Some Redditor will eventually get this (even if from a library) and put it on YouTube. It will be even more embarrassing than it is now, but the damage is done.
So I suspect that Oliver North, a figure head, is in place to encourage military and former military membership in the NRA. It’s all about money.
The NRA is hoping that folks will remember “War Stories,” the Fox News series. Most people the NRA should be after don’t watch TV any more, and none of them remember the scandal in which he was embroiled during the Reagan administration. All they see now if that North wants to take their AR-15s. That sounds like a real winner in the gun community.
In reality, we have another Charlon Heston. I’m sure the NRA is comfortable with him, even if the Redditors aren’t.
Rather than weaseling out with the excuse that this deal (and who knows how many more) was already in the works, Bank of America must pull out of this agreement and deal with the consequences. The bank can use this moment to show true corporate leadership and create a template for bringing about real change in a post-Parkland world.
[ … ]
Here’s what Bank of America can, and should, do to honor and expand on its Parkland pledge:
First, the bank must promise to donate any profit it earns from its financing agreement with Remington to survivor groups that help gun violence victims pay the catastrophic medical bills they face. If the bank bails Remington out from bankruptcy, the least it can do is help those who are suffering the consequences of its products.
Second, the bank must go beyond assault weapons and commit to end all business relationships with gun makers period. After all, handguns are responsible for 65 percent of firearm murders in the United States.
Third, after decades of providing financing that has allowed gun makers to pump more guns into our communities, Bank of America must help clean up its mess by partnering with gun violence prevention organizations and sponsoring voluntary gun buy-back programs all across the United States. What better way to live its values of public safety than to actively take guns off of our streets?
There is a reason this editorial was sent to The Charlotte Observer and they printed it. The Charlotte Observer is progressive, and BoA executives all live in this area since the BoA home office is in Charlotte.
It’s never enough, is it? A progressive corporation who hates liberty deals a blow to gun manufacturers, and yet the controllers want more, and more and more, until BoA is illegally reneging on contractual obligations, banning all gun makers, and purveying bigotry towards gun owners as well.
You see where this is going, do you? Semi-automatic weapons is just the latest boogey man. They want them all, bolt action rifles, handguns, everything. Everything.
This particular controller is being a little impatient, but he wants to strike while the iron is hot. Even if it doesn’t work out for him, it’s just another lesson in the fact that there is no point of intersection for us, no point at which we can compromise, nothing in common, and nothing worth giving away to the controllers.
This is all-out war with them. See it that way, whether you want the war of not. It has come to your doorstep.
Uncontrolled degenerate control freaks like Mel Reynolds have no say on my rights and never will.
Well yes, I grok the sentiment. Oftentimes, control freaks are morally degenerate in all kinds of ways since in order to be a consistent control freak, one must jettison belief in God and His moral law. The statist god is the collective, which ultimately finds itself in “the one” (as I’ve said, for the best study on this, see Rousas J. Rushdoony, “The One and The Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy”).
But the fact is that there are also control freaks out there who aren’t quite so morally degenerate as Mr. Reynolds, at least to the naked eye, and yet they are just as dangerous as Reynolds. Being a control freak is a morally malady, a sin-sickness that finds its rivers of evil in the soul.
So it is with all controllers – gun controllers, tax-and-spenders, war-mongers, proponents of state medicine – all of them.
Whether it’s worth it to the reader notwithstanding, I’m going to give some initial thoughts on the Islamic ambush on the SOF (Green Berets) in Niger in 2017, and then conclude with a few thoughts on guns and generals. I expect pushback, just as I got with A Marine Corps View Of Tactics In Operation Red Wings, a very well visited post, and also a very controversial one. With this former post, not very many commenters understood what I and my son were saying concerning the boundary conditions for the fight, i.e., we were questioning not just the weapons and staffing of the operation, but why it was conceived the way it was to begin with. I expect SF and SOF to disagree with elements of my assessment here too.
First of all, let’s dispense with the preliminary necessities of acknowledging that the operation had a very sad ending, in spite of the heroic efforts of some brave men. Let’s also stipulate that it was very sad that men had to sustain this sacrifice for an army is Islamists created by George Soros and the CIA (along with DynCorp, the CGI, the deep state and others appurtenant parties). Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, we need to learn from the operation in a clinical manner.
First of all, read this CNN article, and then read this Military Times article (which is better) for background. For a redacted DoD assessment, read this document (PDF). I’ll embed a video later, but for the time being, this is necessary reading in order to understand the context. Now for my assessment.
[1] There is absolutely no question that they “continued to engage the enemy” throughout the event. That is stated a number of times in the formal report, and the report is correct and honest about that.
[2] The SOF soldiers had M4 carbines with EOTech holographic sights, not scopes with magnification.
[3] A larger caliber weapon would have been irrelevant without long distance sighting capability.
[4] The M4s they deployed with were sufficient to the task given the distances they were shooting.
[5] A small caliber weapon (5.56mm) was the best choice for the engagement anyway given that they were having to lay down very quick fires and needed rapid recovery of sight picture.
[6] The entire operation was poorly conceived and poorly planned.
[7] It isn’t clear to me why they chose to engage the enemy when they did via dismounted operations rather than evasion, egress and escape more quickly. The vehicle they were using was driving very slowly, leaving them exposed with no cover or concealment.
[8] When they were laying down the only suppressive fires they could, with M4s, there was no coordination of fires. One soldier was shooting while another was waving for the driver to hurry, and vice versa. I understand conservation of ammunition, but this was a high intensity rather than a protracted fire fight.
[9] There was no combined arms fires because there were no combined arms to deploy.
[10] They needed a suppressive weapon and didn’t bring one.
[11] The presence of an M249, while perhaps not changing the outcome, would have made it much more difficult for the enemy.
[12] None of the soldiers in the video had an M203, which has a long range of somewhere around 400 yards and an effective range of somewhere around 150-200 yards.
[13] The presence of an M79 would have made it much more difficult on the enemy. I understand that M79s are still in use. It has an effective range of somewhere around 400 yards, which I estimate to be within range of the cover and concealment used by the enemy.
[14] Sadly, they were vastly outnumbered. Furthermore, the enemy had combined arms. More specifically, they had a crew served truck mounted machine gun. This was likely determinative for the engagement.
[15] Finally, the M4s didn’t jam. They functioned well, they were able to shoot within the range of the cover and concealment used by the enemy, and given the rapid sight picture recovery of the weapon, they were probably the best choice if all you had was a rifle. This was a high intensity engagement. There was no time for designated marksmen or snipers. They needed to break contact more quickly, evade, find concealment, and ensconce with a suppression weapon (which they didn’t have).
In my opinion, the video you are about to watch, combined with the reports I cited, bear out much of what I’m saying. This video was from a helmet camera, confiscated by an Islamic fighter, and now on YouTube. I don’t vouch for it’s presence on the internet for any specific length of time. I cannot say how long it will be available.
Again, this is all so very sad that these men perished the way they did. It should serve as a warning to American politicians on the dangers of open borders for our own country, but it won’t.
And in spite of all of this, Major General Bob Scales indicated this.
He pointed to lives lost due to small arms and other infantry equipment holes from Vietnam to Afghanistan to last year’s deaths of special operations soldiers in Niger.
“If you’d listened to me three years ago, those soldiers in Niger would have had this rifle in their hands,” Scales said. “So, take that to bed tonight.”
He is specifically saying that having a rifle of his own choosing would have changed the outcome of the engagement in Niger.
He is an awful man. Not only is he an idiot and ass-clown, he’s cravenly using the deaths of soldiers in an operation-gone-wrong (because it was conceived wrong) to push his own agenda. He’s blood dancing on the graves of those soldiers to get his way.
Bob … Scales … has … no … shame. He is incapable of shame and has no scruples.
Ohio-based MKS, whose products include Hi-Point Firearms and Inland M1911s, have announced they won’t sell to Dick’s and their affiliates on Second Amendment grounds.
MKS said the recent move by Dick’s to hire a government affairs group for the purpose of gun control lobbying, coupled with the big box retailer’s past choices to destroy their existing inventory of AR-15s and refuse firearm sales to those under age 21 put the two companies at odds when it came to the right to keep and bear arms.
“In recent months, Dick’s Sporting Goods and its subsidiary, Field & Stream, have shown themselves, in our opinion, to be no friend of Americans’ Second Amendment,” said Charles Brown, MKS president. “We believe that refusing to sell long guns to adults under age 21, while many young adults in our military are not similarly restricted, is wrong. We believe that villainizing modern sporting rifles in response to pressure from uninformed, anti-gun voices is wrong. We believe that hiring lobbyists to oppose American citizens’ freedoms secured by the Second Amendment is wrong.”
NORTH HAVEN, CT – O.F. Mossberg & Sons, Inc., a leading American firearms manufacturer, announced today its decision to discontinue selling products to Dick’s Sporting Goods, and its subsidiary, Field & Stream, in response to their hiring of gun control lobbyists in April 2018.
Effective immediately, O.F. Mossberg & Sons will not accept any future orders from Dick’s Sporting Goods or Field & Stream, and is in the process of evaluating current contractual agreements.
“It has come to our attention that Dick’s Sporting Goods recently hired lobbyists on Capitol Hill to promote additional gun control.” said Iver Mossberg, Chief Executive Officer of O.F. Mossberg & Sons. “Make no mistake, Mossberg is a staunch supporter of the U.S. Constitution and our Second Amendment rights, and we fully disagree with Dick’s Sporting Goods’ recent anti-Second Amendment actions.”
I have written a note to Mossberg Media Relations as follows.
I have no doubt my readers will ask about whether this decision is determinative and controlling, or just applies to firearms ordered from Dick’s bypassing distributors. Or another way to ask the question is this. Will Mossberg enforce this decision with distributors too, requiring them to refrain from selling to Dick’s?
As of this writing I have not received a response. But it appears as if these two manufacturers aren’t so worried about “a conspiracy in restraint of trade.” What is Dick’s going to do – fight the lawyers from every gun manufacturer in America?
Good for MKS and Mossberg. Let’s keep piling it on with other gun manufacturers. I hope Mossberg’s lawyers can work out not supplying them with existing contracts.
The Marine Corps is set to begin fielding the Mk 13 Mod 7 in late 2018, with infantry and recon battalions, as well as scout snipers receiving the weapon. The Mk 13 Mod 7 is already in service with the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC).
[ … ]
The Mk 13 Mod 7 is chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum and features a “long-action receiver, stainless steel barrel, and an extended rail interface system for a mounted scope and night vision optic.” The new rifle and round will bring the Marine Corps capability into alignment with that of the US Army’s snipers and those of Special Operations Command.
[ … ]
While the Corps’ press release does not state how many of the new precision rifles have been purchased as we previously reported the USMC’s FY2019 Budget Estimates Justification Book indicates that 356 rifles will be purchased during the 2018 fiscal year at a projected cost of $4.287 million. This puts the per rifle cost at around $12,000.
Excuse me? $12,000 per rifle? I could field three times that many rifles for the cost simply by purchasing parts and doing the build myself. This is a .300 Win Mag with a tactical chassis, bipod and scope. Good Lord. The Marine Corps was taken in this deal. This is why it’s so costly to arm the U.S. Military. We make idiotic decisions.
One good note, however. Heretofore the Marine Corps only shot with the .308, and anything stronger usually involved the deployment of the .50 Sasser. Deploying the .300 Win Mag is a good intermediary step, one that should have been taken long ago.
The Three Percenters are a national group that was loosely organized in 2008 by Mike Vanderboegh, the late militia leader and author of the controversial novel, Absolved. Their central ideology is a strict reading of the Second Amendment’s clauses of a ” well-regulated militia” and “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” feeling these protections permit armed insurrection in the face of governmental power grabs.
The name Three Percenters is based on a false theory that, during the American Revolution, only 2.96% of the US population actually served in George Washington’s army. Historians have estimated the percentage was closer to 15–25%, but Three Percenters are persistent in citing the debunked statistic as evidence of the US federal government as tyrannical from the start.
Since their founding in 2008, the ThreePercenters have been aggressively opposed to (and armed against) any potential gun-control laws, along with other areas where they believe the federal government—particularly under their then-frequent target, Barack Obama—is becoming too large and powerful. For instance, Vanderboegh was recorded arguing for armed resistance against the 2009 Affordable Care Act, rallying fellow Three Percenters to “break windows” at the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Despite Vanderboegh’s cry, the group’s official website states that they do not condone violence and prohibits members from committing “first use of force.”
Hmm … sounds like they’ve copied and pasted from the Southern Preposterous Lie Center. Here’s more from a commenter.
Dictionary’s numbers for the size of the continental army appear to be off.
According to the Smithsonian 100k men served in the continental army over the course of the war (inclusive, not peak size) with potentially another 200k militiamen that did not general get mobilized for more than 90 days at a time.
Using an estimated population of 2.5 million in the vollonies as of 1776, this puts the continental army employing 4% of the overall population and 12% of the population being under arms (including millitia).
Peak size of the revolutionary men under arms (including militia) at any one tine was estimated at ~89k by the sources I’ve been able to find, which would be ~3.6% of the total population.
In short, the 3%ers might be hanging onto one particular statistic which is relevant but incomplete, but I can’t find any credible source that supports the 15-25% claim by Dictionary, unless they’re only counting colonial males, or something.
This is closer to the truth. I would bet MBV is chuckling in heaven as he watches his legacy continue. I’ll drop this post into the “personal” category.
A group of nuns and other faith-based investors won a shareholder vote at Sturm Ruger & Co. requiring one of the nation’s largest gun-makers to prepare a report about the risks of its business.
Ruger’s CEO, Christopher Killoy, said at the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday that the company will comply and prepare the report. “Shareholders have spoken,” he said.
But, he added, the winning proposal “cannot force us to change our business,” and “cannot change what Ruger is about and what we stand for.”
Well, they apparently had enough shareholder power to force this action, which is not good. I’ll tell you what. Corporate Ruger had better evaluate massive share buys in the near future in order to prevent even worse things from happening.
Santa Ynez business owner Gabriele Santi was left frustrated and bewildered when his local bank branch abruptly closed his accounts.
He said he walked into his local Rabobank branch recently and was handed a letter stating that the bank was terminating the accounts for his business, the Second Amendment Gun Shop in Santa Ynez.
I have never had an incident with Rabobank and this came as a shock, quite literally. I am usually a loud guy, but I was quiet, Santi said.
According to the bank’s letter, we are required by federal law to exercise due diligence and understand the financial transactions of our customers. When we are unable to meet the standards imposed by law, we have to take appropriate action to reduce risk to the bank.
I literally have no idea what that means. I haven’t broken any laws. In fact, I supply most of the local law enforcement with their guns and ammunition, and this decision is just political, Santi said.
Here is what it means sir. Federal law doesn’t require them to close your account. They voluntarily chose to do that because they don’t believe in your rights or liberties.
Gentlemen, cut your ties to corporate America. It hates you.
The lead man tasked by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis with transforming everything infantry and close combat on Tuesday challenged industry and government leaders to put a leap-ahead rifle in his boss’ hands in less than two years — or else.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Scales was a keynote speaker at the annual National Defense Industry Association Armament Systems forum here, and he didn’t waste any time launching into a takedown of key components that equip the close combat infantryman.
Scales recounted how he’d spoken at the conference three years ago, pushing industry and government procurement officials to create an intermediate caliber rifle with a piston action, polymer ammunition casing, a suppressor and digital fire controls.
“Now, in 2018, does any of that sound familiar?” he asked.
Scales is the chairman of the Department of Defense’s recently created “Close Combat Lethality Task Force.” The task force formed at Mattis’ direction and has $2.5 billion to fundamentally transform all things close combat for Army and Marine infantry and Special Operations troops.
The rifle he described in his opening remarks is handled under the Next Generation Squad Weapon project, headed by the Army.
But there, too, are problems, he noted.
The NGSW program was aimed at making a rifle or carbine to replace the flawed M16/M4 system, which Scales has railed against since his own experience with early versions of the M16 in Vietnam.
But an incredulous Scales told the audience that developers on the NGSW are now prioritizing the light machine gun in a program called the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle to replace the Squad Automatic Weapon, with the rifle or carbine to come later.
“It’s the Next Generation rifle or carbine, damn it,” Scales said.
The change in focus means that under current schedules, the rifle/carbine won’t be ready until 2024.
That is not acceptable, Scales said. To either him or his boss.
“Let me tell you something, folks. It’s not working,” Scales said. “Make the rifle by 2020. My God, folks, it’s a nine-pound piece of steel. The cost isn’t as much as a lug nut on a B-1 bomber.”
I confess I didn’t know this. Scales is an imbecile. Mattis is an imbecile for putting Scales in charge of anything except taking out the trash. Scales isn’t qualified as a gunsmith, engineer or mechanic to order decisions on cartridge size, type, caliber, or anything else, much less to order that it be a pistol gun rather than DI.
Good Lord. What an idiot.
So, Scales, here are some questions for you to ponder as your play Napoleon with the would-be weapons makers. Are you prepared to change not only weapons, but training and doctrine? You see, the notion of a light, small caliber, automatic gun with high projectile velocity, line of recoil along the axis of the gun, and quick sight-picture recovery, is necessary for the doctrines on which the current militaries of the entire world are built.
They are aided by snipers and DMs carrying larger caliber guns. So where is the money coming from to change everything? Why do you want a piston system? Who told you it is better? Do you know more than my friend the training NCO in the Army, who told me this?
The Marines have established in their 24-72 hour protracted, static, fire fights in Southern Afghanistan, that three 30 round magazines will do the job, if you have NCO directed, well aimed and properly spotted fire. Shoot from cover, control your security and do not allow an element to maneuver unobserved on your position. Maintain indirect fire back-up for surprises and to exploit enemy error’s. It sounds basic but we (Army) do not routinely practice this doctrine. So we kill and maim our troops because of and regardless of, the grain count of our issue rounds. As you point out.
My friend goes on to explain that the gun isn’t the problem – it’s the shooter. It’s almost always the shooter. Hey Scales, do you know more than my buddy does about what’s happened in any theater of conflict in the past 40 years?
Hey Scales, tell me all about the caseless cartridge you want so badly? I want to hear the engineering aspects of this thing. I also want to know all about how easy you think it is to keep recoil down while giving the shooter better ballistic coefficient, less weight, more reliability, a cleaner weapon, and instant recovery of sight picture?
Where did you get your engineering degree to insult design engineers like that, you insufferable old fart? If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?
What do you know about the cost of a bolt on a B-1? Why did you use that analogy? As for this gun, it’s a nine pound piece of steel. Steel? Is that what it is, Scales? Steel? None of it is polymer or aluminum? And it’s nine pounds? Nine pounds? I own a 6.09 pound AR, and you’re going to put a 9 pound gun in a woman’s hands to carry?
Hey, speaking of that, how much of this has to do with trying to reduce weight for women in combat? Or are you trying to reduce weight? Nine pounds isn’t a weight reduction.
How much has changed since you saw the gun in action in Vietnam, Scales? Is it the same gun, or not? Have you shot one lately? Field stripped it and cleaned it? Are BCGs even made of the same material these days, Scales?
You moron. The fact that Mattis put you in charge of this effort makes me laugh and sad at the same time. This is a living example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Without metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.
7 years, 10 months ago
