Via WiscoDave, this.

After three mass shootings left at least 32 people dead in the span of a week, FBI Director Chris Wray has ordered the agency’s offices across the country to conduct a new threat assessment in an effort to thwart future mass attacks, law enforcement sources told CNN.

Field offices will be actively working to identify threats similar to the attacks last week at a local food festival in California, a Walmart in Texas, and an entertainment district in Ohio, the sources said.

A command group at the bureau’s Washington headquarters will oversee the effort, the sources said.

Oh good.  Whew!  I’m glad someone is overseeing this.

The Minority Report, brought to you by the department of pre-crime.

I have never replaced a barrel myself, but one day I might, and if you have, he gives some useful tips.

Here’s what you’ll need: upper receiver fixture; barrel nut wrench head; 1/2-inch drive torque wrench; 1/2-inch drive breaker bar; anti-seize; gas-tube alignment tool. And, of course, a sturdy vise.

To secure the upper receiver I prefer a “pins”-style block, because it gives easy and clear access to the upper interior to make gas tube alignment checks easier. On these, the receiver lugs nestle into the block and 1/4-inch pins, just like the takedown and pivot pins on the gun itself, fix the receiver in place.

The wrench head can be variable. If you’re working with a GI-standard-style barrel nut (has the spiny scallops all around it), there are many to choose from. I prefer one that engages full-circle; most are half-circle. The more scallops engaged, the more secure the connection is under pressure. Otherwise, the head depends on the particular barrel nut that shipped with the handguard rail you chose. If it’s proprietary, most will provide a wrench head along with the package.

Torque wrench: bigger the better, I say. More leverage is easier to operate. Speaking of leverage, adding the extra length of a wrench head requires an offset adjustment. Torque wrenches are accurate and calibrated at a point halfway up the handle (there’s a mark there) to the center of the drive socket. Measure from the center of the handle to the center of the drive socket. Measure then from the center of the drive socket to the center of the wrench attachment. Add those together.

Now divide that total length figure by the length of the handle to drive center. Multiply that by the torque level you want to apply. The answer is then where to set the torque index. For instance, if you have a 15-inch long wrench, center of handle to center of drive, and attach a wrench head that extends 2 more inches beyond the drive socket center, and you’re looking for that standard 35 foot-pounds — 15 + 2 = 17. 15 divided by 17 = 0.882. 0.882 x 35 foot-pounds = 30.87. So, dial the wrench handle to “31.”

He said that backwards (divide the length of the handle to drive center by the total to get the ratio, not the other way around), although his example calculation is fine.  Make sure to read carefully and think it through.

About the gas-tube alignment tool: this can be either ready-made or homemade. I use one that’s a solid steel rod 0.180-inch diameter. If you make one from an old gas tube, for a more precise fit take a section from the gas tube body, not the portion that fits into the carrier key, and make it 3-4 inches long. This is an important tool to have.

The anti-seize comes from an auto parts store and is a copper-based lubricant that does what it suggests it does: it prevents galling. It also protects against dissimilar metals corrosion, and that includes aluminum against steel. It makes the barrel nut easier to install and then uninstall.

Get the upper fixed into whichever fixture you choose. Get your barrel. Wipe down the soon-to-be-mated surfaces to remove any residue or debris. There’s a pin on the barrel extension that fits into a corresponding slot on the threads surrounding the barrel extension receptacle in the upper. Seat the barrel into this receptacle. It usually will slip back and seat fully. If it doesn’t, don’t worry, because the barrel nut will seat it.

Next, get the anti-seize. Put a thin, even coat on the receiver threads. A flat artist’s brush works dandy.

Now get a barrel nut. I use one that I keep separate just for this next job. It’s a USGI-pattern nut that fits snugly and securely into my wrench attachment. The reason I have one that’s separate is because I sometimes “save” the supplied handguard nut until final install (I encounter proprietary aluminum wrench heads that get loose with use, as well as others that aren’t super-solid in engagement with the nut).

Fix the wrench head onto a breaker bar. Why? A torque wrench should not be used to loosen. Run the barrel nut on and tighten it firmly. Give it a yank. Then back it off, and snug it down again, firmly again. After experience you get a calibrated forearm, and you’ll get a feel for how much equals what. I take it to at least the 35 foot-pounds I’ll end up with on final install, but I’m not using a torque wrench for this step. You will, by the way, feel the effects and wisdom of anti-seize in this process. Do that a couple more times. This has seated the surfaces. It’s a sort of “truing,” but it’s really more of a mating. It’s facing down slight surface imperfections on the receiver, mostly.

Now, get your torque wrench and install the wrench head. Tighten the barrel nut until the wrench clicks. Only do this once. Don’t continue to repeat the clicks (you’re adding additional torque when you do).

Now. Here’s the trick: The gas tube has to be dead-centered in whatever it passes through. That might be one of the scallops on the barrel nut or a passage in the barrel nut, and, ultimately, the passage through the upper receiver. On some systems, there’s no association between gas tube and barrel nut. Those are bliss.

I’ve never seen a good torque wrench that would “add” torque if you repeat the clicks.

At any rate, feel free to weigh in with your own experience if you’ve done this before.

BBC.

A woman in the US has died of a gunshot wound after a police officer fired his gun when he saw a barking dog running towards him.

The unnamed policeman was responding to a call about the woman in Arlington, Texas.

She has been named as 30-year-old Margarita Brooks.

She died of her injury in hospital.

Police have described it as a tragedy, and say an investigation is under way.

Video at the link.  So let me assist the police department with the description.  Rather than a tragedy, this is classified as a homicide.

There.  Fixed it.

I note again for the record.  Any time you call the police and they get involved, the level of danger for you goes up one or two orders of magnitude.

John Richardson sends this.

If you attended the Meeting of Members at the NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, you might remember a short Filipino lady seeking out the youngest and oldest Life Member for recognition. That was Mille Hallow who has served as Wayne LaPierre’s right hand since 1996. According to her bio with the National Foundation for Women Legislators where she serves as Secretary, she is the Managing Director, Executive Operations. Earlier according to the same bio, she served as the Executive Director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She went by Mildred Bautista then.

John goes on to fisk here history.

Mildred Bautista, former executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, yesterday was given a suspended prison sentence and placed on three years probation in connection with charges she stole more than $23,000 in commission funds.

So … she’s a convicted embezzler.  Isn’t that nice.

My dog could have done a better job of running the NRA over the past decade.  At least he would have bitten anyone who tried to mess with me, unlike Wayne and his cronies.

Yes.  Yes you do.

Unfortunately, I believe it’s too late for you and there is little you can do.  America doesn’t understand its blessings, and won’t until they’re gone, I’m afraid.  Then, just like in Hong Kong, the very reason for the second amendment will be the catalyst for regret.

The Washington Post.

Three National Rifle Association board members who have raised concerns about reports of reckless spending and mismanagement by the group’s leadership resigned Thursday, another sign of mounting dissent within the nation’s most powerful gun-rights group.

The three board members — Esther Schneider of Texas, Sean Maloney of Ohio and Timothy Knight of Tennessee — said they were stripped of their committee assignments after they asked questions about allegations of lavish spending by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and other financial excesses.

“While our belief in the NRA’s mission remains as strong today as ever, our confidence in the NRA’s leadership has been shattered,” they wrote in a letter to NRA officials Thursday obtained by The Washington Post.

[ … ]

Board member Marion Hammer … wrote in a text message to The Post her reaction to the departing board members: “Don’t let the door hit you in the back on your way out.”

The NRA: An organization for Fudds, run by pit vipers.

Newly released body camera video from an emergency call in Dallas, Tx.  Via The Daily Beast.

The moral of the story is simple.  Don’t put toxicants into your body, and never call the police.  You are worse off and in more danger when the police are around.

Never call the police.

Scott Bach writing at Ammoland.

The purpose of this column is to explain what has recently transpired at NRA, and to refute the false narratives being spread about the Association.  Responsible board members have remained silent until now for legal reasons, but I believe what follows should be said.

Over a year ago, as NRA’s former treasurer was departing, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for a renewed emphasis on transparency and compliance with best practices for the Association and all of its vendors.  Among other things, every vendor was required to provide extra detail backing up their invoices, and additional levels of detail on NRA operations were included on the Association’s tax returns.

Can you see where this is going right off the bat?  This is at least initially about some big ole’ bad boy who was the “former treasurer.”  What the NRA really needed after this bad boy’s departure was a major accounting.  Wayne was just the man to bring that accountability.

LaPierre’s efforts proved to be prescient.  Officials in several jurisdictions began targeting the NRA, investigating how legal loopholes might be used to permanently shut down the Association. But it turns out that LaPierre’s good governance program may very well have created legal impediments to that, blocking efforts to harm NRA.

Ironically, some of those same transparency measures that may protect NRA from hostile public officials were spun by the anti-gun media to fuel a false narrative about NRA’s financial health and spending habits.  The media painted a fake portrait of a sputtering organization in decline, led by selfish executives lavishly spending member monies. That the media should present such a false narrative is not surprising. The surprising part is that some gun owners actually believed them.

Right.  Wayne didn’t really spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on suits and clothing, and he didn’t get an apartment for his sweetie, and there wasn’t a sweet deal with Marion Hammer to give her money she never earned and for which she did no work, and there wasn’t a deal to funnel monies to cronies who were loyal to Wayne.  It’s all just a myth that some stupid NRA members believed.  Not one shred of evidence to refute any of the data.  It just is what he says it is because he says it.

In any event, LaPierre’s initiative to ensure that every NRA vendor provide extra invoice detail required cooperation from the vendors themselves.  Apparently, all but one vendor fully complied. That vendor was among the NRA’s largest, a public relations firm deeply embedded in the NRA’s highest-profile, most sensitive operations. The vendor was so deeply entrenched, for so long, that it apparently had developed independent financial relationships with several NRA officials – including former NRA President Oliver North.  Instead of simply providing the required additional invoice detail, the vendor apparently resisted.

So now the narrative has switched to the big ole’ bad Oliver North and the company that had the right relationship with none other than Wayne himself.  It’s everybody’s fault by Wayne.

By the way, I’m no fan of Oliver North either.  His assertion that civilians have no business owning “assault weapons” like AK-47s proves he was never anything but a Fudd, perfect in all ways for leadership of the NRA.  Oliver North can go pound sand.

As an aside, to those that know him, LaPierre is actually noted for his modest everyday wardrobe. As the public face of over 100 million gun owners, appropriate clothing for high-profile appearances is a justifiable corporate expense.  The cost over the 15 years cited in the information dump was less than 0.007 % (7/1000ths of one percent) of the nearly $4 billion in revenue LaPierre helped raise during the same period to preserve our Second Amendment rights.

His modest everyday wardrobe.  And note how Wayne helped raise the money in NRA coffers.  It’s not about the members, but about Wayne.

LaPierre has consistently done the right thing for NRA, not because it was easy or convenient, but because it was right.  He has not been the problem; he has been the solution.

“Consistently done the right thing for the NRA.”  How about for the members?  Let’s see – support the assault weapons ban, support red flag laws, support (and give idea for) the bump stock ban?  Is that enough?

Well, you’ve seen enough of this sycophant.  This is a disgusting and loathsome missive, full of lies, myths, deflections, blame, and misdirects.

The author ought to be ashamed.  So should Wayne.

Prior:

NRA Category

Here is the video.  Watch it all.

Here is the local news report.

Again, the innocent homeowner was shot through his front door.  Through his front door, while carrying a weapon because he thought he was under threat of home invasion.

The police will of course be the judge of their own kind.  You be a better judge.  In the end, God will be the ultimate judge.

TTAG:

David Dell’Aquila says he finally realized that his attempts to reform the National Rifle Association from within were doomed after a conversation he had with NRA President Carolyn Meadows (she hadn’t been given the top job yet at the time). It happened during a party for large donors like himself that was held before the Indianapolis annual meeting in April.

Dell’Aquila tells TTAG that he approached Meadows because he’d received information indicating that a high-ranking NRA employee was receiving payments from vendors to whom he directed business. Meadows asked where he heard that (he told her it didn’t matter). She then told him none of it was true.

Then Dell’Aquila said he asked Meadows — strictly hypothetically — if she had a problem with an NRA official collecting a salary from the Association while using a vendor with which he either had an ownership interest or received payments for business directed its way (i.e. kickbacks).

According to Dell’Aquila, Meadows told him, “That’s how it’s done in D.C. Everyone does it.”

That’s when he says he knew his year-long effort (it started following the 2018 Dallas annual meeting) to bring about change and accountability by working with NRA officers and employees was futile.

Dell’Aquila, a retired Nashville technology consultant, then set about developing a four-phase strategy to force EVP and CEO Wayne LaPierre and his supporters — both in management and on the board — out of their positions.

I like the cut of his jib.  Then there’s this (readers and I have discussed the issue of fiduciary responsibility of NRA board members and just how far that goes).

It is important for each member of the Board of Directors to completely understand his or her responsibilities. For example, current NRA officers who have stated “I don’t know anything about that,” “that is the first time I’m hearing it,” “I trust Wayne completely,” etc., are not deemed within the law as valid acceptable legal defenses. It is your responsibility to know or take the necessary actions to obtain such knowledge.

Again, we’ll see just how far that responsibility goes, but I do hope it goes all the way to actual personal legal liability.

With all of that said, I still doubt that the NRA can be reformed.  I think it’s dead.