Day: September 15, 2010


A Woman’s Perspective on Personal Self Defense, by Roxanne L. Griswold

Imagine this frightening scenario and try to envision yourself here: You’re strolling through an empty parking lot at dusk thinking about the events of the day when suddenly your arm is clasped from behind and pulled forcefully downward. Your head crashes against the unforgiving concrete. Blood gushes from your nose. Before you have a moment to process anything, your attacker is now on top of you, beating your face with open fists. Gasping for air from fear and excruciating pain, you scream and slap him in an aimless attempt to shield yourself, by which time he has secured your flailing …


Letter Re: Advice on Pre-1899 Guns and Ammunition Availability

Dear Sir: I recently read your FAQ regarding the laws involved in purchasing pre-1899 firearms. It was dated 2004. Have any of the protocols significantly changed in the past several years? I am also curious to know which pre-1899 revolvers function best with current production ammunition. Any info would be of assistance. Thanks. – Louis P. JWR Replies: My advice on buying pre-1899 guns is essentially unchanged. Prices for pre-1899 antique cartridge guns are continuing to advance much more quickly than inflation. (Just as I had predicted.) In recent years, Smith &Wesson revolvers have started to catch up in price …


Letter Re: Lessons Learned from Hurricane Ike

John in Texas wrote a great piece about Lessons Learned from Hurricane Ike. He wrote that his neighbors have ignored the hazards of a hurricane, and that his wife still believes the money spent on a generator is a waste of money. In a somewhat similar experience, many years ago, while living in the Chicago area, we had a winter in which we had a tremendous amount of snow. Tired of shoveling the white stuff, I purchased a snow blower during the next summer. The following winter we had an unusually light snowfall. One day, while my co-workers were laughing …


Economics and Investing:

California home equity hangover: $649 billion in HELOC loans nationwide with most in California. Two Years Later: The U.S. Economy Still Needs a Spark Plug Two years after Lehman Brothers collapsed in a $639 billion bankruptcy and the short-term financial markets seized up with terror, we’ve backed away from the brink. But skittishness in the financial markets hasn’t gone away. It’s just taken a different form — for instance, driving gold prices up 56% from $805 an ounce on Sept. 3, 2008, to $1,253 Sept. 3, 2010. With spot silver now solidly above $20 per ounce, and spot gold above …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Reader M.P.S. notes that there are two coupons for home canning jars currently available at on RedPlum.com. You can print each coupon two times.    o o o A follow-up: Mayor Eddie Perez (recently mentioned in the blog) was sentenced to three years in prison, and three years probation, of a possible 60 year sentence. Perez was convicted on five of six felony charges. He is one of the rogues gallery of Mayor Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns members that have been indicted or convicted of felonies including Sheila Dixon, Kwame Kilpatrick, Gary Becker, Larry Langford, Samuel Rivera, Jerramiah Healy, …


Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad." – James Madison