Weapons Man

In China, where guns really are outlawed, and where fraud is the national pastime1, the New York Times’s Dan Levine and Crystal Tse note a national fraud scandal that has legs… and wings, and ribs, and briskets. Really old ones. Levine & Tse (alternative Google search if you’re paywalled out):

Hey, it worked for the Carthaginians.

The Bren X or Bren 10 was a Jeff Cooper brainstorm at the peak of the old Colonel’s celebrity (and his powers). It was based on what Cooper considered the best designed and executed service pistol of the era, but updated for a new round he considered perfect (instead of the stock 9mm, which he disdained). The gun was made with care in a US factory, of the materials Cooper insisted on (Steel and Stainless Steel, none of those lightweight alloys).

So once a month the venerable OED adds new words (and less publicly, sometimes prunes dormant ones). The June 2015 update is described like this:

“It’s dead, Jim.”

RAP week is over. The two LTs and one MAJ have passed it for a second time. RAP week includes all the events that weed out the completely unprepared: PT test, a minimal swim test, various water events, a laughable land nav course that still produces over 10% failures, Ranger runs and a rucksack march. The women, like most of their male peers, passed these tests to standard.

It’s a day when things are moving and shaking in the industry, some up, some down. Two of the most interesting are Colt and PTR Industries.

These are not the crime weapons. In fact, they’re handmade tools from the Contemporary Makers blog; we just liked the picture.

An elite New England prep school is where successful men send their weak, effete sons to develop an aesthetic approach to coasting through life. And it’s where the Times’s loathing of soldiers and Marines comes from.

Bill Geissele’s wife’s company, ALG Defense, makes products for more of a mass-market than the very sweet, fairly simple, Geissele AR-15 triggers that live in more than a few SOF M4s and Mk. 11/12/18s, etc. (Indeed, sometimes the Geisele triggers are authorized MFP 11 or unit purchases, and sometimes they are installed on a catch-me-F-me basis by unit weapons men or armorers). Along with the triggers for full-on M4s and HK416s, Geissele makes improved triggers in both single-stage and two-stage variants for a wide range of semi ARs. They’re not cheap, they’re not always in stock, but they’re good.

The Special Operations History Foundation is a rare W4: Something we’re proposing not because of what it has done so far, but for its potential. The idea seems to be, a clearinghouse of original primary source material, mostly video, but it’s very sparse at this time with only a couple of civil affairs events, the Ranger/160th video we posted yesterday, and some photos from a routine administrative airborne operation by the late, lamented 12th Special Forces Group (USAR). 

A nice day, a European Ultralight (a model called a Sky Ranger), an airstrip “somewhere in France.” An earnest (and, as it develops, gifted in the sang-froid department) young pilot thrills a lady with an airplane ride. But there is a stowaway on board!

One down, eight to go, perhaps.

The domestic longhair is the mascot of the flying club, and keeps aircraft structures free of rodents. It’s doing fine, but hasn’t been anxious to fly again.

And the club’s pilots have a new line on their preflight checklist: look down the wing cells for, well, anything.

Like a cat.

Actually, we don’t know for sure they were peas, but canned peas are nasty, school-lunch level stuff, so we’re totally prepared to slander them. And the 6+ lb. No. 10 can? Well, it has to have been an assault can, right?

Larry Vickers is thinking about safety:

So there she was at a shootin’ school, and her trusty M&P inspired, shall we say, “trust issues” by shucking off the upper half of the rear sight.

Nobody got whacked in this case, but it was just too weird an example of human depravity not to blog.

1993. Rangers prep their Ranger Special Operations Vehicles for lift by the 160th SOAR.

This thread in Imgur (and there’s a matching discussion on Reddit) shows the whole process of Bubba attempting to alter a modern AR receiver to more closely resemble a Vietnam War early Colt Model 603, often erroneously referred to as an XM16E11. He didn’t go all the way with it, opting not to reprofile the buffer tower and pivot pin areas, both of which were extensively reinforced in later AR lowers.  He did wind up with a decent-looking 50-footer: