When in doubt. . .

. . .make shit up!

Opponents say the measure would undermine federal anti-trafficking laws and allow teenagers and people with a history of mental illness to possess semiautomatic assault rifles.

Uh-huh. Because that's what Americans are telling their Congressman and Senators in their letters. Please Senator, will you vote for this bill so we can sell guns to terrorists?

Come on guys! Can't you do one single freaking piece about gun legislation without saying something crazy? It's like you folks at NBC4 are biased or something.

CNN joins the fray

More on the dogma, as SayUncle correctly calls it, regarding the non-existant flow of extravagantly priced and ultra-rare weapons from the US into violence infested Mexico.

Linked to the CNN piece is a post about it from DownWithTyranny that takes the bait hook, line, and sinker. I posted a comment to try to enlighten; we'll see how that goes, but check em' out if you've got the time. There's plenty more gun confusion for you there, so comment if you can, but be polite.

There it is!

For all the nay sayers that don't think that our enlightened President would possibly ban guns, I link to Bruce who reflects on the dumbassery of Obama and his AG pick, Mr. Eric Holder.

RTWT.

Back already? See how Holder confuses automatic weapons (AKA machine guns) with semi-auto rifles?

The part that I'm going to slash at is this paragraph taken from the ABC News piece that Bruce linked to:

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

"I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum." Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.

Where have we heard of this lie before? Oh, that's right. From ABC News.

My question is when is that lying douche bag Eric Holder going to address the glaring loophole in our border? If Mexican gangs are able to smuggle overpriced semi-auto rifles into their country, and are able to smuggle people and drugs into our country, just how long do you think it's going to take for them to start smuggling RPGs, grenades, bet fed machine guns, and real AK47s that they got from bankrupt former soviet nations into the US in order to continue their drug trade?

You sure as hell can't get that shit here, and you know there's a huge market for it if the average cost of a AK47 in the US is $15,000.

Update: I didn't get a chance to read the second page of the article, but I notice another demon that raises its ugly head:

"I think closing the gun show loophole, the banning of cop-killer bullets and I also think that making the assault weapons ban permanent, would be something that would be permitted under Heller," Holder said, referring to the Supreme Court ruling in Washington, D.C. v. Heller, which asserted the Second Amendment as an individual's right to own a weapon.

I guess that would be two demons. The gun show loophole is not actually a loophole as gun dealers at gun shows have to follow federal regulations by law, which means they have to run a background check on gun buyers. The "unlicensed dealers" at gun shows that the Brady Campaign like to lie about don't have to follow federal regulations and run background checks for firearm purchases because they're not selling firearms, they're selling tools, books, military surplus, knives, etc. What they want you to think is that the occasional citizen walking around at a gun show with the Mosin-Nagant slung on his or her shoulder with a price tag is actually a unscrupulous arms dealer that is trying to find a bearded terrorist to sell the offending weapon to, instead of a free citizen looking to score an extra $100 in order to have enough money to purchase that Springfield Armory Operator he saw at table 14 - after a qualifying background check, of course.

The second thing is that silly "cop-killer" bullet nonsense. People eat that shit up because they don't know any better, and who could possibly be against something that saves cops, right? See here for a test that I did on this very subject that is actually the reason I started this blog.

There's no such thing as cop-killer bullets, and someone who is holding the position as the head law enforcement agent of this country should take the time to actually Google the subject before spouting ignorance.

Animal control fail

In Virginia.

Animal control tries to kill cow but instead kills the farmer. It sounds like a freak accident if the story is correct; for what that's worth.

Arkansas gun bill fails

The bill called for the removal of the law barring concealed firearms in churches.

It looks like it has lots of support, so I'm sure it will pass eventually.

Gun sales help Cabelas

I guess if you're going to invest right now, it pays to put your money into a company that is full of guns that people oh so desperately want to cling to.

A must see film

Instead of watching President Obama's speech last night, which would have just pissed me off, I decided to watch a movie on HBO called Taking Chance that I TVoed.

Go on over to Blackfive for the backstory of how LtCol. Strobl escorted the remains of a Marine named LCpl Chance Phelps to his home in Wyoming.

I first read about the story of LCpl Phelps a couple of weeks ago, and it dawned on me that I had heard his name before. I had to dig through some of the pictures that I had taken from 2006, but I found one of the baseball field and memorial named in his honor that is located on Camp Ramadi, Iraq, within thirty feet of the operations tent where I worked everyday.


Right behind it are the four stacks on the Southern edge of Ramadi that used to be notorious for providing insurgents a birds eye view of the camp. I would often sit on the edge of this memorial to smoke a cigarette as it provided cover from those towers. I often wondered who this Marine was and what the story was behind this inscription.

Now I know.

Thanks for the cover LCpl Phelps, and Semper Fi.

Maybe we should start locking up clueless news anchors

Here's a fun little piece from Lisa Bloom, In Session anchor at CNN.

And here's an idea of what she thinks about firearms for youths:

Are we out of our minds? I have long been saddened, as I interview one grieving family after another, that we lack the political will to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people, and even children, but now we’re making special kiddie guns?

I hate to break this to you, but youth sized firearms have been around for quite awhile. Actually, up until 1968, youths could mail order guns straight to their homes, and blood didn't run in the streets because of a lack of laws. The problems today are a parenting problem.

Pennsylvania, my beloved home state, has the shame of having the highest number of juveniles in the nation serving life without parole sentences. And now they want to lock up another kid and throw away the key.

Uhm, yeah. I'm not under the impression that a person realizes right from wrong on their 18th birthday; like on that very day they have some great epiphany. If a couple of 16 year old kids brutally murder a family, then they don't deserve to see the light of day again. I wouldn't want them walking around in the mall in my town.

But let me get this straight. You're saying that instead of locking up, say, violent teenage gangbangers that have zero problem obtaining a firearm from one of their fellow crackhead friends, the millions of non homicidal folks in this country should make the firearms that we have to defend ourselves from said violent teens useless by locking them up? Is that about right? Have you given any thought whatsoever about the unintended consequenses of that?

You don't need to tell me, I already know the answer.

Dial 911 and take a seat

It's going to be awhile.

A 6-year-old girl at Barkers Mill Elementary School in Clarksville had a pencil in her hand while walking. Her shoe laces became untied. When she tripped, the girl fell on the pencil point, puncturing her trachea.

The nearest EMS station, No. 26, is less than three miles away. An ambulance should have been there in a matter of minutes.

But it took 25 minutes for an EMS crew to arrive at the school.

When seconds count, help is only 25 minutes away!

A hell of a hangover to wake up to

Imagine waking up in the drunk tank to learn that you shot up a town last night and shot at police officers - all because you drank to much after getting caught embezzling $3 million dollars.

Sucks to be you!

I have a grand idea

Why don't they make guns illegal in schools, put up some signs, and post 'security guards'? That would surely have stopped these guys from firing guns at each other, right?

Oh, you mean they had already done all of that, and the criminals still had a shootout?

Weird. It's almost like criminals aren't deterred by laws and signs, and are smart enough to evade the minimum wage, minimally trained security.

Is there nothing else the schools could do to protect the students?

The sounds of war

In Mexico, a reporter is on an overpass while listening to automatic gunfire between drug dealers and the Mexican Army. None of it sounds like it's coming from a FN Five SeveN, and none of these automatic weapons came from gun shows in the US.

That doesn't stop CNN from publishing another fraudulent piece on how the US is responsible for the violence.

Pastor and Hakim note that the United States helps fuel the violence, not only by providing a ready market for illegal drugs, but also by supplying the vast majority of weapons used by drug gangs.

Pastor says there are at least 6,600 U.S. gun shops within 100 miles of the Mexican border and more than 90 percent of weapons in Mexico come from the United States.

And it's not just handguns. Drug traffickers used a bazooka in Tuesday's shootout with federal police and army soldiers in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

Robert Pastor has never been to a gun shop or gun show in the US, but has instead been living inside of his own little fantasy world where anyone can go to a gun store in the US and buy a bazooka. Seriously hoss, good luck finding one.

As I've stated before, Mexican drug dealers and cartels are not buying automatic weapons, grenades, bazookas, RPGs, mines, machine guns, and the like from the US, and 6,500+ people did not die in Mexico last year from handguns. That's a myth.

They're getting their weapons from the corrupt Mexican government, or from former soviet nations who have no reservations of selling heavy hardware to drug dealers. Why would these cartels go through the trouble of finding rare, expensive, coveted, and heavily regulated weapons in the US when they could get them cheap from Russia, China, or Czechoslovakia? Doesn't make sense, does it?

What, you don't think that the Mexican government would be that corrupt? Right after the article blames the US for all the violence:

"There is so much money involved in the drug trade, there is so much fear involved in the drug trade, that no institution can survive unaffected," Birns said.

"This has really revealed just how corrupt Mexican officeholders are," Hakim said.

In one recent instance, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who was the nation's top anti-drug official from 2006 until August 2008, was arrested on charges that he accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers while in office.

You don't suppose some weapons were exchanged somewhere within that $450k, do you? So to all the alphabet news agencies out there: quit drumming up this garbage. Please find something nonfiction to write about, or at the very least do some fundamental research before spreading this stuff around.

A deadly city for scumbags

A scumbag tries to rob a business owner and gets shot to death for his troubles.

It seems to me that trying to rob someone in Kansas City is not the brightest idea.

Movie Guns XXXIV

This week's Movie Guns post is not quite as lengthy as the last post. The movie that I had originally started has some pretty poor picture quality, so I shelved it, and instead opted to cover Rambo: First Blood.

This is the type of film that inspires countless young men to join the Army in an effort to be a bad ass. Unfortunately, a lot of the Speshul Forses stuff in this movie is fantasy, with very little tactical relevance. Special Forces I am not, but I have gone to some of the schools that some high speed special operators go through, and know that some of this is just Hollywood hype. Just know that my tough love attitude toward much of the substance in this movie does not lessen my love for the film in general.

The location of this movie is in Washington state, in a town called Hope. Our prestigious hero is John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone), who has just found out that the last guy from his US Army Special Forces unit died, making Rambo the sole survivor. He is on foot heading towards Hope when the town Sheriff, Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy), intent to keep "drifters" out of town, picks him up and drives him outside of city lines. That pisses Rambo off, so he heads back toward the town so the Sheriff arrests him.

The first pick is of the Sheriff's nickel plated Smith & Wesson Model 629, which he starts to draw when he thinks Rambo might give him trouble:

We'll see this gun again later.

The Sheriff finds a big ass knife on Rambo, and holds it up with the same look that I've had cops give me as a teenager when they noticed I was carrying a knife:

I've never cared for knives that big, and mine have always been considered tools, not weapons, or for hunting, which is what Rambo claims his is used for.

The over zealous Sheriff takes Rambo to jail where even more over zealous cops work him over.

I caught a glimpse of the department armory which consists of mostly M16s:


After the cops beat on him a little bit, a creepy looking Deputy tries to shave Rambo, making him flashback to his time in Vietnam and his torture as a prisoner of war:



Despite the intense suffering, Rambo survives his earlier torture with the help of his trusty porno mustache.

Back in his current nightmare, Rambo flips out and beats the cops in the jail to the floor. Sheriff Teasle tries to find out what all the racket is about when Rambo does a top secret Judo/Ninja Dragon kick; knocking the Sheriff down and making him negligently discharge his gun:


As he runs out the front door of the building, Deputy Galt (Jack Starrett) tries to shoot him in the back outright with a Winchester Model 88, but the Sheriff knocks the gun away:


This is one of the few instances where one of the film's actors actually puts the weapon up to the shoulder.

Rambo escapes to the great outdoors where his speshul forses training helps him fight The Man and win!

The Sheriff and his goons attempt to track Rambo down in the woods with a variety of mismatched M16s and a couple of Heckler & Koch 33s. Here is a pair of pictures where the Deputies flag each other as well as the Sheriff with their rifles:


Safety violators!!

Here are a couple of H&K 33s and a hybrid M16:




Rambo shows us his survival skills by making a super warm jacket out of an old tarp, thus making him impervious to the Washington cold. Here he is with his new jacket, and you can see his big ass knife in it's leather sheath on his waist:


As Rambo is hanging helplessly onto the face of a cliff, Galt tries to get some retribution for Rambo having made him his bitch in the jail cell by firing that Winchester Model 88 at him from a helicopter:


Rambo taketh his life with the skilled throw of a tactical assault stone that hits the helo in the wind screen, thus causing the pilot to gyrate on the cyclic and toss Galt to a righteous screaming death. Sorry, I didn't grab a gruesome picture of that.

Rambo does take Galts rifle and radio, and then tries to surrender to the Sheriff and his goons who are still up on top of the ridge. Rambo is standing there unarmed, but they open up on him with some full auto fire which just bounces off Rambo's skull:


Now shit's on!

Rambo takes off and prepares to take out all of the hostel little bastards with some pernicious booby traps that he builds during a little arts & crafts time:



He kills the dogs that were tracking him, and the Deputies start some indiscriminate fire with their M16s:



One by one the Deputies fall:


But none of them are killed because Rambo has a heart, you see. He takes the Sheriff at knife point and warns him that further action will not be tolerated:


Well, Sheriff Teasle calls in the National Guard, which the director of this movie thinks are a bunch of yahoos, and they appear to be. . . well. . .yahoos. All of them are cowards, but again Rambo shows restraint by not killing them mercilessly.

Here's Rambo heading toward the mine that he's using for a shelter with an M16 that he's holding by the carry handle:

That's a big no-no in the Marine Corps. Carrying your weapon like that will get you smoked for an hour or so.

The National Guardsman fire in vain at the mine where Rambo is with M16A1s:




And Rambo shows them how speshul forses handle an M16: by hip firing with his eyes closed:


No one hits any one, so the Lieutenant in charge of the yahoo brigade has one of his idiots fire a M72 LAW at the entrance of the mine:



But it takes more than a nuclear warhead fired from a Soldiers M72 to take out Rambo!

Rambo escapes from the mine, steals a National Guard truck containing one M60 machine gun and an assload of ammo, and heads towards the town of Hope. Some of the State Police demonstrate their lack of safety and gun handling by shooting over each others heads at the truck that Rambo is driving:


Along the way Rambo decides to shoot the town up, destroy buildings, and pretty much make his wrath known to the good people of Hope.

One of the places that he destroys is a gun store called "The Outpost," which he breaks into, dumps the ammo and cans of gunpowder - some of which is Red Dot - and lights the whole shootin match on fire:




The whole building goes up in a huge fireball, but Rambo's appetite for destruction is not quenched. He shoots up a couple of electrical transformers in order to bring about some darkness, which he uses to get all stealth-ninja and sneak up to the Sheriff's Department:

Firing a M60 one handed with his eyes closed is just another day in the life of a speshul forses soldier, and Rambo has the proper amount of veins sticking up in his arms to qualify as being in that elite part of the Army, because we all know that average sized guys just don't have what it takes.

Sheriff Teasle has his own personal armory in his office, so he grabs an M16 and some ammo and heads up to the roof to wait for Rambo:



Here he's seen with his S&W Model 629 while clearing the roof:


Rambo shoots the building up with the M60, and surprise surprise, uses the sights:


The fight is short lived as Rambo wounds Teasle with some automatic fire and wins the fight. Afterwords, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna), who trained Rambo, shows up to make him surrender. Rambo breaks down and cries like a sissy, thus betraying his eliteness. He's led out of the building by the Colonel with two State Troopers flanking him: one with a M16, the other with an unknown shotgun with folding stock:


In the bonus features of the disk there's an alternate ending which has Rambo taking Colonel Trautman's M1911A1, cocking it, and making the Colonel shoot him with it:


How was that for a Movie Guns? I can't have a collection like this without including Rambo. To tell you the truth, this one was a challenge to get pictures from because most of the scenes are filmed in low light, and for the most part there are no close ups of the weapons. Throughout there is that military drum beat music that I talked about earlier showing the viewers that something military and organized is happening.

Well, I had fun with this one, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Tune in Tomorrow

Today I spent time with the family, so tomorrow will be a Movie Guns post.

Maybe then I'll also get around to responding to all of the comments on my older posts.

In the cradle of freedom. . .

. . witness the decline of humanity.

Cardozo High School looked like a police substation Wednesday thanks to all the men and women in blue patroling the area after Tuesday's outbreak of fighting.

Yes, this would be in DC: the capitol of the most powerful country in the world. This is where our ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice are supposed to be at their most influential.

I can't even understand what most of the people interviewed are saying. And notice that one guy doesn't even want to be seen on camera. My only guess is that he's concerned for his safety in front of a high school in our nations capitol!

I desperately want to move my family to Wyoming.

DC crime cameras don't stop crime?

Who knew?

This is a pretty long article, but go get yourself a cup of coffee and read it. It's worth your time. These cameras may not be as Big Brother as you would think, but they're still an invasion of privacy that are not effective at their assigned task: catching criminals.

A taste:

In warning Congress that cameras are “readymade for abuse,” the ACLU’s Johnny Barnes read an excerpt from a New York Times Magazine article on the surveillance boom.

Reporter Jeffrey Rosen spent some time with the fellows who watch CCTV feeds in London:

“[W]hen you put a group of bored, unsupervised men in front of live video screens and allow them to zoom in on whatever happens to catch their eyes,” Rosen wrote, “they tend to spend a fair amount of time leering at women.”

The blokes in the control room zoomed in on big boobs and teenagers necking in cars.

Hard to imagine it doesn’t happen here, though ever since the Wall Street Journal blew up its surveillance network, the department has not been foolish enough to allow a reporter to hang out in a control room with the people watching the feeds, despite requests.

The video footage may be erased after 10 days, but the door for nefarious use is open wide. And just because a citizen hasn't made a case yet doesn't mean that abuse hasn't happened.

This piece of the article carries the most weight:

A common lament of the civil liberties crowd used to be that the constant and increasing presence of surveillance cameras would acculturate modern society to an omnipresent government eyeball, and that we would miss something we didn’t understand until after we’d lost it: privacy.

Americans have already lost that. This is just the nail in the coffin.

Attempted puppycide, or self defense?

A UPS man smashed a german shepherd on the head with what looks like a small baseball bat while delivering a package, and it's caught on tape. The owner wants the UPS guy fired.

I can understand the outrage from the homeowners; that's to be expected. Homeowners always insist that their animals are harmless, and that they've never harmed a soul. This is, of course, taken from the perspective of the animals beloved owner - the same guy or gal who feeds the thing - and not from the perspective of a stranger that wanders onto the property to deliver a package that said homeowner ordered.

I like how the news only interviewed the owner of the dog and some random couple with a shitload of cats who are not surprisingly sympathetic to the dog owner. Weird.

It's almost like your opinion is being made for you.

I often read about all of the puppycide incidents that accompany forced entry raids by police, and I tend to be sympathetic to the homeowner in that particular situation, but that is on entirely different terms. Talk to anyone who delivers mail or food, or anyone who does residential utility work and you will hear at least one story of some "sweet innocent pooch who would never hurt anyone" going on the offensive and trying to take a bite out of his or her ass. I've had it happen to me. And I don't know of any delivery service that allows any sort of weapon carry, of even pepper spray for that matter.

The cat owners cannot understand why the UPS guy even approached the house. Uhh, maybe because that's his job? He also thinks it was unreasonable for the guy to be carrying a club when he probably had a cellphone. We all know that a cell phone will stop a 65lb. running dog in his tracks.

Well, just watch the video for yourself and be your own judge. Me? I would have done the exact same thing: do my job and deliver the mail. If some happy go lucky dog wants to be a hero and chase after me then I would probably bust him across the head too.

Update: See! People always swear that a pet is harmless when it obviously isn't. I believe that it's because people humanize their pets in their mind.

She said she's upset and saddened and just wants to be back home with her two children. She said she knows the 18-foot snake never meant to harm her son.

“She didn't clamp onto him. If she wanted to try to kill him, she would've crushed him, but she didn't,” Melendrez said

I'm not blaming the snake - it's only being a snake and doing what snakes do, but this woman thinks that the python was making a conscious determination to play with a 3 year old kid. It wasn't:

In a jailhouse interview Wednesday afternoon, Melendrez said she and her husband, who is also charged with felony child abuse and neglect, were baby-sitting an 18-foot python when it somehow broke free from its cage and went for their son.

"But. . . but. . . but. . .Eve was only going for my son to see if he wanted to go outside and play some T-ball!! She would never hurt anyone!!"

According to Metro police's arrest report, the 3-year-old suffered several bite marks in addition to being essentially strangled when the snake, named Eve, began to coil itself around the small boy.'

I suppose that Eve was just trying to give the boy a gentle hug.

I don't think it's a felony; the couple owns snakes like this and take measures to keep the kids separated from them. This seems to be a freak accident. Good thing the kid survived.

What a jackass

He would have been better off knocking on the prison gates.

What did he think he was going to accomplish?

Brock drove up to the north barricade at the Capitol late Tuesday afternoon, saying he had a delivery for the president, Schneider said. After further questioning, he admitted he had a rifle in his truck.

****

A search of his truck turned up several rounds of ammunition, Schneider said.

Who tries to go on a shooting spree with a couple of rounds? And how terrifying is it that all that ammo was "unregistered?" Scary stuff folks.

Why pocket holsters are a good idea

Because nothing says "I'm a complete moron" like shooting yourself in the leg with your own handgun.

. . .and behold a High horse:

and his name that sat on him was Jim Newell, and Smell followed with him.

Gun haters are so ignorant it defies description.

Huge, Fancy Shooting Range To Open in Virginia
Largest range in country to teach citizens how to shoot
people.

Wow. The rest of this trash is identical in tone.

On a day when another major local headline is, "Va. Tech Shootings Archive Now for Public Viewing," some impeccably time-conscious citizens of Virginia tell the Washington Times they are prepared to open "the largest shooting range in the country" this week in Ashburn.

"Time conscious" huh? It's almost like he believes that there's something evil going on here, like the former Soldiers and federal agents that make up the staff of the Silver Eagle Group are so incompetently evil that they deliberately picked an arbitrary day to open their facility, instead of opening it on the day of the VA Tech massacre happened; a massacre of defenseless students in a school just like the one these guys will teach you how to survive in.

What, exactly, is your point?

Because the facility announced that it "is set to open this week" on the same day as NBC News announced the public release of a report from an incident that happened 22 months ago, we're supposed to think that there's some sort of intent? The information isn't even available online yet, so was the opening premature?

Get a freaking grip!

There's not even a hint of rationality in the whole thing as the author believes that everyone who wants firearm training is a lunatic (including military and law enforcement), and learning how to clear your house means that you really think that Al-Qaeda might break in at any moment.

The range's owners will "focus on helping residents, members of the military and police officers protect themselves in schools, homes and other real-life situations." Hmm.

It appears that we can edit this sentence to say this simply by removing a few cumbersome words: "... focus on helping residents ... protect themselves in schools." With guns, that is!

What a dipshit. To think that NBC News lets this retard write stuff is the reason why I only look to mainstream for material to mock.

Note to you gun haters: you might want to police up your idiots every now an then to ensure that you don't look so stupid. We realise that you are mostly just misguided, but having people like this on board makes you loose your credibility.

Update: Found a second piece of trash at NBC News!

Just so there's no confusion, this is the face of media bias. Now that I've found two erronious and blatantly biased articles at NBC in fifteen minutes, how do I believe anything that they report? Do you think they get anything right on other subjects that you might be familiar with?

Shootout in Texas

I just found this video from Live Leak of a bank robber being shot to death by a security guard. Do note the tellers who are trapped and at the mercy of the gunman before they escape to relative safety.

It is not known if the dreaded "Gun Free Zone" signs were posted on the door - I can't imagine why this guy would roll the dice and risk a trespassing charge - but I am operating under the assumption that they were.



From what I can tell, the teller closest to the screen notices the threat at 2:05:40, and the SWAT Team doesn't show up on camera until 3:52:09, which means that the tellers were hiding defenseless in the back room for just under an hour before the cops even got within sight of the gunman's body.

Still think being unarmed in a bank is a great idea?

On the other hand, how bad would that have hurt if the gunman had been alive when hit by the responding SWAT Teams flashbang?!?!

Found via Ernie's House of Whoop Ass. ****DEFINITELY NSFW**** - but a cool place to visit.

My Photobucket account is down

Sorry for all the blank pictures. When I said that my last Movie Guns was a Super Post, I wasn't kidding; I'm way over my monthly picture quota so they shut me down.

I'm looking in to it.

Update: Well, I've exceeded my monthly bandwidth. The only excuse for that is that the Movie Guns posts have become more popular than my Photobucket account allows, so I'm going to have to upgrade. I'll see if I can make that happen today.

I'd like to thank everyone who comes here to view my posts. I never imagined that folks would enjoy them so much, as this bandwidth problem confirms. I've got this coming up weekend off so I'll have to get started on a new post this week.

Thanks again!!

Update: My account is working again and the pics are back up! Thanks to my readers for giving 440,010 hits to that account every month!

Burning dog poo and the human response

Update: Scroll to the bottom for more info.

I just don't get it.

David posted at the War on Guns on another round of deceitful reporting on the "Mexico-drug-cartels-getting-guns-at-gun shows" alarmism; this time being reported by Fox News.

This story has been going round and round and round for a long time, and it stinks to high heaven, yet it keeps drawing attention because people still believe what the news tells them. I posted another story about it on Monday.

What are the facts?

Fact: Mexican drug cartels are in an outright war with their government. They are waging this war with the traditional weapons that wars are fought with: anti-tank rockets (M72 LAWs, apparently), RPGs, general purpose machine guns (specifically, the M60), heavy machine guns, mines, grenades, and finally, rifles like the AK47 (of the automatic kind, mostly), and M16s (with some AR15s). I'm sure there are weapons like the FN FAL and such, but I have no proof.

Fact: M60s like the one portrayed in this video are not purchased at gun shows; they are rare and expensive in the US ($25,000-$50,000), and are not being sold out of the backs of NRA member's vans here in the states for $100. It just ain't happening. With very rare exception, they are not used by US forces, but they are used by the Mexican Army. That's where the M60s are coming from, not the US.

Fact: M72 LAW (66mm) are no longer used by the US military because we have better equipment. It is, however, used by the Mexican Army. That's where they're getting them.

Fact: RPGs are rare in the US and regulated by the NFA, but you can buy them. The problem is that the rockets for them are regulated by the ATF. You file a bunch of paperwork with the ATF and then go through months of waiting, and on top of that you have to pay a $200 tax stamp - for every rocket, and that's if you can find them. But, RPGs are available for a low low price from Russia, China, and Czechoslovakia, which is where they're getting them.

Fact: Real AK47s and M16s are available in the US. They're subject to the NFA and regulated by the ATF, which keeps prices around $10,000-$15,000 each. That's no counting the $200 tax stamp and the above mentioned ATF paperwork. Cartel members are not buying them at gunshows because nobody is going to sell a rare $15,000 M16 or very rare AK47 for $400. Not happening. You can, of course, get a semi-auto AR15 or Ak47 look-alike for $1,000 at a gun show, which is likely what some of the cartel guys are doing, but the auto weapons are probably coming from Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, and the corrupt Mexican soldiers and police for a more affordable price, and would seem to be more popular.

As far as mines, grenades, and heavy machine machine guns go, they are too rare to be getting in the US; would be subject to the NFA; would be regulated by the ATF; would be prohibitively expensive, but would be way more available and affordable from unscrupulous countries like Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, and corrupt Mexican soldiers and police.

Now, I also see that people are alarmed by the cartel's acquisition of the dreaded FN Five SeveN pistol, which you will notice are used by the Mexican military, but are otherwise available from the US. I wonder where they're more affordable? Some of these cartels may be getting them from us by sending 'straw purchasers' to buy them from gun shows, but such buyers are getting a NICS check to get them, despite what you may have heard in the news. The little 5.7x28mm round may penetrate a Kevlar vest, but not nearly as readily as a rifle round. I would point out that wars are not fought and won using pistols; they're fought and won using rifles.

Honestly, do you think that these massive wealthy cartels have no foreign relationships? Do you really think they're sending gun-buying senoritas to the US to straw purchase premium priced weapons, many of them unobtainable, almost all of them rare, when they could just buy them from one of the many third world former soviet countries by the truckload without any sort of background check whatsoever? Why pay US prices for civilian semi-auto rifles when you can get real full-auto battle rifles for a fraction of the cost. Do you not think that the Mexican government is a major supply for these weapons? The Mexican government is as corrupt as it gets, and they're dirt poor to boot. You think that altruism is going to keep a police chief from handing over a couple of crates of automatic weapons to these cartels if they grease his pockets and refrain from shooting his officers?

If so then your as gullible as it gets.

So the next time you see one of these flaming news articles on your doorstep, pay it no attention because it's definitely full of shit.

Update: A Keyboard and a .45 shows us where the Barrett .50 caliber rifles came from, as well as the probable origin of grenades, dynamite, RPGs, and other splodey things - the Mexican military.

Sailorcurt, cross posting at The Sentinel, reaffirms that the 5.7x28mm rounds for the FN Five SeveN pistol - again, used by the Mexican military - are not coming from the US. If the rounds are coming from Mexico, than it's pretty fair to say that the pistols are coming from there as well. It makes sense considering the .38 Super "Super Guns" are popular in Mexico, and not so much here in the States as Snowflakes in Hell points out.

Another law enforcement imposter

Another victim that complied without question.

Stafford Sheriff's spokesman Bill Kennedy said the girl was driving in the area of Hope Road and Walker Way about 6 p.m. when a "police-style" vehicle pulled her over.

The vehicle had red flashing lights on the front and rear dashes, Kennedy said.

The suspect, who was not wearing a law enforcement uniform, asked the victim for her license and registration and asked her where she had been.

I didn't have time to cover this from yesterday, but again I point out that you should treat any interaction with law enforcement - especially if they're not in uniform or not in a marked cruiser - with some amount of question. Don't be a dick, but do maintain a sense of observation and vigilance.

Personally, I do not pull over for unmarked cars. If that ends up pissing some state trooper off, too bad. It's nothing personal, but my safety is my concern.

I don't see how using unmarked cars is sensable anyways. An unmarked black Impala running radar on the side of I95 is not inconspicuous or covert, however, John Q. Public also drives Impalas, Crown Vics, and Chargers, so thinking that I should pull over anyways doesn't sit well with me. I'll maintain a safe speed until a marked cruiser pulls up behind me because I don't want to be shot by some imposter with a blue light in his Caprice.

Good riddance

A teenager who committed two armed robberies in Stafford County in a week was ordered this week to spend 231/2 years in prison.

In Stafford Circuit Court, Naser Mihailovic, 18, received a total of 691/2 years with 46 years suspended.

Mihailovic robbed a man at gunpoint in England Run on Jan. 24 of last year, then held up two people a week later after following them home from a Spotsylvania restaurant.

They don't have much sympathy for scumbags around here, and he didn't even fire a shot. This sentence is straight from the judge; the jury didn't get to recommend a sentence because he was 17 when he committed the crime. If there is a next time, he'll get a longer sentence that won't be suspended. Notice as well that he is still facing more charges elseware.

His mother is pretty pissed. Boo hoo.

Mihailovic's mother was escorted from the courtroom after she screamed out, "You can't do that judge," once the sentence was announced.

Judge John Alderman's sentence Tuesday exceeded the state sentencing guidelines, which called for a maximum penalty of just under 16 years.

Prosecutor Andrea McCauley had argued that Mihailovic deserved a longer sentence. "He earned every day and then some," she said.

As far as I'm concerned, it's only a matter of time before he gets bold enough to kill someone.

Again, good riddance.

Could this be labeled under Future Weapons?

COLORADO SPRINGS - The search is on for the sword-wielding thief two tried to rob two convenience stores early Wednesday morning. The weapon is it described as a Star Trek Klingon-type sword called a "Batleth."

HAHAHA!! That's too funny, except that they were violent robberies, and the clerks could have been hurt.

Had I been a properly armed store clerk that set about shooting this guy rapidly for trying to take money by force, I would probably feel pretty bad about it the next day. I mean, how desperate do you have to be to use a Star Trek sword?

Oh, and the offenders description?

The suspect is described as a white male in a black jacket, blue jeans and wearing a black mask.

(snip)

. . .about 28 years old, 6 foot tall, with a medium build.

And a virgin, for sure; living in his parents garage, and he probably smells awful from never bathing. If you're a Trekkie and that offends, I do apologize.

You tube is corrupting our children!!!

Hawaii "authorities" think that kids just learned last week how to make pressure bombs from household chemicals by watching You Tube.

I can only imagine that some politician there is now going to be pressured to regulate the viewing of that site by minors. Ban it, ban it, ban it! Save our children from the toilet bowl cleaner menace! Maybe we should brand the kids as felons and ruin their lives!!

The whole thing is pretty silly, as kids have been making those things and blowing them up in schools long before Al Gore even imagined creating internets, but these days Americans need a clear direction to place blame. Americans need an enemy to fight against, and here the enemy is clearly a harmless website enjoyed by untold masses of people.

Maybe some restraint is in order

With using overwhelming force based on a phone call.

They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called "swatting" because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.

I understand that someone's life could actually be on the line, but SWAT teams are deployed with little hesitation these days; often times unjustifiably so.

But of all of the things in this article, none bothered me as much as this:

Tony Messina, a construction worker from Salina, N.Y., was swatted three times by the gang broken up by the federal authorities in Dallas. He was even arrested as the result of one call, because authorities found weapons he wasn't supposed to have while they were searching the house.

How could they screw that up three times? And he gets victimized twice because they take his guns away? I don't understand how the police didn't take note of the fact that it was a hoax the first time, and then exercise a little caution two weeks later, then a month later when they got a call. Are patrol officers not competent enough to check the place out before sending in a CTU Tac Team? Maybe they were interested in helping themselves to more of his Constitutionally protected property?

This guy got jacked up on the third raid:

Messina had been told to call 911 himself if the swatting calls happened again, and when the deputies realized it was another fraudulent call, Messina was let go. He said he suffered bruised ribs that kept him out of work for a month and a half.

"Ummm, okaaay Sir. . .next time just try calling 911 if this happens again. . . .we have no way of keeping track of what doors we bust down. . . .mmmkay?"

Seriously? If the 911 system is so "powerless" to stop these attacks, then we need to really buckle down of the use of aggressive tactics:

"Nobody ever thought anyone would get hurt or die from a SWAT call," he said.

Unbelievable.

Such compassion

I'm often pretty hard on the DC government, but I generally cut the residents some slack. Those people live under the yolk of nanny statism every day, and I often wonder why they put up with the government that they have; why they keep electing pompous elitists or slimy tax dodging scumbags.

Well, with compassion like this, who really cares about what your government is doing.

Citizens who would step over a dying man while they load their groceries are clearly "sheeple" in every distasteful, loathsome, and repugnant meaning of the word.

More on the Mexico violence

". . .there are almost 11,000 weapons in here; the vast majority of them seized since 2006. They come from Russia, from China, from Czechoslovakia, and of course from the United States, but the big problem for the army and anyone else fighting the drug gangs is as quickly as they seize these weapons, those gangs are re-arming themselves." - Jonathan Hunt

Well now, maybe we should start looking to close the Russian, Chinese, and Czechoslovakian gun show loopholes; not that it would do any good.

I'd like to make a withdraw

The next time you go to the bank, just tell them to give you all of the money. Don't make threats, don't say you have a weapon, don't even raise your voice. Hell, you don't even need to pass them a note telling them they're being robbed.

When the teller says "can I help you?" Just tell him or her that you want everything in the drawer and they will hand it over without question.

No, really.

After obtaining an undisclosed amount of cash, the suspect fled on foot in an unknown direction. There was no weapon seen or implied. No one was injured during the incident.

I've posted about this phenomenon before. Apparently society is so timid that "just give them what they want" includes people with no weapon and who make no threatening gestures.

Movie Guns XXXIII - Super Post!!

I had no intentions of this being a Super Post, but after I got started in what I thought was going to be a short post, I realized that I had taken almost forty pictures in the first twenty minutes of film. Overall I captured seventy seven frames, but all of them will not be in this post. You'll just have to go browsing through the Photobucket folder.

This post is full of old meets new in terms of the guns involved. There's a little something for everyone; if you're a revolver guy, it's there. ARs? Got them in spades. Mall ninja gear? Oh yeah.

The movie, of course, is 3,000 Miles to Graceland. I've been trying to find this movie for about six months, to no avail. My wife found it bought it for me for Christmas. Since I've seen the movie several times already, I'd figured that that was less time needed to do this post, but considering that I don't get more than ten minutes of uninterrupted time alone, that hope was short lived.

With so many pictures to cover, I'm gonna leave the storyline to your imagination. For the start of the movie we have our main character, Murphy (Kevin Costner) and friends - Zane (Kurt Russell), Hanson (Christian Slater), Franklin (Bokeem Woodbine), and Gus (David Arquette) - dressed up as Elvis in order to get inside of a Vegas casino and steal the money, which they do. Murphy is carrying a Franchi SPAS12 shotgun, which he uses to fire the first shot at the guards who are following them out of the casino, and when he hits the first guard, he goes flying six feet backwards:


Yeah, there's plenty of that in this movie too.

This is when all hell breaks loose. Hanson is firing a modified AR type carbine - it's pieced together from a bunch of different parts - one handed at the guards:


We get to see the awesome power of the mighty .223 Remington as the poor guards closest to Hanson get knocked clean off their feet by the little 50 grain bullets:

Sweetness!

Murphy reloads his SPAS12 with birdshot before firing it empty again:


Murphy then pulls two nickel plated pearl handled 1911s and starts blasting people in slow motion, because that's how he rolls:





He does a reload from cover before blowing another guard off his feet and into a slot machine:



To be fair, I think that it does look cool when the victim gets the snot knocked out of him, despite the lack of realism. How cheezy would it be if the victim just crumpled from the bullet hitting something vital? No fun, huh?

All of this gunfighting is going on to the backdrop of an Elvis impersonator singing amongst half naked dancing woman:

Woooohoooo!!

Back in the fight, one of the guards is firing none other than a Beretta 92F from behind a good deal of cover while another is firing a Remington 870 without cover. Guess who lives:



None of them seem to have ever held a weapon in their lives:


To add to the cool factor, Gus is blazing away with a Smith & Wesson Model 29. and even does a reload for your viewing pleasure:



He would have been better off if he hadn't broke cover before his reload, but we won't knock him too hard.

Franklin and Gus start getting their work done with short barreled (Short Barreled Rifle - SBR)ARs of unknown make. I've seen a similar model as these are, with the high top upper receiver, but can't remember who makes it:




Notice that they're using the 100 round Beta C-Mag magazines in the SBRs, and none of them are wearing hearing protection. I don't have any personal experience with rifles with barrels less than 14.5", but I'm sure that those little 8 1/2" barrels are LOUD!! If they would just put the gun up to their shoulder and use the sights they would be much more successful at taking out the opposition.

Anyways, Gus switches to a Beretta 93R which he fires dry, and is then seen reloading a Walther P99:



This whole time Zane is in an elevator that he's rewiring in order to make it go to the roof. He pulls a piecemeal AR from a guitar case - notice it has the A1 sight and no forward assist or shell deflector:

That's a strange looking pistol grip as well.

When the elevator door opens next to the raging gunbattle, Zane smashes a guard in the face with the buttstock. Look close and you can see the buttstock is made of rubber:


For some odd reason, he spends an entire magazine shooting the glass out of a ceiling to make it drop on three guards instead of just shooting them:


Murphy, Zane, Hanson, Gus, and Franklin jump into the elevator just as a plain clothes Vegas PD officer comes running around the corner with his Sig P228 in full song. The Sig changed to a Sig from a 1911 for just a moment. He manages to hit Franklin before getting a slug from Murphy's 1911 in the forhead:


The rhinestone cowboys make their way to the roof where they're supposed to get picked up by a helicopter. Murphy kneels down and gets ready to ambush the guards when they come through the door, and he actually puts the gun up to his shoulder and looks down the sights, which enables him to get two kills with four shots:



The guards have upgraded to Ruger Mini 14s, but they don't get any more hits on the robbers, nor do they manage to hit the helicopter that's right in front of them:


After the gunfight, the guys take shelter inside of a motel to count their cash. Hanson and Murphy have a disagreement on how the cash is split up, and Hanson pulls a nickel plated S&W Model 27 out and points it at Murphy, who has both of his 1911s in a custom double shoulder holster, as well as an unknown make pistol in a small of the back holster:




Murphy draws one of his now suppressed 1911s and kills Hanson, after which we get a glimpse of Gus' S&W Model 29 in it's vertical shoulder holster:



Moving right along, Murphy kills Gus, and thinks he kills Zane, but Zane was wearing a kevlar vest and survives. Zane goes back to the motel and finds out that a girl who he's been sleeping with, Cybil (Courtney Cox Arquette), her son has taken the money and stashed it. Zane is seen here pointing a S&W Model 5946 at her:


Soemwhere along the line I caught a glimpse of Murphy's Cold Steel Voyager:


There's a big gap in the shooting to make way for a plot, so later on in the film we have Murphy getting pulled over by Idaho Highway Patrol, who is itching for a gunfight with the notorious criminal. The cop has a nickel plated Colt Single Action Army (do you even need to ask the caliber?), which for some reason he decides to open the loading gate, spin the cylinder, and then thumb the hammer back until the cylinder stops. I'm no expert on single action guns, but I do think that that's a good way to ruin the lock:



Do note the lack of a front sight. I've read that old time gunfighters would file the sight off to make for a smoother draw, as they generally didn't use the sights anyways.

As the two fire rounds at each other the rounds pass by one another mid flight, and the scene shows this to the viewer:


I'll let you watch to see how the fight went down, but the victor is obviously Murphy, or we wouldn't have the rest of the movie to bother with.

Before I skip to the end gunbattle, I thought I'd show this unknown police officer's S&W Model 27 in blued steel as he points it at Zane:


Now for more shooting action.

Murphy meets with a friend named Jack to get guns and gear for the final showdown. Murphy gets another 1911, as well as a modified Mossberg 500:



Jack has hired the help of Hamilton (Ice-T) who is supposed to be as good as "a couple of guys." Hamilton walks up while playing with a Microtech Halo:

That's a kick ass knife, but a little spendy.

Zane shows up and gets the drop on Jack who is fondling a S&W Model 686:


What happens next is blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah, starts shooting it out with the Seattle SWAT team and Federal Marshals, who are all armed with H&K MP5s of some shape or form.

Murphy starts it out with his Mossberg, but Hamilton hands him a SBR type AR with one of those Beta C-Mags, which he starts hammering away with:



Jack is using a Sig P228, and this Ruger MP9 to shoot the cops:


SWAT answers back with the MP5Ns:



Hamilton decides to get his hand-to-hand on by skewering a cop with this big ass knife:

You can see the Microtech Halo in a kydex holster on his left shoulder.

And then. . . . .and then. . . .Hamilton, in an act of incredible ludicrousness, went above and beyond the call of stupidity by chaining himself upside down and flying out away from cover while spinning wildly in the air with a FN P90 firing in each hand:


Naturally, all of the cops find him to be easy pickings and promtly shoot him full of holes for his troubles:


Murphy picks up a FN M249 Minimi SAW and starts going buck wild; blowing up cars, fuel tanks, buildings; all the while he's killing SWAT cops like crazy:

Aledgedly, he's the son of Elvis. I don't recall reading anything about Elvis being a gunfighter or a badass, so I don't see the point.

At one point he appears to use the sights, and decides that the weapon is way more controllable with the fold out stock planted in his shoulder:



Sadly, he becomes SWAT fodder as they have H&Ks, which trump FNs no matter how many rounds they hold:


Plus, they all have lasers, and Murphy doesn't. So sad.

Well that about wraps it up. Check this movie out if you like action flicks, or if you like sparky bullets; there's lot's of those in this movie. With all of the money spent on ammo, it's no wonder why the actors didn't get any training and fired every weapon from the hip. Also note that this is the second movie that I've covered with Christian Slater trying to be like Elvis. I find that odd.

Enjoy.

Update: MT2008 points out in comments that the Sig used by the Vegas PD officer to whack Franklin is actually a P226, not a P228. Good catch!

Update: Hell in a Handbasket dropped me some valuable information that is worth your time:

"You mentioned a state trooper in the film who tries to use his Colt Single Action Army in a Western holster to outdraw Kevin Costner, who is using a 1911 in a shoulder holster. That guy was a famed stunt man named Alex Green, one of the oldest performers that still are willing to take a fall. He is also one of the few people still around who know how to use a whip, and he teaches fancy Western style gun handling tricks." "Check out his profile. It seems that he has been in just about every TV show or movie that called for an action sequence since 1970."

http://www.stuntscanada.com/low/memberprofile.php?m=22

Cool stuff. Green has played in a ton of films and shows, and yet I never noticed. These days the shows that we see on TV are full of gun ignorance (CSI comes to mind). We need more people like him to keep things right for correctness, otherwise people will keep being influanced by erroneous gun handling. Also cool is that he's a knife and tomahawk thrower!

Thanks James!