Tag: Weapons

I Just Call Them “Men”

Guy Stuff

Saw this article via Insty, and had to add my thoughts.

Who are the kind of men who still carry pocketknives? They are the type of men who earn an honest living, work hard and stand fearless in a world gone mad.  To put it simply, they are the type of men the world could use a lot more of these days.

To me, this whole idea is such a “duh” situation that I can barely articulate it.

Of course every man — not just the ones in the quote — should carry a pocket knife (and even more than one, maybe) on their belt or in their pocket [sic].  I for one cannot imagine leaving the house without a knife on me — as the writer’s father said, “I’m wearing pants, aren’t I?” — and other than when boarding a flight (don’t get me started) I can’t remember when last I went knife-less out of the house.  (Yeah, I carried a knife even in Britishland, where it’s streng verboten, sorry P.C. Plod.)

Sheesh… next thing we’ll be talking about men not needing cars or trucks*.

*with apologies to the urbanites, who like me when I used to live in downtown Chicago, don’t need one.

Action – Reaction

Gummint, Legal Stuff

In response to situations such as this:

Two teenagers have been stabbed to death within days of each other as Britain’s knife crime bloodshed continues.

…a judge in Britishland has come up with a solution:

A judge has called for a drastic rethink on the way we use knives in kitchens in a bid to reduce the number of young men dying on our streets because of knife crime.
And he has come up with an idea for a scheme that could be rolled out across the UK where members of the public could take their kitchen knives to be ‘modified’ and the points ground down into rounded ends.

After all, nobody except a professional chef (trained in its use) has any need for a pointed knife, anyway.

I report, you wet your pants laughing.

This Won’t Be Good

Military

So this little snippet arrived in my Inbox a while ago, sent on by Loyal Reader Max H., who asks, “Waddya think?”

Oh FFS.

The US Army’s PEO Soldier – Project Manager Soldier Weapons has issued an Request for Information (RFI) to obtain industry feedback on possible submissions to Sub Compact Weapons (SCW) evaluations. The specification details offered by the Project Manager Soldier Weapons (PMSW) are scant and extremely broad. Describing potential SCWs as being select fire weapons, chambered in 9x19mm and having MIL-STD 1913 rail (Picatinny Rail) space.
The RFI, published 2 May, makes no mention of physical dimensions such as size or weight and instead seeks to cast as wide a net as possible for potential submissions. It does, however, call for suppressors, spares and slings for the weapon (not holsters). Potential future SCW submissions will have to chamber ‘9×19 mm military grade’ ammunition – meaning both M882 ball and the new XM1153 Special Purpose 9mm Round from Winchester.
The RFI gives interested parties until the 18 May to submit their responses. It remains to be seen what purpose the SCW would serve and to whom it might be issued. If earlier Army references to a Sub Compact Weapon system are to be believed the new weapon is likely destined for rear echelon troops – in the traditional PDW / submachine gun role.

It starts when the new acronym SCW (Sub Compact Weapon) is used instead of the universally-known SMG (Sub-Machine Gun). (When did the .dotmil start this fucking bullshit? Never mind, I know the answer.)

People, this is not difficult. You take a simple, basic and easy-to-produce concept like the venerable M3 Grease Gun, add the doodads the Army wants, and away you go. Most of the serious firearms manufacturers like SIG, CZ or IMI could do this in their spare time, like over a couple weekends.

Why use the Grease Gun concept as the platform? Because it fucking works, as countless dead Nazis, Japs or Commies would tell you, if they could. With modern steel and production CNC machining, you could have a prototype put together in two weeks, and after a couple months of testing, into full production.

Which is kinda what the .dotmil did with the M3 (minus the CNC) back in the Big One, and it served until the 1990s when the .dotmil ditched it because OMG it wasn’t cool enough anymore. (That’s not the official reason, of course, but it’s the real one.)

Simplicity is just not gonna happen here, of course. What will emerge is some massively over-priced, over-engineered and over-complicated abortion which will be too heavy and too unreliable, because the current loose parameters of the RFI are going to be tightened and tightened until they cry for mercy, and the REMFs are going to get something which they’ll ditch in favor of their handguns at the first opportunity. Something like the HK MP7:

…which begs the question, “Why not just use the MP7?” (It sure as hell is ugly enough.) Of course, that would be just too simple. The .dotmil hates simple, which is why they got rid of the perfectly-capable M3 Grease Gun.

Also, the .dotmil would never adopt a foreign-made SMG with a simple operating mechanism — such as the MP7 or Kalashnikov’s KR-9 SBR (short-barreled rifle) — because OMG Russia, even though Kalashnikov USA is the same type pf corporation as Beretta USA (which supplied the .dotmil with the M-9 pistol, lest we forget).

And the KR-9’s operating system is simple — again that damning word — when we all know that the Pentagon will only consider whizzbang-gee-whizz-complicated guns because that’s how they’ve operated since WWII.

Never mind that everything the Pentagon wants is right there in that photograph, and ready to ship for testing tomorrow. But that would be too easy. Let’s rather take five years to reach a decision and end up with something that doesn’t work well, costs too much and will be in production only after a further five years. (The cost of the KR-9, in the quantities that the Pentagon would order, would be about $395 per piece. Unthinkable.)

And I haven’t even broached  the touchy subject of the .dotmil wanting to use the under-powered and pointless 9x19mm cartridge…

Bah.

Just so we’re all clear on the concept: I’ve fired some of the “modern” SMGs myself, notably the Uzi, Skorpion, the MP5 and yes, the Grease Gun. Of all, the little Skorpion was the easiest to manage and the most reliable, probably because of its dinky lil’ cartridge. But neither the simpler Uzi or Skorpion designs will ever be used because old and made by furriners. Also, they just don’t look ugly modern enough for today’s Army.

Other Means

Crime

So according to Lefties, if we ban public gun ownership, all that icky violence stuff will just vanish. Or not:

Britain’s knife crime epidemic has spread to the Home Counties as stabbings are now more likely in Bedfordshire than in Merseyside.
Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Warwickshire, Norfolk and north Wales’ rates of knife crime have all increased by more than 100 per cent in the past three years, while London’s rate only increased by 20 per cent.
The epidemic is being fuelled by city gangs expanding their territory and going into rural areas, forcing out local gangs with extreme violence, according to experts.

— probably the same “experts” who supported gun bans, and are now scratching their heads.

Of course, this would be the time to relax firearm ownership laws as well as the stupid laws which all but prohibit self-defense for ordinary Brits, but I won’t hold my breath because Lefties can’t handle the truth. [/Colonel Jessup]  They think that all they have to do is pass a law with good intentions, and the problem will be solved.

They all deserve to be stabbed, as well.

Extra Ammo

The Gun Thing

Some wiseguy said this:

“I still don’t get the fascination for high-capacity mags in a non-military / non-law enforcement scenario. I mean, seriously: if the average gunfight is pretty much over, one way or another after three rounds have been fired, the remaining dozen in your double-stack mag are superfluous.”

That was in response to Tami Keel’s article about the low-capacity drawback of the 1911 as a carry piece.

But lo and behold, she’s just come out with a new piece which agrees with me, sorta:

Let’s get this out in the open: You can count the number of private-citizen defensive gun uses in the U.S. when a rapid reload made the difference between a dead good guy and a live one without taking off both mittens.
Reloading a handgun mid-gunfight, outside of a military or law enforcement context is pretty unlikely. Although he’s talking about carbines rather than pistols, a great quote from trainer Randy Harris springs to mind: “If you empty one 30-round mag in civilian-world USA, you’re going to be on the news … if you empty two, you’re going to be in the encyclopedia …”
Another trainer, Claude Werner, studies the reports of private-citizen defensive gun uses as collected in sources like the NRA’s Armed Citizen column. Over time, he’s found the average number of rounds needed in these encounters is low. One month, May of 2017, the average round count across seven reported gunfights was only 1.43 rounds per incident. That’s not a lot. Unless you find yourself caught up in the middle of an action-movie shootout, you’re highly unlikely to need that reload.

And of course, we both agree that having a spare mag is nevertheless A Good Thing should the one in the gun malfunction: the “drop [the mag], clear [the gun], reload” mantra is repeated endlessly in training, with good reason. (I myself generally carry two spare 8-round 1911 mags, by the way, because terrorist assholes / spree shooter possibilities and for another reason that I’ll discuss below.)

But I love the pic which accompanies her Recoil piece:

I think I saw that guy at the range a couple weeks back.

I know all the arguments for carrying spare mags but there’s only one sound reason I do, and it’s not because I’m likely to face off suddenly with a dozen rabid coyotes or the Plano chapter of MS-13, either; it’s just in case my hitherto-infallible PowerMag becomes suddenly fallible. Everything breaks, sooner or later.

And let’s be honest: the aforementioned terrorism / spree shooter thing is probably even less likely to happen to me than a mag breakdown. Any of these scenarios may be unlikely, but experience also tells me that most of the time, you don’t need a fire extinguisher in your car; but when you do need it, you need it really badly. Ditto ammo, hence my 16 spare rounds. I’m just not going to carry around a hundred spare rounds in ten 10-rounders — it’s heavy and spoils the look of my trousers. (Yeah, that’s me: Mr. Fashion Plate lol.)

Of course, the one qualifier to all this is geography. If your business trip takes you to or through unsavory neighborhoods full of gangs and similar goblins, why then, take as much ammo as doesn’t cause your trousers to fall down, with my blessing. There’s no need to be stupid about this issue, after all.

As with all things, your opinion may differ from mine (and in this case from Tami’s too), and that’s fine. Just don’t think you’re somehow deficient if you’re the only guy at the picnic who’s not bow-legged because of an overloaded ammo belt.