This is a good report of a concealed carrier who both stops a burglary and detains the burglar.  But my goodness, watch the way he holds that firearm.  I’ve seen one other person do this in my life, and we asked him to stop and tried to teach him better, but to no avail.

I applaud the man’s determination, but you can do better than that.  Do not hold the gun this way.  And for heaven’s sake, tell him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back.

Prior: Do Not Ever Shoot A Gun This Way

PJM:

Trump is a master of the nihilist style of the web. His competitors speak in political jargon and soaring generalities. He speaks in rant. He attacks, insults, condemns, doubles down on misstatements, never takes a step back, never apologizes. Everyone he dislikes is a liar, “a bimbo,” “bought and paid for.” Without batting an eyelash, he will compare an opponent to a child molester. Such rhetorical aggression is shocking in mainstream American politics but an everyday occurrence on the political web, where death threats and rape threats against a writer are a measure of the potency of the message.

The “angry voter” Trump supposedly has connected with is really an avatar of the mutinous public: and this is its language. It too speaks in rant, inchoate expression of a desire to remake the world by smashing at it, common parlance of the political war-bands that populate Tumblr, Gawker, reddit, and so many other online platforms. By embracing Trump in significant numbers, the public has signaled that it is willing to impose the untrammeled relations of social media on the U.S. electoral process.

To be fair, I think this is right but I think there is more at play than this.  There are legitimate grievances, but voting for Trump to fix those grievances is sort of like placing your penis on an anvil and beating it bloody, shouting “you won’t do it to us again,”  while a Fascist does it again to them as he sings, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”  Turning now to the other parent, pro wrestling.

He parlayed his appearances on Monday Night Raw into a prime-time WrestleMania 23 match. The mega event was billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires” and featured a showdown between a wrestler sponsored by Trump (Bobby Lashley) and a wrestler chosen by McMahon (Umaga) — and was refereed by none other than famous McMahon antagonist Stone Cold Steve Austin. Even the taunt-filled ringside contract-signing showcased Trump, prefiguring his insult-laced debate performances. At stake was a golden head of hair: The loser would be forcibly shorn of his famous locks in front of a record pay-per-view crowd.

I’ve been toying with the idea that Donald Trump isn’t a human, but an apparition of some sort, designed by evil forces to have an adverse impact on behavior.  My thoughts still need to be fully formed before laying that out there as a mature idea, but Trump is certainly having a bad affect on behavior.

The goal is to harden men.  It is to force them to bare their asses, pull their pants down in public, use foul language, discuss obscene things, hurl baseless insults towards other people, to be able to do or feel anything without shame, and manifest utterly narcissistic feelings in all things.

The target is to destroy all etiquette, kill the notion of love, grace and kindness towards others, and coarsen the discourse, both private and public.  Trump has no ideology beyond this, and the increase of Donald Trump.  His values are “without form and void.”  He is an empty vessel, into which anything can be poured that benefits Trump and humiliates, trashes, denigrates and dehumanizes others.

And America is enthralled with the shameless reality show that is Donald Trump.  It is a sick society, sick unto death.

I stumbled across this interesting video.

I think the test is a little less than “scientific” regardless of the words they throw at it.  No gelatin tests, no discussion of terminal ballistics in tissue, etc.  The video could have gone on a lot longer investigating some of these things.

Interesting nonetheless.  I have always known that the 1400+ FPS velocity of the .357 magnum is a powerful thing, which is why I have two .357 magnum handguns (S&W R8 M&P and Ruger GP100 Match Champion).  I love shooting them both.  But it comes down to more than just what runs down the range faster.  What can you carry?  What can you conceal?  I cannot conceal the S&W R8 or my Ruger GP100 Match Champion.  But I can conceal a smallish compact 1911 on my waist or a S&W .38 Spl. +P Air Weight on my ankle.

Each tool has its own purposes.

I have said for a very long time to my family and others that the experience of parents having and raising children isn’t really about the children.  God will handle the children as He sees fit.  It’s about the parents, and there are two experiences that test your mettle more than any other: marriage and children.  It’s one of God’s way of sanctifying His own, but it has the opposite affect on others.

One reason I care about the election cycle isn’t because I think we can make a difference.  Oh, we can in some ways, we can’t in others.  We can make a difference in the medical care situation in the country, but we can’t in the global financial system.  This discussion is saved for another time.  But one thing the individual vote does at one and the same time is affect the soul and show the content of the soul of the voter.  It’s a deeply moral act that has eternal consequences for the one who is given stewardship of the vote.

Now let me turn for a moment to a recent commentary by Jonah Goldberg.  Sometimes I disagree vehemently with him, but other times he hits on all cylinders.  This day the engine was running to perfection on the dynamometer.

This week there have been some cracks in the façade. Trump’s attacks on Heidi Cruz unsettled even Ann Coulter. And his abortion remarks are still sending tremors through the granite foundations of Trump can-do-no-wrong-ism. Joe Scarborough and Breitbart’s John Nolte are talking about what a bad week he’s having and gravely warning Trump to get his act together. As Jim Geraghty has been writing, the problem with such second thoughts is the assumption that something is amiss with Trump or his campaign. This is Trump. This is his campaign. The Trump we see before us is the same Trump. It’s a bit like when Barack Obama said that the Jeremiah Wright he saw denouncing America wasn’t the man he knew. That was nonsense. Obama knew exactly who Wright was, having attended his church for 20 years. It was only when Wright’s act moved to a larger national stage that all of a sudden he became inconvenient to Obama.

The analogy isn’t perfect, of course. But the basic point is the same. The Donald Trump of the last week is the exact same Donald Trump many of us saw a year ago or five years ago. He’s always been full of sh*t. He’s always been a total ignoramus when it comes to public policy, lacking the simple sense of patriotic duty to do his homework on the issues. He’s always been a nasty and boorish cad. He’s always pretended to be a conservative while working on liberal assumptions of what conservatives want to hear.

His “punish the women” comments were of a piece with his refusal to condemn the Klan on CNN. It’s not that he wants to punish women who have abortions — I’d bet he’s paid more abortion bills than he will ever sign — it’s that he thinks that’s what pro-lifers want to hear. It’s not that he’s a Klansman or that the pillowcases at Mara Lago come with eyeholes cut out in advance. It’s that Trump thinks lots of his fans like the Klan and he wants to pander to them. I have heard first-hand stories from people who’ve worked with Trump about how he disparages women’s appearance routinely. That’s who he is. If you’re attacking him because he retweeted a bad picture of Heidi, that’s not you being principled, it’s you getting cold feet. Indeed, I am sure that the same opportunism that has caused so many supposedly principled conservatives to hitch their wagons to Trump is now causing some of them to question their choices, not because Trump has changed but because the climate might be changing around them. By all means, if Trump continues to unravel (a huge if), please abandon Trump. But don’t think for a moment that the rest of us will automatically take your word for it when you say this or that statement changed your mind about the man. He hasn’t changed, your calculations have.

[ … ]

Like all demagogues, he’s using his lies as a loyalty test for his followers. He’s exploiting his popularity and abusing the devotion of his fans to force them into going along with his fictions, until they are in so deep psychologically, they have no choice but to carry on. It’s an ancient psychological tactic of authoritarians, Mafia dons, and the like: Force your followers into sharing the blame for your misdeeds so that they can’t break ranks.

Jonah is right.  He thinks we want to see women who have gotten abortions in the town center in stocks and chains.  He’s pandering to the social right, but he missed on this, and he missed badly.  His other positions – support for the second amendment, advocacy for closed borders – can only be assumed to be pandering as well.

Not to worry, though.  Just about as soon as he said it, he triangulated his position again, to something like abortion laws are already set and we have to leave it that way.  Trumps views on abortion aren’t the topic here.  Trump is the topic.  He is a mirror in which everyone sees what he or she wants to see, its just that the mirror has to be adjusted based on the onlooker and Trump isn’t really as good a triangulator as he is made out to be.

And that brings me to the conservative voters who have already cast their votes for Trump in the primaries heretofore.  Do you remember when socialized medicine was the most important thing about the Obama administration, the holy grail of the progressives?  It still is.

And yet, you have jettisoned that most important piece of your world view to support a man who sees things far differently than you, who supports socialized medicine, and who has said that the only thing he would change about the current system is to allow it to cross state lines.

Trump has woven you into his deception, his lies, his evil.  And when socialized medicine is codified and solidified for you, your children, and your children’s children to the tenth generation of your progeny, when you see that your seed will hate you and this generation for what has been done to the country, it will be far too late.

Open wide, and suck it down.  This is what you voted for, whether in the end it’s Hillary or Trump, or some replacement for Hillary.  Own it.  It’s yours.  The Mafia don asked you to pull the trigger and do the deed.  It’s no longer about him.  Now it’s about you.

The Daily Signal:

The stories of two businessmen who recently were denied banking services because they sell firearms suggest a secretive government program called Operation Choke Point still affects industries across the nation that the Obama administration considered undesirable.

In one case, a large bank in New England denied a line of credit to a former police officer who started a gun and tactical business in Monroe, Conn., saying it “no longer lends to firearms dealers.”

In the other case, a branch of a North Carolina bank refused to set up a new payment service for a firearms seller in Tryon, N.C., because of the nature of his industry, the business owner said.

The Daily Signal talked to both businessmen, who say they are being punished for their line of work despite efforts in Congress to end discrimination by banks against gun sellers.

Some experts believe that banks’ decision not to do business with gun sellers stems from Operation Choke Point, a Justice Department program that, according to government officials, aimed to “attack Internet, telemarketing, mail, and other mass market fraud against consumers, by choking fraudsters’ access to the banking system.”

Rich Sprandel, an 18-year police veteran, had to retire in 2011 from the force in Seymour, Conn., after being hit by a drunk driver while on duty in his patrol car. Sprandel, who is married and has two children, opened an online firearms and tactical business.

“I have a retirement pension, but it’s not 100 percent of my pay, so I need to make a living to support my family,” Sprandel, 48, who owns Blue Line Firearms & Tactical in Monroe, Conn., said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

On March 7, he got a voicemail message from a vice president at People’s United Bank in Fairfield, Conn., regarding his request for a new line of credit.

[ … ]

Another firearms dealer, Luke Lichterman, told The Daily Signal that HomeTrust Bank denied banking services to him March 11 because of the “high risk nature” of his business, Hunting and Defense, in Tryon, N.C.

Lichterman, a Columbus resident, said he was trying to open an automatic clearing house payment service with HomeTrust, where he had maintained accounts since 2012.

But, he said,  a treasury management sales officer at the Asheville branch of the bank denied his request on March 11 because of his line of work.

“He explained that he’s terribly sorry, but the banking industry is tightly regulated by the federal government and we cannot approve your [payment service] because of the high risk nature of your business,” Lichterman said. “I said, high risk? What risk? What’s the problem?”

Lichterman, 75, said the banker then said, “I’m sure your business is fine, but it’s your industry that we feel is too risky.”

It was supposed to be a dead program, this idea of Operation Choke Point.  But it isn’t, and there is only one place to point the finger of blame.  No, not Obama.  He is like most presidents – he would subsume too much authority and power to himself as a king of other men without the proper checks and balances.  The proper checks and balances in this case is supposed to be the House of Representatives and the Senate.

You see, they could easily shut down the government if they wanted.  They could pass a bill firing the people in the executive branch responsible for this, and when not signed by Obama, they could withdraw all funds for continued operation of any department.  They have the ultimate power.  They are the ultimate authority.

But they won’t do it because they believe in what’s happening.  They are culprits along with Obama.  You can point the finger of blame directly at your elected representatives for this outrage.  And no, don’t tell me anything about how much such draconian tactics would hurt this group, that group, national defense, the elderly, the young, education, and on and on and on go the tear jerker stories.  I’m uninterested.  I don’t jerk tears any more.  Shut it all down, or tar and feather them in the streets.  I’m fine with either option.

Army Times:

The Army just bought a new sniper rifle.

The service on Friday announced that it awarded a contract to Heckler & Koch to supply a precision rifle to replace the M110 made by Knight’s Armament.

The Army wanted to acquire a shorter, lighter, more accurate, more ergonomic and more reliable gun for marksmen, according to Program Executive Office Soldier’s product portfolio. The new Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System should be easier to carry and use in close quarters than the M110 without sacrificing performance or accuracy, PEO said.

The FedBizOpps.gov award notice said H&K will produce a maximum of 3,643 rifles over 24 months, as well as spare parts and depot support, at a max contract value of $44.5 million. There’s a minimum purchase of 30 rifles for quality assurance testing.

The Army did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did Heckler & Koch. It is unclear from the FedBizOpps posting which model rifle won the contract, and whether it’s a commercially available gun, modification of one, or a new weapon.

The gunmaker’s website lists two precision rifles, one of which fits the Army’s desire for a rifle smaller than the M110: the G28. The gas-operated rifle fires the same 7.62mm ammunition (NATO standard) as the M110. Heckler & Koch lists a minimum length of 96.5 cm (about 38 inches) and weight of 5.8 kg (12.7 lbs). That makes it nearly 6 cm (2.5 inches) shorter and 1.3 kg (3 lbs) lighter than the M110 (unloaded and without a suppressor).

A Knight’s Armament spokesman said the company had no comment at this time.

It’s shorter but it doesn’t sacrifice accuracy.  Hmmm … or so says the Army.  What model?  Who knows, except the Army.  Available to whom?  Probably no one, except the Army.  Test results to be made public?  Eh, probably not, nothing said about that.  No comments from the Army, no comments from H&K, no comments from Knight’s Armament.  Except this from the always ubiquitous H&K marketing department.

At HK, we stuck a piston on an AR15, just like a bunch of other companies have done, dating back to about 1969. However ours is better, because we refuse to sell it to civilians. Because you suck, and we hate you.

Our XM8 is the greatest rifle ever developed. It may melt, and it doesn’t fit any accessories known to man, but that is your fault. If you were a real operator, you would love it. Once again, look at Rainbow Six, that G36 sure is cool isn’t it? Yeah, you know you want one.And by the way, check out our new HK45. We decided that humans don’t need to release the magazine with their thumbs. If you were a really manly teutonic operator, you would be able to reach the controls. Plus we’ve fired 100,000,000 rounds through one with zero malfunctions, and that was while it was buried in a lake of molten lava, on the moon. If you don’t believe us, it is because you aren’t a real operator.

By the way, our cheap, mass-produced, stamped sheet metal guns like the G3 and MP5 are the bestest things ever, and totally worth asinine scalpers prices, but note that cheap, mass-produced, stamped sheet metal guns from other countries are commie garbage. Not that it matters, because you’re civilians, so we won’t sell them to you anyway. Because you suck, and we hate you, but we know you’ll be back. We can beat you down like a trailer park wife, but you’ll come back, you always do.

Buy our stuff.

Sincerely

HK Marketing Department.  Because you suck.  And we hate you.

So there.

NRO:

In Chicago, two momentous things are happening at once. First, in the aftermath of the Laquan McDonald shooting — where a white officer shot a black teenager, who was armed with a small knife, 16 times, even as McDonald appeared to be walking away — Chicago police and prosecutors are facing a Department of Justice investigation and intense public scrutiny. Second, as the investigation and accompanying political controversy unfold, Chicago’s murder rate has surged by 84 percent, and shootings have almost doubled.

… Since January, [Chicago] officers have recorded 20,908 instances in which they stopped, patted down and questioned people for suspicious behavior, compared with 157,346 in the same period last year. Gun seizures are also down: 1,316 guns have been taken off the streets this year compared with 1,413 at this time last year.

Rogue police officers must be prosecuted, but we are increasingly demanding the impossible from law enforcement — that they maintain order in the streets in a manner that looks great on camera and breaks down neatly along demographic lines. But dealing with violent gangs, drunk, high, and out-of-control criminals, and screaming and vicious domestic disputes is often an ugly business. Moreover, crime rates aren’t evenly distributed demographically, so so stops, arrests, and police shootings won’t be either.

Listen to me, David.  I always go armed with a knife, and not a small one.  If a man is walking away, a cop has no right to shoot him, so says the Supreme Court in Tennessee versus Garner.  Cops can use their weapons for the very same reason I can use mine, i.e., self defense.  Nothing else justifies use of said gun, except if they are saving the life of someone else (and I can use that excuse as well if it’s true).  Cops can’t shoot people for walking away.  Don’t even toy with the idea of defense of a cop who shoots a man in the back for walking away from him.

And yes, someone is asking cops to do the impossible.  I’m not, but someone is.  They are asking cops to be at the receiving end of bad policy that has eviscerated the black family in the inner cities by handouts, making the father both unnecessary and meaningless.  What we are looking at in the inner cities is four generations of entitlement.  Cops can’t change that.  Cops cannot undo the affects of socialist programs that have impoverished and morally bankrupted the black population, and hard core policing tactics that violate the constitution aren’t the answer to bad policy.  At some point the chickens come home to roost.  In this case, many of the chickens are dangerous criminals, and the roost will be hellish, just as it will be with our open borders policy.

No one takes pleasure in this.  This isn’t schadenfreude.  This is called judgment.  Sometimes it can’t be stopped.

Buy guns and ammunition.  Be prepared.  Understand Herschel’s Dictum.  “There aren’t too many human interaction problems that can’t be fixed with a .45 ACP 230-grain fat-boy.”