Dean Weingarten.

An illustration from the April 19, 1884 issue of the National Police Gazette

Rather than have gentlemen of fine upbringing carrying weapons in public, the authorities today would rather men get beaten nearly to death with baseball bats on the NYC subway.

Or get shot in NYC while being mugged.

Never mind the fact that after criminals figured out that they will get shot while perpetrating crimes, NYC would be much more peaceful.  The controllers thrive in chaos.  It suits them just fine.

You see, this isn’t about you or what keeps you or your family safe.  It’s about what helps the controllers to amass power.

I hadn’t heard anything about this.  If you want to skip the gun review, skip to about 14:30 of the video.

The claim is that a former CZ employee has stated that Colt is now beginning to ruin CZ like Colt management did with their own company so many times before.  Tim also shows the discontinued product line from CZ.

If true, what a shame.  CZ is making fine products.

If you can find it.  My observation is that the newer Marlin 45-70 as well as the Henry 45-70 are simply unobtanium.

The reason the large tech companies wanted all of the social media data and search history algorithms was to build the AI. For over a decade, the tech gurus in the late 80s and 90s lamented how to build it. They knew it could be done; they just weren’t sure how. Then somebody said; just get the data; it’ll build itself from there. That was a simple and brilliant strategy.

In order to work, the machine would need loads of data about everything in the world. A computer has no soul; it will never actually be sentient. However, it can have so much data that it may “out-think” humans, appearing to have awareness. And its decision tree will be so thoroughly complex with innumerable options while being immensely quick that it will appear to make independent decisions. Like a master chess player, it will know the answer regardless of your next move. And since it “thinks” faster than anybody and has more data to act upon than anybody, it is, for all intents and purposes, the smartest evil super-genius ever.

We don’t use the word evil lightly. All the depictions of an AI turning evil are not in error. Every man knows he’s a sinner, deep in the depths of his own heart where he won’t discuss it and dares not to tread too often; we all know what we are, wicked. Here is the scary part: everything feeding the AI system is evil because you are feeding it the data. The system will appear to run after the image of its maker, fallen man.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” – Jeremiah 17:9

“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:” – Romans 3:10

You are evil, totally depraved, a sinner. All men are. In fact, you’re so far gone that you’re probably telling yourself right now, “no, I’m ok, I’m not that bad.” You operate within your own capacity, in a fallen state of sin. And you, along with 7 billion others just like you, wholly wicked and full of wretchedness, every last one, are programming the AI.

Source:

The idea of artificial intelligence overthrowing humankind has been talked about for decades, and in 2021, scientists delivered their verdict on whether we’d be able to control a high-level computer super-intelligence. The answer? Almost definitely not.

The catch is that controlling a super-intelligence far beyond human comprehension would require a simulation of that super-intelligence which we can analyze (and control). But if we’re unable to comprehend it, it’s impossible to create such a simulation.

Rules such as ’cause no harm to humans’ can’t be set if we don’t understand the kind of scenarios that an AI is going to come up with, suggest the authors of the new paper. Once a computer system is working on a level above the scope of our programmers, we can no longer set limits.

“A super-intelligence poses a fundamentally different problem than those typically studied under the banner of ‘robot ethics’,” wrote the researchers.

“This is because a superintelligence is multi-faceted, and therefore potentially capable of mobilizing a diversity of resources in order to achieve objectives that are potentially incomprehensible to humans, let alone controllable.”

This article seems to be written with the intent to make you a little dumber and a lot more helpless. It could have been a very good article. Worrying that the machine will “think” of something we didn’t is self-center beyond belief; it’s even egotistical to care about such a thing. I’m not worried at all about the computer coming up with some unforeseen thing. I’d be much more worried about it perfectly emulating all that it’s learned from its input subjects.

H/T Instapundit

Proverbs 22:7 comes to mind. Source:

The U.S. has about $30.9 trillion in national debt, according to the latest data from Treasury Department, and that total will reach a record $31 trillion as early as later in the month.

Roughly $24.3 trillion of America’s total public debt outstanding consists of debt held by the public, and $6.6 trillion is intragovernmental holdings, according to Monday data from the Treasury Department.

Intragovernmental holdings include federal trust funds, revolving funds and special funds, as well as Federal Financing Bank securities, the Treasury Department said on its website.

You can be sure that nobody will pay this “intragovermental holdings” debt but you, dear reader.

Debt held by the public consists of all national debt “held by any person or entity that is not a U.S. federal government agency,” according to the Treasury Department. That includes corporations, domestic individual investors, local or state governments, Federal Reserve banks, foreign investors, foreign governments and other entities.

Last week we talked about transgender evil here at TCJ. At Post Millennial Worldview, Dr. Gentry discusses this further in part two of his short notes on the subject. Dr. Gentry shows how these laws are brought forward into the New Covenant. Here are a couple of verses from the Law of God forbidding this wicked sin.

“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” – Leviticus 18:22

“The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.” – Deuteronomy 22:5

What you must understand is that anarchy starts with rebellion, not against the State, but against Holy God.

There is a battle in Montana between a government department and a judge.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Just hours after a Montana judge blocked health officials from enforcing a state rule that would prevent transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificate, the Republican-run state on Thursday said it would defy the order.

District Court Judge Michael Moses chided attorneys for the state during a hearing in Billings for circumventing his April order that temporarily blocked a 2021 Montana law that made it harder to change birth certificates.

Moses said there was no question that state officials violated his earlier order by creating the new rule. Moses said his order reinstates a 2017 Department of Public Health and Human Services rule that allowed people to update the gender on their birth certificate by filing an affidavit with the department.

However, the state said it would disregard the ruling.

“The Department thoroughly evaluated the judge’s vague April 2022 decision and crafted our final rule to be consistent with the decision. It’s unfortunate that the judge’s ruling today does not square with his vague April decision,” said Charlie Brereton, director of the Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Brereton said the agency was keeping the rule it issued last week in place and an agency spokesperson said the department is waiting to see the judge’s written order before considering its next steps.

ACLU attorney Malita Picasso expressed dismay with the agency’s stance and said officials should immediately start processing requests for birth certificate changes.

“It’s shocking that after this morning’s hearing the department would allege there was any lack of clarity in the court’s ruling from the bench,” Picasso said. “It was very clear that Judge Moses expressly required a reversion to the 2017 policy, and anything short of that is a continued flagrant violation of the court’s order.”

It’s ‘shocking’ when the Right defies a judge’s order, but when the Left ignores Heller or makes burdensome with onerous requirements, lawful carry in light of Bruen, well, that’s just fine. We hold out little faith that, in the end, the government will defy the judge’s direct order. If they submit, all parties will be in open insurrection, fomenting rebellion among the citizenry against Holy God. When the government supports or defends that which is against the Law-word of God, it sides with the prince of this world and promotes spiritual warfare against the throne of the holy Creator. America’s days are numbered if it continues to choose evil over God.

Such open defiance of judge’s order is very unusual from a government agency, said Carl Tobias, a former University of Montana Law School professor now at the University of Richmond. When officials disagree with a ruling, the typical response is to appeal to a higher court, he said.

“Appeal is what you contemplate — not that you can nullify a judge’s orders. Otherwise, people just wouldn’t obey the law,” Tobias said. “The system can’t work that way.”

America is already in anarchy; it’s lawlessness. Christians are hopelessly removed from the reality of the spiritual warfare that rages for the soul of their children and grandchildren. It’s disconcerting, to say the least.

Shooting Illustrated.

Q: While on a recent cleaning binge of my .45 ACP pistols, I noticed that some of the barrels had a right-hand twist, while the majority had a left-hand twist. This got me wondering why that was and what the difference between the two may be.

A: Related to rifles at distances of 300 yards or farther, spin drift can become a factor that will affect the impact of the bullet on the target. Long-range shooters correct for spin drift in right-twist barrels by making windage adjustments to the left as the distance increases. It is just the opposite for left-twist barrels that require a windage adjustment to the right to keep the bullet impact centered on the target.

Further in that vein, it can be proven mathematically that one twist direction is better when used in the Northern Hemisphere and the other is better for use in the Southern Hemisphere in addition to benefits to countering the Coriolis effect on long-range precision shooting.

This may be so, but I have never met or heard of a shooter who put all that into practical application. Also, note that all of the above examples involve rifles, and most of the scientific explanations involve shooting at extreme ranges—the Coriolis effect is not going to have any measurable influence on accuracy with a handgun shooting a standard handgun round at realistic handgun ranges.

In reference to the .45 ACP specifically, I am aware of tests conducted by some of the military teams regarding twist rates and direction, in an attempt to wring the absolute maximum performance from their match guns. This effort was put forth to give their national-level shooters an edge over their counterparts. I am unaware of any discernible game-changing difference that would favor one twist direction over another. If any irrefutable evidence had come from these tests, there would have been a wholesale effort for change across the board. This did not happen.

It is speculated that when John Browning invented the 1911, he designed it as a right-handed pistol for the Cavalry Soldier who could handle the reins with the left hand and shoot with the right. The left twist in the barrel was designed to torque the gun into the palm of the right hand, lessening the likelihood of the Soldier losing control of the pistol during firing. This makes a lot of sense, but is unsupported by any evidence as far as I know.

I had never heard this about JMB’s design of the 1911, and it may be apocryphal.  But Browning was so meticulous and detailed that the decision would actually make sense.

I confess that I have never closely observed the rifling twist direction in my 1911s before, but you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll pay close attention the next time I do a cleaning.  I’ll also pay close attention to rifles as well.

This is an interesting question.

Source.

… two legal challenges to the Trump administration’s prohibition are pending at the Supreme Court – including one that has been rescheduled for consideration 20 times. The lack of a decision about whether or not the court will hear the litigation has led to speculation among experts who follow the issue closely that the court’s 6-3 conservative majority may not agree on how to proceed.

The court twice declined emergency requests from gun groups to delay implementation of the ban in 2019. And it declined to hear a similar challenge in 2020.

“The six conservatives on the court right now aren’t really on the same page about guns as much as people think they are,” said Dru Stevenson, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. Some in the court’s conservative wing, he said, “might be afraid to take the case if they’re not sure that they’re going to get their way.”

In addition to once again raising the issue of guns at the nation’s highest court months after it decided a landmark Second Amendment case, the new litigation also delves into how much power federal agencies have to create regulations when the law those rules are based on is unclear. Conservatives for years have sought to limit that agency discretion and their arguments seem to be gaining traction with the high court.

[ … ]

Feldman points to another reason why the Supreme Court may have been slow to take up the issue of bump stocks: So far, gun rights groups have been losing in appeals courts. The justices often like to see a disagreement in circuit courts – known as a “circuit split” – before wading in to resolve a dispute and provide guidance to lower courts on a thorny legal question.

“Right now,” Feldman said, “there is no circuit split.”

But that may soon change. In a separate case, the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has scheduled arguments in a challenge to the bump stock ban for Tuesday. Meanwhile, at least one of the justices has signaled a receptivity to the arguments being made by the gun rights groups.

The ATF, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in 2020, “used to tell everyone that bump stocks don’t qualify as ‘machineguns.’ Now it says the opposite. The law hasn’t changed, only an agency’s interpretation of it.

“Why should courts,” Gorsuch asked, “defer to such bureaucratic pirouetting?”

Good question.  Here’s the answer.  They shouldn’t.

The bump stock decision was perhaps the worst mistake Trump ever made because of the precedent it set.  I don’t have a bump stock, but that isn’t the point.  The right to own one without interference from the FedGov is enshrined in the 2A.

But more importantly, with all due respect to Justice Gorsuch and his observation on pirouetting (which is correct since the ATF has taken contradictory positions on this as they have on many other things), this is about the question whether a bureaucratic organization has the authority and power to write law.

Here’s the answer.  They don’t.  Beyond that, even the ban on machine guns, I claim, runs afoul of the 2A.  So if the ATF had always taken the position that bump stocks met the definition of machine gun and they had never pirouetted on this issue, it still doesn’t make it right.  Pirouetting isn’t what makes this sinful.  It’s the failure to follow the constitution.

However, with the law and order justices, and also with the progressives, I doubt this issue will find traction in the SCOTUS and I have serious doubts they will overturn this ridiculous rule and put the ATF in its place.

So you see, if they don’t overturn it, the conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too.  On the one hand, they want to disgorge the authority of the bureaucrats from making law (de facto authority because they’ve done it unchallenged), but on the other hand, when it comes to bump stocks their Ox may be gored.  So they will find another route to do their disgorgement of the controllers if they ever do it all.

Will the Supreme Court finally deal the death blow to the bump stock ban?  Color me skeptical.

Ruger now has magazine compatible 5.7x28mm Carbine and Handguns. Compatibility is a compelling option as internal tensions continue to rise in the United States. Caliber consolidation is a budget-conscious approach to ensuring you have the resources your family and clan will need. A handgun caliber compatible Carbine can save money and storage space when considering uses in various applications along with the handgun.

The Carbine comes in a standard configuration (Pictured) and two models with less scary features for communist states. Those may not be compatible with the handgun’s 20 round magazines. The handgun comes in several designs, included on the page is a neat video showing a cutaway of the handgun’s functions.

I took the liberty of making a request to Sturm, Ruger, & Co., Inc., asking for one each of the Carbine and Handgun to write an online review of both here at TCJ. Although we don’t expect an answer, you just never know. Herschel should keep an on the Blog’s email inbox. I knew he wouldn’t mind ;-)

Dean Weingarten has broken down America’s firearms ownership numbers. The article touches on several aspects of ownership, including self-defense use as a percentage of owners.

Here are a couple of snapshots:

What’s not in the survey is American’s willingness to use these firearms for their original purposes.

Mr. Weingarten, as he’s done with bear attacks, is very astute at making these data accessible for all to understand. Read the whole thing at Ammoland.