Weapons Man

Halloween’s over, but there’s still creepy guys with hammers out there.

This document, linked in this post, is official Army doctrine on Special Forces operations. It will be very boring to those of you looking for a JADE HELM smoking gun, or even a lot of nuts and bolts about how SF does things; most of those details live in team and unit SOPs, and those don’t circulate beyond the community.

One thing about the people of the gun: we’re conservative. By that, we don’t necessarily mean that we want 15 carrier groups back, eager to cut taxes and services, or sorry that mandatory chapel was gone by the time we went to college. There are actually card-carrying ACLU members and ivory tower socialists among us, but they’re conservative about their guns. For every reader who’s up to date on polymer wonder pistols, there’s about three who wish you could get a new Python. (The reason they can’t is that they don’t want it $3,500-4,000 bad, which is what an old-style hand-made perfect Python would cost to make today). Or a new Luger. For every one of you guys following the latest in M4 attachments (hey, let’s play “combat Legos!”), there’s a few who’d buy a new MP.44, if they could.

As we mentioned before, we did win two impulse-bought lots at the Rock Island internet auction. They were a Walther Model 8, an interesting PP forerunner with an internal hammer and single-action lockwork, and three Eastern European Cold War era guns: a CZ 52 in 7.62 x 25, a CZ 50 (similar to a PP) in .32 ACP, and an East German 9 x 18 Makarov. Here’s what our max bids were:

A typical murder-suicide, if there is such a thing, happens when a desperate man shoots his wife (or ex), then himself, usually. So what’s Mr Lonelyhearts to do if he hasn’t got a gun? Mayor Bloomberg will never believe this, but some distraught creeps go straight to Plan B.

Apparently it’s a thing for mouth-breathing rappers to say that they’re “OGs,” meeting “original gangsters.” (Sorry, gangstas. We forget that spelling is a marker of white privilege or some such twaddle, and authenticity means pretending you’re retarded in some circles).

In the world of rimfire rifles, the Ruger 10/22 lives in the equivalent mindspace of the AR-15 in Centerfire World: it’s the center of an entire ecosphere of modular customization. You can buy any component for a 1022 that you might like, except the receiver. Wait! Belay that: there are also aftermarket receivers1 and even “80%” receivers2. And then, there’s 3D printing.

Just Fieldstrip is not exactly a website, but it’s a series of YouTube videos posted via check gun expert. As the name suggests, almost all of them are simply how to field strip quite a collection of historic, and sometimes rare and unusual, firearms.

Crime nationwide, including violent crime and gun crime, is down in a trend of many years’ standing. True, it’s down less in jurisdictions that have “Turn em Loose Bruce” judges and Victim Disarmement Zone gun laws (which are usually the same jurisdictions, like Chicongo, Killadelphia, and DC), but it’s down even there, just not as far down as it is in more enlightened climes.

In a post on military corruption on Strategy Page, which is, as usual on that site of wargamer geeks turned armchair experts, all over the place, there’s a little on micromanagement and the media. We’ll pick it up, then, in the middle:

Over the transom from Cody Wilson. We’ve been seeing for some time that (1) he’s got a working shipping solution, which he’s not talking about publicly to keep Holder’s minions from chokepointing it, and (2) he’s got the MarkOne carbon-fiber printer by MarkForged that the company, good Massachusetts Party members all, refused to sell him. (There’s a shock, not). Now he comes with this on the GG. BLUF: technical problems, not shipping ones, have added a week or two’s delay to shipping and stretched, but not broken, the budget. Meanwhile, his guys have tuned up some things, such as workholding:

From the movie that gave Sean Connery his first name (seriously! He saw it and resolved to change his name from Thomas to Sean, which is pronounced “shane” by Scots).

The story says he was a “respected military reservist.” That is, before he got the bright idea of using a .50 tracer round as a firework.

Maybe it’s the snazzy, Hugo Boss uniforms, but SunTrust Bank is inviting Godwin to the party for Hitler’s Birthday, by sending letters to firearms businesses, punitively closing their accounts for dealing in Administration-disapproved goods and services. Effective on the day that was the highest holy day in National Socialism.

If you have a well-rounded firearms education, the name Benelli needs no introduction. Now part of the Beretta family, the marque has been known for its semi-auto shotguns since its founding in 1967. But Benelli made an attempt, in the 70s and 80s, to make a NATO service pistol. It’s interesting for its unusual toggle-lock mechanism (one we missed when we covered toggle-locking), its fine Italian styling, and its relative rarity: internet forum participants, at least, think only about 10,000 were made. (We do some analysis on this claim below, and posit a lower number).

This morning’s story created quite a stir in ICE, both in the field offices and at headquarters. In the headquarters our little story apparently alarmed an organization called OFTP, the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs. OFTP used to be called NFTTU, and some ICEmen still refer to it by the old acronym.

This post will be slightly more personal than usual, and it will be written in the first person. You see, my mother was a remarkable and curious person who lived nearly 80 years and spent all of them trying to slake an insatiable curiosity, a fortunate malady that was among the inheritances she passed to her sons. This insatiable curiosity is manifested, among other things, as reading and love for books that falls somewhere along the scale where passion and obsession are found.

There’s a show on TV somewhere called Doomsday Preppers. Based on the clips we’ve seen, It’s dedicated to the Hollywood proposition that anyone taking measures to be ready for natural or (to use that wonderful DHS locution) “man-made disasters” is (1) an inbred, mouth-breathing moron, and (2) an irresponsible “gun nut.” The actors on the show seem intent on proving these propositions, in the limited set of clips that we’ve seen. In this one, Tim, one of the on-camera “talent” in the show, grapples with the consequences of a negligent discharge:

Here’s a question for all y’all (or in our native New England turkey-herdish, for youse guys). Answer after the jump:

So, the gang at ICE want to buy a new pistol. The initial contract solicitation, a Request for Information, is here (the meat of it is in the bit called the Statement of Work [.pdf]).