Supreme Court Agrees to Hear McDonald v. Chicago Gun Rights Case

The Supreme Court has accepted an appeal “challenging the ability of state and local governments to enforce strict limits on handguns and other weapons” according to a news story posted today on CNN.com.

Oral arguments are expected to start early next year. The most anticipated of the 10 cases chosen for review has to be McDonald v. Chicago, in which the city of Chicago’s ban on handguns is being challenged by community activist Otis McDonald. A resident of a high-crime neighborhood in Chicago, McDonald was denied a handgun permit despite the fact that his work has subjected him to violent threats from drug dealers and other criminals.

Chicago’s ban is considered one of the toughest in the country. (Luckily for Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley, the ban doesn’t extend to his personal security team; one of his armed guards was able to safely apprehend a convicted killer lurking near the mayor’s vacation home in Michigan last July after a prison break.)

An amphibious bike?

After Makeshift Workshop Skills author James Ballou is done with his homemade helicopter, maybe he'll turn his attention to building an amphibious bicycle similar to the one put together by this intrepid inventor.

If you can't get enough of makeshift solutions to construction and repair challenges, check out There, I Fixed It. Some of the photos show clever jury-rigged jobs; most fall into the "kids, do not try this at home" category.

Guns and Ammo Shortage? It’s Not a Problem for Do-It-Yourselfers

Nothing clears the shelves of a valuable commodity quicker than the fear that it’s about to run out. Whether it’s buying extra groceries and gassing up the car before the predicted blizzard closes the roads or stocking up on, well, everything when Y2K was the boogeyman, most people have a strong desire to feel prepared.

The perceived threat to the future availability of weapons and ammunition has been driving sales through the roof since the presidential election last fall. A recent AP story noted that, “Shooting ranges, gun dealers and manufacturers say they have never seen such shortages. Bullets, especially for handguns, have been scarce for months because gun enthusiasts are stocking up on ammo, in part because they fear President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass antigun legislation — even though nothing specific has been proposed and the president last month signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks.”

Whether you're stocking up to brace for some political shenanigans or just want to hit the range or your favorite hunting spot, the current shortage is a problem. So what’s a firearms enthusiast to do? To be truly well prepared you must become self-sufficient. Paladin’s Firearms section has you covered with an entire subcategory devoted to Home Workshop Guns & Ammo, featuring such DIY book and video titles as Homemade Guns and Homemade Ammo, The Home Workshop .50-Caliber Sniper Rifle, The Workbench AR-15 Project, and many, many more. Whether you have always been curious about making your own ammunition or want to build the rifle of your dreams from scratch, you'll find something up your alley right here.

How Long Does It Take to Bleed to Death? Michael Janich Takes a Look

No one knows knife fighting better than Michael Janich. In the “Street Smarts” column of the January 2010 issue of Tactical Knives, Janich discusses how he became involved with the late Christopher Grosz, a decorated Colorado law enforcement officer and defensive tactics master, to determine how long it takes someone to bleed out when major arteries are severed. In the course of this research, Grosz determined that much of the information in Fairbairn’s Timetable of Death was inconsistent with modern medical data. Grosz decided to document his findings about the widely referenced yet scientifically unsubstantiated timetable in a book and teamed up with veteran martial artist and Paladin author Michael Janich. In the early stages of preparing the book, Contemporary Knife Targeting, Grosz suddenly passed away, and Janich completed the book as a tribute to Grosz and his research. Check out the article and then if you want to know more, read Contemporary Knife Targeting. It will change the way you approach a knife fight—and it may well save your life.

Mark Hatmaker on Fear

In the October 2009 edition of Black Belt magazine, Paladin author Mark Hatmaker discusses the proper role of fear in personal protection. In the article, “When Fear Is an Unwelcome Gift,” Hatmaker discusses how to determine whether your fears are relics from long-ago survival instincts that are no longer relevant or from current and imminent dangers to which you need to react rationally. In short, you have to be able to immediately know when to go on alert or stand down when you feel fear.

Mark Hatmaker is the author of a couple of dozen instructional books and videos on such functional self-defense topics as grappling, boxing, combat conditioning, and MMA fighting. Check out the Paladin Press website for more of his books and DVDs, including his most recent, Below the Belt, a DVD filled with explosive low kicks for MMA and self-defense.

Signs of Impending Workplace Violence Too Easily Ignored

The picture that is emerging of Raymond Clark, the accused killer in the murder of Yale grad student Annie Le, shows a man referred to by source after source as controlling and territorial.

“ ‘It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime, but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country,’ said New Haven, Conn., Police Chief James Lewis said after announcing the arrest of suspect Raymond Clark III.”

Both 24 years old, Le’s research held promise for treating diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and MS, while Clark’s job was to keep the mouse cages clean. According to a story in the New York Times, Clark’s supervisor had been alerted in the past that Clark was taking his duties too seriously, berating students for minor infractions and enforcing rules in “an officious manner” for such things as forgetting to wear shoe covers in the lab.

In Surviving Workplace Violence, Loren Christensen tells you how to spot the warning signs of a potentially violent coworker and teaches you how to analyze your work environment to identify possible escape routes, hiding places, and barricade positions. In the event of an actual emergency, this book teaches you how to react quickly and decisively to save your life and the lives of your friends and colleagues. Christensen, a retired police officer with years of experience with violent predators, answers the hard questions that other instructors leave out: exactly what you should do before a violent incident, and what you should do if violence ever explodes where you work.

Paladin Author on Iraq’s Defense Needs After America Departs in 2011

In its Friday, September 11 edition, the Wall Street Journal ran a commentary coauthored by Paladin author Austin Bay on the future of Iraq’s military after American troops withdraw in September 2011. In the article, entitled “Iraq Needs a Real Air Force,” Bay and Omar Fadhil Al-Nidawi identify Iraq’s most pressing military need as an air force made up of “high-performance aircraft flown by Iraqi crack pilots.” They also point out that this goal cannot be accomplished by 2011 and that a more realistic goal would be 2018 or 2020.

Concerning the article, Bay remarks, “On 9-11, 2001, who would have thought eight years later that an Iraqi and an American would be discussing solutions to a democratic Iraq’s air-space defense requirements?”

Bay couthored A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, Fourth Edition, with James Dunnigan for Paladin Press in 2008. For more insight into what the future may hold for Iraq, Iran, and other world hot spots, check out their book.

Dorothy Ainsworth on living a self-sufficient life

She taught herself how to construct beautiful, functional buildings (including a workshop, pump house, water storage tank, and TWO log homes). She is a skilled practitioner of practical gardening. She raises chickens in a coop she built herself. She has mastered the art of eating inexpensively and healthily. She knows when to tackle a job herself and when to seek assistance from friends, acquaintances, and professionals. And she does it all on a $12,000-a-year waitress's income. In short, Dorothy Ainsworth embodies the message and spirit of Paladin's latest self-reliance title, Tough Times Survival Guide, to which she contributed the fantastic article, "The Art of Scrounging Building Materials." We asked Dorothy some of her secrets for living on less and attaining the skills to lead a self-sufficient lifestyle in this interview (click on the author's name in red). For more detailed background, advice, stories, and photos from Dorothy, visit her website.

Start Your Own Country author to speak at “Seasteading” convention

Erwin Strauss, author of the classic manifesto on do-it-yourself nation building, How to Start Your Own Country, is scheduled to speak at the 2009 convention of The Seasteading Institute (TSI), September 28–30, in San Francisco.

Never heard of “seasteading,” you say? According to TSI’s mission statement:

"Seasteading is creating permanent dwellings on the ocean—homesteading the high seas. A seastead . . . is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean."

TSI is one of several organizations and movements in the United States seeking to establish alternative ways to organize society free from the weight, entanglements, and baggage of the heavy-handed government we have today. The ones we've been tracking are dedicated to maximizing individual liberty and free-market principles to reach their goals. As TSI puts it:

“. . . the world needs a new frontier, a place where those who wish to experiment with building new societies can go to test out their ideas. By opening the ocean as a new frontier, we hope to revolutionize the quality of government and social systems worldwide by enabling experimentation, innovation, and competition.”

The seasteading concept is the brainchild of Patri Friedman, grandson of the late, great champion of free-market economics, Milton Friedman. (One of Milton’s more pithy statements: “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”)

Erwin Strauss has been compiling information for an updated edition of How to Start Your Own Country. We’ll keep you posted on his progress.

For an entertaining look at the potential and problems of seasteading, see Brian Doherty’s comprehensive article, “20,000 Nations Above the Sea: Is floating the last, best hope for liberty?”

Seastead image credit: Wendy Sitler-Roddier.

Paladin Author Has Article in Combat Handguns

The November 2009 issue of Combat Handguns has an article by Paladin author Richard Nance entitled “Under the Gun . . . Disarm Your Assailant.” Nance is the coauthor (along with David Hallford) of the newly released DVD, Firearm Acquisition Tactics, which is available from Paladin Press. Accompanying the article is a sidebar, “Life-Saving Drills on DVD,” in which it is noted that a U.S. soldier on a room-clearing mission in Iraq used one of the techniques from the Firearm Acquisition Tactics DVD to disarm an insurgent who had placed the muzzle of his rifle against the soldier’s back. The system taught in this DVD relies on one universal technique that, with only slight modification, can be applied to almost any type of firearm threat you might face. Nance and Hallford are also the authors another DVD available from Paladin, Up Close and Personal: A Street-Smart Guide to Fighting from the Clinch.

Cirillo, Applegate, Plaster: three classic Paladin centerfolds now online!

We’ve updated our Paladin classic centerfold feature with three new entries covering some of Paladin’s most popular authors. In the first, we explore the long partnership between Paladin, its owner Peder Lund, and World War II combatives legend Colonel Rex Applegate. The second centerfold presents an interview with sniping authority John Plaster on his extraordinary new release, The History of Sniping and Sharpshooting. Finally, we talk to Paul Kirchner, author of the best-selling Jim Cirillo’s Tales of the Stakeout Squad, and ask him about how the book came about and what it was like to work with Jim.

If you haven’t already explored the classic centerfold feature, take a look. You’ll find all sorts of background on Paladin’s publishing history, plus revealing articles on some of our best-known authors and contributors: close-combat experts Kelly McCann, W.E. Fairbairn, Carl Cestari, and Charles Nelson; sniping legend Carlos Hathcock; the inimitable Jeff Cooper; noted military historians Peter Senich, Jim Morris, and Paul Balor; knife-making legends Bo Randall and Bob Terzoula; firearm suppressor authorities Al Paulson, N.R. Parker, and J. David Truby; pioneering “streetfighting” authors Peyton Quinn and Marc MacYoung; defensive driving groundbreaker Tony Scotti; ninjutsu master Masaaki Hatsumi; bounty hunter Bob Burton; smuggler M.C. Finn; old favorites Scott French and Ragnar Benson; and more!

Bob Kasper's Sting of The Scorpion Reviewed in Tactical Knives

Steven Dick, editor of Tactical Knives, recently review Bob Kasper's Sting of The Scorpion in the November 2009 issue of Tactical Knives. Steven decribes Bob as an individual who was actually "going and doing" by carrying out covert operations around the world before the war on terror. All these missions overseas definitely influenced the knowledge that Bob writes about in his latest book.

Steven goes on to write, "Paladin's new book cover's Kasper's knowledge on knife design, selection, carry and draw, and, more importantly, using the blade on the modern battlefield. As one of the founders of the Gung-Ho Chuan Association, Kasper's techniques were all thoroughly tested and battle proven.... If you need a training manual by someone who worked off real life rather than theory, then this is the book for you."

Although Bob passed away, we are happy that he left some of his real-life knife fighting knowledge with us. To see more about his latest title Bob Kasper's Sting of The Scorpion, click here.