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Today for the first time I reloaded .380 ACP cartridges. They will be used in my Ruger Security-380.
I used a mix of PMC and Sellier & Bellot brass, Aguila primers, 3.4 grains of Winchester 244 powder, and Berry's 100 grain plated lead bullets. The data I consulted suggests that this will give around 900 - 925 FPS at the muzzle.
Assuming it functions well and is accurate in my gun it will make a good practice load.
I also figured out the approximate cost per round of this ammo, not including sales tax, shipping, or HAZMAT fees for shipping powder and primers.
- Cases: Free (Saved from fired factory ammo.)
- Powder: $0.02
- Bullet: $0.12
- Primer: $0.07
- Total: $0.21
Comparable S&B factory .380 FMJ ammo: $0.40 per round.
After I was done out in the shop I ordered a 6-cavity Lee TL356-95-RF mold. This will cast 95 grain round nose, flat point bullets suitable for use in .380 and could also be used in 9mm, although I generally like 115 - 124 grain bullets for 9mm. This will drive my cost per round down even more.
May as well have a really cool boat:
Most boats are a carefully considered compromise designed to cover as many bases as possible: floating holiday home, party island, offshore cruiser – jack of all trades, as the saying has it, master of none.
Safehaven Marine’s Barracuda SV11 eschews all those compromises, becoming the jack of a single trade, master of one. Its single dedicated purpose is to conquer rough water and transport its crew safely, regardless of conditions.
...
There are no hot tubs, no teak deck option, no rise and fall TV. But there is a rise and fall gyro stabilised machine gun platform that emerges from the foredeck, controlled from the wheelhouse. Bulletproofing and a gun rack for the AK47s are also on the menu, should its customer base require it.
Oh, and it's a stealth boat.
"We've got multiple individuals detained on scene, and we have four firearms recovered from the scene, so it's possible that the individuals who were shot were also individuals shooting, but it's very early on in the investigation. We're looking to determine that," Foley said.
The post Explaining the Yugoslav / Zastava M70 Series of Rifles first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.
On May 30, 1626, an explosion at the Wanggongchang Gunpowder Factory in Beijing destroyed part of the city and killed and estimated 20,000 people. Pictured above are ancient Chinese cannon, near the Forbidden City. — And on May 30, 1806, future US President Andrew Jackson killed Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson accused Jackson’s wife of bigamy. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 124 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. This is the final round of the contest. There will not be a “Round 125”! — Take Note: Our editorial calendar is now filled …
The post Preparedness Notes — Saturday, May 30, 2026 appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
For the last six years, I have been supplementing my retirement income by working as a rideshare driver. At first, I was a little apprehensive about picking up complete strangers and all of the potential danger that might entail. After almost 20,000 rides, I can honestly say that there was only one experience where I thought my personal safety was at risk and it was relatively minor. Since those early days, rideshare companies have greatly improved their safety tools for both drivers and riders. Although I did not begin driving as an exercise in preparedness, it quickly became one. The …
The post Preparedness Observations from the Rideshare Driver’s Seat by Guitar George appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds …
The post Editors’ Prepping Progress appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
“For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them. All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an …
The post The Editors’ Quote appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
From an open source science journal:
Glaciers are rapidly retreating worldwide duto anthropogenic climate change, with severe implications not only for ecosystems and water security but also for cultural memory, emotional wellbeing, and environmental justice. In the Andes, glaciers are more than reservoirs of ice—they are living beings within Indigenous cosmologies, ancestral knowledge systems, and everyday life. This essay explores the cultural, emotional, and symbolic dimensions of glacial loss, focusing on Andean communities who view glaciers as sacred entities..
Glaciers as more-than-human beings
Is it that hard for an editor to say, "Yes, I understand that indigenous cultures have strong mythological beliefs about glacierz but that does mean we mistake that for science. Find whatever journal Carlos Castaneda editing now for this article."
It seems like this is something being pushed by the Boston.Gov:
I'm afraid I don't even understand what they're talking about. Does this mean dudes in dresses learning about periods, or the other way around? Quite frankly, the terminology may be intentionally confusing. Just shut up and nod your head, right?
Oooooh kaaaay.
I am SO glad I got out of there. Didn't even get cut up too badly going over the wire at the border ...
An educational trip for the whole family, we'll take you on a quick tour of the National Museum of the Pacific War! The post BUG Match: Beretta 1934 (in .380) first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.
Cynar Spritz2 oz Cynar3 oz chilled Prosecco1 oz soda waterLemon wedge or olive for garnishFill a wine glass with ice. Add the Cynar first, followed by the Prosecco and finally the soda water. Garnish with either a lemon wedge or olive.
Being in sort of a “1911 season” I’ve been packing this timeless pistol design again. Got a couple of 1911-oriented pistol matches coming up in June, too. It’s reminded me of this article on handling tips that came out this month in Armory Life. One tip not in the article was sort of a life lesson. In […]- NATO Catching Strays: Russian drone misses Ukraine, hits apartment building in Romania, injuring two.
- Zuckermuskian Solipsism
- Rebuilding US precision weapon stockpiles to pre-Iran levels will be a multi-year project.
On July 30, 2023, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CRPC) published a paper showing massive errors in the FBI Active Shooter Reports from 2014 through 2023. This correspondent has been following the issue for the entire period. The first viral post this correspondent wrote about the subject of armed civilians stopping mass murders was published on December 15, 2012. It had 16 incidents documented from October, 1997 to 11 December 2012. All of these incidents occurred before the FBI started collecting data on "active shooter" incidents.
The CRPC paper, with a solid institution and organization behind it, does a better job than a single blogger did at the end of 2012. The CRPC shows how badly the FBI has bungled the job of tracking these events. The first FBI report was published ten months later, during the Obama administration, in September of 2013. The CRPC covered the problems with the FBI report in October of 2014.
The reason for the difference in the numbers reported by the FBI is not immediately obvious. It happens because of the way the FBI structured its approach to finding the incidents and deciding if they qualify for inclusion.
According to the FBI, the FBI, under the Obama administration, started to report "active shooter incidents", as part of the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, 28 USC 530C(b)(1)(M)(1). The research for the report appears to have been done at Texas State University, with overview by FBI Agent Katherine W. Schweit. Later reports were also contracted to and researched at Texas State University. The FBI definition of an "active shooter is stated below:
From the 2016-17 report
"The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of one or more firearms."
From the 2013 Study:
"Incidents identified in this study do not encompass all gun-related situations; therefore caution should be taken when using this information without placing it in context. Specifically, shootings that resulted from gang or drug violence—pervasive, long-tracked, criminal acts that could also affect the public—were not included in this study."
Those definitions, together, create a system which is inherently subjective. It is a system which depends on a great deal of judgement on the part of the people grading the incidents. John Lott investigated the process, asking for answers from the FBI as to why certain incidents were included while others were excluded. Here is an answer he received from and FBI administrator. From email to John Lott in response to queries about incidents, by Shayne E. Buchwald of the FBI, dated May 16, 2018 7:36 AM:
"The selection of cases for inclusion in these reports is the result of a consensus vote of analysts and Law Enforcement professionals using the methodology stated in the original 2013 study. In some cases, a level of interpretation is required with which all may not agree. The FBI notes your differing opinion in the stated cases."
This correspondent's understanding of consensus voting depends on the specific method used. In a small group, it usually means everyone agrees with the decision. If such is the approach, any member of the group has veto power over whether an incident is included. Any member may exclude incidents, but all members are necessary to include any incident. Such a system minimizes the number of incidents which are included.
The CRPC article gives example after example of incidents which were excluded, while others which are very similar are included. There is a high correlation with incidents stopped by armed "civilians" and incidents which are excluded. Incidents are also mislabeled. Volunteer church security action was labeled as defense by a "security guard", instead of an armed civilian, even though the defender was an unpaid volunteer, in the West Freeway Church incident.
The CRPC shows a total of 515 active shooter incidents which they believe qualify for the FBI definition. This is 165 more incidents than the incidents judged to meet the definition by the FBI. The FBI shows only 14 incidents where "active shooters" were stopped by defensive gun use. The CRPC shows 180 incidents stopped by defensive gun uses, or 166 more than the FBI.
Because of the subjective nature of finding and including incidents, and because of the nature of "consensus voting", the FBI can justify its selection of some incidents and its exclusion of others. The CRPC report shows how subjective and exclusionary this process is. The selection of incidents to be voted on by consensus is subjective. The grading of chosen incidents is subjective. It is not surprising those who value armed defense of self and others grade the incidents differently.
Analysis:
The FBI was created in the Progressive ideological era, where government was seen as the solution, and never as the problem. Progressive ideology believes restrains on government are bad. The earliest report of justified homicide statistics found by this correspondent by the FBI is dated 1976. Clayton Cramer does an excellent job of showing how the FBI undercounts justifiable homicides by a factor of 5-1 in his 2016 academic paper. Only 15%-20% of justified homicide are recorded in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. This correspondent wrote about the undercount problem in 2015. The undercount of justified homicides is part of the institutional bias at the FBI. The undercount of armed defenders who stop active shooters appears to be an extension of such a bias. It is not hard to understand how people who believe the population is unable to govern itself, are reluctant to admit armed civilians are a significant part of an effective defense against mass murder. It is not hard to understand how people with such an ideology are subject to confirmation bias by excluding such incidents from their reporting.
Whether such bias is justified can be determined by each reader. Go to the CRPC web site and look at the incidents which were excluded from the FBI report. Draw your own conclusions.
The problem is larger than the FBI. The old media had/has a progressive ideological bias which minimizes coverage of such incidents. This correspondent had a naive belief that when a mass murder was stopped by an armed defender, it would be national news, a "man bites dog" story. It would go "viral". The opposite happened in 1999 when a gun store employee stopped a mass murder by shooting the would be murderer. The story was covered locally. With the internet in its infancy in 1999, the story quickly disappeared. You can find an excerpt on freerepublic, where it was placed in 2012. How quickly the story disappeared convinced this correspondent to start keeping track.
Today the CRPC does a better job.
©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
Officials said the 22-year-old victim walked into the store and approached the shooter. Surveillance footage shows them getting into a face-to-face altercation. Then, the 22-year-old pulls out a gun and points it at the man.
“This other individual, who we now know to be a 21-year-old Hispanic male, pulls out a gun himself and fires at least three times at the person who initially put a gun toward his head and neck area,” said Inspector D.F. Pace.
The victim tried to walk out of the store but collapsed. Officers took him to the hospital, where he died shortly thereafter.
Police said the shooter has a license to carry and is cooperating with the investigation.
Knowledge to make your life better. If you have some free time, check out some of these links this weekend. Inside the Mind of a Home Defense Shooting Recoil Offgrid Magazine has recently published a few valuable articles about the mental processes behind using lethal force and managing the potential stress it might create. […]
On May 29, 1648, King Charles I of England attempted to escape captivity at Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, for the second time, by hacksawing through a barred window but he was caught in the act. — On this day in 1780, the treatment of Patriot prisoners by British Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his Loyalist troops led to the coining of a phrase that defined British brutality for the rest of the War for Independence: “Tarleton’s Quarter.” Tarleton and his Torries proceeded to shoot any an all Patriots that had surrendered after the fall of Charleston. The Patriots lost 113 …
The post Preparedness Notes — Friday, May 29, 2026 appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
Water is essential to all life. The human body can go three weeks without food but only three days without water before completely shutting down. Yet most of us find it much easier to store a year’s worth of food than a month’s worth of water. I live in the suburbs and while I have my beans, bullets and band aids pretty squared away, water has always been an area of concern for me. There is no way to store enough water for a long term outage, and I haven’t found many good options. Recently I have spent more time …
The post Water in Disasters: A Rain Catchment and Treatment System, by Suburban Prepper appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
In Economics & Investing Media of the Week we feature photos, charts, graphs, maps, video links, and news items of interest to preppers. Here is a world map with national surface areas relatively distorted by their total number of annual births. As you can see, Muslim-dominated Indonesia is growing rapidly, while Australia and New Zealand have pitiful birth rates. (Refer to my novel Expatriates for my predictions on Indonesia’s eventual territorial ambitions.) The thumbnail below is click-expandable. (Graphic courtesy of Reddit.) Economics & Investing Links of Interest JP Morgan: The market’s inflation fears are running ahead of reality. USDA: Food …
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“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” – Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations.
The post The Editors’ Quote appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
A good timer is critical for dry-fire, live-fire, training, competition, and a whole lot more. How does the new Double Alpha EDGE stack up? We find out.A former high-ranking CIA official who allegedly lied about his credentials to secure $77,000 in bogus military leave was busted after FBI agents found a mind-blowing fortune, including $40 million worth of gold bars, hidden inside his Virginia home.
The feds conducted a raid at the residence of David Rush last week, uncovering a staggering 303 gold bars, $2 million in cash and nearly three dozen luxury Rolex watches, according to court documents.
Rush, until recently a “senior executive service-level employee” at the CIA, reportedly requested the massive haul of gold and foreign currency for “work-related expenses” between November and March.
If all the Medicaid/Medicare fraudsters and crooks who did not have a a good reason to take $2 million of gold bars home were routed out, would we still be running a deficit every year?
The article explains that he was caught when he defrauded the government of $77,000. This led to the discovery that his bachelor's and master's degrees did not exist nor his military pilot's license.
If the CIA is this careless about background checks, how careful are the other departments?
The profound greed, too. $40 million is a lot of money. You can live very, very comfortably on that forever. He could have stolen $2 million, created a new identity (he did work for CIA) and never been caught.
On May 28, 1588 King Philip II dispatched the Spanish Armada under the Duke of Medina-Sidonia from Lisbon, Portugal to invade England. When it left Lisbon, the fleet was composed of 141 ships, with 10,138 sailors and 19,315 soldiers. The fleet carried 1,500 brass guns and 1,000 iron guns. The armada was hampered by bad weather, and then was outmaneuvered by the 200-ship British navy in several decisive engagements. The remainder of the Armada was devastated by storms, disease, and starvation. An analysis of the human cost of the campaign reveals that 25,696 men departed and just 13,399 returned. — …
The post Preparedness Notes — Thursday, May 28, 2026 appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) The World As We Now Know It Succeed here first. A good man succeeds regardless of where he is. Marcus Aurelius would be a good man here or in ancient Rome. Same for Sejong the Great. Same if an Adeptus Astartes was put in your place. A good man succeeds where he finds himself. “I would succeed if only…” is loser talk. It’s taken many a man who might have succeeded and turned him into one who did not. You’ve probably heard “if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re …
The post A Letter To My Younger Self – Part 2, by N.C. appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. In today’s column, Wrench Attacks on Bitcoin Whales. ‘Wrench Attacks’ Have Crypto Whales Living in Fear The UK Telegraph reports ‘Wrench attacks’ leave crypto billionaires living in fear. A quote: “Billions …
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“I explain the law of compensation like this: ‘Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time.” – Robert Kiyosaki
The post The Editors’ Quote appeared first on SurvivalBlog.com.
I am organizing my entropic collection of telescope parts preparing for my cross-country move. Stuff I do not need (how many 2" to 1.25" adapters did I buy and when?) I will sell. Some parts make me scratch my head and say, "What is this?" It is beautifully machined and polished. Might I have upgraded some part of a Losmandy mount in the long tunnel of time?
Especially if I was senile and dishonest. 5/27/26 NPR:
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden sued the Justice Department on Tuesday in an effort to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of the former president's interview with a ghostwriter that were obtained by the special counsel who investigated his handling of classified documents.
Biden's lawyers said in a lawsuit filed in Washington's federal court that the Justice Department plans to release the files to Congress and a conservative group, the Heritage Foundation, after the department had previously argued that they were exempt from disclosure under the public records law.
Biden's lawyers argued that the disclosure would "constitute an unwarranted invasion of President Biden's privacy."
"Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home," his attorneys wrote. "And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure."
Trump was prosecuted (and his wife's lingerie drawer was searched) as part of an investigation into failure to properly handle classified documents. I would think Biden deserves the same attention.