Month: July 2014

New Executive Order Places Sanctions On All Kalashnikov Concern Products

I’m sure you’ve already heard the news but in case some of you haven’t a new executive order was issued that effects gun owners. Obama, as part of his pissing match with Putin, has placed further sanctions on Russia included all Kalashnikov Concern products:

374. If I own a Kalashnikov product, is that product blocked by sanctions? Am I able to resell a Kalashnikov product at a gun show or other secondary market?

If a U.S. person is in possession of a Kalashnikov Concern product that was bought and fully paid for prior to the date of designation (i.e., no payment remains due to Kalashnikov Concern), then that product is not blocked and OFAC sanctions would not prohibit the U.S. person from keeping or selling the product in the secondary market, so long as Kalashnikov Concern has no interest in the transaction. New transactions by U.S. persons with Kalashnikov Concern are prohibited, however, and any property in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest is blocked pursuant to OFAC’s designation of Kalashnikov Concern on July 16, 2014. If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014]

There goes Saiga rifles and shotguns as well as Vepr rifles. This prohibition isn’t retroactive, most likely because enforcing such a thing would be impossible, so if you already own a Saiga shotgun or rifle you can keep it (unlike your health insurance). But importing new ones is strictly verboten so supplies will go down and prices will go up.

All of this because our government feels as though it absolutely must get into another conflict with Russia.

Who Needs a Warrant When You Can Fabricate a 911 Call

Warrants are such a pesky formality for police officers. When they want to search a house and the owner isn’t stupid enough to just let them walk right in the police have to make a phone call to a judge, wait a few minutes for him to issue a warrant, and finally search the home. Some cunning officers in North Carolina have apparently come up with a way to bypass that inconvenient formality:

A North Carolina police chief has officially barred officers from making up phony 911 calls in order to gain access to private residences without a search warrant.

Several officers with the Durham Police Department lied about 911 hang-up calls to convince residents to consent to searches of their homes, an officer said under oath in late May, a local ABC affiliate reported.

The allegations prompted Police Chief Jose Lopez to send out an internal memo barring the practice.

“It has recently been brought to my attention that some officers have informed citizens that there has been a 911 hang-up call from their residence in order to obtain consent to enter for the actual purpose of looking for wanted persons on outstanding warrants,” he said in the memo, Raw Story reported. “Effective immediately no officer will inform a citizen that there has been any call to the emergency communications center, including a hang-up call, when there in fact has been no such call.”

Statists often tell me that my anarchist views are crazy because we need government to protect our rights. I find it peculiar to charge the biggest violator of rights with the task of protecting rights and this story demonstrates why. The state has written up its own set of rules, which it claims protects our rights, and then bypasses those same rules, meaning it must be violating our rights.

A Gun isn’t Always the Answer

I’ve picked up an interest in martial arts over the last year or so. This interest has lead me to start studying two arts (one being judo and the other being too rare to mention without giving away exactly where I study). Of the two judo would probably be considered the practical art by most of my readers since it can be applied in self-defense (although, honestly, my primary interests in judo are sport and physical fitness). Whenever martial arts enter the self-defense discussion in shooting communities there are one or two people who have to say some variation on “I carry a gun. Why would I waste my time with martial arts?” I’m fairly certain that the people who say this are just disinterested in studying martial arts and feel as though they need to justify that disinterest in practical terms. They don’t, which is perfectly fine. Nobody should be ashamed to admit disinterest in something. But trying to justify your disinterest by giving a practical sounding, albeit bullshit, reasons is stupid.

And I do believe the guns-exist-so-martial-arts-are-stupid justification is bullshit. The argument makes the assumption that firearms, which are arguably the best weapons an individual can reasonably carry, can solve any and all self-defense scenarios. That’s not the case. Just as there are many self-defense scenarios there are many solutions. Martial arts, as they relate to self-defense, are like pepper spray, Tasers, and batons in that they give you more options. The more options you have available to you the more scenarios you can find solutions for.

It’s story time. Not too long ago I was at a party. As one would expect this party involved a lot of drinking. I refrained from imbibing as I was a designated driver but there was a good number of drunk people present. One of the drunk people strongly disagreed with something I said and decided the best way to resolve our disagreement was with force. He took a swing at me and I was able to block the blow, get his arm behind his back and place a majority of his weight on one foot, and slip that foot out from under him so that I could gently lower him to the ground. Take note of the word “gently”. This was one of those situations where I felt minimizing the amount of force used was important. Everybody at the party was socially connected to one another through no more than two degrees of separation. In such an environment pulling a gun on a fellow party goer would have caused everybody else there to hate me (and it would have been way more force than the situation warranted). With absolutely trivial martial arts knowledge I was able to resolve the situation in a way that didn’t cause too much of a ruckus.

Carrying a gun gives you an option to deal with specific self-defense cases but they don’t work for every self-defense case. There are a lot of places that prohibition firearms. Many self-defense situations don’t warrant deadly force. Social settings can greatly limit your responses. The more options you have available to you the more scenarios you can resolve satisfactorily. It’s impossible for any individual to have a tool for every potential self-defense situation so you must decided what situations you are most likely to face (risk assessment) and plan accordingly. As I said in the beginning of this post, my interests in judo are primarily sport and fitness, but it also gives me an option for a class of self-defense scenarios that I feel are common (which is a relative term because self-defense situations in general are very uncommon for most of us): somebody engages you in a way unlikely to cause great bodily harm or death but needs to be countered to prevent injury. It’s a situation that a gun is ill suited for and is a counterargument, in my opinion, to the claim that one doesn’t need [non-gun self-defense opinion] because he or she carries a gun.

They’ve Got Us By the Net Neutrality Balls

I have bad news everybody. In the battle for net neutrality no matter who wins we all lose. I’ve discussed the issue of net neutrality as it pertains to libertarianism before. The main problem is that no actual competition exists in the market of providing Internet access. This near monopoly situation is the product of the state, which used its regulatory powers to protect its favored Internet Service Providers (ISP) from competition. So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the state has set itself up to win no matter what.

Members of the Democratic Party have primarily been advocating to give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulatory power over ISPs to “protect” net neutrality. Meanwhile the Republican Party has been busy discussing the need to take power away from the FCC to protect the “free” market:

US Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) wants to make sure the Federal Communications Commission never interferes with “states’ rights” to protect private Internet service providers from having to compete against municipal broadband networks.

Twenty states have passed laws making it difficult for cities and towns to offer their own broadband Internet services, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has pledged to use his agency’s authority to “preempt state laws that ban competition from community broadband.”

Since ISPs have a state granted near monopoly no free market exists so Mrs. Blackburn’s claim that she is working to protect it is absurd. But this story does demonstrate on concerning fact: in the chess game of net neutrality we are one move away from being checkmated.

Tom Wheeler, the currently appointed chairman of the FCC, was a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries before being given his current position. He has already shown his hand by ruling that ISPs can provide fast and slow lanes for Internet traffic. So we know if the FCC gains the power to regulate ISPs it will kill net neutrality.

On the other hand if the FCC isn’t given more power to regulate ISPs the individual states, 22 of which have already moved to protect the handful of ISPs’ near monopoly, will allow their corporate partners like Comcast to destroy net neutrality by destroying their competition.

No matter who wins we lose. There is one last glimmer of hope but it’s not going to be easy. We need to work on cutting out the ISP middleman. I’ve briefly discussed the work I’ve been involved in to get mesh networks running in the Twin Cities. Building mesh networks is probably the only move that will save use from being checkmated. Because the state has set the board up in such a way that we’ll lose regardless of what powers the FCC has.

Federal Judge Rules California’s Death Penalty Unconstitutional

In a strange twist of fate a federal judge has ruled that California’s death penalty is unconstitutional, unless it’s being performed by a police officer at the scene. But what really got me was the justification:

LA QUINTA, Calif. — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that California’s death penalty system is so arbitrary and plagued with delay that it is unconstitutional, a decision that is expected to inspire similar arguments in death penalty appeals around the country.

The state has placed hundreds of people on death row, but has not executed a prisoner since 2006. The result, wrote Judge Cormac J. Carney of United States District Court, is a sentence that “no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.”

That sense of uncertainty and delay, he wrote, “violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.”

So it’s cruel and unusual punishment to sentence somebody to death and then never kill him? It seems to me that sentencing somebody to death and then fucking killing him would be more cruel (although not unusual in this country).
I know if I was on death row I’d be totally cool with not being executed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad this ruling was handed down since I don’t believe an organization crime syndicate such as the state has the right to execute somebody. But the reason given is just bizarre in my opinion.

It was Bound to Happen

Remember that substandard police training I was talking about? It was finally combined with modern policing’s love of puppycide to its logical conclusion. Via Uncle I learned that Douglas, Georgia shot a 10 year-old kid while trying to gun down the family dog:

Sheriff Wooten said a deputy, who was not named, was on approaching the property when a dog ran up to him. The deputy fired one shot, missing the dog and hitting the child. It was not immediately clear if the gun was accidently fired by the deputy.

It was only a matter of time until this happened. When you combine inadequate weapons training, an almost complete absence of consequences for wrongdoing, and a standard operating procedure to shoot any dog on sight you have a recipe for an innocent bystander getting shot.

If history is any indicator the offending officer will receive a paid vacation while this story blows over. After the weekly news cycle has forgotten about the kid the officer will return to active duty so he can shoot another kid while attempting to gun down another family pet. Because this is America and taking responsibility for your actions is only for the people without badges.

The Fix is In

Speaking of democracy Afghanistan apparently doesn’t understand how to do it. The country recently had a presidential vote. It was a close election, as elections between two worthless twats often are, but the Afghan people apparently chose incorrectly because we had to send John Kerry in to fix things:

Afghanistan’s current President Hamid Karzai, who came to office after the US-led overthrow of the Taliban, is stepping down after more than 10 years.

He has welcomed the audit and agreed to delay his successor’s inauguration to allow time for the review, which is expected to take several weeks.

At a news conference with the two candidates, Mr Kerry said that every single ballot would be audited.

“This is the strongest possible signal by both candidates of a desire to restore legitimacy to the process and to Afghan democracy,” he said.

The thing I don’t understand is that the supposed winner, Ashraf Ghani, seems pretty pro-American. Perhaps we’re just unhappy that he won by such a small margin and are looking to make the margin larger. Who knows. Either way it appears that Afghanistan doesn’t know how to do democracy how we want them to do it.

More Democracy

Somebody started a campaign to put a meaningless item on the ballot in California. That meaningless item is a proposal to split California into six states:

SAN FRANCISCO — A plan backed by venture capitalist Tim Draper to split California into six states has gained enough signatures to make the November 2016 ballot, the plan’s backers say.

A Twitter account belonging to the nonprofit Six Californias tweeted on Monday that “#SixCalifornias will be submitting signatures in Sacramento tomorrow for placement on the November 2016 ballot. Stay tuned for coverage!”

On Tuesday, Draper told USA Today the campaign had garnered 1.3 million signatures, well over the approximately 808,000 needed.

I say that the ballot item is meaningless because even if it does pass the California and federal government will never allow it to happen. But that hasn’t stopped people from getting their panties in a bunch over this. Not surprisingly lovers of democracy have demonstrated once again that they will only love so much democracy because the biggest debate surrounding this proposal is the fact that it would create 10 new senators. This is apparently bad because, well, I don’t fucking know.

I just don’t understand most advocates of democracy. They spend a lot of time talking about the need for choices to vote for but when you give them a lot of choices they complain. When Minneapolis had 35 mayoral candidates people started bitching because there were too many and demanded that the filing fee be increased to $500.00. People here are also bitching about the governor race. As it turns out the fact that the Independence Party has fielded a candidate has pissed off a lot of people because they only want a choice between a Democrat or a Republican. Again, they spend a lot of time talking about the need for choices but when they get choices they complain.

Now a proposal that would create 10 new senators is being put to a vote and fans of democracy are again complaining… because it would create more senators. I guess this could tip the scale of balance between the two party facade in this country or something. Like I said, I don’t understand it. What I do understand is that everybody loves democracy so long as the only choices available are the choices they personally approve of.

In regards to the proposal itself I think it falls a bit short. I believe California should be split up into approximately 38.04 million separate states. But cutting it into six is a start.

Training at a High Rate of Travel with Low Atmospheric Resistance

If you read enough gun forums, watch enough gun channels on YouTube, and talk to enough gun owners you will come across somebody who constantly says the phrase “Train how you fight!” While the advice itself isn’t bad I think a lot of people who parrot the phrase fail to understand some of its key points.

Most of the people who I heard use the phrase imply that you need to train high-speed low-drag and come up with some rather humorous drills that they practice religiously. These people also create scenarios that are often absurd even for police and military personnel. They’ll come up with a drill that involves some kind of ninja-esque tactical roll between cover positions to engage twenty Mongol warriors that just happened to raid the American mall you’re shopping in. Of course the scenario also implies that you are the only person in the mall that can stop this Golden Horde. Unless you have a friend who wants to train with you, then you two are the only people who can save the lives of every man, woman, and child in the mall. Did I mention that these drills must be practiced with an AR-15, a chest rig full of spare magazines, and a sidearm in a drop-leg holster? Let’s be honest, who doesn’t wear that when they go shopping?

Most of us don’t live in a war zone. We’re not carrying around rifles, wearing chest rigs, or having to fight off Mongol hordes in busy shopping centers. Some of the videos I’ve come across on YouTube made by people who “train how they fight” must live in an area where attacks from paramilitary forces is common and nobody hassles them for walking around looking like a discount soldier. I don’t live there and I’m guessing you don’t either.

While I won’t try to dissuade you from coming up with cockamamie scenarios requiring ninja tactics to overcome, because let’s be honest that’s fun, I wouldn’t refer to it as training. If you honestly want to train how you fight consider the following drills:

Place your tail in between your legs.

This drill should be practiced more than any other. In it somebody tries to start a fight with you by insulting your mother, implying you enjoy sexual relations with people of your gender (which you might, but they won’t know that and thus will still try to use it as an insult), shoving you, slapping you, or otherwise acting like an aggressive jackass to you. Upon being engaged by the aggressor you walk away. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything aggressive in return, just walk away. A variation of this drill is the aggressor pursuing you. In this case increase your walking speed until it is quicker than your aggressor’s (the high-speed part of these drills).

The goal of this drill is to overcome your ego. Egos are scientifically proven to be the source of most really stupid decisions. Divorcing your ego from your actions is the surest way to avoid getting involved in a bad situation.

Remove your weapon from concealment.

So your aggressor pulled a weapon on you or running away isn’t viable for some reason. It’s a bad day and it’s about to get worse. Thankfully you have a weapon. But it’s concealed so you need to clear your weapon from concealment.

In this drill you find yourself facing a surprise attack from a Mongol warrior (for the record, Mongol warriors are always armed). Because you live in a constant state of condition yellow the Mongol didn’t get the complete drop on you. But you didn’t have your primary weapon ready. To engage the attacker you must draw your firearm from concealment. If you’re wearing a tuckable holster and normally tuck your shirt into it you must now untuck it quickly. If you wear an untucked shirt you must quickly lift it enough to gain access to your firearm. If you wear a vest you may be safe as the Mongol warrior is probably busy laughing at you but you still need to move it out of the way enough to access your firearm. Once the concealment has been removed you must draw your firearm and bring it up on the pissed off Mongol warrior’s upper torso.

The nice thing about this drill is that it can be done in your home since firing at the Mongol warrior is not necessary. This drill is meant to improve your ability to draw your firearm from concealment.

Shoot the mother fucker attacking you.

You’ve successfully drawn your firearm from concealment and it’s mere presence didn’t cause the Mongol warrior to rethink his actions. That’s unfortunate for many reasons including paperwork, legal battles, and being in a position where you may have to take a life.

This drill is a continuation of the previous drill. In it you’ve successfully drawn your weapon from concealment and have it aimed at the chest of the Mongol warrior. For reasons unknown to you this hasn’t dissuaded him from continuing his jackassery. Fire two shots into his upper torso. A variation of this drill is the Mongol warrior being drugged out of his mind and thus not stopping after two shots. To resolve this situation continue firing until he does stops.

The goal of this drill is to improve your skills at drawing and firing on an aggressor. It should be combined with the previous drill as often as possible. Running the drill against a shot timer can be done to introduce some level of stress.

Wherever you are is bad. Be somewhere else.

Why are you standing around and giving the Mongol warrior ample opportunity to kill you? Move away from him!

This drill is periodically referred to as “getting off of ‘the X'” where “the X” is wherever you’re currently standing. Even after you’ve moved from your initial ‘X’ it will continue following you so you need to keep moving away from it. In it you draw from concealment and shoot your aggressor while moving in a direction away from him (this is very important because moving towards him will make his task of kill you easier). You can combine this drill with only drawing from concealment if you want to practice it at home (assuming your home isn’t a firing range).

I believe the goal of this drill is obvious. Moving targets are harder to hit and the more distance between you and your aggressor the better. The whole point of carrying a firearm as opposed to a sword is that a firearm has a much greater effective range. Utilize it.

God hates you and your gun jammed. Unjam it before Genghis Khan runs you through with a spear.

You’ve overcome your ego, can consistently draw your firearm from concealment, and know how to fire your gun accurately all while moving away from your attacker. But sometimes life hands you a wildcard. What do you do if your gun jams?

If you carry a semi-automatic pistol this is a good list of failure types and the drills to recover from them. Those who carry a revolver have a slightly different set of drills. Ammunition failures in a revolver can generally be overcome by pulling the trigger again. Mechanical failures will leave you with a decision: run away or close range and attempt to use your paperweight as a bludgeon. I’d recommend the former in most cases. Regardless of the type of handgun you’re carrying time yourself when performing this drill. You want to be able to, as the high-speed low-drag crowd says, get your gun back into the fight as soon as possible. That Mongol warrior isn’t going to respect you calling a timeout while you unfuck your gun.

The goal of this drill is to prepare you for the worst when the worst is already happening. Don’t think of it solely as a drill to recover from a firearm failure. It should be thought of as an exercise in rapid analysis and decision making. Bad shit happens and you need to be flexible enough to deal with it.

Stop touching me!

I know we all exist in a perpetual state of condition yellow but even that won’t prevent all surprise attacks. Do you see that girl scout walking towards you? As it turns out she’s a Mongol warrior in disguise (she did smell pretty rank now that I think about it)! Of course you see through his ruse now that he has a grip on your dominant arm (make sure you clean that arm with degreaser after this encounter is over).

There are two things you want to practice in this drill: weapon retention and escape. The variations of this drill are practically infinite. Maybe the Mongol warrior simply grabbed your wrist, maybe he pinned you on your back, or maybe he came up behind you and now has you in a choke hold. Regardless your day now sucks and it’s only going to get suckier. You need to escape and prevent the Mongol warrior from taking your weapon because you’ll need it to engage him in the very near future. When practicing this drill keep in mind that there are these things called blue guns. They’re plastic replicas of real firearms. The nice thing about them is that they can’t actually shoot bullets. Use them for this drill because safety is important.

In reality this drill is probably the least important one on this list to practice. It’s mostly here to encourage you to try some hand-to-hand stuff because hand-to-hand stuff is awesome. The most important thing to practice in this drill is weapon retention. You carry a gun because it’s very effective against human attackers. For that very reason if your attacker realizes you have it he will want it. Keep that in mind.

This list shouldn’t be treated as all encompassing. It’s merely a guideline to better understand how you will most likely fight (again, if you’re not in the police or military). Most people want to spend their time doing things that are fun. For some reason a sizable number of gun owners feel a need to justify all of the shooting they do as being practical training. This leads them to call things that are fun practical when they almost always aren’t. It’s fun to load up the chest rig, design a course of fire around Mongol warriors invading your mall, and engaging them to save the day. But it’s not practical training because most of us aren’t walking around with a chest rig full of magazines or a rifle not slung across our back (unless we’re talking about Open Carry Texas but that’s a very special scenario). We’re carrying concealed handguns. For those of us living in the United States it’s also uncommon for paramilitary forces to invade our shopping centers. Most acts of violence only involve two people. Sometimes a few more are thrown into the mix but it’s seldom and entire army.

I encourage people to have gun but if you’re going to call something training then it should have some practical value.