Politico:

The deconstruction of the State Department is well underway.

I recently returned to Foggy Bottom for the first time since January 20 to attend the departure of a former colleague and career midlevel official—something that had sadly become routine. In my six years at State as a political appointee, under the Obama administration, I had gone to countless of these events. They usually followed a similar pattern: slightly awkward, but endearing formalities, a sense of melancholy at the loss of a valued teammate. But, in the end, a rather jovial celebration of a colleague’s work. These events usually petered out quickly, since there is work to do. At the State Department, the unspoken mantra is: The mission goes on, and no one is irreplaceable. But this event did not follow that pattern. It felt more like a funeral, not for the departing colleague, but for the dying organization they were leaving behind.

As I made the rounds and spoke with usually buttoned-up career officials, some who I knew well, some who I didn’t, from a cross section of offices covering various regions and functions, no one held back. To a person, I heard that the State Department was in “chaos,” “a disaster,” “terrible,” the leadership “totally incompetent.” This reflected what I had been hearing the past few months from friends still inside the department, but hearing it in rapid fire made my stomach churn. As I walked through the halls once stalked by diplomatic giants like Dean Acheson and James Baker, the deconstruction was literally visible. Furniture from now-closed offices crowded the hallways. Dropping in on one of my old offices, I expected to see a former colleague—a career senior foreign service officer—but was stunned to find out she had been abruptly forced into retirement and had departed the previous week. This office, once bustling, had just one person present, keeping on the lights.

When Rex Tillerson was announced as secretary of state, there was a general feeling of excitement and relief in the department. After eight years of high-profile, jet-setting secretaries, the building was genuinely looking forward to having someone experienced in corporate management. Like all large, sprawling organizations, the State Department’s structure is in perpetual need of an organizational rethink. That was what was hoped for, but that is not what is happening. Tillerson is not reorganizing, he’s downsizing.

An “organizational rethink.”  He’s shocked to find downsizing.  Shocked.  But was happy to see someone with corporate experience take the helm.  What does he think happens in the corporate world?

This kind of report makes me happy.  I see that Tillerson is draining the swamp and warring against the deep state.  Good for him.  Let me assist just a bit.  Everyone who went to college where they were trained by America-hating Marxists, and everyone who is a political appointee of Obama, just go ahead and turn in your resignations now.

Save us the hassle of rooting you out later.  We might fill the positions, we might not.  Either way, ridding ourselves of people who want to destroy America makes us better, not worse.  So go cry me a river, and market that “experience” in international affairs.  Let me know when you land a job.

NY Post:

A Minneapolis homeowner demanded to know why a cop responding to a burglary call shot her two dogs at point-blank range — after one approached wagging his tail.

Surveillance video shows the unidentified officer with the Minneapolis Police Department walking backwards in a back yard with his gun drawn when a Staffordshire terrier — named Ciroc — walks toward him wagging his tail Saturday night. The cop suddenly fires his pistol, hitting the dog in the jaw before the animal runs off.

“He was wagging his tail,” the dogs’ owner, Jennifer LeMay, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “My dog wasn’t even moving, lunging toward him or anything.”

Just as Ciroc is shot, a second Staffordshire terrier named Rocko darts into the frame, prompting the cop to fire again, striking the dog in the side, face and shoulder before the officer calmly hops a 7-foot wooden fence out of the yard.

The dogs survived, but LeMay says the family is suddenly overwhelmed by the vet bills after the shooting. Ciroc is back home after a $900 vet bill, but still needs up to $7,000 in surgeries at the University of Minnesota. Rocko, meanwhile, returned home late Sunday. Both dogs are emotional support animals prescribed by a doctor for LeMay’s sons, who have severe anxiety, she said.

“My dogs were doing their job on my property,” she told the Star Tribune. “We have a right to be safe in our yard.”

I’ve watched the video.  I’ll embed it below (sometimes that slows page loading).

I know dogs.  This dog was only moderately interested in the goings-on, and was absolutely no danger to anyone.  The cop should be arrested and charged with cruelty to animals and spend time in prison.  I feel compelled to repeat the counsel I’ve given before concerning LEOs and dogs.  First, as to general rules.

Turning now to the dog, there is no moral or legal requirement for expecting me to own beasts that roll over and play dead when a cop comes around. That isn’t what good dogs do. People have dogs in part for self defense. I strongly suspect that the dog wasn’t a danger to the neighbors, and like most dogs, they know the neighbors and are gentle with them, or at least not a mortal danger.

My own 90 pound Doberman can jump a six foot fence, and when threatened (I’ve witnessed it before), she never backs down, but goes after the threat, trips the threat from behind with her gigantic paws, gets underneath the threat, and bites for the neck / thoracic region to choke air. Fortunately when it has been other animals uncommon to the area I stop her since she obey my voice commands immediately.

She is also such a “lovey” dog she wants to climb up in the lap of any neighbor who comes by. Cops are not neighbors. Cops are foreign to the area. Dogs interpret cops as a threat, and sometimes they are right. There is no way to distinguish between cops and anyone else. Dogs don’t do calculus.

Turning now to the cops, they had no intrinsic right to be on another man’s property. Judges may say so, or state regulation may say so, but it just isn’t justifiable morally. No one was being killed or kidnapped. This was a call for loud music.

I have had two exchanges with cops over the last decade that I can recall. Once they wanted to enter my home (not for me, but to discuss someone else), and I mentioned that they were welcome but I should restrain my dog. They said, “great idea – we’ve had some instances of bad interactions and the chief wants us to retreat and let people restrain their dogs.” The second time, a cop wanted my help with someone and Heidi – my dog – happened to be loose and in the driveway. He approached on the road, but didn’t venture too far and stayed 20 or 30 yards away and called for me. I put Heidi up and obliged.

If I had to list a few pointers for cops the list would go something like this:

1. Do not approach another man’s property assuming you have a right to be there. Ask permission first. Get people to restrain their beasts.
2. Assume every man is armed.
3. Assume every home has a big dog.
4. Unholster your weapon only as a last resort.
5. Do not waste your time making stupid stops. Stopping someone for a broken running light is a stupid stop when you can be shutting down gang activity. There is another regulatory scheme to ensure that the broken running light gets fixed, i.e., car inspection. Be loath to interact with men when they are in a confined space such as a car or truck. You can’t tell what they are doing, and they can’t tell what you are doing. Unless you are an outstanding communicator, your commands are likely to be misunderstood or misinterpreted, or worse yet, incomplete and unclear or even contradictory like in the case of Castile (show me your ID but don’t move).
6. Most dogs are not “pure bred killers.” Most dogs take on the personality of their owner and only want to protect their owner. Understand this. Work with it, not against it. Use it to your advantage. Learn to work with animals, farm animals included. Train animals if you need to in order to gain this experience.

Next, I’ll turn to animals themselves and what LEOs should know.  I only have to do this because men won’t be men and train their sons to handle animals.  Sadly, in the main this is missing from American culture today, and America treats animals more and more like Muslims treat animals.  I consider Muslim treatment of dogs and other animals to be cowardly and immoral, backward and even barbaric.

I have fallen off, been thrown off, bitten, run over, kicked, and just about anything that can happen on or around a horse.  I have ridden horses all day long, and I do mean all … day … long, and gotten on to do it again the next day.  And the next day.  And the next day.  I have fed them, herded them, doctored them, and assisted them to mate.  If you’ve never witnessed horses mating first hand (and I’m not talking about watching the Discovery Channel), it can be a violent affair.  I’ve ridden with saddles and then also (in my much younger years) bareback over mountain tops along narrow trails while running the herd).  The hardest ride was bareback and (on a dare) without a bridle, only the halter.

From the age of fourteen and beyond into my early twenties, I worked weekends and summers at a Christian camp above Marietta, South Carolina named Awanita Valley (and Awanita Ranch in Traveler’s Rest).  We trained and trail rode horses, fed them and cared for them, hiked the trails and cleared them of snakes and yellow jacket nests (have you ever been on a horse when it came up on a yellow jacket nest?).

When we weren’t doing that, we were cutting wood, hauling supplies, digging ditches, and baling hay.  My boys did the same thing, and Daniel later (before the Marine Corps) worked for Joey Macrae in Anderson, South Carolina, an extraordinary professional horseman, breaking and training horses.  I have ridden in the rain, blazing sun, and snow.  I have seen my son Joshua and his horse buried up to his thighs in snow, and watched him ride the horse up from sinking in the drift and stay on him while keeping the horse and him safe.

Why is all (or any) of this important?  Because as I tried to convey in my earlier post, it is critical to have an understanding and mastery over animals, especially if what we think will happen in America really happens.  And Mountain Guerrilla is right about logistics too.  But I’m not so sure that the Army was the first to field this idea.  See my article on Marines and Mules.  The Small Wars Journal had discussion on the importance of animals to logistics long ago.

The problem is that the Marine Corps has forgotten the lessons, and I’m afraid that the Army will never really take them to heart.  The modern U.S. military is techno-weighted down, with gadgetry, doohickeys, and reliance on constant logistics.  The so-called big dog is a symptom of this sickness, as is the huge budget for DARPA every year.  Truthfully, I think this is all related to the effete pressure for gender neutrality in the military.

But don’t you forget these lessons.  Plan ahead.  Learn how to make fire, how to purify water, how to fight, how to make your way around terrain, and how to navigate with maps and a compass (rather than using GPS like the liar Marine Corps officer candidates who were found out during officer’s school).

And learn animals.  Your life will be better for it.  This goes for cops too.

For LEOs (and all other men), learn to doctor animals.  Learn their anatomy.  Learn the necessity of voice inflection and timbre.  Learn voice commands.  Learn how the movement of a shoulder one way or the other can communicate things to animals.  Learn what to do with your eyes.

If you are a LEO and your father was a putz and didn’t teach you any of these things, then go to a farm and volunteer your time in order to learn animals.  They are much more predictable than men and sometimes much better company.  Your life will be enriched for it.

Not that any LEOs will take this to heart.  Then again, from the cowardly pussies like you witnessed in the video above, we can move to the criminally pathological like we have seen in Buffalo and now in Detroit.

Two Detroit residents filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Detroit Police Department Wednesday, alleging that several police officers needlessly and maliciously shot their three dogs during a marijuana raid.

Kenneth Savage and Ashley Franklin say that on July 22, 2016, Detroit police raided their house and found the dogs in a back yard bounded by an eight-foot-tall fence. The officers refused to let Savage and Franklin retrieve the dogs and, instead, shot them.

The reason? Officers found several potted marijuana plants in the backyard Savage and Franklin contend were there legally.

The suit is now the third active civil rights action against the Detroit Police Department for killing dogs during marijuana raids. A Reason investigation last year found that the Detroit Police Department’s Major Violators Unit, which conducts hundreds of drug raids a year in the city, had a nasty habit of leaving dead dogs in its wake. One officer had killed 69 dogs over the course of his career, public records obtained by Reason showed.

According to a search warrant affidavit, a Detroit police officer, while investigating an unrelated matter, observed several marijuana plants outdoors at the home of Savage, Franklin, and their son.

Two days later, eight Detroit police officers arrived at the house. Police were aware Savage and Franklin had a permit to grow medical marijuana, but the plants were in violation because they were visible outside, the search warrant affidavit said.

When Franklin showed police her marijuana paperwork and demanded to see a search warrant, an officer responded, “If you keep asking for a warrant, we are gonna kill those dogs and call child protective services to pick up your kid,” the lawsuit says.

Officers detained Franklin and searched the house, but could not get to the marijuana plants because of the dogs. They initially called animal control but decided to destroy the animals, the lawsuit says. Officers shot and killed one dog through the fence, broke into the backyard enclosure, and fatally shot the other two. Animal control arrived ten minutes later.

There is only one solution to the criminally pathological like this, and retraining isn’t it.

It sounds juvenile even to be asking the question.

The question has been asked: Is the 1911 an effective defensive platform?

Well, yes it is. The pistol may not be the PERFECT defensive pistol, but it is a workable platform for those who choose to carry it; workable if you train properly.

Two of the biggest knocks against the 1911 are the light, single-action trigger and the frame-mounted thumb safety. Some people say the light trigger is the cause of negligent discharges with this type of pistol. Others claim the safety is a problem in a gunfight because, under stress, one will forget to disengage said safety and therefore get killed.

Seriously?  Someone has actually raised the objection to the 1911 that it isn’t designed with double action?  I find the infatuation with cheap plastic guns almost amusing if it wasn’t so sad.

Look, if you want to be sure that you have a ready weapon, chamber a round and put the safety on.  Or don’t.  My holsters guard the trigger anyway.

It’s easy to practice sweeping the safety down as soon as you unholster the weapon.  And John Basilone says hello.

Reader Michael Schlechter, MD, sends this along.

Boggs and colleagues conducted the Treatment Utilization Before Suicide (TUBS) study to determine if limiting firearm access for individuals with a mental health condition or a history of suicidal attempts prevented suicide deaths. They identified 2,674 adults and adolescents from eight integrated health systems who were continuously enrolled in the system for at least 10 months prior to suicide. The researchers separated participants into two groups based on medical records and claims information. The first group consisted of those who were diagnosed with any mental health or substance use condition in the year before death. The second group consisted of those who had made previous suicide attempts. The researchers noted that the groups were not mutually exclusive and that there was considerable overlap between individuals who had a mental health condition and whose who previously attempted suicide.

Researchers found that the majority of patients with a history of suicide attempts or mental health or substance abuse committed suicide through means other than firearms, while the majority of people who did commit suicide with a firearm did not have a previous diagnosis of mental health issues or suicide attempts. More than half of individuals who died by suicide (54.7%) had a mental health or substance use condition and among those, 42.8% used a firearm. Previous suicide attempts were documented in 10.9% of individuals who died by suicide and only 37.5% of those used a firearm. Approximately 4.1% of individuals who died by suicide with a firearm had previously attempted suicide, while 23.5% were diagnosed with a mental health or substance use condition.

“Our findings show that, even if successful, current efforts to limit firearm access only for persons with a mental health condition (including substance use disorders) or those who previously attempted suicide would prevent few suicide deaths by firearm,” Boggs and colleagues concluded. “We suggest that prevention of firearm suicide should be expanded beyond the current focus on these patients to include other persons at risk for suicide… Our findings also highlight the importance of expanding attention beyond an exclusive focus on firearms — especially for persons with mental health or substance use conditions — to include other common means of suicide, such as instruments used for suffocation (for example, rope for hanging) and poison (for example, medications, alcohol, and recreational drugs).”

I have not read the study, and would be happy to evaluate the statistical calculations if I had the chance.  But assuming the fidelity and accuracy of the analysis, this seems to me to be important work.

You always hear three things from the gun controllers as justifications for more control.  First, high gun violence rates, which as I’ve pointed out predominately occur in the inner cities as black on black violence, pointing to a moral and cultural problem rather than guns.  Second, mentally ill people and their propensity to violence.  But as we’ve conclusively shown (or at least we’ve conclusively shown what the mental health professionals think), mental illness has no correlation to propensity to violence.

Finally, there is the study above.  Take note that of the three, two reasons for more gun control concern the mentally ill.  Frankly, I’ve never seen such maligned class of people by such a prejudiced bunch of bigots.

Rekha Basu:

Of course if you have a mental condition you never sought treatment for, there’s no way to know about it without doing an evaluation, which isn’t required. And though lying on the form is a Class-D felony, by the time the lie is discovered, it could be too late.

Well, everyone has a mental condition.  It’s whatever condition you happen to be in mentally.  What the writer is really suggesting is that people suffering from mental illness should not be qualified to own firearms.

But since we’ve demonstrated that mental illness has nothing to do with propensity to violence, the writer is a prejudiced bigot.  Were you raised that way Rekha, or was this just part of earning your progressive creds so that the other staff writers respect you?  Are your fellow writers as bigoted as you are?

Oh, and I see where you’re going with this.  Anyone who believes in the second amendment and a God-given right to bear arms is to be found as “mentally ill” by doctors who have been trained in Freud and Derrida.  Nice try.  No.  Your turn.

The Truth about Knives posts a reader’s story about his son and a knife.  It’s a sad tale indeed.

So imagine that, my oldest Son developed an interest in knives…  In the fall of 2012, at a Gun and Knife show, a particular knife caught my Son’s eye.  He had the money to buy it but the vendor refused to sell it to my Son because he wasn’t 18.  I gladly assumed responsibility for the sale and exchanged of My Son’s hard earned money for the knife he wanted.  He was now the proud owner of a fancy new “spring assisted” knife.  We both marveled at how quickly it opened.  I gave him the same advice my Dad had given me when I got a new knife.  I said intently, “be sure to be careful with that knife”.  The knife quickly became my Son’s favorite knife.  The next spring as the weather warmed and even though Christmas had provided a few new ones, it was still my Son’s favorite knife.  So He took it with him almost everywhere he went.

That is, until April 13, 2013.

It was a perfect night at the end of a beautiful Spring Saturday in April.  It was the kind of day you dream of all Winter long in Michigan.  That night my oldest Son was out riding his bike around the neighborhood.  I wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but I wasn’t exactly worried either as we live in a fairly quiet small town.  Besides, my Son had never been in trouble and I wasn’t worried as he’s a good kid and not the kind to go looking for it…  But when my ex-wife knocked at my door out of the blue that night and said we needed to talk about our oldest, my world changed completely.  I rounded the corner out my front door and onto my porch and saw my Son sitting in the front seat of my Ex’s van.  He was as white as a ghost and shaking.  His eyes were red and full of tears.  I’d never seen his face so full of fear.  The two of them explained to me the best they could through the emotions and tears, that My Son had been riding his bike just a few blocks away from My House when a Police officer stopped him and charged him with carrying an illegal knife!!!  The Police report later confirmed My Son was doing nothing wrong when he was stopped and that he behaved very respectfully to and with the Officer that night.  The Officer had simply seen a clip on My Son’s back pocket and stopped him to see what it was.  My Son while still shaking told me “Dad I wasn’t trying to break the Law”, “I thought my knife was legal.”  And then that night My Son would say the words that would haunt me to this day!!  “If I can’t carry this knife without getting into trouble, what knife can I carry?”  “What knife can I carry…?”

It was a few weeks later or so before the first court date so my Ex-wife and I set up an appointment with her Lawyer to meet to talk about what happened.  The Lawyer explained the legal process and what to expect next… and I asked about MI knife laws and if the knife My Son had was or was not legal according to the Law.  The Lawyer responded that “it didn’t matter what the Law said about his knife”.  Simply put, my Son was being charged by the Local Police and the best option, since he had never been in trouble before, was to hope the court would go easy on him.  He said since it’s his first offence if he plead guilty he would likely just have to do some community service hours and pay a fine.  But I persisted!  What about the knife and the Law!?!?!?  What does the Law say!?!?  But the Lawyer persisted as well and said that the Law did NOT matter!  You see the night of April 13th when this first happened I started to do some ‘Google’ searching to try to understand the law and I was getting confused.  But I did know the MI State Police web site said knives over 3 inches were NOT illegal, unless the person had unlawful intent.  So I called the Officer that night to try to understand the charges.  The Local Police Officer who charged my Son told me on the phone that night that any knife over 3 inches was illegal in Michigan…  And when I questioned him about why the State Police website said otherwise, he told me to get a Lawyer if I needed help understanding the law because I didn’t know what I was talking about.  I tried to explain to him that I believed HE didn’t understand the Law correct…  The call ended and I knew we were in for an uphill fight.  The Visit with my Ex’s Lawyer was no different.   My Son and I talked and neither he nor I wanted him to plead guilty to something he didn’t do wrong.

The months following would prove to be some of the most trying times and frustrating experiences I have ever had.  I called Lawyer after Lawyer and heard the same thing, the Law does not matter.  But I still kept trying to understand it better, and I ended up finding AKTI and KnifeRights.org.  I did everything I could to learn everything I could about knife laws and regulations.  But unfortunately where we lived the Laws did not seem to matter, facts did not seem to matter.  I’d lose more sleep and eventually succumb to panic attacks and bouts of rage trying to prove my Son’s innocence and understand the charges.  Because the truth was traded for opinions and facts were perverted to try to make a innocent child look guilty.  We heard excuse after excuse from the Prosecutor as to why My Son’s knife was not legal.  My Son’s knife was even recorded as being 2 inches longer than it actually was.  At a time when the police department who charged him were teaching and enforcing the law based on the belief that length determined the legality of a knife. Which does NOT agree with the Law.  But yet they recorded his knife longer than it actually was, when they believed and were teaching kids that being longer than 3 inches made it not legal.    The Sergeant had even signed and verified it into evidence at the incorrect overstated length.  The first meeting at the Prosecutor’s Office I questioned the charges and explained I did not believe My Son did anything wrong.  The person we were dealing with looked at the Police report and went straight to the the length and said, yes it’s over 3 inches it’s illegal!  When I handed them a copy of the Michigan State Police website that contradicted what they were saying about blade length they became irate and turned bright red!  It was then we found out the 3 3/4 inch long knife blade of my Son’s knife had been recorded as 5 3/4 inches long!  That simply wasn’t right!  So I questioned the length in the Police report and the Prosecutor contacted the Police department to verify the length.  But I was told they were having trouble contacting them because the Prosecutor could only talk with the charging officer about the case and he worked nights…  Eventually contact was apparently made because according to my lawyer the charging Officer stated it was the correct length.  How can that be!  So I contacted the Chief of Police directly, he was able to review the knife in evidence and confirm the recorded length was not correct!  And stated there was no record of anyone attempting to verify its length from the Prosecutor’s Office.  Then he told me the Officer was not able to find a ruler anywhere in the Station on April 13th and so he had to print one off of the internet to measure my Son’s knife, that’s why the report was not accurate.

Visit TTAK for the rest of the story.  I don’t take as improbable that either (a) the ruler he printed from the internet was to the wrong scale, or (b) he didn’t know the difference between inches and centimeters.

This has as one of its root causes the fact that law enforcement agencies around the country hire in the main improperly or undereducated people to do the job.  This isn’t mean to be insulting – rather, it’s meant as a clinical assessment.

I would advocate that candidates for LEO have taken and passed at least course work in physics and calculus.  College degrees in criminal justice are mainly worthless.

Furthermore, I don’t mean to leave out lawyers from what may seem like a scathing rebuke.  They can be some of the most undereducated people on earth.  Courses in law don’t prepare you for anything except wading your way through the corrupt legal system in America.  How many lawyers do you know that can work on machinery, or maintain their HVAC or automobile, or wire a home, or do the simple geometry and trigonometry necessary to build a structure?

As for knives, every man carries a knife all of the time.  I’ve used knives for everything from opening packages, to cutting plastic bags full of hex-head screws for those infernal apparatus my wife wants me to construct, to cutting tape, to cutting paracord or other cordage or ropes, or repurposing when nothing else is available and turning a screw.  Add to that the fact that a knife is the last line of defense, and it’s obvious why every man carries a knife all of the time.

A large folder, or a straight edge, but a good enough knife to be useful.  And spring-opened if you like that sort of thing for one-handed operation.  I know what women do – they use scissors to open boxes, but since any force on these instruments can cause instant closure of one sharp edge against another, they are dangerous.  When you see that happening, stop it and use a proper tool.  A knife.

But since every real man carries a knife all of the time, it’s no surprise that lawyers, LEOs, lawmakers and judges don’t want to see it happen.  They want the feminization of the American man until he is no more.

And in case I haven’t mentioned it enough times, every real man carries a knife all of the time.

David Codrea:

“Today the Oregon House approved one of the most dangerous, hateful and mean spirited pieces of legislation ever introduced,” Oregon Firearms Federation alerted members Thursday. “SB 719 A, the product of Republican Senator Brian Boquist’s collusion with the most militant anti-gunners in the legislature, will now allow the police to come to your home and confiscate your firearms and ‘deadly weapons’ with no accusation or conviction of a crime.

Got a pissed off former spouse?  I don’t, and I’ll never know what that’s like.  But some people suffer through that.  Or perhaps someone else in your family wants to hurt you.  Now there is no waiting, no due process, no hearing, no deliberations, no jury, no nothing.  Just do it.  Get those guns.

The sponsor is a former Special Forces officer.  I don’t care.  That means nothing to me.  Nor does his high approval ratings from gun rights groups.  Gun rights groups are wrong and should take more concern over their accuracy.  People can lie, and they can turn.  It isn’t clear which he is – a liar or traitor.

You guys in Oregon are looking more and more like the folks in California.  At what point do we just write all of this off as a loss and move on?  I’m asking honestly.  I want reader feedback.  How long should we wage the fight in the progressives’ back yard instead of y’all just relocating to free states and working to make sure they stay free?

David Codrea:

“Recordings reveal FBI gave man a rifle, urged him to carry out mass shooting to ‘Defend Islam,’” Activist Post reported Thursday in a story by USMC veteran and NSA intelligence operator Matt Agorist. “A little over two years ago, Samy Mohamed Hamzeh, 25, found himself in the midst of an FBI sting. Little did he know that he was being groomed for terrorism by the same government who claims to fight terrorism.”

Despite intensive and prolonged recruitment efforts, Hamzeh resisted. In the end, per The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “the resulting charges were two counts of possessing a machine gun and one count of possessing a silencer, all of which he bought for $570 from undercover FBI agents … [D]espite the hours of recorded Arabic conversations with the informants, he ultimately ‘rejected their overtures and lectured his informant friends about why such a plan would be wrong.’”

There’s also a reddit discussion thread on this.  Hey, don’t you guys have something important to work on?  I have a suggestion for you.  Instead of working this angle, embed yourselves in the Dearborn area of Michigan (what we euphemistically call “Dearbornistan“).  Or perhaps go to the twin cities where they want to subjugate your children to Sharia law.

Or do you find that too dangerous?  Or maybe you think someone will cry discrimination if you target the Muslim community, so you find an unwilling tool and trap him into a win for you, loss for him.  We need to do some house cleaning at the FBI just like Tillerson is doing at State.

Glenn Reynolds links TTAG where the author is discussing daily carry of reloads.  It’s not a trivial discussion by any means, but something else caught my eye.  See these comments.

If you have to use the pistol to defend yourself, which I presume is the reason you’re carrying it, you could be placing yourself in a very ill advised position by using reloaded ammunition, particularly in light of the prevailing legal climate. There’s nothing in that equation that bodes well for you.

…

I agree with Mr. Savage. My reloads are better than a lot of factory cartridges for the same reason your mom’s apple pie beats anything you can buy at the grocery store.

…

Just beware that in the aftermath of a defensive shoot, you will get destroyed in court for using reloads. Even if you did everything else right, even if you prove the shoot was self defense, the few dollars you saved could cost you everything you own. A halfway decent prosecutor can convince a jury that you created a round that causesd undue suffering, that only a madman predispoaed to violence would.use. Legally, the best defensive ammo is what the police use, for it destroys any argument a prosecutor may present that the ammo was used for some nefarious purpose. I know, it is silly, but that is what happens in our courts.

…

Regarding the use of reloaded ammo causing extra jeopardy in court, please cite a case where this happened. Otherwise, I call BS.

Well, I’ve already dealt with this issue directly, so you missed hearing an expert weigh in.  No, not me.  Someone else.

For years, I’ve warned people that there are a couple of serious concerns with using handloaded ammunition for personal or home defense.  The big one is forensic replicability when the shooter is accused, and opposing theories of distance become a factor.

How often does this happen? One time some years ago, that question came up on an internet debate.  I looked through the ten cases I had pending at the time as an expert witness, and gunshot residue (GSR) testing to determine distance from gun muzzle to the person shot was an issue in four of them.  Forty percent is not what I’d call statistically insignificant.

[ … ]

… if you have any friends who use handloads for serious social purposes, please share. You might just save them from the sort of nightmare suffered by the defendant in New Jersey v. Daniel Bias, who was bankrupted by legal fees before the first of his three trials was over, and wound up serving hard time.  Both of his attorneys were convinced he was innocent, and told me they believed that if he had simply had factory ammo in his home defense gun, the case would probably never have even gone to trial.

So there you have it.  The commenters are advised to get around a little more.

Well, here it is.  I’m not really sure why anyone would want to shoot a SAW like that.  Fire control is important for barrel life and a number of other things, including proper functioning in times of need.  But in the interest of watching people tear things up, this is interesting.