One more reason to hate lawyers

Found a link to this earlier today:
"An Army judge advocate general (JAG) temporarily banned Army and Marine Corps snipers from using a highly accurate open-tip bullet. "

You're probably aware that the Geneva Convention or some other agreement we never signed on to forbids the use of bullets designed to mushroom or upset upon impact. Well, a long time ago Sierra bullets started making a match grade that has a small hollow point. Not for expansion; if you read the box, it specifically says NOT to use this bullet for hunting as it will NOT upset. These bullets are specifically allowed for military use because of that. Part of their manufacturing process uses a small rod to hold the bullet for part of the shaping, when the rod is removed it leaves a hollow. What happened here is some JAG lawyer heard 'hollow tip' or 'hollow point' and had a fit without bothering to find out what they were talking about.

There ought to be some kind of regulation that before some REMF(to borrow a phrase) can make a ruling on equipment/actions, they have to run it past somebody who actually knows their ass from a hole in the ground. Won't happen, but it should. And please note in the article that the sniper who blew the whistle was screwed over for making noise, even though it corrected a real problem. Idiot bureaucrats in uniform are still idiot bureaucrats.

On a side note, I read years ago that when the U.S. first began using the .223 cartridge in the M16(ok, 5.56x45mm if you're going to be picky and metric) Sweden had diplomatic fits because the little 55-grain bullet will sometimes, if velocity is high enough, not only yaw and tumble after impact but break apart at the cannelure(the grooved band running around the waist of some bullets), thus causing worse wounds. Turned out that while they were bitching at us, the .30 caliber machinegun ammo they were making for their forces was specifically designed to do just that.

The JAG lawyer had the same attitude that kept many police departments from using hollowpoints for many years; screw whether it stops the bad guy better, we think they're mean. Difference being that the cops were wanting actual designed-to-mushroom ammo; the snipers were using already approved ammo that this idiot couldn't bother to find out about before taking fingers to keyboard.

Just because I'm tired, and the new meds are working,

I give you a friend's imprisoned predator pack:



















Not the glinty eyes, the barely visible tips of the flesh-tearing fangs... Scary little beasts, aren't they? I'm told they answer the Vashka and Puck. The third of the pack is sleeping off the effects of the kill napping. Sneaky little beasts, they manage to escape from damn near everything except this high-tech holding facility.

'Fluffy Bunny' syndrome

I can't remember where I first heard that, but it does cover it; Peter Capstick called it 'Disney syndrome' as I recall. 'It' being the "the nice animals won't hurt you if you're nice to them", "the bear will happily graze and not hurt you/the other animals unless provoked" type attitude.

Little earlier this evening was watching a Nature episode on PBS about the Monteray Bay aquarium having kept a small Great White shark for some months. Of itself, a neat thing, and a lot of people got to see it. But the narration and the attitude was annoying. They kept hitting on "will it stay calm or will it start hunting/killing other fish in the tank?". Finally, after it had attacked two other sharks, killing the second, and was 'actively hunting/stalking' other animals in the tank, they decided they couldn't risk it and released it at sea.

Question for you; if you had the apex predator of the sea in a tank, why would you be surprised when it started hunting? Why would you not expect it to? If these biologists actually thought that having it in a tank and feeding it would keep the base instincts from ever coming out, they're not as smart as they're made out to be.

It's like what happens when a bear whacks somebody, and especially if it eats them. Animal lovers come out of the woodwork telling how it must be the fault of the digested, they must have done something to provoke it, etc. Well, bullshit. Bears are big, powerful, omnivorous predators that will eat pretty much anything they can find or kill; sometimes that turns out to be some human. Doesn't make the bear evil, it's just being a bear. Same with cougars, when they don't have any fear of humans some are going to notice that these two-legs are easier to catch than deer. A book that came out a couple of years ago, The Beast in the Garden, covered it nicely. It's about the buildup to the first modern maneating by a cougar in CO. When the cats started coming into town, and eating pets, things got split between the "Shouldn't we make them scared of us so they'll leave us alone?" people and the "The cougars were here first! You don't like it, then leave!" people. These Aquarium people were apparently hoping the hunting instinct wouldn't come out in the shark; to quote Jayne from Firefly, "Nice move, dumbass".

Side note: after California banned hunting of cougars, the game department wound up killing more 'nuisance' cougars than were killed by hunters. The screaming when this was pointed out and some asked why not allow hunting again? told everything; the screamers didn't care how many they game department had to kill, they just didn't want anybody hunting them.

Other side note: in the year they had this shark(roughly 8 month old female), it grew by something like 17" and 100 pounds. Impressive, I'd say.

And while you're at it,

go congratulate Jawa for his part in getting a bin Laden buttmonkey thrown out of the country.

Don't you just love how this stuff works? I started at

Curmudgeonly & Skeptical, which led to Mean Mr. Mustard which led to Relapsed Catholic which led to this place from which I found the Mark Steyn piece that started it all. Damn, by the time the year's out I should be back in fine fettle as a tracker.

Basically, Steyn points out that feminism should be very damn interested in the war on terror as it has freed a hell of a lot of women to do something other than either wear a tent and be escorted to go to the market or be easy prey to be dragged to a rape room. Doing so with his usual humor causes Murney to have a bad case case of the vapors; it seems that Steyn made mock of holy Feminism and was downright racist to boot. As someone once said(or should have) "If this be misogynism and racism, kick it up a notch, boy!"

Said vapors leading to statements such as "It is obvious that Steyn is a misogynist, and hates feminism, which means he opposes gender equality. How barbaric.", and, referring to the 'torrent of hate' directed at feminists, "That hate will climax when the United States Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, which will likely be in the not too distant future."

Never mind that if Roe vs. Wade is thrown out, that will not outlaw abortion; it will put the issue back in the individual states. That's not putting a matter into the hands of the state's voters, it's 'hatred for feminists'. To quote the Catholic, "This man actually publicizes the fact that he's a Women's Studies minor at the University of Regina (insert Beevis "heh") and has something called a Certificate of Administration in Continuing Education Development.

Meet the future of Canada, folks.

And the kicker: He calls himself a Libertarian. Kids, you can have 'im. Kate, I insist that you distance yourself from this Saskatchewan libertarian!"

No more need be said.

Carnival of Cordite #44

Up over at Gullyborg.

The bin Laden tape

Assuming it's him and not dummied up(I'm still wondering why, if he's still in operation, no video?), lets see... You're not hurting us, we're gonna get you, we're winning but we'll offer a truce to rebuild Iraq.

Translation: "We're getting stomped, every time we come out to play you kill us, we haven't been able to pull off a real operation in America in years, so please accept our 'truce' offer and stop killing us. Don't you know you unbelievers are supposed to LOSE?"

I know it's an estimated time, but damn!

FedEx was supposed to be delivering a package today. Checked the tracking data last night, showed estimated time of delivery 10:30. Ok, great, I'll be home then.

I get home from work at 9:15 to find the "you weren't here" note on the door; they'd been here at 8:10.

I understand 'estimated time', but dammit...

Oh, the wonders of the ACLU

You know, that wonderful organization that defends civil rights? As long as they're approved of civil rights and/or plaintiffs, of course. Well, they've filed suit against the U.S.G. to stop the wiretapping of al Queda-related phone calls. Aside from the bullshit about 'widespread bugging of American's phones', there's some problems with the people in the ACLU doing this. Found this at Debbie Schlussel's blog:
"I'm not referring to the famous Plaintiffs about whom you've heard: For example, Christopher Hitchens, the well-known Vanity Fair writer who is tight with convicted felon lobbyist Jack Abramoff's money launderer Grover Norquist. (Norquist's receipt of thousands from Saudi charities raided by Customs for billions in Al-Qaeda money laundering is well-known, and Hitchens wrote glowingly of Norquist's efforts on behalf of radical Islam)." and goes from there:
"I'm referring to ACLU lawyers Noel Saleh, Mohammed Abdrabboh, and Nabih Ayad, the ACLU Plaintiffs named in the yesterday's Complaint, attorney William Swor, a member National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Nazih Hassan--all named in the lawsuit. They are exactly the kind of people whom the federal government SHOULD be watching, but probably isn't. One of these men admitted to funding Hezbollah, one was accused of tampering with a witness, and a third signed a document contradicting statements he made in the lawsuit. Not to mention, one of these men engaged in exactly the same "spying" (on me) that he now opposes when done by the NSA."

Yeah, some people in some branches of the ACLU have done some good things; and many people in many branches have done bad things. If the ACLU actually cared about justice and honesty, they'd throw these clowns out of the organization.

Further, check this out at Stop The ACLU for more information.

I need to put this up at work

Rendezvous!

Not the black-powder kind this time. Well, mostly not. Mr. Completely is putting together a meet in Reno NV in November, details here.

Damn, I'd love to go, but this far out I have no idea if I can get the days off. Hoping, hoping...

Did I mention pain hurts?

My back is easing off, but not fast enough. I'm beginning to feel like a dis dyks dyslexic pirate; every time I bend over or stand up I go "URRRRRR".

Ah, the wonders of 'gun control' laws

Or, as Jeff Cooper refers to them, 'personal disarmament laws'.

Got a notice from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership(JPFO) about this article from San Francisco. Short version: abused woman thinks her husband may have found her, so under a CA law that "waives the permit requirement for anyone who "reasonably believes that he or she is in grave danger because of circumstances forming the basis of a current restraining order.'', she starts carrying a gun. Accidentally leaves purse at store, gun found & police called; she went to jail because it turns out the restraining order which she thought was permanent had expired two months before.

She understands leaving her purse, especially with the piece inside, was bad; she now, because of the conviction, cannot even have a firearm in the house or pick one up for self-defense.

Joan Ryan, the writer, doesn't like guns. Here's the last paragraph:
"The law against carrying concealed guns makes good sense. But so many women every year are killed by their abusive boyfriends and husbands. Restraining orders, as we know, can't stop them. The police often can't stop them. I don't know what the solution is. But something's wrong when, in trying to keep herself alive, the terrorized woman becomes the criminal."

As I said in the e-mail I sent her, Joan, you can't have it both ways. If someone has the right to self-defense, they also have the right to the means with which to defend themselves, and for most people that's a gun. Firearms are not magic wands, you can't wave one and make troubles go away; they are damned effective tools for repelling boarders who come through the window at night, or attack you in a parking lot. But it doesn't matter how skilled you are or how great your need for it, if you don't have it with you when you need it, you're screwed. And the law you think makes such good sense has now prevented this woman from even owning this means of defense, ever again.

Meanwhile, at Smallest Minorty...

I wrote a few days back about when the personal disarmament people really got my attention. Kevin read it and asked the question, and got a lot of comments.

You ought to go read them.

What I'd like to find...

Xavier was writing about what he'd like to find next. Here's what I'd like to run across:


















This beast is the Webley Mk VI revolver, in .455. Friend of mine got hold of a target model a few years ago and I had the chance to shoot it. And immediately lusted after it.

It ain't small; it was adopted by the British army- and lots of people who went out around the world- as a self-defense weapon that would put an attacker down. Big heavy bullet at moderate velocity. Easy to shoot. If you've never been around one, it's a top-break; there's a thumb lever(you can see it in front of the hammer) that you push down to unlock it. Rotate the grip section down and the ejector kicks the empties out, then you drop six more in, close it and continue.

A lot of these were modified during WWII to fire .45acp cartridges. They milled a few thousandths off the back of the cylinder and used half-moon or moon clips to hold the cartridges. Here's a moon clip from a Taurus Tracker:


















Bad thing about this: can't pick out a couple of empties and reload those chambers. Good thing: fast reloading. The other thing about this is that a .45acp bullet is a touch undersize for this bore, so it's not as accurate.

So, what I'd like is an Mk VI, with an uncut cylinder if possible, for $350-400. Which is the real problem. These pistols are out there, but with uncut cylinders tend to go for $450 and up, often going over $600; far more than I'm willing to spend. I'd settle for one with a cut cylinder; I think an unsized .45 bullet would work nicely, and handloading is no problem. I found one in my price range a while back, but close examination showed a slight ring in the barrel, about an inch ahead of the cylinder; bad juju, guys, I decided not to chance it. May not have affected shooting with appropriate handloads, but I'd worry 'bout it. So I'll keep looking.

By the way, if you've read some of my earlier stuff you'll have seen the piece on testing a later model, and Enfield .380:














Very similar design, but smaller and chambered for the .380/200, basically our .38S&W(NOT .38 Special) with a 200-grain round-nose lead bullet. This cartridge was reported to do a very good job of stopping fights; but after they decided a lead bullet violated the Geneva Convention the changed to a 170-grain jacketed bullet and results were not as good. I mentioned I found a Lyman mold that throws a 195-grain round-nose bullet, almost identical to the original for these. Dug around and- at The High Road, I believe- some suggested loads.

DISCLAIMER: This load works very well in this revolver, it might not in yours! Start lower and work up if you try this!

What I wound up using was 2.4 grains of Unique powder and a Winchester Small Pistol primer. According to what I read that gives about 650 feet per second, like the original. Good accuracy, and the bullet hits where the sights are at ten yards.

I love these old firearms.

Speaking of tyranny,

Chris had a link to this. Among the good parts:
"Give us a leftwing dictator, and soon enough every rightwing wacko would be up in the hills with his rifle collection and enough ammo to sink the Titanic. (Not that the Titanic needed any help sinking, but you get the idea.) If things got worse, it wouldn't take long before the wackos were joined by their center-right comrades. The only difference between them would be the price of their guns.

Given a rightwing dictator, the results would be much the same, only more urbanized. Instead of ragtag bands of wanna-be soldiers hitting government convoys on isolated stretches of interstate highways, it would be our cities that would become ungovernable. And don't even try to tell yourself that liberals are too limp-wristed to put up a fight. Set your Way Back Machine to 1968 and think again."

I would argue that left or rightwing tyrant would get all the people in the middle pissed. And I think it would be a BIG middle. Question would become who'd actually be willing to take up arms, and who'd keep talking until it was over for them? Socialist/communists have shown a great willingness to slaughter and imprison "for the good of all/for the revolution!"; far right types the same "for the good of all/for the leader!" So would the people in the middle be ready/willing to stomp on both extremes?

Seems like both extremes want control over everything. Difference seems to be the left wants everything including your thought processes controlled, their opposites often don't care what you think as long as you don't actually oppose them, and don't actually hate the idea of private property. Simplified, yes, but seems to cover much of it.

More armor?

With all the arguing about body armor for the troops, I remembered something. This is from David Drake's book Fortress:

"The thing that nobody who directed war movies understood- and why should they? It would come as news to rear echelons in all the various armies as well- was that the guys at the sharp end carried it all on their backs.

The irreducible minimum for life in a combat zone was water, arms and munitions, and food. In most environments, heavy clothing or shelter had to be factored in as well; exposure in a hilltop trench would kill you just as dead as a bullet.

Helicopters were fine, but they weren't going to land while you lay baking on a bare hillside traversed by enemy guns; so you carried water in gallons, not quarts, and it was life itself. If you ran out of ammo, they'd cut you apart with split bamboo if that was what they had... so you carried extra bandoliers and extra grenades, and a pistol of your own because the rifle you were issued was going to jam at the worst possible time, no matter who designed it or how hard you tried to keep it clean.

Besides that, you carried a belt of ammo for one o f the overburdened machinegunners or a trio of shells for the poor bastard with the mortar tube on his back. You were all in it together; and besides, when the shit hit the fan you were going to need heavy-weapons support.

And the chances were that, if you were really trying to get the jump on the elusive other side, you had a case of rations to hump with you as well. Ever time a resupply bird whop-whopped to you across hostile terrain, it fingered you for the enemy and guaranteed that engagement would be on the enemy's terms.

So you didn't move very fast, but you moved, and you did your job of kicking butt while folks in strack uniforms crayoned little boxes and arrows on acetate-covered maps, learnedly discussing your location. That was the way the world worked; and that was why Tom Kelly felt subconsciously better for the equipment slung on his body as he shuffled into combat."

I'm all for better armor, but if you just keep adding plates and panels, you wind up with something that may technically give better protection, but is so damn heavy and/or constricting that troops wind up taking pieces off. Yeah, we need better armor, not just add-ons to the current stuff. There's been stuff posted about some real interesting ideas(I think Anarchangel had some but I'm too lazy right now to dig it up), and I don't doubt there's stuff being worked on we don't know about; but it will still boil down to a balance between protection and comfort and mobility. And if it doesn't balance out that trifecta, it won't work for people on the sharp end.

Ok, this is getting confusing

First time I looked I was a Flappy Bird; then I was a Floppy Fish(never did hear from Sondra...). Now I'm a Slithering Reptile.

I don't know if I'm evolving or devolving.

Remember the 'upset kid suicide by bomb' outside the stadium?

Went over to Random Nuclear Strikes to see of Prof. Booty had been by(yeah, yeah, I'm a guy; deal with it) and found note of this at Mark Tapscott's place, noting a possible connection to the terrorist arrests in Italy. You know, the ones where the clowns were planning to bomb, among other things, stadiums? The arrests that several people have noted the major media has taken damn little to no notice of?

We've been assured by various officious- that is, official people that he was just a lonely kid who decided to end it all. Problem is, all the bits and pieces don't add up to that. Add this into the mix, and it becomes even more worrying.

And no, I don't trust the officials who said not to worry; they've lied too many times before.

Ok, I started out not liking Swimmer Kennedy,

but the pieces of the Alito hearings I listened to were kind of painful. Whatever he may have once been(and I've never been fond of him), he's become a great big damn joke. I'd say the only joke bigger is the people in MA who keep reelecting him, but that they do is pretty damn scary. I'd have to agree with Rush on this, some of the idiot things he came up with were from notes handed to him by a staffer who got them from some raving left-wing type without bothering to check them out. Either that, or his brain is flat gone. One's stupid, the other's pitiful. And he's pretty well both nowadays.

Biden? I don't hate him(hell, I don't think I've ever actually hated anybody), but I despise him. This just reinforced that.

Feinstein I also despise; at least she didn't make a point of showing her ass to buy votes from her moonbats back home. Though asking a judge to say how he'd rule on a future case... she's GOT to know that no capable judge would do it. And unless her staff is completely stupid, she knows he's capable.

Blah.

Additional: found this over at Rob's place:
"Times change. Two new verbs may emerge from the Alito hearings. Consider “To teddy.” A working definition might be “to decay like Dorian Gray, except do so during live, televised Senate hearings.”

Biden may yet become a verb. “To biden”: to shoot onself in one’s own foot using one’s own mouth."--- austin bay