Like many of you, I've been relying on the 9mm for a long time now. It's cheap practice, easy to control, accurate, and does a fair amount of damage. There are a lot of good guns chambered for it as well, allowing the consumer to have pretty much any flavor of pistol they want. Currently, I'm finding the Beretta PX4CC, brain child of Earnest Langdon, retired USMC and world champion shooter, to fit the bill quite nicely (mostly because I just cannot warm up to Glocks, no matter how many decades I'm given): But, the 9mm is still no .45 despite it's popularity. Tossing 230grn chunks of lead around at 850fps is, quite frankly, one of the most American things a person can do. Sure, a 115grn 9mm at 1300fps (Federal 9BPLE) is nothing to sneeze at, especially when you can have upwards of fifteen to twenty of them on board, but it's just not quite the same. For the time being, I'll continue to rely on my Beretta, but a man can dream. And, what do I dream...
The hardest times are ahead of us - health, political, social, and for some mental. Calls to suicide hotlines have grown exponentially by all accounts. Our years of handing out participation trophies has gained us hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of citizens who cannot handle negative news or hard times. I recently listened to a podcast where an expert talked about how difficult times literally build mental strength. Each time we go through difficult or stressful events, chemicals are released in our brain to deal with it; the more incidents, the more our brain becomes hardwired to deal with difficulty. It goes a long way towards explaining why people from poor, agrarian backgrounds so often become some of our best soldiers, sailors, and Marines. The horror of war is something easier for them to roll with, giving them vital mental and emotional resources to deal with the issues at hand instead of spending them on accepting the difficult environment they fi...
Viruses flourish throughout our world, some infect us and do bad things when they do, most just look at us a go, "Meh", and keep on walking by. When a virus mutates enough to make the jump from an animal to a human we have things like the "Swine Flue" and "H1N1". But, what does it mean when a virus which affects humans begins to infect our dogs and cats ? I really don't know. I'm not sure I've heard of such a jump before. Our systems are so different that such a jump isn't common. And, yet, a cat and two dogs have tested positive for COVID-19, assumed to have caught it from their owners. It feels, and I know that's a bad word, but it's the right word, it feels like this just puts another nail in the coffin of this being a naturally occurring virus. With complete certainty and zero facts, hold on - I'm going full progressive, I'm just going to say that this is now officially a bio-weapon. Oh, sure, DNA stu...