Sorry, but Chapter 8 required somewhat more “research” than I realized.
Till next week.
Below is some of the usual stuff.
Latest Posts
Not Long To Go
According to SOTI, the oldest mass shooter in U.S. history was age 72.
I turn 72 on Ammo Day in November this year.
Coincidence? I guess it all depends what happens in the world, whether I miss it by thismuch or hang on for a year or two and go for the record. Right now it seems unlikely that I’d shoot the works prematurely, so to speak, because I’m quite enjoying all this Trumpy goodness and the Marxist wailing. But later on?
Factors that could influence this event: Democrats cheat their way into winning the Presidential Election in 2028 and immediately call for universal gun confiscation or whatever (see: Virginia’s new gun control law as a starting point). The problem with this scenario is that assuming I live that long, I’d be up against some fierce competition — and that’s just among my Readers. Gawd knows how many other irascible Olde Pharttes are out there who would prefer to take out a few (okay, lots of) Commies rather than let their lives end gradually in the excruciating pain of [insert Fatal Senior Ailment here].
As SOTI also said: “Right now, a lengthy prison term seems less like a deterrent and more like a paid vacation, with free medical.”
Note to the Perpetually Fearful: this whole post was a joke.
Or maybe not.
Snapping The Junk
A whole bunch of people are getting their knickers in a knot about this little development, whereby Pore Folks who qualify for food assistance (SNAP) will in future not be allowed to buy candy and such with these handouts — and are suing the Fed to be allowed to do so.
Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Wednesday, challenging its food restriction waivers that reduce the types of foods that can be purchased with benefits.
Represented by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ), a nonprofit focused on advancing justice for low-income families, five SNAP recipients from Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia sued the USDA for implementing its waiver restriction pilot projects.
The restriction waivers bar SNAP recipients from using their benefits on junk foods, sodas, energy drinks or other “non-nutritious items.” The USDA has approved 22 restriction waivers so far, with the types of barred foods varying across states.
I have two competing thoughts about this. On a point of principle, if money is being given to you (note: given) then the donor has every right to determine how you spend it.
On the other hand, however, is the thought that the fucking government has no business telling people what and what not to eat and drink, regardless of donor status.
“Oooooh but they’re spending money on unhealthy foods!”
So fucking what? They’re adults, and should be treated as such, not as children guided in their food choices by Mother Government.
Just remember, however, that every SNAP dollar spent on Red Bull eventually ends up here:
Not that I care, one way or the other.
Shooting Them Down
Interesting stuff, this (via Insty):
I Have Seen the Future of Anti-Drone Warfare, and It’s Dirt-Cheap
I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they’re both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia’s Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran’s Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.
Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.
So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.
And the Ukrainians did just that.
Of course, that’s all well and good in a military context, and our own .dotmil needs to hop onto this with all due dispatch, if they haven’t done so already. (I assume they have, but whatever.)
What interests me as a civilian, however, is a solution closer to home [sic], in that these little airborne nuisances can also be used by anti-social elements to both spy on people and, in the worst case, to kamikaze themselves into a target — such as, for instance, your home or similar. Why go to all the trouble of kitting yourself up with a suicide explosive vest or a rifle in order to inflict death and damage on (say) a church or synagogue, when you can essentially outsource the suicide bit to something you hand-built in your garage?
And in the above scenario, how would ordinary people — say, adherents of the Second Amendment — defend themselves or their communities against such nefarious electro-mechanical mosquitoes?
I’m thinking of something like this, of course:
That’s the semi-auto 12ga Browning Silver Hunter (and of course there are less-expensive options because America). This differs from your standard home defense shotgun, say a 12ga Mossberg Maverick 88:
…in that the Hunter is not a pump action device but semi-auto (ergo a higher rate of fire) and it has a much longer barrel (ergo much greater accuracy at distance, ask any bird shooter).
I’m interested in this concept because it raises a couple of practical issues such as the type of ammo that would work best to bring down a drone (00 buck, or perhaps something lighter?). Obviously, a 12ga slug would end the flight path of a drone with spectacular effect, but it has to be accurate: far easier to spread the terminal effect with shot… but which shot? 00 buckshot is excellent, but it also kicks like hell — and getting followup blasts off quickly with said semi-auto action means a quicker target re-acquisition time is necessary. Would 7/8 birdshot do the trick as well? For that matter, would a 20ga shotgun be as effective as a 12ga under such circumstances? (Almost all semi-auto shotguns are offered in both chamberings.)
I’ve owned a 20ga semi-auto shotgun in the past, and I have to say that the effect downrange is almost as effective as a 12ga (if those watermelons and milk jugs are at all indicative), but the recoil was far less problematic.
Of course I think that the Silver Hunter is just dreamy, in so many ways:
…and yes, the addition of a red-dot sighting device may certainly be of assistance (even though I think it spoils the look of the gun).
Feel free to discuss this topic in Comments, of course.
Dept. Of Righteous Shootings
[Monty Python] ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ Heeeeere comes annnnother one. ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ [/Monty Python]
Oh boy [sic]:
A mom in Philadelphia should be very proud of her brave 11-year-old son. The young man showed the heart of a lion and tremendous courage when he witnessed over-the-top violence against his mother from her boyfriend and then took action to protect her.
The perp Jaimeer Jones-Walker, aged 30…or old enough to know better, barged into his “girlfriend’s” home. He began screaming at the woman, whose 11-year-old son was right there watching it unfold. Terrorizing a family that wasn’t his to wreck, Jaimeer escalated his verbal attack into a full-on vicious physical assault. Jones-Walker hadn’t been taught not to beat women, but he would soon learn that lesson in a profound way.
According to police reports, as he was physically battering the woman, her 11-year-old son went and grabbed her handgun. The young man acted decisively, shooting the rampaging abuser with a single shot to the face.
As the article goes on to say, the only sucky part of this tale is that the kid is going to have to live with the results of his fine reaction… but however bad it may be, it’s better than having to grow up without a mother. (I know, there’s no evidence that her scrote of a boyfriend would have killed her, but the stats are on my side for this one.)
In the meantime:
Irrelevant
I said a long time ago that I am not interested in hearing anything said by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, and here’s a good reason to add Megyn Kelly to make a list of the Three Worst.
I’ve come to loathe the appellation of “influencer” because the problem with being one of these vacuous fools is that (if they’re collecting money for their opinions, as most are) whether they’re being contrary or else sycophantic, there’s always a motive for those opinions: the more outrageous, the more attention they get, the more cash flows their way.
Well, good for them. There’s nothing wrong with being a pimp after all, because all you’re doing is bringing a product to the attention of the market. Of course, I don’t have to buy the product, but some people are quite in thrall to said blandishments.
And as Scott Pinsker points out in the above linked article, other people — in this case, the liberal media — have an ulterior motive to pimp the pimps, because in this particular case Carlson, Owens and Kelly are pushing an agenda that happens to coincide with that of the liberal media — i.e. trying to split up the MAGA movement. Even though I don’t go along with this, I will at least acknowledge that it’s an acceptable tactic: a fractured enemy is always easier to defeat than a cohesive one.
The point is that I don’t trust the motives of these three foul influencers, because in the end, whatever they say is all about drawing attention to themselves and not necessarily coming from principle. In Carlson’s case, I’m fairly certain that someone else is actually deciding what it is that he has to say because from what I can gather, some of his sponsors look extremely dubious (in a bad way).
Whatever. Frankly, I think that if money is the issue — and Carlson seems to have that nailed down — Owens and Kelly should consider an OnlyFans presence because their opinions are fucking worthless.