Ten Commandments of Propaganda Explained on Youtube

Professor Brian Anse Patrick Explains the Ten Commandments of Propaganda on Youtube

You can get a pretty fair idea of what my book The Ten Commandments of Propaganda is all about by watching the short vignettes on each of the commandments that were recently posted on Youtube:

See: Youtube Ten Commandments of Propaganda  

The book of course contains much more in the way of examples and applications. 

The videos are produced by Amanda Hurst and hosted by Ohio Supermodel Brooke Wagner.  Watch for a soon to be released Youtube video on my new book, Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (and Guns). 

Ballisti-Cast 6 Cavity Bullet Mold Review

Consistent with my recent new practice, I will occasionally post reviews of firearms and firearm-related products here.  I post only what I know.  If I post a review, I have used the product.  No one pays me to do this. If I speak well of a product it is because I have experienced good results.

BAP

Ballisti-Cast 6-Cavity .44 Mold in Action

Review: Ballisti-Cast 6-Cavity Bullet Molds.

The byword in cast bullet molds for decades was the venerable Hensley & Gibbs Co., known for producing superb 6 and 8 cavity molds in what have become classic designs.  These included Elmer Keith’s famous semi-wadcutter in .44 and other calibers, the H&G #68 favored by so many .45 acp shooters and the old #50 wadcutter that fed so many .38 Special revolvers over the years. Millions, if not billions, of H&G bullets have been cast and sent downrange over the years. An H&G 6-cavity bullet mold was once the hallmark of a serious pistol shooter. But H&G is no more.

            The craft of making H&G molds has not vanished from the earth however.  It just moved to the hinterlands, North Dakota , where Ballisti-Cast is located.  In addition to automated casting equipment and large-capacity electric casting pots, the company acquired and now offers the whole line of H&G bullets in up to 6-cavity molds.  The old “arsenal” molds of 10 cavities are no more (see corrective note below), however, which is probably just as well because they required wrists and forearms of steel to operate.  Shooters in this degenerate age apparently no longer have the same kind of preternatural Popeye strength as did our forefathers. Nowadays many think they have “arrived” if they move up from a 2 to a 4-cavity mold. 

            Pistol shooting by its nature requires a lot of bullets.  And once you have cast with a quality 6-cavity it’s hard to go back to even a four-cavity; it feels like somebody put a governor on your car. Properly cared for, these are lifetime molds, maybe several lifetimes. When H&G was still around, I acquired two 6-cavity H&G molds in the old #68BB, a 200-grain bevel base design, and the #107A, a .44 caliber full wadcutter of 245 grains, flat base.  I also inherited a 6-cavity #130 in .45 caliber that casts a fine bullet.  They drop from the mold effortlessly.  Interrupted by Grad school, by the time I got around to ordering a 6-cavity #503, the famous Keith .44 semi-wadcutter, I was too late.  H&G was defunct.  

            I learned about Ballisti-cast when searching online for a used H&G mold.   I had my doubts. Making a good bullet mold is no easy thing.  I wondered if the skills and experience would transfer. In addition to the proper equipment, it requires a considerable amount of arcane knowledge of the sort that tends to disappear or degrade in the process of generational transmission. Plus, North Dakota? North Dakota conjures up visions of ethnic dishes with names like knudle, and of Angie Dickinson, not bullet molds. Montanans tell North Dakota jokes. Besides, if mold-making  of this sort were easy, bullet molds would be generally available and cheap.

            I ordered two six-cavity molds, the H&G # 503 that I had wanted for so long and which Ballisti-cast has re-numbered 1103, and the old H&G #78, designed by the legendary shooter Harry Reeves, so I have read somewhere, and intended for Smith & Wesson 1950 and 1955 model .45 acp target revolvers, renumbered as #678.  The latter is a blunt SWC design of approximately 215 grains.  One doesn’t see them around very much anymore, although some of the old time bullseye pistol shooters liked them. I have fired them in 45 acp target pistols to good effect with a load of 4 grains of Alliant Bullseye powder. My intention was to use them in a vintage revolver I had acquired.  The molds cost approximately $300 each complete with handles and sprue plates.

            And then I waited.  And waited some more. I received an email communication inquiring about my bullet metal alloy and sizing (.429 and .452, respectively, and an approximate 90/5/5 alloy, lead, tin, antimony) and billing me for my balance, which I paid.  And then I waited even more.  Two years ticked by, and I called, finally getting referred to Bill Sands, interrupting him as he ordered a double whopper and strawberry shake in the BK drive through (I know this because the cashier repeated the order).  This apparently did the trick. In a couple of weeks I had my molds.  I got the impression they had experienced turnover and production scheduling problems.  So I worried about quality.

            Bill Sands came through. The molds looked good. They matched the old H&G molds perfectly, even the handles.  No one had “improved” or cheapened anything, except on the mold pins, which help align the two halves.  A small precise insert button and pin combination of some sort of hardened metal or tungsten carbide like substance now did the job, better I believe.

.44 Mold Right Face

            I tried the .44 SWC first.  I lubed slightly the pins and hinge and sprue pin with NRA 50/50 Alox/Beeswax bullet lube (an essential step to preserve mold life.) It took a while to warm up, my first 50-100 bullets were wavy and went back in the pot, but when the mold warmed it started throwing perfect bullets, sharp in the corners and flat on the base.  The mold was marked .437, which apparently designates the machined cavity size. The oversize is deliberate and accommodates the expansion coefficient of the heated lead alloy.  They dropped from the mold assisted only by a light tap or two on the hinge with a lead hammer. The bullets cooled to about .432 and weighed between 247 and 248 grains.  When I sized them in a Star Sizer/Luber they effortlessly went through, coming out at .429.  I loaded 50 rounds in front of 4.3 grains of Alliant Red Dot powder, grabbed my ancient S&W Triple Lock and headed out back to my range. 

One Throw = Six Keith .44 SWCs

            At 25 yards, firing at approximately rapid fire cadence, (5-round strings in 10 seconds), one-handed, unsupported and standing on my hind legs like the higher primate that I am, the rounds impacted exactly where the sights were when the trigger broke. I was happy.  I will try 50-yard slow fire next, but I predict essentially identical results. See the test target. My intention is to use this load and revolver in the Harry Reeves revolver match at Camp Perry.  A beautiful bullet!

25 yards Rapid Fire 

            Next week or so, after I load up all my .44s, I will try out the new .45 mold.  

            Note, that in using these wonderful molds, always use a lead hammer or wooden mallet to knock aside the sprue plate.  Don’t ever peck at one of these molds with a steel hammer.  Keep them rust free and NEVER clean them with a wire brush and they will last decades. I make my own lead hammers with a crude mold made from slightly modified ¾ X ¾ X ½ copper plumbing Tee.  I taper the ends and cut it in half with a hacksaw.  For a handle use ½ inch copper tubing, insert it in the Tee, pour the lead around it, using a piece of metal c-clamped for the mold bottom, while pouring from the top.  This is easy to do and effective.  See the photo.  This is a nearly perfect weight lead hammer for bullet casting.

Closeup Lead Hammer and Left Half of Homemade Hammer Mold

            Ballisti-Cast was worth the wait.  They came through with a high quality product. Now I can cast enough .44 bullets to shoot as much as I would like. Maybe I should try some knudle next and perhaps see what else North Dakota has to offer.   


NOTE/POSTSCRIPT:  After writing this review I talked by telephone with Keith of Northern Valley Machine in E. Grand Fork, Minnesota which does the machine work for Ballisti-cast.  I learned the following things:

•  8 and 10-cavity molds are indeed available for those of you with ambition and powerful forearms. 
• The mold pins are made from hardened steel, and as stated above are indeed an improvement over the old plain steel pins on the elder H&G molds that were subject to wear.
• Depending on machining schedules, the turn around time for mold orders is now roughly 3 to 4 weeks.  
• Keith casts bullets using 4-cavity molds, so he knows whereof he speaks. 
• One of these days on my way out to Montana for elk hunting. I plan/hope to visit Northern Valley Machine in that large land mass called Minnesota.   Keith says he will show me how the molds are machined.     

NRA 2014 Annual Meeting: Reality Versus News Coverage

Good Writing, Bad News

Reality Versus News Coverage at the 2014 NRA Meeting

Brian Anse Patrick

            I came. I saw. I listened. So did about 75,000 other persons from just about everywhere in America: Ohio, Texas and even the wild reaches of the Bronx. Some attendees even reported on the event. Quirkily.

            The Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox in her column of April 28 summed up NRA’s annual meeting: “NRA is at war with America.”  Her April 25^th column had noted four gun-related deaths in the Indianapolis area around the time of the convention.  So what was NRA doing about criminal violence among black urban youths? There it was in black and white—that evil NRA gun lobby, the boogeyman of a thousand media reports.  Drawing yet another connection, Ms. Cox reported that a local gun dealer, just a few miles from the NRA meeting, “supplies criminals with weapons.” So it’s like that?  Really Ms. Cox?  What penetrating reportorial vision!

            How profound.  How ironic.  How silly.

            Ms. Cox’s columns on the NRA meeting may titillate suburban British audiences who presumably have derived their knowledge of America, and their vicarious thrills as well, from GP- and R-rated gangsta movies. Snugly cocooned New York apartment dwellers on the upper west side may also find the reports compelling.  I would guess that the imagined verisimilitude of such reporting depends on the degree of mediation of the experiences of the audience.  Cox produces excellent market-ready commercial journalism in the sense of a well-crafted more or less seamless product that conveys cartoon-like explanations to a mass urban market that is in need of easily digestible interpretations of the meaning of distant, inexplicable events in that curious country called America. In this sense the news consumers of NYC’s upper west side and London are probably little different.

            But isn’t this sort of journalism really no more than a creative game of connect-the-dots? Depending on which dots are connected, and which are ignored, the picture changes.  Junk food journalism for shut-ins or the socially insulated may be good business, but is it “news” in the sense of a fairly reliable report of an event? 

            While I understand how it might be possible to form such an initial impression of a “War with America” in a mere few hurried and confused days at the jam-packed NRA convention, I cannot fathom how it would be possible to maintain it.  

            The annual NRA meeting is a huge event, actually a collection of many events. Thousands of people move about. Multiple sessions and seminars take place simultaneously. NRA officials do indeed rally the troops, as there are about five million NRA members. Cheerleading, as such, tends to lack nuance, for cheerleaders are not known for asking the faithful, “How do you feel about this?” My experience is that once you have heard one NRA convention speech, allowing for minor variations concerning trending political events, you have pretty much heard them all.  They are a genre produced by the occasion, and consist of what used to be known as the epideictic style of rhetoric that celebrates and censures, e.g., the speeches of Martin Luther King, that celebrated a vision for America. Such rhetoric may also call people onto the carpet.

            Unfortunately, however, only by the wildest straining of disconnected logic and the use of imaginative connotations is it possible to link NRA with a cluster of gun deaths in Indianapolis. And Cox’s notion of NRA being at war with America, or fellow Americans, is even more fanciful. I’ll gladly wager that none of the guns in the Indianapolis area shootings were owned or operated by NRA members, who were not slipping out of the convention to do “drive-by” shootings. The urban black youths that Ms. Cox symbolically brandishes are probably not NRA members, neither victims nor shooters. Young American black men kill one another at rates almost 10 times higher than the general population. Additionally, criminologists know that murders overwhelmingly tend to be committed by previously convicted felons, with histories of violence, who are barred from purchasing from the dealer to which Ms. Cox refers. Nor is NRA providing the guns. More, it is a federal felony for a felon to possess or attempt to buy a gun. It is also a federal felony to knowingly sell or provide a firearm to a felon. She casts upon her dealer what is known as “a false light,” which is defensible only in the legalistic sense that her claim may technically be true.  But it seems a misleading equivocation. A person who originally legally bought a firearm from the dealer may have been later convicted of a crime, or an illegal “straw sale” may have taken place wherein a legally qualified person bought the gun, passed the mandatory FBI computerized background check, and then illegally transferred the gun to a felon. Or legally purchased guns may have been stolen, shown up at a crime scene and/or were confiscated by police (and not necessarily used in a crime) and traced by the same federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that monitors and regulates dealers.  But no dealer stays in business who in any sense directly “supplies guns to criminals” –such dealers go to jail.  And in all my many years of researching and hanging around American gun culture, I have yet to see an illegal arms dealer of the sort shown commonly in the action movies. I also suspect that Ms. Cox had no idea how many of the NRA members at the convention were “packing.”  Ten of thousands I would guess, with no murders, shootings or even threats. They were a civil and gracious crowd of unusually friendly people, and much better behaved than any sports crowd that I ever saw.  

            Noting another significant myth perpetuated by the column, NRA is not “the gun lobby.” Among many other functions, too many to list here but which include safety training and civil rights legal defense issues, NRA does indeed lobby on behalf of gun owners. But the gun manufacturers have their own exclusive trade associations and lobbies. NRA represents the interests of a people, not an industry.  These members pay the dues that support NRA’s manifold operations; no shadowy corporations front the money. As such, NRA members assemble in voluntary association; they converse among themselves and with others by means of various print, broadcast and computer-based media; and they peaceably petition government entities.  When the NRA does all this, organs such as The Guardian and The New York Times call it “lobbying,” but more accurately, it should be described as a principled application of the First Amendment. Such “lobbying” is merely the First Amendment put into practice.  I notice that many reporters seem to have little sympathy for the First Amendment as it may apply to people other than themselves.

            Ms. Cox struck me as a smart and dedicated writer. She also had a totally cool business card with a cat on the back. (Or was that the front?) She exhibited a wry sense of humor and a lively interest in story angles and oddities. Stories, though, have a way of taking on lives of their own, for the dots of our experiences will somehow get connected one way or another, for it is deep in our deep human nature to do so. We are story-telling animals. Ana Marie Cox tells a great tale. I like her and her writing. Her tales of the NRA, however, are every bit as sensationalistic, combative and tendentious as the epideictic NRA speechifying to which she reacts. Brothers Grimm, move over, you have been outclassed. But other pictures can indeed be drawn, pictures perhaps more representative of events on the ground during those days. More I cannot say, but perhaps we should designate this emergent market for interpretive style reporting as epideictic journalism.  It’s no wonder, however, that Aristotle, who first catalogued epideictic rhetoric, dismissed some writers and satirists as “evil speakers and tell tales.” 

            But as far as perceptive reporting goes concerning substantive events surrounding NRA at Indianapolis, I would be more inclined to accept the words of the busy young woman who was operating the strategically located shoeshine stand at the JW Marriot Hotel concourse to the giant Convention Center. I asked her what the many people tended to be like who belonged to the different associations that passed by and frequented her business each week. And this she told me, “The cops are jerks, and the teachers—well, they don’t shine their shoes—but the NRA, these are nice people.” She also thought highly of the firefighters. I value her opinions. In fact I would like to read her regular columns on Americana, for she actually appears to be in a position to make some reliable, well grounded observations on the subject.  

            Good writing may equate with bad news. 

Colt New Agent 45 acp 1911: American Gun Review

Ok, so in recent years I have published in various places maybe a dozen reviews of books dealing in some way or another with American Gun Culture.  Maybe it's about time to start reviewing American Guns.  So here is the first of a series.

In all cases I will review guns having primarily social applications, mainly handguns.  My reviews will be practical and useful. I am not a shill for any company. No one pays me to advertise.  And I will not simply repeat the cant and truisms that one sees echoed in so many reviews of guns.   If I review it, this means that I have used it.

This was my Spring 2014 firearm purchase:

45 acp Colt New Agent, 3 inch barrel. (The guitar pick is for scale.) 

The pistol was equipped with two 7 rd. Colt magazines.  Its most interesting feature, beside small size and light weight, is perhaps its trench sight.   Never having before used such a sight, I was anxious to try it and did so more or less immediately.  

8 yards, one handed, fast shooting, WW ball ammo from Walmart

As you can see, it works.  It works well.

The shots to the lower left occurred when I jerked the trigger.  (Incidentally the target was posted upside down, so you are seeing it as I did.)   I found only one aspect of the New Agent distracting, although "odd" might be a better word. Opposed to my usual style/habit of sighting, by peering through the trench sight I had a tendency to see very clearly the X.  This is contrary to habit. I am used to focusing on the sights rather than the target. With the positive iron sight picture that I am used to, I always focus on the front sight, which at this close range essentially covers the X, and then print a group about the size of a half dollar with any 1911 that I own.  The New Agent may require some adjustment on my part.  And maybe I haven' yet properly learned how to use the trench sight.  Now, despite any need for adjustment on my part, the Colt New Agent shoots exactly where you aim it.  Some shooters perhaps won't like this feature because they won't be able to blame the gun or the ammunition for their inability to shoot.   

I am not one of those idiots who is compelled to completely disassemble a gun before shooting it.  My only preparation for shooting the New Agent consisted in putting a few drops of oil on the slide rails, the barrel shroud and the barrel bushing. That's it. If a gun won't shoot as it comes out the of the box from the factory, I have no use for it.  Also, I do not believe in unnecessarily messing with parts and springs.  Especially on social guns. (Target guns are different.) Most so-called gunsmiths in my experience are nothing of the sort and you should hesitate before you trust your social guns to them. One probably needs to be a machinist before one can become a gunsmith, and as these people are not machinists, so they are not gunsmiths, either.  To the contrary, the people at Colt and at Smith & Wesson know well their own business.  Only once or twice in the last 40 years have I encountered a factory handgun that did not shoot far better than virtually any human could hold. And I have fired hundreds. They work well. Even the most ancient Military and Police S&W 38 Special revolver will fire dime-sized groups at 8 to 10 yards with virtually any ammunition. Learn to use them properly. Blame yourself before you blame the gun. 

Right out of the box, I fired about 50 rds. of WW ball without hitch, including trying a full size Colt magazine, which extend below the grip, but which also functioned flawlessly.  I prefer ball and use it for all my social guns. This is partly a function of my"rules" of armed social engagement:

1. Have a gun.
2. Avoid gun fighting if at all possible. If this is not possible, call in an airstrike or otherwise evade. 
3. If you must fire, take care: remember that you cannot call that bullet back. 
4. The gun must go "Bang." 
5. Fire one accurate Zen shot. More only if needed. 
6. Call an attorney. 

Additionally, on a whim I tried some WW 230 grain hollow points in the New Agent and fired two magazines of 7 round each, with a stoppage near the end of the second magazine.  It was caused by the blunt end of the big open cavity coming up against the feed ramp. It cleared easily enough. But that was enough for me.  Ball, henceforth (See rule 4 above).   The hollow points seemed to have more "oomph" than the ball, judged by recoil. I don't care, however, and won't be using them.  If you cannot stop it with ball, then you probably shouldn't be messing with it.  Don't depend on high-priced fancy ammunition.  Depend on accuracy. 

The 3 inch barreled New Agent is slightly snappier recoil-wise than a full size 1911, and also more than the 4.25 inchers that I typically carry (I have S&W 1911-SCs and a Wiley Colt Commander, all excellent, accurate and TOTALLY reliable pistols, through which I have fired many many rounds.)  The New Agent's recoil is acceptable, and certainly not vicious or uncomfortable. Next time I teach a CPL class, I will ask some of the women shooters if they would care to try it and see what they think. 

I especially like the tang of the grip safety which extends perhaps 3/8 to 1/2 inch beyond the rear of the frame and which  is only maybe 1/4 in width, no wider than it needs to be.  This may seem small, but the projection helps it snuggle down into my rather meaty hand, and helps assure that the grip safety is properly depressed. It works quite well when trying to operate the pistol in a hurry. Occasionally I find a 1911 with one of those exaggerated grip safety configurations that seems to do the opposite of what was intended--namely keeping my hand away from the grip and requiring a conscious adjustment of my grip before I could fire the pistol. Not so with the New Agent.    

Also admirable is the simple so-called 1918 manual safety button.  Minimalism pays off in these matters. The manual safety is small and stays out of the way.  I distrust those elaborate ambidextrous, great winged safeties that appear on so many 1911s these days, because they are too easy to accidentally disengage. The only time I want that safety to click off. is when I push it down with the ball of my thumb when about to fire the pistol.  On a target pistol, this doesn't matter so much, because the only time, probably, that the pistol is even loaded is on the range when the range is hot. A social pistol is a different matter, however. A social 1911 is properly carried hot and locked concealed in a suitable holster. By a suitable holster I mean one that covers and protects the trigger.  The grip safety goes down when the pistol is grasped. The manual safety button is pushed off (down) by the thumb when the pistol is extended, and only after that does the trigger finger come into the trigger guard, when a shot is intended or imminent.  As a right-handed shooter I see no reason for an ambidextrous safety because, as I have verified, I can if need be, firing with my left hand, easily bring my left thumb around while the pistol is gripped in my left hand to disengage the safety, still keeping my left index-trigger finger out of the trigger guard and away from the trigger. Left-handers may view this matter differently and might prefer other accommodations.  But for the right-handed social pistol carrier, this minimalistic safety design is ideal. Less is more. 

The New Agent features the Colt 80 series trigger block to avoid inertia type accidental discharges if somehow the pistol is dropped.  In other words, the firing pin is blocked unless the trigger is pulled back to its rearward position in order to unblock it.   This is a good idea.  I like it. Safety rules.   Some purists complain about the 80 series trigger, claiming that it makes achieving a good crisp trigger pull difficult  I don't find this to be true,however, not with other Series 80 guns I have fired and not with the New Agent, either.  The New Agent trigger pull is about 3.5 to 4 pound range, better than any Glock. And it breaks clean. This is not a 50-yard bullseye slow fire gun, in any case. 

My sole reservation about the Series 80 design is that it somewhat complicates the mechanism.  How does it affect function?  I have another Colt Series 80 that I had fired many hundreds of rounds, many of them lead bullet reloads, without cleaning, at which point the gun would go into battery, but the trigger would not break/release. After this happened several times on the same day at the range I investigated. A bit of crud, powder residue it seemed, had interfered with the little lever that pushes the firing pin block out of the way. This little bit of crud defeated the whole system. The gun would not go BANG. I cleaned the gun and it has worked perfectly since.  The lesson here is don't carry or depend on a pistol that is dirty. Especially maybe a Series 80.  But I would never actually carry a gun that was so incredibly dirty. The 70 series, without the block, has the virtue of simplicity. But the 80 series seems safer. Remember Rule 3 above.          

         

I intend to shoot this gun more before I start to carry it to accustom myself to the sights --or their lack or difference.  But it works and works well.  Right out of the box. A small pistol with 7 + 1 rounds of hardball can be a good and true friend. It also has slim grips and a flat mainspring housing that fit well in the hand and reduce the width and print of the pistol.  

  

My plan is to order a Kramer holster for the New Agent and also to fire a few hundred rounds of ball through it at various ranges, even 25 yards or more.  While the pistol seems intended for typical ranges at which self defense encounters tend to occur, I will be very surprised if it does not shoot acceptably at longer ranges. I will even try 50 yards, although that is certainly stretching it with the no-profile trench sight. 

My judgement?  Money well spent.  Colt New Agent is everything it needs to be and no more.   You remember what Goldilocks said..."Just right." 

John Moses Browning?  He's now my patron saint. And Colt is his Agent on Earth. 

Post Script 

As promised, I did in fact order a Kramer Holster and have fired at least 100 more rounds of ball ammo through the New Agent. It has performed without a hiccup. It carries well and comfortably. I even cleaned it. 

After getting more accustomed to the trench sight,  I find no difficulty in printing groups at 8 yards as shown below.  These are one-handed unsupported fire at rapid cadences--maybe 5-10 seconds.  I moved back to 25, however, and although I can keep all the rounds on the target, the vertical dispersion in the group is large--maybe 16 inches.  The trench sight seem very sensitive to changes in light conditions.   I will continue to experiment.  But the little bugger shoots reliably and has a very good trigger. 

I tried a couple of other holsters and was (1) not satisfied in one case and (2) alarmed in the other.   The first was a name brand outside or inside the waistband holster.   Cost me about 40-50 bucks.  It was bulky, unnecessarily so. The second was an extremely well made, comfortable inside-the-waistband holster that  had been recommended to me by a firearm instructor I had met at the NRA annual meeting in Indianapolis in April.  

Here is the alarming part, in experimenting by shifting around and trying to carry the gun in an optimal spot, somehow, apparently, the comfortable back-panel tuned off the manual safety. I certainly didn't do it.  I will NEVER carry with that holster. Not ever.  I am oh-so-happy that I found this flaw early and not later. My belief is that the holster is inherently dangerous for a 1911, which my recommender doesn't carry, but the design may work very well with pistols that do not have an exposed manual safety on the left side. My Colt New Agent takes a very solid push to turn off the safety, so the fact that it got turned off is more alarming yet. The lesson: don't just assume your holster is safe because it's beautiful and someone credible sold it to you. Check, recheck and experiment. 

As firearms instructor Chris Cerrano said last summer when I took the FASTER training for armed response by teachers against schools shooters. "All  of us have a bushel basket of holsters at  home that didn't work."  Mine now contains about $110 more of unsatisfactory holsters.  

The Kramer shown below with the pistol carries well, comfortably and safely.    

Colt New Agent 45 acp, Kramer holster, 8-yard, 7 rd. rapid fire group with Federal 230 grain ball

    

Brian Anse Patrick: Misperceptions of Middleclasshood--the Cargo Cult of the American Dream

New Publication 

"Misperceptions of Middleclasshood: Socialization Propaganda and the Cargo Cult of the American Dream," is now available on Amazon/Kindle.  The paper explores the dimensions, causes and effects of the mass fantasy shared by most  Americans of somehow belonging to "the middle class," when in fact they are clearly members of the lower, working class, as measured by any reasonable set of historically accepted indicators.   The author suggests this erroneously held belief is responsible for a great deal of individual and social malaise because, like traditional cargo cults in colonial situations across the world, the holders of such belief systems stop working meaningfully programs of self development and education, and instead become victims of messianic movement type politics in which demagogic oligarchies exploit magical thinking.   

Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (and Guns).

http://www.amazon.com/Zombology-Zombies-Decline-West-ebook/dp/B00EYNBQQG/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378994931&sr=1-6

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 1, INTRODUCTION, ZOMBIES R US
   
CHAPTER 2, ZOMBIES, UFOS, BVMS AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS: 
EXPRESSION VIA APPARITION
  
CHAPTER 3, ZOMBIES AND DECLINE: THAT NOT SO FRESH CULTURAL FEELING   
CHAPTER 4, ZOMBIES, GUNS AND ZOMBIE-GUNS
  
CHAPTER 6, ZOMBIES AND FASHION IN THE NEW AMERICAN GUN CULTURE: 
SHARED BIRTHDAYS
             
CHAPTER 7, ZOMBIES AND MEDIA ADDICTION: BRAIN PROBLEMS                                      
CHAPTER 8, CITIZEN ZOMBIE
             
CHAPTER 9, MASS ENFEEBLEMENT: GERIATRIC, IATROGENIC AND CONSUMER      ZOMBIES

CHAPTER 10, ZOMBIES, RACE AND GENDER: WESTERN ANIMUS PROBLEMS

CHAPTER 11, TO ZOMBIE OR NOT TO ZOMBIE?  IS THAT A QUESTION?

APPENDIX I, EMAIL EXCHANGE WITH DAN GIFFORD

APPENDIX II, ABSTRACT OF PRESENTATION TO FORDHAM UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL
  SYMPOSIUM ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT, MARCH 2012: “THE SECOND 
AMENDMENT FUTURIST—NEW GUN CULTURE, GUN RIGHTS, THE MILITIA 
AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE”

REFERENCES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Zombiewerke: Call for Book Chapters

Call for Book Chapters: Zombiewerke

Editors David (Jim) Nemeth and Brian Anse Patrick issue a call for chapters for a refereed volume entitled Zombiewerke. The multidisciplinary volume approaches the zombie as a social and literary phenomenon. The editors will consider quality original works from single or multiple authors representing virtually any field of inquiry: legal, humanities, social sciences, historical, etc. Works may be scientific or literary in nature (even alliterative verse). Please send complete chapters or proposals to Professor Brian Anse Patrick, Department of Communication, University of Toledo, MS # 915, Toledo, OH  43606, or to brian.patrick@utoledo.edu for email submissions.