Handgun shooting stance

When did law enforcement/military transition from teaching proper pistol technique from one-hand-the-gun, the-other-hand-on-the-hip to the present two-hands-on-the-gun?

Female police recruits receive handgun training
in the early 1900s.

Was there any particular reason for this? Steadier holding of the firearm seems most likely, especially at longer range, with the new stance. Perhaps harder for an opposing person to snatch a gun from someone holding with both hands.

But quicker acquisition of target, quicker move to shooting stance, and less propensity to tunnel vision seem benefits of the old school practice. You also have a hand free to help repel and attacker, or to use in a blocking motion while bringing a handgun to bear on an attacker, with the old school method. You can keep that free hand prepositioned near a spare mag or speed loader. And shooting single handed allows you to present a lower profile for an adversary to target.

Having my earliest instruction under the guidance of WWII and Korean vets, I initially learned the single hand approach. I've mostly shot two handed the past decade or more, but at times just feel more comfortable going old school.

Having proficiency as a one handed shooter also has advantages if one hand is impaired by a hand or arm injury. Isn't that why military fliers were often issued revolvers instead of semi-autos as survival guns? Semi-autos typically require a second hand to work a slide.

Also wondering if hotter pistol loads played part in the push toward two handed shooting.

Why the questions? I'm watching an old Civil Defene newsreel on TCM... and they're showing volunteer "auxilary police" being trained one handed.

Pretty damn funny, actually, that Turner Classic Movies is probably the only U.S. TV or cable channel airing CD training films.

Hillary Clinton claim vindicated

Highly recommend this video, especially if you're on your second or third cocktail of the evening...

"Being 'cool' counts"

Use more "f**king dumb" gimmicks to target young voters, said Democrat strategist in advising the Clinton campaign.

In the Georgia U.S. senate race...

Could not bring myself to vote for Johnny Isakson, so I voted Allen Buckley (Libertarian) instead.

If the senate race goes to runoff between Isakson (Republican incumbent) and Barksdale (Democrat), I might reconsider and vote Isakson, providing Isakson stops acting like a suck-up to the Democrats, and he quits bragging about dozens of anti-Obamacare votes that accomplished absolutely nothing but to make him sound good to the politically naive.

Too bad the Libertarians didn't put up a candidate in my congressional district.

Prepare on warning?

I don't read Rawles as often as I once did. From a prepping perspective, I've usually thought he gave decent advice.

But I gotta say, I think he misses the mark here in suggesting people wait until election day if they think they're gonna need more guns, mags or ammo.

Could be enough confusing stuff going on day after this election. I'd have no plans to be among panicked crowds in a last minute run on shootin' supplies.

Support for "assault weapon" ban drops to record low

So says a new survey by Gallup.

The fewest Americans in 20 years favor making it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles. Thirty-six percent now want an assault weapons ban, down from 44% in 2012 and 57% when Gallup first asked the question in 1996.

Stretched beyond any semblace of credibilty

Via Branco Cartoons at LegalInsurrection.com:

Made me laugh. But there's a dark side too

Obama's last days in office may be the most scary yet.

Hope n' Change Cartoons

Obamacare unraveling

Obamacare was never intended to work. Obamacare is the intermediate step toward single-payer that Obama promised was coming prior to his 2008 election.

The touted Clinton concept of "double position" rules most everything DC does now. It's way so many things out of Washington don't make sense now. The real agenda is cloaked, and political elites seem to put less and less time into their cover stories, assuming that voters are stupid, and will always take their words at face value.

Seen the latest on Obamacare?

Premiums on many Obamacare packages are going up by 25 percent next year. 

How many voters will be smart enough to let this register before they cast a November ballot?

Got Internet?

I'd really like to know who it was last week who thought it would be a good idea to send Joe Biden out front to start talking up cyber-war.

Via Daily Dot:

Is the internet acting weird today? It's not just you. 

A major cyberattack rendered websites and online services inaccessible across the East Coast on Friday morning. The problems later spread across the United States as a result of a second wave of attacks.

Sounding a little more worked up than usual

Paul Joseph Watson takes aim at MSM with smart bomb accuracy...

But be advised, he's also packed this video with a full load of F-bombs and other off-color references, so an NSF advisory is given.

Why do recipes call for peeling apples before frying them? Seems like a terrible waste of time as well as wasting a good part of an apple.

I whipped these up for lunch yesterday, and it would have taken twice as long if I'd taken time to peel.

Didn't really follow a recipe here. Dip of butter, dash of sugar, sprinkle of cinnamon.

I wonder how apples would taste if water was substituted for butter, if I skipped the sugar, and just added a little cinnamon. May have to experiment there. It would certainly be a more trail prep friendly dish.

It's more than just the lying

Hillary Clinton lied again Wednesday night.

But it's more than that.

Clinton endangers U.S. government legitimacy at home and abroad when she plays her self-serving games intended to deliver, at best, short term political gain.

Seventeen national security agencies have not fingered Russia for Democrat email hacks.

Via National Review:

What Clinton said was false and misleading. First of all, only two intelligence entities – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have weighed in on this issue, not 17 intelligence agencies. And what they said was ambiguous about Russian involvement.

Twist and spin

If this is how Hillary Clinton spins a Supreme Court decision, why trust her to appoint justices who might go to similar extremes to twist the Constitution?

Hillary Clinton claimed the Heller decision was about toddlers. It was actually about whether a 66-year-old police officer had the right to keep a gun at home.

Debate

What did I take away from tonight's debate?

Hillary Clinton seemed to spend more time talking about disarming toddlers than terrorists.


Other than that, I didn't really hear anything new. Really didn't hear any knock out punches.


Can't wait to see what the pundits tomorrow will try to convince me I missed tonight.


Update: It's Thursday morning. Missed this last night. Must've been feeding the cat when it happened.

It's this serious

"Hillary Clinton holds the match. The Democrat party owns the gasoline. Both are ready to douse America to burn it down to below its foundation." - Steven Crowder, as reposted at AR15.com

Clinton media pawns up their game

Mind blowing CNN clip.

Viewers being told it's illegal to search Wikileaks hackings on their own...

CNN putting forth the claim that the only legal access for everyday Americans is through authorized media channels, like CNN:



Seems very much the kind of guidance heavy handed regimes used to dole out under the control of the Nazis or the hardest of the hard line commies.

Welcome to this fundamentally transformed USA.


To be fair: If anyone knows of a broader context that was presented by CNN that might otherwise explain the claim presented here, please feel free to forward it.

Old school scanner

It's sitting on a shelf gathering dust for ten to 15 years.

It's an old Radio Shack police scanner I picked up in 1988 when I moved to Atlanta to work as a news reporter. Not a trunk-tracker, but back in the day, it did a pretty good job when eavesdropping on public safety frequencies around Atlanta operating on VHF up to the 800Mhz band.

Problem was, most metro agencies have long abandoned their FM radio transmissions, and moved on to digital formats, many using some types of encryption.

So the radio sat.

Until I brought it up to the mountain last week.

A bunch of the police, sheriffs and fire services in North Georgia appear to still be using FM narrow band radios on VHF frequencies.

Kinda neat to be able to hear police and fire again. Also kinda neat to hear how few transmissions actually go out compared to the non-stop calls I was used to hearing back in the days I monitored urban and close-in suburban agencies.

Reading between the lines

Washington Post Moscow guy dismisses talk that Russia is prepping for major war.

"Are the Russians really preparing for war?" says the WaPo headline.

The article is quite dismissive of the data points he ranks.

So all's well?

The guy completely ignores Russia's call for civilians to return home, and makes no mention of the massive civil defense drill conducted earlier this month.

He also fails to give us any Russian citizen reaction, or how Russian home media spins the blustery pro-war comments Obama's Pentagon brass made last week.

I find the story disconcerting by its omissions.

Reckless beyond belief

Things were already crazy dicey after Gen Mark Milley shot off his mouth last week.

Now some a**hole goes and leaks something like this?

Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging "clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership.

It's like Obama's team's trying to our way into World War Three.

Is Obama trying to fulfill a lame duck death wish for America?

But wait, there's more...

Could the American consumer hold out 60 days if relations with China sour, and China quits shipping us stuff?

Don't worry,  Obama's Pentagon says WW3 will be a quickie.

Wars and rumors of war. Just talk, or is the countdown clock ticking?

I missed this last week. Shame on me for it. Then again, it didn't get much play in U.S. media (MSM has been too busy bashing Donald Trump).

Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, one of the Pentagon's top commanding generals, Thursday week ago took off the gloves, and made clear warnings (some  might say threats) targeted at America's foreign adversaries.

"I want to be clear to those who wish to do us harm … the United States military - despite all of our challenges, despite our tempo, despite everything we have been doing - we will stop you and we will beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before. Make no mistake about that."

Milley was further quoted in in the Military Times:

"While we focused on the counter-terrorist fight, other countries - Russia, Iran, China, North Korea -- went to school on us," he said. "They studied our doctrine, our tactics, our equipment, our organization, our training, our leadership. And, in turn, they revised their own doctrines, and they are rapidly modernizing their military today to avoid our strengths in hopes of defeating us at some point in the future."

I'm told some in our military have taken notice. Milley seems to dismiss the notion of limited war, which has been a doctrine guiding U.S. military strategy since Harry Truman was president. Milley seems to talk total war, and given the diminished stature of U.S. conventional forces, one that might, if not be likely to, involve nuclear weapons.

If conflict between the U.S. and Russia widens, Milley has potentially killed the notion (in the minds of potential adversaries) that the U.S. wants to minimize potential hostilities, or limit engagements to proxy wars. Milley's comments seem to favor the widest, deepest possible clash.

Rather than backing down, there are signs Russia ramps up its defensive posture. Milley's comments apparently preceded Russia's recent unofficial call for its citizens abroad to return home.

Earlier this month, Russia ran a massive civil defense drill, claiming 40 million of its citizens participated. Said to be an annual exercise, it drew high profile coverage in some international press.

Meanwhile President Obama's administration, while escalating war talk, hasn't said word one about protecting American civilians if the war or wars Gen. Milley speaks of come to be.


Related:

Don Dickinson and I discuss Milley's comments, and expand on other aspects of escalating tension between the U.S. and Russia, and why this may be a far more perilous series of events than those experienced in the previous Cold War with the USSR. First hour and ten minutes of today's webcast.

More Countdown to War Stuff

Things between the US and Russia may really be serious.

Serious enough for CNN to notice!

It's not a new Cold War. It's not even a deep chill. It's an outright conflict.

Not saying war is a for-sure, imminent thing. But things have been moving in this direction for a while.

About a year and half ago, Don Dickinson and I, on our Don and Doug webcast, warned things were headed in an unmistakable direction.

Making the Cold War hotter. And other political insanity

Two years ago, we began to suggest in earnest that Americans begin dusting off some the long-ignored or forgotten practices.

American society, threat assessment and personal planning in a cold war

Earlier this month, I noted on this blog that Russia bragged of putting 40 million people through a civil defense drill.

As present tensions rise, I've yet to hear word one out of  the US government addressing civil defense needs or practices for our own population.

Cold War Winds Are Blowing. Or Is It Something Bigger?

Either grand propaganda, or Russia's Vladmir Putin's going into countdown mode. Just how long that countdown might be is anyone's guess.

Via the UK Daily Mail:

Russia is ordering all of its officials to fly home any relatives living abroad amid heightened tensions over the prospect of global war, it has been claimed. 

Politicians and high-ranking figures are said to have received a warning from president Vladimir Putin to bring their loved-ones home to the 'Motherland', according to local media.

Meanwhile, U.S. MSM is still stuck on Trump bashing and "pussy talk."

Russia knows America's never been weaker. And perhaps suspects Obama will be slower to respond or retaliate to provocation, or even an overt act of war, than either Trump or Clinton would be.

At best, we're back to full-blown Cold War. It's a game Putin knows well. And it's something America's current crop of community-organizers in DC have no clue how to deal with.


Update: The UK's Daily Star also shares the story. 

Who's that?

Via Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/6swMFRAMfb

— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) October 11, 2016

\

Must've been a good night for Trump

Many Clinton supporters, as well as members of the so-called mainstream media, apparently a hard time watching last night's debate.

An example, via Twitter:

Suspicious timing of the Trump leak

I watched some of Saturday political coverage on TV. Self righteous ABC news folks were among those who attacked Donald Trump for his sexually charged comments. Cokie Roberts says sexual assault is serious business, and Trump can't be forgiven. Same Cokie Roberts doesn't bother to mention the Clinton family;s alleged record on sexual abuse, assault and/or rape.

For that matter, consider the now-known behaviors of John Kennedy while in office, or others in the Kennedy clan. Has any Democrat or mainstream media personality ever said a Kennedy needed to abandon a political campaign?

In other news, 800 Haitians died in a hurricane last week, we may never know how many of these desperate people might have survived had the Clinton Foundation delivered on promises of hurricane proof housing. Also largely obscured this weekend are Hillary Clinton's leaked comments where she praised the idea of a North American common market and open U.S. borders. All MSM or GOPe, not to mention the Dems, want us to focus us on are some crude comments by Donald Trump made a decade ago.

Some in Republican circles, especially in Republican establishment circles, say they're revoking their support for Trump.

We're being played. The Trump leak appears deliberately timed to distract from the latest Clinton failings and revelations. GOPe has learned nothing this election cycle. It seems to think President Clinton will be their friend.

GOPe is, in reality, more foolish than my mind can fathom.

Imminent war, or just a propaganda ploy?

Is Russia just trying to energize its internal political base, or is there something bigger in play here?

Seen this? 

As tensions rise in the middle East, an official TV channels in Russia has issued a chilling warning that war with the West could be imminent.

I personally don't think the Obama administration is savvy enough to play Cold War hardball, nor does America's juvenile "mainstream media" understand the seriousness of what's in play.

Maybe it's time to dust off some of those old Civil Defense booklets, and do some refreshing.

Last night's VP debate

Just a few observations from last night's 2016 Vice Presidential debate:

Apparently Tim Kaine was trying to meet the talking points quota the Clinton campaign demanded last night - so he often spouted phrases that didn't fit.

Was Kaine so afraid that people might hear what Mike Pence might say, that he felt compelled to repeatedly interrupt?

When Kaine especially seemed to get in a bind, he just started muttering, "Donald Trump doesn't pay any taxes. Donald Trump doesn't pay any taxes..."

Pence's expressions were priceless - almost like he felt sorry for a guy whose brain had been stuffed with so many crazy, bogus Clinton talking points.

Civil Defense - Theirs and ours

Russia claims it has 40 million people participating in a civil defense drill this week. 

When was the last time you even heard a U.S. politician or civilian administrator even mention "civil defense"?

Ever take the time to see how where you live stacks up in terms of nuclear targeting or fall out drift? A blog I've linked here shares some maps that, based on my recollections of Cold War literature, seem pretty accurate.

Anyone remember some of the classic old-school USA Civil Defense PSAs?

"Come and Take It"

It seems NPR tried to offer its own interpretation of the flag birthed in Texas and slogan it bears.

But here' s a deeper take that dissects NPR's effort, and adds some much needed history.

Fannin Fertilizer Factoid

According to the 1920 Census, the average farm in Fannin County, GA spent $24.47 a year on fertilizer.*

For some reason, this statistic amuses me.

Maybe it's cuz it's hard to buy a single bag of fertilizer for that today.

*This and other nostalgic facts about Fannin County can be found in the 1928 Fannin County Soil Survey, published by the USDA.  

Flirtin' with disaster

I'm thinking Obama and John Kerry are playing with things that are way, way over their heads.

Via the Chicago Tribune:

Already testy, relations between the United States and Russia plummeted Monday as Washington suspended diplomatic contacts with Moscow over failed efforts to end the war in Syria and Vladimir Putin put on hold a deal with the U.S. on disposing weapons-grade plutonium.

Maybe not there yet...

But the seeds have been sown, the direction set...

And there's no will in Washington to roll any of it back.

Chris Muir's Day by Day Cartoon, Oct. 2, 2016

Welcome to our demonstratably Orwellian age...

As seen online: 

What's this?

According to Forbes, the New York Times "paid no taxes".