“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” – Ephesians 4:32

The last phrase of that final verse of Ephesians four is astounding and so very plain. It truly can only be arrived at through childlike faith. If reading along in your bible, it’s easy to miss as you finish the chapter and close the book, but this truth is at the centrality of the doctrine of soul salvation. Of course, the context of the later part of Ephesians four, from verse 20 onward to 32, is critical instruction for the Christian believer, discussing personal effort, putting off your former self, and allowing the Lord to continue His sanctification of you. A man born afresh by the Spirit of God ought to recompense to the brethren all these duties mentioned and more. Give no place to evil speaking or doing. Grieve not the Holy Spirit, verse 30 says.

But found so simple and proper are those few words toward initial faith in Christ at the end of verse 32. Don’t miss it; God did not save you because of you, or because of anything about you, or because of anything you’ve done, said, promised, confessed, nor anyplace you’ve joined in whichever ceremonies or rites you may partake; God, for Christ’s sake alone, because He loves His son, is the sole reason the Father has granted you reprieve and given you to His only begotten.

Salvation is not about you; it’s not for you, and it’s not because of you; it’s all for Jesus Christ.

Oh, the unmerited favor of God who, by grace in salvation, calls men to Christ. God forgave you for Christ’s sake, giving you to Jesus as His Church, the body, for He loves His Christ. Not because of you; what is a man such as you to God and Christ? But God gave you to be the bride of His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. You are the inheritance of Jesus Christ, for His own good pleasure; not for your sake, but entirely by miracle has your faith arrived unto conversion that Christ be magnified among men, hallowed in the highest to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. The degree to which you are blessed by God to be converted for His purposes, chosen in Him, is immeasurable.

On the verge of tears, there’s no way to adequately describe the depths of God’s mercy to be numbered among those forgiven. The complete degree is unknowable; who can reconcile such an act, that God would glorify His Son, and you being what, a hapless stranger alienated from the commonwealth of God, struggling in the toil of daily grind full of labor when God out of heaven called you to His Son. Who are we to complain or object or refuse anything He asks, now living in the freedom of Christ as the gift of His Father? To sound the depths of this blessing is impossible; it’s much too far for a man to understand what it is to be pardoned because he is given to Christ.

God made man in the first place for His own great purposes; male and female created He them; and blessed them. And He formed you, and breathed into your nostrils the breath of life; and you became a living soul, sentient, aware of Him. But the world is filled with liars telling men to be their own gods, the center of it all; humanism is a contagious viral cancer consuming the West and profoundly damaging the Church. Is He the holy Creator, owner of all that is, sovereign in the purposes of His actions and will, knowing and ordering the beginning from the end of all things, or is He less than a man?

The feast is polluted, soiled, and having spots; a plague of leprosy is among us. Most Christians are trained to think of God as their cosmic butler. Manpleasers, false teachers have beguiled us, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Biblical Christianity requires a logically consistent world-life view and a conformable understanding of who God is. The fact is that you are a slave to Christ and not your own, but bought with a price in blood to bring glory to Him, and for no other purpose at all do you now draw breath.

The Lord would tuck you under His wings, cover you with His feathers, be your shield and buckler; “how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” The river runs its course, yet the ocean is not overflowing; the wind on her circuit returns all things, bringing a whirlwind, yet you still have not. When will God’s people stop asking for worldly gain and stuff but again cry unto God; quicken me for thy name’s sake, for thy righteousness, here am I God; send me.

When the twoedged sword of conviction by the Spirit arrives, it convinces us of our unrighteousness and the totality of the perfect righteousness that is Christ our Lord. Righteousness is the quality or state of being morally correct and justifiable – without guilt or sin. Born in sin, you were not and are not righteous, but Christ was, is, and will forever be the sinless Holy One. In Christ is the only place of uprightness for the sinner.

Not because of your righteousness: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” – Romans 3:10. And again: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” – Isaiah 64:6.

Not by any measure of your own works: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” – Titus 3:5

Not by the keeping of any religious rules or law, which only condemn for sin: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” – Romans 3:20.

Not by your religion, for a million blood sacrifices to God over millennia were still not enough: “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” – Hebrews 10:4

But the only hope of men is the offering of the Lamb of God to die on the cross that He might receive those who, by faith, Father God has given. And Jesus rose from the grave, ascending to the Father, preparing His bride over generations for His return to claim what is rightfully His. Holy Father, God gave those whom Christ would convert through faith at His will, not for your sake, but for Christ’s. By no deserving acts of your own, the full measure of the miracle of soul salvation is unknowable to the mind of man. It truly is a grant that you, not of your power, but that God would use you to bless His faithful Son, Jesus Christ.

No man shall boast; salvation is a gift of God. Only Jesus Christ is righteous: love God and have mercy on the brethren, even as God, for Christ’s sake, hath forgiven you.

This looks tough, mostly because it requires continued concentration over time. There’s a downloadable target as well.

This is a test that I got from a range officer at the NRA range one night. I showed it to Todd who liked it more than I did. He figured out that it originally came from David Blinder at personaldefensetraining.com. I don’t know when David put this together, but IPSC shooters have told me they were doing this test in the early 90’s. It has taken on a life of its own and I have to admit, I can’t figure out why. It is a very inefficient way to practice anything, as it is a test. It isn’t hard for a good shooter, though it will obviously be difficult for someone new to handgunning. If you can clean this, then you have gotten what you need and should move on to something more productive. You can certainly push the distance back and try again. Todd cleaned it at 7 yards and was trying for 10 yards when last we spoke about it. I will also add that though Todd liked this test, we never shot it more than very occasionally during the years we trained together. As I said, I don’t favor this for anything, as I can use those 50 rds in much better ways, but it seems to be incredibly popular with recreational shooters. If you enjoy it, that’s great, but there are much better drills available on the rangework page if you are trying to get better.

Start at 3 yards. You have to get all 50 hits to pass. Once you can shoot the whole drill without a single miss, either increase the distance or add time pressure. For instance, try to finish the entire drill in under 5 minutes while maintaining 100% accuracy.

As always, the specific drill, procedure, and scoring are the link.

Also,  Cornered Cat, an excellent resource for beginners and intermediate shooters, covered a version of this drill several years ago.

Pretty interesting stuff. Pictures of each are provided.

Vietnam gave America the first taste of modern asymmetric warfare. We faced a guerilla force and quickly learned that nation-building and fighting a guerilla force is nearly impossible. We later forgot and waged a 22-year war in the middle east without getting much accomplished. In this article, I won’t get too deep into foreign policy failure, but I will dive deep into the world of the weird weapons we saw come out of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam was a brutal place. It was dense jungles, cities, creeks, rivers, and coasts. It created a very diverse and difficult environment for a modern fighting force that was more or less designed for the European theatre of warfare. Southeast Asia, mixed with guerilla warfare, created an environment that required creativity. The folks behind weapons design in the United States were certainly creative and gave us some interesting solutions to interesting problems. Here are some of the weird and creative weapons of the Vietnam War.

Stealth was the order of the day, including a tunnel rat revolver I’d never seen.

I could never imagine being a tunnel rat. Having to crawl into a small tunnel likely made by hand in the middle of a war zone would be terrifying. The tunnel rats would go down these hotels with an M1911, a moonbeam, and a prayer. The M1911 was fine, but the tight quarters often challenged its reliability due to the reciprocating slide in ultra-tight quarters. With that in mind, the military developed the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver.

The idea wasn’t to just give tunnel rats a more reliable weapon, but they would give them a weapon that was easier to use in close quarters overall. The revolver used specially designed ammunition that used an integrally suppressed ammunition known as 10mm QSRP. This round fired 12 pellets, much like buckshot, and was designed to help the shooter fight in situations where aiming was tough.

The QSPR used a Model 29 as its core design, cut the barrel down to nearly nothing, and re-chambered to fit the 10mm QSPR. These were distributed in Vietnam in short numbers. A Ranger team even scored a kill with one, according to an official report. The war ended before they could be widely fielded, and they faded away after the war.

And many others, such as the Remington Model 7188 and the Stoner 63, are also covered.

This smells like an NRA bait and switch, offering a carrot to a select few, while the real purpose is general gun control. The Tennessee special session of the legislature for gun control is now being held. It was called by Governor Bill Lee because he’s probably being paid off. It’s always about the money with politicians. Of course, mad cat ladies against guns have taken a break from drinking box wine to be there, along with “covenant moms” weeping on cue for the cameras. Throw in the added effect of staged ejections by the self-proclaimed pious (probably paid) demonstrators, and it’s all so very tiresome. Suffrage is ruinous.

Both GOP-sponsored bills that advanced in the House Civil Justice Subcommittee would open the door to people other than law enforcement officers having guns in schools.

One measure would let a teacher or school staff member carry a concealed handgun after completing 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, as well as passing a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

It would be up to the local district whether to let employees carry firearms under the legislation sponsored by Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville and Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta.

But the school’s parents and students would not have to be notified under this legislation, which runs counter to the GOP’s emphasis on parental rights and notification in other areas of education, such as curriculum and library materials.

A second bill would allow a person with an enhanced permit, which requires eight hours of training, to carry a handgun openly or concealed in any K-12 public school building, campus, or bus. The proposal also would apply to law enforcement officers and military personnel, whether on duty, off duty, or retired.

The bill, sponsored by Bailey in the Senate and Rep. Chris Todd of Jackson, is opposed by Lee’s administration, which budgeted an extra $140 million this spring to place a full-time, armed officer in every public school in the state, beginning this school year.

Todd countered that many schools still don’t have SROs because of a shortage of law enforcement officers. And he noted that private schools already can set policies so that some employees carry handguns.

Several citizens spoke against any measures that would place additional burdens on teachers.

Sarah Shoop Neumann, a parent at The Covenant School, said she believes the tragedy would have been worse if teachers had focused on anything but keeping students safe in their classrooms as the shooter walked the hallways.

Fighting back tears, she recounted conversations with Covenant teachers who described how their hands shook while they worked to keep their students quiet, hidden, and secure.

“They are heroes,” she said. “They enacted every protocol in place perfectly, and they could not have done those things if they were also meant to be armed and go out and attack the shooter.”

[…]

Currently, special session business is scheduled through Thursday, although leaders could extend it several more days.

Also Tuesday, three bills to create so-called extreme risk protection orders failed in the same House subcommittee where members of the public were kicked out. Those bills, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Bob Freeman of Nashville, would allow courts to order temporary removal of firearms from people at risk of hurting themselves or others.

I don’t trust any of this. Never trust a politician with life, rights, liberties, or money. I won’t believe this is over until the lights are off and doors locked, and then I, along with millions of other Tennesseans, will hate Governor Lee forever for even thinking of calling this special session. I never trusted him from the time he told me that police would have to be consulted about the feasibility of Constitutional Carry, as though the king’s armed guard grants rights. Many prominent people are saying this special session stunt has finished his career. All he had to do was nothing.

Authorities said the 28-year-old shooter at the Covenant School was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder” and had legally obtained multiple weapons.

Sodomites don’t have an emotional disorder; they have a devil!

F&S.

On the other hand, every horse is an individual, strong or weak, stupid or smart, slow or fast, placid or panicky. Moreover, horses respond to how well or poorly you ride them. If you saw at the reins, yank on the bit, flop around in the saddle, or kick constantly, you will soon be riding a very unhappy horse who will be thrilled to scrape you off its back by way of a low tree limb.

Horses are flesh and blood, and wear out. The average elk-hunt cayuse will probably be close to exhaustion by the time you get him, leg-weary and suffering from weeks of a poor diet. Have a heart and don’t beat on him. On the other hand, many horses loaf when they can get away with it, and a tap with a Field Expedient Equine Motivational Device (a switch, which you cut) will remind him of where his duty lies.

Horses are subject to panic attacks. For much of their history, they were what was for dinner, and so if something spooks them, they react instantly, either by kicking, or bucking, or stampeding. If you’re in the saddle when this happens, you’re in trouble. I’ve never known anyone who spent a lot of time with horses and did not get bashed, but good, at some point. Getting bashed is part of the mule vs horse equation no matter which side you take, but in my experience, horses employ a wider variety of ways to bash you.

The mule is a hybrid, produced by mating a male donkey, or jack, with a lady horse. Mules were familiar 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, and were originally imported and bred in America by George Washington, who was first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen, and first to ask “Why don’t we have mules?”, and do something about it.

Most mules weigh between 800 and 1,000 pounds. They come in all colors and can range way above or below those weights depending on the size of their dams. The creatures benefit from a phenomenon known as hybrid vigor; they inherit the best qualities of both the horse and the donkey. The list of ways in which mules outshine horses is so long as to be embarrassing.

Mules are stronger than horses. They can carry more weight and carry it farther without breaking down. During World War II, pack mules served the U.S. Army in Sicily, Italy, and the China-Burma-India Theatre, wherever there were mountains that Jeeps could not navigate and heavy loads that had to be carried over them. In Korea, the U.S. Army ignored mules, but the Chinese Army did not, and our G.I.s used captured mules, feeding them the cereal packets from their own rations. Special Forces used mules in Afghanistan, and at one point SF troopers could take a course in mule management at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

There are reasons for all this.

• Mules are smarter than horses (which is not all that difficult) and have better memories.
• They can subsist on less feed than a horse, and poorer feed.
• Their hooves are smaller, and harder, than a horse’s, and mules are much surer-footed.
• They can work in heat that would founder a horse.
• Mules live longer than horses and are more resistant to disease.
• If you treat them with kindness, they’ll bond with you in a way that horses won’t.

Mules don’t react to the world in the way that horses do. In the face of perceived peril, a mule will not panic and go thundering over a cliff. He will stop and think about the situation, and if he decides that whatever is afoot might be dangerous he will go no further. Mules, I’ve been told, will never do anything that might hurt them, and their legendary stubbornness is actually a form of self-preservation. (Mules will also balk if they’re confused or have no idea what you want them to do.)

I love horses, but I’ve ridden a mule before at the Grand Canyon (horses were too skittish to use near the big drops), and let me tell you, they are much bigger and stronger than horses.  Yea, a bit slow to react to neck reigning, but still mine was responsive to me because of my time training quarter horses, and there isn’t any situation where I had heavy weight to carry out West or up North where I wouldn’t rather have a mule with me.

Guns Magazine.

“We’re mighty proud of it,” said Mark Gurney. “But it’s not a Ruger Marlin. It’s a Marlin.”

[ … ]

In July, 2020, Remington filed for its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy in two years. That fall, Judge Clifton R. Jessup, Jr. of the Northern District of Alabama approved the sale of Remington’s non-Marlin firearms business to the Roundhill Group for $13 million. Ruger got Marlin for $28.3 million.

Ruger’s intent? Use lean manufacturing methods to build traditional Marlin lever rifles to original or higher standards of quality. Quite a task! Ruger CEO Chris Killoy and VP Mickey Wilson had visited Ilion before 2020’s auction. A prompt move was imperative; winter was in the wings. Ruger’s engineers arrived to plan extraction of 40,000-lb. loads, take the measure of tooling to be transferred and ready it for the 650-mile journey. The destination was Ruger’s Mayodan, N.C. plant, where the company builds most of its bolt-action American rifles and its AR-556.

In November, Darryl Freeman, facilities chief at Mayodan, kept decommissioning crews working overtime to accomplish a two-month job in one. They did — finishing December 9 just as snow came to Ilion. The 150 tractor-trailer loads included 450-odd pallets of unfinished and out-of-spec parts. At its new digs, Marlin would be assigned a 105×180-foot cell bringing parts in a compact loop through 53 steps in lever-rifle manufacture. Materials would be fed and people stationed to make the most efficient use of space and movement.

Bruce Rozum, whom I knew when he’d headed R&D at Marlin, had moved to Ruger’s Newport, NH as chief engineer. Now he tapped North Haven’s auto-CAD drawings to design a hybrid production model holding CNC tolerances of 0.002″ on a rifle developed 125 years ago.

I remember this, and honestly I simply do not get the sentiment that it’s a Marlin, not a Ruger.  I cannot fathom why the Marlin brand would not want to be associated with a great firearms manufacturer like Ruger, and I also cannot fathom why Ruger wouldn’t get a great deal of credit for having the vision to bring back the Marlin brand, make it better, and give customers what they wanted.

It’s a Ruger Marlin.  That’s good enough for me.

There isn’t anything off limits.  The core doctrine of the progressives is to un-empower you, and that means disarm you.  Oh, they have other doctrines, but they all depend upon and are corollary to disarmament.

They are controllers, and they can’t fully control you if you are armed.  Someone once said “This is all designed to break the bonds of dependency and love between families and church, cause feelings of isolation, and create dependency on the government.  At its root, it is the wicked desire to control other people.  The tools of control are loneliness, poverty and isolation.  Community becomes government.  The desire to control others is the signal pathology of the wicked.”

That is one huge black bear.

This is an utterly fascinating video, and may be the first of a kind.  I spend time finding fascinating things for you that enable learning about nature, and machines and their operation, especially firearms. I hope you appreciate it. This apparently is a recent encounter in Yellowstone.

Believe it or not, the black bear backed down the grizzly, with the grizzly even running from the black bear.  For a while.  The grizzly eventually came in for the food, with the black bear wandering off (probably when he figured out that there would be a fight and someone would get hurt – which incidentally is probably the reason the grizzly ran from the black bear to begin with).  They were both wise bears that day.

Mark Smith outlines it all for us.  BLUF: 37 legal briefs in the Rahimi case trying to persuade the SCOTUS to back off of the Bruen standard.

The communists see this as their big chance to water down the Bruen test (analogous laws on the books and enforce at the time of the founding) and attempting to return the Supreme Court to tiers of scrutiny.

We’ll see, but I’ve made my prediction known.  The women on the court (including Roberts) water down Bruen and side with the communists.

This is cool.  A dog with four prosthetic legs takes a walk with a girl with one prosthetic leg.

Who would do something like this to a dog?  I suggest that we do the same thing to the jerk who had this idea.  It has a nice ending.

@waldosrescue The story of Braveheart is a good one ❤️ #adoptdontshop #petsoftiktok #rescue #rescuedog ♬ Little Bit More – Suriel Hess

That reader The Alaskan is always talking about how dangerous bears are.  He just needs to get a grip and brush those gentle giants like this lady.

A gang of Baboons let a bit cat know what’s what.  Numbers were the great equalizer in this case as I suspect in many others.

Good guy with a leash takes a shelter dog on a day out.  Hey, I know that place very well.  The walk by the river is very beautiful.

@aguyandagolden

We broke this defeated dog out of the shelter for out weekly Shelter Dog Saturday series. You can find him st Anderson County Paws.

♬ Oceans – Instrumental – Marcelo Cacilias

Ape gets freaked out by a Hedge Hog.

Why haven’t you given him a pool party before now?

People can teach birds to do a lot of things.  Please, please don’t teach them to dance to rap.

Good boy.