Unlike a number of suburban police departments, Detroit precincts do not have metal detectors and the front desks are not fitted with Plexiglass-type shields. They do have security cameras.
What is it with you media people having to pin some sort of explanation or qualifier on everything, no matter how stupid? About the only thing that would have stopped this attack before it happened is if the gunman was hit by a bus crossing the street towards the precinct. Thankfully, this attack punctuated the argument that hard targets are better at stopping violence once it starts, as the idea of a lone gunman throwing down against multiple armed and armored folk ending in favor of the more numerous is generally thought to be sound.
There does seem to be little interest in widening the I-95 corridor from Fredericksburg to DC, unless of course there's a way to bilk money from people by building a special lane for hippies and 18 passenger vans. Then you can only imagine the possibilities.
I learned about cause and effect in like 6th grade, and even then I could have told you that if you build thousands of homes every year and attract tens of thousands of people and families into an area in a short amount of time, you will have a horrendous spectacle of a roadway system unless you address it first. Fucking duh!
So now we have smarty pants people who presumably come to work wearing a white labcoat with pocket protector telling us that they're pissing away public funds studying the effects of piss poor infrastructure management, and then comparing notes to see which major city sux the most.
Well, thank you very much! I can take all that information that you just gave me and do exactly nothing with it, because I've sat in NYC, LA, DC, and Houston traffic, and can tell you without a single bit of doubt that the city management fumbled the fuckin ball bigtime there, and the locals are the ones paying with their time and funds! Super job!
Now, why don't you smarty pants types do us all a favor and do a study to find out the names of the people responsible for mismanaging the roadway systems so we can write them a nasty-gram, or kick them out or kick their ass for making all of us sit in traffic for days out of our lives while they pocket the money from letting greedy developers make a sport of cutting down all of our trees to make shitty homes! I can do something with that information!
As you can read in the story, Goddard survived the gunman's attack at Virginia Tech, and the point is pushed that he carries more weight in the gun control argument because he knows first hand what it's like to be shot by an armed lunatic while at school, and the rest of us don't. There is no mention at all about why Goddard also carries weight to the argument that packing thousands of unarmed people in a small area with minimal security attracts armed lunatics of all types, and the outcome of an event like that will be the same despite whatever law gets passed to prevent it.
None of this is addressed in the article, nor is there any mention of potential unintended consequences. It seems that the sum of the story is that Goddard has an edge because he's been the unarmed victim getting bullets pumped into him while he lies defenseless on the ground, and that should be the best policy. He's also a fudd, so there's that too.
Arguments based entirely on emotion don't get much pull with me. How about putting some facts in there somewhere for the people who aren't so naive.
In case you are not aware, every once and awhile someone will request a photoshop of a picture on ARFCOM, which never ends up like it's supposed to but always entertains.
Obviously what Prince George's county needs these days is some statutes making attacks like this a felony. Maryland is under siege by angry hoodlums; there have been fourteen homicides in nineteen days, so something has to be done. Disregard what the ignorant and tone deaf anonymous commenter wrote in the second article erroneously suggesting that the populace -- not a lack of laws known to effectively regulate malicious human behavior -- is to blame for the scourge of violence. It is Mary-land after all, where everyone is perfectly happy, including disenchanted drug smoking former girlfriends of your recently paroled lover who buy up Assault Solutions (sounds like a cool name for a gun shop) with such wild abandon and use them to bend people to their will.
It's clear that Easy access to dangerouschemicals with no background checks or rectal exams means that any terrorist can get their hands on some and maim or kill. If we could ban a third of the shit that is sold at Wal-Mart, we could end this senseless violence once and for all.
Good grief, what a cesspool PG county has become. The feds have stepped in to help the local cops, who are asking the helpless community to chip in, all the while the cops are increasing their presence in a "show of force". Is that even going to help? Something tells me that knocking on doors, pulling over 1,500 cars, and handing out 100 misdemeanor citations is not going to bring the scumbags to their knees. Just like South East DC, I think it would take a biblical intervention to straighten that whole area out.
There is a way though for PG residents to find real safety from the violent people among them, and it doesn't involve massive police effort or baseless promises from a clueless mayor:
Move.
Pack your shit and move 3 miles West, across the Potomac River, and there you will find a nice place to raise your kids where your chances of getting shot, stabbed, or having your face melted off are slim to none. Be advised though, Alexandria is under a crime wave too, and the police have suggested turning your house light on at night to deal with it, so you can spend your money on good light bulbs instead of kevlar. If you happen to be one of the scumbags causing so much problems in Maryland or DC, know that unlike most of the folks in those areas, Virginia natives are perfectly capable of helping the cops quell community violence, and don't be surprised to see VCDL presence there.
If you consider that to actually "buy back" a gun, the police department dispensing the government funds would have had to successfully purchase a firearm that once belonged to them. That finally happened.
I spy a McMillan TAC-50; a suppressed AIAW in .308 Winchester; a suppressed SCAR-16 with thermal sight, ELCAN optic with Dr Optic reflex; a Sig P239; a Smith and Wesson 686, among other things.
My personal favorite is the suppressed EBR M-14 with Nightforce scope, with the reflex sight mounted behind the elevation turret making it completely useless. Either someone has a sense of humor, or perhaps there needs to be some remedial training. Also, there's a pic of a SEAL holding an H&K MP5. And how cool is that S&W!!!
OOOoooooh, ooooohh!! I also found some evidence that the 1911 is still serving the Marines, as well as a solid confirmation that Marine VBSS teams (now NMIOTC, or whatever complicated term with acronym some eccentric commander comes up with this month) are now using Steyr TMPs for ship boarding. Too friggin' cool!
More Steyr TMP and 1911 goodness, with some Glock usage in there for good measure. Seems that the Greeks are putting them up to this.
See here for the Castle Doctrine bill, a bill to make it a violent felony to get caught with a gun on school property, and another to make it OK for cops and lawyers to be under the influence while carrying.
See here for a Virginia Supreme Court gun ruling, as well as about half a dozen new gun bills.
See here for eight more bills; two of them are Castle Doctrine and one of them is for Constitutional carry (no permit needed for CCW).
See here for a local media look into these proposed laws. I got a kick out of this from the second page:
Among the bills the group opposes, Goddard finds particularly onerous a bill from Del. Bill
Carrico that would exempt any firearms manufactured in Virginia, that remain in Virginia, from federal regulations.
Goddard called the bill "an absolutely, utterly stupid thing," and said there's no way Virginia could ensure that firearms made here don't leave the state.
And? Is there any way to ensure it right now? Has there ever been? Seems to me that if a scumbag in Virginia wanted to build a sheet metal Sten clone that's fully automatic for the sole purpose of gunning down lots of people in Nebraska, then there's no way a law or lack of one is going to make one bit of difference.
"So by saying you're in favor of magazines that hold no more than X rounds, you're publicly stating that it's only X+1 bodies that bother you. If that's not what you mean to say, then come out and state your real intentions."
Yikes! No matter how anyone tries to answer that challenge, it's not going to end well for them!
My-oh-my has this country come a long way in such a short period of time. In the wake of the Tucson shooting, all of the predictable cries by the usual suspects for more gun control have been largely met with shoulder shrugs and silence from the majority of lawmakers.
"Loughner, for one, reportedly used an extended magazine carrying 31 rounds. (Congress outlawed such magazines in 1994, but let the ban lapse in 2004.)"
Aaaahhnnnggt!! Wrong answer sport. Congress temporarily stopped the new manufacture of magazines like the one scumbag-shooty-guy from AZ used; they didn't ban them. Don't worry though, I expected y'all media types to expend yet more of your credibility (isn't it in the red these days) buhleeeet buhleeeet buhleeeting about what you know nothing of in order to push your agenda. It's what you do, and I love pointing it out and doing my small part to make you all look like jackasses.
As for bearing the blame, I'm happy to see that the bulk of its weight rests so well on such petite shoulders, despite it being a juvenile accusation. Not that I'm saying it's right, mind you; I'm just happy that it's not placed on all of us; and something also tells me that there's an unintended consequence of the Palin haters throwing this mess at her, there being no such thing as bad press and all.
Now for the fun stuff.
Back to this article, do yourself a favor and scroll down to the video and watch it. We have the National Urban League's Marc Morial saying, and I quote:
"With respect to gun control, there is no doubt. . .ah. . .that. . .ah. . .the Assault Weapon Ban and the repeal of the Assault Weapon ban was probably a mistake for the nation."
Hmmmmmm, you see. . . .about that. . . . I don't see how such a presumably smart man can say in the same sentence that it's "no doubt" that "probably" something is bad. Mr. Morial, would you also say that there's no doubt that syphilis is probably bad for tigers? Is it your position that ninjas are no doubt, probably bad news for the samurai? That's awesome! I feel the same way too! - (about the tigers, ninja, and samurai, not the Assault Thingie Ban)
I do support his position though that a knee jerk reaction by lawmakers to strip rights from an already agitated populace - who are flocking to buy firearms at the moment - in the wake of a violent shooting is probably no doubt a bad thing to do, especially considering that a great deal of the people buying the guns are doing it not so much in the interest of one day stopping a spree shooter, but because they don't trust lawmakers.
Now go to this link and scroll down to watch the video about the popularity of Glock pistols. This one, for me, defines how utterly stupid newscreatures are. Witness the raw footage of a bona fide dumb ass attack:
Chris Jansing, to guest Jose Diaz-Balart - " I know that in your years of reporting you've had alot of years of experience with all different types of weaponry."
Diaz-Balart - "Sure"
Jansing - "Help us understand the popularity of this type of gun because I think if you're not part of the gun culture for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people. . ."
Diaz-Balart - "yes"
Jansing - ". . .we've heard it's used to kill people."
Injecting myself into the discussion here, what the hell does this chic mean by "for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people"? Is that something like "tell me now Rosie, for a lot of people, mayonnaise is a product used to fatten people. . . .we've heard it's used to fatten people." Or, "tell me Chuck, for a lot of people, ninjas are weapons used to kill people. . . .we've heard they're used to kill people." Is that what she's talking about? You can see that I've used Rosie [O'Donnell] and Chuck [Norris] there as an example because they are, presumably, because of their vaguely associated credentials, known as being part of the fat and ninja culture, respectively. Rosie more so considering that she is known to be the size of a barge, so she might be a little more authoritative.
Diaz-Balart, being a journalist and all and highly trained in the art of the gun culture, is no doubt probably the best bet to be on a national news network chatting with a fellow journalist about something he knows so much about. I mean he knows two people who have Glocks - one a law enforcement officer, and another a friendly gun collector - and these two individuals know without a doubt why Glocks are probably popular, because one of them dropped theirs down some stairs and the other dropped his out the window of a car at 60 miles per hour.
That makes Diaz-Balart a fucking Glock savant!
I guess that since I dropped my Glock yesterday, that qualifies me to say that both of these retards wouldn't make a pimple on a gun owners ass (don't ask, it's not my saying), and I offer to you more evidence to support my claim:
Diaz-Balart - ". . . .there's a number of different millimeters available in weapon sizes. . ."
Looking at the handy chart on Gaston's website, I direct you to the "models" tab, and ask you if they are listed by caliber, or are they listed by millimeters? It must be a hidden language no doubt that can only probably be decoded by gun culture experts well skilled in the art:
Standard model? Lots of millimeters.
Compact model? Not so many millimeters.
Subcompact model? A few millimeters.
Competition model? Huge number of millimeters, like totally a bunch of them n' stuff.
Man though, all this talk about Glocks, heatahs, and millimeatahs makes me want to take a ride to the range and bust me some caps, after I throw my Glock 17 out the window of my truck and make myself a gun culture jedi knight, of course.
And the hits keep on comin'
Diaz-Balart - ". . .it's [Glocks] a natural pistol to get if you're not an expert on weapons."
And again, he later backs that claim up by offering his law enforcement buddy's experience tossing them down stairs and all; you can't claim to be an expert unless you drop the thing down some flights of stairs, and to be able to master this feat, you have to have Glock perfection. It's that simple. So if you've never handled a gun before, and consider yourself to not be an expert, you need to get a Glock first, and then drop it to become a master. Taking what he says literally, one can only deduct that the reason 65% of law enforcement choses Glock is because cops suck with firearms.
I'll have to ask my friends in law enforcement if they learned Glock dropping at the academy. One of them is issued a Sig, a fore-tay millimeter I hear, so he must suck - I don't think they drop test those - but I did personally witness him shoot expert with a rifle once on an Army range, so who knows.
Diaz-Balart goes on to say that the reason for 30 round "clips" (magazines) are popular for the non-gun tossing/dropping/mass murdering population is so that at the shooting range, you don't have to reload as much. That's probably an accurate statement, no doubt, but I would also add that people keep 30 round magazines for their nightstands, glove boxes, and also for competition. I'm an expert, remember, so I know. Of note though is that he says to reload the gun with regular clips, you have to take the clip out of the gun and manually load it with "bullets" using your thumb, and doesn't mention that most shooters have many of these clips, and that they can be used to charge the gun with "bullets" very rapidly. Like this guy:
Fast, huh!!
Ultimately, these two MSNBC people are trying to be honest in that they are doing their best to tell the world why Glock pistols are not the choice of crazies, but are in fact popular to cops and every one else. They would have been better served though giving this task of explaining these truths to someone of more experience than a journalist, but it no doubt would have probably been less entertaining. Admit it!
. . . . with three small sick children, snot running down their red little noses, and when the nurse opens the door and calls out his name, down came a Glock 26 wrapped in a Comp-Tac Infidel holster made of kydex, bouncing off of his thigh and clattering onto the floor of the waiting room.
True story.
Thankfully the waiting room was completely empty, and neither the nurse at the door or the one at the desk was the wiser. The problem I see is that it's possible to bump the bottom of the holster and knock the belt clip over the belt, and with the Glock 26 being so short, it tumbles right out of the waist line. Handling a three, two, and almost one year old with all the gear that's needed to sustain them, things like a pistol clipped inside the waistband are easy to get knocked around.
Well, I've always wanted to try a Summer Special!
*Edit: I can't remember who said it; I think it was Michael Bane but I'm not sure, who said that this is the same reason why he avoids using yaqui style holsters, as the muzzle of the gun can be bumped upwards and the pistol can come out. Same concept.
It's pretty bad when a 50 lb coyote thinks that a grown-ass man is dinner. Hopefully the beast hasn't gotten it through his head that stupid people like this guy might be cream filled and try to eat somebody's five year old.
Idiot:
In the states, coyotes are generally a little more wary of humans, as they are used to getting hit with flying copper when they get too close. When I used to spend a lot of time in the woods, seeing a potentially dangerous or predatory critter with sharp teeth show me that it's not afraid to approach would have made up my mind that it needs to be put down. I don't want to read about a kid killed by a feral dog in my paper and know that I somehow helped it overcome the natural tendancy to fear mankind.
From the movie Jurassic Park: Dieter: "It gives me the creeps, like it's not scared." Dr. Robert Burke: "There haven't been any visitors on this island. There's no reason for it to fear man." [Dieter touches a cattle prod to the dinosaur's head, causing it to flee] Dieter: "Now it does."
I can't understand what they're saying, but they do show what's up the ARX's skirt in detail. Notice the ambidextrous reciprocating charging handle and overall short length. To be fair though, the barrel on that thing looks to be about 10", while the AR they compare it to is a 16".
I cannot wait for Ruger to finally announce the commercial availability of the shit that they're smoking at this year's SHOT show. I want to live in their world for a spell just to see what it's like to be absolutely off your rocker crazy high on drugs.
While I do not own a single Ruger product, know that I am not bashing them. It's just that I've noticed a trend among that organization for building stuff that makes zero sense, and apparently I'm not the only one.
So my Bro-in-law has a newly acquired Horus Hawk scope given to him by some magnificent individual that he had proposed putting on a Ruger M77 in 220 Swift, and I attempted to procure the rings necessary to mount it for him. The problem I ran into is that the guys who designed the M77 receiver wanted to ensure that proper mounting of glass upon the blued carbon steel would be not only very proprietary, but complicated as well. The only picture of this phenomenon that I could glean off the internets can be seen here, if you do not know of what I speak.
The Ruger-only mount milled directly into the receiver is not at the same height, as if machining an even plane onto metal was too difficult. Either that or the engineer that thought of this idea was stoned out of his mind. It means your scope rings are two different heights to attenuate this ridiculousness, which severely limits your choices. If you don't subscribe to the belief in a mounting system that's stupid, you can always by bases from Leupold or Weaver, but you can forget getting a one piece. The only clear option is to order weird scope rings from Leupold and hope they are perfect for your application, as you will not find the rings on shelves in any store. It would be different if the Ruger mount is mechanically better or stronger than anyone elses, but it's not; it's built to be overly stupid.
What in the world grips the minds of those folks at Ruger? They must show up to work drunk, snort a line of metal shavings from the lathe, and top it off with a shot of cutting oil before fabricating their wild-assed ideas like $90 box magazines for short barrelled niche rifles with flash hiders. Why can't you folks just be normal?
One man is dead and another injured after being stabbed in Adelphi, Md., Monday evening, according to Prince George’s County Police.
That's now 10 homicides in the county in the first 10 days of the new year.
You would think that with all the stringent weapon laws in Maryland violence like this would be a thing of the past. It's like the wild West, only in the East.
Too bad that it has to be that way; with the exception of Baltimore, Annapolis, and the surrounding towns around DC, Maryland is exactly like Virginia.
WASHINGTON – The Senate's sergeant-at-arms says he's against members of Congress arming themselves to increase their safety in the wake of the shooting rampage in Arizona.
I don't see how he thinks protecting oneself would be unhelpful; he can't be there with his duty piece to thwart hooligans for every Senator and Congresscritter. Perhaps he should just keep up the good work polishing the Senate's gavel and minding the door and stuff and let the adults take care of themselves for awhile.
Having started out with a Shooting Chrony F1 model, and then stepping up to a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital, and now to a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2, I can tell you that you most definitely DO NOT get what you pay for. In fact, from the research that I have recently done, it seems that chronographs are all basically built from the same cheaply made bargain bin parts and sensors, and that spending more money on one may give you more flashy features, but not reliability.
I was duped into buying the CED M2 because of the manufacturer claims of being more reliable than the rest, and less prone to errors due to light issues, but I see now that I ended up with the least reliable chronograph on the market. Looking back, the Shooting Chrony gave me about the same level of errors as the M2, maybe a little less, but in that I knew nothing of the limitations of these devices, so one could say that errors would be expected. It was only when I bought the CE ProChrono that I read up on the fact that light makes them very fickle; to operate reliably, they need bright sunlight.
If you are having problems getting your chrono to read, make sure you set it up where it will have either full sunlight or full shade or, in the case of the CED M2, don't bother setting it up at all because it won't work regardless. Make sure that there are no shadows across the sensors, and if there are, put up something to completely shade them. If you are shooting rifles, set your chrono up at 12 to 15 feet from the muzzle, and maintain that distance for each shooting session.
If you have the CED M2 chrono, and don't feel like heeding my warning about not bothering with it, make sure to place the display device on a separate table several feet away from the gun or you will get crazy errors. I found out this weekend that you can shake the display on the M2 and get a reading from it despite the fact that the sensors were 15' away. On previous shooting sessions with the M2, I often got two readings for one shot, on an interval of about 1 in 10 shots. Very frustrating. If there are others shooting near you, make 20 feet or more of space in between the chrono and them, as well as the display or the M2 will read their shots too. Also, you will get readings when the wind gusts, so keep that in mind as the display will make all kinds of cool calculations for you, which don't mean squat when you have six velocity readings of 112 fps from the wind queering your shot string. Something else of note is that when I failed to get a reading from my third shot yesterday, I picked up the display and the numbers on it faded in and out, prompting me to install a brand new battery, with the same results. Not what you would expect from a $200 device advertised as being super fancy pants reliable and better than the competition.
I hope this information helps somebody. I was hugely let down this weekend as I had new loads for the 308 from my recently acquired IMR 8208 XBR powder that I believe will end my temperature and consistency problems, and the M2 chrono decided it didn't feel like working that day. Having a working chronograph for load development is a must, and I expected more from the M2 than I got. I din't get a single reading from it, so instead of ruining my test by continuing to fire the rounds, I called it a day.
That's not exactly true; I threw a great big fit about it and hurled the M2 display into the woods at a shown 324 feet per second, but at least I didn't shoot it. For some background, the Shooting Chrony met it's fate on the edge of darkness two years ago when it was not recording shots from my AR15 while shooting offhand. I started shooting closer and closer to the sensors in order to get a reading as the sun was going down until I was shooting a half inch above the unit, and the inevitable happened when I put a 55 grain round right through the display. That was an accident though. The exact same thing happened to my CE ProChrono a couple of months ago when I skipped a round off the top of the display, ruining my OCW test, which prompted me to immediately toss a C-Products magazine in the general direction of the chrono that - as fate would have it - smashed in the display screen with a perfect shot. I had no other choice at that point but to finish it off humanely with a magazine of 100 grain hardcast rounds from my Kel-Tec.
Doesn't someone out there make a chronograph that doesn't suck? I mean, damn, we can send people to the moon; we can replace a human being's heart; we can split atoms and use that technology in a bomb to end the world, and yet there's no one out there that has mastered building a device that can clock the speed of a bullet. Really?
Sheesh!
Now comes my dilemma. CED makes an infra red light kit for the fancy pants M2 that is reported to end the problem of light sensitivity. Thinking about it though, the M2 is reported to end the light sensitivity problems without the IR kit, so I have my doubts, and there's also the issue of the display fading in and out, so their overall quality is in question. I could shell out the $90 on the IR kit and maybe have a working chrono, or I could spend the same amount on another Shooting Chrono F1 and have one that at least works some of the time, which would also allow me to take my M2 and set it on fire in the yard and dance around it in a loin cloth while screaming profane gibberish. I really like that idea. For what it's worth, when my F1 chrony took a round to the face, it still worked, except to say that the bullet hit both sensors and ruined them. So it's at least tough.
I think a nasty letter to the manufacturer is in order, and I have already left a review on the Sinclair International website where I bought the CED M2, which as of this morning hasn't posted yet. I'll keep checking that though.
If you come across this post, which I'm going to go ahead and call a Competitive Edge Dynamics M2 Chronograph review, my advice to you is Caveat Emptor. Don't bother wasting your dollar on "advanced software and digital circuitry" that was put together from Radio Shack seconds and packaged in a cool looking plastic package. Buy the cheapest chronograph you can find as they are all made from the same 1950's technology, and maybe the recent breakthroughs in IR technology will bear some fruit and make these things not suck.
*Update* I found this post on Sniper's Hide about folks building their own IR light source as the kit from CED doesn't sound all that reliable.
There are several pictures in there that literally took my breath away. The picture of the brother hugging his brother in uniform and then later kissing his brother's casket - it took everything I had to not loose it when I saw that one. You don't even know.
Not all of them are sad, but the ones that are will get you.
This weekend I came into a Mosin-Nagant M38 carbine in fantastic shape with a properly pitted bore from many years of shooting corrosive commie ammo. The previous owner is a friend of mine who needed the extra bucks to go in on a Remington M700 chambered in 25-06, and knew of my want for a short and light Mosin-Nagant. As an added bonus, my Fairy god ninja delivered to me an 8 lb. jug of IMR 8208 XBR, so I am committing to that powder my 308 which will hopefully end the temerature sensitivity woes.
Last evening I had the ten minute opportunity to shoot the beast with one of my brothers, and with a cardboard box set at 100 yards I proceeded to miss the thing entirely with five rounds. No worries though; I have no idea what grain the ammo is that I'm shooting, nor do I know if the sights are set up for it, so we moved up to 25 yards and fired off some more rounds with success.
Shooting a short barreled Mosin with horrible ammo on the edge of darkness is a wonderful experience; if this were on a battlefield somewhere I am sure I would invite a volley of hot metal from anyone within a one mile radius:
You can see the white edge of the box on the left there in the first picture. Being proper Hicks, we stapled a blaze orange hunting license sleeve on the middle of the box as an aiming point and shot off hand. The ammo was grouping nicely at the upper left of the box, so there was no way we were going to get hits at 100 yards. It also didn't help that I had the rear sight set to 200 yards, or that the front sight post was painted with dull orange fingernail polish.
My plan is to shoot the hell out of this gun when I get some brass cased ammo for it that won't eat away any more of the bore. For some odd reason considering the economical availability of these rifles, the market for 7.62x54R is awash in the shittiest possible loadings, as nobody seems to give enough of a damn to make non-corrosive cartridges that may have the potential of being accurate.
Just about every major ammo manufacturer has a budget line of cartridges that have perfectly acceptable accuracy, so why don't they make any of this stuff? The only casings that you can buy for it is made by Norma, and it must be stamped from metal retrieved from some alien temple on Neptune as it costs a fortune. I really don't even think that Norma produces as much as they just advertise it to see if anyone is stupid enough to try and order it.
Hopefully the boxer primed ammo that I'm looking at buying will hold decent groups. This rifle is going to get some use.
“To think that they can carry any kind of facsimile weapon to school is absurd, but they see it on TV and they want to show off that they’ve got something similar. It’s an uphill battle for us and it’s good when the students help us out.”
Also, if firing makeshift projectiles at random stuff is your idea of fun, take a look at this slow-mo video of an air cannon firing 4 foot long flourescent light bulbs at mannequin heads!
"Baltimore can be a safer city, and with the help of the Maryland General Assembly, we can pass tougher penalties on illegal gun possession and we can continue to reducing gun violence to historic lows," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
And who wouldn't want to reduce illegal gun possession, right? Wait though, what exactly is her definition of illegal gun possession?
She doesn't enlighten us on that, but her proposal gives you an indication:
The bills the mayor will push are for up to 15 years in prison for felons in possession of a gun and a mandatory 18 months in prison for anyone carrying an illegal and loaded weapon.
Let's break it down: Felons in possession of a gun. The Mayor starts off right out of the gate about repeat gun offenders who are dangerous bad guys, and that is what she would lead you to believe she is after, but she is not suggesting 15 years for a violent gun offense; she is saying that possession of a gun contrary to written code is grounds for 15 years off your life, regardless of intent. If an individual served a two year sentence forty years ago for possession of marijuana, that individual can get a 15 year sentence if they live in a residence with someone who owns a Marlin .22 rifle. Same individual in a car pool van that gets pulled over, and one of the passengers has a legal .25 auto in their pocket: does that count as a "felon in possession of a gun?" I would bet that it does.
Now, to the issue of anyone carrying an illegal and loaded weapon: carrying an unloaded weapon is useless unless you are carrying it to the range, and again, I've never seen that qualified. Usually laws are written in an attempt to cover the person who sticks their unloaded gun in the trunk of the car and goes to the shooting range, but even that gets hemmed up as in the case of Brian Aitken. And if you make guns as illegal as possible for anyone to own, you end up with a handy tool to make anyone a criminal. So really the law is aimed at anyone who has a gun and ammunition on or about their person, and there's a lot of grey in their for the legal minions to work with.
But what about the dangerous criminals who repeatedly get caught using a gun in the commission of a violent felony? How do we ensure that they go to prison for a long long time? If you have to ask that question to somebody, you're a retard. I mean that.
Fisking this tired mantra about strengthening gun laws as a means to put criminals behind bars is getting old. It has nothing at all to do with the criminals and everything to do with control of the general population, as they are the ones who are most likely to get hung up in this mess, and there are money making ventures in that.
If a violent scumbag repeatedly gets caught hurting people, then you already have the Nature and Cause to lock them up for eternity. A gun law is an inappropriate and unnecessary tool to that end. If there are gangbangers who won't stop shooting up the streets of Baltimore, than the next time you catch them committing a violent act, that is your chance to keep them out of society by using the laws against hurting people that have existed since Exodus. It ain't any harder than that.
So this whole "we can't stop them unless you pass this law" is a bunch of bullshit that needs to be called out.
If you believe hollywood, a stun gun will knock you unconscious so that your attacker can conveniently rob you of your goodies. In the really real world, using a stun gun on your victim will probably just piss off your attacker, who may then be inclined to use a more proven weapon platform to ventilate your abdomen and send you running away with piss soaked pants.
One of the men opened the driver’s side door and hit the victim with a stun gun several times while demanding money, Perok said.
The victim, a Woodbridge man, then pulled out a handgun and fired towards the men, he told police.
The clerk, a concealed weapons permit holder, said the men were no more than a foot away from him when he shot at them.
“I’m sure I hit one with at least one shot,” he said a few days later.
He did better than that! I am glad that he survived the attack with minimal injury, and that he doesn't have the burden of killing someone on his conscience or reputation. A win win in my book.
According to the Washington Times, there were 131 homicides in the District in 2010, down nine percent from last year. It’s the lowest number of slayings since 1963.
While I'm reluctant to give quarter to DC's Police Chief or her insane crime lowering ideas, her reasoning on the tip line and community intel seem logical. Until there's some bona fide evidence that gunshot detectors do anything but cost a fortune, I'll dismiss the technology part on its face, and note that Chief Lanier made no mention of the hard work and long hours that DC cops put in to lower that homicide number. Shame on her.
The Times reports that it is the second straight year that homicides have declined in the city and the seventh time in 10 years that the nation’s capital has recorded fewer than 200 homicides.
Hold the phones!! Did that just say the second straight year? As if homicides have declined in two years instead of jumping up? I could have sworn I heard predictions about all the shootings, blood in the streets, and mass chaos that would surely stem from the Heller decision.
Who would have known that ordinary human beings could behave themselves?
Well, maybe not these guys; but it seems that the general population doesn't strike the notion to go out on a killing spree that day just because they have a Mossberg in the closet.
The first one has a lunatic swinging a tree trunk at a store owner in a successful robbery attempt. The store owner tried to get the bandit hammered unsuccessfully. What would you do if you were armed with a firearm and this guy came in and tried to rob you? The cops consider it armed robbery, but I might have tried to take that stick away from the guy if it happened to me.
The second one happened in Canada where some wonderfully misunderstood youths were trying to get charity money from a motel using a musket. They didn't get the funds. In this particular incident, I would see good cause to justify deadly force, as a musket is still up to the task of killing someone as any other firearm. What would you do?
"To gain entry to the store, which is on a secure military base, customers must present valid identification, pass through a metal detector, yield to the security wand and surrender cellphones and cameras.
To buy a gun, clients must submit references and prove that their income is honestly earned, that their record is free of criminal charges and that their military obligations, if any, have been fulfilled with honor. They are fingerprinted and photographed. Finally, if judged worthy of owning a small-caliber weapon to protect home and hearth, they are allowed to buy just one. And a box of bullets."
There are lots of things to be critical about in this article, the first of which is the claim by the author William Booth that Mexico's ridiculous gun laws are "a matter of pride" for Mexican citizens. How the hell does he know that? Did he do a survey? How can he say that with any authority when he claims later that legal gun sales are declining, but the black market is booming? Sounds to me like the proud Mexican citizens are doing an end run around the shenanigans and getting guns however they want.
The very last paragraph says that if you want a gun, just ask a Mexican police officer to provide you with an illegal one, the easiest way:
"The cop will bring it to your house and show you how to load it," Islas said. "Of course, it is technically illegal."
Well, no shit! There's about the only truth you will find in this whole article. Do notice the use of the word "technically," as in it's not really illegal despite being, you know, illegal. Kinda like 'rape-rape:' the police officer is friendly and providing you with a weapon that's not on Mexico's only gun store's precise list, so it's "technically" totally OK and stuff, and not at all a bad thing; and if you have sex with a girl that's under the age of consent, who's too drugged up to consent even if she legally could, and it like happened a long time ago and stuff, and you're popular, than it's OK too.
I'm starting to get the hang of the leftist ideology that breaking the law is cool as long as it's done properly.
As an afterthought, I wonder how many of those weapons handled in "strict military fashion" are handed to the ordinary citizens by friendly police officers -- who are only breaking the law out of the sheer goodness of their hearts -- and don't make it onto the list of extreme precision. You know the ones I'm talking about:
"Police Sales Only," is filled with weapons that ordinary citizens cannot legally buy - the heavy stuff, such as Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifles and Israeli Galil machine guns, plus gas and concussion grenades, as well as bulletproof vests and helmets.
Rest assured that those friendly police officers do not sell them illegally to the bad men who are flooding the US with narcotics. Nooosirrrreeeebob! It's odd though that I've actually seen pictures somewhere of weapons taken from Mexican drug cartel members' cold dead hands. Come to think of it, I've seen all of that stuff exactly as Booth has stated here, taken from criminals, and a lot of those weapons look just like the hardware that the Mexican military and police forces use.
Hmmmm. I'm thinkin that this gun store may keep precise records of firearms sold over the counter, but isn't keeping the most meticulous count of what gets sold under it. Must be easy to keep track when you're running the only store in an entire nation.
"Sedille told investigators that, during sex play the night of Dec. 21, he took a handgun he thought was unloaded from a shelf beside the bed and racked the slide back, cocking the weapon. According to the affidavit, he told police he placed the gun to her head and it fired."
Uh-huh. "It fired" all on its own. Savagely violating the first three rules of gun safety had nothing at all to do with it.
When I was a kid, raising the question in school of what was the most awesome fighter plane ever would have brought about heated discussion between the powerful F-14 Tomcat, the nimble F-16 Falcon, or the fast F-15 Eagle, with perhaps the delusional foreign exchange student from Krasnoyarsk whimpering something about a 'Megg thayerty whon' before being told to shut his commie face. Mentioning the Supermarine Spitfire at the time would have probably invited a punch to the nuts, unless one of the beasty boys had ever layed eyes on one of these British beauties.
If you throw sexy into the criteria of awesomeness, the Spitfire would rise to the top of the stack. Damn, that plane is gorgeous.
If I were a wealthy entrepreneur, I would buy one of these in a heartbeat and learn to fly. I might even pick up eight Browning 1919 machine guns for like $30 bucks from my local gun show to bring the plane up to its full authenticity, which would serve to keep the icky guns out of the hands of the local Mexican drug cartels who buy them up with impunity.
Flying sexy fighters and saving the children is what it's all about!
You may have seen the bright orange hand written letter that a US Navy SEAL posted outside his hospital door advising all who enter that they better go elsewhere if they feel sorry for him.
Gettin' some on Christmas morning! Is that wrong of me to say? Do note the removal of the trigger guard on the M249 SAW, as well as the one Soldier yelling while not using his sights. Also, Magpul magazines are pretty standard now.
Hamas choses Colt. Looks like a CAR-15 with 4X Colt optic. Those yahoos seem to have good trigger discipline, which is well enough cos' we wouldn't want violent terroristic militias running around without the proper level of gun safety.
More violence in Israel. Third pic down shows an Israeli cop using a tactical throat restraint. I hear chicken wire gives the same effect.
"Armed man at Mormon temple killed in Utah shootout"
That's how the title reads, and from what little information there is in the story, it sounds like a good shoot by the police. The problem here is the use of the word "shootout."
Let's consult Dictionary.com: shoot-out [shoot-out] –noun 1. a gunfight that must end in defeat for one side or the other, as between gunfighters in the Old West, criminal groups, or law-enforcement officers and criminals.
Discarding the rest about military skirmishes, hockey, and soccer, I note the requisite word "gunfight." Let's look at that: gun-fight [guhn-fahyt] –noun a battle between two or more people or groups armed with guns, esp. a confrontation between two gunfighters using revolvers in the frontier days of the American West.
So there has to be more than one person, and the parties involved battle with one another using arms of some sort, especially revolvers, and there has to be defeat by at least one party.
Reading through the story, I find no battle between two or more parties using firearms. Everybody involved were armed, one guy got shot by another guy, so I guess that constitutes defeat, but there was no shootout. I guess "somebody got shot" isn't an exciting enough headline for a worthless article. For your edification, this tragic story is about a real gunfight.
There's not really a lot going on out there in the news world, so I thought I would hammer on some no-name journalist at a small time news page over something petty. Good morning to you too.
This is pretty good advice: don't leave your empty big screen TV and entertainment system boxes by the trash can where the heathens can see it and get ideas; but then again, perhaps leaving your OD green Mossberg JIC tube leaning against the wall outside of your door may give potential thieves an understanding of how your Christmas went, and they may pick another door to kick in.
Sadly, this is probably closer to the mark for 99% of so called survivalists. I laughed my ass off to this one, and there's more here. ****NSFW - Severe language warning**** Also, do not have a mouth full of liquid when you watch it:
Some creepy older man in a red truck pulled up next to my 12 year old nephew at the bus stop yesterday morning and explained to him that there was a two-hour school delay, and that my nephew should get into his truck where it was warm. This was in a remote location on a far out of town country road, not in a subdivision, and there was no such school delay. There was no other conversation, no monologuing about strangers and such, no questions asked; my nephew just turned on his heels and ran back into the house.
That's how to do it.
Turns out that a creepy older man in a red truck pulled the same type of stunt in an adjacent county the week before with similar results. Maybe there is hope for the next generation after all.
Still, my family is fresh out of emotion these days with all the hospital drama, so something like this tends to attract raw anger. My sister's advice to me this morning as we were watching for nephew's bus to come from the big bay window was that I could shoot through that window if I had to if creepy guy pulled up and tried to steal our flesh and blood. She had mentioned that it was getting close to the time when nephew had to walk outside and that she had to retrieve her pistol while we waited by the window. I told her not to bother as I had one for each of us at that moment in time.
Turns out that the store owner is a Marine and Vietnam veteran. Before you impulsively try to shoot a man with a Bryco and steal his shit, you may want to find out if the guy had previously made the choice of hunting down and killing people as a means to earn an income, and later wrote a book about it that features a front page picture of him holding a real human skull. That information would come in handy.
Also, it's best to assume that a buisiness man/woman whos wares are valuable and durable goods will probably be armed. Just a thought.
The sickness attacked my household with full furious force this weekend, and I didn't get anything done. My wife took the most of it and was basically totally incapacitated. As I have a fantastic immune system, I was in the best shape, and had to keep the kids from burning the joint down for three days; they've been stuck inside for quite some time and are anxious to do something fun.
Feeling like you've been punched in the guts and beaten across the back with a bat makes you not want to take two toddlers and a baby for a stroll in the mall, which come to think of it is probably where we picked up this sickness to begin with. Pretty much happens every time we go there.
I did finally slip out of the house for an hour during nap time to test fire a few loads that I made up for the 308. Without that hour, I was going to detonate from stress.
It was cold, and the wind was very gusty. I tried to pin down exactly where an accuracy node was for a load using RL-15 that I've been playing with for awhile, but it didn't work out. I did however get wonderful results from my attempts to clone Federal Gold Medal Match; still with 42.5 grains of RL-15 under a 175 grain Sierra Match King in a FGMM case, but this time loaded .010" shorter. It made all the difference, with one group putting five into just over an inch with the wind spreading it horizontally, and the other five shot group going into .700" when I fired it during a lull in the wind.
It took me a few shots to get the Super Sniper scope sighted in, with one of my sighters maliciously aimed at small animated wildlife that ended up missing its mark, but perforating a pitchfork handle an inch to the right. I like being able to adjust the parallax. Good stuff.
Right now I am still suffering from the sickness, and will probably not be very prolific with blogging. Time will tell.
There was one in every ditch on every curve yesterday in the two and a half hours it took me to drive the 20 miles home. In years past, snow was quite common in Virginia, and my fellow Virginians could be counted on to keep their bumpers to themselves while maintaining an orderly fashion on their way home. Not so anymore, as there are so many dipshits that freak out with the first dusting of snow, careening around corners and smashing into shit that it makes my head spin.
I literally pulled every get-home trick from my native backroad knowhow book, and at every turn had to turn around as there was a moron in the ditch in two-wheel-spinning-four-wheel-drive. There were also a great deal of Civics and Frontiers tore up too.
It amazes me these days the false confidence that some morons get in the snow just because they're driving a massive 4X4 SUV. I have it on good authority that most SUVs of this generation are built from bona fide suck-ass, and can't climb their way out of a frost covered field, so the idea that they would help incompetent drivers make their way down a slippery road while texting on their cellphones is a stretch.
My parents used to purposly take me out in the snow just to teach me how to drive in it, so that one day I wouldn't be one of the afore meantioned dipshits stuck on the side of the highway.
It worked.
I guess there is something to be said about the huge influx of people to my area, as the general population went up a genuine five fold over twenty years. I did not fail to notice yesterday the amount of out of state license plates from the likes of Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, and such, which brings back horror stories of every time driving on Maryland roads. Sorry Marylanders, but I have to call y'all out as being, by far, the worst drivers in the union. It's not even a contest. Missouri drivers I would say come in second, although they did alright earlier this week in the winter wonderland which was St. Louis. And before you say it, I obviously don't rank Virginians as being very high on the list anymore.
Since I had the kids in the car this morning, I gave an extra three quarters of an hour for the jackassery and mayhem to die down before venturing about on the highways. Worked like a charm. I can't wait for the next snow, as the XTerra is pretty fun to drive in the mess.
At Sniper's Hide, eighteen pages of beautiful black boomsticks. There's some money in some of those rifles, like the Knight's with night vision and suppressor that probably crests $8,000 or more.
Here's the video footage taken from the room where it went down.
It was apparent that the shooter was not using live ammunition. Also, he fired the gun once or twice towards the ground accidentally. An armed man in the building killed him dead, which is odd considering the video says that the gunman took his own life. If you go to this link, there's the same footage from another angle, but towards the end the video feed locks up and you can only hear what's going on. I count a total of fifteen shots fired.
There's a lady that tries to fight back by hitting the gunman with a purse. I think her efforts would have been more effective if she had pulled a J-frame from that purse and put a 125 grain hollowpoint right through his twisted mind.
I have heard that the scumbag had a lengthy criminal record, as we already anticipate these days.
This testimony flies right into the face of those who say to give your attacker exactly what they want, and do not resist. I remember vividly the time when a the deadly serial killer she's referring to was afoot in my AO, the second of three, and everyone was terrified. This girl, at 15 years old, fought for her life and won, and it's certain that she would be dead and in the ground if she had not.
The rest of that saying is: "If it doesn't move, pick it up. If you can't pick it up, paint it."
I laughed out loud at this cartoon at Terminal Lance,****NSFW, Language**** which has become a daily read for me. I remember one time saluting a Corporal in the PX parking lot at Camp Lejeune because his chevrons were unsat. I felt like an ass until I realized how much of an ass he must be feeling right now as he just got saluted because he didn't bother to keep up with his uniform.
Been with a family member in the hospital for the past few days. Everything's good to go, but everyone was bracing for the worst there for awhile. This on top of other obligations: financial, travel, other family; you know how it is.
This was a contender for a spot on my LR308; the task fell to the Super Sniper in the end though. It's on sale right now at MidwayUSA for $300 big ones!
I first layed my mitts on one at this year's Modern Day Marine Convension, and noted how nice it felt. It's good to know that some things are built well!
I took one look at the Edit Template page on Blogger and knew that it was too far over my head. I used one of their given templates, which still means that I'm uncool, but I wanted an updated look. That, and the way my old page was set up made it hard to read.
I'm really dumb when it comes to this sort of stuff. I only recently figured out how to "Follow" other blogs, or what it even means. And I still have no idea what the RSS feed thingy does. It's just there.
One day I will figure out how to make this blog look cool, but until then, I hope it's easier to read.
This post is rage against the electronic machine, and it probably ain't gonna be pretty.
My bane in life is that nothing electronic lasts around me, and that shit is for real. I'm waiting for the CIA to knock on my door with a one-way ticket to China for a new job sitting in an office across the street from the servers for their intelligence agency. If you want connectivity problems in a building, around office computers, or around people with cell phones, just sit my happy ass twelve feet away and it will happen. Mrs. CTone has commented that I have a magnet in my head.
Now that that is out of the way, whomever designs cameras, cell phones, and other electronic doodads can go blow a goat. Tonight the fam and I were decorating the ol' Christmas tree, you know, something that only happens once a year, and the only working camera in the house ironically was the one in my brand new but barely functioning cell phone; my seventh in two years. OK, technically my sixth as one of them - a BlackBerry - was slain dead by a 33" tire on my XTerra due to the shitty engineering of the bastards at Maxpedition.
Why yes, bitterness IS my middle name. How did you know?
Flashback to yesterday: I picked up the not-quite-two-year-old Sony A300 DSLR camera to take some pictures of the little ones, and when I turned the thing on it made this "Brrrrrraaaaaaaaappppppp" sound that emanated from the lens. Did the same thing when I turned it off. I went to reach for it tonight as it was a picture taking moment, with the kids hanging ornaments on the tree and all, and remembered that the Sony happened to not be capable of doing its designed duty due to suckage. My old standby is my shitty Canon PowerShit SD750 that had to be sent back to the factory brand new, right out of the package. . . . . .twice. Well, that camera sucks too! Turning it on gave me a white screen. It still makes a flash, and you can zoom in and out, but no picture takey takey.
My relationship with the PowerShit is not a nice one; the first time I used it was on a trip to Germany, and out of almost a thousand pictures taken, about a hundred of them you could make out what they were.
Mr. Goat, I am pleased to introduce you to the folks at Canon.
My new cell phone is a Samsung Captivate with Android operating system, and it randomly gets so hot sitting idle on my desk at work that it warns me to turn it off or it will burn up. Also, it turns itself off about once a week for no reason at all that I can establish. WTF?
I don't know much about low voltage electronics other than they are unreliable as hell. Laptops are a perfect example; anything with Windows in it only lasts about three months for me. That's not a lie. The only reason -- Only. Reason. -- that I no longer do Movie Guns anymore is because out of the three laptops that I own, and two desktops that I did own, none of them stay functioning long enough for me to do a post. Either the CD/DVD drive burns the fuck up the first time I use it, or Windows Media Player shits the bed (every time; I was burning the second CD I ever attempted in my new work laptop the day before yesterday and WMP took an unrecoverable dive. It does not work anymore), or the operating system crashes (often), or an update installs a driver that doesn't work and the computer won't boot.
I can't tell you how much moolah I would drop down for some tickets to watch a pride of syphilis afflicted lions tear apart the whole Microsoft staff in one horrific bloody massacre. I'd even spend the ten bucks for some stale popcorn.
I may need a custom made tinfoil hat to shield my magnet from my electronics, or the folks making em' need to figure this shit out and make them not suck. It's true that I may be a mutant - I have DVD players that don't work, cell phones that don't work; I've seen every register at my local Wal-Mart reboot simultaneously at the very moment I swiped my bank card . . . .twice (once while the Mrs. and I were dating and, no shit, I was right then telling her about how I have some sort of issue around electronics).
The chances though that it's really me are slim, while the chances of mankind making mother boards and microchips so small that the copper running through them grow from the heat and short out are startlingly high. It speaks volumes though, to me anyways, that there are so many things that we humans use day-to-day that are just not built to last. If they were, then I wouldn't have so much to bitch about, now would I? What has to be done or not done for some people to build useful stuff that doesn't fail when you need it? Why is it that products used nowadays that has low amounts of voltage running through it barely seem to make it through the year? Is it because technology is advancing at such a rapid pace that it's better to just buy a new phone every year than update it?
I will make it my Christmas wish to have one electronic gizmo last the full 2011 year, or the fuckers that build the stuff will again hear my wrath!
The Navy would like to have a fully functional 64-megajoule system aboard a ship by 2025.
A shot of that power could reach a target 100 nautical miles away in a matter of minutes. The projectile would travel so fast that no warhead is needed; kinetic energy is sufficient to destroy its target.
Killing baddies with the shear awesomeness of fast moving metal! RIGHTEOUS, RIGHTEOUS!!!!
Now, the Navy wants to have this weapon adorning their poop deck by 2025, which isn't all that far away. My hopes are to be toting one of these beasties with a walnut stock in the backwoods of the Old Dominion no later than 2050 or so. Think it's possible?
Once I vaporize a few hundred groghounds and a dozen elk with very fast metal, I envision writing an article on the matter about how 10 megajoules is not humane enough to drop an entire herd of whitetails with one round, so it's best to stick with .22 caliber railguns or higher and leave the pussy .17 caliber rounds for the plinkers.
It is being reported that some immoral piece of scum has done gone out and violated the good intentioned rules of the University of Mary Washington by bringing a handgun on campus. When will these people learn to not break the rules!
Oh, and none of this is confirmed, and it's a day old, but it's still at the top of the page on Fredericksburg.com.
That banks will just hand it over without question based on the presumption of force, without seeing any sort of weapon, begs the question of why banks need vaults and tellers to begin with? Why not just have a wall of ATMs inside so that would-be robbers don't have anyone to rob? If Federal Reserve Notes are so valuable that they need armed guards to store them in massive steel vaults, why is it that it's so easy to just demand it at the counter with some tough talk?
Sure, anyone crazy enough to suggest that they have a gun and will shoot you if you don't hand over the loot may be able to back up their claim, and tellers aren't going to wait around and get shot over some baseless paper, but my question still stands: why even have people in banks anymore to begin with?
A Dutch Madsen short barrel Light Machine Gun. . . . . . . . with a forward grip (scroll down)!!! More here if you want to see how real SWAT operators fire a Madsen: with eyes closed, no cheekweld, and stock under the arm pit!
Expert badge for that one!!!!!!
There is an 80+ year span in firearms development in this one single post on this thread about the war in Brazil. There are weapons there that I don't even have time right now to identify. I get a kick out of seeing the Bushnell 3200 fixed 10X scopes used on M16s, FALs, and beat to hell, wooden stocked bolt action rifles! Awesome!
Also, seeing pepper-haired Klauseus Schteinmunfuertez with a 10" AR15 sporting a ginormous Counter Sniper scope with an EOTech tacked to the side gives me the screaming giggles. Is he wearing the MP3 player Oakleys?!?!?
Oh man! There's an AK type rifle with an upside down stock, a guy casually taking pictures of some poor fella who just got cut down by gunfire, a bare-chested balaclava'ed drug dealer totin' a SIG 551/552 hybrid, and my personal fav, the one guy on a mounted machine gun of some kind cowered down in terror while his buddy gets some with the Right Arm of the Free World!!
I can't stop giggling!
Go check this one out folks; you don't want to miss it!
Last night I replaced my Horus Hawk scope on the LR308 with a 10X Super Sniper. The Hawk has been good to me thus far, and the reticle works better than I had hoped, but it's a hunting scope, and the only thing I hunt these days are Shoot N' C targets. It was time to go to dialing in my shots for more precision.
Since Christmas time is right around the corner, I couldn't afford to drop $1,000 on a Leupold or Nightforce. The Super Sniper scopes are budget priced and have a reputation for being tough as nails. Also, the fixed 10 power with parallax adjustment makes it super simple, and I figured I might as well give Mil-dots a try. It's got MOA adjustments, which these days are old school considering the long range shooting world has realized the benefits of the Mil/Mil type scopes.
Thinking about that, how is it that it took mankind like fifty years or more to figure out that ranging in Mils and then doing complicated mathamatics to find out how to adjust the trajectory of your bullet in Minutes might be a stupid idea, especially in the heat of battle where even simple math is hard? One would think that Ludwig Von Tasco or whoever the fuck designed the first precision adjustable rifle optic would have put two and two together and just made it correct right from the start. Who knows; but now I have willingly joined this madness with the procurement of this type of scope. To my rescue is the Mil-Dot Master, which is pretty badass.
Comparing it with the Horus, the SS is significantly lighter, which makes sense as the Horus is a variable optic with a 50mm objective, while the SS is a fixed 10X with a 42mm objective. Glass is heavy, and the Horus has more of it. They are about the same size though:
I took off the Horus and added the SS upstairs on my kitchen counter so I could watch Lie to Me with my wife like a good husband should. There's only so much hiding in the man cave in the basement that she should endure. There's also a liquid attractant somewhere on that counter top that I normally reserve for when we watch Boardwalk Empire, as they somehow go together.
I continued with the learned trick of coating the inside of the Burris XTreme Tactical (matte black = tactical) rings with black silicon to give them more purchase on the scope tube. I had problems with the Horus sliding around in the rings until someone on Sniper's Hide gave me the remedy. The silicon also cleaned off of the Horus and rings really easy.
Once I had the scope mounted, I realized that the scope was too high, so I have to order some lower rings in order to get a good cheek weld. Oh well, it was a good evening regardless.
Of note is that I do not need a 20 MOA canted base to get this scope to 1,000 yards. Right out of the box, I started twisting the SS's turrets and found it to have 137 & 3/4 Minutes of total elevation, which is amazing even for a 30mm scope tube. The contenders for a spot on this gun were 1" and 30mm tubes from the likes of Burris, Bushnell, and Weaver, and none of them had more than like 60 Minutes total elevation adjustment. That means more cash for a canted base, as well as the task of figuring out what rings to buy with that base. Keep all this in mind when buying a scope. I have no idea how the glass compares with the Horus; I wasn't able to check it out last night as it was already dark.
This weekend if I get the chance to do some shooo-eeeehn done, I'll get some through-the-scope pictures at some wildlife to give an idea of the glass quality.
And, Russian heads of state continue to be more awesome than the US, as here the Prime Minister is helping a young boy holster a gold plated Makarov. Obama plays golf and gets stitches in his lip, while Putin plays with sniper rifles, takes down tigers, and flies airplanes. I see a pattern here.
Shooting long range is never a quick process. You have data books, wind meters, wristop computers, ballistics applications for laptops and phones, etc. and it takes a true marksman to put all that information together along with the fundamentals of shooting to make the projectile hit its mark.
The revolutionary advance involves an array of sights, sensors and lasers that reads the distance to the target, assesses elements such as air pressure, temperature, and ballistics and then sends that data to the microchip embedded in the XM25 shell before it is launched.
The round already knows how to get there before it's even fired. That's pretty cool.
"It takes out a lot of the variables that soldiers have to contemplate and even guess at," Lehner said.
****
Lehner said the XM25 was special in that it requires comparatively little training, because the high-powered technology does so much of the work.
"This system is turning soldiers with average shooting skills into those with phenomenal shooting skills," he said.
Let's not make it too easy boys!
I hope this weapon truly is a game changer. Military advancements have sometimes made old tried-and-true methods of warfare obsolete, like how artillery made fortified walls not so appealing as had been for thousands of years. Damn military/industrial complex!
"You get behind something when someone is shooting at you, and that sort of cover has protected people for thousands of years," Lehner said.
"Now we're taking that away from the enemy forever."
Awesome! So how long before I can get a XM25 on Bud's Gun Shop? I just hate when I can't get the shot on that doe-of-a-lifetime because she's selfishly feeding behind a big tree.
You have to be a real asshole to shoot deer well outside of your limits. Shooting animals at distance is cool if you can actually hit where you aim at, but this douchebag lobs round after round of .50 BMG at deer at a mile until he finally kills one. The reason I decided to post this here is to show my several readers that most rifle rounds actually do ricochet.
The ones ricocheting off the water near the end are perhaps the most dangerous.
The University of Mary Washington is a "Gun Free Zone;" and despite their insistence that the campus is safe, people still get hurt there.
The thing about it is, when you say that a facility is safe, and prevent folks from protecting themselves under written code, you have a contract; anything that happens contrary to that contract opens you up to a claim.
"The suit says UMW creates "an illusion of campus security." The school's literature and other advertising material "emphasize safety and note the presence of campus police."
The university assumed responsibilities for the victim's safety because she was a full-time student who lived on campus, according to the lawsuit."
Yup. This is interesting to me because the whole purpose of "Gun Free Zones" is to avoid the bloodsucking lawyers coming forward in droves to sue for some sort of negligence. It seems to me that the opposite is true.
Now the very policy that UMW took to insulate itself from littigation will probably cost $10 million. I hope that poor girl gets every penny.
It's telling though that students willingly embrace this assinine policy; in the past, UMW students have made statements to the effect that security cameras in the parking garage would have prevented the attack on the victim because the cops would be able to later identify the rapist. Read that sentence again, because I'm not making it up. That's the sort of youth that Americans are sending to these campuses.
That still doesn't take away from the fact that if a corporate type entity makes the statement that you cannot provide for your own security, as the entity will provide that for you, than when they fail at their stated duty, they can and will get their asses sued. Common Law can be a bitch.
