Navy SEALs continue to kill pirates, but are making it more of a challenge

I do wonder if SEALs and Marines kill pirates in other incidents that do not make the news. Seems logical since we hear about the killings where things were extraordinary in some way shape or form, like SEAL snipers taking head shots, or Marines making pirates shite themselves. Here we have hostages murdered, and then SEALs take down the boat and make things extraordinary in their own special way:

The commandos shot and killed one pirate and stabbed another. Two other pirates were found dead, apparently killed by their comrades, and 13 surrendered to the Americans.

Too bad the 13 surviving pirates get a free ride; I am told that Sailors are competent at tying knots.

BlackBerry woes

Sorry for the lack of posting, and I know that this is not in any way gun related, but please do not mind my grumbling.

A couple of years ago my company issued me a BlackBerry so I could keep track of my emails while on travel. That phone became a dinosaur, so I gave it back to my company and just kept track of my work emails on my personal BlackBerry since I had an unlimited data plan anyways. After my BlackBerry was crushed under the weight of my truck, I got a replacement, and then got rid of it because I was not happy with all the bugs in the phone, nor with the dozens of "network@ etp. . . .RIM" messages every day. So now I have nothing to do with BlackBerry - no phones or devices, and no software, but somehow my work email is still linked in to the BlackBerry/RIM beast, so I continue to get these messages. This has been going on for several years now and it's driving me crazy.

I emailed both BlackBerry and RIM many many times to cure this problem, but they must not have any real human beings working for them because all I get is the robo response prompting me on how to fix my BlackBerry device or software. I finally resorted to saving a week or two's worth of these annoying messages and then mailing all fifty or more of them back to every BlackBerry or RIM email address that I could find. I tried to no avail to find the executive email addresses so that I could give them a glimpse into my hell.

Soon I am going to start invoicing BlackBerry for every email I receive:



Click to make bigger.

I wonder how this is going to go. I can't imagine it would take all that much time to disassociate my work email address from their stupid server or whatever. I have no idea how that shit works. And since I spend so much of time already responding to these messages, saving them in my junk folder, and fighting to keep my cell phone from locking up from all of these messages, I have no intentions of jumping through any more hoops over this. They better fix it, or I'm going to try to take it out of their ass.

Professional Obligations

We all must set priorities in life, and sometimes that means that you have stuff that is more pressing than others. Apparently to some lawyers, professional obligations is a code term meaning that they forgot about that important date that was set for them to be at a certain place to do a certain thing because they had mix-matched their priorities.

I'll be off the net today. Y'all have fun.

The speed safari

I got a kick out of this article on Virginia State Police from the General Discussion forum on ARFCOM.

As a lifelong Virginian, I can tell you without a doubt that the entire I-95 corridor, I-81, and I-64 are nothing more than high speed game trails, and the VSP and county mounties are big game hunters looking to bag your speeding ass and mount it on the wall at the courthouse. They are not in it for public safety; it is about the collection of revenue.

Now, in the link above you have some Virginia law enforcement as well as locals who defend the speeding safari by flatly telling you that if you do not speed you will not get a ticket. While one could possibly argue that point successfully, I point out that if you're the person NOT doing 85+ mph on I-95 than you're the one who is acting recklessly, and are probably the guy going home to ARFCOM to breathlessly argue in favor of VSP writing so many tickets. Getting passed on the right by pissed off drivers will get to you after a while, no doubt.

In my experience, the VSP has been a very professional organization so far, except for that one cop who blatantly and deliberately lied to the judge about my speed one night. It's all good though, hoss - I forgive you of your dishonor, but I don't think the majority of Virginians will be so nice. Lying in court to ensure a kiddie porn serial murderer doesn't get off on a technicality is something that will perhaps be forgiven from time to time, but when you make a habit out of revenue'en the good natives with fictitious affidavits and questionable statements, it's only a matter of time before the friendlies change their mind about your organization and say bad things about you on the internets. One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.

Lastly I'll say this: if you're riding down the highway at +10 mph, the radio up, and you're the only fool around, you're not endangering the public. Getting that ticket for nothing more than violating a written rule that was conjured up by people who's intention was to make it legal to siphon fundage out of your wallet does not make you a public nuisance. It would be awesome if the Johnny Law types out there who know that this is damn-well the case would stop insulting the free spirited Virginians who go foul of these speed rules and not give the high horse lecture when writing a ticket. I know exactly what you're up to sport, and it's not stopping reckless and probable terrorists from doing harm at Linda's soccer game.

Drywall test ammo

Sorry I didn't get to this over the last couple of days. I meant to, but between the flu and my kids, it was too much for me to do.

This is the full version of the test discussed earlier, and includes much more information.

There's no date on my notes, oddly enough, but I do recall it being hot and humid, as you can see:



I used my 16" barrelled DPMS AR15, and my buddy shot his 16" barrelled Ruger Mini-14 just to make sure that we were getting good data. The velocities I did record are posted, and I took pictures of the shot holes where either the bullet was keyholing or breaking apart; I generally passed on taking pictures of the 1st wall because I expected the bullets to be passing through it point first. I'm only going to link to the pictures instead of posting every one of them because there's like sixty or seventy pictures here:

Remington 55 grain FMJ handloads with 25 grains of Accurate Arms 2230
1st shot - AR15
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry
- 5th wall entry
- 5th wall exit
2nd shot - Ruger Mini-14
- 4th wall entry
- 5th wall entry
- 5th wall exit

Barnes 50 grain Varmint Grenade handloads with 26 grains of Accurate Arms 2230
3rd shot - AR15 - 3,138 fps
- 2nd wall entry
- 2nd wall exit
- 3rd wall entry
- 3rd wall exit
4th shot - Ruger Mini-14 - 3,124 fps
- 2nd wall entry
- 2nd wall exit
- 3rd wall entry
- 3rd wall exit

Black Hills Blue Box 52 grain hollow points
5th shot - AR15 - 2,955 fps
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry
- 5th wall entry
6th shot - Ruger Mini-14
- 2nd wall entry
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry

Remington 55 grain Metal Case
7th shot - AR15 - 2,949 fps
- 2nd wall exit
- 4th wall entry
- 4th wall exit
8th shot - Ruger Mini-14 - 3,005 fps
- 3rd wall entry

Wolf 55 grain FMJ
9th shot - AR15 - 2,943 fps
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry
- 4th wall exit
- 5th wall entry
10th shot - Ruger Mini-14 - 2,940 fps
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry
- 5th wall entry

Federal Premium 55 grain hollow point
11th shot - AR15 - 3,088 fps
- 3rd wall
12th shot - Ruger Mini-14 - 3,088 fps
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry
- 5th wall entry

Hornady TAP 55 grain ballistic tip #83276
13th shot - AR15 - 2,927 fps
- 2nd wall entry
- 2nd wall exit
- 3rd wall entry
- 3rd wall exit
- 4th wall entry
- 5th wall entry
14th shot - Ruger Mini-14 - 2,953 fps
- 2nd wall entry
- 3rd wall entry
- 3rd wall exit
- 4th wall entry
- 5th wall entry

Remington UMC 50 grain jacketed hollow point
15th shot - AR15
- 2nd wall exit
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry
16th shot - Ruger Mini-14

M855 62 grain ball
17th shot - AR15 - 3,005 fps
- 2nd wall entry
- 2nd wall exit
- 3rd wall entry
- 4th wall entry
18th shot - Ruger Mini-14 - 2,927 fps
- 2nd wall entry
- 4th wall exit
- 5th wall entry
- 5th wall exit

9mm Black Hills Red Box 124 grain +P
- 5th wall entry

Winchester Super X #1 buckshot
- 1st wall entry
- 5th wall entry



Here's front and back pictures of the walls after the shooting was over:

1st wall front
1st wall back
2nd wall front
2nd wall back
3rd wall front
3rd wall back
4th wall front
4th wall back
5th wall front
5th wall back

Keep in mind with the velocities that they were recorded as a single shot, and not averaged over a large sample. After we finished shooting the drywall, we put some wet phonebooks behind the first wall to see if the bullets would still expand after penetrating the drywall. We didn't do this with all of them; some of the bullets we knew we would not be using for a home defense situation, like the 55 grain handloads for example.

Also, here is what happens when you are hunched over trying to make an off hand shot on a one inch dot with iron sights and as you're shooting close to the screens on your chronograph you fail to take into consideration the sight-offset:



In the end, the Barnes Varmint Grenade got our nod as the best home defense ammo, with Black Hills Blue Box 55 grain hollowpoints coming in second. You can see in shots 3 and 4, on the 3rd wall, all the little pieces of the bullets that didn't even fully penetrate. It's comforting knowing that a bullet fired from your rifle will break up into pieces when it hits a couple of walls.

A little piece this morning

This is not my carry piece, but I can tote it whenever I wish; it's my wife's Kahr PM9. This miniature blaster is the bee's knees for pocket carry. The last time I shot it, I was astonished at how well it grouped. Stuff this puppy in a DeSantis Super Fly holster and stick it in your pocket and you're good to go.



The Super Fly is the best pocket holster I have ever encountered, and I have tried many. I think the covering of it is more sticky than the Nemesis, and the removable and reversible flap is perfect for breaking up the outline of the gun while still allowing a quick firing grip. I have several of these holsters and they have never let me down.

You can also see my replacement for the crappy Suunto Vector that failed me recently; it's a Seiko Black Monster. I went with a dive watch specifically because the ISO standards that dive watches have to undergo in order to get their "Divers" rating include three magnet challenges where the watch doesn't lose more than 30 seconds or so. Since everything electronic goes apeshit when I'm around, I figured I would try to mitigate it as much as possible. It's also made of steel, which is a hell of a lot stronger than plastic.

Lastly, there's a Microtech Scarab Executive with tanto blade that is my most spendy knife acquisition to date. It's a neat knife, very ninja, and I have carried it in the past, although I don't recommend it for EDC. It's manufactured very precise, and has moving parts like springs and such, and no matter how well it's made it is prone to failure. The lockup on it is amazing, and it works well at slicing things, and I would imagine it working well at piercing stuff, however, if you put a lot of force on it I'm sure it would break. It's just too delicate. At one point the tungsten glass breaker on the end of it stripped out the aluminum handle, and I had to fix it with a helicoil to make it well again. Microtech collectors are probably cringing right now, but it works. The blade is D2 tool steel, which is excellent steel, but rusts easily if you don't take good care of it. Having wiped your edge down with motor oil, you may not want to be cutting tomatoes with it.

That's my gun p0rn for the day.

What pen for HAHO jumps?

The tactical pen craze now includes Kydex sheaths, for when you've hit the ground after doing a terrain sketch from your chute at 10,000 feet and need to do a quick draw to take out that sentry.

TOPS makes some quality hard use knives; I would expect that their tactical pen would be good to go. The price point is above me at the moment though.

Don't mess with Malaysian women!

"A woman in a jungle region of northern Malaysia rescued her husband from a tiger attack by clubbing the beast on its head with a large wooden soup ladle and chasing it away, police said Monday."

The real moral of the story is that if you're a Malaysian man, you might want to think twice about coming home late with alcohol on your breath; the wimmins in them parts I hear are deadly with kitchen utensils.

Down with the sickness

Last night was awful. I very rarely get seriously sick; I get a cold once a year or so, but I get the flu like once every five years. I picked up the flu sometime last week, and it set in full force Saturday night, with last night being the worst. The shivering sweats with high fever I could do without, and now I know how my kids feel when I put them into a cold bath to bring the fever down. The bright side is I called into work so as to not share my gift with my colleagues, so I should be able to get some blogging done if I can appease CTone the youngest and get him off my ankles.

More drywall shooting pictures

I uploaded the rest of the photos from the drywall shoot to my Photobucket account. I need to dig up the master list that shows which rounds were fired and in what order; once I have it I'll write up a full version that tells the whole tale.

Something changed over the last couple of days

Whatever could it be?




My lowly little blog was chugga chuggin along and then BLAMMO!!

My thanks to Tam and Uncle for the linkage!

Compare and contrast

This morning the news was brimming with the developing story of three people dead and three wounded during two separate attacks in Manassas, Virginia. It appears that two families were gunned down in cold blood.

As sad as that may be, it is noted that this is the first murder in Manassas this year, and is also a rarity for multiple victims. For that I am thankful.

It's quite clear to me now that the single most profound instrument in preventing crime around here is the Potomac River; twenty miles East of Manassas it separates Prince George's county, which if you recall had fourteen murders in the first two weeks of this year, and DC, which has had ten murders this year already. Of the three locales, guess which one doesn't impede an American's right to protect themselves with a firearm?

While that may not be what makes mass violence rare on this side of the Potomac, it certainly doesn't make it common.

Like LEGOs

Committee looks at how to allocate 4,000 housing units in Stafford County

Why not just start stacking them on top of each other? That seems the only logical choice these days considering the sheer amount of homes built in the county over the last decade. So this is exactly what a county plagued with insufficient amount of schools, water, roads, and power needs: more frickin' houses to be filled with more frickin' morons with more frickin' cars.

I've got news for you retards: there ain't many more trees around here to knock over to build your Sim City. It would be wise for you to take your pipe dreams and shove them up your ass.

When unrestrained growth is allowed, you end up with a ton of people in an area that cannot support it ("ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag" - thanks dad!), and when the economy tanks, you end up with tens of thousands of people who want to work but can't. Here we have county politicos suggesting that the fix for this mess is to have more unrestricted growth to get all of the morons working again.

UDAs [Urban Development Areas] are required by state law to accommodate at least 10 years worth of population growth. Eliminating UDAs in Brooke and Widewater left Stafford’s plan with six UDAs—and 4,000 housing units short of its 14,661 requirement. The committee was tasked with finding a place for those units.

Very clever. Stafford county (my county is guilty of this too) completely ignores that "10 year accommodation" part in favor of just rapidly putting up houses and filling them with people, because it's not like they're going to stop the funding stream for one moment. Pockets are being lined, and we can't have reality stand in the way. Notice that three UDAs were eliminated, probably because there couldn't be justification to keep adding to them, and now it's recommended that there be three new one's added, conveniently.

And now there's a recommendation to add a "downtown" area? Where the hell are you going to put it? I don't suppose you are planning on building it in space and then crashing it into the dirt on top of nine subdivisions?

Here's an idea, how about taking the tens of millions of dollars in imaginary funds that you don't have and plan on fixing the nightmare of a roadway and infrastructure problem before you go about making any other plans!

The committee also approved the addition of a 600-unit UDA in Boswell’s Corner. That area had been considered for a UDA last year, but was rejected because Marine Corps Base Quantico officials were concerned that more residents in that area could adversely affect the operations of the base.

Ya think! Completely absent from this article is that 2,700 more Marines and Servicemen - complete with their families, SUVs, and need for shit like power, water, and roads to drive to work on - will be moving into Stafford county this July. I guess that their basic needs take a back seat to other more pressing needs like fresh new architecture to look at "downtown", and maybe a few more Starbucks stores and another Target to buy CDs at.

Snellings also questioned whether the Brooke area could sustain a UDA, as it has a limited road network and no access to public water and sewer.

Have no fear, the county head shed will no doubt publish an exhaustive "study" consisting of a paragraph or two stating that it can support everything as is, and that it can just keep borrowing stuff from the adjacent county.

This jackassery of fueling the overcrowded fire with more bodies is a symptom of being a Virginia politician, I wager. These idiots that the local morons elected will need to hire craftsman skilled at building skyscrapers if they intend to keep up this pace. I'm seeing that the larger picture here is not to turn what used to be a cozy hick town into a bustling place of commerce, or to settle with maintaining it's current status as a suburb of DC, but to turn it into DC.

Fantastic. Lets just hope that somewhere in this madness someone suggests building a Cabelas.

On automatic weapons

Check out these 1st person videos of a submachine gun match over at The Firearm Blog.

I think this illustrates perfectly that full-auto personal weapons are not good for "mowing down" people. They are useful for putting several rounds onto one target quickly, but still have to be transitioned skillfully from one target to the next, and not while the trigger is held down. Also, they run out of ammo fast.

Whey of the gun

Of all the stores to rob, this dude holds up a GNC. Whey protein is pretty spendy, but I believe that one would find an ABC store to hold more booty. I have been known to be a patron at both from time to time, and it's clear to me which vice brings in more income.

Only motivated people buy health food, and there aren't many of them these days.

Handy reloading tip

I have found that saving various empty boxes makes for utility later on down the road. The best ones in my opinion are plastic bullet boxes, as I have found use for them for holding small reloading parts like comparators or gauges:



One for my bullet puller inserts; another for bump gauges that are used to set up dies; one for the FAT Wrench attachments, and one for my comparator inserts for measuring bullet seating depth. The green boxes used to hold .224 caliber Sierra Match King bullets, and the red cardboard box is from Hornady. As you gain further addiction to reloading, you will acquire all sorts of tools and measuring devices that need an orderly place to stay. These boxes fit the bill perfectly, cost nothing, and will last a lifetime.

I also recommend saving cartridge boxes. Sometimes I will load up some obscure loading and don't have any MTM plastic boxes lying around, so I'll stick them in a Remington Core-Lokt box and place a mailing label over the ends and remark them with a Sharpie. Also, the used cardboard boxes are easier to carry in the field and don't make noise like the hard plastic boxes. There has never been a time when I've complained about having too many, and all of the 308 boxes in this picture have been recently re-filled and then emptied on the range:



All of the .45 ACP and .380 boxes are filled, and there aren't many 9mm boxes left in there. I really do use them all the time, and keep every factory ammo box that I empty.

DC gun ownership up

By this surprisingly non-hostile article at the Washington Post, since DC's handgun ban was ruled unconstitutional over 1,400 guns have been registered in the district. Take into account though that there is only one place for DC residents to claim ownership of their purchased firearm due to DC not having any gun stores. In order for a US citizen to lawfully purchase a firearm, they have to buy it in their state of residence; DC is no different even though it's not a state, and the one fellow who is licensed to make transfers of guns in the district charges $125.

The gist of the article is that only the more affluent residents are buying guns, and when you consider that a Glock handgun - not expensive as far as handguns go - is between $550 and $650, and on top of that you have to pay for the $125 transfer fee, you can see why it's something that only the more well off can afford.

Someone needs to tell the guy in the caption on the article to keep his finger off the trigger. Just sayin. And Alan Gura gets quoted a few times in the article, showing in one part that he's a realist:

Police said they could provide no data on registered guns being stolen, misused or used in self-defense, nor could they cite any specific incidents.

"Oh, I'm sure there's been some misuse," said lawyer Alan Gura, who successfully argued against the ban before the Supreme Court. "People steal and misuse stuff every day, whether it's guns or cars or kitchen knives. It's no surprise that people steal stuff and do bad things. That's the ordinary course of life."

Too bad the anti-gunners aren't such realists.

Home defense guns

***Update with links to more pictures***

This post at Snowflakes in Hell reminded me of a test that a friend and I did a couple of years ago shooting drywall with rifles, which I will get to in a minute. The article is about fake gun experts, and is spot on. The expert in question drops this little gem:

Our instructor further advised that shotguns are the weapon of choice for home defense. Unlike a heavy-caliber handgun, a shotgun will put an intruder out of business without a bullet passing through a wall and killing a sleeping child.

I have found this to be a common belief amongst folks at the gun counter at the local Ganderous Mountainous, and it's not even close to being true. With AR type rifles becoming so popular, I had one loaded up in my home in case the Boogey Man came, and thought that the idea that rifles were overpenetrative in a home defense scenario was bunk. A good buddy helped me find out.

I never did publish the results of the shooting test as we did not complete it; we shot five walls with rifles using various loads, and intended to do the same with handguns and shotguns. While we had the walls set up we did fire one round of Winchester Super X 00 buckshot and a few rounds from handguns just for our own edification.

The five walls were to residential spec; 1/2" drywall screwed front and back to 2x4 studs. The longest span in either one of our modest homes measured 30', so we did the shooting at 15' with the walls spaced out over 15'. We used an AR15 and a Ruger Mini-14 both chambered in .223 Remington for the test, and we shot many different types of loads from factory ammo to some handloads. The results told us both without a doubt that that cartridge is way less penetrative than buckshot or handguns.



Here is the impact on the 2nd and 3rd wall made by a Black Hills 52 grain jacketed hollow point fired from the Mini-14's 16" barrel:




Click to make bigger.

As you can see, the bullet was sideways when it hit the second wall, and was in pieces when it hit the third. This was pretty typical for most of the rounds fired, but this was the most notable example of the round breaking up so quickly. Those little pieces of the bullet may still have been lethal, but then again, they may have not. That particular round didn't make it through the fourth wall, leading me to believe that it didn't have much energy left when it hit the third wall. Also, the bullet fragments would lose velocity and energy very rapidly given a little more distance, and when applied to a home defense scenario means that if a round fired from your rifle misses the bad guy and goes through an exterior wall of your home, it will not be nearly as likely to enter your neighbor's house and harm someone.

The one round of buckshot told a completely different story. Fired into the first wall at a distance of 15' from an improved cylendar choke showed that you still have to aim:



The orange dots are one inch, making the spread from the buckshot about six inches. That busts the myth about only needing to aim in the general direction of an attacker with a shotgun. It does show why they will effectively put down a scumbag with one well placed shot; the trauma of twenty five .30 caliber holes concentrated over the vitals gives you a high probability that you won't need to shoot twice.

Here is the face of the 5th wall, and if you look closely you can see 18 shot holes marked with arrows:



That leaves seven pellets unaccounted for. Some of them may have stopped in the fourth wall, or may have gone off the 5th wall and into the woods. The bad part about launching so many projectiles with one shot is that you cannot account for each and every one of them, as they go off on their own program if given some distance. With a rifle, you are only firing one round at a time, so you have much more control.

For fun, we also shot a .38 Special MagTec frangible round, a .357 magnum Glaser Safety Slug, and a Black Hills 124 grain +P 9mm at the walls, and all of them went straight through the five walls and into the woods. High velocity small mass bullets hitting something hard like drywall makes them break up and slow down, and low velocity high mass bullets just keep going.

Food for thought.

The Swiss stick with tradition

The left wing political groups tried their hand at sensible gun laws in Switzerland and failed. Reading some of the arguments in the article shows that the crazy lefties in Switzerland think just like the crazy lefties in America.

And 300 deaths a year? As armed as that country is - 1.7 million issued military weapons - and they have 300 deaths from firearms annually, which tells me that it's not the blasted guns. I bet they would be better served taking away bleach, or swimming pools.

Compliance has no guarantees

Just because you give a scumbag your wallet doesn't mean that that's all he wants.