This is something I have been mulling for some time and now.  Criminals realize that everybody is using this new generation of inexpensive cameras, and some are targeting the most obvious one: The doorbell camera. If they cover or destroy the doorbell cam, you are blind to what is going on outside and information is something nice to have when it comes to the defense of home. If you get distracted/absent minded and have not realized that the camera was disabled but just think something happened, (Wifi down, momentary loss of power or adapter failure) you may step outside to check and either walk into an ambush or allow critters come in.

So, I have been trying to figure out where I am going to install a camera that covers the front and is out of the reach/sight of a bad guy while providing a “back-up” visual of the entrance. Something I learned in my time doing security surveillance is that people don’t look up and that should be part of your strategy.  Find a high angle that provides a clear field of vision while “using” the doorbell camera as “sacrificial” target of the bad guys.

Amazon prime days are here, I am getting a couple of the cameras for the price of one which is not a bad deal at all.

If your gut says not to break perimeter, you simply don’t and the gut will go DEFCON one if a normal-working camera suddenly goes dark. But it is also a good idea to know what’s going on, especially if somebody is about to break the perimeter so you can “welcome” him or them appropriately. Get a backup camera.

Two is one and one is none.

Security cameras are generally Miguel’s topic of interest (and I’d love his take), but this is more about the degree to which the anti-cop Left wants to facilitate crime.

Make no mistake, that is their goal.

You are a bigot for your white flight to the suburbs, so they are doing everything they can to ruin your community.

From Wired:

Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras
They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they have no idea what a vigilante is.

MOST OF THE time, product testing is pretty simple. If a router is better and more feature-full than another with a similar price, then you give it a better score and move on with your day. However, we occasionally end up with products that can be dangerous to you, or to society in general, which we believe to be the case with Amazon-owned Ring and its relationship with law enforcement.

When you set up a Ring camera, you are automatically enrolled in the Neighbors service. (You can go into the Ring app’s settings and toggle off the Neighbors feed integration and notifications, but the onus is on you.) Neighbors, which is also a stand-alone app, shows you an activity feed from all nearby Ring camera owners, with posts about found dogs, stolen hoses, and a Safety Report that shows how many calls for service—violent or nonviolent—were made in the past week. It also provides an outlet for public safety agencies, like local police and fire departments, to broadcast information widely.

But it also allows Ring owners to send videos they’ve captured with their Ring video doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras to law enforcement. This is a feature unique to Ring—even Nextdoor removed its Forward to Police feature in 2020, which allowed Nextdoor users to forward their own safety posts to local law enforcement agencies. If a crime has been committed, law enforcement should obtain a warrant to access civilian video footage.

See, if your Ring camera catches a crime on video, be it a break-in at your home or your neighbor’s home, Ring will send that video evidence to law enforcement.

That’s bad because the cops are bad.  The last thing society needs is for the cops to arrest the right people for committing crimes in middle-class neighborhoods.

Multiple members of WIRED’s Gear team have spoken to Ring over the years about this feature. The company has been clear it’s what customers want, even though there’s no evidence that more video surveillance footage keeps communities safer. Instead, Neighbors increases the possibility of racial profiling. It makes it easier for both private citizens and law enforcement agencies to target certain groups for suspicion of crime based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, or country of origin.

And there you have it, it’s racist.

This is literally the opposite of profiling.  The HD video captures the actual criminals on video.

But you might notice something about those criminals (wink, wink) and that’s double plus ungood.  You might have a wrong think about the evidence your Ring video doorbell captured.

What you need is a video camera system that can’t talk to the police.

If fact, what it needs to do is have facial recognition technology that automatically erases any recording of black people, and report you if there aren’t enough black people in your neighborhood.

Your security system really should be used against you, you bigot, to adjust your social credit score for living in a presumably white, middle-class neighborhood.

The Left doesn’t care about your safety or the safety of your community.  It cares about the safety of criminals.

You can’t have a gun to defend yourself and you can’t have a video security system that talks go the cops.  You just have to accept being the victim of a crime.  That’s social justice.

In one day alone, I had four different patients come in that were combative because they were on Meth. One of them required 4 nurses, 2 paramedics, and 8 security guards to hold down. We wrestled with him for almost 45 minutes and had to give him 6mg of Ativan, 50 mg of Benadryl, and 10mg of Haldol before he took a nap.

Drugs – Area Ocho

Now imagine you having to face this attacking critter alone in the street. If that is not the definition of a mag dump with reload, I don’t know what it. And that is if he is alone.

This is how I wanna travel pic.twitter.com/MkW9ODz1aN

— Much Too Old to Feel this Damn Young (@PalominoOMG) July 9, 2023

Accessorizing is always important.

HT to Ericsinner

My wife had her first true vacation in years last month. Her mother invited her to go to Greece with her and her husband. She had a wonderful time, but we were both ready for her to get home.

Preparing for her return, I told Miss Google, “Play love songs from the 50s and 60s.” This worked well on the drive to the airport. And I heard a song I had heard many times before and thought, “That’s the right one for Tuesday Tunes. She’ll readyreally like this and know I was thinking of her and telling her with all my heart how much I love her and missed here while she was gone.”

And of course, in the excitement of seeing her again, I lost the song. I can’t freaking remember the title. Just that it had something nice about saving kisses for her.

Instead, here’s Frank with a love song.

“The Court’s decision most immediately affects institutions of higher education — and sends a clear message to the mostly Black and Hispanic students who have been shut out of elite schools.” – Forbes, Corrine Lestch.

The other day, the Supreme Court decided to effectively end the use of affirmative action for universities, an action which will trickle down into businesses and other areas. This is something that I’ve long felt was overdue. The ability for Blacks to force schools and businesses to accept and/or hire those who are not qualified for the job is racist to the Nth degree. It’s also not necessary, and harmful for PoC to be treated differently. That’s literally why we added the 13th Amendment.

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I had meant to write about “The Four Rules work” last night but decided on a different style of article.

After reading about Alec Baldwin killing a person on set, there was an uproar in the gun community. Many of us wanted Alec arrested and treated like we assume we would be treated. Others advocated from “positions of knowledge” to tell us that it was never Alec’s fault, he was just a trained monkey.

Turns out that Alec was more than just a trained monkey in front of the camera. He was also the producer, which meant he was also responsible for the safety culture on set.

What I really wanted to talk about was, “how come this didn’t happen way back when?” They used to make a “western” a week. There were weekly westerns, which often included gun fights. Why didn’t we see or hear about accidents back then?

Even before Jeff Cooper made his four rules famous, there were westerns shot without incident. How come?

Let’s start with A Fistful of Dollars

In this quick draw scene, nobody is in the line of fire for either shooter.  Clint’s gun is pointed to his left as he fans the hammer.  His intended targets are all offscreen.  He is pointing his gun at nothing.  The bad guy is still in the middle of his draw.  It might look like he is muzzling himself, but it is more likely his muzzle is in front of him.  If you look at the background, the only person is behind Clint.  The bad guy can aim at the fountain, and it will still seem like he is aiming at Clint.

Clint has the bad guy at gun point.  But there is nobody where his gun is pointing.

Shooting at Clint.  But nobody is where that gun is pointing.

Moving on to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, we see the same sort of thing.  Even more, while we see the character’s loading guns from time to time, when you look at closeups of the guns you find something interesting.

If you look at the revolver, you should notice that it doesn’t have a loading gate.  That is because this is a cap and ball revolver.  There is no cap on the nipples.  This makes it trivial to verify that the gun cannot fire.

You can see the game being played in these two side by side shots, just before the big gun fight.  The pistol belt has cartridges in it.  All of those cartridges would have been dummy rounds.  Take careful note of the pistol, though.  It is a cap and ball revolver.

The left image is part of the montage of quick cuts between the three actors.  There is no reason for there to even be dummy rounds in that revolver.

The right image is just before he draws.  This is a single cut.  In this image, you can see that his right hand has moved slightly AND there are now caps on the nipples of the revolver.  When Van Cleef draws, he will pull the hammer back and fire the gun.  There will be a soft pop from the cap and a flash.  There may or may not be powder in the chamber.

Regardless, there will be nobody where he is pointing the pistol when he shoots.

In a dozen movies I watched shortly after the Rust shooting, I only saw a couple of scenes where the pistol might have been pointing near a person.  All of those scenes were framed in such a way that it is possible for the gun to have been pointing away from all people.

It is certainly possible to film dangerous looking scenes involving guns without actually putting people at risk.