Weapons Man

Here again the Army is trying to map the actual nomenclature used for a weapon to the Army’s preferred terms. We put up the one for the M16 series weapons back in November. Let’s play a little game: can you guess the weapon?

The Army’s terms, though, are fairly useless. They  are often generic, and don’t describe the use or purpose of a “helical compression spring” (coil spring, used several places in this weapon) or “socket head cap screw” (in this weapon, the muzzle brake screw)). The Army also officially calls some coil springs “helical compression springs” and other coil springs “compression helical springs.”

Proof positive that crims are bottom feeders, and from that part of society on the other side of the line of “average” from us: if you’re going to go to jail for armed robbery, stick up a place with something worth stealing. Because when you get in the big house, they are not going to be impressed with your 12-14 for stealing a couple of tacos. With a sword. Especially when this loser didn’t even get the tacos. 

A South Texas man faces an aggravated robbery charge after being accused of ordering several tacos, pulling a sword and refusing to pay.

An affidavit says 28-year-old Adam Kramer began sliding the sword out of a sheath and threatened a waitress at a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. Nobody was hurt in the Dec. 2 incident.

Authorities say Kramer walked out of the restaurant — without the food — and to his truck while yelling either he got free tacos or somebody would die. Investigators say the waitress locked the door

That title is from the poignant diary of a fallen soldier of the Vietnam war. The man was a North Vietnamese regular in the 21st Regiment, and he began his move down the Ho Chi Minh trail on 11 August 65. He wrote a diary — something forbidden to PAVN soldiers, but very widely done — and intended to share it with his family when he got back.

He never got back. He was killed by US Marines in 1966 while manning a heavy machine gun. The gun, and his wounded and slain compatriots, were all dragged off, but his body was left in the gunpit with the expended brass and belts.

And his body was left lying with the diary on his chest — no one knows why. A young Marine picked it up, and kept it for years, until he, and the widow of a fellow Marine, brought it to PBS’s History Detectives. Objective: return the diary and the other documents and photo found with it to the family of the lost soldier.

His hardships will ring true to any soldier. Climbing mountains, pouring with sweat, bad food and not enough of it. And fear.

The last entry in his

There have been several companies named Sterling that have sold guns over the years. There was the British maker of military arms and AR-180s, now defunct; an outfit in California; a company making cheap revolvers (perhaps the same); and a New York maker of auto pistols. It is Sterling Arms Corporation of several addresses in the Buffalo, New York area that we’ll focus on here — because their existence was short (1967-1984) and their guns can get fairly weird.

Sterling Arms “Husky” 285. Image: GunBroker

Sterling appears to have been created just before the Gun Control Act of 1968 devastated two aspects of the firearms industry: importation, and mail order. The market for US-made inexpensive handguns was wide open. The company started in 1967 in Buffalo, but some time around 1968 moved to nearby Lockport, NY. The first Sterling pistol that we know of is the Model 285, a High Standard knockoff

Fun Fact: every single file and promotional photo used by the dozen-plus ankle monitor vendors shows it on a white person. Maybe blacks just go right to prison without the chance for an ankle monitor?

We’ve mentioned the United States’ worst big-city police department, Washington DC, under the incompetent managent of various politicians including affirmative-action hire Chief Cathy Lanier. But even when the cops catch the criminals, DC continues to fail the non-criminal public. One way is in its lax monitoring of youthful offenders. The amusingly named Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, which monitors young felons in the interstitial period between their first felonies and their coming of age and going to the Big House, places great faith in GPS-enabled ankle monitors.

They have identified a few pro

This guy likes to take pictures. OK. He likes to take pictures of naked girls… ohhh-kay. He likes to take pictures of young naked girls… maybe not OK. But wait, he’s a cop and uses the authority of his badge to get the girls naked. You would think that’s definitely not OK, right?

David Seastrand resigned as the New London police chief in April, a month after a woman said Seastrand offered to drop the underage drinking charge against her if she posed for nude pictures. Three other women later came forward. One said she had sexual contact with Seastrand, a second said he paid her parking ticket in exchange for her posing in lingerie and the third said Seacrest offered her cash in exchange for photos.

via No charges against ex-police chief accused by multiple women | SeacoastOnline.com.

But the New Hampshire Attorney General has spoken, and Seastrand is OK. Got that? You’d be in jail, or out on bail waiting for trial, bu

Part of flying the U-2 at operational altitudes at and above 70,000 feet, well over twice the altitude that is unable to support life, is knowing and managing the medical risks, the cockpit pressurization system (which only pressurizes the aircraft to 29,000 feet, not the comfortable 8,000 feet of a jetliner)  and the pilot’s pressure suit (the only thing that will keep him alive if his cockpit pressurization fails, or if he has to abandon the aircraft without descending into thicker air). The aeromedical risks include the scourges of mountaineers — high altitude pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema. But there’s also a constant risk of Decompression Sickness (DCS): as divers have long known it, “the bends.”

While breathing oxygen under pressure will keep a pilot alive at lower altitudes, the gases dissolved in his bloodstream will bubble fatally above an altitude of approximately 50,000 feet. There have been some tragic deaths when pilots fly above FL500 without a preessure suit and lose cockpit pres

It was held in Staten Island, a low-crime area (in fact, it’s a traditionally Italian area and home to lots of cop and firefighter families) on Pearl Harbor day, at one of those post-Christian liberal churches. Here’s the AR:

In exchange for dropping off a handgun or assault rifles, people received a $200 bank card ($20 bank cards for rifles/shotguns). The NYPD says that 96 weapon were turned in: 33 semi-automatic pistols; 40 revolvers; 13 rifles; 1 assault rifle (Colt AR-15); 1 shotgun; and 8 others (BBs, zip guns, starters). Four of the weapons were loaded and three were defaced.

via Photo: Assault Rifle Turned In At Staten Island Gun Buyback: Gothamist.

So, here’s a look at the numbers as they played out. Essentially, the NYPD blew $15,000 to get a mixed bag of closet queens and street junk off the “street.” Many of the guns were valued far below what the PD paid for them, suggesting that

SF NCOs conduct mechanical training on AK rifles for troops of the Malian Army.

When we attended what was then Light Weapons School (then Phase II of a Weapons Man’s SFQC), the stress was on mastering the mechanical operation and employment of foreign and obsolete small arms. Given the environmental changes of the last thirty years, the current course has lots more shooting and teaching-of-shooting (big improvement), lots more base defense and tactics, includes heavy weapons training including weapons that were then-novel and not included in a Heavy Weapons NCO’s training (like ATGMs and MANPADs) and is nearly twice as long. (In 2014, it becomes fully twice as long).

One of the things that’s been cut to make room for the course improvements, is a lot of the foreign and obsolete weapons training. We understand why, but believe that foreign and obsolete weapons training is good for not only SF

Apart from cameo roles in a couple of Rogers Rangers’ standing orders, hatchets just don’t figure a lot in ground combat. But they do occasionally figure in crime. More frequently found in crime are “transients” (also known as “the homeless,” formerly called “bums” in a less judgment-shy era, and usually, in fact, mentally ill and self-medicating these days). So in Marshall, Texas, a “transient” shambled into a Walmart with a hatchet, and began giving the workers — and a customer who intervened — the Lizzie Borden treatment.

Three people have been hurt in a hatchet attack at a Wal-Mart in East Texas and police arrested a transient on assault charges.

Marshall police Detective Sonya Johnson said Monday that Christopher Hamilton of Crawford, Ark., allegedly had the hatchet with him when entering the store. Two female workers and a male shopper were attacked early Sunday.

Authorities are trying to determine a motive. Police don’t believe Hamilton knows the victims.

via

We haven’t covered coastal defenses a lot around here, just made one trip (by bicycle, even, that’s how lazy we are) to a Base-End Station that survived from its pre-WWII utility because it was recycled for other uses. The station, a tall concrete tower, survived first as an element of the national air defense system when we had one, and then, when we didn’t, really, as a means for the state to lay a scope on inshore fishermen to ensure compliance with a Federal near-ban n their livelihood, and finally by local gendarmes to keep a beady eye on coastal motorists and radio in the descriptions of the inevitable summer boozers and road ragists. The base-end station towers existed to serve the big guns that were aimed at deterring the approach of enemy warships. The guns themselves had a technology all their own.

Not many sites like that have survived, and the survival of others, such as battery installations, comes more because they are made of thousands of tons of reinf

Nelson Mandela, a hero to many, is receiving an unprecedented public canonization on the occasion of his death at 95 years’ age. Many are caught up in the tide of praise; others caught up in the undertow:

Newt Gingrich on Sunday addressed the backlash over comments he made on Facebook praising former South African President Nelson Mandela.

CNN “State of the Union” host Candy Crowley read some of the Facebook responses criticizing Gingrich’s statement.

“Such an amazing rewrite of history since 1962 and 1990. Newt, I thought you, of all people, a historian, would be true to who this guy really was,” one said. And another wrote: “This clenched-fist, murdering guerilla warrior does not deserve respect from informed Americans.”

via Gingrich answers Mandela critics – POLITICO.com.

Mandela is a com

Step 1: Buy a gun from the local criminal community

Step 2: Futz with it

Step 3: Seek medical treatment

Step 4: Hire a criminal attorney

Step 5: Profit!!!

If you’re thinking that isn’t exactly like a Harvard Business School case study, you Just Might Be an MBA. You Definitely Are smarter than this kid, who’s now +1 abdominal orifice and +1 set of legal problems, and -1 gun and -1 sum of money the knucklehead thought he was buying a gun with. If Kipling wrote a poem about this, it would be Arithmetic On The Frontier of the Empire of Stupid.

A 19-year-old who allegedly purchased a stolen handgun accidentally shot himself in the abdomen following the transaction in Federal Way on Tuesday night.

Federal Way Police officers responded to the call at approximately 10:01 p.m. at 30823 18th Ave. South. Dispatch advised police that the “victim” showed up at his friend’s apartment with an apparent gunshot wound to the abdomen.

Upon arrival, the victim stated that he was at an unknown ARCO sta

John Dodson’s The Unarmed Truth is a hell of a book. For one thing, it’s the book that ATF Director B. Todd Jones pulled out all the stops to get pulped prior to publication. That fact alone, that a censorious bureaucrat tried to ban the book, should make you want to read it.

Dodson should need no introduction: he’s one of the ATF agents who blew the whistle the the ATF’s delivery of uncounted thousands of guns directly to agents of Mexican drug cartels — guns which have killed several American agents, and hundreds of Mexican cops and civilians. As Dodson points out, we only know the last crime any of these recovered guns was involved in; God alone knows how many other robberies, assaults and murders it was used in before its last rodeo. For anyone who wonders what the hell actually happened? or even what does a conscientious ATF agent do? this is the one book to start with. Indeed, the full title of the book only begins to describ

We’ve been away for the last few days at a unit reunion, hence the light posting.

We hope to catch up Sunday with the 5W and Matinee, and some back stuff from back weeks. Otherwise, see you all Monday.