You can’t go to the Hard Deck, the bar featured in “Top Gun: Maverick,” in real life because it doesn’t actually exist. The good news is that there’s a place both exactly like it and even better at the same time. While former naval aviator Capt. Brian Ferguson was working as a technical adviser for the production of “Top Gun: Maverick,” he decided to take the film’s director and producers to a real Navy hangout and explain the camaraderie behind sharing a drink and sea stories with other pilots. The place he took them was the I-Bar on Naval Station…

Yes, many of us want the ATF abolished. Yes, Robert Cekada is the first ATF director who doesn’t suck, at least as far as I can remember, and he’s doing a lot of good things. However, I still want him out of a job. Why?Because as good as he’s been, there’s nothing to stop the next guy in that role from not just undoing everything, but making things worse. That’s why it needs to be abolished, in my mind.Yet there are more reasons, and I saw this piece when it was shared by Lee Williams…

You can’t keep a good man down, especially when that man participated in Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944. British World War II veteran Bernard Jordan was a former Royal Navy officer who used to tell people “what he did during the war was nothing unusual, and only what many thousands of others did for their country,” according to his nursing home staff. What he did at age 89 was nothing short of extraordinary. After being denied a trip to return to Normandy for the 70th anniversary of the event with the Royal British Legion, the elderly veteran took it…

Did Texas Democrat James Talarico just have his “Beto” moment? Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke famously declared that “hell yes” he was coming for AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles during his brief run for president in 2019. O’Rourke tried backing away from those comments during his gubernatorial campaign in 2022, but his embrace of a gun ban was one of the reasons why Greg Abbott trounced him by more than ten points that year. Texans don’t take kindly to politicians who want to stomp on their Second Amendment rights, and Talarico has made it clear that’s exactly…

Mohamed Farrah Aidid was one of Somalia’s most dangerous and aggressive warlords. He was instrumental in the overthrow of communist dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. After the ouster of Barre, Somalia fell into a period of civil war, where rival factions competed for power, led by former military officers, who became warlords. Aidid’s faction became known as the United Somali Congress (USC) in 1991. Meanwhile, his son, Hussein Farrah Aidid, was busy serving in the United States Marine Corps during Desert Storm. Neither knew the son would follow in his father’s footsteps. The younger Aidid had already immigrated to the United…

Falco Holsters made its name by making them out of leather. They’re amazing holsters, too. The leather is soft in the way you want it, but stout enough to protect your gun. Hell, one protected the handgun from a burning truck, for crying out loud.  To be clear, I’ve become a fan.I became familiar with the 3 of 7 Project via YouTube, but it’s much more than a channel. It’s about building a much better version of you, inside and out. When the two join forces, I expect to see something dope, and the duo doesn’t…

Spencer Clark is probably the most obscure American ever to appear on U.S. banknotes, and there are a surprising number of people (officially, 53) who’ve been featured on things like legal tender, silver certificates, Federal Reserve notes and, of course, your everyday currency notes. They include presidents of the United States, treasury secretaries, generals and even one former enemy of the state. In general, the people honored with appearing on American legal tender have done a lot in their lives, either related to banking or to the ongoing security of the country, to deserve being immortalized on currency. Then there’s…

There are few products so universally recognized that they are recommended for almost everything. For keeping things in place, there’s duct tape, and for loosening things up, there’s WD-40. Originally formulated in the early 1950s by the Rocket Chemical Company in San Diego as an anti-corrosive treatment for missiles, it became commercially available in 1958. You can find lists online that promote it as a cure-all for every lubrication need imaginable and more, from silencing squeaky hinges to removing stains from the toilet bowl.  There are only two problems with WD-40. One: it contains some nasty petrochemicals that you might…

The gun control group Giffords is opening up its pocket book and spending big to help boost the campaigns of several anti-gun candidates. You might not see any Giffords ad promoting candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, though. According to Semafor’s Burgess Everett, the group will be attacking pro-Second Amendment candidates rather than lauding the candidates Giffords has endorsed. And while Giffords has announced several of their targets, there’s at least one curious omission.  The group, Giffords, is spending $1 million against former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers in the Senate race in Michigan, $850,000 in an initial buy…

A 53-year-old Army veteran is accused of killing two apartment leasing agents last week in Texas. Derrick Jackson allegedly shot Rosa Linda Ybarra, 67, and Felix Antonio Jimenez-Macz, 47, at the Park at Woodlake in West Houston, prosecutor Simone Colson said Sept. 9 in court, according to the Houston Chronicle. The shooting occurred Sept. 3 during an argument about Jackson’s leasing agreement, which “caused him to snap,” Colson said. Colson added that she did not know the full details of what the argument was about, though Jackson reportedly told authorities he was upset when Jimenez-Macz used “Spanglish” in their conversation,…

I owe Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway an apology. I blasted her for not defending the state’s Stand Your Ground laws recently, and really felt that was a big betrayal of the Second Amendment community. This was not a universally held opinion, by any means, but I call them like I see them, and while I still would have preferred to see a vigorous defense of the law, there might be reasons I wasn’t privy to. Why am I feeling so magnanimous?Because she’s doing something based enough that I don’t care what she failed to…

The U.S. Armed Forces consist of six branches: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The Army handles land-based operations, the Navy conducts naval missions, the Marine Corps specializes in amphibious warfare, the Air Force manages air and space operations, the Space Force protects U.S. interests in space, and the Coast Guard is responsible for maritime security and law enforcement. Together, they safeguard the nation’s interests, with each branch having distinct roles and areas of expertise. There are three general categories of military people: active duty (full-time soldiers and sailors), reserve & guard forces (usually…