Weapons Man

This is a remarkable story of how a Marine’s war trophy went from seized contraband to museum display — thanks to a change of heart by members of an ATF field office.

One of our former Weapons Websites of the Week has had a 2-year blogiversary, which we learned through Lee Williams. Lee wrote:

Ladies and gents,

Spring is here, finally. The first tulip bloomed, although the rest of the usual April early blooms have yet to show their faces. The flox is usually flowering now, and it’s not even green. On the other hand, dandelions seem to be out in force, now that we got most of the oak leaves up. A late spring is bad news because it means a late leaf drop in the fall…

So concludes Dave Hone who studies these ancient predatory therapods. Tyrannosaurs have come into and out of academic fashion for a very long time, and just now are undergoing a scientific renaissance. And it seems that they were not always nice to one another.

Say what you will about the handful of ambitious women currently battling fatigue (to the point of exhaustion) and physical breakdown in the Army’s first co-ed Ranger course, but they are in the jeezly arena. And God bless them for that. Throughout history, many men (and even a few women) have claimed the Ranger Tab without bothering to, you know, attend the course. If any of those young women graduate, they’ll probably feel about these honor thieves much like we do: pretty hostile.

Bryan Litz with, once again, some science that makes our hair hurt, and that’s even in his cut-down version with minimal traumatic math. In a post excerpted from his latest book, Modern Advancements in Long Range Shooting, Litz discusses the results of tests with a rifle and a series of barrels manufactured by the same barrelsmith to differ only in twist rate, and be identical in all other aspects — a controlled experiment.

It’s that occasion, where we throw together a bunch of stuff and throw it at you before the weekend.

It wasn’t his foot this time.

…does anyone hear the sound? Beltway PR specialists think not. But the ears of WeaponsMan.com are ever open.

We’ve been pretty high on precision guided weapons technology since the first time we saw a TOW do its thing. (And Javelin and other current weapons have answered most of the complaints about TOW since then). But in recent years, the promise of PGWs has migrated down into the small arms world, thanks to the same combination of Moore’s Law, free-flying science and nitty-gritty engineering that gives us everything from rapid genome sequencing to haptics and 3D printing.

There is a barrage of propaganda coming out of the Ranger School. There could be nothing but, with every one of the surviving female students — eight at the end of the first week — shadowed by a Corps of Commissars who broadly (no pun intended) outnumber the female Ranger candidates1, and a media scrum that nearly outnumbers all the Ranger candidates.

Guns.com has the story of how the gun-ban Brady Campaign’s plan to use the parents of a victim of the Aurora, CO shooting as the hook to hang an anti-gun lawsuit on backfired. Badly.

Bob McDonald, a Special Forces impersonator who has no measurable respect for actual veterans, was a bad choice for Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. That was reinforced in a recent meeting with fellow Democrats in the journalism racket, where he made excuses for the agency’s dismal performance, and planned to “solve” it with the two magic elixirs of Beltway hackdom: more money, and fewer facilities.

We don’t have one of these things, but if we did would be concerned:

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the desperate hours of 1940, the local paper began collecting money from loyal Ulstermen to buy the Royal Air Force a plane. And another… and another. In the end, the Belfast Telegraph and its readers’ Belfast Telegraph Spitfire Fund would finance no fewer than 17 Supermarine Spitfires for the RAF.

The Village Voice, of all outlets, calls its attention to an unusual aspect of the present riots in Baltimore: the degree to which they were triggered by an arrest under Maryland’s weapons bans, bans proceeding from the gun control philosophy espoused enthusiastically by figures from Baltimore ‘s pathetically ineffectual Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, and incompetent police chief, Anthony Batts, to Maryland’s late Governor, Martin O’Malley, to such figures as Jesse Jackson, last seen in the rubble of a burned-out CVS egging rioters on. Maryland’s current Governor, Larry Hogan, is a Republican and only a half-hearted supporter of the gun control regime.

A very rare M16 variant, fully transferable, is up for auction on GunBroker. It’s the retro AR guy’s Holy Grail — an original Colt Model 601. It has a low serial number (605), meaning it was one of the first production ARs, making it a gun of notable historical significance. It’s being offered by a reputable seller (Frank Goepfert/Midwest Tactical).

Inserting spices?