Weapons Man

This was one demonically-possessed set of stairs. According to mom Kaitlyn (some documents say Katlyn) Marin (right, in mugshot), the stairs not only reared up and made her three-year-old daughter Brielle Gage tumble down them time and again, they also attacked Marin her ownself, twice. In an illustration of just how cruel and heartless the judicial system is, the murderous stairs walk free (uh, get walked on free?) whilst John Law has set upon the bereaved mom, just cause her little daughter’s dead.

We’re not affiliated with them in any way, except as a satisfied customer. But RIA has two auctions coming up that may be of interest to you. Even if you are not a buyer now, you can benefit greatly from the catalog photos and descriptions, and they can be highly entertaining reading.

Perhaps you want a Goblin Goblet? No, dummy. Take the candy. Leave the goblet. Thank you!

He was, at the time of his death, a young man with a turbulent life and a place in the gun culture. We started to write about it at the time, almost three years ago, and then set this report aside, to finish when the case broke.

No, not “principles.” If they had principles, they probably wouldn’t be outlaws. No, we mean principals, the school-principal kind.

A while back we were agog at the priorities of outgoing Secretary of the Army John McHugh. Since he’s just an Indian in that tribe, we assume some of that nonsense came from higher. We searched in vain for any listing of the Secretary of Defense’s priorities. Unlike McHugh, who boldly admitted his priorities were related only to “social justice” and not to preparing the national defense, SecDef Ashton Carter has not put anything down in writing. He did, however, give a speech shortly after his appointment, from which his priorities may be derived

Today we have a roundup of things loosely connected to home gunsmithing and new technologies: what folks are printing, a well-deserved award for a free radical, an amazing bit of nonsense at a gun range, and general additive technology news including a reasonably-priced 3D scanner, reasonably priced modeling instruction, a power grab by the Librarian of Congress (what’s in the water in Washington?), a DIY (partly printed) rail gun, and desktop 5-axis CNC.

Even the name was over the hill: Avro, the company named for dawn-of-flight founder A.V. Roe, went the way of one firm after another: merged into a soulless, nationalized conglomerate in a series of Socialist-policy forced consolidations of the British aircraft industry. In the end, they wound up sending British aero engineering talent to Canada, and Canadian bungling (with the Canadian Avro company front and center) banked them off and down to the United States, where they were critical to the success of Apollo. The Avro Vulcan was the last of the line that began with spindly triplanes of bamboo and muslin and that rained terror and death from the night skies over Germany.

Isobel Zuluaga, 44, victim. (Possibly an old photo).

Thanks to more news stories and an informative email from a frequent commenter, we have more information on the individuals who lost their lives and the circumstances of the accident. The two men fatally injured were Steve Preston, 51, the owner of the tank and a Board member and Convention Chairman for the Military Vehicle Preservation Association, and Austin Lee, 22, a friend (or relative?) of Preston’s. Both were residents of Oregon CIty, OR; Preston owned Sergeants Towing in Portland.

It’s the rumble in the jungle… ah, rumble where tumbleweeds tumble? On 5 Dec 15 on John McHale’s ranch in Mason, Texas, there’s going to be a shooting competition the likes of which you’ve never, ever seen or heard of — with a million dollars on the line. And there’s a healthy aspect of promotion — for the rejuvenated Tracking Point and its Precision Guided Firearms — and a healthier aspect of charity — for the Chris Kyle Frog Foundation, Tracking Point’s partner in the 1st Annual American Sniper Shootout.

It isn’t the whole website — although there’s other stuff of interest there — but tonight we want to call your attention to one column that runs on the website EveryJoe.com. We’re referring to Tom Kratman’s Lines of Departure. 

Chris Solomon, that is. And a careful read of his article on International Policy Digest, The Economics of the AK-47, left us with an aching head from trying to follow his convoluted, faux-academic prose. It was immediately clear that he can’t write. When we finally figured out what we think he’s saying, it’s pretty clear he can’t think, either.

At least Texas, institutionally, gets it. The doer in this case is charged with capital murder. It is a particularly reprehensible murder, being done by betraying a small child, and being done for one of the most God-awful instrumental reasons you could possibly imagine: because the family home was crowded, and when the murderer’s pregnant girlfriend (the victim’s aunt) delivered her baby, there would be no room.

We asked this question, but came up with no answers. There is, however, this:

Or, hey, the woman. We’d like to see Tam put 1,000 rounds through this! (Although, truth be told, it’s demilled). Available for sale on a European armor and armament sales website, along with its 203 mm howitzer counterpart, the 155 mm “Long Tom” gun was the staple US military heavy piece of World War II. The seller has a French name and a French (33) telephone code.

Here’s a real puzzle. It looks like a mishap during an armored vehicle live fire has killed two people inside the fighting compartment of the vehicle. The vehicle was on a public firing range. Those slain have not been identified. Local TV:

It looks like the whiners have won, and perhaps lost in the winning; according to a couple of much-better-wired-than-us-rifle-operator Navy bloggers, the Navy has completely overthrown the way command selections are done. There will still be a board, but the board results will then be reshuffled, to the demand of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, by the officer convening the board, the Commander of Naval Air Forces (COMNAVAIRFOR), or the “Air Boss,” in Navy parlance. The blogs don’t name him, but he’s easily Googled as VADM Mike Shoemaker — a guy with a good reputation as a commander, at least, until he rose to a position where the choice was “please the politicians,” or, “take your integrity and retire.” So now he’s personally going to be the wind beneath the wings of the dung beetles of the political leaders.

Mind you, it wasn’t just the Radarange. The doer used a bunch of other found pieces to commit his act of homicidal art, including hands, feet and a guitar.

Let’s see if we can observe some trends in the enlightened and genteel lands of Old Europe, where swarms of entitled, demanding “migrants” have been coming to take advantage of European generosity — and transform their new lands into the hell-holes they’ve fled.