Refleks

The admin was planning to do it from the start. Apparently legislature cannot meet during COVID19 so he's used the Canadian equivalent of executive order to push his agenda during a crisis. This does nothing to prevent another incident as the gunman used illegally obtained firearms. Nor does this prevent a mass shooting with the weapons that remain legal after this. They don't have a 2nd amendment. They'll grumble but comply, following in the footsteps of other commonwealth nations.

Up until now I'd been using a micro dot + 3x flip to side magnifier, because when I selected it years back LVPOs weren't as popular as they are now, were still quite expensive, and I had no idea how durable they were -- so I didn't pay much attention to them given my budget. They've become more trendy and less expensive as of late though and so I finally pulled the trigger on the Primary Arms 1-6x FFP based on reviews suggesting it's an outstanding value (and durability) for the price, and I liked the ACSS reticle. The 1x power isn't really 1x, and it's noticeable if you're shooting with both eyes open. It does have noticeable fisheye distortion at 1x indoors, but this is my first LVPO and I don't remember any reviews really emphasizing that, so I guess that's par for the course. Front to back eye relief is generous and forgiving at 1x. Having 6x zoom is definitely nice, and the eyebox understandably gets tighter as you zoom in -- front to back is okay at 6x, it didn't seem any worse than my 3x magnifier, but there's zero tolerance for up / down / left / right shifts (even pressing your cheek harder or less hard into the stock), it just goes from perfectly clear to blacked out right away. Again, maybe that's normal, I don't really have any experience with other magnified optics to compare it to, but it does feel very tight. For a primarily HD gun that you'd like a little magnification on to reach out and tag things out to 300m or so, I think the red dot and magnifier is more than adequate, and probably better up close and indoors. For a rifle with the ability to reach out to the capabilities of the gun and shooter, but can still do up close in a pinch, the LPVO seems like it's a good flexible all around option. The impression I get is a lot of shooters tend to find themselves at the max or minimum zoom without spending much time in between, to the point where some competition shooters add an offset red dot like RMR and pretty much just keep the LPVO zoomed in.

I don't have a 10-22 yet, but I bought a ZK-22 kit just for fun in anticipation of finding a Ruger on sale for a song one day.

If they change their stance on braces then I think AR based pistols will still have value since the buffer tube is integral to the design -- you can manage to shoulder a plain buffer tube in a pinch and just bear it for the duration even if not particularly comfortable. The value of AK based pistols would simply plummet overnight though...

.

Yes Well... yes. In the end, that accomplishes the same task. If you're sick and don't know it, it mitigates the chances that you will spread it to others. If you're not sick but everyone else is wearing source control, it reduces the chances that you will become infected. Tackling this problem from both ends. The approaches aren't mutually exclusive and work best together. That's why health care providers wear N95 / Eye Pro / Gowns / Gloves / Practice hand hygiene / Minimize contact time / Practice social distancing..... AND put a mask on the patient. Source control only works if sources practice it, and what a lot of us have been trying to drive home here is that everyone is a potential source, even if you don't feel sick, since you can spread this well before you feel sick yourself, to a more significant degree than other things we're familiar with like Flu. And breathing, even. All of this was well known since early March. The information was not appropriately disseminated by officials.

If a silver lining can be found in all of this, it is that perhaps those who have adapted to become utterly dependent on the state for their well-being now has a healthy skepticism about their competence and a more realistic assessment of their limitations, and take it upon themselves to share at least some responsibility for their own well-being going forward, at least to give the Government time to gear up their response and shake the rust off. This would result in a healthy mix of responsibility and a far more resilient populace with a robust ability to absorb hardship whether it be through natural disaster, terrorism, scarcity, or otherwise. Unfortunately, I suspect many will go out of their way to miss the lesson and instead say the shortcomings were a flaw in this particular administration rather than an inherent limitation of the nature of the state, and these lessons will be forgotten in a generation.

Indeed. This is a summary of some of my earlier comments but bears mentioning IMO They knew, it was a deliberate decision to try and reduce panic buying (which happened anyway) as Fauci implicitly admitted in an article shortly before the announcement. I understand the need to try and avoid panic, but there are two things wrong with that. Firstly, there should never be a reason that we lack mission critical items (especially PPE, given the universal nature of its importance) necessary to do the job, and that represents a failure of leadership full stop. Our stockpile consisted of somewhere around 112 million N95 masks, reduced after the H1N1 epidemic in 2009-2010 to just 12 million and never replenished. It should have been on the order of 3.5 billion according to one testimony by a SME, which at $2.50 / kg represents less than $200 million in material costs. That's stupid cheap, in the grand scheme of things, even accounting for having to replace them due to expiration dates. Sometimes distribution can understandably be a problem (such as immediately following a natural disaster) but supply should not be -- panic buying is a known variable that can be accounted for in emergency management planning, and whether or not the public panic buys should therefore be irrelevant to mission readiness on the healthcare end if things are running as they should. Unfortunately, we are where we are, you fight with the army you have, and that will hopefully be addressed in the after action report (along with several ranking members hopefully having to update their resume) Secondly, it's disingenuous to deliberately mislead people about the efficacy of an intervention at mitigating potential risk in order to manipulate their actions (in other words, saying "masks do not help the general public" driven not by actual evidence, but because we're short and want to avoid panic buying) and is extraordinarily unethical and would likely be career ending if anyone else was caught doing it. The layperson may not be subject matter experts but they know when something doesn't add up, and it understandably sounded suspect when officials implied that coughing into your arm helps, as do masks for medical professionals, but not for anyone else. People aren't stupid, and they really don't like being misled. Public threads on social media indicated that a non trivial number of people immediately referenced the Surgeon General and parroted the claims that masks don't help. Their contention was likely that if you're practicing social distancing like you should be doing, the general public doesn't need masks, and combined with the severe shortage of PPE they were hoping it would trick the populace into not panic buying. Not only did it not prevent panic buying, but downplaying the seriousness and significant potential for pre-symptomatic transmission (relative to things like Flu) which were known caused everyone down the line to drag their feet in their response, and it illustrated a fundamental disconnect between ostensible guidelines and the realities on the ground, as evidenced by the pictures in mid-March of standing room only crowds at the airport and essential businesses being slow to implement social distancing measures. Those people really thought masks didn't help. So I get their contention, and do not care. This isn't China or HBO's Chernobyl, this is the United States and It's unethical to not be fully truthful to the public for fear of them not being responsible enough to do what is necessary. We can't make informed decisions when authoritative sources deliberately and selectively manipulate information. These actions were deliberate and hurt the public trust, potentially irrevocably, and in the press conference they tried to play this information off as if they didn't have it the whole time and were keeping us up to date with the latest developments. Their approach was conduct unbecoming and this should not be forgotten in the wake of this, because without a doubt their actions cost lives that didn't have to be lost.

February

https://twitter.com/...197218941468673 Now recommends people wear masks, turns out this stuff can be spread pre-symptomatically. Gee.

I have to admit, this one kinda chaps my ass. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/31/fauci-mask-recommendation-coronavirus-157476 Dr Fauci admits that the reluctance to recommend masks for all was driven by an effort to prevent panic buying rather than them actually not being potentially helpful. If there wasn't a shortage, hypothetically, if we were just swimming in PPE, would officials recommend masks for those who do go out (in addition to social distancing and proper hand hygiene), out of an abundance of caution? If yes, then it was disingenuous for them to say masks don't help as a technique to reduce panic buying. The panic buying occurred anyway. Lying to the populace in an effort to manipulate their actions through game theory is something an authoritarian country would do, that's conduct unbecoming in the west at least ostensibly. Again, masks aren't a panacea, there are some caveats but as part of a comprehensive strategy to mitigate risks they have their place. The point is, you don't lie about the potential efficacy of an intervention that could mitigate risks for unrelated reasons, like the fear that we aren't responsible enough to handle the truth: that we shouldn't get them, not because they don't help, but because healthcare workers need them more. That destroys the public trust. People may not be doctors but they're not stupid, they know when something doesn't add up. Like when public officials say "coughing into your arm helps, and a masks for those with a medical license helps" but implying nothing in between is effective.

Comfort is in New York now. Great sight, but those things are aching for replacement... maybe in the wake of this a clean sheet hospital ship will get funded and produced in useful numbers

Indeed. And 112 million masks wouldn't have lasted long either, on the order of a week or so with best practices that preclude reuse. That's it -- that's all we had for contingencies. Had this been a significantly worse pandemic, the tolls would be staggering. Speaking of expiration dates, our stockpile of pharmaceuticals and domestic capacity to produce them would probably be another surprise to most. Even with the DOD SLEP testing and evaluating their efficacy after expiration dates, a lot of people aren't going to be getting their medicine in very short order. Even covering 10% of the population over existing capability seems well out of reach -- that would be on the order of 30 million patients once ICUs are full. Well outside the bounds of what we could expect to achieve without giving it armed services like budgets (which I'm not opposed to). We are, in the end, consumers, living figuratively paycheck to paycheck.

"US never spent enough on emergency stockpile, former managers say" https://www.registerguard.com/zz/news/20200327/us-never-spent-enough-on-emergency-stockpile-former-managers-say Meanwhile... https://www.space.com/space-force-2021-budget-request.html Considering this has done more damage to the US (and global) economy than ISIS, North Korea, Iran, or literally anyone else could have ever dreamed of accomplishing through conventional means, you'd think it would warrant the same attention as a branch of the armed forces, from the national security perspective.

One of my biggest questions as a first responder was how were we so ill equipped to respond on the PPE and basic necessities front? I had assumed all this was well sorted... but In the IAFC brief they were tapping into the strategic national stockpile and still predicting severe shortages in short order. Why? We're mere weeks into this thing. What would have happened if a far more serious outbreak occurred, a real world CBRN event or even natural disaster? Why does it take a pandemic to illuminate the issues? I did finally find an article at least referencing it (refreshing considering it should have _literally_ been the next question after "healthcare workers are running out of PPE"). According to this article 100 million masks were used under Obama for the H1N1 event, leaving around 12 million in the stockpile and the stockpile was never replenished. But even if it had been replenished, it's well short of the 3.5 billion mask recommendation. https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/daily-news-article/la-times-and-bloomberg-news-federal-stockpile-of-n95-masks-was-depleted-under-obama/ We can argue whether heads should roll or not, but the way forward is clear -- un-f*&# it and never let it happen again. Too many people ostensibly responsible for emergency management planning and preparation on the federal level are getting paid fat salaries for this to be a thing. We all know the Federal Govt can screw up a wet dream, but a lot of people are utterly dependent on the state and their faith is still inexplicably unshaken.