Articles by Herschel Smith

Via WoG, “HR 1186 would ban all magazines that hold a capacity of more than 10 rounds. This will only punish law-abiding gun owners and hinder their right to self-defense.”

It supposedly has a decent chance of success.  Hey, what do you bet our “As long as I’m in the White House they won’t come after your guns” President will sign the bill into law?

I was doing some research on barrels and was a bit puzzled to find that so many top flight manufacturers (e.g., Daniel Defense, BCM, etc.) are still putting “government profile” barrels on their guns.  The best research I can find on why such a thing exists shows the idea to be extremely dumb.

Marine Lt. Col Dave Lutz was the program manager for the M16A2 project from 1980 to 1983. He was later the VP for Military Operations at Knights Armament Company. Some years ago he shared the story of the government profile barrel on AR-15.com.

It all started with a drop gauge test. The gauge wouldn’t pass through the bore, so the assumption was that the barrel was “bent.”

We (Marines) were replacing a lot of “bent” barrels that were determined to be “bent” because the Armorer’s Bore Drop Gauge would not freely pass through some barrels during Ordnance Inspections (LTI’s). So the Logisitcs people had “Barrels Bending” on their list of “M16A1” things to “Improve” right after listing “Handguards Breaking.”

AR-15 lore tells us that GIs were using their rifles as pry bars to open crates, and they were bending the barrels by the muzzle doing it. Another story tells us that aggressive bayonet drills were the source of bending. This is the one that Lt. Col Lutz ascribed to, at least somewhat.

We “experts” thought this bending was from rough handling like during bayonet drills, etc., as an absence of any mid-barrel handguard damage in these rifles made one assume the fulcrum of such bending was the bayonet lug. So we made that part of the barrel thicker because we did not want the excess weight of a full length heavy barrel.

The last line of that quote highlights something interesting. There was internal pressure to make the entire barrel thicker. The Marines have always prided themselves on their marksmanship skills. A lot of their techniques and choices of rifle components have origins in competition. The Marines were the driving factor in the adjustable rear sights of the M16A2 as well.

Lt. Col Lutz and his team realized that a heavy barrel all the way through was not a practical solution for a lightweight combat rifle like the M16. So they made only the front of the barrel thicker to increase strength.

In testing using the bayonet lug as a fulcrum, and applying calibrated mechanical pressure to the muzzle, the new barrel was about 9 times more resistant to bend and take a set than an M16A1 profile. So we went with this “improvement.”

With the problem solved, the new barrel design went into effect. Only later did the team realize the actual cause of the drop gauge failure was something entirely different.

However, soon after I started using a borescope with a video recorder and monitor to inspect “bent” barrels. What I found was a mound of bullet jacket material at their gas ports. This build up was caused by a burr left from drilling/reaming the gas port. This was where the Armorer’s Drop Gauge was getting stuck. When we removed this “mound”, the barrels would all pass the Drop Gauge.

Realizing that the “solution” they presented didn’t actually solve a problem, they tried to course correct. Colt listened, and even put out civilian M16A2 copies that still had the standard lightweight profile. But the government was already too far down the road. The new technical data package was already written and put into effect. There was no going back.

First, I question their testing of the resistance to bending of a “government profile” barrel.  They obviously never got real engineers involved in this problem.  The highest bending moment in a cantilever beam will be where it is pinned, which in this case will be at the receiver.  As best as I can tell, not only didn’t they solve a real problem, they didn’t even solve the pretend problem.

Second, engineering resources would have performed a failure mode and effects analysis of the problem.  A failure investigation team of engineers should have been commissioned, not a military team.

Third, if you believe the problem is that Soldiers or Marines are using their rifles to pry open boxes or crates, then teach them not to do that.  That’s stupid.  I remain unimpressed with folks who try to mistreat, abuse and beat up their guns only to complain when they don’t work.

The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases.  Fatigue, metal lattice stretching and deformation, metal creep, rust, corrosion and a host of other problems will affect any machine.  I once read that someone complained that he had used the butt of his rifle as a hammer for tent stakes and other things, and thus wanted “Milspec” parts so they don’t break.

Listen to me.  Milspec isn’t better.  Milspec isn’t worse.  Milspec means that something was fabricated and built according to a specification, nothing more and nothing less.  Some guns and parts are better than Milspec, and some are worse.  Some are just different than Milspec because the buyer wants a different machine for a different purpose or with different parts simply because that’s what he wants.

The takeaway is this: don’t use your rifle butt as a hammer.  It isn’t a shovel, it isn’t a hammer, it isn’t a pry bar, and as for bayonet charges, you’re not going to do one.  Ever.  If you’re doing a bayonet charge, you failed to do whatever you needed to do to make it a stand-off fight.  Your rifle isn’t a spear.

And the top end AR-15 manufacturers need to get away from fabricating “government profile” barrels.  They’re dumb.

If you think I wrong or don’t know the full history of government profile barrels, you can weigh in with comments.

Reason:

The City of Detroit will pay out $60,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit by a woman who says police wantonly shot and killed her three dogs during a marijuana raid three years ago.

The plaintiff, Nikita Smith, claimed in a 2016 lawsuit that officers from Detroit’s Major Violators Unit acted as a “dog death squad” when they executed a narcotics search warrant on her house for a suspected marijuana offense, shooting three of her pit bulls, including one that was behind a closed bathroom door. Extremely graphic photos entered into evidence in the case show bullet holes riddling the outside of the door and the dog dead inside the bathroom.

I covered this but the photos are so gruesome, offensive and disgusting that I don’t even want to link my piece.

Smith was arrested for marijuana possession, but the charges were later dropped when officers failed to appear in court.

The settlement is the latest in a string of costly payouts for Detroit due to dog shootings during drug raids. It also set new precedent in Fourth Amendment law. Detroit tried to argue that, since Smith’s dogs were unlicensed, in violation of Detroit’s municipal code, she had no legitimate property interest in them under the Fourth Amendment. The court rejected this argument.

Smith’s attorney, Chris Olson, calls the decision “a milestone in police-dog shooting cases that continue to plague the United States.

“The decision was significant because it denies police a ‘get out of jail free card’ if the deceased dog is later discovered to have been unlicensed,” he continues. “The decision is especially significant because the vast majority of dogs are unlicensed. The upshot is that the Fourth Amendment prohibits police officers from shooting dogs where the shooting is more intrusive than necessary, and citizens do not have to pay a dog license fee to enjoy their Fourth Amendment rights.”

A 2016 Reason investigation found that the department’s Major Violators Unit, which conducts drug raids across the city, has a nasty habit of leaving dead dogs in its wake and generating civil rights lawsuits. A follow-up investigation found that Detroit police shot 54 dogs in 2017, twice as many as Chicago.

Last year, Detroit paid $225,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Kenneth Savage and Ashley Franklin, who claimed Detroit police officers shot their three dogs while the animals were enclosed behind an 8-foot-tall fence—all so the officers could confiscate several potted marijuana plants in the backyard.

In 2015, the city approved a $100,000 settlement to a man after police shot his dog while it was securely chained to a fence.

One officer involved in the Smith raid has shot 80 dogs over the course of his career, according to “destruction of animal” reports filed by Detroit police officers in 2017 and obtained by Reason. Two other officers involved in the Smith raid testified in depositions that they had shot “fewer than 20” and “at least 19” dogs over the course of their careers.

Bah.  What’s a few thousand here and there when the tax-payers have to foot the bill?  Now if they were to have charged them with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to do harm, animal cruelty and trespassing, and thrown them in prison, we may be getting somewhere.

Here’s another note for you.  I don’t believe in your “war on drugs.”  Not even a little bit.  I consider your raids to be criminal home invasion, and I don’t consider you to be “heroes of the community” when you do things like that.

I have two comments about this.

First, it isn’t really completely accurate to say that the Springfield Armory pistols (XD, XDm, etc.) are made in Croatia.  It would be more accurate to say that the parts were fabricated in Croatia and the gun was assembled in America.  But whatever.  And the HS2000 bears as much similarity to the modern XDs and XDms as Ford Ranger does to a F150.

Second, I would question his brief assessment that more Taurus pistols are being sold and virtually none are coming back for repairs (at least without knowing more).  It could be that the buyers of Taurus pistols simply aren’t shooters like someone who will drop $1200 on a 1911, thus they never come back for repairs because they were bought to sit in a nightstand drawer and never get taken to the range.

I know, there are legitimate Maritime operations where someone would be concerned about this.  I have neither an FN nor a Glock, so I don’t have a dog in this fight either.  But there are so many responses one could give (at least one of which comes from the comments).

“Then don’t repeatedly submerge your pistol in water and try to shoot it immediately upon retrieval.”

“Submerged till the bubbles stop. Would be a good test for politicians.” – video comments

“If the striker channel is a weak point in the machine and fills with water fighting the spring, then shoot a hammer pistol like I do, and you won’t have to deal with that scratchy, grinding, crinkly feel of a striker gun trigger.  You’ll be happier.”

News from Idaho:

Something rather remarkable just happened in Idaho. The state legislature opted to—in essence—repeal the entire state regulatory code. The cause may have been dysfunction across legislative chambers, but the result is serendipitous. A new governor is presented with an unprecedented opportunity to repeal an outdated and burdensome regulatory code and replace it with a more streamlined and sensible set of rules. Other states should be paying close attention.

The situation came about due to the somewhat unconventional nature of Idaho’s regulatory process. Each year, the state’s entire existing body of regulations expires unless reauthorized for an additional year by the legislature. In most years, reauthorization happens smoothly, but not this year.

Instead, the legislature wrapped up an acrimonious session in April without passing a rule-reauthorization bill. As a result, come July 1, some 8,200 pages of regulations containing 736 chapters of state rules will expire. Any rules the governor opts to keep will have to be implemented as emergency regulations, and the legislature will consider them anew when it returns next January.

Governor Brad Little, sworn into office in January, already had a nascent red tape cutting effort underway, but the impending regulatory cliff creates some new dynamics. Previously, each rule the governor wanted cut would have had to be justified as a new rulemaking action; now, every regulation that agencies want to keep has to be justified. The burden of proof has switched.

The new scenario creates multiple touch points when rules could end up on the cutting room floor. First, when regulations expire on July 1, many will not be refiled. Second, the public will have the opportunity to comment on regulations that are resubmitted. In some cases, public hearings are likely to take place, presenting another opportunity to reshape, and cut, some regulations. Finally, when the legislature returns next year, it will need to pass a reauthorization bill for those regulations Governor Little’s administration wants kept. Even more red tape can be trimmed then.

Good idea.  Throw everything away and start over.  I’m sure the pit vipers sitting in the capital will find a way to foist unnecessary regulations on their constituency, as they always do.  But in this case at least there’s a chance of turning these back.

Now, if we could just convince the other 49 states to do the same thing.  And if libertarians and conservatives just cared enough to get involved in the process.

From a reader, Fox News:

James Jordan, 30, of West Yarmouth, Mass., was arrested early Saturday on a federal complaint charging him with murder and assault with intent to murder in connection with the “senseless and brutal attack” on the two unidentified hikers, Abingdon U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said.

Jordan was known to hike the Appalachian Trail under the moniker “Sovereign,” WCYB-TV reported. He was arrested in April for threatening hikers on the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation, according to WJHL-TV.

The victims were hiking together when they were attacked, WSLS-TV reported. Deputies responded sometime after 3:30 a.m.

The deputies used GPS to find the man in Wythe County after he sent out an emergency notification on his cellphone, the station reported.

Two hikers helped the woman after she walked six miles injured and bleeding, according to the station.

He looks like a creep, and he isn’t sovereign over anything.  I would had been suspicious of him right off the bat.

When you’re in the bush, there are threats of the four legged kind and two legged kind.  Be prepared for both.  Carry guns and travel with a dog.  Make sure your gun isn’t inside a backpack or stowed away where you can’t get to it.

News from Kentucky:

Startling video released by the Warren County, Kentucky sheriff’s office gives us a front seat to a real-life home invasion.

This is not a drill, and the bullets are real.

It happened in Bowling Green at the Country Living Estates Mobile Home Park. The video shows four intruders busting through the front door and charging into the living room.

The apparent leader of the crew has a gun. He turns a corner and suddenly he is confronted by another man with a gun, the homeowner Austin Orwig.

There are gunshots.  You can see the flashes.

The home invasion crew turns around and runs away.

Police tell us Orwig was shot in the hand  He was flown to a hospital in Louisville for treatment.

Streaming the video was laborious for me and I don’t want to embed it here and slow down my web site hosting service.  You can watch it if you want, or not.  Four of what I’m sure are the brightest, most well-behaved boys in the world who wouldn’t do something like that, probably according to their mothers, did something like that.

Four … home … invaders.

What was that about not needing an AR-15 or standard capacity magazines for home defense?  Gosh.  It just seems like the narrative is a damn lie.

Recoil:

In addition, the top of the mount also incorporates the activation button for the light, providing natural and ergonomic access to the controls, especially for shooters who use a thumb-over grip on their rifle. Tap the switch to turn the light on or off, or hold it to activate momentary on mode. Double tapping the switch engages strobe mode. INFORCE says the light will output approximately 1,300 lumens.

That’s a lot of light.  I’m certain it would be blinding in the dark to an assailant, but the danger is that it’s so bright that it causes dysfunction even in the shooter due to light scattering from walls, ground, etc.  I’d want to see this in the dark myself before buying, although with electronic components there are no returns.  I do like the offset mount.

The INFORCE web site doesn’t show this product yet.  The alleged cost is in the neighborhood of $239, with a $100 switch.  I found the cost of the Surefire M622 (with switch) to be $429.  That’s up a bit from the last time I looked.