The phi­los­o­phy of gun con­trol: Teenagers are roar­ing through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solu­tion is to lower the speed limit to 20, out­law any vehi­cle that has a round hood orna­ment or that can carry more than 10 gal­lons of fuel, require sen­si­tiv­ity train­ing and manda­tory annual test­ing for all licensed dri­vers, require all vehi­cle pur­chases to be doc­u­mented at a deal­er­ship (with a 10-day wait­ing period), and spec­ify the locks on the garage where the vehi­cles are stored (with their wheels removed and stored in a locked con­tainer on the other side of the home). Mean­while the most dan­ger­ous inter­sec­tions are changed from stop­lights to yield signs, and res­i­den­tial and school zone reg­u­la­tions are tight­ened with ‘no-stop’ rules so strict that even police can­not stop to set up a speed trap, thus giv­ing the speed­ers free reign in the very areas they are likely to do the most damage.

Tony B.

A Journalist’s Citizen’s Guide to Firearms Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Cour­tesy of The Ari­zona Rifle­man.

[The Ulti­mate Answer to Kings]

An amus­ing joke about the main­stream media’s abysmal and will­ful igno­rance on the sub­ject of firearms.

…Guns will never be con­fis­cated in the US: when mar­tial law is declared, the gun own­ers will be given badges and arm-bands and sent out on patrol. As long as the Pres­i­dent at the time is a right-winger and white, the gun nuts won’t put up a fuss.

Unknown Lib­eral

Guns and Mum­bai.

India’s gov­ern­ment not only failed to pro­tect its cit­i­zens from ter­ror­ism, it wouldn’t allow them to pro­tect them­selves. Check out this para­graph from the Wall Street Jour­nal:

At about 9:45 p.m., two gun­men, slen­der and in their mid-20s, ran up the cir­cu­lar dri­ve­way at the entrance to the Tri­dent. They shot the secu­rity guard and two bell­hops. The hotel had metal detec­tors, but none of its secu­rity per­son­nel car­ried weapons because of the dif­fi­cul­ties in obtain­ing gun per­mits from the Indian gov­ern­ment, accord­ing to the hotel company’s chair­man, P.R.S. Oberoi.

On the other hand, at least some Indian offi­cials are tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for their fail­ure, which is more than we can say about any­one in the U.S. gov­ern­ment after Sep­tem­ber 11.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

I’ve seen this sort of claim a num­ber of places, but I dis­agree, because this isn’t a case of an indi­vid­ual going postal in a shop­ping mall or a school. In those parts of the US where ordi­nary peo­ple can legally carry hand­guns, the per­cent­age who do so is very low–so low that there would be at best one or two peo­ple with a pis­tol around if some­thing like this hap­pened here. Real life isn’t like Die Hard–one guy with a pis­tol going up against a trained infantry squad is just going to die with­out accom­plish­ing anything.

For the peo­ple on the spot to stop a ter­ror­ist attack like this, it’s also nec­es­sary for the cul­ture to be such that all or nearly all of the peo­ple are armed at all times. That’s not the case in the US, and I know of no rea­son to think it’s the case in India either. In fact, the only inci­dent I know of in my life­time where an armed cit­i­zenry repelled heav­ily armed ter­ror­ists was in Soma­lia, when the city of Mogadishu drove off a ter­ror­ist attack by the Evil Empire. It was a costly vic­tory, though–thousands of Soma­lis died fight­ing about a com­pany of Impe­r­ial Stormtroopers.

460 Row­land — .44 Mag­num Per­for­mance from a 1911 Plat­form.

Just learned about a new wild­cat car­tridge. The 460 Row­land car­tridge gives bet­ter than .44 mag­num per­for­mance by switch­ing the bar­rel, guide rod, and spring on a stan­dard 1911 pis­tol. Felt recoil is sim­i­lar to reg­u­lar .45 Auto, but, due to the com­pen­sator, directly back instead of twist­ing up. The case, made by Star­line, is 1/16″ longer than a .45 Auto case, to pre­vent cham­ber­ing it in a reg­u­lar 1911. Can be reloaded with stan­dard .45 Auto dies.

A $300 drop-in con­ver­sion kit is avail­able from Clark Cus­tom Guns

Press release: http://www.clarkcustomguns.com/460press.htm

Con­ver­sion kit order page with links to reload­ing data: http://www.clarkcustomguns.com/rowland.htm

Demo video: http://www.gunsandgears.tv/movie1.php?file=460_demo.flv

Guns and Gears Tele­vi­sion promises a .460 Row­land car­bine soon: http://www.gunsandgears.tv/

Photo below from This Real Guns arti­cle.

[End the War on Free­dom]

I like the idea, but I’d be afraid to try it with my own M1911–I sus­pect that it might be a bit much for a ninety year old frame.

3 Sus­pects Break In, Only 2 Get Out Alive. A Wood­land Hills home­owner shot and killed one of three sus­pects who
burst into his home Fri­day after­noon in an appar­ent attempted home
inva­sion rob­bery, police said. [CBS 2 News]

It’s pretty unusual for the main­stream media to admit that peo­ple use guns to defend them­selves. Such sto­ries are nor­mally either buried com­pletely or “san­i­tized” to remove any men­tion of how exactly the crim­i­nals were stopped.

It’s also worth com­par­ing the out­come in this inci­dent to another recent story, of the type the media prefers.

“I’ve Been to Chuck E. Cheese with a Gun”.

What hap­pens when a Mid­dle Eastern-looking man and a young black man walk into a Long­Horn with loaded pis­tols on their belts?

“Wel­come to Long­Horn, will it just be the two of you?”

The host­ess told us there would be a 20-minute wait. We stood at the door­way and talked. Nobody said a word or even looked at us funny. A few peo­ple glanced down at my belt as they walked up, but hon­estly, a new iPhone would have caused a big­ger fuss than our guns.

At Cre­ative Loaf­ing Atlanta, vaguely lib­er­al­ish sen­si­tive guy Andisheh Nouraee traipses around Atlanta and its envi­rons with a gun and waits for reac­tions. Take­away: No one even says “boo.”

In April, Geor­gia passed a law that expanded the list of places that it’s A-OK to carry a gun to include restau­rants, includ­ing those that serve booze, and those that don’t, like Chuck E. Cheese, plus pub­lic transit:

“So I just want to be clear,” I asked [Atlanta pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem] MARTA police Chief Wanda Dun­ham. “If I had a turkey sand­wich in one hand and a gun in the other hand, MARTA police would ticket me for the turkey sandwich?”

“If you’re eat­ing it,” she replied. “Only if you’re eat­ing it.”

An inter­est­ing study in the robust minding-one’s-own-business ethos that makes Amer­ica great. Read the whole thing.

[Hit and Run]

There’s a bit of fuss today about the rul­ing by the Nazgûl in the Heller case. As I expected, they took the same posi­tion that Ashcroft did sev­eral years ago, which is (short­ened considerably):

“The Sec­ond Amend­ment means what it says, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights, and we’ll ignore it when­ever we want to, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights.”

The out­come is entirely pre­dictable, of course; so much so that I just copied and pasted the above quote from a pre­dic­tion I had made on a web forum yesterday.

Pro-Gun Law Help­ing Crime Vic­tims Defend Them­selves?.

You don’t say.

Good for the Detroit Free Press for run­ning this story.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

One week after a fatal car­jack­ing in Ham­tramck, an 18-year-old would-be car­jacker was killed when his poten­tial vic­tim opened fire. Police said Michael Evans of Detroit bran­dished a hand­gun as he approached a 36-year-old man from Troy as he got into his vehi­cle after hav­ing din­ner with friends. The Troy man used his reg­is­tered hand­gun to shoot Evans in appar­ent self-defense.

The shoot­ing, which occurred in front of Detroit Police head­quar­ters at 1300 Beaubien, remains under inves­ti­ga­tion, but pros­e­cu­tors likely won’t charge the uniden­ti­fied Troy man if his ver­sion of events checks out.

Notice that the car­jacker didn’t think any­thing of bran­dish­ing a gun and try­ing to car­jack some­body right in front of the Detroit Police head­quar­ters. This case clearly illus­trates which is the more effec­tive self-defense strat­egy: car­ry­ing a gun or rely­ing on the cops.

Let­ter Re: A Secu­rity Contractor’s Con­voy Expe­ri­ence in Iraq.

Dear Jim,
A friend of mine who is a con­trac­tor sent this. It’s been posted else­where.
Foul lan­guage warn­ing. — Michael
Z. Williamson

Info from Iraq From Some­one Who is Doing the “Run and Gun”

Yes­ter­day a friend of mine who runs a small secu­rity com­pany here in Iraq emailed
me. He is stand­ing up a pro­tec­tion detail and wanted my opin­ion on tac­tics
and equip­ment run­ning the roads of Iraq; Tac­tics, SOPs, hard car or soft?
I have been giv­ing it some thought and here is where I am at.

I am will­ing to spec­u­late I’m as well trav­eled in Iraq as any­one I’ve
met. I’ve been just about every­where between Kuwait and Iran, all points
in between. And I’ve trav­eled every way pos­si­ble.
I’ve gone in mil­i­tary con­voy up armored hum­mers at 40 MPH. I’ve
run the Fal­lu­jah Bagh­dad gaunt­let in a 15 truck con­voy, thin skinned white
F350s. I’ve rolled all over in blacked out Pajeros in local dress. Diplo­matic
con­voys with armored sub­ur­bans and helo cover.
I’ve done the whole hide the guns and smile a lot all the way to show­ing
just about every­one the front sight post.
I’ve done 140 KPH up MSR Tampa
and weaved through Sadr city at a near stand­still.
I, like nearly every­one have made mis­takes and been lucky to be here writ­ing
this.
I think the most impor­tant and neglected aspect of sur­vival in the­atre is train­ing.
Every freak­ing day your crew should prac­tice “actions on” — At least
do it on a dry erase board. Actions upon any­thing and every­thing. What usu­ally
hap­pens is we start going through the “what ifs” and all the sud­den
every guy in the crew has a dif­fer­ent idea of what should hap­pen. After all
we come from many dif­fer­ent back­grounds. After about 30 min­utes of that we
all end up scratch­ing our head debat­ing which idea is best and say “let’s
get chow.” Decide on some fun­da­men­tal con­cepts. And stick to them, but
of course always remem­ber­ing that the plan is just some­thing to devi­ate from
any­way. As long as we all know the end goal and work towards it. i.e. If the
vehi­cle is stalled in the ambush, dri­ver flicks it in neu­tral so the rear car
can ram us out and we pre­pare to un-ass the vehi­cle on the oppo­site side of
the con­tact.
So rehearse and prac­tice — Which is easy to say because I am the first to admit
that a knock on my hooch at 7AM with, “Hey, man, let’s rehearse
this” makes me grum­ble.
I’m sure we can all agree that debat­ing your actions on is best done
at the hootch rather than on the side of a road in Tikrit while your car is
being remod­eled by a PKM.
PMCS your vehi­cles all the time. Being broke down in Iraq is like a scene on
a bad movie. Been there done that. Check tires, oil, fluid, etc… And don’t
over­drive your car. My friend VC man­aged to put a Pajero upside down and back­wards
on Tampa once because we pushed the cars past their con­trol­la­bil­ity.
Every IC you meet will tell you he is a great dri­ver. Just because you drive
fast and haven’t hit any­thing yet doesn’t mean you’re a good
tac­ti­cal dri­ver. Go to BSR or some other school. And if you haven’t let
the guy who has drive. Con­duct dri­ver train­ing. Get the best guy to teach every­one
else. OJT.
Prac­tice chang­ing tires. There are a cou­ple guys read­ing this email right now
who know exactly what I am talk­ing about. Real­iz­ing you’ve packed 300
pounds of gear on top the spare while on the side of a road in Ramadi is a
self loathing I’d like not repli­cate. Make sure you have a tow strap
in every vehi­cle. Loop it through the rear bumper so it’s already attached.
that way you swing in front of the busted car and they hook up. Gone in 60
sec­onds or vice versa… Get a good jack, it’s worth the money. Make sure every­one
knows where all the tow, change, repair gear is in every vehi­cle.
In the glove box keep your stay behinds. A frag, Smoke, CN. The rule is. Never
f*ck with the pin unless you have the grenade out­side of the win­dow. Hit
a bump and it drops on the road­side. Min­i­mal drama. Inside the car? Party foul.
Use
CN and Smoke. If you’re caught in traf­fic and you have a bad feel­ing about
a car behind you, toss the smoke. Most motorists will stop or at least give
you a lot of space. It works and it’s harm­less. Can use more spar­ingly
and never while in tight traf­fic. Watch­ing that cloud blow towards your car
faster than you can drive is not fun. The CN is rough stuff and I only would
use it on those rare sit­u­a­tions where it just has to be done. And the frag?
Well we all know when those need to be used.
Put a rub­ber band on your sling so it doesn’t get caught on stuff while
get­ting out of the car.
Always do a proper route plan. Com­mon sense here. And another note, we are
always try­ing to be sneakier and clev­erer than every­one else. Avoid­ing MSR’s
and roads fre­quented by con­voys you know the deal. Well before tak­ing a road
you see on a map that isn’t used by the Army. Go see the G2, ask them
why. It may be for good rea­son.
Think about fuel con­sump­tion. Plan your stops for fuel and food. Always carry
a gas can, just in case.
Always have spare bat­ter­ies for the GPS, Always have a map and com­pass just
like when we were E1’s. Do a map study; make sure every­one in the crew knows
the route plan.
Carry as big a gun as you can. Keep it clean. Keep it hot.
Carry lots of ammo. On April 4^th I went through 14 mags and never would have thought that a pos­si­bil­ity before then. Carry more ammo, stage
spare mags every­where.
Like the freakin Easter bunny.
I will never go with­out wear­ing a hel­met again. If there is a Kevlar hel­met,
it’s going on my head. A dude stand­ing right next to all of us on the
roof was dropped from a head shot. Spend the money get a good MICH or
the like. The more com­fort­able and low pro­file the more likely it is you’ll
wear it.
Wear a hel­met. Watch­ing Alcon get blasted in the nog­gin was
a SOP chang­ing expe­ri­ence for all of us here.
Wear your armor. Period.
If you sleep in a trailer or hootch, know where the near­est bunker is. Try­ing
to find it at 4 AM while scared sh*tless isn’t the answer. And yes every­one
runs for the bunker. The Delta dude who is always giv­ing the evil eye will
prob­a­bly be the first one there fol­lowed imme­di­ately after by a SEAL in flip-flops.
120mm mor­tars make us all very hum­ble.
Shoot a lot. Keep train­ing. If your com­pany won’t get more ammo, make
them dry fire. Prac­tice mag changes. Focus on cheek weld and front site. The
basics win every time.
The three guys shot on the roof here were all either chang­ing mags while stand­ing
or weren’t mov­ing to dif­fer­ent fir­ing posi­tions fre­quently — all were
reg­u­lar mil­i­tary and not con­trac­tors. They were doing stan­dard Army range sh*t.
And got dropped for it…
You remem­ber when Sam Elliot said “If I need one there will be plenty
lay­ing around” in the film We Were Sol­diers Once, in regards
to the rifles? He was right. If you’ve seen those pic­tures of us on the
net Chip was on a SAW and I had a M203. There were weapons strewn about the
roof by wounded
and those who elected to not play on the two way range. No sh*t. By the end
of week two here we all had our choice in weapons. No sh*t. We fired RPK, AK47,
PKM, MK19, M249, M203, M4, Dra­gunov, and M60 at bad guys between the eight
of us… That was unreal.
This brings me onto this — Train on all weapons. If you don’t have access
at least read the FM or TM on them. You never know when you’re out of
5.56 and some­one will hand you a PKM. Get famil­iar with them.
Prac­tice shoot­ing out to 800 meters. I know, nearly every fight is within 150
[meters] but we were try­ing to bang a mor­tar crew that was pound­ing us at 800
meters. And it
hap­pened more than once.
In terms of shoot­ing. Prac­tice as you did on active duty. Always scrounge ammo.
I will ALWAYS take a hard car over a soft. Its just com­mon sense at this point.
If I have a soft car I will sand­bag the floors and jam steel and spare plates
every­where I can. Bolt on armor is sh*t, but bet­ter than noth­ing. Remove the
Lexan win­dows from the gun trucks. Just like in the old days noth­ing breaks
con­tact quite like return­ing accu­rate, vio­lent fire.
The rear vehi­cle is always most likely to be hit. Put your best shoot­ers in
there, biggest guns.

The Golden CONEX
box. It ain’t com­ing dude. If I had a nickel for every time I have been told “Oh
yeah man, we ordered ten of those and they should be here in three days” Or
my favorite “don’t worry, it will
meet you in coun­try.” If you don’t have good guns, ammo, armor,
or comms, just say no like Nancy Rea­gan used to say. Some com­pa­nies are total
pieces of sh*t and will leave you in Iraq with a busted ass stolen AK and two
mags. Some will do you bet­ter than a tier one unit. Per­son­ally, I just want
the above men­tioned items and the rest to go to my bank account. If I want
a three hun­dred dol­lar back­pack Ill buy it.
Bot­tom line. Remem­ber what gear is crit­i­cal. Demand it be the best and take
proper care of it.
Med­ical equip­ment. It’s expen­sive. It has saved lives. The com­pany I
cur­rently work for spent a gazil­lion dol­lars out­fit­ting each crew with great
mad gear. I’m sure the bill was hard to swal­low. I sh*t you not it saved three
people’s lives, all had life threat­en­ing injuries. The med kits and our
18Ds saved them. The Army had a few ban­dages and an IV.
That was it. You know who you are, thank you for spend­ing the money…
Do reme­dial med[ical] train­ing. Can’t say any­more on that issue. Do it.
Wher­ever you go carry lots of booze. It’s the most valu­able item you
can have. If I wrote a list of things I have man­aged to swin­dle with a bot­tle
of Jack [Daniels whiskey] placed in an E8’s hands you would cr*p you’re
pants.
Don’t get drunk and stu­pid. Be drunk or stu­pid but never both at once.
Never let the client con­vince you “it’s safe, I do this all the
time.” If it’s stu­pid it’s stu­pid.
On the same note. Remem­ber if we ham­per our client’s abil­ity to do their
job too much. Our com­pany can get sh*tcanned. It’s a fine line. Yeah,
your client thinks it’s cute to drive to some Hadji’s house at mid­night
for tea, some­times you just have to do it.
Learn to deal with all the clients. Some truly think that all Iraqis are great
peo­ple and that the US Army is the enemy. Some will encour­age you to shoot
bicy­clists who hog the road. I’ve seen both sides. Keep their agenda
and egos in mind. Don’t make your own life mis­er­able.
Aim­points are great. The Eotech is okay. TA31 ACOG is
the best by far. The Aim­point bat­tery lasts six months. The Eotech is a lit­tle
too bright for my
taste. Remem­ber
that the dot is like 3 MOA in
size so they aren’t any good past 300 or
400. The ACOG is the heat.
Buy short M4s. They will save you’re ass. I carry a 18″ upper on
me with glass so when we reach our des­ti­na­tion I flick it on the lower receiver
and I now have a decent long gun. It’s like hav­ing two guns to choose
from.
If you’re doing Green Zone PSD a
mag or two may do you but if you’re
in the party zone? Twelve.
Speak­ing of which, weapon, twelve mags, pis­tol, three mags, Med kit, GPS, map
and com­pass, radio, spare bat­tery, $500 [in] US dol­lars, MRE , water bot­tle, NVG,
armor. It’s a lot. It’s hot but f**k it, if its too heavy get mem­ber­ship
at the gym. This job isn’t for every­body.
In your vehi­cle. Put a US flag on the visor so nobody can see it until you
approach a check­point, then flip it down. On the pas­sen­ger side do the same
with a VS17 panel. G.I. Joe will shoot your a** just as soon as a Hadji will.
Carry MREs
and water in your car.
NEVER throw food or candy to kids. there are many rea­sons why. But at the least
it encour­ages kids to jump in front of cars, smash­ing a kid would ruin your
trip here.
If you find your­self trust­ing the locals its time to take a vaca­tion.
Walk the fine line. Don’t be too con­ser­v­a­tive and don’t get blown
up.
Lis­ten to your intu­ition. It has saved a guy who is on this mail­ing list and
not lis­ten­ing to it killed a friend a month ago.
Once you make con­tact … Fin­ish it. If you shot a guy and he is limp­ing to
cover he can still get there and return fire. Just fin­ish every­thing you start.
A car door is not cover. In fact a car is not cover. Cement is.
While doing the work-up for my last deploy­ment we did live fire IADS and move­ment
from vehi­cles. It was the best train­ing I have done and the most use­ful. On
that note we did many Simu­ni­tion [prac­tice] runs with vehi­cle ambush sce­nar­ios.
We found that with­out a doubt the sin­gle most impor­tant fac­tor in sur­viv­ing
is
get­ting
out and away from the car. Get­ting behind it as though it was a con­crete bar­rier
and play­ing HEAT will get you killed.
Don’t work for a com­pany that doesn’t vet its ICs.
Check their creds, call the ref­er­ences, and put them through a ten day selec­tion
course.
Just because a guy was a SEAL in Viet­nam doesn’t mean he main­tained his
skills. On that note the best shooter in my train­ing class was Viet­nam SEAL.
Some of the best guys were 22 year old Rangers and the worst 38 year old SEALs.
My point it’s the indi­vid­ual that counts.
But we don’t have time or money to bring a reg­u­lar Army kid up to speed.
You have to have the fun­da­men­tal skill sets. We can’t intro­duce you to
live fire Aus­tralian peels. We should just review and coör­di­nate ver­bal com­mands
and sim­ple sh*t.
Just because some­body is a good dude isn’t good enough. If he can’t
shoot, think, and move — leave him home. Big boy rules.
If a guy doesn’t work out in your crew but has tal­ent and skill send
him else­where, don’t sh*tcan him. Per­son­al­i­ties clash. Espe­cially when
you’re liv­ing together 24/7 for six months. Eat­ing every meal together
all that. If I hear the same stu­pid story from a guy forty times? That’s
cool. It’s the 41^st that’s gonna be drama. You guys know what I’m
talk­ing about.
The con­trac­tor com­mu­nity is a sewing cir­cle for men. Remem­ber the Dyn­corp guy
who shot the prin­ci­pal in Bagh­dad last win­ter? The story in its most recent
telling over cheap Turk­ish beer involved a diplo­matic cover up, a mag­a­zine
change, and sev­eral deaths.
Throw­ing a flash-bang into the team leader’s hootch at 3AM while drunk
is not a good prac­ti­cal joke.
Remem­ber how much money you’re mak­ing. Nobody wants to clean the sh*tter
on a Wednes­day morn­ing but keep in mind you’re the high­est paid jan­i­tor in
the world that day.
Keep a sense of humor. Keep funny peo­ple around, they make sh*tty sit­u­a­tions
tol­er­a­ble and are like Prozac when you need it.
Have thick skin. Your friends will ask for naked pic­tures of your wife on deploy­ment
and yes they may take them to the bath­room with them. Take crit­i­cism. If you
suck at some­thing ask for train­ing.
Always remem­ber that you were once a young dumb*ss E1. You made $450
a month and weren’t allowed to fart with­out a per­mis­sion chit ran up
and down the chain of com­mand. Keep this in mind when you’re bitch­ing
because you’re only mak­ing $17,000 a month when guys at the other
com­pany are get­ting $17,500. And when the bosses back in the states email you
to have a clean shave? Do it. you never know when you’re going to be
on some stu­pid news­pa­per.
The sol­diers around us are deployed for a year some­times more. They make a
frac­tion of the pay. And are ordered to do stu­pid, dan­ger­ous sh*t every­day.
Keep that in mind when you are upset that instead of 60 days you’re extended
to 68.
And keep that in mind when deal­ing with sol­diers. Treat them well, nobody else
does.
Yes, we all work for our­selves at the end of the day. At the same end, never
f**k over your com­pany or team­mates who have to stay behind and clean up your
mess. Busi­ness OPSEC is
one thing but always share your info on intel and tac­tics. We are all Amer­i­cans
and most of us will work together one time or another.
Some of the “busi­ness secret” stuff is corny. If you hit an IED on ASR Jack­son
yes­ter­day, e-mail your col­leagues to stay away.
That’s it off the top of my head. Stay Safe, — Ben

[SurvivalBlog.com]

Just because they’re bad peo­ple doesn’t make them stu­pid or incom­pe­tent. These mer­ce­nar­ies could be dri­ving around the streets of your city treat­ing it like occu­pied ter­ri­tory some­day. If you live in New Orleans, they already have.