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 Nick Freidas is a conservative voice in the United States.  A proud veteran, he served with the US 1st Special Forces in overseas deployments.  Post military, he served in the Virginia legislature.  Now he is speaking out on a range of issues.

Nick put out a documentary on the problems of unrestricted immigration. It is a cautionary tale for US politics and social policy.

Viva Las Vegas, baby:

At Gunship Helicopters we offer:

• The only place in the world you can shoot full-auto belt fed from a helicopter as a civilian
• 71 acres of mountainside range space
• A truly authentic military experience

I was surprised that they have packages under $1000, but they get more expensive pretty quickly.  But things like this make me proud to be American.

The post America’s Do-It-All Naval Gun: The 5 Inch Mk12 on the USS New Jersey first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.

Slovakia map in public domain 

While researching bear/human conflicts, two more incidents were found where Slovakians used handguns to successfully defend themselves against European brown bears (Ursus arctos).  Slovakia is one of the central European countries which have adopted statutes so that people can legally carry handguns for defense of self and others. The area of both attacks is located about 20 km north of Banská Bystrica, just north of central Slovakia.

On March 30, 2024, a young man was searching for mushrooms in dense forest in the district of Žilina, near the village of Stráňavy. He was off the hiking trail when a brown bear charged him. Fortunately, he was carrying a handgun, and fired at the bear, stopping the attack. Members of the Slovakian State Nature Conservancy quickly investigated. They assembled a team including members of the local hunting associations and local police, and hunting dogs. The team was able to trace the bear involved.

During the search, the bear attacked the hunters, who were forced to fire at the bear. The Slovakian account does not specifically say if the bear was killed. The local account does not identify the handgun or ammunition used in the defense.

On October 29, 2025, two National Park workers were in the field inside the Great Fatra National Park, in the district of Ružomberok, near the village of Liptovské Revúce.  The two workers, a man and a woman were unexpectedly attacked by a European brown bear. The man was carrying a legal handgun. He fired several times at the bear until the bear fled the scene. The two park workers were not injured. The incident was immediately reported to the police and the official Team to investigate brown bear incidents. When the team searched the area of the attack, the found a dead brown bear. The bear was an old bear. It weighed about 290 lbs.

 Grizzly bear in mountains, public domain

Because of increasing bear numbers and bear attacks, Slovakia has proposed a cull of 350 bears out of a population estimated at 1300.  This would be about 27% of the existing bear population. Brown bears, ursus arctos, can increase their population by about 18% per year, if they have sufficient food supplies. In areas with significant human populations, access to human produced foods on farms and ranches supplies much more food than would be available in most untouched wilderness. Brown bear populations have been increasing over much of their range, from Europe to areas near Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks in the United States.

In 1972, a commission considered a population of 300-500 bears to be an "optimal" level for Slovakia. A paper published by the Slovak Wildlife Society and funded by the World Wildlife Fund indicated there were about 800 European brown bears in Slovakia in 2007. The bears are concentrated in the central mountainous region of Slovakia. The factors considered to arrive at the optimal level were not published. In 2015 a Slovak source published that genetic research from 2013-2014 indicated a population level of between 1000 and 1500 bears in Slovakia.

Brown bear populations have been increasing over much of their range, from Europe to areas near Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks in the United States. Along with the increases in bear populations, there have been increases in bear/human conflicts. Governments around the world are now facing the challenge of balancing local residents desires to be safe in the forest with international and urban pressure not to kill bears or reduce their populations. Japan has started to take aggressive action to limit bear populations in response to record numbers of people killed by bears in 2025.

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

Gun Watch 

COLERAIN, Bertie County — A Colerain man faces multiple charges after a homeowner caught him during an alleged break-in and held him at gunpoint until a Bertie County deputy arrived, according to the sheriff's office.

The Bertie County Sheriff's Office said a deputy was dispatched around 9:14 a.m. Tuesday to a home in the 200 block of Sally Freeman Road for a reported break-in in progress.

According to the sheriff's office, the homeowner had the suspect at gunpoint when the deputy arrived.

More Here

 I have three big AC units in the shop, and since June I have left one of them running even when we aren't in the shop  I have the thermostat set and it seems to help keep the place cooler, with a shorter cool-down time.

This mooring we awoke to milder temps, drier air, and the coffee on the patio was very pleasant.  When the dog and I walked out to the shop, I was pleased to see that the AC unit was cycled off.  It's cooler in here than it has been sine last May.

We still have a lot of summer left in subtropical Louisiana and we are in a drought with no relief in sight for the next week or so.  But, this morning gives me reassurance that milder temps are on the way. In another month, I might be able to make a gumbo.

Very soon, I'll be hauling propane bottles to the feed store to heat the place.

• The Nuclear (Again) Future


• You have no idea how weird some of the key people around the AI flagpole really are.


• China's oil stockpiling pays dividends.

9/17/26 CNN:

The bond market gave the Federal Reserve an ultimatum: Raise rates, or we will.

 So the Fed did the only thing it could do. Backed into a corner by rising Treasury yields and inflation, the central bank boosted its target interest rate Wednesday for the first time since 2023.

Americans have suffered from a persistent inflation problem for five years, and an interest rate hike is a powerful weapon that could help squash it. But it’s a blunt tool that comes with a nasty side effect: It can unintentionally turn the job market into collateral damage.

Still, for Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh & Co., this isn’t any ordinary inflation problem. It’s mainly a result of high energy prices caused by the war with Iran, and as my colleague Matt Egan noted in July: Warsh can’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

So the bond market got its wish Wednesday, and the reasonably strong job market and robust consumer spending probably gave the Fed enough room for error.

But the Fed is playing with fire. Raising interest rates risks slowing down the American economy without anything to show for it.
‘Weak case’

Before the Fed decision, some prominent economists were already on its case.

Goldman Sachs economists suggested in a note to clients this week that the case for a rate hike was “weak,” based on the state of the US economy. They argued the economy wasn’t overheating, demand wasn’t excessive, and the supply shocks fueling inflation – namely high oil and fuel prices – would correct themselves once the war ended.

It’s not that the Iran war and Ukraine’s attacks on Russian diesel refineries are part of the problem; they are the problem – all of it, Goldman’s economists said....

The Fed typically “looks through” supply shocks because they’re temporary and rate hikes are ineffective at combatting them. And once they fix themselves, the Fed may find that interest rates now are too high, artificially raising borrowing costs for businesses and consumers without actually tackling inflation.

“The Fed cannot control energy prices,” said Michael Pearce, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. “The economy is solid and can withstand a few rate hikes, but the risk is higher interest rates begin to weaken the labor market.”

Other discussions of the hike are also interesting. 9/17/26 CBS News:

Warsh, who was named by President Trump to succeed longtime Fed Chair Jerome Powell earlier this year, has previously vowed to tackle inflation. But economists had been unsure of his commitment to that goal, given that he had also echoed some of Mr. Trump's views that the economy could benefit from lower interest rates.

What changed? Between the time Warsh was nominated in January and this week's Fed meeting, inflation has sharply accelerated, driven largely by the Iran war's impact on global oil prices.

In January, consumer prices were rising at an annual rate of 2.4%, within touching distance of the Fed's 2% target. But soaring crude prices have reversed that progress, sending the Consumer Price Index to a three-year high of 4.2% in May. While inflation has eased slightly since then, dipping to 3.4% in August, it's still far higher than Fed officials like.

"The plain fact is that inflation is too high, and has been for too long," Warsh said in a press conference after the Fed announced the rate hike on Wednesday, stressing that the Fed wants to take a "timelier" approach to curb price increases.

Those comments were interpreted as pointing to "higher rates for longer," Jaison Davis, economic research analyst at GlobalData, said in a report. "The bar for easing [rates] is now much higher, and it rests on clear evidence that inflation is heading back to target."
The Iran war is complicating life for the Fed

Warsh pointed to the impact of the war in Iran as one reason Fed officials were unanimous on the need to hike interest rates. The conflict, which has no end in sight, has severely reduced the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, while an escalation in fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen threatens another vital waterway.

Crude oil prices have jumped above $100 a barrel in recent weeks. The price increase has pushed fuel costs higher for Americans, who paid a record-high $6.40 per gallon for diesel on Thursday, a 73% jump from a year ago. Gasoline reached $4.44 a gallon, 38% higher than a year earlier, according to AAA data.

The Federal Reserve has spent more than five years promising the American public that policymakers will bring inflation sustainably back to the central bank’s 2% annual target. On Sept. 16 the Fed raised interest rates in pursuit of that goal.

John Cochrane, a prominent economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, thinks that higher rates are a short-term solution, at best. His research suggests that inflation will resume climbing unless fiscal policy also changes and the U.S. brings its borrowing and spending under control. Without more restrictive fiscal policy, he says, the Fed can only rearrange inflation in the face of a mountain of federal debt that recently surpassed $40 trillion. That’s because higher rates push up the government’s interest costs, leading to higher inflation in the long run.

Cochrane, previously a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has laid out these and other ideas in his popular blog, The Grumpy Economist He spoke with Barron’s on Sept. 11 about his economic research, the U.S. Treasury’s buyback of longer-dated debt, and the changes that Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh is implementing. An edited version of the conversation follows.

All of this makes sense. The Fed is legally obligated to keep inflation and unemployment balanced. This is at best a "threading the eye of the needle" problem at best; the insane deficits make this nearly impossible. The big gorilla in the room on interest rates is federal borrowing. If the U.S. government cannot control its borrowing, it will push out other borrowers, raising interest rates. Somehow, Congress will need to address this problem. At some point, pursuing Medicare/Medicaid/COVID fraud will make a difference but not quickly. 

 Paterson, N.J. (1973)

03/18/1973: Police charged a man, 33, with beating to death his wife and their three small children with a hammer. He was later transferred to a state mental hospital for evaluation. Psychiatrists determined he was “insane at the time and unable to stand trial.” In 1975, he was “declared to be sane enough to stand trial.” He had attempted suicide by a pill overdose. He was later “declared sane enough to stand trial.”

Category: family

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: hammer[1]

 9/15/26 Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. ​poverty rate edged down to the lowest on record ‌in 2025, while median household income hit a record high, the Census Bureau said on Tuesday. There were 34.5 million people in poverty ​in 2025, the agency said.

The decline marked the second ​consecutive annual drop in the poverty rate and brought ⁠it to its lowest level since the bureau began tracking ​the measure. It came as policymakers debate the impact of ​federal spending cuts on safety-net programs.

9/15/26 Washington Post explains why this is not a basis for joy.

 Mill Valley, Cal. (1973)

Before 03/17/1973: “Police hunted today for a man in his early 20s seen leaving a burning home after a businessman, his wife and son were shot to death outside the hillside dwelling.” A neighbor saw the man leaving with a shotgun who rejected the neighbor’s poorly thought offer to help. “Go away,” was the response. Police found at least 22 shotgun shells.

At a subsequent trial of a man, 22, his defense attorney asserted that the murderer was paranoid schizophrenic and committed the murders because his friend, one of those murdered, “possessed supernatural powers which were bent of destroying [the murderer.” Also, “the Mafia was involved in his life and that Dan Shallock was involved and could not be killed, even by an H-Bomb.” “At one point he believed Dan Shallock was the devil, and to this day [the murderer] fear in his heart that Dan may come back.” The murderer had spent a month at Marin Community Mental Health Center, and in the days immediately prior to the slayings, his mother had been trying to persuade the youth to commit himself.”

It appears that the jury did not accept “not guilty by reason of insanity”; they convicted him of murder.

Category: family non-resident

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: shotgun[1]

 Santa Cruz, Cal. (1973)

02/06/1973: Same killer and reasons as 01/25/1973: in this case, the victims were four “long-haired youths” who had built “a 10-by-12 foot, pyramid-shaped shelter constructed of pine saplings, branches, cardboard and plastic sheeting.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: firearm[1]

In the video, a masked man approaches a person who is at a gas pump. The man at the gas pump has a concealed pistol. He watches the masked man approach.  When the would be robber pulls a gun, the concealed pistol owner draws his weapon and shoots the suspect, who runs off. 

Video Here

 9/15/26 Ars Technica:

 9/10/26 The Hill:

Officials from the Justice Department and Education Department alleged Wednesday that the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law favors Black applicants over white and Asian applicants, in violation of federal law.

In a letter to attorney Tania Faransso, who is representing the law school, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the institution “deliberately discriminated” against Asian and white applicants based on race.

By doing so, Berkeley Law violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars the use of federal funds to further racial discrimination, Dhillon alleged. The Justice Department is seeking to enter into a resolution agreement with the college to ensure it complies with federal law.

“This discrimination is apparent from the significant disparity in objective academic metrics between racially preferred applicants, and applicants from non-preferred races,” Dhillon wrote, accusing the law school of discriminating by using racial proxies and certain essay prompts in admissions.

This is a sensitive subject for me because when I graduated high school, I was coming from a home below the poverty line. Another student from an East Indian family who lived in the nice neighborhoods north of Montana Blvd., back when East Indians were still considered oppressed minorities, received a full ride scholarship. 

When I started working, racial discrimination in hiring was explicit: "Because this position is currently held by an EEO double pointer, it must be filled with same."

9/1/26 Science Alert:

In February of last year, authorities confirmed the details of a grave medical accident.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) diagnosed a fatal rabies infection in a patient from Michigan.

The circumstances of transmission were unusual. The deceased man, an organ recipient, had received a donated kidney infected with rabies.

The source of the kidney was a man in Idaho who had died only weeks earlier, donating his organs for others in need. At the time of his death, nobody realized his body was infected with the deadly virus.

Subsequent investigations revealed the Idaho man had recently been scratched by a skunk on his rural property – an infectious encounter that ultimately claimed his own life, and that of the man to whom he gave his kidney.

Records show it was only the fourth time in US history that an organ transplant procedure had transmitted the rabies virus (Lyssavirus rabies) from an initially undiagnosed donor.

But what if these kinds of records are wrong?

A new analysis published in Communications Health suggests that official figures may dramatically underestimate how many human cases of rabies are actually circulating in the US each year.

According to researchers from the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford, the extremely low count of confirmed human rabies cases in the US each year – just 2.4 cases annually on average from 2000 to 2024 – seems much lower than it should be.

The reason why it seems low is that a relatively high number of rabies cases are subsequently confirmed after infected organ transplants, like the sad case of the kidney recipient from Michigan. 

And why would you check a donated organ for a rare disease that had nothing apparently to do with donor's death? 

Torrance, Cal. (1973)

02/11/1973: Police investigated a missing person report and four theater employees. They were at first unsure if the victims were shot or stabbed to death It turned out that he used a gun to get compliance but used a knife to slit their throats. They could not be identified at first because of the amount of blood on their bodies. The safe was open.

Subsequent investigation into a similar business robbery that only resulted in one murder and the suspect’s suicide in jail led police to surmise that a long-time criminal, 30, with an extensive psychiatric history, which included repeated warnings that he was a murder-in-training. Police arrested him for misdemeanor traffic warrants; he committed suicide in jail. He committed the murders after a detailed casing of the theater. He told his roommate that “if he didn’t come back there was no reason to feel guilty. If everything went right, he would have $2,000 owed to him and his roommate would read about in the newspapers.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: knife[1]

 It's a popular meme in science fiction, dramatized by Arnold Schwartzenegger about the day that Skynet became self-aware.  Great movie and scary gloom and doom about computers are going to kill us all.

Now in an Orwellian twist, I see that the tech giants on the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are asking government to regulate them. That is the most bizarre thig I have ever heard.  Huge companies asking government to get involved in their business.

The huge fallacy here is that government is capable of intelligently regulating technology that so few of us understand.  My congressman, for example, is incapable of regulating himself.  He's an idiot. Come November, he will be out of work, but I don't hold out much hope for his replacement, at least in any technical field.  Congress is the last body I want to see regulating AI.

As for these tech giants, are they incapable of regulating themselves?  They need Big Brother to keep the genie locked in the bottle?

Lets note the timing.  We are less than two months away from the mid-term elections.  I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but both the subject matter and timing are suspicious.  This whole idea is so bizarre as to beg for conspiracy theories.  What is the real play?

Something is afoot and all we are seeing is the smokescreen.

• "However much you think the Iran war is sapping U.S. military readiness, it's probably more than that."


• Mexican cartel crypto mining farm running on stolen electricity.


• The U.S. military's bizarre infatuation with the German way of war.

The post Intro to EOTech: How Holographic Sights Actually Work first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.

On April 18, 2026, a 58-year-old man committed a mass murder in Kyiv, Ukraine, using a legally registered firearm. Two police officers fled the scene. The Minister of the Interior, Ihor Klymenko established an administrative working group to consider the creation of a national law to allow citizens to carry handguns for self-defense.  The working group was established on June 11, 2026.

Ihor Klymenko was replaced as Interior Minister on July 16, 2026. Ivan Vyhivskyi is the current Minister of the Interior. It is not clear if the working group has submitted recommendations to the parliament, or if the working group is still working.

On August 9, 2026, an article published in sud.ua describes a petition submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. The petition is No. 41/010504-26ep. The petition outlines reasons for the Ukrainian government to solidify requirements to purchase, possess, and carry handguns in Ukraine. The current system is regulated by acts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  The Ministry of Internal Affairs has control of the police forces of Ukraine and the National Guard. In effect licenses to possess or carry handguns have been handed out, very rarely, by officials within the National Police force of Ukraine, pretty much at their discretion.  Not many are handed out. Requirements for shall issue permits suggested in the petition are these:

• have reached the age of 21;
• have no unexpunged or outstanding criminal record;
• have no medical contraindications;
• have completed mandatory training on safe handling of weapons;
• have successfully passed theoretical and practical exams;
• have concluded a compulsory civil liability insurance contract for the weapon owner;
• have registered the weapon in the Unified State Register of Weapons and obtained the appropriate permit. 

An article in sud.ua, published on August 18, 2026, gives more details about the proposed Ukrainian weapons law.  The proposal would create a "shall issue" system of permits to allow veterans to purchase, possess, and carry concealed handguns. The article shows more details from the petition No. 41/010504-26ep, as it applies to veterans. The requirements are a bit different from those listed in the August 9th article.

• State registration of each weapon.
• Identity verification and confirmation of the absence of legal grounds for refusing a permit.
• Medical and psychiatric assessments.
• Confirmation of knowledge regarding safe handling rules.
• Periodic confirmation of the right to possess weapons.
• An absolute prohibition on carrying weapons while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
• Suspension or cancellation of the permit in legally defined circumstance

The petition makes the point such reforms are becoming popular in other countries in central Europe. It lists the Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldava, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Those countries have instituted forms of shall issue carry permit systems, and have not suffered from increased crime.

It is unclear if the change of Ministers of the Interior of Ukraine means a change in support for a Ukrainian law regulating the ownership and carry of handguns. Since the war, attitudes toward the citizen ownership of weapons have changed. Some polls indicate a majority of citizens now favor a weapons permit system.

The current system has been accused of being riddled with corruption. A Ukrainian publication indicates handguns, sub-machine guns, and assault rifles have been issued as "award pistols". The claim is made such could be had for a price of $30,000.  If that sort of money can be made inside the current system, there is certain to be opposition to reform legislation.

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

Gun Watch 

On September 14, 2026, at approximately 4:34 p.m., the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Emergency Communications Center received a 9-1-1 call from a resident in the 3900 block of Walnut Street in Eureka reporting that he had shot a male subject who had forcibly entered his residence. The resident reported the suspect fled the area on foot toward Walnut Drive.

Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the scene, along with officers from the Eureka Police Department. A male subject matching the description of the suspect was located in the area of W Street and Glatt Street suffering from a gunshot wound.

More Here

According to Goose Creek police, someone tried to get inside an apartment, prompting an exchange of gunfire. The person inside the apartment returned fire.

No injuries were reported. Investigators said they found no signs that the suspect was struck by the returned gunfire outside the apartment.

More Here

By Lee Williams SAF Investigative Journalism Project When I first started writing about Patrick “Tate” Adamiak’s plight about 21 months ago, I never thought he would be an honored guest at the Second Amendment Foundation’s Gun Rights Policy Conference, or that I would be able to interview him about his undeserved four years behind bars, […]

The post Send Me Your Questions Now for Patrick ‘Tate’ Adamiak appeared first on Liberty Park Press.