Weapons Man

Here’s the Nite Owl. It’s being introduced to the world today at SHOT, although the web site and Facebook have been up for a while.

Today, we’re treating a group of five to a chance to participate in a Box Office wave: let’s set some records for Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, and, not least, Chris and Taya Kyle.

This is our first TW3 of 2015. We got ahead of the wave for a moment this weekend, so here it is. We’re going to keep this brief, like a well-run Saudi beheading, and not drawn out and painful, like a Taliban one.

So, what’s the gun industry like? If you watch the pilot of Amazon’s potential new series, Cocked, it’s inhabited by some of the weirdest and least likeable people you could ever imagine meeting.

The ATF has issued a new and undated letter — apparently on a Saturday — containing a blanket statement that firing a weapon with an “arm brace” from the shoulder constitutes a “redesign” of the device and a Federal felony.

It looks as if Defense Distributed’s original intent, to ship the initial batch of GhostGunners by Christmas, ran into the buzzsaw called reality, and the machines did not ship on time.

How often have we held a gun, and thought, or even said aloud: “If it could only speak! What stories might it tell?” But our stories about these guns usually begin in a gun shop or auction listing, not quite the tales of romance and intrigue we imagine. Conversely, the gun in this picture certainly has a dramatic story to tell — if only it could.

…read Andrew Tuohy on the recent exposure of two military phonies, pre-basic-training (!) deserter Cory A. Jackson, and a during-basic quitter who’s been selling herself as a Marine, when she’s a bootcamp bolo.

The Columbia Journalism School and the Bloomberg Youth (or whatever he’s calling his fully-owned and operated gun-ban subsidiary these days) is going to run a “continuing education” workshop for journalists to teach them how to slant gun stories.

It was not announced in a press conference. It was not put on the Army’s home page, and was kept off the Army’s news page, and there’s certainly nothing on the Army media page. But an official Army statement was selectively, furtively emailed by shifty and underhanded Honor Code failure PR functionary LTC Courtney Massengale Ben Garrett to “friendly” media, announcing that the first women will be attending, and graduating, Ranger School in April.

MagPul has had several announcements of new products. We’ve featured their video press release on the D-60 60-round AR drum, because the product tickled our fancy. On the other hand, we initially let their AK announcement slide. There were two reasons that we might have included it here: (1) it’s a big deal that they have an AK product line, and it will give tacticool AK fans an alternative to TAPCO, and (2) the video is hell for clever, and humorous, and God knows we haven’t had enough grins lateley, and there are plenty in this. So we’ll run the video now, even though we didn’t run it here when they first put it up.

If posting’s been a bit erratic lately, it’s because other activities have been consuming a great deal of time.

(Politics, n. from poly, Greek “many,” and ticks, O.E. “small, disease-spreading bloodsucking arthropods.” — Eds.)

Two more women Marines failed to meet the standard at the Infantry Officer Course and were binned on the first day — along with fifteen of their male counterparts. They will be reassigned to other specialties based on their preferences and the needs of the Corps. 101 other officers, all men, continued in the course. If the past is a guide, not all of them will be in the graduation formation.

One sign of a gun design that is not completely thought through is a requirement for special tools for disassembly. These days, most guns are designed for disassembly without any kind of offboard tools. But this was not always the case. John M. Browning was one of the first designers to consistently design guns to be disassembled without anything special. And it was a bit of a marvel, as the tone of this excerpt from a naval aerial gunner’s manual called This is Your Gun reveals:

In the comments, someone asked how long it took for the Russians to develop VT Fuzes, after the Rosenbergs gave them plans1. In attempting to answer this question (which we still have not done), we came across an excellent study and engineering text on VT fuze development by Dr VK Arora. Dr Arora’s book is supposedly available from the Defense Research and Development Office in India ($45 in the USA); we can’t figure out how to buy it, though. If we could, we could arbitrage them on Amazon where they’re going for $99!

Type 64 “7.62” (.32 ACP) pistol. DIA image.

…When, two years ago, a young man stuck a pistol in the face of Bulgarian politician Ahmed Dogan. Watch what happens next.

Well, we guess we all know what Magpul is letting out of the bag at SHOT next week. The video dropped at about 1300 Eastern Time yesterday, and we don’t know anything else about it. It’s a 60-round drum with a loading lever to allow “easy” hand-loading. They show it with ARs, a 416 (wait, that’s an AR, HK fanboys!) and a SAW.

Looks like you could definitely melt a barrel with a few of these things. Looks like Magpul got close.

It’s pretty bulky. There are good drums on the market already, including a couple with NSNs, but drums tend to have problems as practical mags. (When we tried to use them in SF, it was as a single mag to use gaining fire superiority as part of an ambush drill. We wound up regressing to standard capacity, 30-round magazines).

Some of the drums out there work well, and each has some pros and cons. But none of them has Magpul’s name and brand recognition behind it. Maybe we need to gather a few drums for a drum-off?

This article has been around for years, but it’s still worth reading. Mike Pannone is a fellow 18B and someone with nearly immeasurable M4 experience. He was an instructor for, and one of the designers of, AWG’s combat shooting school, which prepared a lot of guys for successful combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. A friend who was the SJA at AWG raved about that course. Mike is pretty well known in the shooting and training community.