Outdoor Life.

A few remarks of my own.  First of all, it seems like every company now, in order to compete, has to offer a 1000 lumen flashlight.  Whether one needs that or not is a different story.  Inside a home for regular tasks, it’s blinding.  But blinding would be a good thing for a home invader, so there’s that going for it.

Second, weight matters.  In front of me I have two lights, one a very old SureFire, model 6P using two 123 Batteries, and the other a very high lumen Streamlight, ProTac HL3, using three 123 batteries.

For weight shavers and gram counters, it matters which one you choose if you’re hiking 10 miles up 3- or 4-thousand feet in two days.  Grams turn into Kg, Kg converts to more water you have to carry to stay hydrated, and on the vicious cycle goes.  Carrying more weight because it means more lumens is not a good decision for hikers and backpackers who care about weight.

Third, I won’t have a flashlight that is rechargeable-only.  In grid-down, whether more extended or simply for a few days because of storms, that matters more to me than anything else.  It can be rechargeable, only as long as it can take batteries too.

Fourth, some of these considerations are malleable depending upon whether you intend on carrying a weapon-mounted light.

NRA Women.

Ruger has re-introduced the Marlin Model 1894 Classic chambered in .44 Rem Mag. The Model 1894 Classic retains the traditional characteristics that made this a truly iconic rifle.

[ … ]

The Ruger-made 1894 Classic is marked “Mayodan, NC,” bears an “RM” or Ruger-made serial number prefix, and features the red and white “bullseye” in the stock.

Additional models in different calibers and configurations will be released throughout the coming year. Due to the anticipated strong demand and the limited quantity of Ruger-made Marlin lever-action rifles, Ruger encourages retailers to contact their distributors for availability and advises consumers not to leave deposits with retailers that do not have confirmed shipments.

Why they announced this in Women’s NRA I don’t know – all men should want a Marlin .44 magnum.  However, what could be better than his and hers Marlin 1894s and a date at the range?  And what excuse could be better than that to buy a couple of them?  “I did this for us, dear.  I promise.  I love you that much!  I wanted you to have your very own Marlin.  Let’s head to the range and that evening a nice dinner date to your favorite steakhouse!”

What?

If that sounds weird, it is.  To be completely fair, as you watch the video, it doesn’t say exactly what he says it says, at least not in direct terms.  There is nothing about modern sporting rifles in the executive order, but you have to know that the DoD isn’t going to be purchasing Beretta 694s or Marlin lever action rifles.  The exact wording is found in the order he links.

• Use the Department of Defense’s acquisition of firearms to further firearm and public safety practices. The Department of Defense buys a large number of firearms and other weapons to protect and serve our country. The President is directing the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement principles to further firearm and public safety practices through Department of Defense acquisition of firearms, consistent with applicable law.

The controllers think it’s safer for you if the DoD buys all the guns rather than you.  So that’s where your tax money will be going.  Getting DoD contracts will involve the stipulation that the company doesn’t sell to civilians, I’m sure.  Frankly, Colt serves as the poster child for that experiment.  I would expect a company like Knight’s Armament to continue to focus on military contracts as they do now.  If you think that a company like Ruger, Daniel Defense, BCM, Aeroprecision, Rock River Arms, etc., are going to destroy their future by inking a 2-year contract (who knows what will happen to this after the election), that would likely be a huge error.  My assessment: I don’t expect to see much come of this.

This looks like interesting handgun training with only 50 rounds expended. But that’s no fun, you better have more and run it multiple times.

The only thing I know about Kansas is from the band Kansas, and it’s the songs “Dust in the Wind and “Carry on Wayward Son.” If I had to guess, I bet people from Kansas are fine, upstanding Americans who likely live in peace in a rather nice state. Seriously, look at some of the natural beauty in that state and tell me it’s not gorgeous. Well, today, we are talking about Kansas, and learning something beyond a few 1970s rock songs. Today we’re learning the handgun standards the Kansas police employ with the Kansas CPOST annual firearms qualification.

What We’ll Need

The Kansas CPOST Handgun qual is fairly simple and won’t cause you to go broke on ammo. All you’ll need is 50 rounds, which isn’t bad. In terms of magazines, that’s up to you. You could stop the qual to reload your mags or just bring four average 9mm magazines. I suggest at least two mags, but the qual doesn’t require a particular number.

Train like you fight or how you’ll most likely be carrying should a self-defense situation arise. Included is information about the rig he used, but for the average personal defense minded CCW, train just the way you EDC.

Obviously, we’ll need our handgun. It’s a police qual, so I went with a duty-sized handgun with the P320C that’s optically equipped with a ROMEO2. You’ll also need a holster. I used an L2C fit to a battle belt. While it’s not a police belt, it’s a close replication. The CPOST also requires a single target, and the target is either a standard FBI Q or an IALEFIQ. We aren’t Kansas police, so we can make it up as we go. I used a simple Sage Dynamics target, which is admittedly smaller and more challenging to hit.

The FBI “Q” target, or bottle target, is actually just the lighter-shaded “bowling pin” shape, but the above image better represents the purpose of using this target. If employing it, the object is to hit the Q at center mass:

The article continues…

We will also need a barricade of some form to train behind. You can improvise your own or employ something like the PTSB Lite. I’ve been using an old blue barrel, and it seems to work pretty well for what I need.

Scoring

Scoring is very simple. Shots have to hit the bowling pin of the Q target. There is no call for headshots or specific body portion shots. To pass, shooters have to score a 70% or higher, which means 35 shots have to hit a fairly big target. Any shots fired outside the time limits are misses.

Hitting the Range With the Kansas CPOST Qual

What you should know about this course is that there are no required or timed reloads. Ammo management and reloads are entirely on the shooter. If you are shooting a string and run empty, you have to reload and keep shooting. This can make things interesting and force you to either reload quickly or plan ahead.

Stage One: 1.5 Yards

Yep, we start up close and personal with your target. This likely simulates an interview position and situation that goes bad. At the beep, you have to step to the rear and then laterally. At the same time, you have to draw and fire three rounds into the target. You have a total of three seconds to get it done.

There are six stages, some of which are multi-phase; the longest is 25 yards. You can always tighten the training down with smaller targets and timed runs. If I were to do these drills, a different target would be in order; the plain white bottle isn’t great. See the rest at the link.

Source:

Safely handling a firearm and improving marksmanship at the range is just the beginning for armed citizens and professionals. Follow this Hierarchy of Combative Firearm Training to understand what skills are necessary, and in what order they should be learned.

According to my Webster’s Dictionary, training is defined as “to instruct so as to make proficient.” Instruct means “to teach, educate or inform,” while proficient means “highly competent, skilled.” Thus, combative handgun training, in my mind can be defined as follows: Teaching a person to be highly competent and skilled in the use of a handgun for personal defense. How much skill do you need to proficiently take care yourself? Who knows? For me, it’s as much skill as I can develop because it will be my life on the line, and my life is really important!

The three levels of combative pistolcraft. (from Dave Spaulding, found at the link)

Base Level: Essentials

The Essentials level provides the foundation for everything else to build upon. Compare it to placing your hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel when learning to drive. The fundamentals include safe handling, grip, body position (aka stance), sight alignment, sight picture, loading and unloading and, most importantly, trigger control. You know, all of the things that keep the gun running.

The grip should use both hands and cover as much of the grip as possible. The grip is the human contact with the firearm, place as much skin on the gun as you can. Any area of the grip left open will provide an avenue for recoil to carry the gun off target, making quick, follow-up shots more difficult. And follow-up shots may be needed to end the fight.

I’ve quit using the term stance as it relates to shooting a handgun because it really doesn’t matter where your feet are situated. As a matter of fact, it’s quite likely they will not be where you want them when you need to shoot. What is more important is keeping your body in a position that allows you to deliver multiple shots in multiple directions without being thrown off balance. In general, this means you must keep your shoulders over your toes and your knees unlocked.

Clearing a stoppage or malfunction is a requirement for any piece of machinery, but in a gunfight it is a life-saving skill. For semiauto pistols, you must be able to clear any malfunctions quickly and easily, which is not as hard as it sounds. Someone just has to show you how to do it. Revolvers are a whole different matter. A quality revolver runs under very extreme conditions, but when it malfunctions it usually requires a trip to the gunsmith. Some would say this is an advantage of the revolver over the pistol — I will leave that up to you.

While many wish to debate using sights versus point shooting, I’ve found neither is very important if the shooter can’t control the trigger. Without trigger control, the muzzle won’t stay in alignment with the target, and the shot will miss regardless of the system used. Only hits count, so while I admit I’m an advocate of sighted fire, I’m an even greater advocate of trigger control. Without it, everything else is a doomed to failure.

All of the skills taught and practiced at the Essentials level are required to keep the gun running in a fight. That is why I say they are essential. While some may consider one skill more important than another, ask yourself, which skills will be needed to win your gun fight? That’s right, you don’t know. So, having a mastery of all will be required to rapidly adapt to the situation faced.

Ultimately, the most essential of essentials is a combative mind, but you won’t find that listed among the classic fundamentals of shooting or taught in basic marksmanship classes.

Continues at the link with mid-level and upper-level interactive combatives.

The title of this article is rather broad and audacious, so let’s do what all good engineers would do and set the boundary conditions for the analysis.

All calculations will be approximate given the time invested in this analysis and the purpose thereto.  Some assumptions and engineering judgments will be made due to the lack of independently verified information and data.  This analysis is meant to be brief and the intended audience is both engineers and non-engineers (for educational purposes).  Why am I writing this – out of some sort of ghoulish focus on death?  Well, engineers study the ghoulish consequences of the failures of other engineers as part of our profession.  Consider the fact that most engineers can explain the cause of the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse (if you can’t, you shouldn’t be an engineer), the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure, the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster, and the space shuttle Challenger disaster (where Morton Thiokol was told to take off their engineer hats and put on their manager hats when considering O-ring temperature certification).  This is part of what we do to become better.

Moreover, the public needs to be more aware of things like this.  Every time an individual walks into a building or drives on a bridge, they are entrusting their very lives to engineers.  Let’s say all you do downtown on a given day is walk into a building to use the restroom.  How do you know that the HVAC system won’t kill you?  At the Bellevue-Stratford hotel, the engineers designed the intake air to be in the proximity of the condensation pooling, thus concentrating what is otherwise a fairly innocuous bacteria called Legionella to a finally fatal concentration to the occupants.

We’ll go in a sort of flow of consciousness fashion under headings for purposes of clarity, and rather than clutter the analysis with links, a series of source URLs will be posted at the end.  I will use information from those sources.  Understand that this puts us at the disadvantage of trusting what may be later learned to be erroneous information.

Final Pressure

Computation of the final pressure upon destruction of the vessel is fairly easy, but then fairly complicated, depending upon how precise you want to make it.  Under normal conditions, many mechanical engineers use a simple rule for conversion, i.e., 0.433 psi/ft.  This comes from the STP (standard temperature and pressure) value of 62.4 lbm/ft³ / 144 in²/ft² = 0.433 psi/ft.  So assuming that the vessel imploded at 4000 meters, this converts to 3.28084 ft/m ⋅ 4000 m = 13,123 ft, but we’ll use 13,000 feet.  The pressure at that depth is 13,000 ft ⋅ 0.433 psi/ft = 5629 psi.  This will be seen to be important later.

True enough, this is a simplification.  The assumption of 62.4 lbm/ft³ is at STP, and water becomes more dense down to 39.2 ºF (also, there is a compressibility factor for water to be incorporated).  So as the temperature of the water decreases and the pressure increases, the water will become more dense.  If asked to solve this more precisely, I would use the ASME steam table data and enter it into TableCurve-2D, then use the fit and coefficients it gave me to enter into MathCAD or JupyterLab for integration.  Another option might be just to solve the equations of state.  But the resultant value wouldn’t be much different than the one above.

Hull Fabrication

OceanGate apparently used a mixed composite of carbon and Titanium fibers wound with adhesive to construct the hull.  Whether this is a good design notwithstanding, the vessel had been to approximately this depth before.  Apparently, the assumption was that if it was safely done once, it can be safely done again.  But that doesn’t account for deformation where the crystalline structures slip, discontinuities form along grain boundaries, and you go beyond mere elastic deformation to loss of material strength.  The operations manager wanted NDE (non-destructive examination) to be performed on the hull and viewport (we’ll get to the viewport shortly).  The CEO responded that there was no NDE that could possibly be successful on this design, an assertion I flatly deny.  The chief of operations was fired because of his concerns.

Viewport

From all available sources, it is apparent that the viewport was designed and certified down to a depth of 1300 meters, not 4000 meters.  I have found no information to contradict this.  This was perhaps the largest concern that the operations manager had.  The viewport material is essentially Plexiglas.  He wanted the viewport to be redesigned by the same company to be worthy and certified down to the same depth as the hull, of course, assuming the hull hadn’t sustained plastic deformation.  As the analyst says in the video I embed at the end, this is the most egregious failure of all.  I agree.  I would assess that it’s mostly likely that the catastrophic failure the Titan sustained was caused by the viewport.  It was previously stated by the CEO that each time he descended to that depth, the viewport deformed several inches inward.  Whether that was plastic deformation or not is unknown, but that’s what NDE might have determined.

Construction & Vessel Closure

Videos I have seen showed no concern for FME (foreign material exclusion) during either fabrication of the vessel or closure of the aft end (done externally, I’m assuming, with torquing passes on the bolts).  Foreign material in any of these design materials or in the closure head would of course completely negate any engineering analysis done on the vessel.

NDE

I am not an NDE engineer, but I know a bit about it.  There are many kinds of NDE: visual examination, eddy current testing, acoustic testing, dye penetrant testing, radiograph, ultrasonic testing.  Of these, I would surmise that UST would be effective, and I know for certain that radiograph would be a successful test of the hull, and I assume the viewport (I am less certain on the viewport, but the viewport may be an easier test by other means anyway).  Cobalt-60 is a commonly used radionuclide for radiography.  Grabbing David Kocher, ORNL/NUREG/TM-102, Co-60 emits two photons at 100% yield, 1.173 Mev and 1.332 MeV.  For simplification (so I don’t have to interpolate), we’ll use 1 MeV for our calculations.

Using ANSI/ANS-6.4.3, the mass attenuation coefficient for carbon at 1 MeV is 6.352E-2 cm²/g.  After doing research in which I found that most carbon fibers are being sold at around 1.5 g/cm³ density, I decided to conservatively use 2 g/cm³ to prove my point.  (6.352E-2 cm²/g) ⋅ (2 g/cm³) = μ = Linear Attenuation Coefficient = 0.127 cm(-1).  The hull is approximately 5″ thick ≈ 12.7 cm.  EXP(-0.127 ⋅ 12.7) = 0.1993.  Thus, 20% of the emitted photons would have completely penetrated the hull, and this doesn’t include buildup (in other words, these simple attenuation calculations assume death of the particle at first collision, but there are always follow-on particles).  Yes, there is a better way to do this calculation, i.e., with Monte Carlo transport analysis.  But doing so wouldn’t change the basic point.

Radiography would most certainly have been a successful means of NDE for the vessel.  After all, we perform radiography of pressure vessel nozzle welds in nuclear power plants.  I assess the claim made by OceanGate to be completely false, perhaps due to ignorance, perhaps because they didn’t have any safety culture to speak of.

Thoughts on What Engineering Is and Is Not

It is the solemn duty and responsibility of engineers to protect the safety and health of the public.  There are dishonest and corrupt actors in every profession, of course, but they are to be called out, shunned, and their license revoked.

Designing a vessel that can go to a shipwreck and view the remains may be fun, challenging, and motivating.  Doing it, whether successfully or not, is not engineering.  It’s clear from the words of the CEO himself that he held a low view of both safety and highly experienced analysts.  But it’s precisely those people he needed to hold him and the project accountable to proper engineering principles.

It’s also not engineering if you solve an ODE (ordinary differential equation).  Second year calculus students do this all day, every day, all across the globe.  That’s called mathematics.  Engineers use math a lot, but doing math doesn’t make you an engineer, and certainly not a good one.

If you want to understand the life of an engineer, consider that ODE in a different context.  A client asks you to solve an ODE for him to model a chemical or nuclear system.  To begin with, all equations need input.  Solving symbolically does him no good.  That input might be correct, or it might not be, and might be based on instrumentation that doesn’t have the range it needs, or left in the field in harsh conditions or not inspected and calibrated on regular intervals.  A simple field walkdown of the instrumentation the client is trusting indicates that workers are using impulse lines as ladders to get to valves above the instrument.  The impulse lines are bent or broken.  Thus, the engineer cannot trust that instrument.

The engineer must correct this with the client.  He must ensure that there is a calibration done on regular intervals, and he must also understand whether the inputs he has been given are normal operating conditions or transient conditions, and what happens when the system is not operating as intended.  The system is out of specification.  How does that effect his calculations?  What are the consequences of those out-of-normal operating conditions?

You see, he is responsible for every possible use of the system he’s modeling.  He must make that clear to the client, must document each and every assumption and engineering judgment in his file, and then write a document that, in today’s expectations, looks more like a book with footnotes, references, reference page numbers, and possible use of alternative methods to arrive at his results (if he used forward differencing in EXCEL, what does JupyterLab tell him and how well does it benchmark?).  Did he find errors in his work?  Did he find any computational instability due to numerical stiffness of the equations?  How did he document and display his results?  Can the client use it without confusion, or worse, mistakes and errors that may lead to personnel or equipment safety problems?

Next, on to the PowerPoint presentation of results to the client, along with recommendations for corrective actions, field notes and observations, and statements of liability.  After all, the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse occurred due to deviations the construction company made from the drawings and specifications.  But our engineer knows that the engineering firm was held responsible for not knowing that, and their errors and omissions insurance had to come to the rescue.

Unless there is complete and total traceability of inputs, references, communications, instrument calibrations, SSC (structure, system and component) qualifications and environmental conditions throughout the entire SSC train, no engineering has been done.  I repeat.  Unless these things obtain, engineering has not been done.  Someone is pretending to be an engineer, but he’s not doing engineering.

These are lessons every engineering student learns in their classes all the way through school.  But incorporation of these principles takes time and experience, and rarely if ever have I seen a student fresh out of any school, regardless of pedigree or extent of education, display these attributes.  This approach has to be trained into people.  That’s the value of age and experience.

The CEO had a low view of that, apparently leading to confirmation bias.  Because I’ve done it before, I can do it again.  Chain of SSC qualifications (is the viewport qualified to the same depth as the hull), testing to detect plastic deformation, understanding material fatigue, spending a bit more money to ensure that proper engineering principles have been followed, obtaining fully independent review of his design – these are all things that were apparently not motivating or exciting or inspiring to him.  The fact that this craft had a fairly new design schema doesn’t negate the need for review by experienced engineers – it increases it.  The principles of physics, mathematics and engineering are timeless.

I am not saying that doing any or all of this would have prevented the implosion.  I am saying that this vessel was not “engineered.”  It was fabricated and set to voyage, but it was not engineered.  The company also apparently marketed this vessel as having industry and academic involvement that it didn’t have.

I assess this failure to likely have been preventable, and the company negligent.  Unfortunately, this will probably take its place as a case study alongside other engineering disasters like the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, Union Carbide Bhopal disaster, the Texas A&M bonfire disaster, and the Tacoma Narrows bridge failure.

UPDATE: Source.

New evidence continues to strongly suggest that OceanGate’s submersible, which catastrophically imploded and killed all five passengers on its way to the wreck of the Titanic last week, unfit for the journey.

Arnie Weissman, editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly, initially agreed to join the June expedition, the Washington Post reports, but backed out at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict. A May dive he was supposed to go on also was canceled due to bad weather.

A conversation he had with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush the night before the expedition, however, still haunts him to this day.

According to Weissman, Rush had bought the carbon fiber used to make the Titan “at a big discount from Boeing,” because “it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes.”

In other words, Rush knew that the carbon fiber — which is a very poor choice of material for a deepsea vessel, as many experts have pointed out — already potentially had flaws that could’ve played a role in the Titan’s tragic demise.

It’s yet another indication that Rush and OceanGate cut alarming corners in the development of the sub. In fact, experts had been warning them for years that building such a vessel while dismissing any efforts to have it qualified and tested by experts and regulators is a very bad idea.

Even after his death — Rush himself was on board during last week’s implosion — the CEO’s poor decision-making and rejections of prioritizing safety are starting to come to light.

“I responded right away, saying, ‘Don’t you have any concerns about that?'” Weissman told the WaPo, recalling his conversation about Rush’s decision to use expired carbon fiber for the hull of the Titan. “He was very dismissive and said: ‘No, it’s perfectly fine. Having all these certifications for airplanes is one thing, but the carbon fiber was perfectly sound.'”

Meaning what, exactly?  Certifications for aircraft are fine, but not necessary for sea craft?  Anyway, I don’t know how Boeing (or the manufacturer of the carbon fibers) ascertains a shelf life.  But this exchange goes to show a cavalier and dismissive attitude towards SSC certification and traceability.  I continue to believe the most likely failure point was the viewport, certified as we discussed above down to 1300 meters, or < 2000 psi.  If I was the manufacturer of the viewport, at this point in the warranty I would get very, very precise with my calculations of depth, temperature/density assumptions, and pressure, as well as fold in margin of safety.

UPDATE #2: U.S. Coast Guard Launches Investigation into Titan Submersible Implosion.

The U.S. Coast Guard has announced the launch of an investigation into the implosion of the Titan submersible that killed the five people on board.

The Deseret News reported that the Titan lost communications with the Canadian research ship Polar Prince about an hour and 45 minutes after the dive initially began and that the U.S. Navy heard a potential implosion of the submersible on June 18.

The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation is looking into the case and is set to include officials “from Canada, France and the United Kingdom as they look into what caused the deadly implosion,” according to CBS News.

[ … ]

The Guardian reported that some questions being asked following the incident included questions about “the craft’s experimental design, safety standards and lack of certification” for the submersible.

“My primary goal is to prevent a similar occurrence by making the necessary recommendations to advance the safety of the maritime domain worldwide,” chief investigator Capt. Jason Neubauer said, according to ABC News.

[ … ]

Axios reported that Neubauer said that officials investigating the incident “are taking all proper precautions on site if we are to encounter any human remains.”

No human remains will be found.  Without trying to be ghoulish, the bodies have been incinerated and torn apart.  This is what happens when engineers don’t do their job.  However, this development does expand the potential scope of legal liability for the company, as well as cause pause to consider potential charges depending upon the outcome.

UPDATE #3:

A comment points to this photo.

NEW: photo reveals the monitor in the doomed Titanic sub was *screwed into* the carbon fiber hull… 😳 pic.twitter.com/0mrxf8gTCb

— LeGate🇺🇦 (@williamlegate) June 23, 2023

I would have to know more about how the interior inner lining was attached to the hull before I commented on it.  If there is a compressible barrier (such as cork) and the hull doesn’t sustain a lot of deformation, it’s possible this modification to the lining makes no difference.  However, if the lining becomes essentially an integral part of the hull and is compressed with it, then the screw holes become a “stress concentration point.”  Every mechanical engineer knows about stress concentrations at keys on shafts, teeth on gears, etc., that cause localized stress to degrade the whole structure.  It probably would have been better if the device was never mounted on anything attached to the hull.

I highly recommend these videos.

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Source 7

Source 8

Source 9

Source 10

Source 11

Many more, too numerous to link.

F&S.

On June 7, a property owner in Virginia filed suit against the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (VDWR) and three conservation officers that work for the state agency. In his lawsuit, filed in Henrico County Circuit Court, Josh Highlander claims that multiple game wardens wearing camouflage entered his private 30-acre parcel without his consent or knowledge—alarming his wife and young son and confiscating a game camera in the process.

Highlander is being represented in his case by the Institute for Justice (IJ), a non-profit Arlington-based law firm with a history of backing landowners in private property disputes against state wildlife agencies. According to IJ, the incident occurred on April 8, 2023, the opening day of Virginia’s spring turkey season.

The lawsuit says that Highlander legally harvested a turkey on his property on the morning of April 8 before logging his kill on the VDWR mobile app. It then alleges that, several hours later, three VDWR officers parked their trucks in a cul de sac, a few hundred yards from the property line, and walked through an adjacent private parcel into Highlander’s woods.

According to Highlander, his wife spotted a camouflaged figure moving through a forested part of the family property that afternoon while playing basketball with their 6-year-old son. When she alerted Highlander to the person’s presence, he said he went outside to check the woods, finding only an empty post where one of his game cameras had been mounted in the middle of a food plot.

Highlander’s brother, Rob Highlander Jr., was cited for hunting turkeys over bait several miles east of Josh Highlander’s property on the same day that the alleged incident took place by one of the officers he is suing. According to the lawsuit, responding agents seized two of Rob Highlander’s trail cameras after issuing those citations.

Rob Jr. is contesting that ticket, saying that he was hunting turkeys on a legal food plot with no bait. He says the bait that the agents accused him of using was actually fresh millet seed that he’d legally spread while replenishing the food plot earlier in the year. Virginia wildlife code defines “bait” as “any food, grain, or other consumable substance that could serve as a lure or attractant.”

When contacted by Field & Stream, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources declined to comment on any specifics related to the “pending litigation.” But VDWR Public Information Officer Paige Pearson confirmed in an email that it is lawful for a Virginia game warden to carry out an active investigation on private property without a warrant—or the consent or knowledge of the landowner—so long as those activities are executed “within constitutional bounds.” It is also lawful, she confirmed, for a warden to deploy game cameras on private property, or to seize game cameras off of private property during an investigation—again, as long as it’s done “within constitutional bounds.”

I don’t even know what that means.  It sounds to me like she is saying that it’s okay to violate the constitution as long as it’s done constitutionally.  So here’s a challenge question for her.  Can she explain what it means to violate the constitution as long as it is within “constitutional bounds?”  Do your homework and provide examples.

“24 And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. 25 This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. 26 And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly. 27 And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him: who, when he was come, helped them much which had believed through grace: 28 For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ.” – Acts 18:24-28

This section of Acts is a tightly-knit example of discipleship to us today. View it in this context and not merely as a historical aside.

Introduction.

Not necessarily enjoying character studies from the Bible; nonetheless, we find several important markers in Apollos of a man willing to mature in his faith and serve Jesus Christ. Some folks suspect Apollos wrote the New Testament book of Hebrews. But in any case, he received instruction, verified what he was shown by searching the Scripture, grew thereby, and preached Jesus Christ whithersoever the Lord sent him. That, brethren, is Christianity in a nutshell, as God would lead and have us serve; yield yourself unto God as one who has been made alive from the dead, making yourself an instrument of Christ.

Many are willing to be taught but never verify, with God, the integrity of the instruction. That’s how they end up in Christian-sounding cults. Many are eager to be instructed and do absolutely nothing with what they’ve been taught except enjoy a good feeling. They also err. Worst of all, some folks claim to know all they need, rejecting a love for God’s holy word when they should take it upon their honor to become a lifelong student of the sacred writ.

These few verses from Acts teach us exactly how to grow and serve. You might object, saying that you’re not called to preach, but we are all witnesses for Jesus Christ (Mark 16:15), and how shall you answer the man seeking God except you know His holy word to expound the truth to them more perfectly, as Aquila and his wife did with Apollos? Your faithful service may be the spark by which Holy God raises another Spurgeon, Whitefield, or Edwards! Look at what mighty work Aquila and Priscilla did by spreading the truth of Jesus Christ.

Points of instruction.

First, learn by personal study and seeking sound preaching for the purposes of growing in the faith. Growth is sometimes uncomfortable; get over it; God desires your service, having saved you to walk in the works He has foreordained for you to accomplish, and the kingdom needs you, for what kingdom can flourish with ignorant and slack citizens?

Second, verify in Scripture the accuracy of all teaching, taking no man’s word it, but praying for understanding from holy God alone, searching the Scriptures for yourself. Apollos did, so should you search the Scriptures daily (Acts 17:11); are these things so? He took seriously the public responsibility of carrying the marker Christian with his name.

Thirdly, be a life-long learner of the word of God. Please don’t allow the understanding that you will never comprehend the entire Bible to discourage you. But apprehending the walk of faith rightly, you are blessed never to stop learning, growing, drawing nigh to the throne of God, bringing glory to Christ, and being sanctified for Father God’s great purposes, which we can only see half darkly now, but knowing all will soon be revealed. Apollos learned (Verse 25), and continued to be instructed (Verse 26).

If we knew all the answers, it wouldn’t be faith! It’s an honor to be born again; look at the gift you’ve received, and pray to the Giver that you will walk worthy of your calling in Christ.

Notes from the text.

In verse 24, we find that Apollos is a student of the word of God, mighty in the scriptures. Believing firmly in the providence of Holy God, it seems to us that Apollos was sent to Ephesus for this very reason; to meet and be further trained by Aquila and his wife. The Christian ought to see life as something other than random chance but readily accept the fortuitous meetings that the Lord appoints. And the Lord may also present a negative contact from which to learn. In all these, give thanks unto the Father because He loves you enough to continue enlightening you in the faith. Also, by the foreordination of God, for whatever practical reason Apollos may have perceived he was traveling, the Lord was already making him an evangelist by practice.

Doing what the Lord says is critical for the life of the believer to continue to walk in faith. The whole object of this life in Christ is to live by faith, from initial salvation to serving Him in love and truth, up to the end, in reliance on Him to take us into heaven. Your faith brings glory to the Father through Christ, our Saviour. And your failures prove His will; we often say the will of God is found in the Holy Bible. If you think you’ve heard from God, yet it doesn’t align with Scripture, then be cautious. For Apollos, he was a man of the book.

In verse 25, Apollos is shown as having been instructed yet willing to be further advised and also to teach. Though, being a student of the Old Testament and a disciple of John, he knew that Christ must come, but he lacked complete knowledge of the New Covenant. Sound encouragement for us on this point is found in the duty Apollos took upon himself, and Acts 17:11 also applies.

He had received some formal training, it appears, but as Mark Twain may have said, don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education. Apollos continued to pursue the truth of God’s word, adding more completely to what he had been taught.

Life for the believer is much different on this side of the cross for us, than for the Old Testament saints. We have the historical record of Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And for Apollos, a firm foundation in the Old Testament; though he didn’t have the New Testament, it was being written upon his heart as he received the truth of Jesus Christ from the disciples and apostles. What more excellent advantage have we also to have the New Testament record, yet we do less with it?

We are supposed to share the Gospel with the lost and encourage the saints. Hide the word in your heart that you might not sin against God, but then share it with others that in so doing iron would sharpen iron among the brethren, and sow the seeds of faith by His word among lost souls for they must all hear of Christ our King.

In verse 26, we see again that Apollos is willing to be instructed further, and beyond doubt if he hadn’t heard, Aquila told him that one Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ (1 Corinthians 15:3-4), and the New Covenant had arrived. John 14:1 comes to mind.

These few verses are as much about Aquila and Priscilla as Apollos. They found a man of good faith and taught him in the way of a disciple of Jesus Christ. They did it on purpose with a goal in mind; they took him and expounded unto him the way of God by intentionally training him. It may be that nobody sets about to teach you how to grow in the Lord, but in either case, you must, as Apollos and Aquila did, prepare yourself from Scripture, seek faithful saints from which to learn, and also teach. This section of Acts is a tightly-knit example of discipleship to us today.

Aquila didn’t pursue unwilling subjects to conform them into good little cultural Christians. Sent by God, he found a man, able, willing, and seeking.

In verses 27 and 28, having been converted by grace, Apollos taught and preached with all the more boldness. Even if you only teach a man for a brief season, as Aquila did, or in just a few points of doctrine, you may be setting firm foundations in a future preacher or teacher, missionary, or evangelist. This is serious stuff and oughtn’t to be viewed lightly or pursued haphazardly. All of Heaven desires these things from you, and God will prepare and equip you if, and only if, you will walk by faith, learning from failures as much as from successes, relying on the word of God as your preeminent source and guide.

Conclusion.

Apollos showed publicly, from the Scripture to the lost, that Jesus was the Christ. This requires some things; prayer, knowing the Scripture (study/reading) to present, carrying your bible, and expounding on it to lost souls. Also important is being strengthened and encouraged in the religion by assembling together with other believers. None of this is difficult, but it will take time, commitment, and, most of all, faith.

And so we see the confidence of Aquila, his faithful wife by his side, and Apollos to go where God leads, be taught by others, study the word, and then to go make more disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:18-20).

Source.

The Senate on Thursday rejected a GOP effort to overturn the Biden administration’s new rule on pistol braces.

Republicans say the regulation, which reclassifies pistols as short-barreled rifles if gun owners use the firearm accessory, is an infringement of the Second Amendment and universally supported the measure. The legislation nonetheless failed 49-50 in a chamber that Democrats control.

The legislation was at the center of a conservative revolt earlier this month that ground House business to a halt. A group of hard-line conservatives, upset over the deal House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) struck to raise the debt ceiling, refused to allow the speaker to move any legislation until he agreed to deeper spending cuts than what the White House agreed to last month.

But the dissidents also claimed Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) threatened to pull a vote on the pistol brace measure if its House sponsor, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), opposed a procedural step on the debt ceiling legislation.

Scalise denied he ever made such a threat, and the House passed the resolution days later in a near-party-line vote.

Republicans argue the new regulation, finalized in January by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, infringes on the rights of disabled people who use stabilizing braces. They take issue with the administration’s requirement that pistols with those braces be registered with the federal government or otherwise destroyed.

“The ATF is just a backdoor way to subject pistols to more smothering regulations,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), the resolution’s Senate sponsor, said in a floor speech ahead of the vote.

Democrats counter that the gun accessory, invented in 2012, is a way to circumvent a law on short-barreled rifles that has been on the books for decades and cite mass shootings in which the gunman used a pistol brace.

Earlier this month, the White House pledged to veto the legislation had it passed the Senate.

They could have just argued that the regulation infringes on the 2A and it would have been simpler.

You do realize that this was all optics and show, right?

This was never going anywhere because of the power of the veto.  They could have stopped it cold though, by the power of the purse.

They gave that up when the current House speaker gave Biden most or all of what he wanted and called it a win.  Sorry bunch of people, yes?

They could have shut down the ATF entirely by defunding any of their efforts, but you see, they didn’t want to be responsible for a FedGov shutdown because that might affect national parks in the summer, SNAP payments, and so on.  They would lose votes in the next election, so they wanted to get the vote on the record and be able to campaign on it next time while leaving everything else intact.

McCarthy was responsible for all of this, but he had his helpers.

Thus is the way of things in the house of wickedness among the pit vipers and demons.

BLUF: Both eyes open.

Frankly, the other option never even occurred to me.  You lose your depth and movement perception without both eyes open, and you need both to shotgun.