What’s the use of a gunship without guns?
The Tachi/Rocinante looks best with its PDCs out…
Jun 192016
Jun 152016
The most pathetic thing you’ll read today:
What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud
And what was learned? Primarily that the author of the piece is a man not to be respected (bolding mine):
It felt to me like a bazooka — and sounded like a cannon.
One day after 49 people were killed in the Orlando shooting, I traveled to Philadelphia to better understand the firepower of military-style weapons and, hopefully, explain their appeal to gun lovers.
But mostly, I was just terrified.
The man-child continues:
The recoil bruised my shoulder, which can happen if you don’t know what you’re doing. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.
Oh FFS. As someone on Fark correctly posted:
Ye gods. Compared to most “military style” weapons – the M-1 Garand, the M-14, the M-16, the AK-47, a good shotgun – the AR-15 is a BB gun. The standard AR-15 platform is *small,* the bullet is small, the cartridge is small. I shudder to imagine what this guy would have done had he been confronted with a Barret. Or Odin forbid, a Ma Deuce.
Jun 152016
Obviously Hillary and Trump are out. I’d been considering Gary Johnson, even though he’s pretty lackluster. But now… all I have are people to vote *against.* Why? Behold:
Gary Johnson Shoots Himself in the Foot: Throws Out Austin Petersen’s Gun
Short form: after clinching the Libertarian nomination, Austin Petersen, another Libertarian candidate, gave Johnson a replica of George Washington’s flintlock pistol. A little odd, but I guess a nice gesture. But hotel guests saw Johnson dumping the pistol into a trash can, fished it out and returned it to Petersen.
Weak. Weeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaak.
Jun 122016
KINDA INTERESTING UPDATE:
Ahem:
And from last year…
So, it seems the overly armed feller from Indiana wasn’t likely going to the LA Gay Pride Parade to blow the place up. He was going there for… well, some other purpose. And he just happened to be hauling his guns and explosives along with him, because he’s apparently none too bright.
—————
After events earlier today in Orlando, police in Santa Monica, CA, arrested *another* guy *apparently* bent on causing havoc at a “Pride Parade” in Los Angeles. This guy, one James Howell, was from Indiana and had an “arsenal” of guns and a bucket of explosives, and apparently told the police that he wanted to “harm” the event.
You don’t often hear about “buckets” of explosives, but in this case it’s Tannerite. To me this seems a dubious choice for bomb making purposes… it’s a simple mix of aluminum powder and ammonium nitrate, used for exploding targets on a gun range. It’s not a particularly impressive explosive, and setting it off is a chore. Set fire to it? It doesn’t go off. Zap it with electricity? Nada. Whack it with a hammer? Snore. To get it to go off you have to hit it with a relatively powerful supersonic shock, such as you’d get with a rifle round. A pistol round probably won’t do it.
Since it’s a binary explosive, it’s brisance (shattering force) is not particularly good, but it’s heaving force is pretty good. As such it can be used to Blow Stuff Up Good if you use enough of it and shoot it with a high power rifle. Still, to make it really effective as a bomb you’d want to make a pipe bomb of it… which is a problem, since you have to actually shoot it. The pipe *might* play hell with the bullets ability to set off the Tannerite.
This seems like sloppy bomb making. Couple this with the fact that “James Howell” is a perfectly bland euro- American name, this doesn’t seem to indicate that this incident was ISIS inspired. If the bomber-to-be really was intending to set off a bomb and *isn’t* a Muslim, then things could get politically pretty interesting.
Jun 122016
Twenty are dead after someone – identity as yet undivulged – opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The FBI is investigating this as terrorism, which certainly seems reasonable. So, get ready for your new media obsession for the next week or three, at least until Trump opens his yap and says something stupid.
About 20 people dead, more than 40 taken to hospital after shooting at downtown Orlando nightclub
So, since there is as yet no data on the shooter, speculation will of course run rampant. The top four, as it seems to me:
- Run of the mill whackjob
- Some whackjob with a problem with the club (former employee) or someone there (former boyfriend)
- Religious whackjob, tweaked about teh gheys. Note: reports are the terrorist *may* have been wearing a bomb vest, *may* have been strapping bombs to hostages. I leave it to you to decide if that sounds like any religion in particular.
- Conspiracy Theory Wildcard: Umm… lessee. Ah, got it. The gunman was brainwashed by Obama to shoot up a Protected Class in order to gin up outrage among the electorate to help ram through new gun control measures and/or divert attention away from Hillarys upcoming indictment
UPDATE: The Daily Fail is already reasonably certain of the motive…
UPDATE 2: And we have a winner. Multiple news outlets including CNN are ID’ing the terrorist as one “Omar Saddiqui Mateen” from Port St. Lucie, Florida, American born to Afghani parents.
UPDATE 3: Latest number I’ve heard is 59 dead, confirmed as 50 or more. Worst mass shooting in the US since at least the 19th century.
UPDATE 4: Omar pledged his loyalty to Islamic State on a call to 911 during the shootout.
Jun 052016
Who said Socialism never aided business growth? If you are a grenade manufacturer or dealer, Venezuela is the place to be!
Deaths From Hand Grenades Rise in Venezuela
47 people killed with grenades in 2015. Still small compared to the overall of 27,875 homicides (90 per 100,000). But hey, the economic conditions are so spectacularly awesome that the military is selling things like AT-4 anti-tank missiles to street criminals.
Feel the Bern!
May 202016
An article describing a little-known Austro-Hungarian submachinegun from 1915:
The ‘Standschutze Hellriegel’ Submachine Gun Is a Mystery
It’s an odd one… with a water-cooled barrel and the choice of either box or drum magazine. But the drum was pretty bizarre… it didn’t affix directly to the gun, but via a flexible chute. Now, if the chute was *really* long, like three feet, then the gunner could carry the ammo on his back. But it was only a few inches long, which would seem to make the thing pretty cumbersome and limiting.
May 202016
Giggity!
Apr 162016
This video demonstrates the French Brun-Latrige Model 1900 pocket pistol. It clearly shoots an odd, small round (probably 8mm, but it looks like the cartridge must be tiny) out of a built-in box magazine of 8 or 10 rounds capacity. It’s pretty stylish and odd looking… looks like something the prop makers for Deep Space 9 would have slapped together for Random Alien Of The Week.
It seems like it’d be difficult to hit anything with this at more than point-blank range; but even if you did, the wimpy bullet would not exactly be a man-stopper. Still, it looks kinda neat. Scale it up by ten percent, run it off the 3D printer, and maybe it’d be a dandy shooter of .380 or even maybe 9mm.
Apr 082016
Not just the recent SpaceX success. The graphics below show that at least one area of society is improving.
And the all-important end result:
