Occasionally, something so good passes my way that I must share it for the sake of humor.  Something makes me wonder if the boi has ever worked on a machine of any kind.  He really should go volunteer at a farm and work on tractors, trucks, machines, etc.

Good Lord, what an effeminate clique of little bois America has raised.

Move over guys, we have a specialist in the house‍♀️ #AntifaTerrorist #Stupidity #WednesdayThoughts #GoodMorning pic.twitter.com/aMK5agwn2W

— Trump~Army⭐⭐⭐ (@heather_giron) August 19, 2020

Via reader Fred.

Forbes.

Gun and ammo makers are staying cautious ahead of the election despite surging sales, because they remember all too well the crash that happened after the election of President Trump.

Gunmakers can barely keep up with demand. Sales have been booming since the start of the pandemic, fueled by fears of coronavirus and civil unrest. FBI background checks have been breaking records. Makers of guns and ammo are reporting double-digit increases in revenue. Handguns are flying off the shelves and ammo is selling out and getting scarce.

“It’s the 2013 shortage all over again,” said Brian Rafn, a gun industry analyst who recently retired from Morgan Dempsey, referring to the run on ammo during the Obama administration. Rafn, whose family owns shares in Sturm, Ruger, said that nowadays buyers of popular ammo like 9 mm have to hunt for it from store to store like “the guy who’s buying milk during the hurricane.”

But gun and ammo makers are hyper-cautious about ramping up manufacturing capacity. They don’t want to get burned like in 2016, when sales surged to record levels only to implode on Election Day. Sales then were driven by fears of gun control fueled by mass shootings, but those fears evaporated with the election of President Trump, a Republican endorsed by the National Rifle Association. Gun sales plunged immediately after his election, resulting in layoffs and sliding stocks for Sturm, Ruger and Smith & Wesson.

Gun makers fear that fickle consumers could slow down spending, depending on election results, the severity of the pandemic, or the persistence of clashes between police and protesters.

“Firearm manufacturers are making prudent decisions to keep up with extraordinary demand during these past few months,” said Mark Oliva, director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry group. “Manufacturers are producing firearms and ammunition as quickly as they can to meet customer demand.” But he said that gunmakers must meet the skyrocketing demand, which has outstripped production, “in a way that is going to ensure sustained participation in tomorrow’s market.”

Spikes in demand result in bullet shortages because the ammo manufacturing industry, dominated by Vista Outdoor and Olin’s Winchester, is less flexible than guns. Dionisio said bullet makers manufacture huge batches of ammo with massive machines to maximize efficiency, with no wiggle room to match fluctuations in demand.

“That’s an industry that has less of an ability to max up or max down,” he said. “You’re not going to buy this expensive machine just because demand is going to be up for six months.”

Manufacturers are trying to forecast the future for firearms. Will the election results increase sales or trigger a decline?  Will civil unrest and coronavirus continue to drive sales?

“Like any other manufacturing base, firearm and ammunition makers forecast their best analysis for what the demand will be for their products in the coming year,” said Oliva of the NSSF. “That includes placing orders for raw materials, including bar stock to make barrels, component materials to make ammunition and predicting labor, warehousing and shipping costs, distribution channels and retail demand.”

Logistics is everything.  Warehouse min-max must be adjusted, the upstream supply must match the adjustments, transportation must follow, machinery must be procured, machinery operators must be trained, QA inspectors must be trained, and on the list goes.

As with any industry, it can’t make these switches in an instant.  Moreover, even if they could simply hire a lot of folks, with the time and investment in training, the demand might have gone away at that point.

That would mean a drop in stock prices, the sunk costs of idle machinery, warehouse min-max that needed to be readjusted, and potential layoffs and the corollary severance packages for those manufacturers who want a good reputation for the future.

I know we’ve discussed primers as being the logistical sticking point right now, but this explanation makes the most sense of anything I’ve heard yet.  A fluctuation in demand is difficult to deal with for companies that rely on logistics networks outside of their control and who use complex CNC machinery.

It would be best if you already had what you needed.  I have actually ordered 5.56mm and .45 ACP ammunition for the last size months, even up through last week, at regular cost or perhaps slightly above (10%).  I had to search long and hard for it, but it was there.  But that ammunition was in the pipeline – the availability has basically gone away at the moment.

There may be deals in the future, keep your eyes open.  One thing I have found, for instance, is that the cost of personal defense ammunition has decreased even as the cost of ball range ammunition has increased while it also became unavailable.

If you’re willing to purchase reman ammo (re-manufactured), the deals are a little better.  I’ve found reman ammo to be quite reliable, e.g., through Freedom Munitions.

In the end, it makes no sense for the manufacturers to drop a lot of capital in expansion when their own polls are telling them that they won’t need it in the future.

Michael Yon.

Quick note from Michael Yon as I continue to prepare to ‘deploy’ home to United States.

As you know, I’ve warned hundreds of times since January to invest in your personal and family resilience.  And encourage all you know to do same.

I have read many dozens of books on pestilence and famine over the years, and probably hundreds on war, and spent years in or around same.

Three things always go together:

Big:
1) Pestilence always brings war and famine
2) Famine always brings war and pestilence
3) War always brings famine and pestilence

I will add to this that big Pestilence, Famine, or War, also always bring “submunitions” in the form of, they sort of echo or spin off others.

Example: HIV/AIDS by its nature brings other disease such as tuberculosis.

All of the above cause economic problems and so all of the above create more of the above.  Like wildfires in high winds.

[ … ]

And this is why you saw me say a hundred times since January that the world we knew in 2019 is over.  That will never come back.  That is history.  There was the world we knew in 2019 and before, the one we are now enjoying in 2020, and what I think will be far more serious in 2021.

This hurricane season if a town gets flattened, the ability to rebound is sharply mitigated.  Fire season: same.  Floods, earthquakes, name it.

Remember since January I have been saying food prices will rise.  I cannot say why specifically because this would be like tossing a stone off a cliff and predicting how it will bounce on the way down.  What I can say is that disasters are normal, and China just got smashed with major floods.  Not to mention there have been swine flu issues (which you heard me talking about in 2019), locusts in Africa and Asia, and on and on.

Bottom line: we live in a global grocery environment.  China will now rape the seas for protein, and will buy up food supplies on the global market causing global prices to rise.  This will cause YOUR prices to rise and not just with groceries but ripple into other areas.

China will not hesitate to use its military to get food, other resources, or just divert attention from impending internal issues.

Invest in your resilience.  And this does not mean a few days of food and other supplies such as your ability to get and filter water.  Also war game what you will do with power outtages.

Highways can be shut for long periods.  You must plan as if there can be plenty of food, but it’s across the river and the bridge is out, and you have BLAMTIFA and other issues making matters worse.

I will return to USA soon for the long haul.  I cannot just leave Thailand.  This is like a journey to Mars.  I cannot just return to Thailand.  Takes a 14 day quarantine for starters, and so when I land in America I am coming to take inventory like I did in Iraq, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, and so many other crisis.  Long haul.  Big investment in time and resources.

I look forward to Michael returning back to the states.  I talked over the phone with him yesterday, and he’s coming back to do in-depth, in the field reporting on Antifa and BLM, or in his words, the next American civil war.

I hope to see him in person at some point.

He will need some help with expenses.  Please donate if you’re inclined.

Via David Codrea, this report on invasion of privacy.

Seated at his kitchen table, finishing off the remains of a Saturday breakfast, Hunter Hollingsworth’s world was rocked by footsteps on his front porch and pounding at the door, punctuated by an aggressive order: “Open up or we’ll kick the door down.”

Surrounded on all sides of his house, and the driveway blocked, Hollingsworth was the target of approximately 10 federal and state wildlife officials packing pistols, shotguns and rifles. And what was Hollingsworth’s crime? Drugs, armed robbery, assault, money laundering? Not quite.

Months prior, in 2018, the Tennessee landowner removed a game camera secretly strapped to a tree on his private land by wildlife officials in order to monitor his activity without apparent sanction or probable cause. Repeat: Hollingsworth’s residence was searched by U.S. government and state officials, dressed to the nines in assault gear, seeking to regain possession of a trail camera—the precise camera they had surreptitiously placed on his private acreage after sneaking onto his property at night, loading the camera with active SD and SIM cards, and zip-tying the device roughly 10’ high up a tree—all without a warrant.

Can the government place cameras and monitoring equipment on a private citizen’s land at will, or conduct surveillance and stakeouts on private land, without probable cause or a search warrant? Indeed, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Welcome to Open Fields.

The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, SCOTUS has ruled that private land—is not private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling area, according to SCOTUS.

However, SCOTUS’ Open Fields doctrine has been bucked in Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon and Vermont through protections granted by state constitutions, and for many American landowners, the more they discover about Open Fields—the more questions they have regarding the bounds of government power.

[ … ]

In 1924, Hester v. United States set up the Open Fields framework and said the U.S. Constitution does not extend to most land: “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.” Significantly, Open Fields is translated beyond its literal sense, and basically is defined as general acreage: woods, fields, farmland, barren ground, and more.

Further, in 1984, SCOTUS gave additional strength to Open Fields in Oliver v. United States: “open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance. There is no societal interest in protecting the privacy of those activities, such as the cultivation of crops, that occur in open fields.”

Do as we order you or we’ll break your property down!  This is the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, and likely other local LEOs, and certainly federal officers (because the article says so).

The Supreme Court let you down.  They did it a long time ago, and they reiterated their treachery later.  That doesn’t surprise anyone.  But the state is taking advantage of that, and while that should not surprise anyone, it’s something to fight.

Land of the free.  You must have the king’s permission to hunt the royal forests, and do everything his way.

We certainly need a reset in America, a complete do-over.

This is what antifa do to people they encounter in the street. Watch them assault and hit a man walking away from the antifa riot in SE Portland. They bring bats precisely for this purpose. #PortlandRiots #antifa Video by @VenturaReport. pic.twitter.com/AfxmVHHk6K

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 16, 2020

A baseball bat is a lethal weapon.  One blow to the head can kill, or perhaps even worse for the victim, it could maim due to TBI.

First of all, don’t be found among such people.  Second, the first time this occurred, the victim should have pulled a .45 ACP pistol and made it clear that one more advance would have sent a 230 grain ball his way.

This is the only way to handle people like this.  The victim is assuming that the next blow won’t be to the back of the skull.

Oh and make sure to note that since the Portland DA is self-identified Antifa, no charges will be filed.

Today I remarked that “As this progresses, they will begin to use terror tactics. I loosely predict that in the future we will see some guy wearing a MAGA hat beheaded in the road by some Antifa insurgent using a sword.  He’ll be all covered up in black, unable to be identified, and besides, the Portland DA will ignore it since he is Antifa.”

Some may have found this extreme.  I really don’t think so.  Andy Ngo doesn’t just link feed in his Twitter account.  He goes out and gets the feed himself as well.  These are some of the latest posts.

“He didn’t do nothing bro”

Video by @livesmattershow shows the altercations that happened in downtown Portland before the car crash. The BLM mob is beating a blonde woman and they tackle her to the ground. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/c0xbTr2Eon

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 17, 2020

It is truly staggering that this is not all over the news. What an indictment. Hopefully that will change. https://t.co/cjhUNTcHCW

— Lara Logan (@laralogan) August 17, 2020

Officers sustained burns last night at the #antifa riot in Seattle. Like Portland, the militants there buy and use large commercial-grade firework explosives as weapons. #SeattleRiots pic.twitter.com/6skruuFhY0

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 17, 2020

#Portland pic.twitter.com/pkk71kTWFz

— Kitty Shackleford (@KittyLists) August 16, 2020

The tactics are becoming more violent by the day.  Beatings, arson, threats of shooting and other violence, beatings of random drivers and passengers, and so on.

The other thing this brings up is that this has all been a catalyst for turning gangs loose on the American cities.  Inner cities are becoming gang land.

Stay away from these crowds, but if you have to drive in what may be proximity to them, carry a weapon.  Always carry a weapon.  Given that the gangs have been turned loose, you may have to use it, and you’ll have to use it better than they do.

By the way, The Post Millennial identified the thug who issued the beat down of the driver the other day.  Now with the Portland DA being aligned with Antifa, we’ll see if charges are ever brought.

News from Louisiana.

A Metairie man who worked for a company contracted to maintain the baggage handling system at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport is accused looting items from travelers’ luggage on the job, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Karl Brown Jr., 20, was arrested and booked with three counts of possession of stolen property, two counts of theft and possession of marijuana, said Capt. Jason Rivarde, spokesman for the department.

“They stole cash, guns, electronics and other property from the baggage,” Rivarde said, noting that the woman will face similar charges once she is brought to Jefferson parish.

Brown and his alleged co-conspirator are accused of stealing from passengers’ bags between December 2019 and May 2020, according to Sheriff’s Office records. Searches of Brown’s Metairie apartment turned up property that had been reported missing by travelers, including:

– A $10,000 Rolex watch, a $1,300 Gucci purse, a $900 Prada purse and jewelry, all taken from an El Paso woman’s suitcase when she flew home from a trip to New Orleans on March 2.

– A 9mm pistol, ammunition and magazines and a knife, all inside a locked gun box, stolen from a man’s luggage during an April 27 trip from New Orleans to Tampa.

– An iPod, a tripod, two suits and other clothing stolen from a man’s suitcase during his March 12 trip from New Orleans to Los Angeles.

Investigators stressed that Brown and the other suspect were not baggage handlers, airline employees or Transportation Safety Administration agents. They worked for company that repairs the baggage system within the airport, Rivarde said.

Anyone who has access to the airport behind the wall can pull this off, at least until they’re caught.  This is a risk when we fly with firearms.

Remember when I said this?  “Let’s face it, folks.  Since we are dropping off the luggage and we are picking it up, the only necessity for the luggage to be locked up is what happens behind the wall.  The only good of locking up the gun is theft by airport employees.  We know it, the TSA knows it, and the airlines know it.  It’s the truth.  None of this has anything to do with security.  It’s all about airport theft by airline or airport employees.”

Yea.  I’m straight up with you.  And data most often proves me correct on these things.  Having said that, this isn’t much to be proud of.  Anyone with two brain cells already knew this.

Via David Codrea (see his post for additional comments).

Portland: A man accused of trying to run over protesters crashed his vehicle. BLM & Antifa militants then pull him from the car and violently assault him. pic.twitter.com/DiUbV9Mcy5

— Kalen From Scriberr (@FromKalen) August 17, 2020

So I feel it’s time to remember Herschel’s Dictum.  It’s so important that it bears repeating.

“There aren’t too many human interaction problems that can’t be fixed with a .45 ACP 230-grain fat-boy.”

Michael Yon has told me that he is heading back to the states from Thailand to help cover current events.  This is good, as Michael will no doubt be boots on the ground.  He will get first hand pictures, video and reports of what is happening in Portland, Seattle, Austin, and the other hell holes in America.

Andy Ngo is about the only reporter who is providing accurate, good, informative and honest reporting of Antifa and BLM.  The tactics in use by Antifa/BLM are more well-rehearsed than just several years ago, including better communications, leadership, the use of green light lasers (I have thoughts on amelioration of that threat), the use of hammers and baseball bats, breaking windows, blocking roadways and means of egress, boxing in and attacking cars, and on the list could go.

The newly elected Portland DA is aligned with Antifa, and said so himself.  The Portland and Seattle city councils and mayors are aligned with Antifa/BLM, as is the case in Austin.  The politicians (and by extension, the police) are protecting Antifa.  The squad of communists in the House is calling for unrest in the streets.

To a large degree, they have been protected and coddled.  Andy Ngo points out that as soon as charged by police, the Antifa crowds evaporate (see also this post).  Several misguided Antifa folks thought they would crash the biker rally at Sturgis.  This was a mistake, and were it not for the police, those folks might have been killed.

This protection and coddling will redound to much difficulty and perhaps bloodshed in the coming days.  As Antifa presses out into the suburbs of America, bringing their tactics with them of busting windows, burning houses, threatening women and children, millions of homeowners with firearms will return the threat in kind.

By protecting, encouraging and coddling Antifa/BLM at the present rather than shutting it down, the pols are simply ensuring the coming bloodshed.  Maybe that’s what they want to see.