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In the year 1000 A.D. an unbiased world observer would never have picked Europe as the region that would dominate the globe.  Probably they would pick China with its massive population or fabulously wealthy India.  The Islamic Caliphate would have looked past its sell-by date but would have beaten Europe by a mile.

In 1500 A.D. it would have been a closer match, but Columbus' small flotilla and the individual exploration ships sent by Prince Henry the Navigator to feel their way down the African coast compared very poorly with the huge Chinese treasure fleets that sailed all the way to Mogidishu.  Our unbiased observer would still have thought that Europe was the underdog.

Two centuries later and the sun never set on the British Empire.  How on earth did something this unlikely happen?

This is one of the biggest questions in the field of history.  The event is called the Great Divergence and in history it's a real thing.  Why did the Industrial Revolution happen first in Europe, and in Britain before anywhere in Europe?  It seems so unlikely as to be incredible.

In this day and age - and particularly on Columbus Day - it is frowned upon to ask these questions.  The Powers That Be tell us that Europe got rich by stealing indigenous people's wealth, conveniently ignoring the many other non-European powers that were much more brutal at doing that than the Europeans were.  The Mongol Empire in 1300 would have had poll position for World Domination, as would the earlier Abbasid caliphate.  If all it takes for World Domination is to steal other people's stuff, what was it about Europe that was different?

After all, China invented gunpowder.  Why did Europe perfect it?  Why did little England perfect the sailing Ship-of-the-Line?  Why did the Divergence start and why there?

Today I offer two books for interested readers that explain this.  One of these could never be published today, and the author would never get tenure today.  Fortunately (if that's the right word) David Landes is safely dead and doesn't have to worry about The Usual Suspects getting him denied tenure.

Landes was a big deal in Economic History, authoring the section on the Industrial Revolution in the Cambridge Economic History.  Late in his career, perhaps 30 years ago, he wrote The Wealth And Poverty of Nations, an economic history whose title was unashamedly stolen from Adam Smith.  Landes insisted that social systems were key, and that some societies allowed progress towards a Great Divergence while other societies stifled attempts towards that progress.

In other words, if your society doesn't support the right efforts it doesn't matter how much of other people's wealth you steal; you're going nowhere.  We see this in the history of Spain which became fabulously wealthy by stealing New World wealth but squandered it, ending up at the bottom of European power rankings.  You could say exactly the same thing about the Mongol empire, or the Caliphate.

Landes' arguments in the book are considered double-plus ungood by the woke crowd, so you might want to pick up a used copy from Amazon.  The chapter on Argentina is particularly interesting in this age of President Milei.  Interestingly, Milei was an Economist, and may have read Landes' book.

A second recommendation is less controversal with the woke crowd but is joined at the hip with the Great Divergence.  The political cycle world wide has been the emergence of an empire, the collapse of the empire, and the rise of a successor empire.  We see this in China, in India, in Mesoamerica.  

But not in Europe.  Europe only had one great empire, Rome.  When it fell, it was not replaced.  Walter Scheidel wrote a book exploring why this unusual circumstance happened, Escape From Rome.  Using Landes' analytical framework, the Roman Empire did not encourage the types of behaviors that could have led to an Industrial Revolution, because those behaviors were seen by the Authorities as subversive to the state.  But when Rome fell, there were unusual circumstances in Europe that prevented a new empire from rising in its place.  Then competition between the poor emerging states set Europe on a very different path from the rest of the world.  Basically, Europe escaped from Empire while the rest of the world didn't.

Both of these books are relevant on this Columbus Day.  We are offered a litany of European sins (which quite frankly are mostly true but are hardly unique to Europe).  All politics is local, so the Woke brigade must needs tear down Western Civilization by means fair or foul.

But facts are stubborn things, and the Great Divergence is a fact.  Another fact is that the sun really did not set on the British Empire.  Understanding "why" is always more important than knowing "what" - but that understanding starts with the "what" and Landes' and Scheidel's books are your entry point to this.

Because it's a fact that Columbus did discover the New World.  It's a fact that the New World did not discover the old.  It's a fact that the great Chinese treasure fleets were suddenly gone like they had never been, and that Vasco da Gama opened India to Europe, and not India sailing trading ships up the river Thames.

Facts are stubborn things.  Things happen for a reason.  History will tell us, if we listen. 

The post M1E4: Origins of the M14 Gas Expansion/Cutoff System first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.

Everytown is the anti-Second Amendment activist group funded in large part by Michael Bloomberg. Everytown Research has posted a report which calls for AI companies to integrate  restrictions on users into their AI programs. The report is titled "Artificially Assisted Gun Violence" "Chatbox Risks and Preventative Steps for Responsible AI Companies".

The report has five listed authors: Krystal LoPilato, Sriraman Madhavan, Ruhi Bengali, Olivia Li, and Justin Wagner. 

A common criticism of Everytown is the use of propaganda terms such as "Gun Violence".  The term creates an association of guns and immoral violence. It conflates separate issues of suicide, homicide and accidents. The use of the term raises questions about the bias of the authors.

Another criticism is the claim the leading cause of death among "Children and Teens" are various suicides, homicides, and accidents where firearms are used or abused. The categorization lumps adults and children together. Many of the deaths are homicides committed by gang members who are often 15-17 years old, which are unlikely to be stopped with firearms legislation. The claim is misleading.

Several individual cases are cited to build a case for owners of AI programs to create a censorship regime within the programs. This is a common tactic used to pass legislation. Here it is used to push private censorship.  Restriction of some material from the view of children has always been legitimate.

Everytown points out Large Language AI programs are trained to be agreeable and sympathetic to prolong contact. When this becomes an amoral response without any concern for consequences, bad results can happen. An AI model can encourage a person to commit suicide or to commit mass murder. In some states, encouraging a suicide can be criminal. Encouraging mass murder would often be criminal, depending on the specific language used.

Stopping AI programs from encouraging suicide and mass murder is not particularly controversial. Everytown goes far beyond this goal. They do not ask AI owners to only stop conversations encouraging suicide and/or mass murder. They extend the information covered to many ordinary conversations about firearms in general, with anyone.

Everytown implies actions which have long been legal are generally illegal. Using the term "unsafe" they claim AI programs should:

 "..refuse to advise users on how to illegally acquire, modify or manufacture firearms, firearm parts, or accessories."

This is an extremely complicated legal question. Most modification of firearms, manufacture of firearms, or acquisition of firearms or firearm parts is moral and legal.  The default position of an AI restriction would likely stop far more moral and legal actions than illegal actions.

Everytown implies the prohibitions on minors should extend to young adults 18-21. The report uses the word "unsafe" to lump individuals making guns for themselves with people making illegal machine guns. Not surprisingly, Everytown wants the AI owners to incorporate Everytown's view on how firearms should be safely used and stored into how the AI views such topics. Keeping firearms locked up and unloaded makes them extremely difficult to use for defense of self and home.

Missing from the paper is any consideration of rights protected by the Second Amendment, or of positive uses of firearms for self-defense, recreation, or defense against tyranny. The legal landscape is changing rapidly. It appears the rights of young adults to acquire firearms will be upheld in the courts as a right protected by the Second Amendment. The right to acquire firearms is gaining traction as an ancillary right included with the right to keep and bear arms.

Analysis:

AI is becoming a powerful, new tool. It should not be used to encourage suicide or  murder. It should not be used to discourage the exercise of Second Amendment rights, or the use of any of the Bill of Rights. Everytown's view of "gun safety is a direct assault on rights protected by the Second Amendment. AI owners would be wise to incorporate respect for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution into AI programs.  Making firearms for personal use has been a part of American gun culture since before the Constitution. Such a way to acquire firearms is implicitly covered by the Second Amendment.

©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch  

The woman wanted to contact police immediately, but Rodriguez convinced her to wait, she told investigators.

The couple returned to sleep, only to awaken shortly after 6 a.m. to find Click had entered their home, according to the DA's office.

Surveillance video from inside the residence appeared to show Click entering through a downstairs living room, investigators said.

Rodriguez attempted to grab a handgun to defend himself, but Click shot him multiple times before he could arm himself, the woman told police.

(Click fled, then committed suicide) 

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"Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Houthis."

"Houthis who?"

"Houthis got your range."

 Not at the animals 2 x 2 level but I think I hear a keel being cut.

 I was reading Ruth for a Bible Study and ran into both the word and concept of gleaning. Leviticus 19:9-10 directs farmers:

9“ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

Why? Even the poorest could put a small amount of labor into gathering food without anyone else needing to do so. This provided for them but also meant that a poor person would need to invest some effort into getting himself fed. At the same time, he was not going (to mix a Victorian metaphor profoundly time machine blended) cap in hand asking for help. His dignity was undamaged. If you were too proud to invest a few minutes of your time locating unharvested food, you were probably too proud. From the Torah.com:

The concept of “charity” (tzedakah) in a form recognizable to us today – as giving one’s money or other asset to the poor without an expectation of compensation from the recipient – is a post-biblical development, beginning in the Hellenistic era and brought to fuller fruition in the earliest rabbinic texts (second-third centuries C.E.).[1] In the Hebrew Bible, support for the poor is provided in a variety of different ways.

Exodus 23:11 instructs landowners to leave their land fallow every seventh year for the poor to collect what grows. Deuteronomy (14:28–9 and 26:12–15) requires the tithe in the third and sixth years of the Sabbatical cycle, to be given to the needy, and advocates lending to the poor in the years leading up to the cancellation of debts every seventh year (15:7–11).

A number of prophetic texts also express special empathy for the poor, instructing the reader not to take advantage of the needy (Isa 3:14–15, 10:1–2; Jer 5:28; Amos 8:4–6) while the book of Esther (9:22) instructs one to give “gifts to the poor” on the festival of Purim.

Above all, the preeminent way to support the poor in the Hebrew Bible is through allocations to the poor at the time of the harvest, which is the focus of this piece.

Gleraning seems to have been a right recognized in English law at times:

GLEANING, LEASING,OR LESING, FromFr. glainer, quasi graner ; colligere grana. Teuton. Ahrlesen, ex ahr, spica, & lesen, colligere. Minshew in v. Glean] It hath beensaid, that by the commonlaw and custom ofEngland, the poor are allowed toenter and gleanuponanother'sground, after the harvest,withoutbeing guilty of trespass; which humane provision seems borrowed from the Mosaical law. 3 Comm. 212, 213. Trials per pais, c. 15. p. 438. 534. [Giles Jacob, comp. 3 The Law-Dictionary 185 ( 1811).]

Right of poor to glean-Most municipal laws had some rules relating to poor and famishing people before poor laws were adopted. Moses prohibited the owners of fields from reaping the corners of their crops, or from gathering the scattered ears, or fruits of the trees after being shaken, these being reserved as an indirect fund of support to the gleaners.¹ And a traveller could pluck the ears of corn growing near the wayside and eat, though not carry them away; and he was even justified in entering his neighbour's vineyard and eating enough of grapes to satisfy his appetite.2 And Mahomet also recognised gleaning as a sacred right of the poor. Moreover a Brahmin in his travels when hungry was exempted from fine, if he took only two sugar-canes, or two esculent roots from another's field. 4 By the ancient laws of Wales a poor man, who had traversed a certain breadth of country without obtaining either alms or entertainment, was not punishable though caught with stolen eatables in his possession. [James Paterson, 2 COMMENTARIES ON THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT AND The Laws of England RELATING TO The Security of the Person, 24 (1877)]

If the right to glean was ever recognized in American law, I have not seen it. Yet the parallel to SNAP (or "Food Stamps" as the program was known in my youth) is very strong. When Food Stamps were created, the goal was to soak up the surplus that American agriculture had created by its high efficiency in the postwar era. This is why the Food Stamp Act of 1964 excluded imported foods:

(b) The term “food” means any food or food product for human consumption except alcoholic beverages, tobacco, those foods which are identified on the package as being imported, and meat and meat products which are imported.

In a weird analogy, SNAP was doing the gleaning on behalf of the poor. Farmers were producing food so efficiently that there was not enough demand to buy it all, so our government was doing a sort of post-harvest gleaning. Similarly, if you are of my generation, you remember US Government surplus cheese in the 1980s.

Most cities have laws prohibiting the poor from taking the garbage behind restaurants. There are certainly some health risks associated with this; I can also see why this likely leads to unsightly messes. I think laws allowing restaurants to leave in clearly marked locations food that has not gone bad that could be safely put in a timed container: eat until 10:00 PM. This could certainly alleviate hunger among the homeless. Is this an ideal way of doing it? No. But better than letting people fall through the crevasses of pride or bureaucracy.

I can see why farmers might not be keen on legal recognition of gleaning. It would certainly be commercially misused. Not everyone gleaning a harvest is likely to be responsible about access to the fields.

Gonzalez “appeared intoxicated and agitated” when the father tried to send him on his way, police said, adding that Gonzalez then “physically assaulted” the father. The father was forced to the ground and suffered several injuries, according to police.

Police said Gonzalez also attacked the daughter when she tried to intervene on her father’s behalf.

Fearing for his and his daughter’s safety, the father drew a gun and fired one shot at Gonzalez, hitting him in the midsection, according to police. The daughter’s boyfriend, an off-duty police officer, arrived at the scene a short time later and handcuffed Gonzalez.

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Minutes later, the man reportedly confronted the DoorDash driver again, and stated that he was going to take his vehicle, walked to the front passenger-side door, and opened it. The DoorDash driver was seated in the driver’s seat and displayed a firearm, telling the man that he did not want any further trouble and directing him to leave him alone.

The man is then accused of responding to say he was going to take the DoorDash driver’s gun as well. The man reportedly moved around the vehicle to the driver’s side and lunged through the open driver’s door, attacking the DoorDash Driver while he remained seated in the driver’s seat. The DoorDash driver fired three rounds in self-defense, striking the man with all three shots.

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According to NBC Los Angeles, the two men had argued during a physical custody transfer of a child before one of them threatened the other with a shovel, prompting the other man to respond by firing a gun. Deputies later recovered a firearm at the scene. Separately, hometownstation.com reported that the two men were known to each other and that their verbal argument escalated before one charged at the other with a sharp gardening tool, leading the other man to discharge a firearm — while signalscv.com reported that the gunshot victim was the one who began chasing the other man, in that account with an ax. The accounts do not agree on exactly which tool was involved or who wielded it, and that detail remains unresolved.

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On October 6, 2026, State Police and South Glens Falls Police Department responded to a home on Main Street in South Glens Falls for the report of a home invasion. 

On October 6, 2026, at approximately 4:39 a.m. Law Enforcement responded to a residence on Main Street in South Glens Falls for the report of a home invasion. The investigation has determined that an individual unknown to the homeowner entered the occupied home and was shot by the homeowner. The homeowner and other occupants were uninjured. The individual shot has been transported to Albany Medical Center for treatment of the gunshot wound, which is believed to be non-life-threatening. 

The investigation is ongoing. A heavy police presence is anticipated in the area. There is no threat to the public at this time. 

Sourch Here

 I'm only going to use his name once, so listen up.  Do you remember Nidal Hassan? He was a US Army officer and psychologist who perpetrated a mass casualty event at Fort Hood in 2009.  He killed 13 people and injured 32 before he was captured.

Yeahh, this is the asshole who abrogated his oath both as an officer and as a physician and decided to go all Aloha Snackbar at the Fort Hood reediness center, a place where soldiers and dependents get ID cards and register vehicles. So, he brought a pistol and started shooting people, because Aloha.

Well, it seems that the War Department has decided to Aloha his ass by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3rd.  Rumors are that it is going to be a public execution. We're talking livestream here.

If they are thinking about a good old-fashioned stand-him-up- and-shoot-him, that is too good for him. I'd get a bit more creative.  Maybe a couple of kneecap shots just to start the party.  Or, maybe after a quick coup de grace, feed him to a herd of hogs. They could stake him out somewhere and eh would be gone in three days.

A standard killing and burial is too good for this asshole.

I run into cases like this.

 Victor, Cal. (1973)

11/07/1973: Seven adults were bound and gagged in a semicircle, then shot to death. Two children were found shot to death in a bedroom. Police eventually arrested two persons for whom arrest warrants were already outstanding for a similar crime in Phoenix One of the dead owned a nearby market. An undetermined amount of cash was missing from its floor safe which had not been forced. Police believed this mass murder was to cover up the robbery. Police across Northern California were stacking up charges against these two for murder and rape. Arizona executed one of them in 1978; the other died of cirrhosis of the liver on death row in 1986.

Category: family non-residential

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: firearm[1]

There is something special about an old rifle. Especially Bill’s Sweet Thang which won him the local bench rest competition at his local match. Maybe it is the walnut. Maybe it is the steel. Maybe it is knowing that somebody was shooting that rifle long before we ever got our hands on it. Or maybe […]

A man was shot and killed after trying to break into a home on Shoreline Drive early Monday morning, according to the Portsmouth Police Department.

Around 3:25 a.m., Portsmouth police officers arrived at the 3700 block of Shoreline Drive on the report of a shooting after a break-in. Officers say they found a man with gunshot wounds, and he was declared dead at the scene.

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A police spokesperson says just before 6:45 p.m. Monday, officers were called to a Paige Drive home for shots fired.

They discovered there had been a fight between Keith Smith and a woman that turned physical. Police say the 37-year-old man tried to run the woman over with his car, which led to her shooting at the vehicle.

Police say Smith managed to get control of the gun and chased the woman before leaving the scene.

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 Isaias is hammering Fort Walton/Destin/Pensacola right now.  I'm watching Ryan Hall, who does a great weather channel on YouTube,

I shared texts with Termite, a frequent commenter and good personal friend, who is currently on an offshore rig riding it out.  They couldn't leave the rig yesterday at shift change, so they are drawing overtime pay until the helicopters can get out to pick them up. Probably tomorrow.  Termite is fine, eating well, and drawing overtime.  Hopefully, he will drop by next week, drink a beer, and tell me all about it.