09:43 – I just got back from walking Colin. This is the first morning this season that was too cool for just a t-shirt, so I wore a light flannel shirt as a jacket. It was 59F (15C) when we left.
People are getting very concerned about how things are going in this country. Not just people who self-identify as preppers, but “regular” people. They don’t think of themselves as preppers, but are starting to prepare for coming bad times. And with what’s going on, who can blame them? What would in the past have been stunning outrages have become commonplace. Rioting, looting, burning, and random shootings of cops and whites have become the norm. And it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse. People rightly perceive that the government isn’t going to protect them from these goblins, so they’d best prepare to protect themselves.
Barbara was talking with one of her friends the other day. She’s a hobby shooter, so I was surprised when Barbara said she’d asked which specific weapons we’d bought for defending ourselves. There’s obviously a quick answer to that question, but answering it properly requires more than just giving her a shopping list. But my short answer for a first choice would be a short-barrel Remington 870, Mossberg 500/590, or Maverick 88 pump shotgun in 12-gauge if she can handle the recoil, or 20-gauge if she can’t. And 100 to 1,000 rounds of mixed slugs and buckshot ammunition. If she already has a suitable pump shotgun for shooting clays, all she needs to do is buy a short open-cylinder barrel and keep it on the shotgun by default, loaded with buck. That, and get some practice in with the heavy loads. There’s a world of difference between shooting light skeet loads and shooting heavy buck/slug loads, and the middle of the night with an intruder threatening you is not the time to discover that difference.
The other good choice is a heavy-caliber pistol. I prefer a 1911-pattern in .45 ACP, but I have no real argument with someone who prefers a revolver. The big advantage of a pistol or revolver–and its only advantage–is that it’s small enough to carry on your person so it’s always available. Otherwise, it’s grossly inferior to the shotgun in every respect that matters. If you’re at home and realize that an intruder is in the house, grab the shotgun, take cover (or at least concealment) behind something substantial, and lie in wait for the intruder to come to you. Shoot from ambush. Wandering around the house looking for the intruder is a good way to get yourself shot.
There it is. In fact, as regards the handgun, I’d pretty much recommend a revolver for the relatively inexperienced people out there; it’s always gonna shoot bullets; it’s easier to take care of; and there is a very good variety of calibers and loads that one could practice with. No yanking slides back and slapping mags in and out; just pull the dam trigga.
But agreed on the shotguns as the primary household defense firearm and very much agreed on not entering your house or apartment when you arrive home and find the door ajar or busted in and certainly not prowling around the place in the dead of night while you’re half-asleep looking for the perp. Have a light handy, either on the weapons themselves or in your hand so you CAN ID the target; after all, it could be one of the kids sleepwalking or just some drunk who wandered into the wrong house (although presumably you locked all your doors and ground-floor windows previously, amirite?)
“People rightly perceive that the government isn’t going to protect them from these goblins, so they’d best prepare to protect themselves.”
That is correct. I just read yet another story yesterday about a woman who called 911 for somebody breaking into her house and an hour later she called them back to tell them she took care of it herself. (Blew the guy away, no expensive court trials, etc.) The police didn’t even show up. That’s becoming more common now, too, and any honest cop over the past forty years would tell you that you’re really on your own; they have no legal obligation to actually “protect and serve.”
“What would in the past have been stunning outrages have become commonplace.”
Exactly, and the ground was prepared for the latest stunning outrages by the previous outrages across many areas of society that were allowed to just slide over the past half-century. Once you show that ANYTHING is permissible and that all things are relative, the sky’s the limit. Most derps can’t handle that level of “freedom.” So now we have tens of millions of derps with zero sense of responsibility or rational thinking and most of them are illiterate, innumerate, and ahistorical, and assume that they’re entitled to anything they want anytime they want and someone else will provide it for them.
Two quick examples: Trillions spent since the 1960s on inner-city “underclass” elements and we’ve seen not only zero progress or improvement, but now they’re rioting again and murdering police officers.
And, we went from “Stonewall” and “gay pride” events and parades, to “civil unions” and then “gay marriages;” does anyone seriously doubt that the next move is to legalized pedophila, incest, bestiality and necrophilia? You think that’s CRAZY? And I must be OFF MY ROCKER completely? Yeah, that must be it.
Oh and just one more; they got away with erasing people like Paul Revere and Robert E. Lee from the skool history books; now they’re ripping down Confederate flags, toppling statues and digging up Confederate generals (like the Royalists dug up Cromwell and the other regicides after the English Civil War). This is, is it not, like unto the old Soviets airbrushing people out of official photographs, the Khmer Rouge toppling Angkor Wat, and the Taliban and ISIS blowing up ancient Christian churches and Assyrian monuments.
Well, the problem really comes down to the fact that half the population are below average in intelligence and most of the remainder are foolish, including a fair percentage of the real high-IQ types.
But at least intelligent fools can rethink their foolishness. The stupid ones are SOL.
BTW, when are we going to see your outline/bios? I’ve been reduced to reading stuff like A. American’s Home series, Crawford’s Lights Out, and so on. Not horrible, but mediocre. I’m really looking forward to the first in your PA novel series.
Cranking along at one or a half-page per day, usually, and often tossing them immediately or the following day. Very anal. I need to get over that; it comes from ancient grad skool crap. My opposite problem is spewing tons of stuff endlessly and having been given four pages to write I’ll unthinkingly and easily produce twenty and they notice finally and tell me to STOP!
I should have some more free time over the next few weeks, as the ball-and-chain will be moving around the country mostly and the pressure of having things ADDED to my five-page To-Do list will ease up (of course she calls on the phone and adds to it anyway).
the problem really comes down to the fact that half the population are below average in intelligence
the problem really comes down to the fact that a significant portion of the population are way below average in intelligence
Fixed it for you.
Have a light handy…
Fishing for flashlight comments, sir? Very childish of you.
as the ball-and-chain…
Careful, sir, you are in the same boat as me, the wimmenz* making all the loot. I usually get a chunkla alongside the head when I say stuff like that.
*I know you’re just kidding, but know how wimmenz can be.
OFD, if you’re serious about cranking out some fiction, give a listen to Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcasts. I don’t like her fiction (what little I’ve read) and suspect I’d dislike her in person* but she has a lot of good, practical tips for plotting, keep yourself focused, what to do if you should be writing but nothing is coming to you, and so on.
There’s also http://www.writingexcuses.com/, which I find harder to listen to for comprehension because I always listen to podcasts while doing something else and WE is several people kicking a single topic back and forth, demanding more attention.
* She’s definitely buying in to the “women are oppressed and suppressed, wah” mantra, despite over half of senior editors and the overwhelming majority of junior editors at the big publishers being female, and the studies showing that Arbitrary Female Author F is more likely to be be picked up by an agent or publisher than Arbitrary Male Author M. She occasionally mentions other SJW tropes, usually just in passing. Ignore all that and focus on the tips, which are usually good.
Here’s an article, Sweden’s Ugly Immigration Problem, that reflects everything we talk about here. Obola has probably printed this and taped it to his mirror as a guide on how to ruin the USA.
Sweden takes in more refugees per capita than any other European country, and immigrants – mainly from the Middle East and Africa – now make up about 16 per cent of the population. The main political parties, as well as the mainstream media, support the status quo. Questioning the consensus is regarded as xenophobic and hateful. Now all of Europe is being urged to be as generous as Sweden.
So how are things working out in the most immigration-friendly country on the planet?
Not so well, says Tino Sanandaji. Mr. Sanandaji is himself an immigrant, a Kurdish-Swedish economist who was born in Iran and moved to Sweden when he was 10. He has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago and specializes in immigration issues. This week I spoke with him by Skype.
“There has been a lack of integration among non-European refugees,” he told me. Forty-eight per cent of immigrants of working age don’t work, he said. Even after 15 years in Sweden, their employment rates reach only about 60 per cent. Sweden has the biggest employment gap in Europe between natives and non-natives.
Take a look at the current rape stats in Norway and Sweden; the vast majority, if not all of them in Norway, are perpetrated by hadji crimmigrants. I think it’s close to 80% in Sweden and 100% in Norway.
Tx 4 the links, Mr. SteveF; cherry-picking useful tips and ideas as I roll along here…
Overcast, dark, foggy and drizzling in Retroville today; after a week of temps near 90 with high humidity. Typical; rocket immediately from high summa into fall. And then fall will be all colorful and brisk and wunnerful, with leaves burning, All Hallows Eve, Thanksgiving and then suddenly we’ll get the Arctic blast of wind and ice and snow. Funny how it doesn’t work that way when it’s supposed to be spring here; Old Man Winter don’t go out quickly or quietly and we get Mud Season in between.
I’ll get to see what mid-October looks like twelve hours northeast of here, though.
With the lower temps forecast, I decided to get one of the projects further along. To wit, construction of the grape arbor.
It was 70 when I woke, and 80 by the time the kids were fed, and I was ready to dig. Dug a nice clean hole, (no formwork for me!) hopefully big enough, and took a break to figure out the concrete to mix. While I’m sitting inside, I realize I’m dripping sweat, have dry mouth, and breathing shallowly. So heat stress. BUT you say, only 80 deg…
Well it kept rising to 90 deg in the shade. Well, that makes sense now.
So I’m one bag short, it’s now 90 in the shade, and family activities call.
I got one hole dug, so sorta win, yea me!
nick
If a person can’t handle the recoil from a full 12 gauge load in a 12 gauge shotgun does it make sense to use something lighter but nearly as effective? If so why would anyone ever buy a 20 gauge shotgun?
Mr. Chuck must be back in action in Germany. I read Germany has halted the incoming masses of Syria-Mooslims. I wonder what the Germans will do when the Mooslims just decide to keep running across the border.
“I wonder what the Germans will do when the Mooslims just decide to keep running across the border.”
Given their current ideological and socialized status my guess is that they’ll have to exhume buried Waffen SS Panzer divisions and augment them with Stuka dive-bombers. It’s so cool when the Stukas turn their sirens on.
And for once, all that deaths’head (totenkopf) insignia will be truth-in-advertising.
Humor for the day, from Chez OFD in Retroville:
Mrs. OFD left on the plane this morning for Milledgeville, Georgia and got down there and pulled out her netbook/laptop only to find she’d grabbed the wrong one, haha. Instead of her Winblows 7 machine she took my Santoku Linux netbook accidentally and called just now for the password. She’ll have to use LibreOffice and run Impress instead of PowerPoint, haha. Only 2GB of RAM and only 2 USB ports.
OFD, I suggest stickers on each laptop’s cover. Mine has a variety of ponies, flowers, and other cutesy stickers*. You could go with a unique pattern of those for each laptop, or go for something boring like “Laptop 1” in red electrical tape.
* The little girls in my daughter’s dance class a few years ago got a sticker at the end of class if they were good. My 5-7 year old daughter took great delight in putting her stickers on my laptop.
“My 5-7 year old daughter took great delight in putting her stickers on my laptop.”
When our daughter was that age, she put stickers on the walls, windows and mirrors. They were all a PITA to get off, too. Also wrote with crayons on the window screens. And when we made her clean her room out in later years, she dumped all her rubbish on our bed. Aren’t daughters wunnerful?
Yeah, I’ll have to put stickers on ’em, I guess, but there’s still no guarantee my Starfleet Academy summa cum laude wife will see them; maybe if I actually spray-paint them….
Meh, the stickers on the laptop didn’t and don’t bother me. The stickers on the car windows…
Our daughter drew on the wall in only one place, for just a day or two. I can’t even blame her for that, because she was only three and Grandma had taped some butcher paper to the wall for the kid to color on, and the kid drew there again after the paper had been removed. Like I said, can’t blame the kid. I do question Grandma’s judgment, though.
“I do question Grandma’s judgment, though.”
As do I up here with our Grandma. And our great-Grandma. All. The. Time.
Rain all day here, alternating light drizzle to steady pounding downpour, with fog on the bay so I couldn’t see the shore road to our south or Lazy Lady Island. If Champ is out there, he’s got the run of the bay with no one likely to see him. Or her.
Whoops, almost committed a micro-aggression there.
Oh crap–I did anyway by mentioning I almost did, in a snarky and sarcastic manner.
Shame on me.
Invasions gonna get stepped up here:
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/09/the-invasion-of-the-west-has-begun/
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/09/america-to-take-in-100000-muslims-be-prepared-for-isis-massacres-to-happen-in-the-us-soon/
“SLL has predicted that the path of equity markets during the gathering crisis would be similar to that of the last one: roller coaster plunges interrupted by occasional madcap rallies precipitated by announcements of various government and central bank schemes (all of which would eventually prove either ineffectual or counterproductive). SLL may be wrong. Belief ran much deeper back then; now it’s hanging by a gossamer filament. When it breaks, the market graph may well look like the drop of a guillotine blade rather than the more typical sawtooth downward progression. In other words, this crash may happen very quickly. Two words to the wise—which includes all those who read SLL—will be sufficient. Be prepared.”
http://straightlinelogic.com/2015/09/12/the-guillotine-blade-by-robert-gore/
This would be my general take on things past and things present and things future:
“As a matter of fact, when things get really sporty in the coming Endarkenment descending on the USSA and the Slave Forces (SLAVFOR) start fighting against the inevitable insurgency that is germinating in the states, watch how well that works out. I assure you it will be much like the bloody Kansas and Missouri conflicts in the South before the War of Northern Aggression where Federal involvement built and motored a southon resistance from scratch with scorched earth tactics.”
http://zerogov.com/?p=4460
But my short answer for a first choice would be a short-barrel Remington 870, Mossberg 500/590, or Maverick 88 pump shotgun in 12-gauge if she can handle the recoil, or 20-gauge if she can’t. And 100 to 1,000 rounds of mixed slugs and buckshot ammunition.
Is a 20 gauge an effective weapon for this 55 year old wimp XXXX guy? I’ve never shot a shotgun, always rifles and pistols. Can my wife shoot a 20 gauge? Can you take down a MZB with a 20 gauge?
Yes to all. A 20 with buckshot throws a lighter load at a bit lower velocity than a 12. It’s effective out to maybe 35 to 40 yards, versus maybe 45 to 50 for the 12.
And rifled slugs will extend that range in both calibers another fotty yahds, roughly. This is where ghost ring sights are nice, or even a See-All sight or red-dot optic. But for inside the domicile and twisting around corners and up and down stairs, a pistol-grip .20-gauge is just the ticket.