I’ve lost count, but many, many times.  It’s too late to avoid suffering at least some financial damage.

Due to the New York state decision to shutter non-essential businesses as part of the COVID-19 response plan, Kimber Mfg. Inc. has stopped production at its New York facilities.

Production continues at Kimber’s new, state-of-the-art Troy, Alabama manufacturing facility, with the entire line of handguns and long guns being assembled. Due to the large number of parts manufactured in Yonkers and the state-mandated closure in New York, the Troy facility will suspend production on March 31^st. “This situation is unfortunate as we were off to an incredible start in gun shipments in 2020 and were running our factories seven days a week.

One commenter says “For the life of me, I cannot understand why any firearm related manufacturer would do business in a state, the government of which is committed to the destruction of that business.”

Me neither.

Only the best and brightest for cops in Tennessee.

A Collegedale police officer’s department-issued AR-15 was fired inside the City Hall building last week.

Officer Josh Booth was in the department’s armory at around 9 a.m. when he was “starting to look” at Sgt. Burlon Hayworth’s department-issued AR-15 assault weapon.

The weapon had already been taken apart when Booth received it, Booth wrote in an incident report.

“I attempted to do a weapon check,” he wrote.

But due to a rusted bolt, he was unable to clear the chamber.

Booth then started to put the weapon back together, and as he pushed the pieces together, “it caused the weapon to fire a round that was in the chamber,” Booth wrote.

“The round went through the wall, and into the squad room and hit a cabinet where it was stopped,” he added.

So many failures.  Rusted bolt.  Chambered round.  Handling firearms away from the range like that, or away from at least gunsmiths who could have done this safely.

I suspect the firing pin was protruding out of the bolt and he slapped the upper and lower together with enough force to cause at least a light primer strike.

Only the best and brightest.

Second Amendment Daily.

Boise, ID–When it all hits the fan, we might just head to Idaho.  Long known as a solid Second Amendment state, Idaho just raised the bar.

Idaho Governor Brad Little has signed a bill into law that extends the right of Constitutional Carry to all American citizens.  The law goes into effect on July 1st, 2020.  This means that gun owners don’t have to be residents of Idaho to exercise the right to concealed carry in the state.

This move was spearheaded by the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, the biggest and most powerful gun group in the state.  Headed by Iraqi war veteran Greg Pruett, the organization has a no-holds-barred approach that has forced the conversation on guns to the right for years.

If you think .gov can’t focus on anything else amid the Covid-19 panic, think again.  Idaho did it.

Say, how’s that South Carolina constitutional carry / open carry thing coming?  Has it been derailed for yet another legislative session by the progs and their panty waist republican slave boys in South Carolina?

In my ongoing coverage and analysis of Covid-19 in America (updated almost daily), I included a much earlier graph with a curve fit, at the time, exponential and with a very high correlation coefficient.  The graph from 3/23 looked like this.

The doubling time was computed as:

ln(2) / 0.2988 = 2.32 days

The graph has been unsettled lately, until last night and today.  I have received requests to update the curve.  I said I would have to jettison the exponential curve fit and go with a polynomial (see original post), and today I did that.  The exponential model was massively over-predicting cases going forward and the correlation coefficient had begun to degrade.  The revised curve is below.

There is a remarkable difference.  The doubling time depends on where you are on the graph.  It’s a third-order polynomial.  Currently, the doubling time is 4.1 days, versus the value of 2.32 days computed not too many days ago.  The correlation coefficient is very high, and the curve is stable and well-behaved.

Here I am not weighing in on or performing analysis of the reasons for this.  There could be many, or only one, or some combination of causes.  Some readers may posit “social distancing,” others may point out that the testing rate has change because slightly symptomatic patients are not being tested, others may postulate that herd immunity may be playing a factor (i.e., it’s possible that many millions of Americans have already been exposed to and infected with the virus and had little to no problem with it), and still others may postulate that PPEs, hygiene protocol and the reluctance to go to hospitals may be playing a role (my own daughter, a surgical NP and first assist who also has to spend copious time in the ER) observes that numbers of patients entering hospital care is down.

Again, I am making no claim whatsoever as to reasons for this.  I am only mathematically modeling this phenomenon, and I can conclusively say that there is a remarkable difference between doubling time and trajectory today and a week ago.

UPDATE:

Per request, this is a picture of the previous exponential fit versus the polynomial fit.  It’s QAD (quick and dirty), with no bells and whistles.

With more time I could write Macros to make this much better with various data analytics options, but I’m not paid to do this analysis.

Watch all of this video (it’s long) or my comments will make no sense at all.

Allow me to weigh in a bit.  I’ve never seen or heard of this guy (“Caleb” from Gun Nuts Media – I have no idea if that’s his real name or a nom de guerre).  I have visited his site once as you’ll see below, and I’ll never visit again.

He impresses me as a spoiled little boy, a narcissist, a child who was never spanked, a liar, and a drama queen who writes click bait for his web site and soap operas for his YouTube channel.  He’s much too emotional for my tastes.

If he was never spanked as a child, he certainly was by Paul in this video.  He deserved it.  I agree with everything Paul said, but even if I had not, there’s a moral issue at stake here.  It comes from Leviticus 19:32.  “Caleb,” if you need help with exegesis of that, write me a note.

On the issue of revolvers and “hitting” or slapping the ejector rod, I’ve done that as long as I’ve been shooting revolvers.  I’ve never had a problem.  The only problem I’ve ever had was with a S&W R8 revolver.

It’s tolerances are tight, and it’s very accurate.  I’m sure those are related things.  I could have taken the time to ream the cylinder a bit and gotten better performance, but there would still be the issue of the forcing cone being so tight against the cylinder.

Within 50 rounds without fail, shooting high power .357 magnum ammunition which of course runs very hot, the metal would expand and cause either (a) the brass to fail to come out of the cylinder (which necessitated me striking the ejector rod pretty hard), or (b) the cylinder seizing against the forcing cone until the gun cooled down.

I dumped the gun.  It was a wonderful gun, but I just wanted to shoot more than it would allow without heating up too much.  Every other wheel gun I’ve ever shot only had that problem to a much less degree, this one to a much greater degree.

So if you needed any more information about Gun Nuts Media, here is something they have to say about what should be your own choice.

Basically, it’s 2019, and if you aren’t shooting 9mm as a primary pistol cartridge, you need to re-evaluate your life choices. It’s now an undisptued fact that modern 9mm ammo can give ballistic performance on par with 40 S&W, 45 Auto, and pretty much every other handgun cartridge.

“Re-evaluate your life choices.”  Being a bit dramatic, are we?  If you shoot anything other than 9mm you need to “re-evaluate your life choices.”

Okay, first of all, it’s simply not true.  Oh, it may be close for two-legged threats, but it’s certainly not true for four-legged threats.  Moreover, if someone happens to shoot .45 ACP or .40 S&W better than 9mm, or .38 Spl better, they should be allowed to shoot whatever works for them without internet know-it-alls telling them not to.  Some rounds push, some rounds snap and cause more pronounced muzzle flip.

Either way, I don’t think there’s a nickel’s worth of difference between someone telling you that you shouldn’t be allowed to have such-and-such gun, and someone telling you that you should shoot such-and-such a gun because I say so.  Each is a different form of collectivism.  I can’t stand collectivists.  Mind your own business.

And “Caleb,” grow up, little boy, and quit being a drama queen.  Maybe when you do, you can be like Paul.

We discussed how Dean Weingarten had been tracking bear attacks with associated data on the effectiveness of handguns to stop them.  He previously had cataloged 63 cases.  Now, Dean updates his data to include up to a total of 93 cases, concluding that a handgun was effective 97% of the time.

As of March 2020, we have found 20 more handgun cases, for a total of 93 cases, with three failures, for a success rate of 97%.

In addition to the handgun defenses, there are four more instances where handguns were used in combination with long guns, bringing the total to eight; one where a pistol was used on an aggressive bear hit by a vehicle, two examples where pistols were present but not used, one indeterminate case, and two examples of unconfirmed incidents.  All of these additional incidents are referenced but are not included in the 93 cases or the 97% success rate.

[ … ]

The handgun calibers, when known, range from .22 rimfire to .460 Smith & Wesson Magnum. The most common are .44 magnums with 28 cases, all successful.  There were 2 combinations of .44 magnum and .357 magnum cases. Six of the combination handgun and long gun cases involved .44 magnum revolvers.

For this update, we found another .22 rimfire case, two additional 9mm cases, another .38 special case, three additional .357 magnum cases, another 10mm case, five additional .44 magnum cases (included in the 28 total .44 magnum number), another .45 ACP case, another .454 Casull case, four more cases where the caliber was unknown, and one more case where both .357 and .44 magnum revolvers were used. All 93 cases are referenced below, as well as the combination cases and examples of incidents that were not included, in the interest of transparency and completeness.

And he lists the cases for any detractors, stating that they can be independently verified.

Once again, congratulations to Dean on outstanding research.  Lesson: In the bush, carry means of self defense.  I prefer a larger bore bullet, specifically, 45 SMC.

What would TheAlaskan think about carrying a .22LR for self defense in the Alaskan bush?  I think I’ll take a pass on that.

News from the U.K.

Patrick Phinn, 49, stabbed Ronald Pattison 17 times at his home in Easterhouse, Glasgow, in September 2018.

The High Court in Glasgow heard that Pattison, who had a knife, had threatened to kill Phinn and his partner.

A fight broke out and Phinn grabbed a knife which he used to stab Pattison.

He was originally charged with murdering the 38-year-old, but a jury found him guilty of the reduced charge of culpable homicide.

Lord Matthews told Phinn: “It is difficult to think of circumstances where provocation is more appropriate than this.

“This was extreme in the circumstances.

“However, the jury was satisfied that you went beyond what was necessary.”

Such is the case when you are a subject of the Queen.  Someone else claims authority over your God-given rights.

David Codrea.

… Assemblyman David Chiu, resurrected a gun-grabber dream list priority, microstamping, a requirement for firearms to mark an identifier on ammunition casings, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Disregard for a moment that professional reporter Alexei Koseff and his editors seem confused at times and tell readers the “unique imprint [will be left on] on bullets that are fired.”

That’s not what it’s about anyway, since, after then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (warned ya!) signed microstamping into law in 2007, manufacturers stopped introducing new models …

It seems to be happening with regularity in places that aren’t otherwise amenable to God-given rights of self defense.  Concern for Coronavirus patients isn’t his primary concern.  Control of people is.

I’ve said it before, the desire to control others is the signal sociopathology of the wicked.  And I hate to say it again, but if you waited until now to get your firearms and ammunition, you waited too late.

From reading reddit/firearms and other sites, it’s obvious that run-of-the-mill progs (i.e., the ones not in charge) who are hunting for weapons at the moment, first of all seem to have given up on their anti-gun fetish (it only takes a pandemic to jettison foolish ideas).

Second, they are finding that it isn’t as easy to get them as they had been told, are having to wait, and are paying higher prices than if they had jettisoned those beliefs long ago.  Finally, they’re finding that there is no ammunition.

So sorry.  We told you.

Shooting Illustrated.

1X magnification, of course, obviously meant for a MSR.  Decent price point: $365.  Auto dot shutdown upon no movement for five minutes, total of 1000 hours on middle setting.

Ammoland.com.

While the news is filled with gloom and doom over Coronavirus scares, some good news came out of the West Virginia earlier today. WV Governor Jim Justice signed a bill that reinforces the state’s preemption law. Senate Bill 96 is part of a concerted effort by pro-gun politicians in WV to prevent anti-gun municipalities from passing anti-gun local ordinances that could restrict the rights of WV citizens.

The wording of Senate Bill 96 is very encompassing and deliberate. This is ideal for any legislation dealing with fundamental human rights as it helps prevent future politicians from resticting those rights by playing on the ambiguity them.

Well good.  But we’re not finished yet.  Not even nearly.

What about HB 4168?  I see the governor hasn’t signed it yet.  In fact, it isn’t clear to me that anything at all has been done with it since introduction.

What gives?  Why won’t WV legislators support gun rights?