Busting the myths.

Riflescope brightness is not as big a deal as advertising makes it out to be.

Differences in brightness from scope to scope are often undetectable to users.

Some features credited with brightness don’t even contribute.

Some high-end scopes aren’t as bright as some costing half that.

Maintaining a sharp image is as important as raw brightness. A sharp image at any brightness level looks “brighter” than a softly focused image. Resolution is a critical ingredient for making images seen through a scope appear brighter.

As for the wider main tube contributing to brightness, forget it. Doesn’t work that way. Regardless how much light enters the objective “window.” The higher the magnification, the less light that gets out. The amount of light that exits the scope at the eyepiece depends on the power level. Both objective lens and magnification work together to create the beam of light that exits the eyepiece. It is called the Exit Pupil (EP.) You can see it by holding a scope at arms length and pointed it at a bright surface. The little circle of light you see in the eyepiece lens is the EP. If you have a variable power scope, turn the power ring and watch the EP enlarge and shrink as powers goes down and up. The lower the power, the larger the EP and the more light that exits the scope.

While EP matters, extremely large EP does not because its effectiveness is limited by our own pupils. The human pupil opens (dilates) to about 7mm max. But this doesn’t happen until it’s nearly dark. In full daylight our pupils shrink to about 2.5mm. On cloudy days they might be opened to around 4mm. Place a 5mm diameter beam of light in front of your 4mm pupil and the extra 1mm rim just bounces off your iris. So why bother with a 50mm objective?

The magic hour for hunting is often the last few minutes of legal shooting light a half hour or more after sunset. Our pupils might then dilate to 6mm. They could use all of the 5mm EP and 1mm more. So step up to a big 56mm objective and what do you get? A 5.6mm EP. Not quite the 6mm you could fully use. You’ll need a 60mm objective at 10X to get the full 6mm EP. And if you want maximum brightness at the last minute or two of legal shooting light, you might need a 7mm EP scope. To get that, of course, you’d need a 70mm objective at 10X.

I’m not enough of a precision shooter, especially in dim light conditions, to nay say his observations.  Hunters can weigh in on this.  The most expensive scope I have costs around $600.

Wheee … big news for the DoD.

After more than 50 years of failed attempts, the U.S. military may be on the verge of ending its love affair with brass-cased ammunition, something that predates the Spanish-American War.

Advancements in body armor, communications equipment and other tactical gear have weighed down U.S. combat troops in the Army and Marine Corps, pushing individual loads well past 100 pounds and degrading service members’ physical performance, U.S. military studies have shown.

Both services have launched multiple efforts to lighten the weapons and equipment grunts carried while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but ammunition weight has always been an Achilles’ heel for these efforts.

Oh bull.

We suit these guys up in 30+ pounds of body armor with Kevlar and SAPI plates, and then add cameras, comms equipment, helmets, etc., etc., etc., and then spend millions of dollars to design polymer case ammo as a solution?

My reaction is good!  That will relieve the pressure on the civilian market and [hopefully] the costs of real ammunition.  That’s more for me for less.

Via Insty, this story buries important details.

The reason this information is buried is the same reason that people like Dr. Zack Moore of North Carolina recommends against the use of hydroxychloroquine.  Trump haters would rather see people perish that prescribe live-saving medications because Trump might get the credit.

Honestly.  They think like this.  That’s how juvenile they are.

Politico.

The National Rifle Association has laid off more than 60 employees in recent weeks, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Unless that number includes Wayne, the number will continue to grow.

Wayne, do the right thing and step down.  Only then can the NRA recast itself as a true gun rights organization designed to protect and defend the God-given rights of Americans.

As opposed to what the NRA is today, one which supported the NFA, the Hughes Amendment, the GCA, the bump stock ban, universal background checks, and red flag laws.

And if you’re an honorable man or woman still on the board of directors of the NRA, we have to question why?  Or we have to question if you’re really an honorable man or woman.  Take your pick.

David Codrea.

Petri, Maher, Cleese, and others know damn well the reason why. The extent of what we are facing is yet unknown, as is the potential for social upheaval, violence, anarchy, and mayhem, along with a government response that will only get more repressive the more its control is threatened. Let the food supply get interrupted and those who thought they saw it all with toilet paper brawls will find they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Do you recall the time when the computers crashed and FedGov failed to give SNAP payments to inner city Atlanta moms?  Yea, then.  There were nearly riots in the streets, and that was over a day or two delay.

The vast majority of America is within 72 hours beginning starvation.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

And then ponder why on earth people would want means of self defense in a time of turmoil, panic, broken and delayed lines of logistics, sick workers, high unemployment, and potential inflation when all of this cash hits the market?

The gun sales says it all.  The people are smarter than you think, and even the progs know when to give up their utopian dreams.

First up, a newly elected congress woman in Detroit.

LANSING – A Democratic state representative from Detroit is crediting hydroxychloroquine — and Republican President Donald Trump who touted the drug — for saving her in her battle with the coronavirus.

State Rep. Karen Whitsett, who learned Monday she has tested positive for COVID-19, said she started taking hydroxychloroquine on March 31, prescribed by her doctor, after both she and her husband sought treatment for a range of symptoms on March 18.

“It was less than two hours” before she started to feel relief, said Whitsett, who had experienced shortness of breath, swollen lymph nodes, and what felt like a sinus infection. She is still experiencing headaches, she said.

Whitsett said she was familiar with “the wonders” of hydroxychloroquine from an earlier bout with Lyme disease, but does not believe she would have thought to ask for it, or her doctor would have prescribed it, had Trump not been touting it as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

But that same thing, i.e., Trump touting it as a possible therapeutic, has caused the status quo, the ensconced bureaucracy, and doctors who live by state decrees, to pan it as needful or effective.  Queue many more doctors who think it works, via Katie Pavlich.

First, in Los Angeles:

Dr. Anthony Cardillo said he has seen very promising results when prescribing hydroxychloroquine in combination with zinc for the most severely-ill COVID-19 patients.

“Every patient I’ve prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within 8 to 12 hours, they were basically symptom-free,” Cardillo told Eyewitness News. “So clinically I am seeing a resolution.”

Cardillo is the CEO of Mend Urgent Care, which has locations in Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys and Burbank.

He said he has found it only works if combined with zinc. The drug, he said, opens a channel for the zinc to enter the cell and block virus replication.

“We have to be cautious and mindful that we don’t prescribe it for patients who have COVID who are well,” Cardillo said. “It should be reserved for people who are really sick, in the hospital or at home very sick, who need that medication. Otherwise we’re going to blow through our supply for patients that take it regularly for other disease processes.”

New York:

Dr. Mohammud Alam, an infectious disease specialist affiliated with Plainview Hospital, said 81 percent of infected covid patients he treated at three Long Island nursing homes recovered from the contagion.

“In this crisis, I realized I had to do something,” Alam said. ”I realized if this was my dad, what would I do? And I would do anything I could to help.”

Alam said he decided he could not apply the touted combination of the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine and antibiotic azithromycin because the side effects could be potentially fatal for his high-risk patients, many of whom had underlying heart issues.

So instead, Alam replaced azithromycin with another decades-old antibiotic that doesn’t pose any known risks to the heart.

New Jersey:

Dr. Stephen Smith, founder of The Smith Center for Infectious Diseases and Urban Health, said on “The Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday night that he is optimistic about the use of antimalarial medications and antibiotics to treat COVID-19 patients, calling it “a game-changer.”

Smith, who is treating 72 COVID-19 patients, said that he has been treating “everybody with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin [an antibiotic]. We’ve been doing so for a while.”

He pointed out that not a single COVID-19 patient of his that has been on the hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin regimen for five days or more has had to be intubated.

Around the world:

An international poll of thousands of doctors rated the Trump-touted anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine the best treatment for the novel coronavirus.

Of the 6,227 physicians surveyed in 30 countries, 37 percent rated hydroxychloroquine the “most effective therapy” for combating the potentially deadly illness, according to the results released Thursday.

The survey, conducted by the global health care polling company Sermo, also found that 23 percent of medical professionals had prescribed the drug in the US — far less than other countries.

“Outside the US, hydroxychloroquine was equally used for diagnosed patients with mild to severe symptoms whereas in the US it was most commonly used for high risk diagnosed patients,” the survey found.

The medicine was most widely used in Spain, where 72 percent of physicians said they had prescribed it.

The doctors who reflexively revert to bureaucracy for the determination of right and wrong, and who, because of hatred for Mr. Trump, have panned it and recommended against it because they lack fifty billion controlled studies approved by the FDA, have blood on their hands in the face of this mounting evidence.

Look, I have my issues with Trump too, from bump stock bans to red flag laws.  But reflexive reversion to opposing anything he says because a doctor doesn’t happen to like him, in a time of pandemic, is the most unethical and uncaring thing I can possibly think of.

It borders on negligent homicide.  If you’re a doctor, I’m speaking to you.

I’ll also point out that the epidemiologist in my own state of North Carolina, Dr. Zack Moore, opposes it, and I have sent him two notes now on this very subject, to be ignored both times.

I’ll have my say before this is all over with, and he’ll hear me loud and clear.

So you think times can’t get tougher on the poor pols who are laboring so hard on behalf of your well-being?  In Maryland, they have found time to infringe on the rights of their own people even more.

Maryland lawmakers gave final approval on Monday to a bill that requires all purchasers of rifles and shotguns to submit to background checks.

State law already requires buyers to undergo a federal background check through the NICS Index when purchasing rifles from licensed dealers. The bill extends that requirement to private sales and permanent gifts.

Anyone who violates the act is guilty of a misdemeanor and could be convicted for up to 6 months, be subject to a fine of up to $10,000, or both. A person who provides false information could be imprisoned for up to 3 years, be subject to a fine of $5,000, or both.

The Maryland House of Delegates approved the bill by a vote of 87 to 47, and the Senate approved the bill by a vote of 31 to 14.

The bill will now go to Governor Larry Hogan. Provided that the governor does not veto it, the act will take effect on October 1.

Or in other words, universal background checks.  I do hope gun owners totally ignore it and via person to person transfers, buy and sell until their heart is content.

Because God-given rights.

Dean Weingarten.

The Rusk County Sheriff’s Office and Public Health Department take coronavirus infection (COVID-19) seriously. We are informing the public that making false statements and spreading rumors about COVID-19 is a crime and will be prosecuted.

No Wisconsin statute is cited. Wisconsin statutes have provisions for false statements or claims by a health care provider.  A search did not find a statute for false statements by a member of the public, not for spreading rumors.

The problem with prosecuting people for spreading rumors or making false statements is it is not clear who gets to decide what is false or not.

There are often diametrically opposed statements made by different media, which cannot both be true.

The First Amendment protects speech, very widely. There are exceptions for inciting riots, slander, defamation or inciting the violent overthrow of the government. There is a provision for disorderly conduct.

None of that seems to apply to the Rusk County threat about false statements and rumors.

The First and Second Amendments are tied tightly together. Openly carrying a firearm is a strong, symbolic, political speech. It is difficult to protect your right to freedom of speech and the press, if you have no right to bear arms, or are not allowed to protect the property necessary to spread your message.

Petty tyrants flow like feces out of the ground as if from a leaking sewer pipe when times get spicy.  Times are spicy, thus the Sheriff seeps from the leak.

If for no other reason, this pandemic is a good chance to see them in action, taking advantage of the situation to lord it over other men and women in violation of their God-given rights.

Nothing gives them the right to prohibit free speech, not God, not the constitution, not anyone or anything.  They may even find a tyrannical judge who backs them up.  That wouldn’t change the reality that they are entirely outside their authority to do something like this.

Sheriff Jeffery Wallace’s email address is jw101@ruskcountywi.us.

Oh, and by the way, if this Sheriff will clamp down on God-given rights to free speech, he’ll do it when the .gov demands gun confiscations too.  You know he will.  He’s already demonstrated fealty to the dark powers of tyranny.

NY Post.

Leading US manufacturers of medical safety gear told the White House that China prohibited them from exporting their products from the country as the coronavirus pandemic mounted — even as Beijing was trying to “corner the world market” in personal protective equipment, The Post has learned.

Now, the Trump administration is weighing legal action against China over its alleged actions, a lawyer for President Trump said Sunday.

“In criminal law, compare this to the levels that we have for murder,” said Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to Trump’s re-election campaign.

“People are dying. When you have intentional, cold-blooded, premeditated action like you have with China, this would be considered first-degree murder.”

Ellis said the options under consideration include filing a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights or working “through the United Nations.”

Executives from 3M and Honeywell told US officials that the Chinese government in January began blocking exports of N95 respirators, booties, gloves and other supplies produced by their factories in China, according to a senior White House official.

China paid the manufacturers their standard wholesale rates, but prohibited the vital items from being sold to anyone else, the official said.

Around the same time that China cracked down on PPE exports, official data posted online shows that it imported 2.46 billion pieces of “epidemic prevention and control materials” between Jan. 24 and Feb. 29, the White House official said.

The gear, valued at nearly $1.2 billion, included more than 2 billion masks and more than 25 million “protective clothing” items that came from countries in the European Union, as well as Australia, Brazil and Cambodia, the official said.

“Data from China’s own customs agency points to an attempt to corner the world market in PPE like gloves, goggles, and masks through massive increased purchases — even as China, the world’s largest PPE manufacturer, was restricting exports,” the official said.

But … but … but … “free trade,” “capitalism,” the world is our backyard and giggles and smiles and lots of love and unicorns farting purple pixie dust rainbows over trade partners!

It’s almost as if American corporations sending jobs and capital to declared enemies for the purpose of maximizing quarterly profits for the benefit of boards of directors and analysts who want to play a better gambling game on Wall Street are just shameless whores after all.