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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

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Forgotten Weapons – Winchester Thumb Trigger Rifle

An evening pause: A bit of engineering history. Note the simplicity.

Hat tip Gene Shipp.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

5 comments

  • judd

    RIA has some lovely old rifles shotguns in their catalog.

  • Col Beausabre

    Great, I have been a fan of Ian “Gun Jesus” McCollum for years. There are almost no politics on his site, just history and discussion of the technology as in this video. https://www.forgottenweapons.com/ and https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/gun-jesus-posters.371295/

  • Blackwing1

    I dunno about this thing…other than for people with some type of disability in their trigger finger it strikes me as horribly unsafe. Once loaded and cocked there is no safety, and the usual “keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot” doesn’t even apply. I’m guessing that the center of balance for the thing is probably muzzle-forward, but there is still going to be a natural tendency for people to pick it up by the stock right on top of the trigger resulting in an unanticipated “bang”. With no safety you’d have to carry it in the woods (say, for squirrel hunting) either with the striker not cocked (be sure not to bash it around then), or unloaded, and there doesn’t even appear to be a good ramp built into the feed area so loading is going to be very slow and awkward.

    It’s interesting but since he didn’t perform a range test I’m left curious as to how accurate it is. I’m also guessing that with the metallurgy of that era it probably would not handle high-velocity .22 ammo, and you’d be limited to shorts or “standard” (low) velocity .22 LR which is pretty spendy. I had a Marlin 39 made in 1926 in which you couldn’t shoot high-velocity .22 since it tended to cause the bolt to break. I donated it to a museum since I didn’t want to stock “standard” low-velocity ammo for it.

    The first rifle I ever shot was my grandfather’s old single-shot bolt action, which also had a pull-back type striker arrangement, but it was a standard type with a trigger. For an ancient old .22 it was extremely accurate (squirrel’s head at 25 yards), and it taught good shooting (sight alignment, sight picture, move the trigger back without disturbing the first two).

  • ROBERT E NABORNEY

    Ian usually has separate videos of him shooting the weapon. Sometimes though, it’s the property of a museum or individual who doesn’t want it shot. For other good sites see Bloke on the Range https://www.youtube.com/c/BlokeontheRange/videos and The Royal Armouries https://www.youtube.com/user/RoyalArmouries – especially Jonathan, the Curator of Firearms (They also have pre-gunpowder weapons and armour)

  • Jeff Wright

    Cool!

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