Weapons Man

Two Colt 1917 revolvers (one repark’d for WWII), from an excellent article in

Apparently, China has a real problem with JD’s. The Chinese have another problem, too, although they haven’t yet cottoned to it: sociologists and psychologists. These pseudo-scienticts are a much more serious threat to society than criminals; murder and theft have been with us since Genesis, but the soft -ologies are mostly a 20th Century “own goal.” As China grows stronger and wealthier, these academics appear, parasites eating away their host from within.

It’s pretty hard to put one over on you guys. (one of the wrong answers is one I put there, and still most of you got it right). Promised answers after the jump. 

This is a passage from a book of nonfiction by a guy who is, unusually, celebrated both for his award-winning fiction and for his award-winning novels. (He’s also an Army combat veteran, a fact modestly omitted from his book-flap bio). It describes how a child was disciplined. The only change we have made was to substitute generic terms or pronouns for proper names.

Lauren Serrano is a Marine officer, and one dedicated to the idea that women ought to serve in the ways that are best for them, and best for the service. It is clearly with great reluctance that she stepped up and touched the Third Rail of military PC these days: the women-in-combat issue. She wrote an essay about it. She submitted it to a Marine Corps Association contest. And she won 1st Prize in the “MajGen Harold W. Chase Prize Essay Contest” for her entry.

This footage survives because it was documenting something thought remarkable at the time — entire ordnance factories operated mostly by women. But if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may be more interested in what these British ladies are doing in the Royal Ordnance Factory at Enfield: manufacturing STEN Mk II submachine guns.

Ah, what will they think of next? A New Zealand entrepreneur has come up with a small unit called Cyborg Unplug that you can use to kick such users as drones and Google Glass wearers off your network.

Soon available in ladies’ sizes….

The Stoner 63 is interesting for a number of reasons. It was the Next Big Thing that Eugene Stoner did after leaving Armalite, and it had a lot of effort behind it, thanks to its sponsor, defense contractor Cadillac Gage which made, among other things, the V-100 armored car. Apart from the Stoner connection, the gun had two things that helped to build its legend. It was an early example of a modular weapons system, readily converted from box-fed rifle to carbine to belt-fed light machine gun and back again. It was such a novel idea, way back then in the Kennedy Administration, that it received US Patent 3,198,076 on 22 Mar 63. The second thing was that it was used in combat in Vietnam by the Navy SEAL teams as the Mark 23 LMG. Very few weapons are uniquely associated with specific special operations units,  but this is one.

A few days ago, we used this picture of a Fairbairn-Sykes dagger to illustrate a knife attack story. (Turns out our doer used a kitchen knife, not anything so military as this Deadly Assault Knife, the Preferred Weapon of Screenwriters). But Andrew Branca, author of the Law of Self Defense and a no-kidding MA self-defense lawyer, pointed out that possession of the F-S commando dagger was in itself banned in the wacky state of Massachusetts.

Arturo in comments asked about the women in the Pesh Merga’s infantry outfit, which have, it turns out, been held out as an example of the potential of women in infantry combat. And they’re largely (per the photos) rather pretty looking, which is the opposite of what the Army’s PR flacks were asking for last year.

Actors in an Indian movie about the 21 Sikhs. Note the practical Khakis for desert/mountain combat.

You know, TIME magazine, famous for wringing its editorial hands over whatever the latest trendy bullshit is.

According to a court brief reported in the Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, an 18th-Century definition of “arms” includes: “any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” The authors of the amicus curiae brief that cited that Supreme Court precedent: Michael Rosman, Michelle Scott, Lisa Steele and Eugene Volokh filed the brief in a Massachusetts case, seeking to overturn the extreme anti-gun state’s ban on nonlethal self-defense weapons.

“Because looking cool is more important than training.”  Heh.

The details of what’s “looking cool” have changed since we stumbled into service on Jimmy Earl Carter’s watch — in those days it was a commando sweater and a Fu Manchu mustache, and a Randall Model 14 and Chippewa boots — but the objective has not.

Here’s to the cool kids everywhere. And when did we become the old man muttering about them on our lawn?

Hat tip, Miguel. Somos agradecidos, hermano.

It’s Sunday and all we want to do is crawl back under the covers. It’s sunny and seasonably cool here so maybe a sweatshirt is in order if we’re going to take a bike ride along the beach. No one will be in the water this weekend, except the hardiest of the wetsuited surfers.

Funny thing. Surfers do it, and they sometimes overdo it when the waves are really running. But they never, really never, seem to get so hypothermic they need help. Nobody can recall a callout for a cyanotic, nonresponsive surfer.

What!?! Responsible surfers with good judgment? Who ever heard of such a thing?

But apparently there are such things. In any event, they enjoy their sport with no interference, one hopes, from the rest of us. And most of the time, we can do the same. A free country is a good thing.

We will post last week’s TW3 sometime today. Other than that, we’re in our usual Sunday mode: Peace, out!

It’s been so long since we’ve done a TW3, we’re not sure we have the ordinal week right.

We’re hesitant to review a TV show that’s still running, as a positive review from this site has been the kiss of death before. Still, we’re not Judas on a mission… more like Hardy expressing his great regard for the dying Admiral. So we will send a kiss the way of Lilyhammer, the consequences be damned.

A Friday night bad-news blast launched the Army’s latest iniquity into the weekend. The fix continues to be in for sending women to Ranger school in the Army. Indeed, they’ll be coming on two different pathways, both designed to use the halo of Ranger School and the Ranger Tab to burnish the packets of female careerists.