Maduro is a monstrous dictator. He’s just not the kind of monstrous dictator that Trump likes. Like, y’know, Putin.
The person that won the Nobel Prize recently–Machado–ain’t exactly a great person to be leading Venezuela either, but the odds appear to be pretty damn high that she would have won the 2024 election in a blowout landslide, had she not been barred from running, and the vote count being entirely fraudulent by Maduro.
Possibly, yes. But the page would have needed to have been archived, and not everything has been. For a random subreddit that isn’t massively popular? I dunno.
It’s not my Walther; it’s my partner’s, and they got the F version specifically because the reduced spring power on the slide makes cycling it easier. But the reduced spring power also makes it less likely to go fully into battery without a very firm grip. In general, the Walther PDPs are very nice guns, but the F versions have to make some trade-offs to work for smaller/weaker hands.
Me, I’ve got a CZ Shadow II Compact (I would have gotten the Carry, but that came out a month or two after I got the Compact). Love it. I went from using an inexpensive steel boat-anchor of a double-stack .40S&W/10mm 1911 in matches to the CZ.
For anyone that reads this, with the time for a gunfight that ArcaneSlime notes, .8 seconds for a draw from concealment and a single shot on target in the A zone is ‘competitive’. You should practice to get to that point. I’m not there, and I need to practice to get there myself.
…'Cuz carrying a gun isn’t like a magic talisman. It doesn’t make you safer to carry a gun unless you practice, and practice a lot. No one wants to get in a gun fight unless they’re either psychotic, suicidally stupid, or both.
Stovepipes are pretty common if you limp-wrist your pistol. Similarly, some pistols don’t go back into battery if you don’t keep a rock-solid grip on the gun (I know for certain that this is an issue with the Walther PDP-F). Hang fires are something I wouldn’t worry about in a gun fight; if it doesn’t go bang, immediately cycle the slide and drop the round. Squibs on the other hand… If you get one of those, well, you aren’t shooting with that gun any more, not until you can clear it. If it goes pop instead of BANG, then you definitely should not try a second time.
Honestly, if you, as a non-cop/non-military person are in a gunfight, the odds that you will need to reload are incredibly low. The biggest reason to carry a spare magazine along with your carry gun is so that you can drop your mag and swap out if you have some kind of failure. But even that is highly unlikely, assuming that you have bought a reputable firearm in the first place (e.g., not KelTec, Taurus, or a Sig P320), and have kept it maintained. Keep in mind that gun fights outside of police standoffs and military engagements are almost always very, very fast; like, less than five seconds most of the time.
…But what happens when your second magazine runs out? What then?
Let’s say that I have a gun that normally has a seven round magazine. I add a second magazine. Now I’ve got 14 rounds! …But why not just make a 14 round magazine? And now when I run out, I have to change two magazines. (FWIW, normal capacity for a semi-auto 9mm is 13-18 rounds, and 15 is about average. 7 is the OEM capacity of all traditional .45ACP 1911 pistols.)
IMO adding a secondary magazine, rather than increasing the capacity of an existing magazine, adds needless complexity. Added complexity increases the odds of failure. I hate to say that this is a skill issue, but, well, changing a magazine quickly is a skill that you should practice if you want to be proficient in practical shooting. (By “practical shooting”, I mean things like IPSC, IDPA, USPSA, PCSL, three gun, steel challenge, self-defense, and war. You shouldn’t need to worry about rapid magazine changes for hunting or long range competitions.)
Unfortunately they’re pretty failure prone; they’ve got some small plastic parts that tend to break. Being pump guns, they’re also at risk of short-stroking, where you don’t fully complete a cycle, and jam your shotgun.
It’s a great idea, KelTec just needs to iron out the bugs.
Batteries are quite expensive. Lead-acid batteries are readily available, but don’t really work well for powering a house on a regular basis, because they don’t have a very long life cycle. LiON batteries work very well, but they’re fire hazards. Even worse, if you live in an area where you get freezing temperatures, they must be kept inside, because they can’t be allowed to freeze if you’re cycling them. LiFePO4 is the current best option. If you don’t charge them above 80, 85%, and never discharge below 20%, you should have a nearly infinite lifespan. But that means that for every 30kWh of power you use, you want 50kWh of battery. And currently LiFePO4 battery banks run approx. $1000/kWh (+/- depending on band). If you heat your home with electricity, and you live in e.g. North Dakota, you’re going to want more like 200kWh of batteries, because even high efficiency heat pumps can suck a lot of power when it’s -20F.
I’m currently working on getting a 17.7kW system approved by the local utility. It looks like I’ll need to step down what I’m feeding into the grid, because the line capacity out where I live is only 10kW, and they will only approve 75% of the line capacity for grid-tied systems.
I have priced out gym equipment, because I live 100 miles from the nearest “city” (…which is, like 20,000 people).
At $30/mo for a gym membership, it would take me >15 years to pay for a decent, mid-range power rack, Olympic bars, and bench. And that’s not including the weights themselves, which are usually $2-5/pound. A decent elliptical machine from eBay? Another 2 years, plus a year and a half for shipping.
If you’re serious about weights, and not independently wealthy, it almost always makes more sense to have a gym membership.
If you’re including all non-experienced shooters
Even if you include only gun owners that think they’re experienced, it’s still easy-ish to be better than average with focused practice. There are a lot of people that think going to the range once every six months and shooting 100 rounds of slow fire makes them good. Meanwhile, the people that are actually good do dryfire drills daily, and shoot thousands of rounds each month.
I’m solidly low-middle when it comes to shooting competitions like local PCSL, local USPSA, Brutality, Gun Run, etc. That probably puts me in the top 5% of gun owners though. (And I absolutely suck at long range shooting; I’ve done a little, but I don’t know my holds, because I’ve had very limited ability to shoot past 100y. I really struggle past 300y without a spotter, and past 500y it’s basically pure luck for me to hit a full-sized steel IPSC target.)
Absolutely. There are certain things that will make it easier–like having very good proprioception/kinesthesia, or perfect vision–but with enough focused time and practice, almost anyone can become a highly proficient shooter. Some people will definitely have an easier time than others, and some abilities in other areas will help more than others. And yes, you absolutely need to practice or else you’ll start losing your ability.
But.
As far as needing to be introduced to shooting early, absolutely not. There are a number of people that have moved to the US in their middle age from other countries (Korea, in particular) with no experience with firearms, taken up shooting, and have become USPSA masters and grand masters, because they understand how to practice.
Depending on what you want to learn, my first suggestion would be to look up NRA classes. Yes, yes, I know, but trust me, the NRA classes are very good for foundational work. You want to start with safety and get very, very familiar with that before moving on, because carelessness with a firearm can kill. From there, you can do something like Project Appleseed to get proficient with rifle marksmanship, or you can take classes with Ben Stoeger and Joel Park for pistol.
Hunting specifically is going to require far, far more than shooting ability; you’re going to need naturalist skills, like being able to see trail sign, land navigation, getting a feel for movement without spooking animals, and so on. For hunting, most of your time will be spent in observation and waiting, with only a single shot at the end of it all. Spending a lot of time outdoors, in the woods or fields, paying attention to animal behavior is your ‘practice’ for hunting.
Aside from all of this, something to consider is that the average shooter is… Pretty bad. Most people that own firearms don’t put in any significant amount of time training. The police are no exception; most cops are not terribly proficient with their weapon, because they only have to qualify annually, and qualification is slow fire at a target 10y away, not a practical shooting course.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the NRA rifle courses; the instructional courses are where the NRA really shines. The NRA as a 501©(4) is great. It’s the NRA-ILA that’s a steaming pile of shit.
The Socialist IRA is… Very dependent on the chapter. Some are fantastic, amazing groups. Some are very cliquish, and you’re going to need to know your theory cold and never, ever voice any contrary opinions in order to get membership. (E.g., if I say that I think that come degree of professional policing is necessary, both because not all criminals are a product of material circumstances, and because ‘community policing’ can be the autobahn to vigilantism and night riders, that would get me thrown out of some chapters.)
There’s also the Liberal Gun Club, which has some pretty decent people in it, but they’re as scattered as the SocialistIRA is.
Operation Blazing Sword lists instructors that are willing to work with LGBTQ+ people; I’m on there for one of the states.
Appleseed events are a great way of learning the basics of rifle shooting over 2 days. Some of the history they teach as fact is highly suspect–it’s more the American myth than American history—but they nominally keep contemporary politics out of it.
…And so it’s not enough that she voted against the appropriations bill that would have entirely funded the Israel war machine, she also needed to vote for the amendment to the bill that would have cut ‘offensive weapons’ in a bill that she was going to vote against…? source for the bill, source for vote record
…And you expect me to believe that M-L wouldn’t still be saying that she voted for an amendment to continue funding the Israeli military? That’s simply not believable when she already voted against the whole bill.
Can you tell me which sentence in that statement clearly says, “I support sending weapons to Israel”? Or are you making a lot of inferences based on you a priori beliefs?
You’re not proving your point.
Hope that helps.
You aren’t making your case here.
It wouldn’t have mattered how she voted on this bill to anyone that thinks she isn’t far enough left, or left in the correct way, because that amendment wouldn’t have eliminated all Israel weapons from the bill. As you know. Voted to stop sending some weapons to Israel? That’s not enough, therefore she supports genocide. Didn’t vote to stop sending some weapons to Israel? She supports genocide. It’s ‘heads I win, tails you lose’.
She knew that, in the end, the bill would get passed despite her nay vote.
Okay, she also knew that the amendment wouldn’t get passed, so there’s no harm in voting against it, right? You’re applying two different standards of logic here. If you look at it through the lens of, “AOC wants to eliminate all military funding to Israel”, then the votes are ideologically consistent; the first fails to meet the goal, so gets voted down, the second vote–the overall military appropriation–funds Israel, and so also gets voted down.
You’re setting up an unfalsifiable argument, where there’s no condition that would lead you to believe that she’s opposed to the genocide in Palestine.
As far as I can tell, there is nothing in chiropractic practice that is not quackery.
Think about it this way: the basic practice is the idea that you have misalignments causing problems, and that you can manually manipulate the body back into alignment. But then what keeps you from getting unaligned again as soon as you stand up? (Nothing, of course! That’s why you have to keep going back!) Take, for example, the common inguinal hernia. You can manually manipulate it so that you’re forcing the intestines back through the abdominal wall. And it absolutely relieves the immediate discomfort. But you’re not actually fixing anything; you need surgery to stitch the tear up. If you have weak support structures causing a problem, then physical therapy is going to create a permanent solution. If you have a herniated disc that’s not healing and causing referred pain, then you need to surgically fix the herniation.
I opt for bitcoin because it has more utility value for me.
My bank makes it an enormous pain in my ass to buy things from overseas vendors; they won’t process any payments that are going outside of the US border. The rationale is ‘fraud’, even when you’re dealing with well-known and trusted vendors. Even when I try calling my banks and telling them to pre-authorize the charges, they won’t go through. The only way I can get around that within the established financial system is by using a 3rd party payment service; those 3rd party services make their money by lopping off a percentage of that purchase. E.g., if I’m buying something for $1000 from China (and we’re going to ignore tariffs, duties, taxes, and shipping costs for the moment), then I may have to pay $1040 for it, because of the fees that are taken out. On the other hand, if I’m buying from a trusted vendor, and I use bitcoin, I can just send it to them. Bitcoin doesn’t care where it’s going, and–assuming you don’t care about speed of confirmations–transaction fees can be quite a bit lower than using any other payment system. (And, BTW, transaction fees are built into all payment processing systems; it’s just not apparent to individuals on the purchasing end. That means that if something costs .001btc, then I have to send, say, .0010001btc to the vendor, but then the)
Speculation doesn’t play a role in it for me.
I have no direct use for gold; I can’t plate connectors.
Yes.
But many people–and I’m not saying you do this–but many people get gold, silver, and diamonds confused, and think that their intrinsic value is linked to their perceived value. does that make sense?
Gonzalez, the person that did run against Maduro, almost certainly won.
Maduro refuses to show the proof, and all attempts by non-partisan groups to monitor the election were rebuffed. Meanwhile, Gonzalez released the official tally sheets from poll watchers, and parallel vote tabulation confirms those results, and some statistical analysis of the claimed vote totals is very, very strongly suggestive that Maduro cooked the vote totals. And yet, somehow you’re sure that he won.
Is there any amount of evidence that would convince you that Maduro falsified the election results? Because he’s not providing any evidence.
Also, there’s no doubt that Hugo Chavez was popularly elected. And Maduro was elected by a very slim majority (about 50.6%, IIRC) the first time, in '15 (?). Since then? Eh. Popularly supported? I’m not seeing any independent evidence of that; the people claiming he is are official propaganda arms of communist parties. Was Machado a right-wing candidate? Yep. But if she had so little support, then why was she barred from running? And the fact that she’s done shitty things, is a shitty person, and asked another shitty person to illegally invade does not mean that Maduro is popular with the people of Venezuela.