PDW

I’ve had a PDW (NATO personal defense weapon) rolling around in my head, but Frank James just did one recently that does a much better job than I ever could. (And I THINK this is the bullet type he prefers for a possible PDW. Partly because it can be converted back to regular 9mm NATO chambering sorta easily. Oooo, and that leads to THIS article... It's like a Rabbit Hole, this subject.)


Have you noticed something? We don’t have a PDW weapon issued to the troops…

Remember your history. This spec for a PDW came out in the mid 80s. The things that gun fanbois were thinking of that trickled down to my young skull full of mush was Uzi’s (the war in Beirut was fresh in folks’ minds) and the supposedly ‘faster’ MAC10s (Miami Vice). Small subbies were the shizzle. In the lizard brains of the folks calling for a new PDW, I imagine, was a tiny voice saying, “Like the Uzi, but COOLER! And more effective, naturally.”

It’s a tough nut to crack. Simpler and handier than the issue rifle, but more effective against bad guys than the pistol. Something that hits almost as hard as the M16, and almost as accurate yet maybe at slightly shorter range, but as close to butt simple as a double action revolver. It’s a dream! But if some genius can make that dream come true…

It also why my hunt for the carbine I want so time consuming. Another reason my quest is hard is that I want unfashionable features. “You want it in .45ACP? But there are much ‘better’ modern rounds! The .45 is for purists and gamers mostly. You want magazines from a 1911? But a Glock 20 magazine holds so much more! Just get a Glock and a KRISS and pay for the tax stamp for a short barrel.” Yeah, yeah. Heard that before. A KRISS is pretty good, but not ideal for me.

The two REAL contenders, according to Frank, were the FN P90 and the HK MP7. They shoot teeny bullets at high velocity with special projectiles to defeat body armor. I can’t get those special projectiles, and my personal requirements about defeating body armor involve asking myself, “Why am I trying to shoot somebody in body armor? Especially with THIS little thing? Things have gotten TRULY bad to find myself in this situation. I need to rethink the circumstances that brought me here and try to avoid letting this happen again in the future. If I survive this.”

So I still stick with big pistol bullets out of a shoulder fired carbine. A modern Mare’s Leg to go with my modern Hog Leg. I ain’t gonna find what I want. Not for under $4000 at some custom gunsmith.

Zombie Jazzercise?

Zombie exercise class. People motivated to get in shape by a 'fear of the coming Zombacalypse' take the class.

The money quote? "Nobody actually comes to class because they really believe in zombies," Gatz said.

Sure. Nobody.

But it beats Jazzercise.

Their is an in class argument on the value of sprint exercises. The theory is that the coming Troubles will be filled with slow Shamblor type Zeds. Well, the world isn't full of JUST zombie threats in this scenario. You often have to worry about OTHER survivors, and sprinting from them can be valuable. There is always some biker gang causing no end of problem for the Good Guys.

And this is being done in suburb of Chicago. Plenty of zombies, plenty of Bad Guy uninfected.

Mil Qual

I've talked about the military's rifle qualification before, but what about pistol qualification?

The quality of my qualification in the Navy was a joke. It was just a plinking session with the pistol prepped and ready on a bench on the fantail of a supply ship. I don't really think I earned that ribbon... I have corrected that since, with my current skill. I don't think I'd have earned Sharpshooter or Expert level, necessarily, yet.

In my original qualification, the targets were on the fantail and we were back 10 yards or so. The deck was pitching, as we were underway and doing 20 knots, and the targets were bouncing on their bungies and we were firing 1911's made back before the war. WWII. They just fed me already prepped magazines and we blasted away until the ammo ran out. I hit a few times. There were dozens of holes in each target. The splashes behind the ship were stupendous and it was a beautiful day in the western Mediterranean. I have no idea what my score was. I teacupped the grip and no one taught me otherwise. All I was taught is how to release the slide and start shooting after inserting a fresh mag. I never learned how to field strip or even load a magazine. There was no briefing.

Nowadays in the Navy, with the 9mm Berretta, it appears to be 36 shots at a silhohuette target at various specified ranges (3, 7, and 15 yards) at a not TOO fast pace. There is a notebook paper sized section nearest the center of the silhohuette worth 5 points per hit. So a maximum score is 180. A score of 135 is enough to get the ribbon.

Then there is a more advanced set of training with 48 shots with a max score of 240... Add a 25 yard target to that. A score of 204 gets you a metal 'S' for Sharpshooter to add to your ribbon. A score of 228 out of 240 gets you an 'E' for Expert.

I have no idea what the standards were back in 1990.

But what I described to you was the Naval Academy's stuff. It looks different from this stuff here with the Combat Pistol Qualification Course. Well, duh, that's the Army. But it's 30 rounds at various ranges with a score of 300 max. 160 is qualification, and 260 is expert. Various random ranged pop-up targets, the farthest is 31 meters, and are exposed only for so long a period of time (2 seconds each at the fastest set. 5 sets.)

And the other branches have other standards, naturally.


Could I get Expert today using Navy rules but my 1911? I dunno. Sure, I'll get all 5's on the 3 yard range. But half the shots at 15 and 25 yards have to hit the notebook paper, and other half have to hit the section outside that. But 6 of the 25's are with the pistol on an improvised rest. On a good day I might squeak by with an Expert qualification.

[Something I didn't know... The Coast Guard uses the same sorta SIG as I have. P229 with DAK.]

BOB vs Hole Up

Serious people in the survivalist circles are understandably down on the whole concept of Bug Out Bags. The pithy saying with a huge kernel of truth is, "bugging out means you choose to be a voluntary refugee." Holing up is preferred, if at ALL possible, as you can't carry a lot of stuff with you and you are familiar and stronger on your home turf. There is safety in being a moving target but you are also vulnerable from all sides.

But when the lava is heading toward your house... You do have to leave.

And serious survivalists also freely admit that there are times when, yes, you have to quit your base location and go elsewhere. Even the best selected site A may be in the way of something irresistable. And your back up locations B, C, and D that you arranged ahead of time to bug out TO might be compromised, as well. It doesn't take much imagination to come up with such a scenario.

You're in the worst possible situation, on foot, carrying everything you own, and on the move to be ahead of something bad. I'm not going to sugar coat it, this is a good way see a bad end.

The whole point of survivalist thinking is to SURVIVE, naturally. You try to make yourself as lucky as possible by preparation ahead of time. Hey, at least you got a pack full of possibly useful stuff on your back. It could be worse. You could be naked and severely injured. The ultimate goal is to endure through an emergency and get to the other side where lives can be rebuilt, and some semblance of normalcy returns. People that didn't prep have a greater chance of not being there on the other side. So at least some starry eyed foolishness has been culled. Hopefully a stoic rock-hard unhappy pessimism won't endure in the survivors.

But don't making Bugging Out your FIRST option on your disaster prep. Think twice on bug-outtable situations. You might be able to ride out a riot or a hurricane, especially if you have no place else to go. A forest fire? Maybe not. You definitely have places to go in most forest fire evacuations, and usually enough lead time to pack the BoB and then some. BoB plus valuables, plus papers, plus enough gear for a weeklong vacation. It's not TEOTWAWKI when there is a Holiday Inn with a functioning contintental breakfast, complete with fresh bran muffins, 400 miles away, but you may need that Bug Out Bag to get there.

Is Back

Gunblogger appears to have returned. Looks different, but same great stuff.

Range Day in July

After a range week hiatus I showed up with the snubbie.

BOY did my shooting stink up the joint. It took about 3 cylinders to settle in and get used to the little DA again.

Practice people. We gotta practice.

I even got a small blister. Just 75 rounds and I got a blister. Well, man up, and charge on.

The 2 Marines shooting some narrow .40 in the lane to my left were positioned perfectly to throw brass into my shirt pocket. And my pants cuff, as I found out an hour later when going to buy beer for the weekend. Ting! Ting-ting! Oh, explain THAT to the other patrons.

Here's the first target. The first 15 are masked by 16+. Pick the worst 15 holes on there, and assume those were the first 15 shots.

I was still settled at the second target. But still... it was a light shooting day.

Tam's Rainbow Friend

Is quite talented:

Blogger's

Blogger's commenting system is acting all hinky. Roberta noticed too.

Survivalist Rifle

All the survivalists types toy with similar memes of “what 3 guns system is best for TEOTWAWKI” and then spend a lot of time hashing that out.

But this Argentinian brings up a good point. How big a SHTF situation do you have to have before it would be ‘socially acceptable’ to walk around, out of uniform, with a slung rifle on your shoulder? His country had a pretty big economic collapse, but toting a rifle was still out of the question. Times would have to be pretty bad. Not just a Depression times 3, or a Katrina times 10… You’d have to be in a The Road type worldwide disaster with giga-deaths. And then you wouldn’t want folks to SEE you and your rifle. Maybe something lesser like One Second After (EMP knocks the US into the 19th Century), and then it would be in your capacity as part of the community militia and you’d be carrying it around folks you know.

It’s good you have the rifle, but you may find yourself only carrying the pistol you chose most of the time. US hyperinflation and nationwide food riots? Just the pistol on your daily commute to your job. Big volcano in Yellowstone that blots out the sun and makes all the east coast look like Seattle after Mt St Helens? Yup, you still would go to work in New York. Times would be bad, yes, but there would still be officials trying to maintain order. And you don’t want them to think you are a possible source of disorder unless you are bigger than them. Peak Oil turns out to be very real and on a single day in 2013 all oil well just stop? You will be walking to your job, and you may have a new job farming, but electricity may still work most of the time and people would be trying to cope.

Of course in a pistol carrying CCW everywhere SHTF scenario you might not carry the rifle everywhere, but it would be close by and easy to hand most times…

Soldiery type invasions and insurrections? Then you might need that rifle constantly. By then you’d BE a soldier. With very little logistical tail. You’d have your rifle and you’d be on the move, probably eating the seed corn of the area you are travelling through, successfully fighting people that stayed put because there are more of you then there are of them. Congratulations! In this scenario you’ve become part of the problem instead of part of the Survivalist solution. Even if you are fighting for the ‘good guys’.

Yeah, there seem to be no GOOD outcomes in a TEOTWAWKI situation. Lots of suffering. It would really suck. I got an idea… Let’s try, as much as possible, not to go there.


[Update: THIS is the specific post I was referencing. 2008. No wonder I couldn't find it. Sorry about that people. Money quote:

"What I’m trying to explain, is that it’s ok to prepare for China invading you country, Germans and UN or Martians. That is the extreme, less likely worst case scenario.

There is an infinity spectrum of gray between the black and white. White being your average normal day and black being total TEOTWAWKI, lizard men invading the planet.

Rifles do have a place in the survivalist’s arsenal, and a very important one. But you have to understand that 90% of the time, the handgun will be the weapon you have available when you need one. You can’t compare to a trooper in Iraq that has his weapon with him at all times. I ask you how many soldiers do you know that keep wearing cammo and totting their M4s around town when they return home?"

and it keeps going from there.]

Where was Archie?

I thought it would be of historical interest to ask my crotchety old WWII veteran neighbor know as 'Archie' where he was when he heard about important news events. A 'Where were you when?...'

So. This is how it went.

When FDR died? Playing catch with a baseball behind the barracks at Bainbridge Naval Base. He thought the war would be over and he wouldn't get killed overseas.

When the Challenger exploded? Watching it on TV and noticing the spark from the booster aiming at the main tank and thinking, "Well that is gonna blow up..."

When JFK was killed? "NEVER YOU FUGGIN MIND AND I DON'T KNOW NUTHIN ABOUT NO GRASSY KNOLL NOW GET OUTTA MY HOUSE!!!"

Anvil 4th

Anvil shooting is the traditional July 4th event for at least the first 100 years of the country's existence.

Go to 1:15 in...



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Rule of Law

So we are offered a monstrosity of a Healthcare Bill. 2000+ pages. It even falls outside of standard legislative processes in order to get it passed. No one knows what's in it before the legislators vote on it. A man will decide what's in the law later, now that it is passed.

There is a Banking Reform Bill on the Hill. It's huge. 2000+ pages. The two powerful men that 'wrote' it, Dodd and Frank, don't even know what's in it, and they admit it. We'll find out what's in it later, after it is passed when some man decides what's in it.

The Banking bill is because of the mortgage crisis. You see banks don't like risk, but they do like profit. Lucky for them, the gov't took their risk away with Fannie and Freddie. If there is no consquences for risky behavior but a chance for profit, of COURSE they took that path. They called it irresponsible lending, but it isn't that. It's mercenary lending. The irresponsible part was the borrowing. Buying a $500k house while working a $25k job by fudging the application and getting a balloon mortgage to keep the payments down for the first 3 years. If the house doesn't go up in value after a balloon bursts, so? Theur credit was very bad BEFORE the loan, so what if it get's worse. Need a place to live? Stay in the $500k home even after foreclosure, you don't have to leave. And you don't have to make payments. Following the rules, getting a $100k house and a 30 year fixed rate mortgage? The advice that everyone back past your great grandparents gave you? Following the rules are suckers.

Same for legal immigrants. You filled out all that paperwork and jumped through hoops to come to this country? Sucker.

An oil drilling company has a horrible accident. It's their responsibility. It may bankrupt them and they will have to dissolve the corporation to pay the damages and obligations meted down by due process. But even as a non functioning and bankrupt entity they have much of value to sell, many hard assets that can be liquidated to meet every obligation, every claimant. And there is a process to go through to settle those claims, a procedure agreed upon and in place for all these score of decades. Unless a powerful man promises no end of extralegal harassment if the company doesn't front up a huge escrow payment. Under what authority is this demand justified? Everyone on all sides admits there is no statute for this. It's just done. One man decides with no real authority, another acquiesces because it would be even more ruinous to oppose the will of that one man.

There is a Cap and Trade bill before congress. It's suppose to put the kibosh on Anthropogenic Catastrophic Greenhouse Warming. Hogwash. A group of people 20+ years ago had a solution: Socialism! As much central planning as the American people will sit still for. And they hunted around for a problem to apply this solution to. They went for global warming as problem as good as any. Sympathy for the plight of the proletariat wasn't cutting the mustard in the problem department anymore and they needed a new angle. Well, all the foundation for this problem seems to be falling apart. It was built on top of the 'sand' of fraud, groupthink, and the grubbing for grant money from any available source. Rather than resting on what they originally claimed: the solid bedrock of science. Science welcome skeptics, as it seeks Truth, at any rate. It doesn't cast out skeptics, calling them Deniers (just like friend of Hitler! godwin...), and stitching the scarlet letter D to their garments.

A Supreme Court justice is nominated. And this nominee won't answer a direct question. No nominee has for years. A forthright and honest answer of her legal views and opinions just invites rejection. It's even named after the last nominee that was truthful with his answered. She'd be "Borked". So the nomination hearing process is just useless political kabuki theater now. No objective criteria on qualification. Her favorite color might have more weight on whether she is voted in or out. At least she can answer what her favorite color is. But there is every indication, admitted by both side of the aisle as understood,that despite what she says now she will make rulings based on her desires and feelings. She'll decide what is right in her heart and work her legal justification around her prejudicial decision no matter what the plainest language in the law says. She'll twist the means of the law to achieve a desired ends. It's a tradition since Justice Warren and even before.

We've been adding laws on top of the body of English Common Law for 234 years. It's no wonder that you can't wake in morning and commute to work without running afoul of 4 obscure felonies. Some crazy Russian woman said, "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers." A man will determine if you broke anything important. Especially if he need to be done with you. He'll pick one of those many codes in the system to paste upon you. It's not like there is some body of men that can repeal extraneous crap and keep the code sensible. They are busy men with other things to attend to. Like passing more laws and raising election fund money and golfing and screwing their mistress (or mister, depending on the preference of law-making-man or law-making-woman).


But that's how the United States was set up, though. We are ruled by men. The capricious rules of men. Some elected and known, many faceless and power seeking behind-the-scenes type? How else are a people governed if not by men and man's opinion of the moment.

The Law? Plain and clear? Written in the vernacular for everyone to see? Not requiring a priest caste to figure it out for us, to trick out every invisible and magical penumbra? A body of Law out of us reg'lar folks' control? How can the Law rule men? Rule of Law? Whoever heard of such poppycock before today? Madness to contemplate.



[Can you tell I've been watching the John Adams mini-series?]

Remote Controlled Zombie

That's ALL we need.

The Lamentation of the Women!

Pistol Selection

When I asked for input on which pistol to take to the range, the consensus of these:

1. 1911 pattern
2. .22 revolver
3. .357 revolver
4. .357 snub revolver
5. SIG P229
6. 1903/8 Colt Pocket Hammerless

was to take the one I carry... Ok... I get that... the thing is... which one is that?

I live in Maryland. Carrying is a no-no. Ok. When not in Maryland what do I carry? Well...

If I have a holster it's the SIG, if i just have a pocket it's the snubbie, but I WANT the 1911 to be the go-to pistol some day, and if I lose the snubbie it's the Colt in the pocket, and if there is a bump in the night (3AM? Who sells magazines at 3AM?) the big .357 revolver is the gun to hand for social purposes.

About the only pistol I don't carry is the .22, but all of you will grant that's a good round for lots of cheap practice. I don't have any extraneous 'fun' pistols. All are either carriers or marksmanship practice pieces. No 'fun' guns. All have a 'place.'

My other criteria is normally "What ammo do I have lots of above the 'don't go below this level' quantity?" But that's not relevant this time, as I am flush enough.

I'd rather not have a group of pistols. I'd rather have one go-to gatt. (And a duplicate of that in case the primary goes to the smith.) And that one be the 1911. But that was not to be. Yet. That's the direction I want to go. I'm just not there yet.

So, you're saying now, "T-Bolt, all this internal conflict is fine for filling up a blog post and I see where you are going with your thought process, but which gun did you take?"

The snubbie. It's my most frequent companion. And I remembered that the Lawman +p .38 is on top of the stack of boxes.

Guns don't kill people

Cardboard kills people.

Zombie Day

Today, at Scienceblogs

Dang link is a moving target.

Cleaning a 1911

It had been a while since I took the extractor and firing pin out of the 1911. When the books say to wear eye protection they ain't fooling! Wear goggles! It wasn't so much taking the firing pin out, as I pointed it away from my face and at cardboard. Ptop! But the struggle to depress the spring while sliding the little firing pin stop into place, that firing pin is pointed right at your face and your fingers are coated in gun cleaning solvent. Good job if you get it all back together without the pin going flying at least once. It flew 4 times for me.

And OH MY! That was a lot of carbon in there. And as fine as face powder. A q-tip did a good job dragging that filth out of there. I probably had the pin out for cleaning... maybe 1500 rounds ago? It was an impressive amount of filth. It felt good excavating it out of there.

Ok, here is a question. The lands and/or grooves nearest the breech are getting dirty and resistant to cleaning. I was waiting for this. Lot of patches, lots of brushing, lots of solvent... What gives? I wanted to check with the peanut gallery before I attacked it with a stronger chemical.

In before Tam

Today is the 94th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme.

Some Brits died when they found out khaki wasn't MG-proof. Then the next day, more. And more...

Top Shot AR Friend or Foe

Ok, I have forgiven hulu. They eventually put up ep4 of Top Shot.

I need the fodder, you see...

This episode is all about the AR and all about shooting the target and NOT shooting the thing that looks like a target, but is really a 'friendly'. And you don't know which is which until the last second.

As the host said, "I, your host, say, 'Judgment'." Or something.

The trainer is/was a SEAL.

Shoot the black, leave the white, and do it fast fast fast, or...

Shoot the white, leave the black, and do it fast fast fast.

The classic-rifle guy, Jim, on the blue team is SLOW in the practice, and Blake and JJ are fast. Iain, the Brit, made some errors.

On red, there are a couple Marines, and they did fine. Brad did good in practice, and he's been in the elimination twice. Kelly is also not used to speedy rifle. But all in all, the red team did better in the dry run than blue.

~spoilers~

The actual challenge... Adds memory to the mix, like the game Concentration. They show the target, then cover it, then you shoot the grid printed on the cover but only at specified color. If you are on red team, remember where the blue targets team.

Blue team ended up having Iain, JJ, and Blake to sit out.

Hey, look at Caleb! 5 of 7. Not shabby.

Even the players that did poorly are still doing pretty good on this challenge, I notice. No negative scores. I would have gotten a negative score.

Peter on Red cleaned up at his turn making it mathematically impossible for Blue to catch up.

And Blue take a cavalier attitude toward the challenging selection of the elimination... challenge... selectees... But I kinda like it. Shows cameraderie. Like they are gelling as a team. We'll see how that works out over time. And it is the TV shows job to drive some drama in the team's unified front so let's see.

Jim was selected, as he had the lowest score and pretty much volunteered. And Iain was selected because he insisted they others select him.

~'live' blog~

The elimination challenge! Oh crap! MOVING targets. And pistols. I'm guess Iain wins before I even see the event. TZ99 from South Africa? Wow, never heard of that 9mm handgun before now... Ah, it's a SIG clone. Thought it looked kinda familiar. Iain, being a Brit mil type, prolly knows this handgun... And he does. He's FAST.

The trainer brings up that Jim is methodical and that might help him if Iain is too confident or rushes...

Jim is looking confident and seems to be having fun after practice.

And the big show. Swinging random red targets among no-shoot blue targets, swing swing swing. DANG. I'd do well hitting targets if I was there. Hitting the wrong targets.

And they are like 10 yards away!

I take it back, If I was there I'd hit nothing.

Iain is first. Hits all 3, but with .6 seconds left. Wow.

Jim is gonna lose...

Nope, all 3, and with 1.7 seconds left! Double Wow!

Ooops, I didn't notice Jim nicked a blue. What a great round. Too bad Jim has to go after that.


Next show...

Muzzle loader long rifle next week, and Blue team drama. Ah well.