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Still not vaccinated, still not masked

Official Health Fear Mongering 2.0 has returned, again about Covid 3.0, for which there is no vaccine and no response but natural resistance. In its third mutation since being released from the Wuhan lab in 2020, no one can even say that what is possibly circulating is actually Covid. We don’t really know what this is, because in its third generation, it is something quite distinct from what we first experienced three and a half years ago. Bugs mutate. Virus A is no longer the same virus a year later; it could be Virus B or Virus Z.

Nice thing about real science is that humans are naturally hard-wired for natural resistance to viruses. I grant you that our bodies probably have not naturally selected and evolved to resist Chinese lab viruses, but at some point human bodies do indeed fight back. So whether it is me now, or my kids soon, or my grandkids eventually, we will have natural immunity to whatever this strain is, and to later strains of the Wuhan Flu that are yet to be.

Fake science is where politics takes control of the public health narrative, and historically all politics is just about how much control people in control can exert over the people beneath them. Up until the stolen election of 2020 I had believed that Americans were way too tough, too strong of character, too smart, too devoted to their own freedom to submit to either fake science or fake news or fake elections or fake narratives.

Well, I admit now that my prior assessment of the American character was wrong in so many ways. In so many ways, Americans have become just as docile, just as compliant, just as weak-willed and sissified as pretty much every other People around the globe. At one time Americans had a very low tolerance for either bullshiite or political evil, hell that low tolerance is exactly what created America and American freedom in the first place. Now, most Americans seem Low T and wussified, weak, and incapable or uninterested in resisting the Washington DC bullies and tyrants.

So, the unsustainable fake science narrative about the necessity of “masking up” and “social distancing” and “locking down,” and thereby giving up your personal life and individual choice to submit to unelected bureaucrats, has made a resurgence along with a claimed Covid 3.0.

The tradeoffs are huge here. The tradeoffs here are civilizational, not just personal. When a nation of 350 million free citizens shuts down to appease unelected but heavily politicized bureaucrats peddling politicized fake science, so that America turns into a nation of sheep and pussies compliant with tyrants, then I say we have made too many bad trades in the hopium of avoiding the inevitable exposure to the Chinese Flu.

Real science tells us viruses have always existed, they have always infected people, and people have always gotten sick and sometimes died from these viruses. Real science tells us to stay in bed and drink lots of fluids if we get real sick. Real science tells us to take the medicines shown to work against whatever it is that is ailing us, even if wealthy snake oil vaccine makers at Big Pharma say their competition doesn’t work.

Fake science tells us we can toss our rights out the window and maybe not get sick. Fake science tells us to wear a flimsy mask that is useless in stopping a tiny virus. Fake science tells us to take a vaccine made for a virus that doesn’t even exist any longer….because corrupt America-hating bureaucrats at the corrupt and unelected World Health Organization and United Nations say so. All of the people peddling this fake science do not have your best interests at heart, to say the least. At the very least they simply want you to comply with them, even if they are wrong. Fake politicians will tell you to comply with their baton wielding police officers enforcing fake science. That should set off your Freedom Is In Danger alarm bells.

I myself never got the fake science jab, the so-called “vaccine” that we now know did not work. I would say it is hilarious to watch videos of Canadian PM Justine Trudeau and doddering Joe Biden demanding that people get vaccinated so that the unvaccinated are not placing the vaccinated at risk, except that tyranny is no laughing matter. When your elected leaders are lying to your face and also demanding that you comply with their tyranny, you have a huge and dangerous problem on your hands, and there is nothing humorous about it. The fact that the supposed Covid “vaccines” were known to not work early on, even as Western governments were ramping up their comply-or-rot-in-jail policies, tells us everything we need to know about the vaccines and the politics behind them:

Covid is only about obedience to authority. Covid is all about politicized science and fake messages meant to reduce your resistance to the real bug, the real virus, which is big government and tyranny.

And whereas Americans used to wake up and question authority every day, because that is how America was founded and how our freedoms were maintained, now we are being shaped into mindless, unquestioning sheep. Put on your mask and don’t question it. Take this poisonous and dangerous shot, and don’t question it, even as people drop dead from it in front of your face. Stay away from your family and neighbors and friends, don’t talk to anyone in person, and just rely on information that the government pipes into your head through its censored internet, and don’t question it.

This is all a huge tradeoff I am unwilling to make myself. The risk of having government become all-powerful and strip us of our freedoms and personal decision making is far greater than the risk of getting sick and maaaayyybe dying from a third generation Chinese lab created virus. So I am going to remain un-jabbed and unmasked, resisting tyranny all the way, and keeping the American body politic on life support.

Sorry not sorry, but I am sorry for the weak fools who go along with evil just to get along with their lives. Either stand up and resist tyranny or become its real and true victim, a victimhood that is far worse than a transient bug.

First World Problem: Antique Arms Collectors Now Face Mostly Fakes

This headline is probably ho-hum to most people, at best.

To others, it is a “here we go again, another whine-fest by history buffs who spend their money badly on old rusty junk.”

But if you are indeed a history buff with a penchant for old weapons, both edged and those that go BOOM, you may be interested in this post.

My opinion is that most antique weapons collectors are facing an overwhelming amount of fakes.

Much more so with Japanese swords, so let’s discuss them first.

Used to be that finding a Gendaito blade was unusual; maybe one or two a year. Now, you go on eBay and find the same several sellers conveying dozens of them annually. Wakizashis, katanas, even various sized dirks and tantos etc.

These must all be fakes, as there simply were not this many Gendaito blades in existence before Chinese smiths began to create them in about 2011.  Having watched these counterfeits move at an ever brisker pace, I simply feel sad. At some point the uninformed collectors will discover their money has been taken for what is a very good reproduction that is probably worth a thousand bucks, simply because it is that good of a copy. But it ain’t real.

Smith-made (hand made art blades) Shinto blades also fall into this counterfeiting scam by the hundreds annually. Again, there simply were not as many of these blades surviving WWII as there are now for sale on eBay.

With guns, it is harder to fake than a sword, because a gun is obviously a gun. A Winchester 1873 is a Winchester 1873, and its condition usually dictates its value.

What makes some gun values go crazy high are rare or historic marks (the ubiquitous spurious stage coach markings on rabbit eared double shotguns being the best example), which can be easily faked by anyone with good control of a metal punch. This is true fakery and it is an area most collectors know about and do more diligence about.

But let’s talk about the area where it is harder to see what has happened, and harder to call it fakery, though it is: The collectible antique sporting rifles.

Demand is high for antique sporting rifles, because their modern day equivalents cost about $35,000 to start and easily get to $100,000 and much, much higher. So in that context, it “makes sense” to pay $5,000 to $20,000 for an antique sporting firearm that functions as it should, rather than several times that amount for a brand new one that goes BOOM just like or nearly like the old one.

Antique sporting rifles are getting lots and lots of makeovers, both in England and here in America. They are marketed at auction and on websites as having been “period upgraded” or “period refurbished” (say from the 1870s to 1930s), when in fact they were very recently “tarted up” by a gunsmith to heighten their attractiveness to unknowing, unquestioning collectors.

I recently purchased – and immediately returned – such a rifle.

Oh it was a rare dandy, and looking past the hyperbole on the well-known seller’s website, which included an obviously fraudulent claim of “original condition,” there was still a fine gun that could take an American bison or a grizzly. If it worked the simple way a rifle should work, it was the gun of a lifetime. In a rare, hard-hitting caliber that I wanted.

So, I busted a move on it.

After joking on the phone with the salesman about the obviously fake claims of original condition, the seller and I eventually reached agreement on price, and the gun arrived in a couple days. Right out of its original 1895 leather and brass case with the original owner’s name and military rank on it (God, what a case!), the red flags were popping up: Improperly refinished wood had pulled the stock away from the receiver, leaving the stock to accept the heavy recoil on only one side.This meant the stock would crack soon after use.

A punch mark on the barrel lump was testimony to the cheap and meaningless effort to temporarily tighten the otherwise loose action. The list of el cheapo work went on. Yes, the bores were immaculate, but the fact is that this gun had been recently “tarted up” for re-sale, and it had been worn down quite a bit recently. Worn down more by the nature of its heavy caliber than by any misuse by previous owners.

Had the seller simply disclosed these facts, I might have made a more informed decision, and he would have received less money. We would have had full disclosure and an honest exchange. But within 48 hours of receiving it, I drove the gun all the way back to the sales room, three hours away, where the sales manager and the business owner tried to talk me out of the return. The refund check arrived ten days later, with none of the additional costs I incurred like shipping, transfer, gunsmith evaluation etc. They knew full well what had been done to that gun, and they simply got caught, and they punished me by withholding cash they should have covered.

This is one of the big names in high end gun sales.

Today I am looking at another uncommon rifle on a well known auction site. The gun has clearly been recently overhauled for re-sale. The wood finish is as bright and shiny as the new wood floor in a brand new home. The metal finishes look like they were done weeks ago, and not the 117 years ago that is the actual age of the gun. Yet it is marketed as having a “period” refurbish. Rubbish! Nonsense! Buyer be super aware!

This is not total fakery, as no fake numbers or markings have been punched into the metal or wood. Custer did not purportedly grasp this gun as he fell at the Little Big Horn.

Instead, until a few months ago, this gun’s metal parts were probably a mix of silvered and plum finishes, the welcome, honest patinas of hundreds of days afield in India or Africa, or the Scottish Highlands, chasing big game in the hands of a British, Indian, or Scottish Man of Importance. Until months ago, the wood probably looked like hell, was beat to hell, dented, dinged, and scratched, each a story in itself. Not any more! Now it looks so fake and shiny it about blinds the eye.

Shame, too, because under the fakery is a really cool gun.

Apparently the sellers believe that hiring “gunsmiths” to do quick and dirty upgrades to these collectible old sporting arms is more important than selling the actual honest gun, with its actual original wear and condition.

This means the sellers have gullible buyers who ascribe too much weight to new and fresh appearance, when the opposite is true: An original condition gun that has not been butchered or fooled with by a modern day “gunsmith” is actually more valuable.

The key to fending off the faking is educating new gun collectors and buyers to understand this fact: Fresh, new looking antique guns have been shined up to turn them into shiny objects. Don’t be a foolish fish and bite on them, unless you recognize a) what they are, and b) there are probably problems covered up by the new “improvements” that would have been addressed 100 years ago, but are now papered over, and thus, you are not getting what you paid for.

And as for the Japanese swords out there on eBay, man, what can be said? Be super wary. Ask yourself simple questions about production numbers, survivor numbers, and then answer your own question: How on earth is this one seller repeatedly finding so many of these should-be rare swords? Is every American veteran selling his prized Japanese sword to just these few dealers?

You know the answers to these questions. Run away, and hold on to your money.

In closing, buyer beware. Because there are gullible collectors willing to part with their money, there are unscrupulous sellers willing to sell them things that simply cannot be true. It behooves the smart man to ask the simple questions before biting.

Good luck and be patient!