Aaron Russo, Libertarian Filmmaker Dies: Longtime movie producer and
2004 Libertarian presidential candidate Aaron Russo is dead at age 64,
having succumbed to cancer yesterday. (Not mentioned in this article is
his work Innocents Betrayed, which depicts the interrelationship of
firearm prohibition and genocides in the 20th century, produced in
conjunction with Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, which
offers it in DVD or VHS format at
http://shop.jpfo.org/cart.php?m=product_list&c=8.)
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57316
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Arizona School Draws Fire For Suspension Over Drawing: An Arizona school
that suspended a boy for drawing a sketch of a gun has drawn no small
amount of flak from locals and has many asking one question: Has society
become so fearful in the post-Columbine era that a boy can't draw a
picture of what boys have been drawing pictures of for decades?
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/61113.php
Related Commentary:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PaulJacob/2007/08/26/unhappiness_is_a_drawn_gun?page=full&comments=true
Meanwhile, In Florida...: Austin Perkins, 17, thought he was going one
step above what was required of him. The Golden Gate High School senior
wore a jacket and tie to school Wednesday and the act sent him to
in-school suspension. His violation? He wasn't following the dress code.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/aug/23/golden_gate_high_school_student_gets_school_suspen/
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Oops, Wrong Pharmacy: A man is dead after trying to rob a North Wichita
business Saturday morning. Police say the man walked into Salyer
Pharmacy near 21st and Broadway and explained to a female employee that
he was going to rob her. But the female employee was not alone. Three
other employees were also inside the store. One of the male workers
grabbed a gun and shot the robber once in the head. Police are not
saying whether or not they know if the robber had a weapon.
http://www.kake.com/news/headlines/9372231.html
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Bringing An Attitude To A Gunfight: A couple of Sampson County teenagers
are behind bars after trying to rob a well-known hardware store in Dunn,
and family members are calling the store's 81-year-old owner a
hero..."Well, he had the gun I tried to get it from him," Carr said. "I
didn't know whether it was loaded or not, so out of fear, we just
tussled." (Don't try this at home unless you believe you are about to be
shot.)
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=local&id=5604210
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From John Farnam:
20 Aug 07
The venerable M1 Carbine!
This from a student:
"I dug out an old, Universal M1 Carbine for a shooting get-together last
weekend. When I acquired this gun from the widow of a WWII Veteran years
ago, it was filthy, and all I did with it at the time was stash it away
and forget about it. The bore was full of grime, and an action was
rusty, gritty, and difficult to cycle. After digging it out, I
hurriedly gave it the once-over, exposing it to the first lubricant it
had seen in, I'm sure, in sixty years!
When I inherited this rifle, I also inherited several thousand rounds of
old, badly corroded foreign-manufactured ammunition. Box labels were
not printed in any language I recognized. Many rounds were coated in
green slime, and some were nearly all black.
I thought I could use the piece as an historical artifact as I talked
with young shooters about WWII. I figured I may even get it to
function, at least for a round or two.
Well, one-thousand rounds later, with no additional lubrication nor
maintenance, and without so much as a single hiccup, the Universal
Carbine was still running just fine, every bit as well as it did in
1942! While no target rifle, at fifty meters it was effortlessly
shooting four-inch groups, even with garbage ammunition. Everyone
wanted to shoot it!
In any event, I'm sending it off to Colby Adler for a complete overhaul
and then off to Robbie Barrkman for the ROBAR treatment, after which it
will assume the title of my official "car-gun." From then on, I'll be
feeding it Cor-Bon DPX. This little rifle has surely earned my respect!"
Comment: Mine too! Kahr and Fulton Armory are both currently making
new-production copies of this venerable warrior, but even the old ones
are remarkably durable, as we see!
Short, light, with mild recoil and low muzzle blast, the M1 Carbine is a
100 meter rifle. However, within that range, particularly with DPX
ammunition, it is deadly, and a good penetrator. One can do a lot worse!
/John
(Most American military firearms, including the M1 Carbine, are usually
fairly demanding of lubrication. As John notes below, the GI WWII M1
Carbine was not actually manufactured by Universal, successor to
Bullseye Gun Works. The bulk of Universal Carbines were manufactured in
the 1960's.)
20 Aug 07
WWII vintage M1 Carbines:
The M1 Carbine described in my last Quip was manufactured by Underwood,
not Universal. I got it wrong! Universal did not get involved in the
M1 Carbine business until a number of years after the War, and their
guns never attained a particularly good reputation.
Friend, and firearms historian, Steve Wenger adds:
"Ironically, firms that had not manufactured firearms before turned out
the best product. Conversely, Winchester Carbines, highly prized by
unsophisticated collectors, were never given high marks for quality."
/John
20 Apr 07
We need to take John Boyd's advice! This from a friend in New Orleans:
"I'm nearing a merciful end to a month-long stint of jury duty here in
our local Criminal District Court. Today's jury selection was for a
criminal case. The accused is being held on multiple, first-degree
murder charges. New Orleans still proudly claims the title of 'The
USA's Murder Capitol!'
As I sat, patiently awaiting my turn to be examined, I noticed three
sheriff's deputies, all female, all unarmed, surrounding the defendant's
table. Holsters were obviously empty, and none had a Taser, OC, nor
even a baton!
The judge wanted nothing in his courtroom that even remotely resembled a
weapon, in spite of the conspicuous danger. He doesn't trust anyone
with a gun, even (apparently) himself!"
Comment: In this age of institutionalized insanity, where judges like
this one would rather be murdered than admit they're wrong (and have
every other unarmed person in the courtroom murdered as well) we all
need reminding of what John Boyd taught us years ago.
With his OODA-Loop model, Boyd reminds us "Reality always trumps
expectation." When there is a conflict between observed reality and
your personal map, the problem is with your map, not with reality! Put
another way, "Reality is always right!" The trouble with the
self-righteous and power-mad (like this judge) is that they are way too
proud of their map. Indeed his map is more important to him than is
his very life. Because his abject arrogance is so absolute, death is
preferable to repentance!
An inability to repent is a pivotal character flaw, a deadly handicap.
Who cannot repent, in effect, says he has never learned anything in his
entire life! All true learning involves the pain of repentance.
Enlightened seekers of truth accept its inevitability. The arrogant
prefer denial, error, and darkness!
/John
22 Aug 07
On contact wounds, from a student who is an ER/trauma surgeon:
"What timing! Your recent Quip discussed the impressive consequences of
contact pistol shots into gelatin (w/denim layers). Earlier this week,
I personally observed and treated, first hand, the results of such a
contact pistol discharge into a living, human thigh.
The wound was accidental and self-inflicted. An unsupervised, clueless,
thirteen-year-old boy was handling his uncle's G23 (loaded w/hardball
ammunition). The magazine had been removed, and idiot, of course,
assumed the pistol was thus unloaded. For reasons known only to him,
the boy pressed the pistol's muzzle into his upper, inner, left leg, and
then pressed the trigger. The FMJ bullet entered four inches below the
inner groin and exited on the opposite side of the thigh. The boy
indicated that he was exceedingly surprised when pistol thus functioned
normally!
After exiting, the bullet struck soft earth and was not recovered. No
one else was hurt. As I worked on him, I advised that pointing guns at
himself, loaded or unloaded, was probably a habit he needed to lose, if
he planned on anything other than a short and unhappy rest of his life!
I work on many GSWs here in the ER, and it is my experience that
non-contact, pistol wounds typically produce a small, symmetrical entry
wound, and a larger, always asymmetrical, exit wound, when, as in this
case, the bullet goes through-and-through.
However, as surgery proceeded for this case, I noted the entry wound was
a gaping and cavernous, with six-inch, stellate spears radiating from
the center. Extensive powder smudging and stippling, along with burned
skin edges were also noted, along with copious disruption/destruction of
underlying fat and muscle tissue. Indeed, tissue destruction was far in
excess of what is typical for through-and-through, pistol wounds!
The bullet itself nicked the femur and missed the femoral artery!
However, the boy (now older and hopefully, at least, slightly wiser),
while he will suffer permanent disfigurement and maybe a limp due to
abundant, and irrecoverable, destruction of his leg tissues, will live
through this one."
Comment: While, I'm still not at all sure of the extent to which
ordinance gelatin simulates living, human tissue, the differences we
observe in gelatin tests, between contact and non-contact pistol wounds,
is surely corroborated with this one example.
Pressing your pistol's muzzle into the body of an attacker prior to
firing is a risky maneuver from the standpoint of weapon retention. In
effect, you're handing him your gun! However, when you're literally
wrestling with him anyway, arranging for a contact wound may indeed be a
good idea, as I think it safe to say you're at least doubling the amount
of tissue destruction inflicted by each round so fired, a particularly
significant consideration when you're carrying a snubby revolver!
/John
23 Aug 07
More on the subject. This is from a fellow Training Officer with a
large PD:
"Two of our patrol officers were just involved (Tuesday) in what was
nearly a lethal fight with a robbery suspect in, of all places, a
fast-food restaurant bathroom!
Our officer was in foot-pursuit of a single, bank-robber suspect. The
suspect had at least one pistol with him that he had used to threaten
bank employees. He ran into a local fast-food restaurant and hid in the
restroom. Our fleet-footed officer was right on top of him. When he
made physical contact, the suspect stuck his pistol in the officer's
stomach. However, our officer responded instantly by grabbing the
suspect's gun and prevented it
from pointing at him. The suspect's pistol never discharged.
The suspect, large and muscular, bit and fought, trying his best to get
back control of his pistol, but was unable to. Our officer was more
than a match for him, but both the officer's hands were occupied, and he
was unable to get to his own pistol.
A second officer entered bathroom moments behind the first. Seeing what
was going on, he jammed his own service pistol (G22) into the side of
the suspect 's head and immediately attempted to fire. The pistol did
not fire, because the slide was pushed out of battery far enough to
engage the disconnector.
The astonished officer, not understanding why his pistol would not fire,
abandoned efforts to shoot the suspect, and, using his pistol as a
club, savagely beat the suspect's head until the suspect, by then
pleading for the beating to stop, relinquished control of his own
pistol and surrendered.
The suspect was taken into custody without further resistance. He
suffered several cuts but no serious injury. Our officers are okay, but
shook-up, as you might imagine!
Both these officers have been on the job for less than two years.
During my investigation, I apologized to both that, during their academy
training, they were apparently never told that their Glock pistols would
not fire with the slide out of battery. Indeed, the subject of
contact-shooting was scarcely addressed at all. The Academy curriculum
is currently being updated/corrected with regard to that.
However, neither officer carried a serious blade nor a back-up pistol,
despite the fact that their academy training did extensively address
those subjects. I instructed both to get serious blades and back-up
guns into their lives straightaway, before something like this happens
to them again!"
Comment: We have a grossly inadequate amount of time to train young
police officers, and lethal-force training, it seems, is always least
important in the eyes of many academy administrators, training
administrators, and chiefs of police. For example, in the case of these
two officers, the subject of contact-shooting was never even mentioned.
The omission nearly cost them their lives!
Had the second officer's pistol discharged into the suspect's cranium
when he intended for it to, the fight would have almost certainly ended
instantly. However, as mentioned in recent Quips, when attempting
contact shots using an autoloading pistol, there is always the danger
(as in the above case) that the slide will be pushed out of battery,
preventing the pistol from firing at all. And, even when the pistol
does discharge as planned, there is the danger that bone chips,
particles of skin and other bodily tissues, and blood will be blasted
into the pistol, preventing it from firing a second shot.
There are several methods for addressing these issues, from physically
holding the slide forward with the support-side hand as the trigger is
pressed, to withdrawing the pistol, performing a tap-rack-resume, and
immediately attempting to fire again, to posthaste transitioning to a
back-up revolver and re-performing the contact shot. All are valid.
None are perfect. This issue is one with which Operators need to be
familiar, and which academies need to teach, along with knife-fighting
and other life-saving skills!
/John
(As John points out, contact shots risk "splash-back" of body tissue.
While revolvers cannot have a non-existent slide pushed out of battery,
disabling them for the first contact shot, such debris can potentially
lodge in the front of one or more chambers, preventing rotation of the
cylinder for a subsequent shot. While I am not fond of porting on
handguns, a former associate of mine was once involved in a very
close-range gun battle, in which he wrapped his non-gun arm around his
assailant's back and flame-cut his way through the guy's gut as he
emptied his Detonics .45 into him. We both surmise that it was the
optional trapezoidal porting on the barrel that kept it clear of tissue
debris and allowed the autoloading pistol to keep cycling.)
24 Aug 07
Why am I always armed? Why do I train continuously?
This from a friend who works in a prison:
"Today, I had an opportunity to hear stories from several violent
offenders, straight from their own lips. All were in excellent physical
shape and would (and do!) put up a serious fight in any situation. I
know few people could prevail against them with only bare hands. When
there is more than one, any one of us would be in serious danger. Put
any one of them into regular clothing, and they would blend right in
most anywhere.
One inmate revealed the reason he was in the prison was multiple
murders. He got high on meth one evening and decided to break into a
home. He tied up the terrified (an unarmed) husband and wife, then
decided to murder them. With a pocket knife, he sawed on a woman's neck
until he had cut her head off. Before he himself was similarly
murdered, her husband heard every one of her screams and gurgles!
He took the victims' car and headed out of state. On the way, he ran out
of gas, so he stopped another car, murdered the unarmed driver (again
with a pocket knife), and took that car.
He continued to meet and murder people over the next week, seven in
three states. Finally, he returned home, married his girlfriend, and
became a father! Using DNA analysis, detectives secured a warrant for
his arrest two years later.
This is just one prison story, and by no means the worst! This
institution alone is full of them."
Comment: Next time someone asks you why you go armed, tell them this story!
/John
--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
