Amnesty International is a joke

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Oct 152021
 

Yow:

Amnesty International brief against right to bear arms

AI displays some shocking lack of reason. A group supposedly meant to help people attain and maintain their human rights, they are opposed to people being wiped out in genocides being granted the means to defend themselves:

“We at Amnesty International are not going to condone escalation of the flow of arms to the region.” Indeed, “You are empowering (the victims) to create an element of retaliation.” “Whenever you create a sword-fight by letting the poor people fight back and give them arms, it creates an added element of complexity. You do not know what the results will be.” In sum, “Fighting fire with fire is not the solution to genocide. It is a dangerous proposition to arm the minorities to fight back.”

And more recently, they are currently arguing that New York finally recognizing the right of its citizens to bear arms would be against international law, Constitution be damned. The whole thing is worth reading… and then passing on to anyone you know who may be a donor to AI. AI’s position is that international law makes it a requirement of the US Government to protect criminals from *victims,” that allowing victims the means to defend themselves violates the criminals rights.

ᛖᚪᛏ ᛗᛖ, Amnesty International.

 Posted by at 6:21 pm

“The View” gets guns

 Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., politics, weapons  No Responses »
Oct 152021
 

Well, a couple of them, anyway. It’s interesting to listen to the reactions as well as to the dishonesty and outright lunacy from the gun grabbers. The notion was floated that the NRA was responsible for increased gun laws in the 1960’s due to black folks getting guns; the fact that it was largely Democrat politicians passing those gun laws was somehow overlooked. Similarly, the laughably false notion was raised that the crime wave that black folks today need to worry about is white supremacists… and that, somehow, gun-grabbing laws are *still* the right approach.

Note that some in the audience laugh when one of the hosts announced that she recently purchased a pistol.

 Posted by at 10:03 am

Preparing for battle on Hoth

 aircraft, awesomeness, history, weapons  No Responses »
Oct 132021
 

The Dutch national airline KLM equipped their long range Arctic-crossing airliners with some interesting stuff. In 1958 they began stocking their DC-7’s and DC-8’s with Armalite AR-10 semi-auto “sporter” rifles for use against polar bears in the event the plane was forced down onto the ice. The AR-10, as I’m sure I don’t need to explain, was a design that preceded the AR-15/M-16, and was chambered in 7.62X51mm NATO. This is a reasonably substantial round that hits a lot harder than the littler BB’s that the 5.56mm AR-15 shoots… but it shoots fewer of them due to the rounds being larger and heavier. However, when you’re faced with a polar bear or two rather than hordes of Commies, a smaller number of bigger bullets is the way to go.

KLM’s Arctic AR-10

Article includes a link to a KLM publicity photo showing a stewardess training with an AR-10. Note that the trigger guard for this particular rifle was designed to flip down to make it easier to handle while wearing mittens; it’s not folded down here, so she’s going to have a big of trouble pulling that trigger when the snowtroopers and the Wampas storm Echo Base.

 Posted by at 3:33 pm

Modern Gyrojet

 awesomeness, history, Hmm..., rockets, science, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 282021
 

This feller made himself some Gyrojet rounds. Their performance is… meh. I can see some clear ways to improve the design; lead weight in the nose of the case, nozzles swaged into the rear of the case rather than pinned, properly formed propellant, cast with a machined teflon mandrel to create a multi-fin grain for high initial thrust and very brief burn time. And use better propellant; the stuff he used is sugar-based… fine for amateur model rockets, but you want *good* propellant for this application. Ammonium  perchlorate oxidizer, aluminum powder fuel, HTPB “rubber” as the binder. Throw in some iron oxide to goose up the burn rate, some superglue to speed cure time, and hey presto, about as good as it gets. Deployable fins might improve stability at the cost of additional cost and complexity.

Further: consider cutting down the case length and bonding a pointier brass, bronze, copper or steel nose to it to improve stability, aerodynamics and penetration. Other propellant grain options exist; one I’d like to see more work on is a thin sheet of propellant, perforated to turn it into a mesh screen, rolled into a tube with the layers separated by thin strips of bonded-on propellant. A whole lot of surface area, very fast burn, labor intensive to manufacture.

 

 Posted by at 9:26 pm

Pulse Rifle: Gimme gimme gimme gimme…

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., science fiction, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 262021
 

What’s better than an M41A Pulse Rifle that fires Nerf darts? An M41A that fires airsoft. And what’s better than an M41A that fires airsoft? One that fires 12 gauge and 45 ACP.

WANT.

A test fire without the furniture:

Not quite complete, and with a bit of a problem ejecting the shotgun shells:

And the final product:

That looks like the *perfect* home defense weapon. Small and maneuverable, it fires two rounds that are *fantastic* for close quarters discouragement of home invasion. It’s apparently heavy, but that would seem to be less of a problem for home defense than long-term draggin’ round for combat.

As with the M41’s used in the filming of “Aliens,” this one is based on an actual Thompson. Those are heavy machined blocks of steel, and of course marrying a shotgun to it is a whole lot of inefficiency. But it seems that a modernized Thompson could be designed to take advantage of modern materials and designs; make a lot of it from titanium, for instance. This uses the standard double-stack 20-round magazine; I bet that a quad-stack magazine of the same length could be produced to raise the capacity to at least thirty rounds while still fitting within the M41A form factor.

 Posted by at 8:16 pm

XM808 Twister

 awesomeness, history, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Sep 112021
 

One of the odder vehicles to be tested by the Army… the next best thing to a Landmaster. I was always surprised that Hasbro never made one of these for their GI Joe line of toys. I always thought hat an interesting diorama would have a Boeing SICBM Hard Mobile Launcher setting up shop in the western desert flanked by a couple Twister scout vehicles and a Landmaster for cargo and crew transfer.

 Posted by at 4:43 pm

Craziness

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 032021
 

See, this is just whackadoodle:

Security guard who shot man 3 times acted in self defense because the victim wasn’t wearing a COVID mask, lawyer says

What’s more, the “security guard” is all kinds of special who should probably not have been out in society in the first place:

Holmes, who is barred from possessing a weapon because he is a four-time convicted felon and registered child sex offender, was working as an armed security guard at the store

Ummm… what. The article does not detail what his four felony convictions are. But four felony convictions and being a sex offender, never mind a child sex offender, starts to sound like the sort of description that would be best applied to someone who has been put away for life or sent to the off-world dilithium mines. Not to someone paid to provide security for a liquor store, and certainly not for someone doing so with a gun. A gun, it should be pointed out, that he was legally barred from owning or wielding or even touching. This being not only Illinois but *Chicago,* it’s probably technically illegal for him to even look longingly at a gun. So… yet another gun control policy win.

But wait! There’s more!

Holmes, who defense attorney Jonathan Feldman said “has a big heart and is a kind-hearted man,” shot the man again, then paced around and shot him a third time before running away

Yeah. And Mike Brown was a “gentle giant.” From the limited information available on the shooter, it seems safe to suggest that he was one minor frustration from plugging someone anyway. But I think at the same time the shooting victim here might have a case for suing the media for ramping up fear about masking.

 Posted by at 4:37 pm
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