Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Popular Mechanics:

The Army’s program to replace the M4 carbine with a larger, harder-hitting rifle is dead, canceled after just under two months. But now that the Interim Combat Service Rifle is dead, what’s next?

The Interim Combat Service Rifle was proposed as a means of countering the new generation of cheap, highly effective body armors likely to be worn by America’s enemies . Countries such as Russia are now issuing body armors that can allegedly stop a .30-06 armor piercing bullet. Experts inside and outside the Army believed that the Army’s current issue 5.56-millimeter bullet would not be able to penetrate new armor, and that a larger, heavier bullet that transfers more energy to the target is necessary. Like everything else in the domain of military weapons, it’s an arms race between measure and countermeasure.

Seriously folks, who shoots armor piercing .30-06?  No, really.  This isn’t rhetorical.  What army shoots the Springfield round?  And how much body armor would be necessary to stop an armor piercing .30-06?  Think through this for a moment.  They would be like the Pillsbury dough boy, just with York 45 pound steel plates attached to their front and back.  They wouldn’t be able to move, much less fight.

The M4 doesn’t need to be replaced.  Via TCJ, there are good suggestions for making your AR run like a gazelle.  Do it.  Aim for heads and hips.  Make sure you have other kinds of weapons such as .308 or 6.5mm Creedmoor, and remember that when you get something, you always give up something.  Weapon selection is always a balancing act.  Also, for the Army in particular, learn to shoot before considering replacement of your rifle system.

Finally, you do realize that even the arms manufacturers who gave us the AK-47 no longer shoot the 7.62X39, right?  All of those rifles have been replaced by the 5.45X39.  No major land army on earth now shoots the larger bore cartridges except as DM and sniper rifles.

Via SOFREP, I had missed this tip by John Lovell.  I like John and not only does he make useful videos, he seems to be a genuinely nice guy, unlike some of the trainers out there.  At any rate, he makes use of height-over-bore to show you how to zero your carbine when you don’t have access to a 100 yard rifle range at that particular time.

Reuters:

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Tuesday unveiled a statue of Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle that became by some estimates the most lethal weapon ever made and the best known Russian brand abroad.

Perched atop a pedestal in a tiny square on Moscow’s busy Garden Ring thoroughfare, the statue of Kalashnikov, who died in 2013, has him dressed in a bomber jacket and clutching an AK-47 in both hands.

“I created a weapon for the defense of my fatherland,” runs a Kalashnikov quote hewn on the pedestal. At the unveiling ceremony, a Kremlin guard of honor stood to attention as Russia’s national anthem played.

“This weapon is Russia’s defense. It’s one of Russia’s symbols. Alas, for life to continue, for lovely children to grow up, for beautiful women in Russia, there must be a weapon,” the monument’s sculptor, Salavat Shcherbakov, told reporters.

Kalashnikov actually didn’t work alone, nor did he begin with an unknown cartridge.  His cartridge was already designed, he began with the German Sturmgewehr assault rifle design, and also had features of the M1.  He was aided by Aleksandr Zaitsen.

Eugene Stoner was also the chief engineer over the design of the AR line of rifles, with designers / mechanics Robert Fremont and Jim Sullivan.  It’s mostly Stoner we remember, just like it’s mostly Kalashnikov we remember.  I much prefer the exquisite engineering and tight tolerances of the AR design to the clunkiness and rattling of the AK.  But that’s just my preference.

The U.S. ought to erect monuments to John Moses Browning and Eugene Stoner.  But we won’t.  We aren’t Russia.  Russia has fighters.  We have PowerPoint presentations on workforce diversity and workplace harassment.

So tell me again who won the cold war?  Russia erects monuments to weapons designers, and American universities have professors who fill the minds of idiot-youngsters with poison.  I’m not feeling victorious for some reason.

Via Eugene Volokh.

Like Secretary Clinton, the supporters of the bills put before Congress to repeal PLCAA argue that no other industry enjoys the legal shield that the gun industry does — giving as counter-examples firms such as auto companies, pharmaceutical drug companies and even tobacco companies.

They are right to some extent …. [But] would there be widespread tort liability for gun companies were both PLCAA and state pre-emption laws all repealed?

The central argument I will put forward is that it is not easy to find good examples from other important industries of defendants being held liable for the sorts of cases that gun victim plaintiffs would like to win.

Take the motor vehicle accident problem. It is well understood that car companies make vehicles intended to be sold to ordinary drivers that are capable of going more than 100 miles per hour even though that is well more than the maximum road speed allowed. Surely the car companies know that some owners regularly drive faster than, say, 75 miles per hour and cause accidents because of their speeding. Product liability law today generally requires product makers to take into account foreseeable product misuse.

Does this make cars involved in very high speed crashes defectively designed? Although there is something appealing about this idea, I don’t see successful cases being brought on this theory, and given the record so far I’d be surprised if they were successful.

Next, I imagine that in today’s high-tech world motor vehicles could be engineered so that (perhaps absent an emergency) they could not be driven faster than the posted speed limit on the road on which they are currently travelling (and I assume that self-driving cars currently have and will continue to have this feature). Does the failure to include this speed-control function in all of today’s new motor vehicles make them defective so that the manufacturer would be liable in tort to victims of drivers whose speeding (at any speed) causes accidents? This too is an appealing idea, but I don’t see such cases.

It’s only appealing if you’re a nanny-state control freak.  As for cars engineered with governors, don’t give the progressives any more ideas for things they can regulate.

I’ll just remark one more time that the free-for-all hippie culture –love, peace and feel-good – which made its living complaining about signs and other such rules, believed in absolutely nothing and held to no morals or scruples.  Their empty minds became vessels for the poison fed to them, and within short order (one generation), the generation of free wheeling liberty became the cabal of controllers.

The sons and daughters of hippies are nanny-state, government-worshipping control freaks searching for the next thing to regulate so they can bring ubiquitous sameness and monolithic utopia to the world.

Would The Alaskan say this is enough 12 gauge for a grizzly?

Dean Weingarten at Ammoland.

On May 6th, 2017, an armed man was sitting on his front porch in the 400 block of Glenburnie Drive in Houston, Texas. He had a concealed carry permit. His brother says that he goes to the range often. He was on his porch and had another firearm with him. An AR-15 type rifle.

Three men attacked him in a drive-by shooting at about 2:15 a.m. He fired back, hitting all three. They car they were in crashed, and all three left the vehicle to continue the attack.

The homeowner kept up his defense, shooting back and hitting all three men again. Two died, one at the scene, one at the hospital. One of them was in critical condition.

Over 40 shots were fired, but the home defender was not hit. Not once.

Those who wish a disarmed population tell us that AR-15 rifles and other modern sporting rifles are not useful for self-defense.

Here is the report.  No one actually believes that use of an AR-15 is unnecessary or ineffective for self defense.  They’re lying if they say that (unless the conversation is buried in details of long range threats where you need something like an AR-10).  When a person says that, he means that he doesn’t believe that you should have access to AR-15s and that only the state has a righteous monopoly on the use of force, even if you’re defending your life or the lives of loved ones.

Just as we saw in the case of Mr. Stephen Bayazes, who killed one home invader and sent two others to the hospital, he found a reliable semiautomatic rifle with a standard capacity magazine an indispensable tool of self defense.

In another episode of semiautomatic rifle use, an attacker in Hawaii found that no one was capable of effecting self defense.

Hawaii police officers are continuing their search for a suspect who fired an assault rifle at a group of people standing outside a club in Waikiki, killing one and seriously injuring others.

Hawaii News Now reports (http://bit.ly/2xrcAAB ) the shooting happened Saturday morning near Club Alley Cat. Police say a man fired about 10 rounds at the group. A 22-year-old man was taken to the hospital in critical condition and later died. Two other victims, a 27-year-old man and a 31-year-old man, were taken to a hospital in serious condition.

The report says “assault rifle,” and of course it wasn’t a legitimate assault rifle with select fire, and perhaps it was an AK design rather than an AR design.  Who knows, certainly not the reporter?  Either way, the people he attacked didn’t even have a pistol for self defense, or if they did, it was being carried legally.  Not in Hawaii.

Hey, how’s that gun control stuff working out for you, Hawaiians?

The Daily Caller.  1) .300 Win Mag (M91A2), 2) M4A1 with SOPMOD Kit and M203, 3) M14, 4) MP5, and 5) Sig Sauer P226.

Eh, you can have the Sig.  I don’t want it, and I don’t shoot 9mm.  My 1911s do just fine, and John Moses Browning is still comfortable in his superiority to the Sig designer.  I would buy 9mm if I had an MP5 though (I would rather have an M3 .45 “grease gun”).  As for the M14, I suspect that’s going to go the way of the Dodo bird.  This experience seems a little dated, but what do I know.  I am not a Navy SEAL.

In the world of precision shooting the 6.5mm Creedmoor (and 6mm Creedmoor) have completely taken over.  The .308 isn’t being shot any more because of the superior ballistics of the Creedmoor.  I suspect that the military will catch up (there are also some nice semi-automatic guns now in 6.5mm Creedmoor in the AR platform, and for affordable prices.

I’ll also take the grenade launcher.  That would be a nice addition to my gun safe.

Salon:

Silencers are seen by the gun industry as a great way to recruit new customers, because the devices make guns less scary to children.

“For new or younger shooters, using a silencer means being able to focus on marksmanship fundamentals and enjoy the overall shooting experience with considerably more comfort,” the 2017 catalog for Advanced Armament Corporation explained.

Donald Trump Jr., who is a big fan of silencers, concurs. Last year, in a video interview with Joshua Waldron, the CEO of a silencer manufacturer, Don Jr. said that silencers were great at getting “little kids into the game.”

Yep.  That’s what it’s all about – revenue.  It isn’t really about a less dangerous shooting experience, one that protects your hearing.  It isn’t about getting a better cheek weld on the butt of your rifle because you don’t have to knock your head into those idiotic ear muffs.  It’s all about money.

There are several things that we should point out about this simpleton’s article.  First of all, she doesn’t believe in the market.  If something doesn’t live up to the hype, it will die off in the marketplace.  If it isn’t wanted by the public, it won’t continue to be manufactured.  But not according to her.

Second, she believes that you are idiots.  She believes that whether you need something or not, you will buy it with a little coaxing by somebody – who knows – the NRA, the gun manufacturers (who do not fabricate suppressors anyway, other companies do that), or whomever.  It’s all just a revenue stream to them.  You will throw away your hard earned money on trash because somebody else has a scheme to rob you with worthless products.

So she is there to protect you.  The market works because you will buy it, but the market doesn’t work because you can’t discern the difference between needful products and those that aren’t.  It is not a needful product because you have ear plugs and ear muffs.  But it is needful because it might make the shooting experience more enjoyable and entice kids to learn to shoot.

And the main objection she has is that it’s just a revenue scheme.  Or if you continue reading, that it will make the jobs of police harder because it will fall into criminal hands and cause mass shootings.  Or that it will prevent you from hearing the sound of gunfire and running away.  Or something.

Good Lord.  Do they have editors over at Salon or has this just become a total trash bin of word salads for the gun haters?  At any rate, such is the confused thinking of the collectivists.

Shooting Illustrated has a very informative article on revolver disassembly and cleaning.  It’s worth reading in full, and it’s also worth sending this link to yourself and referring to it later with an email search (which is what I do).

It has very good pictures (I learn visually) and also recommendations for revolver tools.  I’ll be using this advice in the future.  If anyone has additional counsel for revolver disassembly, maintenance or cleaning, please fill in the details in comments.

From The Guardian:

Survivors on Caribbean islands shattered by Hurricane Irma begged the world for food, water, shelter and rescue on Saturday as they faced down armed looters and the prospect of a fresh onslaught from strengthening Hurricane Jose.

[ … ]

From the Virgin Islands, survivors painted a picture of desolation and violence, but warned that the situation could deteriorate if aid did not arrive fast. “There is nothing left, I don’t think people will believe the severity of what happened. There is no water, no food, no supplies, no transport. You can’t get from one part to another unless you walk,” said Giles Cadman, who lives on the islands part-time and has been part of a remote relief network that sprang up in the wake of the disaster.

Here’s another report.

Looters started raiding hotels and shops in St Maarten after the Category 5 storm battered the island on Wednesday.

Those remaining in the Dutch territory said the situation was like a ‘civil war’ as looters armed with guns and knives descended on vulnerable locations.

And now for the U.S.

As Hurricane Irma lashed Florida with heavy winds and rain, TV stations captured groups of people breaking into stores.

Footage from WPLG Local 10 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, shows multiple people breaking through the front window Simon’s Sportswear, entering the store and walking out with various items.

According to WPLG Local 10, the looters had also broken into other stores in the nearby area, including Footlocker and CashAmerica Pawn Store.

Good grief.  Shoes.  And now one final report from reader Joe.

“Isabelle, who was born in Toulouse, has been living on the island of Saint-Martin in the Antilles for 25 years. This doctor, who is currently on holiday in Toulouse, normally, thanks to her job, has nerves of steel. But since yesterday, she is in total panic and is calling for help because she fears for the life of her husband and son who are on the Antilles island that has been ravaged by Hurricane Irma.

“My husband and my son are in danger of being killed, like a large part of the population. It’s civil war there. We have started to hear some talk in the media about looters who cleaned out the shops after the hurricane, but it’s still very far from reality. Gangs of thugs have robbed the customs house, which was badly damaged, and have stolen the stocks of weapons that were there. Since Thursday evening, they’ve been moving back and forth across the island wearing masks and hoods attacking the houses that were still standing where the inhabitants had taken refuge,” she says, on the verge of tears.

“I had them on the phone last night. They are paralysed with fear. It’s around our house where they’ve barricaded themselves with six friends who are at our home because their villa was destroyed,” she continues. “They can’t go out. They say the attackers are moving around in gangs of ten, it’s completely lawless and they’re ready to shoot to get food or money.”

Her statements are confirmed by the testimonies of other residents of the island, who tell on social networks of gangs who are smashing in the doors of houses saying, “Whites out.”

The criminals have the weapons, and note that guns were confiscated by the authorities prior to the event (or at least, it was threatened).  Of course, the confiscation, if it happened, affected only the peaceable and law abiding, but that’s the way it’s always intended when guns are “controlled” or confiscated by anyone.

Don’t ever give up your guns and fight to keep them as if your life depends on it.  Because it does.