PJM.

Anders Walker, a constitutional law professor at St. Louis University, said that although it’s “very dangerous” to engage protesters with guns, the homeowners broke no laws by brandishing or pointing weapons at them because Portland Place is a private street. He said the McCloskeys are protected by Missouri’s Castle Doctrine, which allows people to use deadly force to defend private property.

“At any point that you enter the property, they can then, in Missouri, use deadly force to get you off the lawn,” Walker said, calling the state’s Castle Doctrine a “force field” that “indemnifies you, and you can even pull the trigger in Missouri.”

Well that should about cover it.  But leave it to the communist prosecutor bringing charges against this couple to continue the carnival, waste taxpayer monies, and continue her march through the halls of Marxist heroes.

This first video post-dates the second one I’m embedding.  It’s Massad Ayoob’s answer to the second video I’m embedding.  I’m interested in reader reactions to Massad’s advice.  I’ve already told you what I think in the post title.  And while we’re at it, take careful note that this is ground that smarter people that Ayoob have covered in detail.

News from Portland.

After nearly 40 days of unrest, demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, have successfully evicted law enforcement from a park in the city’s downtown, creating their own “autonomous zone” like the one that was dismantled last week in Seattle, Washington.

“Anti-fascist” protesters have been waging a nightly war against police and federal law enforcement agents in downtown Portland, centered around a federal courthouse that demonstrators were looking to “occupy.” The confrontations gradually became more violent until, in an incident earlier this week, a protester received a gruesome injury from a non-lethal pellet after allegedly throwing a “canister” at federal agents.

Tuesday night, the protesters gave up the fight for the courthouse and instead decided to set up an “occupied” area in the city’s Lownsdale Square, just across the street, according to Fox News.

“Demonstrators began erecting tents in downtown Portland’s Lownsdale Square, across the street from the federal Pioneer Courthouse, one of the federal properties Homeland Security sought to protect by bringing federal officers into the city two weeks ago,” the outlet reported. “A camera at the Portland Standard Building showed protesters beginning to assemble tents late Tuesday night in the same park where ‘Occupy Portland’ set up in 2011.”

The “Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front,” an “anti-capitalist” group that the Seattle Times reported Monday has organized and supplied protesters for their nightly attacks on the courthouse, informally announced the creation of an “autonomous zone” Tuesday night and asked for volunteers to staff the area around the clock.

The Portland Police also note that a “couple hundred demonstrators gathered at Revolution Hall in Southeast Portland and marched all throughout downtown Portland before ending their march at Pioneer Square,” where they blocked traffic, set up tents, and began erecting barricades using “industrial kitchen appliances, road blockades, and flashing traffic signs.”

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, like Seattle’s Mayor Jenny Durkan, blamed the unrest on President Donald Trump and federal agents charged with protecting federal buildings.

“I told the Acting Secretary [of Homeland Security] that my biggest immediate concern is the violence federal officers brought to our streets in recent days, and the life-threatening tactics his agents use. We do not need or want their help,” Wheeler tweeted earlier this week. “The best thing they can do is stay inside their building, or leave Portland altogether. Our goal is to end these violent demonstrations quickly and safely. And in the meantime, I asked him to clean up the graffiti on local federal facilities.”

The mayor sounds as much like a school child as the rioters.  Imagine the mental gymnastics it takes to allow the rioters to go unmolested, blame it on the victims, and then demand that the victims clean up the mess.

So this is what Marxists do.  When socialism fails in one place, they double-down and try harder.  If it was possible, I’d like to see the feds back off, allow the rioters freedom to do what they wanted to Portland, raise taxes on Portland residents to clean it up after they failed, and then imprison the mayor and city council who let it happen.

The moral of the story is that bird shot may be okay for very short range, but is certainly not viable for longer range self defense applications.

Shooting Illustrated.

I have a Remington R1 1911 chambered in .45 ACP. Arthritis has invaded my hands and it’s getting harder for me to rack the slide. Would putting a lighter recoil spring in it be a bad idea? The factory recoil spring is 16 pounds. I bought a 12-pound spring for it, just to see if it solved my racking problem, and it did. I haven’t shot it yet, and I would like to get a knowledgeable opinion on it before doing so. The only thing I have been told so far about putting the lighter spring in it is that the recoil would be increased. I’m not as worried about that as I am about risking unnecessary damage to my pistol. While I’m sure other shooters have this same difficulty, I don’t know anyone in my area who does. Any insight and/or suggestions regarding how to tackle this challenge would be greatly appreciated.
Larry Jones, via e-mail

[ … ]

While the recoil spring helps to attenuate recoil of the pistol, its main job is to return the slide forward, which strips the next round off the magazine and fully closes the pistol with the barrel and slide locked together, ready to fire the next shot.

The first thing I would do to aid in the function of the gun and help to prevent impact damage of the internal parts is to add a Wilson Combat Shok-Buff, or equivalent, to the recoil-spring guide for the lighter recoil spring to rest against. The Shok-Buff is a polymer shock absorber designed to help prevent slide and frame battering as they transition through the cycle of operation.

[ … ]

Keep in mind the recoil spring and Shok-Buff are being worked hard with the lower-power rating of the spring and should be replaced at 500-round intervals or when obvious signs of wear are evident. The Shok-Buff will start to lose its shape and the recoil-spring length will shorten by several coils, indicating it’s time to replace them.

To begin with, I’m no stranger to severe RA in my hands.  Mostly, my right hand (shooting hand) is affected.  It is affected to the point that my hand appears deformed, and I usually hide it when I meet people.  It helps to put my hand in my pocket.

RA is caused by the same affliction as Psoriasis, that is, an overactive and confused immune system.  My immune system thinks my cartilage is a foreign object and attacks it, making scar tissue of it.  I have thus far refused to take a biologic like Methotrexate, and so I simply make it by day to day.

So I sympathize in the superlative with the writer.  With that said, I find no discomfort in shooting .45 ACP.  I enjoy it more than shooting any other round, and I enjoy shooting a 1911 more than any other firearm.  I also find that the best thing for me is to exercise, and that means not being courteous to my RA.  The more I can push myself, the better off I am.

One of my [modified] 1911s came with an 18# spring, not 16#.  I didn’t know that the Remington came with a 16# spring.  That seems a little light to me.  Readers may recall that I replaced my 18# spring with a 22# spring from Wolff Gunsprings for my trip to the Weminuche Wilderness.  I did that so that I can shoot 450 SMC out of that gun, achieving 1120 FPS with 230 grain bullets (the 450 SMC has to be purchased from Double Tap Ammunition).  I still have that gun modified that way, although it’s an easy spring switch to change it back if I wanted to.

I also find that it eats all other .45 ACP ammunition flawlessly.  The heavier spring doesn’t cause problems with normal bulk range ammunition, although I wouldn’t shoot 450 SMC out of my other 1911s without a similar spring modification.

Double Tap and Buffalo Bore make very hot .45 ACP +P ammunition (~ 1000 FPS), and the heavier spring would work well with that choice.  If I switched to a light spring, like the analyst said, I would want to make sure I had put it through its paces to see what ammunition worked well with it.

As RA progresses, I wouldn’t be opposed to changing to a lighter spring, but I’m a long way from that.

Shotspotter.

ShotSpotter has been tracking gunfire trends in response to the global pandemic followed by civil unrest in the US after the killing of George Floyd. The graph above shows gunfire per square mile per week across all ShotSpotter coverage areas in the US in the first half of 2020 and 2019. In 2020 gunfire appears to trend upward as the shelter-in-place orders for COVID-19 took effect in mid-March and then spike after the protests began. These unprecedented events appear to be fueling higher gunfire rates overall in 2020 relative to 2019.

Of course, the societal destruction the Marxists work towards may not go down as a civil war.  It may look more like Sarajevo.

Penses.

A HARD PLACE (UN, ANTIFA, BLM, LA RAZA, MBH, CAIR, MS13)

(you are here)

A ROCK (DEEP STATE, DOJ, FBI, DEA, DHS, BATF, DOD, Local police and sheriffs)

Unfortunately, that’s right on the mark.  The things unleashed at otherwise peaceable men are abominable, but just as outrageous is that the very people who should be punishing the evil-doers are protecting them.

Romans 13 doesn’t give the state the mission of fighting poverty, or fighting a war on drugs, or lording it over their people, or tyrannizing them, or confiscating guns, or performing COIN missions of community engagement.

It gives the police and courts one and only one mission: to punish evil-doers.  Just as the singular mission given to the armed forces, i.e., to protect the borders of the country, has been abandoned in favor of foreign misadventures, the police and courts are doing everything but what God has commanded and ignore the one thing He commanded them to do.

God: “I gave one one job.  Just one.  You failed.”

From a reader, Fox News.

The simple act of wearing a mask amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has become a politically charged topic in the U.S. and across social media. Despite the urgings of public health officials and pleas from doctors in hard-hit hospitals across the country, some people have still refused to don a facial covering, citing widespread disinformation about alleged negative health effects of mask wearing.

One Irish doctor set out to prove mask detractors wrong in an experiment that debunked the claim that wearing a facial covering negatively impacts the wearer’s oxygen levels.

Dr. Maitiu O Tuathail, a doctor based in Dublin, shared on Twitter that patients repeatedly ask him whether masks affect oxygen levels.

He conducted the test in response to the queries, and he found that the results did not show a lowering of oxygen levels.

The video, posted Tuesday, showed O Tuathail putting six face masks on his face as he recorded his pulse rate on a pulse oximeter.The pulse oximeter showed no change in the doctor’s oxygen levels after putting on the medical coverings.

He’s not an engineer.  I can prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that an increased ΔP causes a decrease in flow rate (Q) unless you’re dealing with a positive displacement pump operating short of “dead head” conditions.

With his brain controlling his lungs and diaphragm, he has a PD pump.  He simply breathed enough to compensate for the increased differential pressure.  But humans get fatigued, and there is no study demonstrating that there wouldn’t have been a decrease in O2 saturation levels over time, or that less healthy individuals wouldn’t have suffered.

This should be placed in the category of fake science.  It’s just entertainment.  Get a team to study it, and then get a PE seal and signature on it.  Then maybe I’ll take it seriously.  Otherwise, it’s just a circus trick suitable for a carnival.  It’s the equivalent of the bearded fat lady lifting a thousand pounds over her head.

The Washington Post.

This sight of well-dressed homeowners emerging from an expensive house with firearms to stave off a peaceful protest appeared to strike many observers as incongruous. There are a slew of expectations about gun owners in the United States — rural hunters, suburban enthusiasts — but a pink-shirted lawyer emerging from a re-created Renaissance palazzo holding a long gun isn’t among them.

You see, that’s the way the MSM portrays self defense and defense of home and hearth.  “Stave off a peaceful protest.”

So it isn’t really true that they were threatened.  It isn’t really true that the mob had designs on burning the house to the ground.  It isn’t really true that the mob broke through the gate.

This WaPo commenter knows better, even though he wasn’t really there, and even though he just made that up about “peaceful” protesters.  He apparently knows the facts of the situation better than the people who were there – all from looking at photos and imagining things.

But if all else fails (and logic surely will too with the progs), why would anyone have to “stave off”a protest if it was peaceful?

His name is Philip Bump, and his email address is: philip.bump@washpost.com.