Weapons Man

We’re really, really tired of writing about VA screw-up after VA screw-up. We’re sure our readers, mostly veterans themselves, are tired of reading about it. The VA, however, is not tired of screwing up. If you’re tired of something and it isn’t a duty, you stop, right? Unless you’re sick in the head.

The RIA Premiere Auction kicks off soon, at 0900 Central Time today. RIA’s online auctions are where we occasionally find a good deal. The Premiere Auctions are where really awesome stuff shows up — stuff that, despite what seem to be reasonable auction estimates, we almost certainly can’t afford.

This article, from the New York Daily News, raises two questions:

One of the few good things about actually being in combat? Unlike in garrison and headquarters, no one pesters you with the gaudy, mind-numbing waste of time that is PowerPoint.

Here are two great photo tutorials on AK building.

The first walks you through building a receiver from a flat. (It’s an RPK receover in the example, but trust us, that’s the exact same thing in terms of how it goes together).

building an rpk receiver

The second describes how to press the barrel into place and check headspace.

How to build an AK part 2: barrel population

Part 3 is promised a some future date (there were months between Parts 1 and 2, and Part 2 just was published this week). Part 3 will cover riveting, an essential part of assembling an AK; there is riveting (& welding) in Part 1 but not the essentially riveting of trunnions into the receiver.

These posts come from the AK builders at Spivey Arms in Texas, another one of those awesome small shop manufacturers that are building a customer base one gun at a time.

There was once something called the Weapons Systems Technology Information Analysis Center, just a few years ago; it published great stuff like this 2008 issue of its Quarterly (.pdf) with an interesting analysis of CQB lethality of the 5.56mm round (this is an analysis of M855, not the improved rounds run by the Army and USMC — which resulted in part from this analysis.   (The study examined 16 weights of 5.56 round, two different 6.8 SPC rounds, and several competitive and control rounds from 9mm to 7.62 x 39 to .30-06).

“Not my founders; the Constitution is an obstacle to absolute power, which I prefer.” — Thiru Vignarajah.

Carol Bell’s crushed walker (technically, a rollerator, wasn’t it?) and cigarettes mark the place she died.

This amazing flowchart from MOA Targets helps you decide what you need. We could explain it in depth, but why? It’s pretty much self-explanatory.

And yes, it embiggens if needed.

Because access and leverage are enemies of security. If they can get under it, they can dolly it out to a safe (from their point of view) space. If they can knock it over they can attack vulnerable back and side skins, and corners. This safe, a perfect example, was attacked in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and popped up in a Reddit thread.

This is an extra post, because you don’t get a deal like this every day, and it only lasts as long as it lasts. Matt Bracken (former SEAL officer) wrote a dystopian novel of a very plausible future about 15-20 years ago, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, and then extended it to a trilogy:

Politics, n. From Greek poly-, “many,” and ticks, “small bloodsucking arthropods.” – Ed.

The perp. No one knows what made him snap.

The sight at the center of the storm: EOTech 556.A65 Holographic.

Even as all the Feds are squirrelly about the prospect of adopting the SIG P320, something else is happening: people who try it seem to really like it. So far, we haven’t had a replay of the debacle that occurred with SIG’s modular hammer-fired gun, the P250, and the Federal Air Marshals Service (although FAMS is still feeling the opposite of enthusiasm for SIG these days). Tam put a couple of thousand rounds through one and at Michael Bane’s Downrange.TV blog, Ed Head reports on having one worked on by Bruce Gray of Grayguns. He calls the result the Super SIG. Why “Super?” Maybe this picture explains it:

Amazingly, even after he is convicted, the lax and lackadaisical slackers of Canadian law enforcement still threaten anyone who names “Obnoxious” — his own chosen screen name, and a fitting one — with consequences far more dire that the tap on the wrist that his crimes brought  him.

The trouble with being a drug mule is that you have to trust a bunch of druggies to know what they’re doing when they pack you full of haphazardly wrapped poisons… and, well, they’re not exactly the Houston Manned Space Flight Center watch-standing crew. They’re a bunch of druggies.

Excerpts from an Op-Ed by Congressman Gus Bilirakis with the hyper-optimisitic title, “Holding the VA Accountable.”

Well, it had to happen, and sooner rather than later. An ATF-approved Glock-off frame that a home hobbyist can complete himself, producing a legal “Ghost Glock.”

It is Sunday, and we are back in Hog Manor, to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the other residents, except Small Dog, who was atypically (for the family; typically, for a dog) glad to see us.