Ruger American Pro 9mm Review

This is an interesting review of a new handgun, that might very well be a good option for some people as a good secondary weapon system.

Pat Cascio’s Product Review: Ruger’s New American Pro 9mm

I’ve been a huge fan of Ruger firearms since 1979, when I bought my first Ruger centerfire rifle in .300 Winchester Mag. Everyone anticipated the first cernterfire semiauto pistol from Ruger in 1985, when it was first announced. Alas, there were problems, and the Ruger P85 didn’t actually come out until 1987. I lived in Colorado Springs, CO at the time and operated a small gun business with a friend out of his gas station as well as gun shows, but we couldn’t get our hands on a P85. One gun shop in the entire city had received one sample, and it wasn’t for sale, but there was literally a line of guys waiting to handle it and place their order for one. The P85 was ugly as sin; it was big and bulky, too. I loved it!

I didn’t get my own P85 until we had moved back to Oregon in 1988, and in one week I actually received two P85s. I was in heaven. However, one of the guns had a problem I couldn’t figure out. The slide would lock halfway open during firing and I had to remove the magazine and pound the slide closed. For the life of me, I couldn’t see what the problem was. The gun was sent to Ruger and repaired, without an explanation, and returned to me. Since this time, I’ve owned every P-series pistol that Ruger has made over the years. Several years ago, Ruger came out with a completely different pistol in their SR-series– striker fired, and once again I owned all the different models.

The P-85 developed a problem with the firing pin breaking, and it could have potentially fired when you decocked the gun. In short order, to Ruger’s credit, they recalled those guns, corrected the problem, and stamped MKII on the slides, so you knew the problem was taken care of. I applaud Ruger for this. They are fast to jump on a problem and take care of it, unlike some other gun makers who want to hide the problem, hoping it will go away. Ruger came out with the P-89 in 1989, basically the P-85 without any problems. Since then, Ruger has had a whole host of centerfire pistols over the years, and every last one was a winner in my book.

A few days before New Years Day, 2015, I received a press release from Ruger, introducing their brand-new, striker-fired “American” semiauto pistol. I loved what I saw and read. The gun is very sleek, very up-to-date, and modern looking. I hate boring our readers with all the specs on guns, so go to the Ruger website, where they will give you all that information.

The new American from Ruger is only being produced in 9mm and .45ACP, with no plans on coming out with one in .40S&W anytime soon. The .40 S&W is falling out of favor these days, especially with law enforcement. They are going back to the 9mm in droves. With new developments in JHP 9mm ammunition these days, the 9mm is supposedly right up there in stopping power with the .40 S&W, and it is easier to shoot. There is a lot less recoil, and police qualifying scores are going up since they switched back to the 9mm; hits and hits only are what count. So, we may not see a Ruger American in .40 S&W.

I didn’t receive my Ruger American Pro 9mm sample until more than two weeks after I ordered it. Ruger is slammed with orders. Demand is outstripping production right now. That’s how popular the American is, right out of the gate. Of course, my local gun shop got in their order for the American a day before I got my sample, and needless to say they really rubbed it in that they, once again, got a new gun before I did. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, they really get on my case about it.

Over the course of three days I put more than 500-rds though my Ruger sample. Unlike most blogs out there, SurvivalBlog.com will never report on a new product based solely on a press release. Yeah, a lot of gun and survival blogs were 2½ weeks ahead of us reporting on a gun they didn’t have. They simply wrote on their blogs what was on the Ruger press release. That’s not fair to their readers, and we won’t do that, EVER!

The new Ruger American Pro 9 is a striker-fired handgun, which is the trend these days. It has a black polymer frame, and the slide is blackened stainless steel. The frame has several Picatinny rails for mounting lights and/or lasers; previous Ruger’s didn’t have but one rail mounting point. The slide is very sleek looking, and it has cocking serrations on the rear of the slide. There is also a massive external extractor right in front on the right side of the gun. Funny thing is, there is nothing on my sample with the “American” moniker on it. On the front of the slide on either side, it simply has “Ruger” on it. We also have a genuine Novake rear sight on the slide, which is nice, real nice. Two white dots on the rear sight, and one white dot on the front sight make it very fast and easy to pick-up. There is a lot of light between the front and rear sight on either side of the front sight, which makes it great for combat work but not for precise target shooting . Then again, this isn’t a target gun; keep that in mind!

Gone is the big “flag” that Ruger was putting on their SR series, alerting you that there was a round in the chamber. No one liked it. Instead, we have a cut in the rear of the barrel’s chamber, where you can see if there is a round in there. It seems like everyone is going to this sort of thing, and many states require it, if you want to sell a handgun in their state. Moving down to the frame, there is no manual safety, instead it has the little lever in the front of the trigger. That is popular; the gun can’t fire if you don’t have pressure on the trigger, pushing the lever backwards. There is also several internal, passive safeties that won’t allow the gun to fire if dropped. There is a full-time ambi slide release, and on the left side is the take down lever. Remove the magazine, lock the slide open, and rotate the lever down, and then carefully, while holding the slide, release it and the slide comes off, and you can then remove the recoil spring and barrel. It’s just that simple and fast.

Moving down on the frame, we have a full-time magazine release, one triangular button on either side of the frame, right behind the trigger guard. And, as already mentioned, the frame has Picatinny rails for mounting lights and/or lasers. The front strap of the frame has several different diamond patterns on it, for a sure grip; I love it. The back strap has diamond patterns on it, but they’re different. (See the pics.) Now, here is where things get interesting. The back strap is removable/replaceable. My sample came with the medium-sized back strap; however, included in the nice black polymer case the American came in is two more back straps– one smaller/thinner and one bigger front to back and thicker. A Torx head tool is included for changing out the back straps. I tried all three, and settled on the medium-sized one that was on the gun. However, quite honestly, I could live with any of the three back straps. They all felt good to my hands. We also have a lanyard attachment on the rear of the butt of the gun. This is obviously geared toward law enforcement. A lot of cops in foreign countries have their guns attached to a lanyard so it can’t be taken from them.

The trigger guard is not quite square-ish but is very nicely done with none of those silly serrations or checkering on the front that used to be in favor, for those who placed the trigger finger of their off-hand on the front of the trigger guard. Plus, the trigger guard is large enough for a gloved hand, which is another nice touch. We also want to mention the extended “beaver tail” on the frame. On some guns, especially a GLOCK, if you are wearing heavy gloves in the winter and your have a high hold on the gun with your gun hand, the slide can and does get caught on the gloves, producing a malfunction. On the Ruger American, the beaver tail is placed perfectly, still giving you a high hand hold on the gun, but the slide won’t catch your thick-gloved hand. A lot of thought went into the feature.

The American comes with two nickel/Teflon coated 17-rd magazines, and needless to say you won’t see any on the market for a while. You’ll have to purchase them directly from Ruger for the time being. I placed an order for another mag at www.shopruger.com. Mags are in short supply right now. The magazines have viewing holes, starting at hole #4 and ending with hole #17, so you have a good idea of how many rounds are left in your mag. The mags were easy to load, until I got to the 16th and 17th rounds; they were a bugger to stuff into the mags. Then again, many handgun mags are hard to fully load. What I do is load my mags to full-capacity and let them sit for a couple weeks. After that, those last few rounds are easy to insert. So then you have a fully loaded magazine, not a problem!

The American has been tested for sustained +P fire, and I have no doubts the gun will hold up to all the +P ammo you want to shoot through it, if you can afford the price tag for +P ammo. To be sure, no gun makers recommend that you run +P+ ammo through their guns; some of this ammo is really hot-loaded to “proof” loading pressures, so be advised.

BTW, Ruger advertises the trigger return as crisp, with a short take-up. The take-up before firing is short, and the trigger reset is very positive. The trigger pull on my sample broke at 5.5-lbs, but it didn’t feel that heavy in the least. The trigger is actually more of a two-stage one with some take-up and then you feel some resistance before the gun fires. This is much better than many other striker-fired handguns I’ve used over the years. I like it.

The Ruger American weighs in at 30-oz for the 9mm version and only an ounce more for the .45ACP version, which is a little bit heavier than some other polymer framed handguns, but this is a full-sized, duty gun. My crystal ball is working and I predict we will start seeing these guns in duty holsters at various law enforcement agencies and without a doubt, in military holsters all over the world. Ruger is going to put a serious dent in GLOCK and S&W M&P sales. Full retain is $589, but once supply catches up with demand you’ll see the Ruger American selling for under $500; that’s a lot less than a GLOCK and about the same as a S&W M&P. Based on my testing, I’d pick the American over the GLOCK or M&P for a duty gun, if I were a cop again!

If you check out Ruger’s website, you will find that they already have a list of holster makers who have holsters in-stock and ready to ship that will fit the American. I have more holsters than I care to admit, so I started experimenting with them and the American. I found that the Blackhawk Products leather Askins holster, for concealed carry, fit my American sample perfectly. Also, I have some old Uncle Mike’s duty and concealed holsters that also fit the American. So, unlike many new handguns that come on the market with no one making holsters for them, Ruger saw to it that you won’t have a problem finding a holster to fit their new handguns.

As soon as I received my Ruger American Pro 9mm sample, I ran out to my usual shooting spot to run some ammo through the sample. I had an outstanding supply of 9mm from Black Hills Ammunition and Buffalo Bore Ammunition for my testing. Of course, it had to be pouring down rain, but rain doesn’t stop my shooting; extreme summer heat does though.

From Black Hills, I had their 100-gr Frangible load– factor seconds. This load isn’t sold to the public. I had forgotten I had some left from a few years ago and only had a couple boxes. This ammo breaks apart when it hits something solid, like a steel backstop at a firing range. I also had their 115-gr JHP +P, 124-gr JHP +P, 115-gr FMJ, 124-gr JHP, 115-gr Barnes TAC –XP +P loads – a great assortment. From Buffalo Bore, I had their 147-gr Hard Cast FN +P load, 147-gr JHP sub sonic JHP load, 147-gr FMJ sub sonic, 115-gr Barnes TAC XP +P+, and the Barnes loads from Black Hills and Buffalo Bore are an all-copper hollow point load. I had the 124-gr FMJ FN +P+ Penetrator round and their 115-gr JHP +P+ load. It was quite an assortment of different loads and different bullet weights to test in the American.

I had a strange thing happen during the first three 17-rd mags I fired, and that was that the empty brass was being flung in all directions. After those first three mags, the empties were all going in a nice little pile to the right of the gun. I guess things needed to settle down in the new gun. I’ve had this same thing happen with some other brand-new guns; the brass would go every place to start with. Then the gun would settle down. Eventually, the brass was going where it needed to go, so don’t think this is a “problem” with any new gun. I just wanted to mention it.

My second day of shooting was fairly nice weather with no rain. My beautiful wife helped me with the shooting but not loading magazines. She always leaves that job to me for some reason. Throughout my testing those last two rounds, in both magazines, were a real bugger to get loaded, but as I said before load-up those mags and let ‘em sit for two weeks. Then, the last two rounds will slide right in there. I’ve been there and done that with many brand-new magazines. Again, it’s not a “problem” to the Ruger magazines, not in the least. On my third day of testing, we had clouds and it was chilly. I was out shooting alone. The thumb on my right hand was taking a beating from loading those magazines, and it was bruised and sore, real sore. I wanted to get all my shooting in as soon as I could, so I could give our readers a real report on the new Ruger, not just copying from the press release, like so many other blogs have done.

There was not a single malfunction in all my testing, not even a hint of a problem, other than those first three magazines I fired, with the empty brass being flung all over the place. The American chugged along without any problems. Then, it dawned on me that I never lubed the gun. It was pretty dry with just some packing oils on it. I broke the gun down, before I fired it the first time, to check things out but didn’t lube the gun in all my shooting and there were no problems. Yes!!

At 25-yards, I could keep my groups around 3-inches or less, if I did my part, and when I was getting tired, the groups opened-up to 4-inches. My accuracy testing was done over a rolled up sleeping bag, over the hood of my pickup truck. Honestly, I didn’t test all the various ammo during my testing for accuracy. There was just too big of a selection to pick from, and I wanted to get this article out to our readers. If I was on my game and fresh, the Black Hills 124-gr JHP load was the winner with groups slightly under 3-inches, but I think the Ruger can do better. Right on the heels of that load was the Bufflo Bore 147-gr FMJ sub sonic load. Tied for third place was the Black Hills 115-gr JHP +P and the Buffalo Bore 147-gr Hard Cast FN +P load. There were no losers in the accuracy department, and as mentioned, I think the Ruger can go even better, when I take some time to really wring it out for accuracy. Still, three inch groups for a “duty” handgun, that’s more than acceptable, much more than acceptable!

Without a doubt, the Ruger designers took some serious time to design this gun, and they listened to shooters, too. It has all the features you need and nothing you don’t. Night sights would be nice, and I’m sure the after-market folks will come out with some, if Ruger doesn’t.

We’ve come a long, long way since the Ruger P-85 came out in 1987, and along the way I’ve seen each new model that Ruger came out with get better and better. I don’t know how Ruger is going to top themselves with their next centerfire semiauto pistol. They are going to have to work extra hard at it. The new Ruger American is a total winner in my book. Now the only problem I have is trying to talk myself out of not getting one in 9mm. No sooner do I get close to getting Ruger paid-off on gun samples I kept, then they go and do this to me. Here’s another new gun that I’m going to keep and pay for, but now I want one in .45ACP, too. Ruger, you did it up right this time, 110% right. We all appreciate it!

– Senior Product Review Editor, Pat Cascio

From: Survival Blog

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click here for all your prepping/tactical needs: The Tactical Patriot Store

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leaderless Resistance

This article is about the concept of Leaderless Resistance; the ideas and comments are not my own, I do agree with much of what is said, I just wanted to get this point of veiw out there so people can make their own informed decision about the direction they want to go.


Author: SMB (US Army, Retired)
Edited for content.
A Brief Overview

Nothing defines the blatant ineptitude and rank incompetence of the radical resistance more starkly than the concept of so-called “leaderless resistance” (hereafter, LR). By its very nature LR amounts to little more than anarchy and, as demonstrated by some of the most recent examples, very rapidly degenerates into simple banditry. Furthermore, one notes for the record that the most vociferous proponents of LR have, in common with those to whom that fantastic idea appeals, exactly zero experience in guerrilla warfare, its theory, or practice.

Simply stated, the concept of LR posits that individuals or small, close-knit groups, acting on their own initiative, performing their own targeting and relying on their own resources, can strike at the government’s infrastructure at will without fear of infiltration. Tactically, LR ranges from individual nuisance acts for the sake of causing a nuisance on one end of the spectrum to small unit terrorism for terrorism’s sake on the other. However, nothing can be said about LR’s potential operational impact because, by definition, through rejection of any superior organizational structure, it can have no operational impact.

Strategically, LR is conspicuously absent from any historical examples of successful insurgency. The idea has been advanced by several writers on the subject that LR is essentially a modern version of the Committees of Correspondence of American Revolution fame. I do not think those writers mean to purposely distort the realities of revolutionary organization in the colonies, but their zeal to justify LR apparently overrode their rational faculties. If those writers had simply paused to consider the word “committee” juxtaposed with “correspondence”, the notion that Committees of Correspondence were autonomous bodies acting independently of one another would have collapsed of its own illogic. In fact, the members of the several colonies’ Committees of Correspondence were appointed by their colonies’ legislative bodies, everyone knew who they were, and they coordinated their activities between each other or with the Continental Congress through a chain of command. Hardly an example of leaderless resistance.

There are however several striking examples, discussed below, that demonstrate why LR is fundamentally flawed as a resistance strategy.

The Order

“The Order” is frequently cited as an example (in its early stages, before it began recruiting) of the principle of LR. Given that most members of The Order are either dead or in federal prisons it is also an example of many of the fundamental flaws in the concept.

The Order began as an eight man cell dedicated to creating an Aryan homeland in the Pacific Northwest. How eight men expected to accomplish that objective has never been clearly explained, but following their logic it seems that the organizers of The Order believed that direct action against the government for the purpose of financing other organizations in the racialist resistance would inspire others to imitate their example thus creating an avalanche effect as other self creating “cells” rallied to the cause. Predictably, that “strategy” failed miserably.

Had the organizers of The Order expended half the effort in researching failed insurgencies as they did planning armored car and bank heists they would have found that their strategy (if indeed they ever had one beyond “do things”) had already been tried by no less than Che Guevara. The name of that “strategy” is called the Loco (i.e., focus). The theory is this: Plunk a small band of guerrillas down in an ostensibly “oppressed” countryside, begin maiming, murdering and robbing the oppressors, and the peasants will rise up and flock in proletarian support to the Loco to sweep the bourgeoisie from the political landscape. However, the “oppressed” in whose name Che fought snitched off his band to the oppressors, and Che and his Bolivian Loco bandits were hunted down like animals and killed. End of insurgency.

Aside from robbing banks and armored cars and sharing the loot with phone booth emperors who were vying for the same mailing list, The Order did manage to kill a Jew in Denver, blow up a synagogue in Boise, Idaho, and murder one of their own recruits before they were finally hunted down, killed or arrested.

The Order therefore illustrates Reason #1 LR does not work. “Grass roots” resistance is doomed to failure; there are no examples of it having ever succeeded. Frustrated by any appreciable effect of propaganda on a population so dim it could offer not even neutrality, and impatient with time proven organizational principles, they simply decided to “kick things off” themselves armed with nothing but a single idea that was immediately discredited because (1) the population did not care about the idea, so (2) they possessed no means of enlisting assistance or acceptance for their crime spree. The lesson learned about The Order’s example is that rebelliousness has no place in a resistance.

Eric Rudolph

Personally, my reaction to the bombing of abortion clinics and gay bars is, “Where’s the crime?” In many respects Rudolph exemplifies LR at the individual level. He didn’t make threats or discuss his plans with anybody, he didn’t ask permission, he simply started punctuating his deeply held beliefs with explosions.

If Rudolph has one thing going for him (aside from being the “1997 – 1999 Hide and Seek Champion of the World”) it’s that he has a steep learning curve. Note the successive “product improvements” of his devices. He obviously paid close attention to the official Bomb Damage Assessments of his handiwork, and progressively applied those lessons learned to his subsequent projects, not only mechanically (although he had not yet come to appreciate that nails are crap for shrapnel — ball bearings are much better, having sounder ballistics) but also tactically.

For example, constructive development of Rudolph’s devices progresses to smaller timers, smaller batteries, dynamite instead of pipe bombs and thicker pressure plates. By the time of the Atlanta gay bar and abortion clinic bombings his devices fit very nicely into a book bag, and at the lesbian bar he left behind an 80 pound time delay “present” intended for enthusiastic crime scene investigators. A year later, a Birmingham, Alabama, cop who was guarding an abortion clinic between stints as a guard at a gay bar, poked at a flower pot with his baton causing Rudolph to allegedly command detonate his device (or lose it to the bomb squad). Significantly, the device was directional, the majority of the blast was focused on the front door. Eric’s obvious goal was to abort the abortionist when he arrived, but the cop’s ill considered curiosity preempted the objective of the attack. Nevertheless, Rudolph had progressed from crude pipe bombs to command detonated directional devices in four operations. Not bad.

Rudolph’s problem was that, while his devices advanced both mechanically and in lethality, their basic construction, and therefore their “signature,” remained the same. Because he was driving his own vehicle to and from the target area the feds quickly obtained a description of it and the plate number, and by the time he had driven back in Murphy, North Carolina, the FBI was scouring the city for him. Informed by friends that he was being sought by the FBI as a “material witness” to the Birmingham bombing, he did the next logical thing. He went to Burger King, bought some chow, then disappeared into the mountains.

What is remarkable about Rudolph, as an individual example of LR, is his focus, his dedication, his coolness, his self reliance, and his aggressiveness — and that he is still alive. In fact, by the spring of 1999, the FBI had almost completely retreated out of the mountains and into their compound in Andrews, North Carolina, because, in the words of SSA Terry Turchie, Rudolph manhunt director, “We think he is hunting us.”
But those very qualities that make young Eric so remarkable are precisely those qualities that make him not only the exception to the rule, but also a positive example of why LR on an individual level is again doomed to failure except in the rarest of circumstances. Eric possesses what precious few other individuals who might contemplate the “Rudolph model” of LR possess — the semblance of an infrastructure. Young Eric’s infrastructure is composed entirely of friends of belief in kind, or tacit sympathy for the act even if not for his beliefs. However, that necessarily delimited his operational radius. And even though Rudolph enjoys the active neutrality of the population in his area of operations, his limited circle of friends lacked any infrastructure that would have enabled him wider range in his holy mission.

What Rudolph’s circle of friends were incapable of providing was operational support. He procured his own explosives and materiel. He built his own bombs. He performed his own targeting. He emplaced his own devices. He provided his own transportation. His circle of friends were useless operationally, and the best they could do for him locally when he became a fugitive was turn a blind eye when he raided their chicken coops or delay reporting his presence when he broke into their houses to raid the cupboard.

Eric Rudolph therefore illustrates Reason #2 LR does not work. It has no formal infrastructure, thus its support is at best haphazard and is always uncoordinated. Consequently, such notional “support” is bound to fall apart at the seams at some point. Even though there is not yet any evidence that his network of friends is beginning to crumble, it is painfully obvious that they are incapable of supporting or sustaining any further operations by Eric. The lesson learned about Eric Rudolph’s example is that independence of action means isolation from effective support, hence an inability to sustain operations in the face of determined opposition reaction.

Further Considerations

The above examples of group and individual LR illustrate only a very small number of associated problems. For example, as mentioned in the Eric Rudolph example, the lack of a formal organizational infrastructure means that LR “cells” must provide for themselves everything appertaining their operational requirements. This fact necessarily places the LR “cell” in the unenviable position of being personally involved in all the activities, such as logistics (including financing), communications, targeting and planning, needed to execute their operations. Because of their personal involvement they dramatically raise not only their own “profile,” but also that of the operation. Those named activities in a properly constituted resistance organization would be delegated to cells (unknown to the “direct action” operatives) specifically tasked to perform those functions thus virtually eliminating the operation’s profile — until bodies need to be dug out of the rubble. Traditional procedures also so diffuse the opposition’s post action investigation that it takes months or years, instead of days in the case of an LR “plan,” to unravel all the pre-mission details and thereby identify and begin hunting the operatives.

Furthermore, LR as a “strategy,” if we are to believe what its proponents expect us to believe about it, has specific appeal only to the lowest (or most psychotic) common denominator within any given organization. The fact that the notion of LR is being propagated should give pause to serious minded individuals because those organizations that promote LR almost universally make their appeals for membership to the “proletariat,” as demonstrated by the crudeness of their rhetoric and public manifestations. Nevertheless, the idea that independently conceived and executed “grassroots” action solely for the sake of action can have any appreciable impact as a resistance methodology to the planned destruction of our society is nonsense. And if the history of LR is any indicator it plays right into our enemy’s hand.

Consider the Progressive distorted prosecutive “legal” strategy known as vicarious liability. In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence vicarious liability is the “indirect or imputed legal responsibility for the acts of another… as between an employer and employee… or a principle for torts and contracts of an agent.” (Black’s 6th ed.) In a nut shell, the Progressive-contorted version of vicarious liability contends that “hate speech” creates a “climate of hate” that propels small groups or individuals to commit “hate crimes” and that, therefore, any organization that espouses Progressive-defined “hate” is “responsible” for the actions of individuals or groups, employees or not, who commit the “crime.”

Never mind that the Progressive-version of vicarious liability perfectly inverts the traditions of Anglo-Saxon legal precedent which places responsibility for crime upon the individual criminal and which reserves vicarious liability to employers whose agents’ (i.e., responsible to the employer) acts result in willful harm to others. In the example of the justifiable murder of the abortionist Sleppian, a web site that listed the names, addresses and photographs of abortionists was ordered to shut down even though there was no proof of any connection between the owners of the web site and the righteous man who dwindled our Progressive infestation by one. The web site had “created a climate of hate,” you see.

The Progressive-twisted version of vicarious liability is reserved solely for Christian men and their organizations. Why? Eric Rudolph serves as another example. Hundreds of FBI agents [has anybody else noticed that the FBI refers to its personnel using the same term intelligence officers understand as “street shit?”] are hunting him, and a million dollar reward has been offered for him, not because he allegedly planted a couple of bombs, but because he committed a politically incorrect crime; he tried to blow up abortionists and gays. His motive is the reason he is being hunted.

In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence motive is merely a mitigating factor. When Progressives are permitted to practice law — or more horrifying, make law — in Anglo-Saxon nations, the law rapidly degenerates into quibbling. In the case of vicarious liability, the extrinsic motive becomes the real crime. In other words, what you were thinking when you committed the crime is more important than what you did, and what you were thinking is the fault of the organization – whether you are a member or not — that espouses what you believe. Ergo, according to Progressive lawyers, the organization is vicariously liable for your crime and can be sued. The most recent Southern Poverty Law Center law suit against the Aryan Nations is only the most recent in a pattern of similar suits.

Why the long winded speech about vicarious liability? Because the organizations that promote LR are being sued in rotation by Progressives when proletarian groups or individuals (employees, members, or not) take them at their word and begin practicing it. Significantly, organizations that demand at least a modicum of discipline from their members and which prefer to recruit from the bourgeoisie, have so far been spared the embarrassment of “loose cannons” in their ranks. Think about it.

How “It” Is Really Done

What often amazes me is the simple-mindedness of those who propose to wage one or the other of many forms of armed resistance against the government. Because the sheer scale of the proposition cannot be grasped by minds conditioned to think in terms of snappy political slogans and time frames rarely exceeding seven minutes between commercial breaks, I often find that when the scale is explained to them their response is blank incomprehension. This inability to grasp the complexity and magnitude of the proposition is but one reason why such ideas as Leaderless Resistance gain currency.

Among all the outpourings about LR, the only comprehensible rationale given for promoting anarcho-resistance is the fear of opposition infiltration and penetration of properly constituted organizations. That rationale is the very reason LR should be dismissed out of hand as the drivel of flagrant neophytes who possess just enough comic book knowledge about armed resistance to be dangerously stupid (emphasis added –JM); and who are irresponsible enough to share their “knowledge” with others.

The reason advocates of LR advance the fear of infiltration as their only comprehensible rationale for promoting anarcho-resistance is because, like every other band of proletarian dissidents, they believe that resistance begins with armed groups. In other words, they organize everything backwards, from the bottom up. This does, as they fear, leave them vulnerable to penetration when they finally discover that they cannot support or sustain their own operations and of necessity need to recruit new members or organize some semblance of a support apparatus.

Armed resistance is only one subset of what is properly defined as Political Warfare. Policy making in Political Warfare encompasses ideological warfare, organizational warfare, psychological warfare (wherein falls armed resistance), intelligence warfare, and mass warfare. Within the subset of armed resistance we find planned political violence (assassination, kidnapping, bombing), which is employed as a tactic of both disruptive and coercive terrorism. The disruptive nature of terrorism is the repression of and reprisals against the general population that it provokes from government. As a coercive measure terrorism enforces obedience from noncombatants or punctuates the demands of the terrorists.

Note the words “policy” and “planned.” That means there must be a policy making body who turn their deliberated decisions over to another organizational element which plans the implementation of those policies, in turn delegating responsibility for executing the plan to further subordinate elements. This requires not only a centralized command element that makes decisions, but also a staff who turn those decisions into mission taskings to the staffs of subordinate resistance activities. In descending order of manpower and complexity of organization those activities are, (1) the underground, (2) the auxiliary, and (3) the guerrillas.

Mission tasking, broadly speaking, covers five basic categories; (1) action, (2) security, (3) cover and logistics, (4) surveillance and intelligence, and (5) communications. Each category is serviced by in independent element. Each element’s requirements are then forwarded to management who assemble the information into a mission planning guide and requirements list. Once this information is assembled, planning follows an ordered sequence.

The Intelligence Cycle sets into motion collection operations in response to the informational needs expressed in the requirements list. Targeting is highly discriminatory, begins very early in the planning process, and includes consideration of both primary and sub-targets. Wargaming, which considers the action to be taken and the probability of success of several courses of action. Protection, which prevents discovery, prevention of arrest, and provision for building and maintaining cover. Operational Support falls into five broad categories; (1) communications, (2) accommodations, (3) transportation, (4) technological support, and (5) supply. Planning of the final phase, Action, does not begin until all other planning requirements have been met.

LR objections to the foregoing model are, as already stated, the fear of infiltration and betrayal by government informants or penetration of the organization by government spies. The reason I mentioned my disdain for the tendency among the various proletarian organizations to organize armed cells first (i.e., do the whole thing backward) earlier in this essay is because organizing backward creates the very condition that leaves their groups open to infiltration and betrayal — their eventual necessity to organize some form of support. To do this they need to recruit from outside their immediate circle.

Tim McVeigh & Co. is an excellent example. When they realized they could not pull off their operation on their own they began enlisting support from people and organizations who really had no business knowing what they were up to. Within hours of the OKC bombing the FBI was all over them like flies on dung (and there is considerable evidence that the FBI began manipulating the operation about midway through their “planning”).

The point I am making is this: In a properly organized resistance one of the first things constituted is an overarching counterintelligence body that permeates the very fabric of the organization at all levels. Coincident with counterintelligence is the compartmentalization of the resistance organization and planning — something almost totally lacking in LR “cells.”

Furthermore, for those among you who think that resistance warfare is some type of free-booting tryst where “rugged individuals” can “get some back” from their oppressors, I suggest you stay home with the women. The authoritarianism and regulation of the standing military pales in comparison to the rigid authoritarianism, regulation and submission to duty found in resistance organizations.

Although some small measure of disjointed disruption may be achieved by LR, and although LR may exert some paltry degree of temporary coercion, its lack of far ranging planning, organizational discipline, coordination with other elements, or a support net designed to sustain operations will find them littering the streets with their corpses.

If there is a single good thing to be said about LR, it is that while LR “cells” are distracting the Enemy, the grown-ups can go about their more serious business.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click here for all your prepping/tactical needs: The Tactical Patriot Store

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How our cities might explode

This is a really good read, long, but worth it, please take the time and read it. I did not write this, and I give credit to the author just below. I just knew I had to post it after I read it.

From Matt Bracken:

In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town in the South as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots greater than those experienced in Los Angeles in 1965 (Watts), multiple cities in 1968 (MLK assassination), and Los Angeles again in 1992 (Rodney King). New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance. In fact, the proximate spark of the next round of major riots in America could be any from a long list cribbed from our history.

We have seen them all before, and we shall see them all again as history rhymes along regardless of the century or the generation of humankind nominally in control of events. But the next time we are visited by widespread, large-scale urban riots, a dangerous new escalation may be triggered by a fresh vulnerability: It’s estimated that the average American home has less than two weeks of food on hand. In poor minority areas, it may be much less. What if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards flashing nothing but ERROR? This could also be the result of deliberate sabotage by hackers, or other technical system failures. Alternatively, the government might pump endless digits into the cards in a hopeless attempt to outpace future hyperinflation. The government can order the supermarkets to honor the cards, and it can even set price controls, but history’s verdict is clear: If suppliers are paid only with worthless scrip or blinking digits, the food will stop.

STEP ONE: FLASH MOB LOOTING

In my scenario, the initial riots begin spontaneously across affected urban areas, as SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) and other government welfare recipients learn that their EBT cards no longer function. This sudden revelation will cause widespread anger, which will quickly lead to the flash-mob looting of local supermarkets and other businesses. The media will initially portray these “food riots” as at least partly justifiable. Sadly, millions of Americans have been made largely, or even entirely, dependent on government wealth transfer payments to put food on their tables.

A new social contract has been created, where bread and circuses buy a measure of peace in our minority-populated urban zones. In the era of ubiquitous big-screen cable television, the Internet and smart phones, the circus part of the equation is never in doubt as long as the electricity flows. But the bread is highly problematic. Food must be delivered the old-fashioned way: physically. Any disruption in the normal functioning of the EBT system will lead to food riots with a speed that is astonishing. This will inevitably happen when our unsustainable, debt-fueled binge party finally stops, and the music is over. Now that the delivery of free or heavily subsidized food is perceived by tens of millions of Americans to be a basic human right, the cutoff of “their” food money will cause an immediate explosion of rage. When the hunger begins to bite, supermarkets, shops and restaurants will be looted, and initially the media will not condemn the looting. Unfortunately, this initial violence will only be the start of a dangerous escalation.

The ransacked supermarkets, convenience stores, ATMs and gas stations will not be restocked during this period due to the precarious security situation. A single truck loaded with food or gasoline would be perceived to be a Fort Knox on wheels and subject to immediate attack unless heavily protected by powerfully armed security forces, but such forces will not be available during this chaotic period. Under those conditions, resupply to the urban areas cannot and will not take place. The downward spiral of social and economic dysfunction will therefore both accelerate and spread from city to city. These delays, in turn, will lead to more riots with the constant underlying demand that hungry people be fed, one way or another.
Catch-22, anyone? When these demands do not bring the desired outcome, the participants will ratchet up the violence, hoping to force action by the feckless state and national governments.
The “food riots” will be a grass-roots movement of the moment born out of hunger and desperation. It will not be dependent upon leaders or an underlying organization, although they could certainly add to the sauce. Existing cell phone technology provides all the organization a flash mob needs. Most of the mobs will consist of minority urban youths, termed MUYs in the rest of this essay. Which minority doesn’t matter; each urban locale will come with its own unique multi-ethnic dynamic.

Some locales will divide upon religious or political lines, but they will not be the dominant factors contributing to conflict. In the American context, the divisions will primarily have an ethnic or racial context, largely because that makes it easy to sort out the sides at a safe distance. No need to check religious or political affiliation at a hundred yards when The Other is of a different color.

We Americans are all about doing things the easy way, so, sadly, visible racial and ethnic features will form the predominant lines of division.
Would that it were not so, but reality is reality, even when it’s is a bitch.
Especially then.

NEXT STEP: FLASH MOB RIOTS

In order to highlight their grievances and escalate their demands for an immediate resumption of government benefits, the MUY flash mobs will next move their activities to the borders of their ethnic enclaves. They will concentrate on major intersections and highway interchanges where non-MUY suburban commuters must make daily passage to and from what forms of employment still exist. People making a living will still be using those roads to get to where they earn their daily bread.

The results of these clashes will frequently resemble the intersection of Florence and Normandie during the Rodney King riots in 1992, where Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck’s cab and beaten nearly to death with a cinder block. If you don’t remember it, watch it on Youtube. Then imagine that scene with the mob-making accelerant of texting and other social media technology added to stoke the fires. Instead of a few dozen thugs terrorizing the ambushed intersections, in minutes there will be hundreds.

Rioters will throw debris such as shopping carts and trash cans into the intersection, causing the more timid drivers to pause. The mobs will swarm the lines of trapped cars once they have stopped. Traffic will be forced into gridlock for blocks in all directions. Drivers and passengers of the wrong ethnic persuasions will be pulled from their vehicles to be beaten, robbed, and in some cases raped and/or killed. It will be hyper-violent and overtly racial mob behavior, on a massive and undeniable basis.

Some of those trapped in their cars will try to drive out of the area, inevitably knocking down MUY pedestrians and being trapped by even more outraged MUYs. The commuters will be dragged out of their cars and kicked or beaten to death. Other suburban commuters will try to shoot their way out of the lines of stopped cars, and they will meet the same grim fate once they run out of bullets and room to escape.

The mob will be armed with everything from knives, clubs and pistols to AK-47s. A bloodbath will result. These unlucky drivers and their passengers will suffer horribly, and some of their deaths will be captured on traffic web cameras. Later, these terrible scenes will be released or leaked by sympathetic government insiders and shown by the alternative media, which continue to expand as the traditional media become increasingly irrelevant.
Implausible, you insist?

This grim tableau is my analysis of age-old human behavior patterns, adding flash mobs and 2012 levels of racial anger to the old recipe. Early-teenage MUYs today are frequently playing “The Knockout Game” on full bellies, just for kicks, and proudly uploading the videos. They and their older peers can be expected to do far worse when hunger and the fear of starvation enter their physical, mental, and emotional equations. The blame for their hunger will be turned outward against the greater society, and will be vented at first hand against any non-MUY who falls into their grasp while they are in the thrall of mob hysteria. These episodes of mass psychology we will refer to as “flash mob riots”, “wilding”, or some other new name.

THE OFFICIAL POLICE RESPONSE TO FLASH MOB RIOTS

To gear up for even a single “Florence and Normandie on steroids” flash mob street riot, city police departments will require an hour or longer to stage their SWAT teams and riot squads in position to react. Ordinary patrol cars in small numbers will not venture anywhere near such roiling masses of hysterical rioters, not even to perform rescues. Those citizens trapped in their cars cannot expect timely assistance from local or state authorities.

Even in the first days of widespread riots, when the police forces are well rested, it might take several hours to mount a response sufficient to quell the disturbance and restore order to even one major street intersection riot. In the meantime, scores of innocent commuters will have been attacked, with many of them injured or killed and left at the scene. It will be a law enforcement nightmare to quell the disturbance, mop up lingering rioters, restore security, and bring medical attention to the living and get medical examiners to the dead. And each jurisdiction will face potentially dozens of such scenes, thanks to the ability for MUYs to cross-communicate at will using their wireless devices.

The far more difficult challenge for the police is that by the time they are suited in riot gear, armed and geared up to sweep the intersection, it will probably be empty of rioters. The police, with their major riot squad reaction times measured in hours, will be fighting flash mobs that materialize, cause mayhem, and evaporate in only fractions of hours. This rapid cycle time is a clear lesson taken from massive riots by immigrant French Muslim MUYs in their own religious enclaves and bordering areas.

The American flash mob riot will exist almost entirely inside the law enforcement OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop. In other words, the rioters will have a much quicker reaction time than the police. Until fairly recently, superior police communications meant that they could use their radio networks as a force multiplier. With their networking advantage and cohesive reactions both within a department and among cooperating local agencies, police could act as shepherds guiding or dispersing a wayward stampeding flock.

Today, the mob has the greater advantage, immediately spreading word of every police preparation by text and Tweet, even in advance of the police movement. Attempts by the authorities to stop the flash mobs by blocking and jamming wireless transmissions will have limited success.

It is at this point that the situation spirals out of control.
The enraged mobs in urban America will soon recognize that their spontaneous street riots cannot be stopped by the police, and then they will grow truly fearsome. For the police, it will be a losing game of Whack-a-Mole, with riots breaking out and dispersing at a speed they cannot hope to match. The violence will spread to previously unaffected cities as an awareness of law enforcement impotence is spread by television and social media. After a few days, the police forces will be exhausted and demoralized. As the violence intensifies and spreads, and in the absence of any viable security arrangements, supermarkets and other stores will not be restocked, leaving the MUYs even more desperate and angry than before. The increasing desperation born of worsening hunger will refuel the escalating spiral of violence.

Nor will violent conflict be only between the inhabitants of the urban areas and the suburbs. The international record of conflict in tri-ethnic cities is grim, making the old bi-racial dichotomy formerly seen in America seem stable by comparison. In tri-ethnic cities the perceived balance of power is constantly shifting, with each side in turn feeling outnumbered and out muscled. Temporary truces, betrayals and new alliances follow in rapid succession, removing any lingering sense of social cohesion.

The former Yugoslavia, with its Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim divisions, comes starkly to mind. The Lebanese Civil War between the Christians, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze raged across Beirut (at one time known as “The Paris of the Middle East”) for fifteen brutal years. Once a city turns on itself and becomes a runaway engine of self-destruction, it can be difficult to impossible to switch off the process and return to normal pre-conflict life. It’s not inconceivable that the United States could produce a dozen Sarajevos or Beiruts, primarily across racial instead of religious divides.

Vehicle traffic by non-minority suburban commuters through adjoining minority areas will virtually halt, wrecking what is left of the local economy. Businesses will not open because employees will not be able to travel to work safely. Businesses in minority areas, needless to say, will be looted. “Gentrified” enclaves of affluent suburbanites within or near the urban zones will suffer repeated attacks, until their inhabitants flee.

Radically disaffected minorities will hold critical infrastructure corridors through their areas hostage against the greater society. Highways, railroad tracks, pipe and power lines will all be under constant threat, or may be cut in planned or unplanned acts of raging against “the system.” As long as security in the urban areas cannot be restored, these corridors will be under threat. Even airports will not be immune. Many of them have been absorbed into urban areas, and aircraft will come under sporadic fire while taking off and landing.

In the absence of fresh targets of value blundering into their areas, and still out of food, MUYs will begin to forage beyond their desolated home neighborhoods and into suburban borderlands. “Safe” supermarkets and other stores will be robbed in brazen commando-like gang attacks. Carjackings and home invasions will proliferate madly. As I have discussed in my essay “The Civil War Two Cube,” so-called “transitional” and mixed-ethnic areas will suffer the worst violence. These neighborhoods will become utterly chaotic killing zones, with little or no help coming from the overstretched police, who will be trying to rest up for their next shift on riot squad duty, if they have not already deserted their posts to take care of their own families.

THE SUBURBAN ARMED VIGILANTE RESPONSE 

In the absence of an effective official police response to the exploding levels of violence, suburbanites will first hastily form self-defense forces to guard their neighborhoods—especially ones located near ethnic borders. These ubiquitous neighborhood armed defense teams will often have a deep and talented bench from which to select members, and they will not lack for volunteers.

Since 9-11, hundreds of thousands of young men (and more than a few women) have acquired graduate-level educations in various aspects of urban warfare. In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife. Today these former military men and women understand better than anyone the life-or-death difference between being armed and organized versus unarmed and disorganized.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of veterans currently own rifles strikingly similar to those they carried in the armed forces, lacking only the full-automatic selector switch. Their brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and neighbors who did not serve in the military are often just as familiar with the weapons, if not the tactics. Today the AR-pattern rifle (the semi-automatic civilian version of the familiar full-auto-capable M-16 or M-4) is the most popular model of rifle in America, with millions sold in the past decade. Virtually all of them produced in the past decade have abandoned the old M-16′s signature “carrying handle” rear iron sight for a standardized sight mounting rail, meaning that virtually every AR sold today can be easily equipped with an efficient optical sight. Firing the high-velocity 5.56×45 mm cartridge and mounted with a four-power tactical sight, a typical AR rifle can shoot two-inch groups at one hundred yards when fired from a steady bench rest. That translates to shooting eight- to ten-inch groups at four hundred yards.

Four hundred yards is a long walk. Pace it off on a straight road, and observe how tiny somebody appears at that distance. Yet a typical AR rifle, like those currently owned by millions of American citizens, can hit a man-sized target at that range very easily, given a stable firing platform and a moderate level of shooting ability.

And there are a far greater number of scoped bolt-action hunting rifles in private hands in the United States. Keep this number in mind: based on deer stamps sold, approximately twenty million Americans venture into the woods every fall armed with such rifles, fully intending to shoot and kill a two-hundred-pound mammal. Millions of these scoped bolt-action deer rifles are quite capable of hitting a man-sized target at ranges out to and even beyond a thousand yards, or nearly three-fifths of a mile. In that context, the 500-yard effective range of the average semi-auto AR-pattern rifle is not at all remarkable.

So, we have millions of men and women with military training, owning rifles similar to the ones they used in combat operations overseas from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Many of these Soldiers and Marines have special operations training. They are former warriors with experience at conducting irregular warfare and counter-terrorism operations in dangerous urban environments. They are the opposite of unthinking robots: their greatest military talent is looking outside the box for new solutions. They always seek to “over-match” their enemies, using their own advantages as force multipliers while diminishing or concealing their weaknesses. These military veterans are also ready, willing and able to pass on their experience and training to interested students in their civilian circles.

Let’s return to our hypothetical Florence and Normandie intersection, but this time with hundreds of rioters per city block, instead of mere dozens. Among the mobs are thugs armed with pistols and perhaps even AK-47s equipped with standard iron sights, and except in rare cases, these rifles have never been “zeroed in” on a target range. In other words, past a medium distance of fifty to a hundred yards, these MUY shooters will have little idea where their fired bullets will strike—nor will they care. Typically, most of the rioters armed with a pistol, shotgun or an iron-sighted rifle could not hit a mailbox at a hundred yards unless by luck. Inside that distance, any non-MUY could be at immediate risk of brutal death at the hands of an enraged mob, but beyond that range, the mob will pose much less danger.
Taking this imbalance in effective ranges of the firearms most likely to be available to both sides, certain tactical responses are sure to arise, and ranking near the top will be the one described next.

THE SNIPER AMBUSH: THE NEW TACTIC OF CHOICE

The sniper ambush will predictably be used as a counter to rampaging mobs armed only with short- to medium-range weapons. This extremely deadly trick was developed by our war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking advantage of the significant effective range and firepower of our scoped 5.56mm rifles. Tactics such as the sniper ambush may not be seen early in the civil disorder, but they will surely arise after a steady progression of atrocities attributed to rampaging MUYs.

Street intersection flash mob riots will not be the only type of violence exploding during periods of civil disorder. As mentioned earlier, the number and ferocity of home invasions will skyrocket, and they will be very hard to defend against. Neighborhood self-defense forces will be able to protect a group of homes if they are located on cul-de-sacs or in defensible subdivisions with limited entrances, turning them overnight into fortified gated communities. Individual homes and apartment buildings located in open grid-pattern neighborhoods with outside access from many directions will be much more difficult to defend, and the home invasions will continue.

Carjacking and other forms of armed robbery will proliferate to previously unimagined levels, leading to a total loss of confidence in the government’s ability to provide security across all social lines. Stray bullets striking pedestrians or penetrating houses will take a frightening toll, even in areas previously considered to be safe. The police will be exhausted by constant riot-squad duty, and will not even respond to reports of mere individual acts of violent criminality. They will simply be overwhelmed, and will be forced to triage their responses. The wealthy, powerful and politically well-connected will demand the lion’s share of remaining police resources, further diminishing the safety of average Americans.
 
In that context, neighborhood self-defense forces will form the nucleus of the armed vigilante direct action groups which will spring up next in the progression. Suburban anger will continue to build against the MUYs, who are perceived to be the originators of the home invasions and gang-level armed looting raids. Survivors of street ambushes, carjackings and home invasions will tell blood-curdling tales and show horrific scars.

The neighborhood defense teams will evolve into proactive suburban armed vigilante groups (SAVs) out of a desire to preemptively take the violence to their perceived enemies, instead of passively waiting for the next home invasion or carjacking. The SAV teams will consist of the more aggressive and gung-ho members of the self-defense forces, who met and compared notes. Often they will be young men with recent combat experience in the armed forces, who will apply their military training to the new situation. Major intersections and highway interchanges where ambush riots have previously occurred will be among the SAV targets. The SAV reaction times will be measured in minutes, compared to the hours required by major police department SWAT teams and riot squads.

A SAMPLE SNIPER AMBUSH SCENARIO

When word is received that a flash mob is forming at one of their pre-reconnoitered intersections or highway interchanges, the SAV team will assemble. Sometimes cooperating police will pass tactical intel to their civilian friends on the outside. Some clever individuals will have exploited their technical know-how and military experience to build real-time intel collection tools, such as private UAVs. Police will have access to urban security camera footage showing MUYs moving barricade materials into position—a normal prerequisite to a flash mob riot intended to stop traffic. Tip-offs to the vigilantes will be common, and where the networks are still functioning, citizens may still be able to access some video feeds. Sometimes, police will even join the SAV teams, incognito and off-duty, blurring the teams into so-called “death squads.”

The operation I will describe (and it’s only one of dozens that will be tried) uses two ordinary pickup trucks and eight fighters. Two riflemen are lying prone in the back of each truck, facing rearward, with removable canvas covers concealing their presence. Their semi-automatic, scoped rifles are supported at their front ends on bipods for very accurate shooting. A row of protective sandbags a foot high is between them and the raised tailgate.

In the cab are a driver and a spotter in the passenger seat who also serves as the vehicle’s 360-degree security. The two trucks don’t ever appear on the same stretch of road, but coordinate their movements using one-word brevity codes over small FRS walkie-talkie radios. Each truck has a series of predetermined elevated locations where the intersection in question will lie between 200 and 500 yards away. Each truck is totally nondescript and forgettable, the only detail perhaps being the non-MUY ethnicity of the suburbanite driver and spotter driving relatively near to a riot in progress.

By the time the two SAV pickup trucks arrive at their firing positions on different streets and oriented ninety degrees to one another, the flash mob riot is in full swing. A hundred or more of the rampaging youths are posturing and throwing debris into traffic in order to intimidate some cars into stopping. The riflemen in the backs of the pickups are waiting for this moment and know what to expect, trusting their spotters and drivers to give them a good firing lane. The spotters in each truck issue a code word on their radios when they are in final position. The tailgates are swung down, and the leader among the riflemen initiates the firing. All-around security is provided by the driver and spotter.

Lying prone and using their bipods for support, the shooters have five to ten degrees of pan or traverse across the entire intersection. Individual rioters are clearly visible in the shooters’ magnified optical scopes. Each of the four snipers has a plan to shoot from the outside of the mob toward the middle, driving participants into a panicked mass. The left-side shooters start on the left side and work to the middle, engaging targets with rapid fire, about one aimed shot per two seconds. Since the two trucks are set at ninety degrees to one another, very complete coverage will be obtained, even among and between the stopped vehicles.

The result is a turkey shoot. One magazine of thirty aimed shots per rifle is expended in under a minute, a coded cease-fire is called on the walkie-talkies, and the trucks drive away at the speed limit. The canvas covering the truck beds contains the shooters’ spent brass. If the trucks are attacked from medium or close range, the canvas can be thrown back and the two snipers with their semi-automatic rifles or carbines will add their firepower to that of the driver and spotter.

Back at the intersection, complete panic breaks out among the rioters as a great number of bullets have landed in human flesh. Over a score have been killed outright, and many more scream in pain for medical attention they will not receive in time. The sniper ambush stops the flash mob cold in its tracks as the uninjured flee in terror, leaving their erstwhile comrades back on the ground bleeding. The commuters trapped in their vehicles may have an opportunity to escape.

This type of sniper ambush and a hundred variations on the theme will finally accomplish what the police could not: put an end to mobs of violent rioters making the cities through-streets and highways impassible killing zones. Would-be rioters will soon understand it to be suicidal to cluster in easily visible groups and engage in mob violence, as the immediate response could come at any time in the form of aimed fire from hundreds of yards away. Even one rifleman with a scoped semi-auto can break up a medium-sized riot.

Many citizens will take to carrying rifles and carbines in their vehicles, along with their pistols, so that if their cars are trapped in an ambush they will have a chance to fight their way out. If their vehicle is stopped outside the immediate area of the flash mob, they will be able to direct accurate fire at the rioters from a few hundred yards away. Inside the fatal hundred-yard radius, unlucky suburbanite drivers and passengers pulled from their cars will still be brutally violated, but the occurrences of large mob-driven street ambushes will be much less frequent once long-range retaliation becomes a frequent expectation.

THE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO VIGILANTISM

Where they will be unable to respond swiftly or effectively to the outbreaks of street riots by MUY flash mobs, the police and federal agents will respond vigorously to the deadly but smaller vigilante attacks. These sniper ambushes and other SAV attacks will be called acts of domestic terrorism and mass murder by government officials and the mainstream media. A nearly seamless web of urban and suburban street cameras will reveal some of the SAV teams by their vehicles, facial recognition programs, and other technical means. Some early arrests will be made, but the vigilantes will adapt to increasing law enforcement pressure against them by becoming cleverer about their camouflage, most often using stolen cars and false uniforms and masks during their direct-action missions. Observe Mexico today for ideas on how this type of dirty war is fought.

Eventually, the U.S. Army itself might be called upon to put out all the social firestorms in our cities, restore order and security, pacify the angry masses, feed the starving millions, get vital infrastructure operating again, and do it all at once in a dozen American Beiruts, Sarajevos and Mogadishus.

Good luck to them, I say.
A few hundred “Active IRA” tied down thousands of British troops in one corner of a small island for decades. The same ratios have served the Taliban well over the past decade while fighting against the combined might of NATO. Set aside for a moment the angry starving millions trapped in the urban areas, and the dire security issues arising thereof. Just to consider the official reaction to vigilantism separately, it’s unlikely that any conceivable combinations of local and state police, federal law enforcement, National Guard or active-duty Army actions could neutralize or eliminate tens of thousands of former special operations troops intent on providing their own form of security. Millions of Americans are already far better armed and trained than a few hundred IRA or Taliban ever were. And the police and Army would not be operating from secure fire bases, their families living in total safety thousands of miles away in a secure rear area. In this scenario, there is no rear area, and every family member, anywhere, would be at perpetual risk of reprisal actions by any of the warring sides.

In this hyper-dangerous environment, new laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in vehicles would be ignored as the illegitimate diktat of dictatorship, just when the Second Amendment is needed more than ever. Police or military conducting searches for firearms at checkpoints would themselves become targets of vigilante snipers. Serving on anti-firearms duty would be seen as nothing but pure treason by millions of Americans who took the oath to defend the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Politicians who did not act in the security interest of their local constituents as a result of political correctness or other reasons would also be targeted.

A festering race war with police and the military in the middle taking fire from both sides could last for many years, turning many American cities into a living hell. Remember history: when the British Army landed in Northern Ireland in 1969, they were greeted with flowers and applause from the Catholics. The Tommys were welcomed as peacekeepers who would protect them from Protestant violence. That soon changed. Likewise with our tragic misadventure in Lebanon back in 1982 and 1983. Well-intended referees often find themselves taking fire from all sides. It’s as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise. Why would it be any different when the U.S. Army is sent to Los Angeles, Chicago or Philadelphia to break apart warring ethnic factions?
For a long time after these events, it will be impossible for the warring ethnic groups to live together or even to mingle peacefully. Too much rage and hatred will have been built up on all sides of our many American multi-ethnic fault lines. The new wounds will be raw and painful for many years to come, as they were in the South for long after the Civil War. The fracturing of the urban areas, divided by no-man’s-lands, will also hinder economic redevelopment for many years because the critical infrastructure corridors will remain insecure.

Eventually, high concrete “Peace Walls” like those in Belfast, Northern Ireland, will be installed where the different ethnic groups live in close proximity. That is, if recovery to sane and civilized norms of behavior are ever regained in our lifetimes and we don’t slide into a new Dark Age, a stern and permanent tyranny, warlordism, anarchy, or any other dire outcome.
Dark Ages can last for centuries, after sinking civilizations in a vicious, downward vortex. “When the music’s over, turn out the lights,” to quote Jim Morrison of The Doors. Sometimes the lights stay out for a long time. Sometimes civilization itself is lost. Millions of EBT cards flashing zeroes might be the signal event of a terrible transformation.

It is a frightening thing to crystallize the possible outbreak of mass starvation and racial warfare into words, so that the mind is forced to confront agonizingly painful scenarios. It is much easier to avert one’s eyes and mind from the ugliness with politically correct Kumbaya bromides. In this grim essay, I am describing a brutal situation of ethnic civil war not differing much from the worst scenes from recent history in Rwanda, South Africa, Mexico, Bosnia, Iraq, and many other places that have experienced varying types and degrees of societal collapse. We all deplore the conditions that might drive us toward such a hellish outcome, and we should work unceasingly to return America to the path of true brotherhood, peace and prosperity. Race hustlers of every stripe should be condemned.

Most of us wish we could turn back the calendar to Norman Rockwell’s America. But we cannot, for that America is water long over the dam and gone from our sight, if not from our memories. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” If that is true, judging by current and even accelerating cultural shifts, we might already have passed the point of no return.

The prudent American will trim his sails accordingly.

Backpack Survival

There's a lot of confusion about what survival means.
To some, it's getting through the aftermath of an airplane wreck in a desolate area. It can mean knowing when to avoid walking in radioactive wastes. Or, it can mean knowing how to barter with troops in the aftermath of riots, war, and looting. 

To others, survival has to do with avoiding danger and knowing how to deal with it when it breaks into your home in the dead of night.
Survival ideas abound and there are as many definitions and strategies as there are survivalists. Some have good ideas for survival and some have unsound tactics. Bad ideas can mean extra work or trouble in everyday life; bad ideas during a survival situation get you killed. On-the-job training doesn't work when you're dealing with poison and gunfights. 

Or survival. 

One of the most dangerous ideas--as far as I'm concerned--is that of "backpack survival."
A "back-pack survivalist" is a survivalist that plans on leaving his home ahead of a disaster and taking to the woods with only what he can carry out with him. He plans to survive through a strategy that is a sort of cross between the Boy-Scout-in-the-woods and Robinson Crusoe.
The backpack survival- ist plans on outrunning danger with a four-wheel drive or a motorcycle and hopes to travel light with a survival kit of everything he might need to cope with the unexpected. He hasn't cached anything in the area he's headed for because, chances are, he doesn't know where he's headed. Somehow, he hopes to overcome all odds with a minimum of supplies and a maximum of smarts. 

Certainly it is a noble cause; but it seems like one destined to failure. And that's not survival.
(Let's back up a minute. Backpack fever--or bug-outosis--does makes sense when you're facing a localized disaster like a derailed train with overturned poisonous gas cars. A a potential nuclear meltdown, an impending hurricane, or similar disasters where there is a safe place to run to. During such a time, it makes perfect sense to retreat and come back when things settle down.
Likewise, some people have to work in dangerous areas. For them, donning a backpack and heading for a retreat that they've prepared before hand is a viable survival strategy. These people aren't backpack survivalists.) 

Let me make a confession. Yes, I once was a closet backpack survivalist. I had an ALICE pack and had it packed with all I could carry. As I learned more about how to survive, I realized I needed to carry more. Soon I discover- ed that, just for my family to survive for a very few days, I'd need a pack mule and/or a hernia operation...

Something was very wrong.
Probably most survivalists start out the same way. Things are bad so let's bug out. Backpack survivalism is an effort to deal with the possibility of a major disaster.
As backpack survivalists, we make elaborate plans centered around the idea of "bugging out" of the area we live in. 

We hope to travel to an area that is safer than the one we're in and plan on living off the land or on some survival supplies we've hidden in the area. On the home front, we carefully prepare a stock of supplies that we can quickly cart off in a car or van when things start to look bad.
As more and more plans are made and as ever more survival gear is purchased, the survivalist realizes just how much he needs to cope with in order to survive. If he is any sort of realist, he soon amasses enough gear to warrant a truck or--more likely--a moving van just for carrying the survival equipment. (And don't laugh, there are survivalists who have large trucks for just such use.)
Some brave souls continue to make more elaborate plans and some of these survivalists may be able to pull off their plans. Those who have really thought things out and have spared no expenses may manage to survive with a bug-out strategy. But I think there are more logical--and less expensive--ways to survive a large crisis. 

Forget all your preconceived notions for a minute.
Imagine that there is a national emergency and you are an outside observ- er? What happens if a nuclear attack is eminent, an economic collapse has occurred, or a dictator has taken over and is ready to round up all malcontents (with survivalists at the top of the list)? 

Situations change with time. The survivalist movement--and backpack fever--first started up when gas guzzler cars were about all that anyone drove. That meant that a survivalist with some spare gasoline could outdis- tance his unprepared peers and get to a retreat that was far from the maddening crowd, as it were. (Read some of Mel Tappan's early writing on survival retreats. His ideas are good but many have been undone with the new, fuel-ef- ficient cars.) 

With cars getting 30 or even 40 miles per gallon, it isn't rare for a car to be able to travel half way across a state on less than a tank of gasoline. The exodus from cities or trouble spots will be more limited by traffic snarls than lack of gasoline even if the gas stations are completely devoid of their liquid fuel. 

Too, there are a lot of people thinking about what to do if the time for fleeing comes. A lot of people will be headed for the same spots. (Don't laugh that off, either. In my area, every eighth person has confided his secret retreat spot to me. And about half of them are all headed for the same spot: an old missile silo devoid of water and food. I suspect that the battle at the gates of the old missile base will rival the Little Big Horn.) 

No matter how out-of-the-way their destination, most survivalists are kidding themselves if they think others won't be headed for their hideaway spot along with them. There are few places in the US which aren't accessible to anyone with a little driving skill and a good map. 

Too, there are few places which aren't in grave danger during a nuclear war or national social unrest.
Though most nuclear war survival books can give you a nice little map showing likely targets, they don't tell you some essential information. Like what the purpose of the attack will be. The enemy may not be aiming for military targets that day; a blackmail threat might begin by hitting the heart of the farmland or a number of cities before demanding the surrender of the country being attacked. The target areas on the maps might be quite safe. 

And the maps show where the missiles land IF they all enjoy 100 percent accuracy and reliability. Anyone know of such conditions in war? With Soviet machinery!? Targets may be relatively safe places to be in. 

Added to this is the fact that some areas can be heavily contaminated or completely free of contamination depending on the wind directions in the upper atmosphere. Crystal ball in your survival gear? 

But let's ignore all the facts thus far for a few moments and assume that a backpack survivalist has found an ideal retreat and is planning to go there in the event of a national disaster... What next?
His first concern should be that he'll have a hard time taking the supplies he needs with him. A nuclear war might mean that it will be impos- sible to grow food for at least a year and foraging is out as well since animals and plants may be contaminated extensively. 

An economic collapse wouldn't be much better. It might discourage the raising of crops; no money, no sales except for the barter to keep a small farm family going.
With large corporations doing much of our farming these days, it is not unreasonable to expect a major famine coming on the heals of an economic collapse. Raising food would be a good way to attract starving looters from miles around. 

Ever try to pack a year's supply of food for a family into a small van or car? There isn't much room left over. But the backpack survivalist needs more than just food.
If he lives in a cold climate (or thinks there might be something to the nuclear winter theory) then he'll need some heavy clothing. 

Rifles, medicine, ammunition, tools, and other supplies will also increase what he'll need to be taking or which he'll have to hide away at his retreat site.
Shelter? Building a place to live (in any style other than early-American caveman) takes time. If he builds a cabin beforehand, he may find it vandalized or occupied when he gets to his retreat; if he doesn't build it before- hand, he may have to live in his vehicle or a primitive shelter of some sort.
Thus, a major problem is to get a large enough vehicle to carry everything he needs as well as to live in. 

History has shown that cities empty themselves without official evacuation orders when things look bad. It happened in WW II and has even happened in the US during approaching hurricanes, large urban fires, and nuclear reactor problems. 

So there's a major problem of timing which the backpack survivalist must contend with. He has to be packed and ready to go with all members of his family at the precise moment he learns of the disaster! The warning he gets that warrants evacuating an area will have to be acted on quickly if he's to get out ahead of the major traffic snarls that will quickly develop. A spouse at work or shopping or kids across town at school means he'll either have to leave them behind or be trapped in the area he's in. A choice not worth having to make. 

Unless he's got a hot-line from the White House, the backpack survivalist will not hear the bad news much ahead of everyone else. If he doesn't act immediately, he'll be trapped out on the road and get a first-hand idea of what grid-lock is like if he's in an urban area. Even out on the open road, far away from a city, an interstate can become hectic following a ballgame... Imagine what it would be like if everyone were driving for their lives, some cars were running out of fuel (and the occupants trying to stop someone for a ride), and the traffic laws were being totally ignored while the highway patrol tried to escape along with everyone else. Just trying to get off or on major highways might become impossible. If things bog down, how long can the backpack survivalist keep those around from helping to unload his truck-load of supplies that they'll be in bad need of? 

Telling them they should have prepared ahead of time won't get many sympathetic words.
Even on lightly-traveled roadways, how safe would it be to drive around in a vehicle loaded with supplies? Our backpack survivalist will need to defend himself. 

But let's suppose that he's thought all this out. He has a large van, had the supplies loaded in it, managed to round every member of his family up beforehand, somehow got out of his area ahead of the mob, is armed to the teeth, and doesn't need to take an interstate route.
When he reaches his destination, his troubles are far from over. 

The gridlock and traffic snarls won't stop everyone. People will slowly be coming out of heavily populated areas and most of them will have few supplies.
They will have weapons (guns are one of the first things people grab in a crisis according to civil defense studies) and the evacuees will be desperate. How many pitched battles will the survivalist's family be able to endure? How much work--or even sleep--can he get when he's constantly on the lookout to repel those who may be trying to get a share of his supplies? 

This assumes that he gets to where he's going ahead of everyone else. He might not though. If he has to travel for long, he may discover squatters on his land or find that some local person has staked out his retreat area for their own. There won't be any law to help out; what happens next? Since (according to military strategists) our backpack survivalist needs about three times as many people to take an area as to defend it, he will need to have some numbers with him and expect to suffer some casualties. Does that sound like a good way to survive? 

What about the local people that don't try to take over his retreat before he gets there? Will they be glad to see another stranger move into the area to tax their limited supplies? Or will they be setting up roadblocks to turn people like the backpack survivalist away?
But let's just imagine that somehow he's discovered a place that doesn't have a local population and where those fleeing cities aren't able to get to. What happens when he gets to his retreat? How good does he need to be at hunting and fishing? One reason mankind went into farming was that hunting and fishing don't supply enough food for a very large population nor do they work during times of drought or climatic disruption. What does he do when he runs out of ammunition or game? What happens if the streams become so contaminated that he can't safely eat what he catches? Can he stake out a large enough area to guarantee that he won't depleat it of game so that the next year is not barren of animals? 

Farming? Unless he finds some unclaimed farm machinery and a handy storage tank of gasoline at his retreat, he'll hardly get off first base. Even primitive crop production requires a plow and work animals (or a lot of manpower) to pull the blade. No plow, no food for him or domestic animals.
And domestic animals don't grow on trees. Again, unless he just happens to find some cows waiting for him at his retreat, he'll be out of luck. (No one has packaged freeze-dried cows or chickens--at least, not in a form you can reconstitute into living things). 

Intensive gardening? Maybe. But even that takes a lot of special tools, seeds, know-how, and good weather. Can he carry what he needs and have all the skills that can be developed only through experience? 

Even if he did, he might not have any food to eat. Pestilence goes hand in hand with disasters. Our modern age has forgotten this. But during a time when chemical factories aren't churning out the insecticides and pest poisons we've come to rely on, our backpack survivalist should be prepared for waves of insects flooding into any garden he may create. How good is he at making insecticides? Even if he carries out a large quantity of chemicals to his retreat, how many growing seasons will they last? 

Did he truck out a lot of gasoline and an electrical generator with him? No? Do you REALLY think he can create an alcohol still from scratch in the middle of no-where without tools or grain? Then he'd better write off communications, lighting, and all the niceties of the 20th Century after his year's supply of batteries wear out and his vehicle's supply of gasoline conks out.
I'm afraid we've only scratched the surface though. 

Thus far things have been going pretty well. What happens when things get really bad? How good is he at removing his spouse's appendix--without electric lights, pain killers, or antiseptic conditions? Campfire dental work, anyone? 

How good is he at making ammunition? Clothing? Shoes?
I think you'll have to agree that this hardly seems like survival in style. Even if our backpack survivalist is able to live in the most spartan of conditions and has the know-how to create plenty out of the few scraps around him, he'll never have much of a life ahead of him. 

Camping out is fun for a few days. Living in rags like a hunted animal doesn't sound like an existence to be aimed for.
The bottom line with backpack fever is that, with any major disaster that isn't extremely localized, running is a panic reaction not a survival strategy. Running scared is seldom a good survival technique and backpack fever during any but a localized disaster (like a flood or chemical spill) looks like it would be a terminal disease with few, rare exceptions. 

So what's the alternative?
A number of writers, from Kurt Saxon to Howard Ruff, have already suggested it but I think that it bears a retelling.
What they've said is this: get yourself situated in a small community that could get by without outside help if things came unglued nationally or internationally. Find a spot that allows you to live in the life-style you've grown accustomed to (and a community that allows you to carry on your livelihood) but which has the ability to grow its own food and protect its people from the unprepared (or looters) that might drift in from surrounding cities during a crisis. This spot has the ability to carry on trade within its borders and has a number of people who can supply specialized products or professional skills. 

An area with two thousand to five thousand people in it along with a surrounding farm community would be ideal but sizes can vary a lot according to the climate and city. Ideally such a town would have its own power plant with a few small industries along with the usual smattering of doctors, dentists, and other professionals. 

This type of community isn't rare in the US. It's quite common in almost every state. You could probably even take a little risk and commute into a city if you must keep your current job. (In such a case a reverse backpack survival strategy just might work--you'd be bugging out to your home.)
Western civilization stepped out of the dark ages when small communities started allowing people to specialize in various jobs. Rather than each many being his own artisan, farmer, doctor, carpenter, etc., men started learning to master one job they enjoyed doing. Each man become more efficient at doing a job and--through the magic of capitalism--western culture finally started upward again.
A small modern community like the one suggested above, when faced with a national economic collapse or the aftermath of a nuclear war, would eventually lift itself up the same way. It would give those who lived in it the same chance for specialization of work and the ability to carry on mutual trade, support, and protection. Such small communities will be the few light spots in a Neo-Dark Age. 

Which place would you rather be: in a cave, wondering where the food for tomorrow would come from, or with a group of people living in their homes, working together to overcome their problems? Even the most individualistic of survivalists shouldn't find the choice too hard to make. 

The author of this article, Duncan Long, is well-known as the writer of many gun, self-sufficiency, and survival books. His firearms books are listed (along with other interesting books) in a free catalog available from Paladin Press, P. O. Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306 (303) 443-7250. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click here for all your prepping/tactical needs: The Tactical Patriot Store

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------