Ammoland.

“We hope to increase our manufacturing capabilities two to three times over the next year,” commented Greg Buchel, Owner of Big Horn Armory. “Much of this will involve new personnel in our assembly and quality control departments. We have a core workforce of excellent people right now and we intend to use these people to train and orient our new personnel to create more of the fine products that we currently produce for our customers.”

“Our firearms are not purchases made on a whim, but thoughtful investments in heirloom-quality rifles aimed at giving you the biggest bang for your buck. We know our customers want these rifles, and we want to give them to them. We’re working our hardest to get our firearms out the door and into our customers’ hands,” Buchel stated. “We appreciate our customers’ patience as they bear with us as we continue to fulfill our orders and implement these changes to meet our customers’ needs.”

Well, okay.  That’s nice, but the pricing of the BHA guns is still too steep for me.  A .454 Casull rifle is my dream gun, but in order to afford it I will have to find a lemon that was sent back to the factory to be refurbished and fixed, and sold as a used gun.

This is very interesting and a good commentary on the recent history of the 1911 in U.S. special forces by someone who was there.

Shooting Illustrated.

Absurd and useless. Those are the words I would’ve used to describe ankle holsters—before I started rocking one. If you are inexperienced with them, you probably imagine having to drop to your strong-side knee, pulling up your pant cuff and drawing the pistol. That doesn’t sound terribly efficient and it’s difficult to envision many scenarios where you’d have that kind of leisure.

In point of fact, though, an ankle holster is very often the best way to carry in a variety of scenarios, particularly those in which you’d be seated.

Let’s say you have an office job in which you’re sitting at your desk all morning. Then you drive to a restaurant to meet a friend for lunch. Afterward, you hop back in your car and return to work. Nothing strange or infrequent about that, yet it demonstrates the utility of a good ankle holster. Seated at a desk, the holster can be accessed without your getting up or rocking or having to worry about clearing your chair’s armrest. (Also, if seeking to maintain discretion while carrying in an office, few carry methods are as discreet as an ankle holster.)

In the car on the way to and from the restaurant, if needed you can access your gun without having to lean hard to the side or worry about clearing the seatbelt. Assuming you drive an automatic transmission, an ankle rig is also a faster draw than from a glove box, console or onboard gun vault, one you can make without taking your eyes off the threat or the road.

I don’t disagree with all of that, but I still disagree with the title of the article.  Time to presentation is slower when you have to pull up your pant leg, and we all know it.

I say that as one who ankle carries often.

News.

As set forth in more detail in its Order, a Georgia federal district court judge today issued an injunction halting enforcement of Executive Order 14042, which requires that federal contractors and subcontractors with specific types of covered contracts ensure that their covered employees are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by January 18^th, 2022.

As the Order states,

Accordingly,  the Court ORDERS that Defendants are ENJOINED, during the pendency of this action or until further order of this Court, from enforcing the vaccine mandate for federal contractors and subcontractors in all covered contracts in any state or territory of the United States of America.

In a brief 28-page decision U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker found

it necessary, in order to truly afford injunctive relief to the parties before it, to issue an injunction with nationwide applicability.

The case was initially filed by the states of Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.  However, Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. a nationwide trade organization “representing tens of thousands of contractors and subcontractors that regularly bid on and work on federal contracts for services” petitioned to intervene in the suit and joined the states in their request for a preliminary injunction.

In granting the injunction, Judge Baker found

The Court finds that Plaintiffs have a likelihood of proving that Congress, through the language it used, did not clearly authorize the President to issue the kind of mandate contained in EO 14042, as EO 14042 goes far beyond addressing administrative and management issues in order to promote efficiency and economy in procurement and contracting, and instead, in application, works as a regulation of public health, which is not clearly authorized under the Procurement Act.

The Court also found that “Plaintiffs have a likelihood of proving that EO 14042 does not have a sufficient nexus to the purposes of the Procurement Act and thus does not fall within the authority actually granted to the President in that Act.”

This Order follows the order of a Kentucky federal court also enjoining enforcement of the Executive Order in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.  In contrast, today’s Order halts enforcement of the Executive Order nationwide.

Zero Hedge is also covering this.  This one comment sums up how I feel about all of this.

Damage has been done. How many lost their jobs over an illegal order? How many millions that didnt want the death jab were forced by their employer? You can vote your way into communism but you have to shoot your way out.

As I’ve noted before, the cowering cowards of the SCOTUS have already declined to hear this several times and let the mandate go forward, knowing full well it’s unconstitutional.

Oh, they would probably say something like “But cases must be heard first at the appellate court level to flush out the issues.”  In the mean time, good men and women get injured, and religious rights get violated.

One good sign is that some prog commentator is astonished at Gorsuch and pens this ridiculous title “Neil Gorsuch’s Terrifying Paragraph.”

“I accept that what we said 11 months ago remains true today – that ‘[s]temming the spread of COVID-19’ qualifies as ‘a compelling inter­est.’ At the same time, I would acknowledge that this interest cannot qualify as such forever. Back when we decided Roman Catholic Diocese, there were no widely distributed vac­cines. Today there are three. At that time, the country had comparably few treatments for those suffering with the disease. Today we have additional treatments and more appear near. If human nature and history teach anything, it is that civil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency.”

That’s weak tea, but tea nonetheless.  Hopefully the SCOTUS does the right thing when it finally makes its way to them – and it will make its way to them.

It would have been better to have addressed this months ago.

This powerful.

A 45ACP round is powerful enough to blow a man completely in half, deafen human ears up to a 1/4 mile away, and open a small rift in time and space just large enough for human lips to emerge through and whisper ‘two world wars’ before closing up.

I enjoy it when gunners can see the humor in things and parody our community.  It made me laugh.

I’ve discussed the nature of the need to understand animals before, as well as my experiences with them.

Check.  All of the above.  I have fallen off, been thrown off, bitten, run over, kicked, and just about anything that can happen on or around a horse.  I have ridden horses all day long, and I do mean all … day … long, and gotten on to do it again the next day.  And the next day.  And the next day.  I have fed them, herded them, doctored them, and assisted them to mate.  If you’ve never witnessed horses mating first hand (and I’m not talking about watching the Discovery Channel), it can be a violent affair.  I’ve ridden with saddles and then also (in my much younger years) bareback over mountain tops along narrow trails while running the herd).  The hardest ride was bareback and (on a dare) without a bridle, only the halter.

From the age of fourteen and beyond into my early twenties, I worked weekends and summers at a Christian camp above Marietta, South Carolina named Awanita Valley (and Awanita Ranch in Traveler’s Rest).  We trained and trail rode horses, fed them and cared for them, hiked the trails and cleared them of snakes and yellow jacket nests (have you ever been on a horse when it came up on a yellow jacket nest?).

When we weren’t doing that, we were cutting wood, hauling supplies, digging ditches, and baling hay.  My boys did the same thing, and Daniel later (before the Marine Corps) worked for Joey Macrae in Anderson, South Carolina, an extraordinary professional horseman, breaking and training horses.  I have ridden in the rain, blazing sun, and snow.  I have seen my son Joshua and his horse buried up to his thighs in snow, and watched him ride the horse up from sinking in the drift and stay on him while keeping the horse and him safe.

I was preaching at that point to LEOs, and explaining that you need to understand the affects of voice volume, timbre, pitch, etc., the calmness of your voice and demeaner, nature of eye contact and body movements, etc., on the behavior of the animal.  The animal must trust you and agree to a relationship.  If that doesn’t happen, in most cases, the animal will kill you.  So you learn from someone who knows how to do it, or you learn from the school of hard knocks.

Here is a related instance of failing to understand animals (or simply not caring).

Medina Spirit, the horse that finished first in this year’s Kentucky Derby but failed a drug test after the race, died after suffering a heart attack Monday at a Southern California racetrack, trainer Bob Baffert said. The trainer said Medina Spirit died following a workout at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California.

Baffert attorney Craig Robertson initially confirmed the death to CBS News. The California Horse Racing Board said in a statement a necropsy would be performed at a lab run by the University of California, Davis, and a cause of death can’t be determined until the examination and toxicology tests have been completed.

The 3-year-old colt died immediately after collapsing near the finish line on Santa Anita’s main track Monday morning, the board said.

“My entire barn is devastated by this news,” Baffert said in a statement. “Medina Spirit was a great champion, a member of our family who was loved by all, and we are deeply mourning his loss.”

Medina Spirit is the 10th horse to die while training at the track this year, according to the California Horse Racing Board. Nine other horses died while racing at the track in 2021, according to the board. In 2019, racing at the track was temporarily suspended twice amid a spike in horse fatalities.

Before you go there, I know what you’re going to say.  The animal perished because it was fed PEDs.

No … that’s not right.  No it didn’t.

I’ve tried to point this out before in previous posts.  The notion you are constantly exposed to in American western movies about horses running at a full gallop for miles and miles and miles is just false.  Horses cannot do that.  Their hearts will explode if you try to force a horse to do that.  American westerns perpetrate a lie.

Horse racing is immoral.  Greyhound racing is immoral.  They should both be illegal because they inflict suffering for man’s pleasure.  There isn’t an iota of difference between horse racing and dog fighting, which is also immoral.  You are forcing the animal to do something that runs contrary to its nature and is dangerous to its health.

Man was designed to run a long ways over long distances, and man’s body has internal triggers, clocks, and gages to tell him when to stop, when to hydrate, when to replenish, when this is “fast enough for me,” and so forth.  Animals do what they are told to do when they trust us.

The horse shouldn’t have trusted the trainer or rider.  The horse cannot tell otherwise.  The trainer and rider should be ashamed.  They killed the horse.

The good man cares for the life of his beast.  Because God says so (Psalm 50:10, Proverbs 12:10, Genesis 1:25, Proverbs 27:23, Matthew 10:29).

Iraqveteran8888 does some testing of soft body armor against unrated threats.

While we’re at it, Rex did some testing of some very light soft body armor from RTS that I haven’t had an opportunity to embed.  Some of his testing was also with unrated threats. I like the RTS gear.

The Federalist.

Four military officers who describe themselves as “researchers” at the Army’s highly respected Cyber Institute have published an article that adds to the growing concern about the ongoing politicization of the military. Published by the military’s National Defense University (NDU), their article purports to analyze the dangers of misinformation and disinformation and to advise the Biden administration about how to counter it.

The article’s authors all are military officers and at least two are professors at West Point. They say their article “is written in response to the Capitol insurrection.”

[ … ]

The Cyber Center authors’ thesis is that the “insurrection” at the Capitol building on Jan. 6 was a mortal danger to the country that was caused by disinformation, namely the idea that the 2020 presidential election was rigged or stolen. The “insurrection” spawned by this alleged disinformation then becomes the justification for the authors’ proposed government censorship (although they eschew the term) of free speech.

Uh huh.

What happened that ridiculous day wasn’t an insurrection.  They will witness an insurrection if they attempt to confiscate firearms.

I have a suggestion.  Perhaps these “professors” could focus on fire and maneuver warfare and go get a combat action ribbon (or whatever the Army calls that).  Otherwise, they’re just wasting time.

As for the Marine Corps, what was once a respected institution now allows females into the infantry officer’s course at Quantico, and also allows females into the infantry battalions.

This piece at business insider discusses the U.S. Marines versus the Royal Marines, and why the USMC lost in mock battles recently to the Royal Marines.

They lost because they no longer know who they are.  They began to change right before my youngest son got out (which was the reason for his having left), and he never looked back.  Today they don’t know whether they are “Soldiers of the Sea,” an Expeditionary Fighting Force, cyber warriors, or what.

They got too heavy, and experimented with the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an idiotic idea if I’ve ever heard one.  I recommended at the time (beginning more than a decade ago) that the Marine Corps scale down the size of the force, focus more on pay, retention, specialized training, and air and sea insertion for special operations.

They have too many stupid people in the USMC today, and thus none of that advice obtained.  So any comparison between the USMC and Royal Marines suffers from the USMC not knowing who they are or want to be, wanting to be too big and too heavy, treating its Marines like crap, being [stupidly] proud of the fact that they get the short end of the stick on training dollars from the DoD, and recruiting the wrong sort of people.

Among the “wrong sort of people” are females who believe they can do anything a male can do.

As for USMA at West Point, they were lost a very long time ago.  If I were hiring today, I wouldn’t be any more impressed at a degree from the USMA than my local 2-year community college.

Via TTAG, this missive.

As a teacher in Northeast Ohio high schools for over 20 years, a special kind of horror fills me when I hear about bills like HB 99. Here are a few of the reasons why more guns in schools is no solution.

For us teachers, many experiences in our lives are teachable moments. There are lessons to be had in all that happens to us as individuals and as a society. The lessons we choose to learn will determine our actions. Bringing guns into our schools conveys one monumental lesson: that we should deal with violence in our society with greater threats of violence. As students go out into the world, will they take that lesson with them? Who else should carry guns? Doctors? Engineers? Nursing home employees? Is the effective solution to violence just more potential for violence?

Wait.  I’m an engineer and I carry guns!

In fact, I think it’s a grand idea if nursing home employees carried firearms, at least a few of them.  Whom else will defend the residents from home invasion.  Of course, it’s a better arrangement if there were no nursing homes and families took care of their own, but that’s a sticky wicket and very complicated.  I had an aunt with dementia who couldn’t be left alone because she had a propensity to throw hand towels down on hot stove units, so you couldn’t even take a trip to work or the store.

Sent from a reader, a sad analysis.

The couple found dead on a Northern California hiking trail over the summer desperately tried to save their 1-year-old daughter before all three succumbed to extreme heat as temperatures soared to 109 degrees, investigators found.

British software engineer Jonathan Gerrish, 45, his wife Ellen Chung, 31, and their daughter, Miju were found dead of hyperthermia and dehydration on a remote Sierra National Forest hiking trail in August.

Their dog, Oski — an 8-year-old Australian shepherd and Akita mix — also died on the trail.

Investigators now believe the couple was desperately seeking for medical help for Miju, before they themselves succumbed to the brutal temperatures, according to a new 77-page report obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Officials ruled out several other factors for their deaths through the course of the investigation, including murder, lightning strikes, poisoning, illegal drugs and suicide.

A survival trainer wrote in an email to detectives that in all likelihood, the parents’ panicked efforts to help the baby — who likely began suffering from symptoms first — possibly led to their own deaths.

“Sadly, I believe they were caught off guard, and once they realized their situation, they died trying to save their child and each other,” the trainer wrote to detectives, according to The Chronicle.

He called the mix of the terrain, elevation and heat a “deadly trifecta.”

“It is likely the child began to succumb first, which hurried the parents’ efforts up the hill,” the trainer wrote. “When one could no longer continue, they stayed behind to care for the child and pet, while the other tried to forge on and get help for their loved ones. It is a tragedy of the highest order.”

First of all, remember the necessary life-saving kit that MUST be carried in the bush: Rubberized poncho, parka, redundant fire start, large bore handgun, food energy, cordage, tactical light, knife, water and means of water filtration.  This might have saved their lives.

Beyond this, I was commenting to my oldest son not too many days ago that the biggest enemy of survival in the bush is panic.  If you carry the right kit, you can be in the position where you say to yourself or loved ones, “I don’t know where we are, but it’s getting dark and we need warmth, shelter, water and rest.  We have the right kit for it, so we camp here for the night and get a safe, good night sleep, and carry on at first light.”

If you panic, adrenalin rushes into your system, you expend way too much energy, your judgment is clouded and you’re more likely to do stupid things, you get exhausted, the exhaustion makes you cold, and you risk hypothermia.

In the bush, panic is your enemy.  It sounds as if they didn’t have the right kit, and they panicked.

It’s a sad but preventable story.