This bill won’t pass

 awesomeness, history, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Jul 232022
 

But it *should.*

H.R.8399 – To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the National Firearms Act.

A BILL

To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the National Firearms Act.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. Repeal of National Firearms Act.

Chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, and the item relating to such chapter in the table of chapters for subtitle E, are hereby repealed

 

This would be *spectacular.* It would be the most important rollback of governmental overreach since the end of prohibition. But will it pass? The chances in *this* House are nil. In this Senate are nil. Getting signed by this Administration? Less than Nil.

But a man can dream.

 Posted by at 8:35 pm

Nuclear powered Chinese torpedo?

 Hmm..., news, nukes, politics, projects, ships, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 212022
 

China’s Nuclear Powered Super Long-Range Torpedo Concept Fits Concerning Pattern

Article concerns a theoretical weapon the Chinese have written a paper about. A torpedo that can be launched from a normal tube, equipped with a reactor of rather inefficient performance but adequate to drive it across the ocean to San Francisco at 30 knots. There it would drop the reactor which would supposedly safely deactivate and sink into the sand; the torpedo would then guide itself to the target under conventional power.

On the one hand: archives are filled with design studies that went nowhere. One the other hand, it would be unwise to assume that the Chinese *aren’t* developing this. And given their recent history of aggression and technical incompetence, I’d fully expect a large fraction of the reactors to melt down en route, some to deactivate then reactivate, some of the torpedoes to wander off and blow up Easter Island or Fiji, or just bob around in the ocean until rammed by a fishing vessel or a deafened whale. Still, it’s interesting to note that the Commies are threatening San Francisco. Gotta wonder how the commies of San Fran and Berkeley would react to the sudden appearance of a radioactive tsunami a few meters high washing into town. I imagine the radiation wards will be filled with plaintive cries of “Trump’s fault!” and “white privilege!”

 Posted by at 7:15 pm

Russia *might* have a problem incoming…

 aircraft, awesomeness, blather, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, weapons  No Responses »
Jul 212022
 

This may well be pure BS. If it’s not, though… ruh-roh, Russian tankies…

The A-10 is, let’s face it, obsolete. As absolutely badass as the plane is, drones have kinda taken over the role… sure, they’re far more easily destroyed than the A-10, but who cares? They’re cheap and disposable and ain’t nobody on board. The modern battlefield is an unsafe place for something slow and targetable like the A-10. Buuuuuuuut…. the Russians, rather stupidly, have failed to gain absolute air dominance over all of Ukraine. This is the sort of environment that the A-10, properly employed and properly flown, can shine in. Swamp the Russian air defenses with cheap rocks and cheap drones, and then the A-10 comes striding in ten feet tall and lays waste with precision, determination and brutality. *Imagine* those long trains of resupply trucks, miles long, looking up and seeing a few A-10s drawing down on them. Whoopsie.

Of course, there are lots of problems with this idea. The A-10 is not in production, nor, I expect, are most of the spare parts needed to maintain the fleet. A Ukrainian A-10 gets damaged, repairing it might be quite problematic. Ukrainian pilots have, to my knowledge, zero training time on the A-10. Russian air defense has been kind of a joke; this might spur them to actually get on the job. And every A-10 sent to Ukraine is an A-10 that can’t be sent to the US Army (the Army should have fixed wing ground attack/support aircraft: fight me). The USAF has wanted to rid itself of the A-10 for decades, and, honestly, I guess I’d rather see them lost in combat shooting their way to Valhalla than in a scrap yard getting turned into nails and pop cans. At this point, losing airframes over enemy territory no longer holds the fear of “oh no, they’ll learn our secrets from examining the wreckage” that it might have 40 years ago.

A-10’s appear in the skies of Ukraine, the Russians will make taking them out a priority. That will certainly make for an interesting clash. And if the American plane and Ukrainian pilot put up a good showing of survivability… the Russians will probably bend themselves over backwards to take them out. The A-10s could thus be useful simply as a way to throw the Russian war effort into chaos, devoting effort and funds to some new goal, while now getting stingier on other more practical goals.

 Posted by at 3:01 pm

Even more impressive

 awesomeness, news, weapons  No Responses »
Jul 202022
 

I had noted that Good Guy With A Gun Eli Dicken was reported to have shot the wannabe mass shooter from a range of forty yards. It gets better:

Update: Eli Dicken stopped the mall shooter in 15 seconds flat, landing 8 out of 10 shots from his 9mm at 40 freaking yards!

Yup. From forty to fifty yards, he took the bad guy down in less time than most of us would take to register just what the frak was going on. The coroner report says that the badguy had 8 bullet wounds, which *may* mean he got shot eight times, though it might include both entry and exit wounds as separate, dunno (which would still mean four hits at least).

 Posted by at 1:30 am

Uvalde cops: take note, this is how it’s done

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, Crazy, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 182022
 

Elishjah Dicken is a *man.* He shot a murderer 40 yards away with a pistol. Well done sir.

EDIT: Video below is a local news interview with the grandmother of Dicken’s girlfriend. It’s worth a watch; nothing NSFW, just news. Dunno why they’ve blocked playback on other sites.

When seconds count, the police are only… what, like, 45 minutes away?

Elisjsha Dicken: Good Samaritan Named in Greenwood Mall Shooting

This news story has basically two characters of note. With luck, Elisjsha will be the one who is remembered.

 Posted by at 6:35 pm

H.R. 1808

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 152022
 

Here’s a link to H.R. 1808, a bill the Democrats are pushing that is *blatantly* unConstitutional. Anyone who signs it should be impeached, but here we are.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1808/text

To regulate assault weapons, to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited, and for other purposes.

The important bits:

“(36) The term ‘semiautomatic assault weapon’ means any of the following, regardless of country of manufacture or caliber of ammunition accepted:

“(A) A semiautomatic rifle that—

“(i) has a magazine that is not a fixed magazine; and

“(ii) does have any 1 of the following:

“(I) A pistol grip.

“(II) A forward grip.

“(III) A folding, telescoping, or detachable stock, or is otherwise foldable or adjustable in a manner that operates to reduce the length, size, or any other dimension, or otherwise enhances the concealability, of the weapon.

“(IV) A grenade launcher.

“(V) A barrel shroud.

“(VI) A threaded barrel.

So, in short, an “assault weapon” is basically any semi-automatic rifle you are likely to come across.

And what do they want to do with these “assault weapons?”

It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon.

They want to imprison or kill – perhaps both – tens of *millions* of Americans.

The Democrats don;t have the votes to pull this scheme off by themselves. They’ll need a few backstabbing “Republicans” to get onboard as well. Keep an eye on them.

 Posted by at 2:29 pm

Drone deliveries of consumer products

 aircraft, Hmm..., news, politics, science, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Jul 072022
 

The future is now!

Drone carrying 11 guns found stuck in tree near Canada-U.S. border along St. Clair River

According to THIS ARTICLE, a drone of this kind runs around $20,000. That’s a lot. But the payload is 11 handguns… purchased in the US for perhaps $200 each, sold in Canada for up to $3000 each, the profit would be about $30,800 per run: you could simply throw the drone away each time in still rake in substantial cash profit. Fly it two or three times – a job of a few hours – and you’ve got yourself a decent yearly salary right there.

Illegal? Sure. Wrong? Ummm… Given what current Canadian dictator Justin Trudeau has said about Canadians not having the right to defend themselves, delivering them the *means* of self defense is not wrong. Sadly, of course, these gun are highly unlikely to be going to average Canadians, but more likely gang members, “migrants” and other members of the criminal element… but the potential still stands for simple robotics to be useful for delivering the means of self defense to regular people. Further afield, drone deliveries could be used to drop off ammo (bullets, grenades, rockets, etc.) to Ukrainian defense forces. There, of course, care would have to be taken to make sure that that drone delivering weapons to you won’t be using those weapons *on* you. Similarly, the use of drones along the US-Canadian border would have to be done with care; I would not be surprised if authoritarian, anti-human-rights types like “Fang Fang Swalwell” wouldn’t sabotage the effort by swapping out good guns for compromised weapons, or even weapons that have poison or polonium dusted onto them.

 Posted by at 9:29 am
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