Russian drones while
avoiding similar damage to their own.
Similar weapons have been developed. The Israeli Iron Beam laser comes in two
versions. The larger one has a range of ten kilometers. The smaller, portable one has
a range of two kilometers and can be truck mounted. Iron Beam is not expected to be
ready for combat use until late 2025. If that schedule is met, Israel will have a low cost
laser weapon to complement Iron Dome and its expensive Tamir missiles. The laser
system has an inexhaustible ammunition supply and can rapidly fire at incoming targets
using a proven fire control system developed for autocannon systems that have been in
use for years.
In early 2024 Britain announced that it had developed a laser-based weapon called
DragonFire that can destroy or disable a UAV several kilometers away. Each shot costs
about $13 for the electricity generated in the vehicle or ship carrying the DragonFire
system. Britain is installing DragonFire in a 6x6 twelve-ton Wolfhound armored truck.
DragonFire is also going to be installed on warships and replace conventional anti-aircraft
or anti-missile systems.
The U.S. Navy has long sought to install more laser weapons on its ships. In 2010
the navy successfully tested a laser weapon, using it to destroy a UAV and then repeat
that several times. The laser cannon was mounted on a KINETO Tracking Mount,
which is similar, but larger and more accurate than the mount used by the Phalanx
CIWS/Close In Weapons System. The navy laser weapon test used the radar and
tracking system of the CIWS. In 2009 CIWS was upgraded so that its sensors could
detect speedboats, small aircraft, and naval mines. Knocking down UAVs is not
something that the navy currently needs help with, and the current laser gun technology
has to be improved quite a bit before it's worth mounting on a ship.
This is a similar situation with laser weapons in the other services. In 2010 the
U.S. Air Force fired its ALT/Airborne Laser Testbed laser while in flight and hit a
ballistic missile that had just been launched and was moving at 1,800 meters a second.
The laser beam took several seconds to weaken the missile structure and cause it to
come apart. This test came only eight months after an ALT was fired in flight for the
first time. The target was some lumber on the ground, which was hit. The ALT weapon
was carried in a C-130H four engine transport.
In 2005 manufacturers of combat lasers believed these weapons were only a few
years away from battlefield use. To that end, Northrop-Grumman set up a new division
to develop and build battle lasers. This optimism was caused by two successful tests
in 2004. In one, a solid state laser shot down a mortar round. In another, a much more
powerful chemical laser hit a missile type target. Neither of these tests led to any usable
weapons, and the combat laser remained a weapon of the future. The basic problems
are reliability and sufficient electrical power to generate the laser.
Solid state lasers have been around since the 1950s, and chemical lasers first
appeared in the 1970s. The chemical laser has the advantage of using a chemical
reaction to create the megawatt level of energy for a laser that can penetrate the body
of a ballistic missile that is still rising in the air hundreds of kilometers away. The
chemical reaction uses atomized liquid hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide
and chlorine gas to form an ionized form of oxygen known as singlet delta oxygen or
SDO. This, in turn, is rapidly mixed with molecular iodine gas to form ionized iodine
gas. At that point, the ionized iodine gas rapidly returns to its resting state, and while
doing so releases photons pulsing at the right frequency to create the laser light. These
photons are channeled by mirrors and sent on their way to the target which was being
tracked and pinpointed by other lasers. The airborne laser weighed about six tons.
It can be carried in a C-130H, producing a laser powerful enough to hit airborne or
ground targets fifteen kilometers away. The laser exits via a targeting turret under
the nose of the aircraft, and its beam is invisible to the human eye. The chemicals
are mixed at high speeds, and the byproducts are harmless heat, potassium salt, water,
and oxygen. A similar laser, flying in a larger aircraft like a B-747 freighter, would
have enough range to knock down ballistic missiles as they take off. This is what was
used in the recent test.
Nearly half a century of engineering work has produced thousands of improvements,
and a few breakthroughs, in making lasers more powerful, accurate and lethal. More
efficient energy storage has made it possible to use lighter, shorter range ground based
lasers effective against smaller targets like mortar shells and short-range rockets.
Northrop's move was an indication that the company felt confident enough to gamble
its own money, instead of what they get for government research contracts, to produce
useful laser weapons. A larger high energy airborne laser would not only be useful
against ballistic missiles. Enemy aircraft and space satellites would also be at risk.
But companies like Northrop and Boeing are still trying to produce ground and airborne
lasers that can successfully operate under combat conditions. The big problem with
anti-missile airborne lasers is the power supply. Lots of chemicals are needed to
generate sufficient power for a laser that can reach out for hundreds of kilometers
and do sufficient damage to a ballistic missile. To be effective, the airborne laser
needs sufficient power to get off several shots. So far, no one has been able to produce
such a weapon. That's why these lasers remain the weapon of the future until these
fundamental problems are solved. Dragon Fire is a partial solution and now there
will be more.
Since the 1990s the U.S. Department of Defense has spent over five billion dollars
on laser weapons that could shoot down guided missiles, unguided rockets, artillery
and mortar shells. These efforts have been slow to reach the battlefield. Some systems
worked reliably but the laser equipment was not rugged enough for sustained combat
use, worse, available power supplies were not sufficient to fire the laser often enough
to be useful.
The billions have not been wasted, but they did buy a lot of disappointment. At the
same time, the money and development effort has, slowly, moved the technology towards
the point where lasers will be robust enough, and sufficiently supplied with energy, to
make themselves effective for the troops. Close now, but not there yet. The Department
of Defense fears that a sharp reduction of the defense budget will halt the development
money. That would stop work, except for what the manufacturers might continue on their
own nickel, and battlefield lasers would remain suspended just short of being useful.
It's not the first time this has happened. At the end of World War II, smart bombs
were just coming into use. While primitive, they worked. Same with wire-guided
missiles, ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons and many other bits of military technology
we still consider high tech. Development stopped on most of these systems after the war.
Work continued on ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Over the next few decades,
work resumed on all these, and most are now in service. The end of the development
money is never the end of the line.
-- James Dunnigan
"Intelligence: Russian Sleepers In Ukraine" by James Dunnigan
November 19, 2024:
The Ukrainian security service (SSU) recently detected several Russian agents
operating in Kherson, which is near the Black Sea northwest of Crimea. Three Russian
spies were arrested. Each of them was operating independently, without knowledge
of other Russian operatives. This is a common practice in all espionage agencies. The
Russian spies were working jobs, like driving a cab, that allowed them to get around
without raising suspicions. Interrogators found that the Russians were currently seeking
locations and status of Ukrainian air defense systems and other military targets,
especially those difficult to identify using aerial reconnaissance. Earlier SSU had
disrupted an espionage network seeking location of Ukrainian HIMARS missile
launcher vehicles. These are kept hidden because the Russians fear these mobile missile
launchers, and the damage they do to Russian artillery units and supply storage sites.
Eastern Ukraine always had a large Russian population because during the 1930s
Russians were brought into eastern Ukraine to replace all the Ukrainians who died during
the Holodomor (Great Famine). The famine was caused by the Soviet government
exporting nearly all grain produced in that part of the country for several years. This was
part of a Soviet plan to raise additional foreign currency to pay for importing Western
machinery needed to industrialize Russia. This plan worked, and leader Josef Stalin
saw the dead Ukrainians as necessary to enable Russia to build factories for producing
commercial and military products, including tanks and the new multiple cell rocket
launchers they had recently invented.
Now, nearly a century later, there is another war because Russian forces invaded
independent Ukraine in 2022. Stalin would have seen this as a civil war, but times
have changed. Some things going on today Stalin wound see as familiar. For example
the current Russian government has lost its destabilization skills. A century ago, the
new communist government in Russia came to power because of the communists’
ability to subvert their opponents and eliminate opposition without a lot of bloodshed.
A more recent destabilization effort involved an effort to destabilize countries in Africa
to distract attention mass media paid to the Russian campaign in Ukraine. Russian
mercenaries and spies are busy trying to cause as much distracting chaos as possible
in the rest of the world. This includes covert operations in Europe, mercenaries
operating throughout Africa, and establishing links with Moslem organizations in
Central Asia and Europe, and blowing up Western airliners.
Russia believes that conventional warfare waged in Ukraine and the unconventional
warfare carried out worldwide complement each other. Russian efforts to destabilize
Africa are supposed to divert attention and resources headed to Ukraine. To make this
happen, Russian spies, assassins, and propagandists continue their efforts.
Revolution and subversion efforts worldwide have long been used by the Soviet Union
and later Russia to exploit whatever opportunities were available to disrupt and diminish
support for groups hostile to Russia while encouraging local leaders that support Russian
objectives. For example, in 2016, Russian operatives recruited criminal gangs to cause
trouble in the tiny Balkan state of Montenegro and disrupt efforts by that country to join
NATO. That attempt failed when several foreign agents and pro-coup Montenegrin
politicians were detected, arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.
In February 2022, Russian agents tried to organize widespread protests that would
justify Russian military intervention, aided by pro-Russian factions in the Ukrainian
government. These factions were supposed to make it possible for pro-Russian groups
belonging to the Ukrainian parliament and government to seize power. That effort failed
because the Russians overestimated the number of pro-Russian officials in the Ukrainian
government and the Russian invasion did not immediately succeed, as the Russians
expected. There were too many Ukrainians willing and able to fight and defeat the
Russian invaders.
A similar situation took place in neighboring Moldova, a poor, landlocked country
that borders Ukraine in the west, near the port of Odessa. During 2022 and 2023,
Russian FSB (Federal Security Service) operatives tried to encourage anti-Ukraine
protests that would offer an excuse for pro-Russian Moldovan politicians to call for
military intervention by Russia. That failed because the Russian invasion of Ukraine
in early 2022 failed and continues to fail as Russia suffers enormous losses in manpower
and military equipment.
The Russian FSB is the post-Soviet version of the KGB but has demonstrated a
shortage of skills and ability to match the performance of the KGB in its prime.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was made possible, in part, because the
KGB had also lost its ability to get things done.
In the Soviet and Russian competition for the KGB and FSB, the smaller GRU
military intelligence organization often outperformed them. That was not the case in
Ukraine, where the GRU also failed. This was not as bad as it seemed because the
GRU specializes in operations outside Russia. The FSB has a component that does
that and it is called the SVR. Foreign operations are often carried out by the GRU
and SVR operating together.
When GRU officers are working abroad, they are monitored by counterintelligence
personnel in Directorate K of the SVR. Those who serve inside Russia are watched
by the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence. This is the Third Directorate of
the FSB. Interestingly, in the Soviet period, it was also called the Third Directorate.
It is not a coincidence but a continuation of the Soviet tradition. The Third Directorate
of the FSB is still assigned to monitor the Defense Ministry, of which the GRU is a part.
The head of GRU does not even report directly to the Russian president. GRU reports
have to go through the Head of the General Staff and the defense minister before
reaching the top man. GRU is very much number two in the Russian foreign intelligence
business. As such they tend to try harder and consider themselves more elite than those
pampered wimps over at SVR.
On the other hand, there also is one function monopolized by the GRU: battlefield
intelligence. NATO countries are, and always have been, considered potential
battlefields. Battlefield intelligence is run in peacetime as well. For example, in
preparation for future wars, the GRU sets up illegal weapons and ammunition dumps
in the territory of many foreign countries. This is a risky operation. It usually involves
groups of junior Russian diplomats secretly going into rural areas to bury rifles,
machine-guns, and other weapons. They have to do this discreetly and, in a hurry,
to avoid detection by the local counterintelligence service. It is considered a hard job.
Western analysts regard the GRU as the most closed Russian intelligence service
partly because it does not even manage its own press relations. That's because GRU
is one of many components of the Defense Ministry and is not eligible to have its
own press relations staff. The FSB and SVR are higher up in the government pecking
order and entitled to their own press relations operations. Formally, GRU is nothing
but one of the numerous Chief Directorates of the General Staff of the Defense
Ministry. It does not even report directly to the Minister of Defense. That is why
those foreign journalists who have questions about GRU must address them to the
Press Service of the Russian Defense Ministry. The questions are often handled by
some press aide who knows little about intelligence work, while FSB and SVR
press people are very well informed. Foreign journalists tend to seek out the
SVR press department when seeking information on Russian intel operations.
During the Second World War GRU worked in close contact with the NKVD,
the predecessor of the KGB. For example, in March 1941, both intelligence services
jointly carried out a successful operation aimed at overthrowing the pro-German
government of Yugoslavia. During the entire war, GRU and NKVD managed a joint
network of foreign agents in Europe. The current system of two separate foreign
intelligence services competing with each other only came about in the 1950s,
after Stalin’s death. It was done by the Central Committee of the Communist Party
in order to protect itself from a coup inspired by either intelligence service. As a result,
the GRU not only competes with the SVR, but it is also supposed to keep an eye on
the SVR for signs of disloyalty.
In Soviet times, although the GRU was monitored by the KGB, both organizations
reported to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In case of emergency,
the Central Committee could control the KGB using the GRU. The communists
believed it best that someone guards the guards. Nowadays, GRU does not monitor
the SVR anymore. GRU, the military, and the rest of Russia are all subordinate to
the FSB/SVR.
SVR has more money and resources. It's long been like that, and the GRU has
developed a tradition of getting by on very little. GRU methods are considered more
aggressive and cruder than those of the SVR. GRU operatives tend to think they are
at war even during peacetime. The SVR assigns its officers to do some jobs in the
form of tasks, not detailed orders. The task is not supposed to be necessarily
accomplished, while the order is to be carried out by all means. The GRU prefers
ordering and expects results no matter what.
Russia is having problems with its secret agents and spies because of its invasion
of Ukraine. NATO nations heeded the advice of Ukrainian intelligence that Russia
was expanding its espionage operations in Ukraine and elsewhere. These warnings
included some information on the expansion of Russian espionage and assassination
efforts in Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of Europe.
For example, in late 2022 Germany arrested a former soldier who held a senior
position in the BND (Federal Intelligence Service). The interrogation of the prisoner
has confirmed he was spying for Russia, and this led to the arrest of the Russian courier
who took classified information to Russia while bringing the BND mole, as in a spy
working for a foreign intelligence agency, his cash compensation. The Germans feared
there were more such moles. There were a lot of them during the Cold War but most
of those were arrested after 1991 or surrendered voluntarily. Not all the cold war era
moles were identified, and Russia revived its espionage program in the 1990s, even
before former KGB officer Vladimir Putin took power in Russia. When the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, Putin was a KGB officer in communist East Germany. He spoke
German and apparently knew about the KGB’s mole network in West Germany and
its sleeper agents operating in the West.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were problems with Russian
sleeper agents, also known as illegals. During the last decade Russia has activated
more of these sleeper agents and used them for a variety of tasks besides espionage.
Since the Russians invaded Ukraine, more sleepers have been activated to gather
information on NATO efforts to supply the Ukrainian war effort. These sleepers are
trained to do this discreetly, but some used commercial quadcopters too frequently
and attracted unwanted attention. European counter-intelligence agencies have
prepared profiles of likely sleepers and that has made it easier to detect and arrest
sleepers even if they have not been activated.
As a result of all this activity NATO governments, often the post-Cold War ones
in East Europe, have increasingly gone public with details of Russian espionage
operations, especially the use of assassination of those Russians considers traitors
or simply enemies of the state. There has been more of that since the Ukraine
invasion and more Russians have fled their homeland.
In 2019 French journalists uncovered evidence of a Russian GRU (Russian Military
Intelligence) Unit 29155 that operated from a secret logistics base in France near the
Swiss border. From there at least fifteen GRU undercover agents engaged in espionage,
sabotage, and assassination operations. Also described was a joint British, Swiss, French,
and American intelligence operation to track down details of Unit 29155 and what it
was doing between 2014 and 2018. The Unit 29155 base was apparently moved around
Western Europe frequently to avoid detection and concentrate efforts on specific tasks.
One of these was assassination, including attempts on the life of Sergei Skripal in
Britain early in 2018. This incident did make the news, mainly because the GRU agents
used a form of nerve gas called novichok. That incident caused an international uproar,
particularly as a British civilian was killed. In mid-August 2018 the U.S. imposed its
first round of new sanctions on Russia for its March 2018 use of nerve gas in Britain.
The details of this use of Russian nerve gas had been confirmed. British investigators
identified the Russians who were involved with the use of nerve gas to try and attempt
to murder Sergei Skripal, a former Soviet intelligence officer who worked for Britain
as a double agent.
In response to the March 2018 incident, Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats
suspected of being intelligence agents and Russia responded by expelling 23 British
diplomats. More nations said they would expel Russian diplomats and after the June
confirmation that it was Russian novichok, the U.S. ordered into effect a series of
additional sanctions on Russia. These would have been limited if Russia admitted
it used novichok and provided assurances it would never do so again with any banned
weapons. Russia said it will do neither and denied any involvement.
This assassination effort was nothing new for Russia. Skripal was still working for
British intelligence when he was arrested in Russia at the end of 2004 and prosecuted
for espionage. He was sent to prison in 2006 but got out in 2010 when Russia agreed
to use him as one of the three imprisoned spies exchanged to get back several Russian
illegals who were caught in the United States. Russia was reluctant to part with Skripal,
who had apparently done enormous damage to Russian overseas spying efforts. But they
wanted their imprisoned agents in the U.S. back. This was not the first time Russia had
gone after people like Skripal in Britain. This sort of thing happened elsewhere in
Europe before and after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Russia insists that it does
not do this and has been saying that since the Soviets started hunting down and killing
traitors overseas back in the 1930s.
What was not revealed at that time was the joint investigation of Unit 29155 and
how many of the growing number of Russian espionage efforts in Europe could be
traced to it and similar GRU or KGB operations in East Europe. The Russians have
been quite active in Serbia and Bulgaria where local intel agencies have more experience
with Russian methods. That’s because until the 1990s Bulgaria was ruled by a
Russia-backed communist government that had close ties to the KGB and GRU.
It was these former communist states in East Europe that were the first to detect and
warn their NATO allies of the resumption of major Russian espionage efforts. Even
journalists in East Europe were able to identify some Russian agents on their own.
Decades of Russian-imposed communist rule in East Europe left bitter memories
of how ruthless the Russian espionage services could be, and many victims are still
alive to provide personal testimony. Western Europeans, except those in East Germany,
did not experience this and were slow to accept the fact that the Russians were back,
since the late 1990s, at their Cold War espionage efforts. That attitude is changing as
more details of recent Russian efforts are made public.
For example, in late 2012 Germany revealed it was prosecuting a Russian married
couple who were arrested in 2011 on suspicion of espionage. Russia insisted that the
two Russians were not active Russian agents but retired Cold War era spies. Germany
accused the couple of recruiting and using a local spy three times between 2008 and 2011.
When the police came to arrest the couple, the woman was found listening to coded
messages. There was apparently much more evidence as well that the couple was spying.
The two 51-year-old Russians were sent to Germany via Austria using false Austrian IDs
in 1988, to serve as sleepers, agents that spend most of their time doing nothing until
activated from time-to-time for some simple, but essential, mission. While Germany
let a lot of its own Soviet era spies off easy, there is still a lot of animosity towards
Russian spies. That's because Russia is still very much involved with espionage.
In Germany that means stealing economic secrets, which hurts the German economy.
The Germans are not in a forgiving mood because of this Russian aggression.
Germany believes that this couple are but two of many other Cold War sleeper agents
that Russia, or someone, is reactivating. Prosecuting these two included attempts to get
them to reveal details of how the sleeper program operates. This would help the Germans
track down other sleepers and get an idea of how many of them are out there. These two
sleepers were apparently not very cooperative.
Some details of the sleeper operation were gathered from the investigation of so
many sleepers. Many, if not all, sleepers were cut loose in the 1990s, as the KGB back
home was reorganized and had its budget cut sharply. But after 2000 the FSB, the
rebranded and reorganized domestic operations branch of the KGB, and SVR, foreign
operations of the KGB, revived a lot of Cold War era operations. In large part that's
because KGB men hold many senior jobs in the Russian government. The SVR and
GRU got more money to operate in foreign lands.
In the GRU nobody cares how their officers obtain secret information, like parts
of missiles and other weapons. They may buy it legally or semi-legally or even steal it.
One enterprising GRU agent in the 1970’s shipped a stolen Sidewinder air-to-air missile
from West Germany to Moscow via United Airlines air freight. SVR officers are not
allowed to do so. They are supposed to use foreign collaborators for it. In the GRU
you just go get it. That’s why tracking Unit 29155 was such a big deal. These are all
reasons why Unit 29155 is still active.
-- James Dunnigan
"That security guard is picking up litter around our camp. What a nice guy."
He is not picking up litter. He is gathering intelligence.
From James Dunnigan --
"Procurement: China Insists On Respect" November 11, 2024:
The Chinese Communist Party is energetically seeking food and respect.
First priority is food. China has not got enough of it and is taking extreme
measures to fix the problem. At the [present] time China has to import about
40 percent of its food for a hungry population of a billion people. Since the
1990s China has been assisting Russia to develop thinly populated areas in
central and eastern Russia to feed the hungry Chinese.
The original Russian farmers and their families left during the 1990s after
the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The Soviets prohibited privately owned
farms. Instead there were state owned collective farms where farmers did the
work as employees of the state. This arrangement was unpopular with Russian
farmers and when the Soviet government disappeared, so did the collective
farm workers. This left thousands of square kilometers of prime farmland in
central Russia unused. Chinese farmers sought to gain access to that land so
they produce more food for hungry Chinese. China needed the food, but Russia
already had markets in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
The situation changed in 2014 and 2022 when Russian aggression resulted
in economic sanctions that included food exports. Russia went looking for
more reliable markets and found it in China. Russia accepted the Chinese
proposals for allowing Chinese farmers to enter the underused central Russian
and far eastern farmlands. The large number of Chinese farmers would produce
a lot more food, which the Chinese were willing to pay for. Russia needed the
money and this seemed like an excellent way to monetize the food produced on
some of the most productive Russian farmlands.
This doesn’t leave the Middle East, Africa and Europe hungry because North
American and Australian farmers are major, and flexible producers of food.
The Americans and Australians were able to keep everyone supplied with
affordable food.
The new Central Asian food arrangement for the Chinese had significant
political implications. Now the food supplies were coming overland, not by ship.
The use of ships was always threatened by blockade by a hostile American navy
if there was war with China. Now the larger Chinese navy could confidently
threaten to attack the Americans Pacific fleet without worrying about U.S. Navy
nuclear submarines blockading Chinese ports.
The food arrangement provides Russia with sanction-proof food income from
China. Food is a major Russian export and now it is safe from disruptions by
sanctions or unreliable shipping. For China, conquering Taiwan is now more
likely because the Americans can no longer threaten the Chinese food supply.
Yet the Taiwanese do not feel threatened. Taiwan has increased its defensives
and is still a vital source for scarce electronic components and production
equipment. China cannot ignore that risk and that means Taiwan is still safe.
While Taiwan is not threatened, international use of the South China Sea,
China wants to control this body of water and thus control seas through which
over 40 percent of the world's waterborne traffic moves. Without the threat
of a food blockade, China can now be more aggressive in gaining complete
control of the South China Sea. China has asserted such control for over a
decade, but now they can afford to use violence to enforce their control.
The Chinese don’t believe the Americans would risk a war against a larger
Chinese fleet in waters close to Chinese territory and land-based bombers
and fighters. For the U.S. Navy, this is not a good place to fight a war.
Gaining control over the South China Sea would be a major accomplishment
and indicates the growing power of China to get what it wants and feels it
deserves. With these changes China finally becomes a true superpower,
with a secure food supply and a population willing to risk war without the
threat of privation when [it] come to food supplies and the quality of the
food available.
-- James Dunnigan
It's easy to get false IDs that are real government issued IDs.
"Black Ops in Africa is Legitimately Insane" by Task & Purpose
Who said the Global War On Terrorism ended?
"North Koreans Defected to Ukrainian Side" by The Military Show
"USA Just Got 1 MILLION Sq Km Bigger!" by Roman Balmakov
"Good habits and skill beat luck every time."
-- Sheriff Jim Wilson
"The Merge"
Breaking Defense
Intrigue
1440
29155
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***** ***** ***** After Thoughts, Politics, and such ***** ***** *****
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always
possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Richard Henry Lee
Signer, Declaration of Independence
The hunt.
"Gun Facts in the U.S. 2024: The Reality of Firearms in America"
by Cassandra McBride
Hat tip to Greg Ellifritz.
"Gun Ownership Rates Have Spiked Among Republican Women
Ownership among all Americans steady, as fewer non-Republican men own guns"
by Jeffrey M. Jones
---
"Note that a wide variety of sources, since the wave of rioting in 2020, have taken
note of the surge in first-time gun ownership among women and other demographics
previously taken for granted as Democratic voters. In the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
section on my website's Useful Links page there's a link to a 2016 article on why gun
owners lie to pollsters. Perhaps newer gun owners are as reluctant to disclose the
presence of guns in their homes as the more traditional set of eight years ago. Intrigued
by the reference to “model,” I clicked a link to find:
“. . . Interviews are conducted with U.S. adults aged 18 and older living in all 50 states
and the District of Columbia using a dual-frame design, which includes both landline
and cellphone numbers . . . Yes, Gallup weights samples to correct for unequal selection
probability, nonresponse, and double coverage of landline and cellphone users in the two
sampling frames. Gallup also weights its final samples to match the U.S. population
according to gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, population density,
and phone status [cellphone only, landline only, both, and cellphone mostly]."
-- Stephen P. Wenger
"Trophy wife or war booty?" by Oleg Volk
"The FBI's Continued Political Corruption"
"At the Federalist:
The FBI Is Lying About Violent Crime To Help Democrats Win This Election"
God's will.
"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
-- (Mary) Flannery O'Connor
"The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword;
because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force
superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense,
raised in the United States."
-- Noah Webster
This is why science is so hard. Scientists keep mistaking beauty for truth.
“You can’t truly call yourself ‘peaceful’ unless you are capable of great violence.
If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful, you’re harmless.
Important distinction.”
-- Stef Starkgaryen
Semper Fidelis,
Jonathan D. Low
Email: Jon_Low@yahoo.com
Radio: KI4SDN
