You don’t want a .50 blowing up in your face

 AARRRGH, Gah., Hmm..., weapons, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
May 042021
 

The Serbu SN-50 is an odd gun: a single-shot .50 BMG that you have to kinda disassemble to reload. It’s little more than an M2 machine gun barrel with some modifications; that makes it less expensive ($1259 rather than the seven-plus grand you can expect for semi-auto .50s), but is seems like a lot of bother to go to between each shot. Still, Serbu has a good reputation and the design seems pretty rugged. Yet… one of them underwent rapid unplanned disassembly right in the shooters face, doing him a lot of bad damage. The firearms side of YouTube has taken notice and lots of people are trying to figure it out.

Yow.

 

This guy focuses on the rather unique ammo, as well as unfortunate design features:

Same guy revisits the issue, and is rather more explicit in his opinion that the RN 50 is not a weapon to be fired:

Forgotten Weapons covers the topic of firearms exploding:

 

Mark Serbu made a comment:

Serbu may, depending on the results of the analysis of the rifle, be in a spot of trouble.

 Posted by at 8:18 pm

Notable!

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, weapons, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
May 012021
 

Trying to rob a dude while he has a gasoline spray-gun IN HIS HAND might not be the best idea, as these Chilean criminals discovered:

And then there’s this attempt to take down an armored cash-transport in South Africa. I know, I know, who would have ever believed that there’d be violent crime in South Africa. Mind blown.

This is a story screaming out for a followup.

 Posted by at 10:29 pm

A little Preview of “B-47/B-52”

 aircraft, awesomeness, B-47 and B-52 Origins and Evolution, Book X, books, history, new products, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  No Responses »
Apr 302021
 

Here is an incomplete look at the diagrams created for my first book, “Boeing B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress; Origins & Evolution.” It can be pre-ordered either directly from the publisher (with publication expected in late September) or through Amazon (looks like they’ll have it two months later). It is also expected to be on certain store shelves… more on that when it’s confirmed.

A few of these diagrams will be compressed to several-per-page; a few of them here are already shown in multiple optional layouts. But there are also a dozen-ish diagrams *not* shown because they are incomplete as yet. This gives an indication of the size and scope of the project…

 Posted by at 2:49 pm

USSC to take up a 2nd Amendment case

 awesomeness, news, politics, weapons  No Responses »
Apr 262021
 

Good:

Supreme Court to take up major Second Amendment concealed handgun case

In short, New York state effectively makes it illegal to carry firearms outside of the home, openly or concealed. This clearly violates the “right to keep AND BEAR arms” part of the Constitution. This *might* be a step towards national reciprocity. If a Utah drivers license is good in New York, then a concealed carry license should be as well. Especially when you consider that CC license holders from probably every state that has concealed carry licenses are less law-breaking than the general population of New York.

Time to get on the right side of history:

 Posted by at 11:14 pm

Getting around gun laws with the 1776 Boomstick

 art, awesomeness, dumbassery, humor, I'm from the government, news, politics, weapons, wisdom  No Responses »
Apr 242021
 

It is legal for you to build your own firearm from scratch (assuming you live in a civilized region that recognizes your basic human rights). Where things get tricky is if you try to *sell* your home-made firearm. If you don’t have proper Federal licensing… you can get in a *lot* of trouble.

But there seems to be a loophole: government “buy back” events. They will buy any piece of junk gun for a relative pittance, no questions asked. They will then (probably) check the firearm to see if it was used in a crime, and if not, they will then (probably) destroy that firearm, no matter how rare, valuable or historically significant it is (unless, gasp, someone in the chain recognizes its value and absconds with it).

“Buy backs” are of course dubious for any of a number of reasons. The guns they get are typically either junk that couldn’t function to be used in a  crime, or grand-dad’s old war relic that hasn’t seen the light of day in years and isn’t likely to be used in a crime either. And of course there’s the existential issue with buy-backs: how do you buy back something you didn’t own in the first place?

Here’s the fun part: you can make a functional crappy zip gun or slam-fire shotgun for a few bucks in scrap and labor. And these buy-back morons will buy them for substantially more than they cost you to make. And it’s all legal, apparently. Gentlemen, behold – the 1776 Boomstick, the profit-making venture of the future:

Florida Man Sells Homemade ‘1776 Boom Sticks’ At Gun Buyback, City Runs Out Of Cash In 30 Minutes

The gentleman selling the “Boom Stick 1776” shotguns told me he called the City rep before the event, and asked if they would purchase a single-shot shotgun – because the flier said they were buying semi-automatic firearms. Allegedly, he was told they would pay $125 for single-shot shotguns. So he attended the event.

At the checkpoint, he did have to demonstrate that they were functional (they were), and he was sent to the payment line, guns in hand.

Maybe ten bucks worth of junk, twenty bucks worth of labor, for $375 in sales. SPECTACULAR.

Would it be illegal or unethical to petition your local city or county to hold a buyback, while you have prepared a stock of slamfire shotguns for the specific purpose of selling at ten times their cost? I dunno, maybe… but it would be *appropriate,* and got-dam hilarious if you pulled it off.

 

Side note: take a look on that cops face. It is the weary look of a man who knows that he’s getting played, and knows that there’s nothing he can do about it, and who knows that there are *far* better things for him to be doing with his time.

 Posted by at 7:52 pm

A good shoot? Discuss.

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, youtube  No Responses »
Apr 222021
 

A cop comes up on a rock-throwing guy who pulls out a knife, takes about one step towards the cop, then catches a bullet. I think in the strictest sense, this was a legitimate shoot; cop told the guy several times to drop the knife, and instead he advanced towards the cop. But it all happened *real* fast. Britlanderish blog readers might well point out that their cops deal with knife wielding criminal types all the time and hardly ever shoot them… I believe the approach is the bring in a whole lot of backup and whallop the tar out of them with billyclubs (or to just let them go; I’m not really sure). And of course there are Tasers, of sometimes dubious reliability.

So, what should be the preferred approach in such circumstances? The subject is armed and aggressive, but if the cop retreats the subject probably does not pose an *immediate* threat. But if the cop retreats, the subject, who is clearly a menace to society, could get away. BUT simply being a probable threat may not be adequate cause for the deployment of deadly force. And on and on.

My view: I’m all in favor of “no duty to retreat.” Someone comes at you with a knife, *especially* if you are pointing a pistol at them, you – any form of “you,” from cop to soldier to housewife – have every right to do whatever you feel you need to to defend yourself. And on the other hand, those who are tasked with enforcing the governments’ will should probably be held to a reasonably high standard.

At least they can’t fault the cop for shooting off a wild volley of rounds. One shot and the guy seemed to be dead before he hit the pavement.

Once again, a situation that could have been more peaceably resolved if we had access to phasers with heavy stun settings. Or dart guns that fired transporter-lock tags: shoot the guy and he gets beamed directly into a jail cell. Sigh. It’s the year 2021, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don’t see any flying cars.

 Posted by at 10:52 pm

Well, the media should be happy now

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 162021
 

They finally get what they want more than anything: extremely white guy with an AR-15 goes buggo.

FedEx shooter ID’d as 19-year-old former employee Brandon Scott Hole

Once again, we get us a whackaloon who did things backwards: he shot eight people dead and *then* shot himself.

Watch the coming hours and days to see the ghouls come out to gloat over the corpses, their gore-drenched political fangs slavering over the idea of banning a hundred million Americans from having something a vanishingly small number of crazies misuse.

 

 Posted by at 7:03 pm

Yeeting a bobcat

 AARRRGH, awesomeness, cats, Crazy, critters, Gah., humor, news, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 162021
 

Whoa.

Ooops, there is context, and it’s sad. This happened in North Carolina and the bobcat had rabies, which explains the craziness. The guy in the video ended up shooting the bobcat, and the folks involved ended up going to the hospital and likely got a super-fun series of rabies shots.

Bobcat with rabies? Sad. Husband going from Mr. Pleasant to “I’m gonna shoot that ᚠᚪᛣᚳᛖᚱ” in ten seconds? Priceless. Now, if you want the racist take on the incident, The Root has you covered. And even here, where they try to disparage and dehumanize white folks at every turn, they gotta give this feller the respect he deserves.

I once stared down a bobcat. Going on 20 years ago, I dug through a black widow infested rocket parts boneyard a day or two after 9-11 in order to find components for Tomahawk  cruise missile booster motors so’s we could finish a bunch of motors we just knew we’d soon need to send downrange. And as I dug through a pile of boxes and pallets, a big-ass bobcat climbed up to the top of said pile of pallets and just looked at me like “Hey. ‘sup.” We looked at each other for a few seconds, then it turned and wandered off. Normal bobcats? Reasonable fellas. Rabid bobcats? Noooooooo thank you.

 Posted by at 6:58 pm
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