Shooting Illustrated.

Proofing—as the term pertains to firearms—refers to the test of a fully assembled firearm or component of a firearm with a high-pressure cartridge, or series of cartridges in the case of a revolver, that can be as much as 30-percent higher pressure than the recommended industry safety standard for a given round.

It is essentially a stress test on a firearm or component of a firearm by firing one or more “proof cartridges” to ensure the structural integrity of the gun or part being tested. Once the proof cartridge or cartridges are fired, the gun is inspected to verify no damage to any of the parts of the gun has incurred. If none was sustained from the proofing procedure, the firearm is deemed mechanically sound and ready to enter the distribution chain.

Depending on the manufacturer and/or country of origin, the frame, barrel and slide of a pistol may be stamped with a mark signifying successful completion of the test procedure. Other firearms may have proofmarks stamped into the frame and/or the barrel by itself.

In some cases, only the barrel is tested since it is the primary component containing the pressure of the ammunition. This is usually done in product designs that have a history of durability and reliability as a cost-saving method of manufacturing.

In addition, barrels that have quick-change or drop-in capability in multiple frames are usually proofed individually and are stamped in a conspicuous location as verification that they have been tested.

When proofing a complete firearm, the whole gun must be placed in an enclosed fixture and triggered remotely for safety purposes in case of a failure during the discharge of the high-pressure ammunition.

Proofing a barrel individually is much simpler, even though it, too, must be tested in an enclosed fixture for safety in the unlikely event of failure.

The time it takes to proof a barrel by itself as opposed to a whole firearm is significantly less. From an economic perspective, this is the best option for manufacturers to take without compromising safety.

Generally speaking, once a firearm has been proofed, it is proofed for the life of the gun unless some major changes have occurred to the parts managing the pressure of a cartridge when fired. A gunsmith restoring or rebuilding a gun may have the occasion to re-proof a firearm, but for the average gun owner it should not be a particular concern.

Added to that, proof ammunition is highly regulated and generally unavailable to those who do not either manufacture or remanufacture firearms.

While not dangerous in highly specialized, extremely limited use, prolonged firing of proof ammunition would be harmful to the gun and therefore detrimental to both shooter safety and his or her investment.

It’s called proof of principle, and the principle is engineering design margin.  Manufacturers who do not do this should be shunned.

I actually didn’t know that proof ammunition is “highly regulated.”  It shouldn’t be.  If I want to purchase it, I should be able to purchase it.

I see proof ammunition as similar to 450 SMC (or 460 Rowland), which I should only be shooting in .45 ACP guns that have been inspected and modified with a stiffer spring.  Most manufacturers will tell you that, for example, our gun will shoot +P ammunition, but “We don’t recommend feeding the gun a steady diet of +P ammunition.”

How I run my gun is up to me, but I’m an engineer and I think hard about these things.

As if we needed volume XVII of this, via David Codrea comes news from Florida.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — He had just stepped from the shower and was settling in for the night when he caught a glimpse of a figure outside his window.

Seventy-year-old Bill Norkunas, a childhood polio survivor, headed over to the light and flicked it on hoping to scare away whoever was there. Instead, the light was a beacon drawing a young man to his front door, a door made of glass.

And then for the next 15 minutes, Norkunas stood there, barefoot and unclothed, with his crutches, on one side of the glass pane trying to steady a gun in his trembling hand while the stranger stood on the other side, pounding on the door, banging it with his hip or gnawing at the thick hurricane-grade glass with a garden paver.

Norkunas, who suffered minor injuries from the glass digging into his foot, has no idea why the man, later identified as 23-year-old Timothy Johnson of Fort Lauderdale, tried to break down his door on Nov. 7.

And as bewildering, and just as terrifying to him, is the knowledge that a squad of Broward sheriff’s deputies responded to his Tamarac neighborhood, but none came close to his home to stop the man. Instead, they waited down the street until he walked over to them and surrendered, witnesses told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The result is a palpable sense of outrage toward the Sheriff’s Office with many in the neighborhood questioning why deputies would leave a terrified, disabled man to fend for himself for as long as they did.

[ … ]

“If he opens the door can I shoot him?” Norkunas asks the 911 dispatcher about two minutes into his phone call for help.

By the third minute, Norkunas is telling the dispatcher that the stranger is trying to kick the door in, according to recording of the call. While still on the phone with the dispatcher, Norkunas can be heard warning the stranger that he better leave or he is going to get shot. Until this point in his life, Norkunas had never pointed a gun at anyone before.

“Get the cops here quick,” he barks into the phone at minute four.

Three minutes later, Norkunas’ voice is weary: “Sheriff, hurry up please.”

Three more minutes pass. “Where the hell are the cruisers? … They are still not here. Jesus Christ. There’s still no cruisers. Come to my house, please please.”

He tells the dispatcher his glass door is smashed in and he doesn’t know what to do. The dispatcher tells him the deputies are canvassing the area to “make sure no one else gets hurt.”

While law enforcement officers take an oath to serve and protect, they are not bound to do so legally, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

“The law doesn’t require law enforcement officers to protect you from other people,” said Rodney Jacobs, assistant director of the Civil Investigative Panel, a police oversight committee for the city of Miami.

As a reminder to regular readers, and a brief primer for new readers, the police are under no legal obligation to protect anyone.  If you doubt this, read the following decisions.

Castle Rock v. Gonzalez

Warren v. District of Columbia

DeShaney v. Winnebago County

As for talking to the dispatcher, this in my estimation is a very unwise move.  Calling to report the incident may have been necessary (although as I’ve pointed out before, if you think things can’t get any more dangerous for you, just wait until the police arrive), but sticking around over the phone was a distraction for him, and consuming of time and energy.

Do not ever, ever, ever, ask permission from a dispatcher to shoot an intruder.  When the police do finally arrive, if you have had to discharge your firearm, do not talk to them.  Let your attorney do the talking.

Bottom line.  The police are not obligated to protect you.  You are obligated under God to protect yourself and your family.  I think with the recent flurry of gun-buying in America, many people grok that notion now who didn’t just weeks or months ago.

News from Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (D-Pa.) vetoed two gun bills that would repeal laws intended to control the carrying of guns and prevent public officials from shutting down firearms sales during emergency proclamations.

The bills, which recently passed the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania State Senate, intended to limit Wolf’s powers during the COVID-19 pandemic and moving forward, AP News reported. Wolf, a Democrat who supports broader gun control measures, has previously vetoed more than six such bills.

“The current disaster declarations in place are meant to help the administration fight the public health crises at hand and have no impact on citizens and their firearm rights,” Wolf’s office said in a statement on Nov. 19.

The Senate confirmed both bills by identical 29-20 votes on Nov. 18, and both received approval from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives earlier this year. According to AP News, all but one Republican voted in favor of the bills, and all but one Democrat voted against them.

While the first bill would repeal a provision that states “no person shall carry a firearm upon the public streets or upon any public property,” those who have a concealed-carry license would be exempt. Lawmakers say the law has gone largely unenforced, AP News reported.

Rep. Matthew Dowling (R.-Fayette), the bill’s sponsor, however, believes the law could limit people from openly carrying a firearm which is not generally banned in the state, AP News reported.

The second bill would block both the governor and local public officials from suspending or limiting the sale of firearms during a disaster emergency, AP News reported. To help respond to a disaster, governors can invoke a disaster emergency to bypass state regulations.

This is targeted towards open carry, a subject near and dear to my heart as readers know.

Under God, a man has no right to tell me or anyone else in what manner property may be carried on my person.  Under God, a man has no right to tell me or anyone else in what manner buying and selling may be done, or when it may be done.

The desire to control others is the signal pathology of the wicked.

PJM.

“In the wee hours of Thanksgiving Day, the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society filed an explosive election lawsuit asking Michigan’s Supreme Court to prevent Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson from certifying the election results until the Michigan legislature can fully investigate fraud claims and to force election officials to hand over all election materials to the legislature for this purpose. The lawsuit claims that officials illegally counted or threw out no fewer than 508,016 ballots, far more than Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote margin over Donald Trump. . . . Citing state records, the lawsuit claims that Benson’s office sent out 355,392 unsolicited ballots. Northon explained that Michigan law requires two signatures for absentee voting: a signature on an application form and a signature on the security sleeve for the ballot. In this election, officials mailed out more than 300,000 ballots that no one had requested.”

They’re trying to certify the vote as quickly as possible everywhere they have a democrat governor or elections board.  In Georgia, a lawsuit had to be filed to stop them from erasing all data and files from the voting machines.

Oh what a tangled we we weave, when first we practice to deceive.  Lie upon lie, deception upon deception, theft upon theft.

God is watching all of this and will in no wise leave the guilty unpunished.

There is nothing now hidden from the eyes of men that will not, in time, be made manifest on the great day of judgment.

Courtesy of JWR.

General McInerny says it happened, and that U.S. military personnel were killed in the raid.

On the other hand, Jeffrey Prather says it happened, but that no one was killed.  See this video, starting at 22 minutes or thereabouts.

NC Scout has a fuller assessment here.

I try to take things like this with a grain of salt.  William Barr was going to turn the light on the deep state and make the cockroaches scatter.  As it turns out, Barr is likely part of the deep state.

Durham’s investigation was going to send the guilty to prison, and as it turns out, the entire investigation was shut down with a whimper because they fear backlash from an incoming Biden administration.

Trump was going to rid America of the deep state, and as it turns out, he might be its greatest victim.

Trump had four years to see what was happening with the voting scam, and failed to shut it down before it put him out of office.  He left Comey and McCabe in charge of the FBI, and then Chris Wray (good Lord).  He left Mattis in charge of the DoD, he put Jeff Sessions in charge of the DoJ, he allowed Kelly to direct the WH staff for far too long, he allowed Reince Priebus to direct affairs of the WH, and he spent his time on Twitter, empowering Jack Dorsey.  Not even to mention the role of McMaster, another deep state guy.

This failure is on Trump.  I hope that this goes to the SCOTUS and that Biden doesn’t take control of the executive branch, and that the servers were confiscated and turn up the full story of what happened.

But if not, the finger of blame cannot be pointed at powerless citizens to do the work of the chief executive.

I took one of my sons to the range last week (specifically, Foothills Shooting Complex in N.C.), and because of Governor Cooper’s orders, we were required to wear masks at all times outside the shooting stall, even outdoors.

We were no doubt breathing lead and copper, but they claim they want to protect us from a virus with a diameter of 80 nm with a piece of cotton cloth.

Because Roy Cooper is a jackass.

But then so is his wife.  By the way, they soften her “apology” and fail to point out that over Twitter, she admitted to making an obscene gesture at children, but said that she could live with it.

They are some of the worst people in politics, and that’s saying something.

Libertas Bella.

But there is scant evidence that masks prevent the transmission of COVID or any other respiratory infection. In every randomized clinical trial ever conducted, there have been inconclusive findings that mask wearing aided in suppressing transmission of respiratory diseases. Studies generally rely upon fitted N95 respirators that must be sterilized after every use or surgical masks that should be thrown away. We have more evidence that typical masks cause headaches than that they prevent against COVID.

[ … ]

This isn’t just a matter of a few people missing out on a few weeks of work. CNBC host Jim Cramer has noted that the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic led to one of the biggest wealth transfers in all of American history. Wall Street cleaned up at the expense of Main Street.

Of course, this was the goal of it all, just as will be the goal of the “Great Reset.”  It is to impoverish the middle class, and enrich the already wealthy.  They hate the middle class.

As for masks, I’ve explain before many times that you may as well try to stop a mosquito with a chain link fence.

The filter fibers leave too much open space to capture a particle the size of a virus (80 – 120 nm) by interception, and the virus is non-polar, so electrostatic attraction to the fibers isn’t an effective means of filtration.

On the other hand, you can certainly deprive your brain of oxygen by wearing a mask.  One other thing that can be accomplished is to make children even more ignorant.

School is out.  If you think learning is happening at home, you’re naive.  Children in my neighborhood are majoring in learning to ride skateboards when they ought to be learning to construct meaningful sentences, calculus and physics.

It’s almost as if they want to create an entire generation of stupid factory workers, perpetually behind the Chinese and Japanese children, yes?

I wouldn’t have know how to work some of these.