Honolulu police on Oahu, Hawaii issued the first concealed carry permit for the county today. This revolutionary impact of SCOTUS’ Bruen decision marks the first substantive victory in a long list of cases that are being fought right now in courts from NY and NJ, to CA and more, as anti-gun legislatures attempt to circumvent the highest court in the land. Hawaii was the first to fall, in what looks more and more like a massive domino arrangement.
As significant as this Hawaii win is, it’s worth noting that this was just the first of hundreds of applications submitted since November, and there is still resistance, most notably in mentions of potentially denoting “sensitive areas” where carry might be prohibited. Given how well this same end-run is going for NY, CA, and NJ, it’s unlikely that it will succeed in the end, but it may well have to go to SCOTUS to be put entirely to bed.
Hawaii, though small, going to shall-issue is a major win for pro-gun advocates as it has been among the most strident of anti-gun legislatures for decades. The small island chain has a limited amount of both public and private land, meaning gun ranges make up most of the potential shooting spots. Unlike many of us on the mainland, heading out to a patch of BLM land to bust caps really just isn’t a thing for most of Hawaii. This means private range fees stack on top of permit and transfer fees, potentially pricing the poorest of Hawaiians out of gun ownership. Much is yet to be done to improve the situation, but this dramatic first step is a harbinger of what’s to come both in Hawaii and across the country as the Bruen decision’s impact is truly felt for the first time.
Hawaii CHL: It’s About Time
Firequick – Putting the Fire in Firearm
Some people take the term firearm a little further than others. A company called Firequick takes the term firearm to the extreme. In fact, their firearms aren’t even technically firearms. They are flare-launching devices, but they are not your dad’s maritime flare gun he’s required to keep on the fishing boat. Firequick produces flare guns designed to set fires.
Believe it or not, sometimes you do, in fact, fight fire with fire. Wildland firefighters face a dynamic environment as they try to wrangle down fast-moving blazes. In fact, sometimes, the front of a fire is moving too fast to do anything but watch and plan. When water doesn’t work, and you can’t till a big enough line fast enough, you can slow or stop the fire’s path by removing any fuel in front of it.
This is known as controlled or prescribed burning. If you burn the fuel ahead of the fire, you can stop it. Burning the fuels create what firefighters call ‘the black.’ The black is the area that’s already been burned and offers no fuel for the fire. Firefighters work hard to control their created blazes but often have to move fast to do so. The Firequick nonfirearms allow them to do just that.
The Firequick Fire Starters
Firequick looked at actual firearms design to develop their products. Instead of just building a flare launcher, they adapted real, or at least blank, firing guns to the task. The first is a .22 caliber blank-firing revolver made by Alfa-Proj out of the Czech Republic.
Alfa-Proj makes a number of real revolvers, as well as blank-firing guns. These revolvers are fit with a special barrel attachment that gives a somewhat odd appearance. These revolvers cannot fire live rounds and can only utilize flares. It’s a six-shot revolver with a swing-out cylinder for easy loading. The massive trigger guard is designed for the heavy leather gloves that wildland firefighters use.
Wildland firefighters go out by themselves with what they have on their backs. This offers a lightweight, handy option that can be carried amongst a firefighter’s gear. They produce a simple nylon holster to make it easy and safe to carry as well.
The second Firequick launcher is known as the Large Format Launcher. As you can see, it very much looks like an AR-15 with a can cannon attached. Just like the handgun, this Firequick launcher can only fire flares propelled by blanks. The LFL offers you a max range of 200 feet and can launcher larger, more powerful flares without punishing recoil.
Firequick had to fight with the ATF to ensure this was not considered a firearm. A sitting Congressman at the time had to get involved to ensure it was designated a non-firearm. Who knew the ATF likes to be capricious and difficult?
Why Guns?
Technically these aren’t guns, and legally they aren’t guns, but it’s easy to ask why something that is very similar to a gun used? There are a few reasons. Blank-propelled flares are nice between the primer is separate from the flare, and this helps prevent accidental ignition when the two are separated.
Second, they are faster to shoot and offer a more effective range than the average flare launcher. Finally, they are built to last. The gear firefighters carry has to be tough, and like real guns, these flare launchers are plenty tough and can be abused wholeheartedly without the worry of them breaking.
It’s somewhat ironic that a firefighter in California uses a device based on an AR-15 to help save California. I’m surprised Cali didn’t demand a ‘featureless’ version for CALFIRE. Can I build my own Firequick with a 80 lower receiver? The Firequick launchers are an interesting way to prove that fighting fire with fire does work.
The Wonderful World of Anti-Tank Rifles
Oh boy, it’s 1918, and you’re in the trenches of World War One. Those dastardly Brits have created something called a tank. This armored monstrosity crosses no man’s land and comes screaming at you over and over. It’s seemingly unstoppable until a big crate arrives, packing a very big rifle. It resembles your Mauser but is absolutely massive. They say it will kill tanks. You’ve borne witness to the first anti-tank rifle and arguably the first anti-material rifle.
It’s one of the first dedicated anti-armor weapons ever fielded and started an interesting but short-lived genre of weaponry. These days the idea of a portable rifle stopping a tank is insane. It just couldn’t happen with modern tanks. However, throughout World War One, Two, and even into Korea, the Anti-tank rifle was an effective anti-armor option. Today we are going to look at five anti-tank rifles that stopped tanks dead.
Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr
The first ever anti-tank rifle came as a response to the British tanks. As these tanks crossed no man’s land, German soldiers used this massive, 13mm single shot, bolt action rifle to shut the tank down. This huge rifle was a crew-served weapon with an A-gunner and loader. The rifle weighed 41 pounds loaded with a bipod and was five foot, seven inches long.
Nothing was in place to absorb recoil, and it was said to be absolutely brutal. In fact, it would break the collarbones of some young and unlucky Germans. This unit of a rifle was the only anti-tank rifle fielded during World War One but went on to inspire every anti-tank rifle created after it.
Boys Anti-Tank Rifle
After World War One, the Boys Anti-Tank rifle came out of the land of tea and crumpets. Captain Henry Boys developed the rifle. He sat on the British Small Arms Committee at the Enfield facility. Captain Boys died right before the rifle was formally adopted in 1937. The Boys was notably a fairly well-thought-out rifle.
It featured a bolt action design with a five-round magazine mounted to the top of the gun. This allowed the A-Gunner to quickly reload the rifle in the midst of a fight. A padded stock and muzzle brake helped tame the recoil for the .55 Boys cartridge. The rifle used a bipod and monopod for support and was effective early on in the Second World War.
Although, like most tank rifles, its efficiency declined by the end of the war. Interestingly enough, Walt Disney was commissioned to produce a film called Stop That Tank for the Canadian government.
Wz. 35
The Polish developed the Wz. 35 in 1935 and was extremely secretive about the weapon. They stored the weapons in crates marked Do Not Open! Surveillance Equipment. Troops trained with the rifle were sworn to secrecy. It was issued on an infantry level to provide anti-armor support at the platoon level. The Wz. 35 utilized an interesting 7.92x107mm DS round that was surprisingly effective. It could penetrate the Panzer 1, 2, 3, and 4 tanks.
The Wz. 35 anti-tank rifle could penetrate up to 33mms of armor at 100 yards. The rifle was o effective that captured variants were pressed both into German And Italian service. The WZ. 35 was quite the rifle. It utilized a bolt action design with an internal four-round magazine.
PTRS-41
The minds of Soviet weapons designers Simonov and Degtyaryov teamed up to create a semi-automatic anti-tank rifle. This is a gas-operated, short-stroke gas piston system that fed from a five-round integral magazine. It launched 14.5x114mm rounds at over 3,000 feet per second. The rifle could penetrate 40mms of armor at 100 meters.
The rifle was prone to failing when dirty but offered a controllable platform. The weapon’s recoil was cut significantly due to the semi-auto action and the gun’s large muzzle device. This PTRS-41 is still in service to this day as an anti-material rifle. Simonov would later shrink the PTRS-41 design to produce the SKS.
Lahti L-39
Last but not least, we have the massive, semi-automatic, magazine-fed Lahti L-39. This 20mm rifle was absolutely fierce and more akin to a field piece than an anti-tank rifle. The Lahti L-39 utilized a 10-round, top-loading box magazine to distribute 20mms of hate one round at a time. This massive weapon was so large and powerful that the cocking handle couldn’t be charged by your average soldier, so a crank device was used to charge the weapon.
It weighed 109 pounds and was 87 inches long. It was not just crew served, but team served. This massive beast of a gun was used for a good portion of the war, but eventually, tanks became too capable, and they lost efficiency. It remained in service as a tank harassment weapon, a sniping weapon, and even an anti-air weapon. The weapon evolved into the Lahti 39/44, which was a two-barreled, full-auto anti-air weapon.
Anti-Tank Rifles Rule
Anti-tank rifles are somewhat useless these days. Tanks like the M1 Abrams would laugh off a shot from any of these rifles. However, for a short time, these weapons were the elephant guns of the battlefield. They were massive, heavy, but oh so powerful. They are an interesting blip in the history of anti-armor weaponry.
Big Iron Update – The HCAR
I always like when the Ohio Ordnance HCAR rifles crosses the streams if the gunternet. The update to the Browning Automatic Rifle loses weight, adds rails for optics and lasers and has a big curvy magazine.
It looks cools, tacti-cool even, and still fires ‘mA ThirTy AughT SIX’ for maximum .30 cal. That’s the .30 that should exist by the way, it’s the .308 that I will consistently posit that we knew better than to make another .30 caliber round by that point in history.
Modernizing an older platform is nothing new, we’re even familiar with ‘semi’ing a typically full-auto open bolt weapon like the UZI carbines. The HCAR is both of those and came out in a time period where 30.06 had basically been shelved as a hunting round or you’d get some lightweight ‘Garand’ loads for your surplus M1 to go plink.
Yes, fun fact, the Garand wasn’t an ideal 30.06 host since it was originally built around .276 and that rifle both ran better and held two more rounds. The BAR though was built up around 30.06, John Moses Browning had the US standard cartridge in mind when he put these together and his action designs were meant for it.
Is this a practical weapon? No.
Is this a weapon with some niche capability that you’re modern rifle can’t match? No.
Is it affordable? …
So why is it so stinking cool then?
Simple, because it is. It’s a weapon that served several hard decades from then end of First World War, through the American Gangster era, brought US GI’s through the brutality of the Second World War, and began retiring with honors after Korea.
It did work.
The HCAR is a weird offshoot of that because it represents a development branch we could theoretically have ended up at from the M14 trials. The US didn’t want to ditch .30 cal and we had a wonderfully working .30 cal weapon in nearly the configuration we needed it to be with the Colt Monitor variant of the BAR. The Monitor is essentially the M16A2 and the HCAR is then the M16A4.
That’s an over simplification, but it signifies the jump into the ancillary era brought on by durable optic suites. The HCAR can do work, and if you want to shoot 30.06 as your rifle round of choice and have a modernized set of capabilities in the weapon it is the choice. It isn’t a bad choice either. It’s just… inefficient by todays standards.
The HCAR and the 30.06 can be loaded with a little more legs than the 7.62 NATO can be, not a lot but a little. But that begs the questions why not look at .300 WinMag, Norma, 6.5 Creed, etc. if you’re looking for rounds with distance efficiency. The 30.06 and the HCAR aren’t about efficiency, they’re about BAR and 30.06. This weapon is the rule of cool.
The HCAR isn’t doing anything a decent AR-10 build won’t do better, armor defeat even holds true if you get hands on M80A1 in place of M2. The SCAR, MR762, or SPEAR all come in lighter and in 6.5 (or potentially 6.8×51) they can have every inch of the range and then some.
But you you got the HCAR because you wanted an BAR in 30.06.
Changing Your Harris Bipod to ARCA
Arca-Swiss, it is everywhere in the firearms industry right now and for good reason. An ARCA compatible gun allows for easy adjustments and installs/removals of pieces of equipment such as mounting the gun onto a tripod or repositioning your bipod on the clock. ARCA is a simple clamping system type of mounting therefore adjustments are as easy as turning a knob.
In a previous article we went over how to change your Gas Gun to the IWI ARCA compatible rail. Before the ARCA I was running a KAC URX M-LOK Rail with 1913 piece where I used my Harris Bipod with quick detach Picatinny mount. This allowed for quick removal and install however it didn’t allow me to move the bipod back and forth dependent on the stage or scenario. This is why I went to ARCA. After changing my gas gun rail out I now had to figure out how to connect a bipod.
AREA419
In comes AREA419. A well known company in the precision rifle world. AREA419 is mainly known for their muzzle devices, reloading equipment, and ARCA compatible equipment such as rails, bags, and barricade stops. In this instance we are looking at their Harris Bipod ARCA adapter.
Harris Bipod ARCA Clamp Kit
The Harris Bipod Swivel style will naturally come with a rounded shape housing on the top and a clamp that connects to a swivel stud. Swivel studs are often found on hunter style stocks. Other chassis style rifles or AR type will need an adapter such as a quick release 1913, ARCA, or even a direct mount M-LOK. For the ARCA rail that was just installed on an AR-15 ARCA rail we will need the ARCA adapter.
Specs
Price: $100
- Comes with Harris Adapter and ARCALOCK Clamp Base
- Replaces the swivel stud mounting platform
- Works with the factory tensioning screw or a KMW Pod Loc
- Machined in house from 6061-T6
- Type III Black Hardcoat Anodized
- **Does not work in conjunction with Barricade Stop**
- Weight: 0.5lbs
- Dimensions: 6×3.5 ×2 in
Install
Install takes about 5 minutes if it is your first time and it’s pretty simple. See the video below for help.
Note: In the video below AREA419 is only showing how to install the adapter, not the clamp. The adapter is the tough part, the clamp is just two screws onto that adapter. The KMW Podloc that he is installing is a tensioning lever that replaces the tensioning knob. Also a great upgrade.
Tools Needed
- 1/4″ socket
- 1/8″ Allen Wrench
Personal Review
AREA419 always has great machining and parts. Right away I noticed that they didn’t use the cheap YFS screws from China which is fantastic as those need to be pretty strong in this case due to the stress being put onto the clamp.
Everything works intended however, there was one issue that I ran into and have heard from others. When tightening the clamp onto my IWI ARCA rail I found that I have to tighten it on to almost not being able to remove it, and if I don’t it will become so loose that it can fall off. Now first I would think this may just be the machining of both the rail and the clamp not really working together, however I did hear the same thing from someone else who was running a different rail. This issue may be because of the small pins that are machined into the clamp which are there to soften the blow of the clamp tightening onto the rail and not do any damage to the rail.
Remember, ARCA is still very new in the firearms industry and AREA419 is one of the first and few to even put a harris adapter out. So it doesn’t make me say no to AREA419 products at all because they do put out some of the best machined pieces in the market.
Other Options
If you did want to do a side by side comparison of what works on your firearm, the only other company I know of that is even making these is Really Right Stuff (RRS), which again makes industry leading things such as tripods and are THE company that set the industry standard for ARCA. Their adapter is below.
RRS Harris Bipod Adapter
Note that when purchasing you need to buy two items, the adapter and the type of clamp you want. For instance, if you want the type of knob as the AREA419 has, purchase the Bipod Adapter and the BTC-Pro.
To Purchase AREA419 Adapter
Click here to purchase the AREA419 bipod adapter kit with all parts necessary included.
Note when purchasing, the photos show the Harris Bipod however the bipod does not come with the clamp. You are only purchasing the clamp. Also, it is only compatible with the “S” style bipods. This is due to the swivel lever redesigning the housing. If you have an older style bipod this clamp will not work.
The Other Colt 1903 – A Pocket Hammer
The Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless often sits in the shadow of the Colt M1911. Both guns share a creator in John Browning, and both guns were and remain well-loved. One pistol that’s seemingly faded from the minds of gun enthusiasts is the M1903’s lesser-known brother. The Colt M1903 Pocket hammer. Your mind might be thinking, oh, they made a version of the 1903 with an exposed hammer. That’s what I thought upon hearing that name.
After even a cursory search, it’s easy to see that not, that wasn’t the case at all. Outside of a very similar name, the Pocket Hammer and Pocket Hammerless have nearly nothing in common. Except that Colt produced them and Browning designed them. The Model 1903 Pocket Hammer was never as successful as the Pocket Hammerless guns. As the name implies, they began production in 1903, but production ended in 1927.
The Lineage of the 1903 Pocket Hammer
When you look at the Colt 1903 and 1908 Pocket Hammerless guns, it’s easy to see some resemblance to the 1911. They have distinctly similar external designs. With the Pocket Hammer, it goes beyond just similar looks. The 1903 Pocket Hammer is a bit of an uncle to the 1911.
The Pocket Hammer is derived from the Colt Model 1902. In fact, it’s just a compact version of that very gun. The Model 1902 comes from the Model 1900. The Model 1902 is the result of incremental changes to the Model 1900. When the United States became interested in an automatic pistol, they initially tested the 1902. The 1902 became the 1905, and eventually, over time, and with changes suggested by the US Ordnance Board, we got the M1911.
Breaking Down the 1903 Pocket Hammer
The M1903 Pocket Hammer is an interesting gun. Its predecessor, the M1900, was the first short recoil gun, and much like grandad, the M1903 Pocket Hammer used a short recoil operation. The famed Pocket Hammerless guns used a much simple straight blowback operation. However, the Pocket Hammer used a short recoil design and utilized the more powerful .38 ACP cartridge.
The gun used a single stack magazine that held seven rounds of .38 ACP. The Model 1902 featured a 6-inch barrel, but the pocket Hammer trimmed things down to about 4.5 inches. It’s still fairly large, with an overall length of 7.75 inches. The gun weighed 1.96 pounds. By all accounts, it’s a big gun, something we’d considered full-size.
A single action trigger and exposed hammer give it big 1911 energy. Unlike the 1911, the Colt 1903 Pocket Hammer used a two-link locking system. The downside to dual links was that the gun required a cross wedge in the slide. This cross wedge sat near the muzzle for stripping purposes. If this wedge came loose, the slide could fly rearwards and hit the user. (Beretta didn’t pioneer launching slides.)
The gun looks like what would happen if I tried to draw a 1911. It has a much straighter grip, and a good bit of the barrel sits exposed. The ejection port is rather small, and the magazine release is at the bottom of the grip and not a press button on the side.
Browning loved his safeties, but the 1903 Pocket Hammerless has none. No frame safety, no grip safety, and no magazine safety are present. It’s bare, and your safety is your trigger finger.
The Cartridge
Colt and John Browning created the .38 ACP. It’s an interesting round that could launch a 115-grain round at 1,150 feet per second. It’s a bit like a slightly weaker 9mm Parabellum. It bears mentioning that the original .38 ACP loads were much more powerful and could fire a 130-grain round at 1,350 feet per second. The problem was that this proved too powerful for the Colt M1900, and they trimmed the power down a bit.
The .38 ACP never gained massive popularity, and it was constrained to the Colt Model 1900, 1902, and 1903 Pocket Hammer. It’s not popular, but it is an interesting footnote in the intermediate handgun cartridge world. 9mm parabellum would be produced only a year later. When the Colt pistol died out, the round seemingly did as well. It had a brief resurgence when Astra Model 400 pistols entered the surplus market.
The .38 Super and .38 ACP are dimensionally the same, but the .38 Super is much more powerful. While the .38 Super will load and even fire from an M1903 Pocket Hammer, it’s not a wise idea. Due to this being a known issue, companies used to produce .38 Super in nickeled casings to help avoid confusion and blown-up guns.
The End of the Pocket Hammer
The 1903 Pocket Hammer saw some minor adoption by foreign forces. The Philippine Constabulary adopted the gun. A number found their way to Mexico and fought in the Mexican Revolution. Although it didn’t see anywhere near the success of the 1903 and 1908 Pocket hammerless, it’s an interesting part of the M1911 lineage.
“The Grotesque Lies That Keep America’s Phony “Gun Debate” Going”
LAProgressive is not a bastion of constitutional scholarship, at least on civil rights with which they disagree. As the title suggests, they are antithetical to the 2nd Amendment and firearms rights. They consider the acting of owning a firearm absurdly hazardous. So this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
However, I want to see what a group who has never met a stat they wouldn’t spin into tragically comical hyperbole (so long as it would make it horrific enough to push anti-gun agendas) are claiming about ‘grotesque lies’ about the gun debate. Others have since grabbed this thread and ran with it if you’ve seen more recent headlines.
Please note, I have edited the article subheading a bit for clarity. TEXT: is the original phrasing with my clarifying edit afterwards.
America’s children die by guns far more than kids in other Western carefully selected ‘modern’ countries not because of school shootings or loose guns, but because American grownups of mature age are shooting them people we would and have called children or youth in a different context are shooting them, parents kill their families, and sometimes children are collateral damage in violent urban criminal conflicts, as motives vary wildly.
American ‘children’ do indeed die at a higher rate to firearms, but our age ranges for ‘children’ in these reports tends to vary depending upon how gruesome the data needs to be, not by a social metric that would bracket causality in a meaningful way. Add to that, our absurdly high gun ownership rate comparing any nation to the US but lacking a mention to any correspondingly proportional rate in any of the crimes, accidents, or suicides they are decrying, and top it off with examples of nations that have X, Y, or Z policy in place but are dismissed from consideration as not ‘Western’ enough to be a good example.
We do this domestically too whenever you see a ‘States with the most lax gun laws…’ post.
Please note, dear reader, that I’m not saying we, Americans, own an absurd number of private arms. I’m firmly in the “catch up, scrubs” camp when it comes to getting private firearm ownership normalized. I am saying that comparatively, there is no comparison.
If guns were truly the problem being claimed, we would know handily. It wouldn’t even be close. Flat earthers would sound more scientifically astute than someone with a pro-gun point of view. Instead, the homicide rates to ownership rates are all over.
We are the third largest nation in the world, we have the most firearms by an order of magnitude, and yet we are 86th in intentional homicide.
Perspective
Consider the most violent decades of adult life, especially male adults, are 15-35 with 15-25 being worse than 25-35. Consider that ‘child’ or ‘youth’ has been used to describe people as old as 26. We should take ‘child’ with a grain of salt in reports such as this, until given enough grounding context that we know what a ‘child’ is instead of what we think of naturally when hearing ‘child’. What we think of, and what writers use manipulatively, is a pre-teen of age 12 and under. What they use, is 19 and under ‘teens’, 17 and under ‘minors’, and occasionally as old as 26 and under ‘youth’ depending upon the source. If they need to a look a little more intellectually honest they’ll use 15 or 16 and under for ‘child’ because it catches the teen criminal deaths and suicides that are an unfortunate part of human maturation.
When it comes to ‘teen’ and ‘youth’ decision making, they can and are criminally charged as adults for good reason. In inflicting deliberate harm they are capable of adult rationale, they know what they are doing. What a teen lacks isn’t intelligence that their act will cause harm, it is usually the experience and guidance to see that harm as a bad thing, even for selfish reasons of bad as in ‘not advantageous enough or not enough gained vs risked’.
Accidents happen. Murders & suicides happen. What I would be curious to see, and what isn’t in this piece thus far as we’ve read, is how the US familicide rates stack against other nations, even ‘Western’ ones. Do those rates differ from our general homicide rates? Do they scale within standard deviations? If they are in line, as I suspect, within context of the respective overall homicide rates, then this isn’t a uniquely American problem at all, certainly not because of the 2nd Amendment. It is simply one in line with the current amalgamation of cultural stresses and ethos the nation is trying to navigate.
Consider this,
In a nation of 330,000,000 people, and more than that many firearms, what are the number of firearm deaths in a year for ages 0-12, even 0-14? They rarely exceed a few hundred. Because they don’t exceed a few hundred, as the third largest nation on the planet, this “report” and those like it are using several multi-year spans for measurement metrics on its various topics.
These firearm related deaths are tragic, yes, but the leading causes of death among various youth age groups, according to the CDC, go thus.
THE TOP THREE CAUSES OF DEATH BY AGE GROUP
0 to 1 year:
- Developmental and genetic conditions that were present at birth
- Conditions due to premature birth (short gestation)
- Health problems of the mother during pregnancy
1 to 4 years:
- Accidents (unintentional injuries)
- Developmental and genetic conditions that were present at birth
- Homicide
5 to 14 years:
- Accidents (unintentional injuries)
- Cancer
- Suicide
Accidents (unintentional injuries) are, by far, the leading cause of death among children and teens.
Now, let’s take a look at the 1-4 year age category since homicide did rank and the topic of this discussion, per the “American grownups of mature age are shooting them“, is adults murdering children.
Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in the 1-4 age range, and there were only 75 in 2020. That’s 75 too many of course, and the highest in the 3 decades displayed, but perspective and context matter and we get nowhere productive with the regurgitation of the “one is one too many” line. That bit of utopian vision nonsense has been used to argue for objectively harmful policies in the name of safety.
In contrast, one is too many deaths yet one life saved by a firearm isn’t enough to justify ownership. Nor 2 lives, nor even the 60,000 (minimum) DGUs which the CDC has removed from their statistics on firearms (with promises of a more accurate figure coming in 2023, we shall see).
Let’s look at all ages now.
We haven’t even gotten beyond the subheading and its all just so much… stuff, so let’s read on and see where its heading.
As depressing as America’s endless parade of shootings alongside its going-nowhere gun debate is, injecting reality into gun politics would make things even more distressing. Begin with the question at the forefront of the dubious debate: Who is shooting thousands of America’s children?
Thousands? If you expand the date range far enough, yes. I dare say if we look at date ranges 1914-1918 or 1935-1945 those look pretty bleak in Europe, North Africa, and in China and the Pacific. Who are killing ‘thousands’ of America’s children? The same people with the same motives who’ve always been killing them. This isn’t a new facet of life in the world.
To further contrast ‘who is shooting thousands of children’, drowning is roughly twice as lethal to children in a given year as homicide. But kids have to be able to swim recreationally, we couldn’t dream of banning pools right? It’s almost like risk is a part of life and quixotically trying to remove risks (far beyond conscientious mitigation at least) in increasingly absurd manners is doomed to failure and harms the credibility and legitimacy of the state’s efforts besides.
There aren’t even 400 murders on those charts for 2020, age 14 and under, with less than 100 accidents, and 224 suicides. Accidental injury is the number one cause of death in children and teens, and yet there are less than 100 fatal firearm accidents. This is likely the result of the one trackable positive firearm initiative, safe storage.
2020 was a really bad year for crime and suicide, largely due to the pandemic and riot stresses. It was also bad for firearm accidents among kids, compared to 2018 and 2019. Keeping kids all home had many unintended consequences.
But where is it that LAP referencing? Where comes this information to stir them up so on child firearm homicides?
“Gun violence,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Weekly Update begins, is “the leading cause of death for children in America.” Bonta touts his Office of Gun Violence Prevention as “innovative… the first of its kind.” What “innovative” ideas, then, does he propose?
Well, there’s a problem. I don’t believe Bonta should be taken seriously regarding anything, least of all, “Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in America.”
The CDC begs to differ, unless we’re shifting older teens under ‘children’ again because of course you are. Convenient that we can’t define what a child is. Such a slippery definition, shifting dramatically depending upon what we need to fear for the sake of the children.
The facts are stark. Over the last decade, an appalling 2,401 American children under age 12 died by guns; two-thirds were murdered. A record 464 were killed in gun homicides in 2020 and 2021 alone, a uniquely American carnage. Gun homicides in general are rare in other Western nations; those victimizing children all but unheard-of.
There is that ‘Western’ again, where we pick rich, predominantly white countries, ignore demographic and socioeconomic inconsistencies that make the comparison ludicrous, and then say, ‘Bad America! How dare you be the third largest nation in the world with diverse socioeconomic groups and the challenges that come with them!’
The nerve. The audacity! The sheer audnervecity!!
Maybe if all of our immigrants and culture came from those whi.. um, civili.. no.. oh, ‘Western’ nations we’d emulate them more. Saying ‘Western Nation’ is the statistical equivalent of promising you aren’t racist or prejudiced because you have an [insert friend of appropriate demographic].
The US is highly diverse with a sufficiently separate and more recent developmental history. We’re also, again, the third largest nation on the planet. Our minority populations outweigh nations. We also have a tendency when ranting upon the vileness of US violence to gloss over the incredibly violent histories of all those ‘Western’ nations to instead look at a tiny slice in time where ‘Western’ nations have not had to resort to civil warfare or other lethal conflict in a few decades and declare ‘look at how well this works’. Ukraine gives us a handy example of how quickly all that can evaporate, just how fragile ‘Western’ civilization is.
Remember kids, our speciecial norm is tribalism.
‘Western’
Lowest Firearms Ownership
Seems like number of firearms has no correlation to homicide rate. Weird. Seems more like how well off and homogenous the population is matters far more.
School shootings of young children invoke tears and outrage among American politicians, interest group spokespersons, and media commentators, many speaking “as parents.” Then, they distort children’s shootings simply as tragedies the young inflict on themselves.
Ironic that we’re talking about distorting shootings, but victim blaming? Are we seriously trying to say that for the statistically rare and tragic incidents of terrorism and mass casualty violence, as compared to common assaults and homicides, that media commentators are blaming the victims? That they, the young, inflict this upon themselves?
I’m curious now. This has taken an odd turn.
Media talkers incessantly berate “young men” for committing “these shootings” such as the Sandy Hook, Conn., and Uvalde, Tex., grade-school massacres. Acclaimed Washington Post writer John Woodrow Cox, voicing the official/media consensus, denounces “teenagers who slaughter children:” the “biggest threat to the safety of children in our country” is “punks with a gun and a grudge” and children finding “guns… unlocked,” he fumes. Experts invoke debunked “non-science” to disparage youthful “developing brains” as recklessly violent. A recent CNN survey of “experts” found all but one simply blaming gun violence on “kids” and “youths” shooting themselves and each other.
We’re oversimplifying other media hot take oversimplifications here, that’s a big problem. Hot takes are already problem enough with their lack of nuance and information, just look at tweet or a VagueBook post of your choice.
Yes, the young are shooting ‘their own’. The problem is that distinction makes little sense as a denominator of a group, the two groups are separate in many ways in most cases. The one exception is high school shootings, which tend to be student or faculty perpetrated at a greater rate.
The age of ‘young men’ doesn’t bracket these people as a social structure, not the way a neighborhood, or classroom, or sports team do. We can’t ask, “Why are 20ish year old’s murdering kindergarteners at an alarming rate?” with any kind of expectation for useable information to act on. It is, quite simply, too rare an event to bracket it that way. We are asking the wrong question, seeking the wrong motivational source. Any rate of that is alarming, especially with the strikingly broad sample period of ‘all events’.
Blaming the deaths in Sandy Hook or Uvalde on ‘those crazy youths’, as if the age range 18-24 is a reason, is asinine. However there can be no denying that the current world of stresses and triggers has tripped that switch in a few young men recently and repeatedly. Especially those feeling disenfranchised, lost, vulnerable, offended, rejected, etc.
That, by the way, isn’t news at all. That is terrorist/insurgent recruiting 101. Find the angry young men and point them at the thing you can blame for their ills, resource them and they’ll do the rest. The CIA and the Special Forces hold this neat trick as part of their core missions. ‘Can you hear the people sing?’
But why here? Why is it happening domestically at such as seemingly high rate?
What we seem to be seeing here in 2022, specifically in the mass shooters, is an increase in the reckless natural, or I suppose spontaneous societal, occurrences of the trigger. A combination of the information age providing the right insulator conditions to ferment the resentments necessary and the continued proofs that this method of acting out will garner them boundless notoriety and attention. Why is ‘The FBI grooms mass shooters’ a popular conspiracy? Because of the terrifying plausibility of it, it is legitimately a tactic we use.
Far more likely is the Helter Skelter ‘made’ the Manson family do it, or Hinckley trying to impress Jodie Foster by killing the President, but magnified within the chaos of the online society. With all the information at our fingertips in record time and the ability to communicate in echo chambers of our choosing, the fringes can find each other and communicate with each other. That feeding off each others ‘injuries’, even if the vast majority of posts remain harmless spleen venting sessions, can push one of the most vulnerable and extreme past their trigger point. No deliberate pressure from [insert evil entity/org] to reach that result need be applied, the currents of online information could push hard enough within the organic interactions there simply because there are so many of them occurring. Add to that, there never has existed a more toxic interconnected environment, full of distrust and the ability to find the answers they want to hear, than we have today. This is one of the greatest risks of the information age and one that cannot be mitigated very well without losing the far greater degree of benefits it provides.
But what is it that they (LAP) are reasoning this out as?
In fact, school shootings and children shooting children, though unspeakably horrific, account for just 2% of younger children’s gun homicides. No one talks about who really is murdering children. The answer and silence are deeply disturbing.
Ah, now we’re shifting back to familicide.
FBI tabulations of age of killer by age of victim show 77% of children younger than 12 murdered by guns were shot by grownups age 25 and older — a consistent pattern for at least 40 years. More children are shot by murderers over age 50 than under age 18.
Most of the few child murders that are occurring annually are by familicide. They always have been. When they aren’t, collateral damage is often the culprit as a child is killed as a consequence of unrelated criminal violence in proximity. We’re again weirdly bracketing age alone as a social circle that it isn’t.
These shootings are hardly hidden, as just a few stories from 2021-22 show (“Father fatally shoots five children”; “Father shoots son, 3, daughter, 5”; “ “Woman kills 2 young children, herself”; “Father fatally shoots 4 people, including his 3 children”; “Father shoots 2 young sons, killing 1”; “Father kills 2 children in murder-suicide”; “Man charged in deadly shooting of 6-year-old”; “Maryland father shoots family”; “Phoenix father shoots, kills family“; “Colorado gun shop owner suspected of killing 2 children”; “Gresham woman kills 2 young children, herself”; “Father fatally shoots 4 people, including his 3 children”; on and on). They’re just not the “gun violence” anyone wants to talk about.
For several reasons.
Domestic violence is ugly but doesn’t carry the social capital that a terroristic incident like Uvalde, the July 4th Parade, Mandalay Bay, Pulse, or Bataclan do. Domestic violence is ugly, but its motives are often too humanizing. Where a mass killer can be more easily called a monster and separated as ‘was not really one of us’, a stressed husband, wife, mother, or father is more easily understood even if vehemently abhorred.
And people, quite frankly, have shit to do. Worrying about the 1-in-a-million asshole who would kill their kids, actually the the subset of them who would dare do it with a gun instead of drowning, smothering, abandoning, blunt force, or any other of the myriad ways you can complete a familicide, is not high on everyone’s daily to-do’s. It isn’t. Outside of the few who are at high risk of domestic violence on the regular, this isn’t going to be a blip through anyone’s consciousness.
2021 and 2022, like 2020, are banner years for social and domestic distress, financial strains, and people believing that their little slice of the world is at its end. Divorce and domestic violence rates went up dramatically during the lockdown. Suicides went up.
Some people in that suicide rationale reach that personal ‘world’s end’ and act out violently, they won’t go alone. Some are caught before doing any real harm, some aren’t. Crushing despair and anger are hellacious and unpredictable motivators.
Facing the harsh reality of thousands of 30-aged and middle-aged Americans shooting children, mainly in homes, would completely upend an already vitriolic gun-policy quarrel. The one consensus angrily battling gun-control and gun-rights factions share is the “right” of nearly all adults to have at least some guns, especially in their homes.
Ohh, now this is clever. Terribly dishonest, but clever. They’ve taken over a decade of stats to point out that domestic violence familicide claims the lives of most murdered children, not mass killers of a more terroristic nature. But then make the spurious claim that this ‘fact’ would upend the gun debate? The fact that is somehow not upending the gun debate despite everyone knowing about it.
The premise LAP is forwarding is that ‘How dare we ever allow guns in homes when sometimes those guns will then be turned upon the family by a family member…’
Nobody has killed their family any other way, right?
Ah, never mind. Now it’s just claiming that death by firearm is somehow a worse death than other kinds of death… because firearm.
Classic anti-gunnery.
“This is not about taking away anyone’s guns,” President Joe Biden declared of modest gun-control proposals proposals that will absolutely take away guns and increase the ponderous nightmare of buying one. An adult can own “a dozen AR-15s” so long as he “prevent(s) his deadly weapons from falling into the hands of a child,” Cox insists.
Fixed again. Cox could not be reached on whether or not pools should be kept away from children with the same vehemence despite them being far deadlier.
The easily-discerned reality on who is shooting children renders this made-up consensus vital to sustaining Americans’ gun discourse both callous and insane. Americans’ megalomanic concept of “adult rights” enabled one 64-year-old legally to obtain weaponry capable of shooting more people in 15 minutes in Las Vegas than have been shot in all 131,000 American schools in four years. No proposed reform would have stopped him.
Correction, that right has enabled that theoretical ability of mass murder for hundreds of millions of people. One crazy person did so and was not stopped. The concept of ‘adult rights’ and privileges also enabled the renting of the vehicles that have killed and wounded thousands of people. Notable among those are Nice, France (86 Dead) and Oklahoma City (168 Dead) with Waukesha Wisconsin (6 dead) added on just for fun.
How dare we let this concept of “adult rights” kill nearly 40,000 people in 2020 alone! No proposed reforms would stop these needless deaths upon the roads.
See, I can do it too.
That simple, stark fact with cataclysmic implications for safety cannot be published in any mainstream media or by any gun-debate lobby (I’ve tried). It is too threatening to the fragile set of myths that dictate how we discuss guns.
What myths? How so? We’re using hyperbole to make a mountain out of a molehill and and the mortar used to this hold this farce together against scrutiny is the blood of children. Maybe your stark fact is lacking something facts need to work, context. A kid dead at the hands of their family member’s gun, or a terrorist’s, does not change the cold calculus of wider reality.
That reality is that this isn’t the problem you are making it out to be. The outrage over the murder of children and the just need to vilify, shame, and prosecute their murders doesn’t contrast against the far more lethal forces of negligence and ill fortune. Accidental injury kills kids the most. This doesn’t make murders less guilty of their actions, it just means the fault is that of the murderer and not societies efforts at large.
In truth, as long as the right of nearly every American adult to have a gun remains unassailable, Americans will continue to suffer hundreds of thousands of gun deaths every decade, including tens of thousands victimizing children.
Now its tens of thousands? Didn’t you say it was 2,401 the past decade?
“Over the last decade, an appalling 2,401 American children under age 12 died by guns“
Yes, you did.
I would once again like to propose the banning of pools, which we do not have “unassailable” rights to as they are recreational, and would save more children. No? Okay.
Wait! Let me have a stab at it this way.
In truth, as long as the right of nearly every American adult to buy alcohol remains unassailable, Americans will continue to suffer millions of deaths (not exaggerated, here’s the CDC) every decade, including tens of thousands victimizing children.
See, I can do it too. So let’s dust off ye olde prohibition right?
However, let us interpret the seemingly unconscionable silence by gun-control groups (whose researchers surely know the facts presented here) as charitably as possible. They know that challenging the court-upheld right of every American adult to “keep and bear arms” would jeopardize gun-control lobbies’ already difficult politics, rendering the modest reforms they propose (background checks on gun buyers, bans on assault weapons, holding gun makers liable for reckless marketing, and “red flag” laws to seize guns from openly disturbed owners) all but impossible to win against implacable gun-rights forces.
Let us be backhandedly charitable to the organizations trying to ‘reasonably’ crush a human right? As they fail to use our absurd perspective on these statistics? We’re talking about a gun controller’s perspective on absurd about another gun controller. Use this ‘evidence’ to advance an argument they are already losing on multiple fronts to cold facts? Why would this be unconscionable I wonder.
One strongly correlated regulation, safe storage, is already in place and widely popular. It is strongly encouraged by all parties in the debate, and is having the notably positive influences that it can. But unless we are proposing that making a rule imposes a physical reality, you’re not playing in the same ballpark they are and your opinions are not helping their already shaky cases.
At least the honesty about not believing the 2nd Amendment should be a right and that private firearms ownership is the problem you seek to solve isn’t masked behind the usual platitudes. That’s refreshing to read.
Research shows these modest reforms, even if they would barely dent America’s enormous gun toll, would do at least some good. They would marginally reduce domestic gun killings, especially those victimizing women, and gun suicides. Therefore, this thinking goes, it’s better not to raise unpalatable gun-violence realities in order to win some beneficial reforms.
Except those studies are suspect, as we keep pointing out with the RAND analysis on those gun control studies. What we have is the hope of positive outcomes from implementing any or all of these policies, which rely upon the compliance of the notoriously uncompliant. Politicos aren’t looking for marginal wins, they’ll take them if they get luck but they aren’t. They are looking to remain elected and ‘doing something’ about gun violence gives them political and actual capital to do that.
If that’s the rationale, gun-control lobbies should at least observe some basic honesty and stop defeating themselves with lies about schools, youth, and startling, positive trends, to be detailed in Part II.
Oh goodie, there’s a Part II.
Look, these realities aren’t unpalatable. They are grim, but they statistically outly and aren’t fixable by a policy. Short of the violence of outright confiscation we can’t make the unreasonable few start to reason. Even after a door to door confiscation we wouldn’t be out of firearms and we wouldn’t remove motive. We would undoubtedly have increased the body count though. It is of suspect moral high ground to consider the death toll and unconscionable violation of personal sovereignty fine to allegedly prevent other death. Because some death is more badder than other death, that seems to be the nonsense here.
It just goes to show, again, the anti-gunner is perfectly fine with violence, or more accurately ignoring the realities of violence, if it advances a policy they like. They will then quite inconsistently return to being ‘ACAB’ against the violence of the state, even the necessary violence for their policies, when it become politically convenient to do so.
Nobody is ignoring preventable child fatalities, with guns or otherwise, it is consistently in the public discussion. More importantly it is a topic of professional discussions too. What defeats arguments time and again is the false assertion that preventable death type A is somehow much worse than preventable death type B, especially when B is far greater than A. Another false assertion that remains popular is that with a simple ‘common sense’ proposal we can fix death type A, but then we will ignore the infeasibility and negative order effects of the policy outright because of the alleged morality of said policy. We also won’t discuss nearly as drastic of solutions for the far more lethal, but more socially acceptable, death type B. All this combines with the dishonesty of statistical distortion, rather than taking a look at a single year and meaningfully trying to put a number of improved prevented fatalities 1-to-1 with deaths in that year is another of your problems.
When anti-gunners get asked which deaths would be prevented they vaguely wave at the number and say ‘some, maybe, we have to do something you crazy gun nut’ instead of ‘I’m glad you asked, here are the deaths the policy might have prevented, the likelihood of prevention, and projected effects and societal impacts of implementing the policy’. We even read the admission above that their policies are ineffectual, but we should be implementing their policies, or ‘a’ policy vaguely hinted at.
Americans’ megalomanic concept of “adult rights” enabled one 64-year-old legally to obtain weaponry capable of shooting more people in 15 minutes in Las Vegas than have been shot in all 131,000 American schools in four years. No proposed reform would have stopped him.
Then, when challenged on the decidedly negative effects of gun control, like its blatant racism, anti-gunners will go through mental gymnastics as impressive as those shown in this piece to show that ‘aCchUalLy… being for arming the Black community (and empowering them as full members of society) is the real racism, you know they shoot each other way more often.’
Anti-gunners have never met a standard they would not double or inconvenient negative effects of their policies which they’ll ignore. If too much noise is made about the negative effect they will totally promise to amend the law with a biased policy via ‘criminal justice reform’ all in order to have their illogical but moralist position to stand on.
Conclusions
It took me months to get to this piece of Ph.D authored moronicism, but it is just the type of preachy ‘I am right and you are wrong, see my shiny doctorate for proof… no not actual proof, just spun statistical evidence I twisted, selectively left out, scaled absurdly in my favor without a significant reason, and I’ll call you a heartless bigot if you don’t agree with me’ that I expect.
Look, I am open to evidence. I have changed my opinions consistently when given proper evidence and reasoning on many social issues. But one of the consistent facets of swaying my opinions, and many I know, is strong evidence combined with taking my objections seriously.
Not a single policy from gun controllers can survive that scrutiny, those that push them do not want to have the policies dragged into the ugly light to showcase those failings and they do not want to take gun owner objections seriously. These policies were argued up without addressing their weaknesses, so highlighting weaknesses highlights the flawed and dishonest methodology that is crucial to actually advancing the proposal.
Gun control operates entirely on a premise that the societal willingness to be compliant will somehow control the noncompliant. Those noncompliant people, whose true weapon is their personal autonomy, not a gun, or a car, or even water, we are promised will reduce in number. That’s it, its just a promise. No logical scrutinized walkthrough on how that is supposed to occur.
Just trust the folks we will be told to distrust in 2 seconds as the political topic changes.
Gun control remains farcically stupid and a Ph D. doesn’t void that.
A Tale of Two LAPD Shotgun Quals
The LAPD is one of the largest police forces in the country. They are also one of the most regulated and arguably well-funded departments. An LAPD officer is likely to qualify with several different weapons throughout their career. Interestingly enough, the LAPD has two shotgun qualifications. One for the standard Remington 870 and another for the Benelli M4. Today we are going to tackle both of them.
The Standard – LAPD Remington 870 Qual
The LAPD 870 qualification is split into two different stages. You won’t shoot beyond ten yards and need two targets. You’ll need a total of ten rounds of buckshot. The qual calls for the BT-5 target, but shots only count if they are in the nine and ten ring. That portion of the target is the size of a piece of letter paper. I printed a Sage Dynamics target as a stand-in, and it worked perfectly.
Stage One
The first stage is more of an action shooting drill. You’ll need to load the gun with three in the tube and one in the chamber. You’ll start in the low ready.
At the beep of the timer, you’ll shoot both targets with one round of buckshot. You’ll then speed reload two rounds into the shotgun’s tube.
From there, you’ll fire one round into target one, one round into target two, then another round into target 1, and a final round into target 2. You have 25 seconds to complete stage 1.
Stage Two
Stage 2 of the LAPD 870 shotgun qual consists of three strings of fire from the ten and seven-yard line. You’ll still need both targets, and you’ll also need something to act as a barricade.
String 1 – At the ten-yard line, ensure you have three rounds in the tube and one in the chamber. At the beep of the timer, engage target 1 with one round and target 2 with one round. You have four seconds to do so. At the end of the drill, load two rounds into the weapon.
String 2 – Step up to the seven-yard line and ensure your weapon is loaded with three rounds in the tube and one in the chamber. The shotgun should be positioned on the left shoulder. Start standing behind cover, and at the beep, take a knee and engage target 1 with two rounds. You have eight seconds to do so.
String 3 – We are still at the seven-yard line, and our shotgun is loaded with one round in the chamber and one in the pipe. Just like before, you’ll be behind cover, but the shotgun will be located on your right shoulder. At the beep, take a knee and fire two rounds into target 1. You have 8 seconds.
Scoring the LAPD 870 Qual
That’s it. We are done. You’ve fired ten rounds of buckshot, and you need to have 70% of your pellets inside the nine and ten rings of the target, or in my case, the whole target. It’s not too difficult, and most average shotgun shooters will pass easily.
The Benelli Qual – Benelli M4
The Benelli M4 is a weapon that’s a fair bit different than your standard Remington 870. When the LAPD allowed officers to carry the M4, they devised a separate qual for it. This qualification is in eight separate stages. It requires fifteen rounds of buckshot and five slugs. You’ll only need a single BT-5 target to complete the drill.
Reloading is done by the shooter without prompt and not timed, but it should be done before every stage.
Stage One – 25 Yards – 2X Slugs Loaded
Fire one body shot with a slug in four seconds. Complete this stage twice.
Stage Two – 15 Yards – 2X Slugs Loaded
Fire two shots to the body in three seconds.
Stage Three – 10 Yards – 1X Slug
Fire one headshot in two seconds.
Stage Four – 10-Yard Line – 2X Buckshot
Fire one round to the body in three seconds. Complete this stage twice.
Stage Five – 7-Yard Line – 2X Buckshot
Fire two rounds to the body in 3 seconds.
Stage Six – 5-Yard Line – 2X Buckshot
Fire 1 headshot in 2.5 seconds. Complete this stage twice.
Stage Seven – 5 Yard Line – 3X buckshot
Fire a failure drill in three seconds.
Stage 8 – 8 Yard Line – 6X Buckshot
Move from the 8-yard line to the 3-yard line and fire a pair to the body in five seconds. Complete this stage three times.
Scoring The LAPD Benelli Qual
All slugs and pellets count as one point. Any shots outside the 9-ring count or the head of the target count as a miss. Students must score a 90%, and that pellet count varies depending on the use of 8 or 9-pellet buckshot.
Trained Up
Both of the LAPD shotgun quals are fairly unique and interesting. The times tend to be fairly generous, but there are accuracy demands which aren’t common with most shotgun courses of fire. Both are pretty solid pieces of training, and honestly, if you combined the two, you’d have a fairly solid shotgun skills test. Try it out if you want to test your scattergun skills.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Have a blessed weekend with family, friends, pets, or quietly as you choose.
To those working and volunteering, well done and stay safe.
To those traveling through the storms, please be careful.
And to all a goodnight and good times.
BE SAFE IF YOU’RE IN ONE OF YE OLDE BLIZZARD ZONES
Hipster AK Practical Accuracy
The Vz58 rifle has an odd reputation. It’s place in 20th Century weapons history is an interesting one within the otherwise AK post Soviet states.
The Vz58 also holds a few ‘common knowledge’ distinctions above the AK, and one of them is the assertion that it was a more accurate rifle.
Now, more accurate when it comes to judging the quality of a weapon throwing steel cased commie ammo is, well, what it is. Soviets were a very ‘good enough’ people. But the reputation persists that the Vz58 was a better built and more accurate rifle, a rifle for a more professional grade of soldier.
So does it pan out? Is an optic equipped Vz going to perform at our above the level of an optic wearing AK?
Press play and find out, Henry and Josh will show us the way.
The Problem With the Mossberg Bead
Mossberg is one of two American shotgun companies that dominate the pump action game. Of the two companies that rule the roost, Mossberg is much more consistent. They don’t face bankruptcy over and over and haven’t had some massive dips in quality. Mossberg has been consistently solid and pumping out good, well-made pump-action shotguns. Those shotguns aren’t perfect, and Mossberg’s biggest problem is the Mossberg bead.
Mossberg utilizes several different sighting systems on their shotguns. They have the ribbed high viz fiber optic sights, the ghost ring sights, and the bead sight. The Mossberg bead presents its own challenges. The main problem with the Mossberg bead is that it is directly attached to the barrel.
Look at Remington and their bead sights. They take their bead and place it on a pedestal that boosts it a bit higher than the Mossberg bead. This is done for a reason. Look at the ghost ring sights Mossberg uses. They are placed much higher than the beads for the same reason.
The Big Problem With the Mossberg Bead
Anyone who has ever fired a load of buckshot from a Mossberg into a paper target has probably been confused. Why does your pattern seem to hit so high in relation to your point of aim? Maybe you’re flinching? Maybe you are sucking at recoil control? Believe it or not, that’s a big nope.
It’s because the bead is attached directly to the barrel. If you have a ribbed barrel, then the bead is positioned perfectly. However, if you have any of the tactical or security models, the bead is stuck to the barrel. Your point of aim will always launch your load of buckshot seemingly high. In reality, the sight is too low, making it appear that your load of buckshot is hitting high.
You can’t adjust the bead, and it’s a real pain. Back in the day, the old advice used to be to aim at the bad guy’s belt buckle, and you’ll hit them in the chest. Since then, most companies have realized that placing the bead directly on the barrel isn’t a great idea. Raise it up, make it a rifle sight, or something similar.
Heck, even Turkish companies avoid putting the bead directly onto the barrel. Why Mossberg still does this is a mystery to me. It wouldn’t be hard to add a pedestal to raise the bead up a bit to prevent this point of aim, point of impact problem. It seems almost like a point of pride not to be like Remington.
How to Fix It
The Mossberg Bead wouldn’t be tough to fix. Just raise it up. If you are shopping for a Mossberg shotgun, I’d suggest purchasing a model with the ghost ring sights. At least if it’s for home defense or tactical use, if it’s for sporting use, look for the bead and ribbed barrel combo to get the correct point of aim and point of impact.
If you already have a Mossberg with the Mossberg bead, then there is no hope lost. Mossberg shotguns are optics-ready. Well, they are drilled and tapped for a rail or optics mount. KE Arms makes a great mount at a great price, so give it a look. Mount a red dot, zero it, and bam, you are ready to rock and roll. Ultimately I wish Mossberg would fix their bead, but at least there is a fix available.
Candle Stove Experiments
Remember the piece about the 3-wick emergency candle stove I devised the other month? Well, the cooking experiments have been ongoing ever since with some surprising results.
I’ll reiterate that this isn’t a rig for a family of five. But if you are only feeding yourself, or your spouse can have a candle stove for themselves, it works surprisingly well as an emergency food and water heating device.
Through various experiments I’ve determined that success is very pan/container dependent, as well as food volume dependent.
I tried actually “cooking” a meal for several hours in a small cast iron covered pot, but though the food got quite hot, it didn’t quite boil enough to be throughly cooked, and I had to finish it off on the actual stove. I would need to try about half that volume next time.
I then tried frying an egg with an actual small frying pan, but discovered that not only was the pan too large and smothered the candle flames for lack of airflow, it also “wasted” too much heat in heating the pan itself rather than the food.
But the experiments continued. I next tried a small aluminum disposable pie pan I found in my cupboard from the last time I bought a store made pie (I am not a hoarder). I was able to fry one egg sunny-side up in butter in that pan! And the couple strips of bacon I tried worked as well! But it was the only pan of its size that I owned and I had to use aluminum foil as a lid to keep the heat in while the food cooked.
So off to the internet I went, and found 6-inch disposable aluminum cake pans which were a little deeper than the pie plate, but still thin enough to conduct the heat directly to the food. With these pans I was able to fry a couple strips of bacon and two powdered eggs, as well as heat to bubbling a small can of beanie weenies from my emergency supply! I even managed ramen noodles, though I started the water to heat in the kettle like an hour ahead of time before pouring it over the noodles and putting the pan back on the flame for a few minutes. It still worked like a charm.
This rig definitely needs a lid on the pan in order to maximize heat retention. So since these foil disposables came in packs of ten, I took one of the spares, punched two holes in the bottom and threaded a foil twist tie through them to make an improvised pot lid with handle. It has worked marvelously.
Though these pans are disposable and quite thin, I have used the initial ones several times already and they have survived a soak in the sink as well as a trip through the dishwasher. But if you are short on water, they ARE disposable. For that matter it may be possible to create a multilayer “pot” out of just heavy duty foil, which would truly be disposable to save water in an emergency. I’ll have to try that next.
The bottom line from these experiments so far is – if you have an electric stove that would be useless in a power outage, although you should certainly have something like chafing fuel or an indoor-rated butane burner in reserve for when it’s not grilling weather, this 3-wick candle stove DOES work, is cheap to operate, is safe to use indoors, and also safe to store in a closet or apartment (unlike some commercial fuels). It’s something to think about. 3-wick candles might even be on sale after Christmas!
The Frozen Chosen, Part 2.
Once again Mike is attempting to set the internet ablaze, by freezing guns in blocks of ice.
These frozen rifle tests are interesting extreme data points, they show vulnerabilities in a weapon that exist under a severe and artificial condition. If your rifle “fails” this test, it doesn’t equate to being a bad rifle. You freeze a machine, it tends to stop working. The rifles that have done well frozen often fail in other extremes. How sealed away the action is often makes or breaks this one.
What does it show us if most rifles fail?
Maintenance needs.
If you take a cold swim with your gear, what do you have to do to keep your gear running once you’ve seen to your own needs? That’s a valid question on any weapon. The AR may do very well, but what if you’ve got the SAW?
The long and the short of this is, if the rifle failed frozen, that’s very much expected of a machine. We need to know though, so we know what to do if a weapon freezes hard. It is part of knowing the systems you are working with. How do you get your rifle working again? Are your electronics okay? How is your sustainment gear? What needs to be worked on so you don’t get caught in a spot worse than frozen already.
For many rifles it is going to be “break ’em down”. Open them up and get that ice out. Warm them, if you can. Work the actions clear. Cold weather lubricant and shut them back up. Nothing is going to be “nah, its fine” if the rifle is that iced.
The Oddball Barrett M82A2
The Barrett .50 BMG wasn’t the first anti-material rifle, but it was the first American-made, semi-automatic .50 BMG rifle. Ronnie Barrett was a madman who ended up designing one of the most successful anti-material rifles ever made. It’s fielded by multiple military forces, including the United States. The original M82 has seen numerous improvements and changes and currently goes by the M107. Between the original M82 and the M107 sits an oddball known as the M82A2.
The M82A2 was created at the behest of the US Military as a shoulder-fired variant of the M82. It’s unknown exactly how many were made, but some estimates claim only ten were produced or at least tested by the US Military. Since you’ve likely never heard of it, you are right in assuming the Barrett M82A2 went nowhere.
The Barrett M82A2 – What the Hell Is It?
How do you make a rifle that weighs over 30 pounds and is almost five feet long shoulder-fired? That’s the million-dollar question. I know someone out there is thinking, wait, you can fire the M82 from the shoulder! I’ve seen Jerry Miculek do it! Sure, you can fire the weapon from the shoulder, but it’s not exactly easy or accurate. It might be fun, but it’s not something your average soldier would ever do.
To make this mighty weapon shoulder-fireable, Barrett did some mad science and bullpupped the M82. The resulting gun was the M82A2. It’s not your traditional bullpup in layout. The magazine is in front of the firing arm, and right behind the magazine sits the stock that goes against your shoulder. You still have a lot of rifle above and behind the stock, and much like a recoilless rifle, the rest of the gun sits behind you.
Up front, we have the trigger and pistol grip, as well as a second forward pistol to help increase control. Right above the trigger sits a scope rail, and an optic is absolutely necessary. The M82A2 shifted the weight and balance of the weapon to allow the shooter to manhandle the gun without it being overtly awkward or unbalanced.
Now instead of having all of the weight in front of your shoulder, a good bit of it is behind and under you. While odd looking, the Barrett M82A2 accomplished its goal of being a shoulder-fired .50 BMG rifle.
What’s the Point?
The mission of the M82A2 isn’t exactly known. There is some speculation that it is a cheap anti-helicopter weapon. It is at least cheap when compared to something like a Stinger missile system. Soldiers could engage low-flying aircraft with fairly effective fire. Of course, helicopters are fast-moving, and this idea relies on something hovering more than flying.
The military didn’t speculate it had to be a bullpup design. They just wanted a more portable system that could be used in a wider variety of situations. The M82A2 could have been a squad-level anti-material weapon for engaging everything from vehicles to dug-in positions. It would be much easier to carry and shoot than the M82 and other variants of the Barrett rifles.
It hasn’t been revealed what the exact purpose of the weapon was, but we do know it was not adopted or taken beyond the prototype stage. Brandon “the AK Guy” Herrara is one of the few people who own one, and his video gives you a good idea of how the weapon handles. Barrett seemingly met their goal.
On the Way Out
The Barett M82A2 wasn’t successful but did pop up in some pop culture. It was in Jurassic Park 3 and has a cameo in the Chuck Norris feature Top Dog. I knew it from Metal Gear Solid Four. Other than that, this rare .50 BMG is pretty much vaporware these days. It’s a neat idea but not a successful one.
How To Build A Field Improvised Shooting Rest
Another day, another fun fieldcraft activity. At least it’s fun to me. Today we are going to build a field improvised shooting rest. Did you go to the field without a bipod or shooting stick and find yourself needing a little extra support? Maybe you are stuck in the defense in the woods of Camp Lejeune and are looking for a way to improve your position. That’s where this rest comes in.
What You’ll Need For Your Field Improvised Shooting Rest
You won’t need much to build our field improvised shooting rest. In fact, all you need from civilization is some 550 cord.
Three feet can usually build a prone height-supported position. You need to find a few decent-sized limbs or a limb that’s a few feet tall. It should be at least 1.5 inches thick. You’ll need three-foot length pieces for a prone height field improvised shooting rest.
Building Your Field Improvised Shooting Rest
Gather your sticks and choose two that look thick and supportive. Grab your 550 cord and begin wrapping the sticks together in an X shape. This forms the anchor of your field improvised shooting rest. Have the 550 cord go around, over, and through as you bind. Make sure the binding is super tight, and you have a layer over the top axis of the X. This will keep the legs from collapsing and bending together.
The binding has to be tight, or it will not support the weight of the weapon when its tasked to once you have a rugged, tight, and strong X grab your third stick. You will attach the final stick to the bottom of the X. It needs to be bound very tight to provide support and prevent collapse. Go around the bottom of the stick and through the top of X once more. Once it’s tight, take your tail and tie it to any of the limbs.
Once it’s tied together, rest your rifle on the support and see if your field improvised shooting rest can support the weight. If it cannot, your sticks are likely not bound tight enough. Retighten it until it can support the weight of the weapon without collapsing. Your next test will be shooting with it. The heavier the recoil, the tighter your binding needs to be.
With an AR in 5.56, it’s no big deal. A .300 WinMag Remington 700 might have something else to say about it. This rest and is a disposable item that will wear out quickly. Don’t expect it to last forever. You may need to tighten the binding and watch for collapse occasionally.
Size and Height
You can always build it taller to support a weapon outside of the prone position. Heck, if you get big enough limbs, you can make it tall enough to sit with your gun rested.
The taller the support, the stronger the binding and limbs have to be. If it’s sitting height, you might need some surprisingly dense wood and a fair bit of binding material.
Sizing it just right for your weapon and situation is wise. It’s perfect for hunting on the ground or fighting in Ukraine. Knowing how to build a field improvised shooting rest is a very simple skill to have and a very handy one to have. Knowledge weighs nothing, and I find outdoor arts and crafts fun, and hopefully, you enjoy it as well.