Things just like this.

“In a stunning setback for gun rights supporters, Sen. Anitere Flores, one of the most powerful lawmakers in Tallahassee, declared on the very first day of Florida’s two-month legislative session that she likely would not support any of Steube’s 10 other gun bills

The ouster of Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami means nothing to her.  Of course not.  If you’ll cheat on your spouse, you’ll do anything.  Character is the necessary prerequisite for good governance.  This is why we get tyranny from FedGov.  Washington, D.C. is a haven for witches, warlocks, demons, gargoyles, criminals and pit vipers.

This is an interesting video.  It wasn’t made to test the gun so much, but rather the BCG.  He makes that very clear.

It sort of makes you wonder about those Soldiers complaining about firing 400 rounds through their Colt guns at Wanat and Kamdesh only to see their guns seize up.

First of all, remember that the Army hasn’t trained their men in fire control and marksmanship like the Marines.  I’m not saying that – an experienced trainer who has time in Afghanistan is saying that.

Second, I maintain that the problems at Wanat had to do with being deployed at the bottom of a valley in between mountains, giving up the high ground, no logistics, no support, a poorly connected and poorly manned observation post, and a total time of more than a year from start to finish to build and man the COP (giving the Haqqani network time to deploy fighters at will).  Again, see multiple entries on The Battle of Wanat.  If you haven’t studied it, it’s a sad but necessary tale.

There is a rich history of blaming the gun for the failures when the real blame had to do with leadership, so it’s entirely misplaced blame to point to the gun.  But it does cause you to wonder if those Colt guns had a better BCG would they have seized up after 400 rounds (400 rounds in 30 or so minutes at Wanat).

There are a lot of very good coated BCGs like this Titanium Nitride component.  This is the guts of the gun.  It makes sense to outfit yours with a good one.

You can read about it here.

My son (former SAW gunner) thinks this is a very bad idea.  First of all, it’s a closed bolt system.  The SAW was an open bolt system, which allowed the gun to cool.

Second, he had to train the other SAW gunners in his company over a protracted period of time to ensure that they understood rate of fire, proper fire control, etc., gun temperature regulation, and so forth, and got proficient at it on the range.  The concept of squad rushes relies on a SAW gunner laying down suppressing fire for the other three Marines in the fire team to rush forward, and then the three Marines carrying carbines to lay down fire for the SAW gunner to rush forward.

This is fixed doctrine, fully embedded into the training materials, range time, and small unit fire and maneuver tactics.  Nothing will be the same, and the Marines will have to revamp that doctrine and the follow-on training.  There won’t be any SAW gunners to rely on to provide suppressing fire, regardless of what this rifle can do.

That, at any rate, is his take.  Perhaps it will work out for them.  Say, why isn’t that Marine using a Pmag?

Via Say Uncle, this comes to us from Tam.

Super Vel Ammo: I have to vent.

What kills me is how they’re hyping 90gr +P .38 Spl & 9mm and 185gr +P .45ACP bullets as if the last thirty years of accumulated terminal ballistics knowledge hadn’t even happened.

Flying dimes with no sectional density moving at Warp Factor Six are how we got Miami and then wound up spending twenty years wandering in the .40 caliber wilderness, and the shit is being pimped by people who should goddam well know better because, I dunno, Cameron Hopkins is a nice guy or something and the boxes make older gunwriters feel nostalgic.

Oh dear.  The lady doth annoy me sometimes.  So let’s discuss this a bit.  She’s referring to sectional density, which is technically calculated as the ratio of mass over the cross sectional area, or SD = M/A.  The gun community simplifies that by ignoring the value of Pi in the computation of area, and converting mass in grains to pounds with the conversion of 7000 grains per pound.  Like this.

SD = M / (7000 X r^2)

The resultant value is dimensionless and totally meaningless unless in the context of comparison to the sectional densities of other bullets.  So for instance, the 230 grain .45 ACP bullet has a sectional density of 0.162, while the 185 grain bullet has a SD of 0.130.

But in reality, the lighter bullets aren’t travelling at “Warp Factor Six,” and a 185 grain .45 ACP isn’t a “flying dime” compared to any handgun round on earth.  And as for that matter, the 45 grain 22 magnum round has a SD of 0.128, which is reasonably close to that of the 185 grain .45 ACP.  Does that mean we should all dump whatever we currently shoot and adopt the .22 WMR?

No it doesn’t, because SD isn’t the only thing on earth to consider.  If it was, then Lucky Gunner would show that the penetration and expansion of 185 grain rounds sucked, while the 230 grain rounds succeeded.  Oops.  Guess she got that one wrong.

There are multiple things to consider, like (a) velocity, (b) consistent expansion, (c) penetration depth, (d) wound track, etc.  I’ve pointed out before that while I shoot the .45 ACP and I like it, I also like much higher velocity rounds.  Let’s rehearse what we saw with the FN 5.7 shot at Fort Hood.

The FN 5.7 pistol is constantly maligned or underestimated in many gun forums and articles, often by people who have never experienced shooting the pistol. Subjective comparisons with the .22 magnum or categorization as a sub-par .223 round create confusion about the effectiveness of the FN 5.7.

Enough time has passed after the terrorist attack at Ft. Hood. The shooter, Nidal Malik Hassan, has been arrested, tried and sentenced. The media has moved on. Now we can begin to analyze the impact of the FN 5.7 and address the question of lethality.

Using SS192 and SS197SR ammunition (common commercial 5.7×28 ammo), several 20-30 round magazines and an FN 5.7 (shooter also had a .357 revolver but did not use it), Hassan killed 13 and wounded 32 people.

Many armchair ballistics expert criticized this result as proof that the FN 5.7 platform is not lethal enough because of the proportion of the fatalities to the wounded. Others have proposed that had Hassan use another type of pistol, 9mm or .45, there would have been more fatalities.

If you look at this Wikipedia link and look at the list of casualties, one can come to a very eye-opening conclusion.
Fort Hood shooting – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1. 11 people were shot center-of-mass (COM), one was shot in the stomach and one was shot in the head. All 13 died. All 11 victims who were shot COM did not survive.
2. 3 of the 13 people who died, tried to charge Hassan, but he stopped them with COM shots.
3. The 32 people who were wounded were hit in the arms, legs, hips and shoulders. None of the wounded survivors were shot COM.

The following conclusions can be drawn:
1. The FN 5.7 is a very lethal round CQB because all 11 victims who were shot COM died. No survivors for those hit COM.
2. The FN 5.7 is a real stopper, because 3 tried to charge Hassan at close range and were stopped by COM shots.
3. One of the fatalities was shot in the stomach, and died. The fragmentation of the SS197R round can create a hail of metal shards that can cause serious internal organ damage and bleeding in the stomach.
4. None of the 32 people who were hit in the extremities, hips and shoulders were able to muster a counter-attack because the FN 5.7 must have shattered or broken bones. The high rate of wounded vicitms to fatalities was the direct result of the shooting ability of Hassan (or lack thereof), and not because the 5.7×28 round is not lethal.
5. Sgt. Kimberly Munley (base civilian police), one of the first responders, was immediately disabled with 5.7×28 bullet shrapnels to her wrist and a second 5.7×28 bullet broke her femur. The light 5.7×28 commercial ammo showed that it can shatter large bones due to its velocity
6. According to medical personnel, there was so much blood in the room that it was difficult to get to the victims because the floor became very slippery. One can conclude that the commercial 5.7×28 rounds can fragment or tumble, causing immense blood loss.
7. It took five bullets (which I assume was a 9 mm) from Sgt Mark Todd to stop Hasan. And he survived his wounds (no available info on where he was hit, except that one of the bullets paralyzed Hasan).

In conclusion:
1. The FN 5.7 is definitely a very lethal round. 100% fatality for COM shots.
2. The FN 5.7 is a man-stopper. Three military men tried to charge Hasan, and all three were stopped.
2. The FN 5.7 is a very incapacitating round, if extremities are hit, because it is powerful enough to break the femur (which is the largest bone in the body)
3. The fragmentation or tumbling effect of commercial ammo can cause a lot of blood loss.

The FN 5.7 is a very effective weapon. It is as effective as, or arguably more effective, than any military or civilian pistols in the market.

It is unfortunate that the jihadist Hassan used this weapon against U.S. soldiers.

I have an FN 5.7.  You don’t want to be shot with that round, especially not the ammunition travelling 2200 FPS (the red box ammunition versus the blue tip sporting rounds).  Velocity isn’t everything.  If it was, I’d carry a 6″ barrel .357 magnum with me everywhere.  There is the issue of weight, shape, form, and so on the list goes.

But oversimplifying this to some idiotic rant about turning back the hands of time on 30 years of research is silly and does nothing to serve the gun community.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with the .40 S&W, even though she likens it to wandering in the wilderness for 20 years, any more than there is anything wrong with the 10 mm (which is similar).  The notion of high velocity round to which she refers can be studied here.  The comments are laughable.  There is this one.

In the ’60’s I was a cop in a moderate size PD in Texas, an officer shot a suspect in the chest three times with .357 Super Vel 110 grain bullets. Even though the bullets were traveling 10,000 miles an hour none of the three penetrated past the ribcage and they expanded well and destroyed his ribcage he almost knocked the officer down running passed him. The next day Super Vel was removed from my revolver.

If you believe that someone shot someone else with three .357 magnum rounds, or even one of them, and it failed to penetrate past the rib cage (in other words, it only penetrated the clothes and skin), then you’re dumber that a box of rocks.  That cop missed.  Or the person was lying about what happened.  He was fabulating.

Be careful what you read on the interwebz.

A few days while touring around inside Google Analytics I saw a visit from Kimber on an article I wrote where I tried to encourage Kimber to move out of New York to greener pastures, or in other words, right-to-work states.  It would match the move South by many other firearms manufacturers and likely garner more support within the gun community.  After all, one wonders how many guns are being sold in the Northeast compared to Southeast.

Now I understand why this article captured someone’s interest.  Troy, Alabama won a new Kimber facility.

David Codrea points out an article by Alex Yablon that appears on the face of it to be quite fair and impartial, but David points out to me that he is a Bloomberg apparatchik and relishes pointing out dissension in the gun ranks.  Whatever.  There is a lot of dissension and if you haven’t seen it you haven’t been looking.  With friends like we have, who needs enemies?  Hey, here’s a quick note to Alex.  If he really wants to be impartial and fair, I invite him down to my neck of the woods to go shooting at a local range.  Will he take me up on the offer?

At any rate, David has made his remarks on the proposed rulemaking on bump stocks.  I’ll get to it before the deadline, but I’m still expecting some help from readers.  To date there hasn’t been much input.

There is more.

“When I was 18, I was arrested and charged with felony retail theft for theft of $479 worth of clothing at a Chicago mall,” a young man whose name  I’m withholding told me in a recent email. “State law of Illinois says any value of retail goods above $300 is a felony.

That was a bad decision, no way around it. He regrets the hell out of it, and has since striven to learn from his poor choice and to lead a productive and law-abiding life. But now he’s a “prohibited person,” forbidden by law to touch a gun. And unless he can figure out a legal way around that, it’s a life sentence.

Well, he has a God-given right to defend his life like anyone else.  I’ve made known my views on the alleged “debt” criminals have to society.  It’s a myth statists and collectivists like to tell.  There is no debt to society.  If a person steals, he should become the slave of the offended until the debt has been paid threefold.  The debt is to the offended.  If he rapes, kidnaps, or murders anyone, his life should be taken by the community.  This concept would clear out the prisons, yes?  And if someone refuses to become the slave of the offended until his debt is paid, put him into the pit with the murderers and rapists and fill it up with stones, with the first one being tossed in by the offended.  How about some Biblical justice for a change?

Via reader David, Ruger is laying off employees.

Newport — Sturm, Ruger & Co. is in the process of laying off about 50 workers, or about 2.7 percent, of the company’s workforce, a top executive for the gunmaker said on Friday.

Ruger Vice President and General Counsel Kevin Reid Sr. said the layoffs are happening companywide, and he isn’t sure how many of the roughly 1,300 workers at the Newport location would be affected.

“It was for the needs of the business and tied to employee performance,” Reid said of the layoffs. “At Ruger, we routinely adjust our workforce.”

Reid, who is based in Ruger headquarters in Southport, Conn., said the company focused most of the layoffs on “indirect labor positions” such as marketing, sales and engineering, and not on employees directly involved in production.

Ruger employs between 1,800 and 1,900 people around the country.

He declined to comment on the timeline for the layoffs.

Ruger has three manufacturing locations: in Newport; Prescott, Ariz.; and Mayodan, N.C.

It also has a precision metals branch in Earth City, Mo., according to Ruger’s website.

Reid shied away from commenting on whether a third-quarter sales decrease impacted the layoffs, but noted that the company has “been in a fluctuating market, which I don’t think is lost on anybody.”

Well this isn’t a good report.  The gun market is soft right now for obvious reasons and so the work force is a little bloated compared to the purchase frenzy prior to the election.  But if anyone thinks that the softer market will continue they’re badly mistaken.

Let’s say it another way.  If you believe that the election of a pro-gun president is anything but a brief respite, you’re dense.  We need to remember that half of the country voted for gun controllers, and the other half is comprised of a lot of people who don’t care about our rights.

Florida will become a reliable blue state because of immigration from Puerto Rico, and Texas will be in play within a decade due to immigration South of the border.  Alabama just elected a democrat Senator, and Soros and Bloomberg are still dumping money into their candidates.  Except for a few outliers such as Texas open carry, gun rights hasn’t had a victory in a very long time (and no, Heller wasn’t a victory, and Texas open carry is still permitted carry).

This is going to turn around for firearms manufacturers within the next year or two, perhaps right after the 2018 elections, perhaps not, but certainly the year before the next presidential election.  Firearms manufacturers must do what they need to survive until then, but layoffs in marketing, sales, HR and support is one thing.  Layoffs in engineering is quite another.

Layoffs in engineering means that development slows down and competition gets harder to match.  It means that plant problems don’t get addressed as expeditiously as they otherwise might, and it means that just a single unaddressed problem like the Walker Fire Control that almost ruined Remington may end up ruining the next company that doesn’t have the resources to study problems and design remediation.

I think this is all around a very bad idea, and layoffs need to happen elsewhere, or otherwise all employees should take no raise (or even pay cuts) in order to ensure the health of the company.

Washington Post:

A veteran police officer who used his gun to try to smash a window wound up shooting an unarmed driver in a Montgomery County parking lot when the weapon accidentally went off, police officials said Tuesday.

The driver survived the Nov. 5 shooting.

The officer, Todd Archer, will not be criminally charged, according to authorities, but he remains under administrative investigation by the Montgomery Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division.

“Questions remain as to why a firearm was used to try to break the glass, and why the firearm discharged,” the Montgomery department said in a statement.

Archer, who has been an officer for 10 years with the Montgomery force, remains on paid administrative leave. Officials have not identified the man who was shot. They are arranging to have him, his family and their representatives view a video recording of the shooting captured by Archer’s body-worn camera.

Montgomery Police Chief J. Thomas Manger has reviewed the video. “I don’t believe the officer intended to shoot this man,” Manger said, but added that “a number of questions remain about what happened.”

Morgan Blackledge, an attorney for Archer, said her client rendered aid to the SUV driver immediately after the gunshot. But she declined Tuesday to speak in detail about the case until the administrative investigation is complete.

“All I can say is that Officer Archer is a dedicated member of the Montgomery County Police Department and will continue to serve the citizens of Montgomery County,” Blackledge said.

Chuck Drago, a national expert on police use of force, said that, in general, officers should not use guns to smash windows.

“A gun isn’t a tool for hitting or banging or ramming. It’s designed for one thing, to shoot a bullet,” he said.

One particular concern, he said, is that when someone uses a gun to strike something, there is a reflexive reaction: “You tend to clench your fist, which includes your trigger finger,” Drago said.

Hmm … an expert on the use of police force.  Expert.  I’m glad they could find a self proclaimed expert on the use of police force to tell them that this was stupid.  And I’m glad they could find someone to tell them about sympathetic muscle reflexes.  It’s a shame no one else has ever said anything about this before.

What the hell was this guy doing beating on a window to begin with?  The glass could break and blind the person inside.  If he was going to beat on the window, what the hell was he doing using his gun for this task?

Well, at least the dedicated and highly trained cop won’t lose his job.  We’d hate to have to replace someone so qualified as him.

I usually try to leave commenters alone, both on this web site and others.  Occasionally one surfaces that warrants a reply.  David Codrea linked my piece on the continued shootings by cop in Wichita, and this comment was proffered by FedUp.

Smith frequently makes the mistake of presuming the facts of any matter are exactly what the LEOs say they are.

Like this:

Second, the officer went into the domicile with the dog unsecured. The dog did what he’s supposed to do, what he is bred to do, and what he is expected to do. He defended the home from invaders.

Who, besides the shooter, says the dog did a damn thing?

Frequently, says he.  Frequently.  This comment does raise interesting questions on how you formulate good arguments though.

First of all, it’s my intention not only to convey my own thoughts, but to do so in a manner that causes you to think, as well as ponder how you might engage people in conversation on these matters in a manner that is compelling.

It’s rarely wise to concede any point.  So for instance, while I once argued for open carry by simply saying that I hate concealed carry because it’s uncomfortable and it sweats my weapon (and all of that is still true), I now add to it by saying that I open carry “For the peace, good and dignity of the country and the welfare of its people.”  After serious thought about it and being persuaded by other writers, I don’t want to concede the point that the only reason I open carry is because I hate concealed carry.  There are other very legitimate reasons to open carry, the First Amendment being one of them.

I’ve argued in a similar manner with mental health and gun ownership.  Mental health doesn’t have any bearing at all on disposition to violence as we’ve seen from mental health professionals.  But I’m unwilling to concede the point that if it could somehow be proven that it does, I’m willing to use mental health assessments as criteria for gun ownership.

Likewise, in the subject article on the Wichita police home invasion, I wanted to point out two things.  Let’s first assume that the cop is telling the truth since the shooting was what happened chronologically first.  Let’s assume that the dog attacked him.  I’m unwilling to concede the point that the cop was justified in shooting at the dog if the dog attacked him.  That’s why I said he should have taken the bite.  He was a goober for not asking that the dog be secured before entering the home, and thus he should have suffered the consequences for his stupid decisions.  I will not concede that it is justified for cops to shoot dogs.

Only then did I address the possibility that the cop was lying, when I said this: “Finally, it seems questionable to me how much danger he was in anyway, since apparently there was no bite forthcoming.  The report doesn’t say that the officer was taken the hospital to suture wounds.  Remember, he missed.  What happened to that threatening dog?”

The cop probably panicked, and carelessly deployed and discharged his weapon.  He shouldn’t be a cop.  He doesn’t have the disposition for it, and he was likely never in the danger he said he was.

Capisce?  Is that clear enough now?  There is a method to my argument[s], and it’s usually set up the way it is in order to prevent having to concede important points.

But then again, I try to write on something other than a fifth grade level anyway.  I want my readers to have to think when they read my prose.  Perhaps this will help FedUp.

The National Interest:

More than a hundred years after Colt’s successful line of cavalry pistols the company released a new revolver: the Colt Python. One of seven mid-20th century Colt handguns named after snakes, the Python was introduced in 1955. The Python was a beefy, all steel and wood revolver chambered in .357 Magnum. The revolver had a six-shot cylinder and originally came with either a bright nickel or royal blue finish.

The Python was exactly what people imagined a revolver to be. The Python had a slightly oversized, stout .41 caliber frame with beautiful, beveled edges. The trigger well was large and capable of accommodating gloved fingers. The revolver was most commonly sold with a six-inch barrel, although two, three, four, and eight-inch barrels were also available.

The barrel was the Python’s most defining and beautiful feature. A full length ventilated rib ran the length of the barrel, all the way to the muzzle, leading to the front iron sights. This was complemented by a full length underlug with a knurled ejector rod tastefully nestled inside. The result was a barrel that at first glance looked outsized, as though it was a larger caliber than it really was.

Pythons were made the old fashioned way, by hand, when as one gun writer put it, “technology was relatively expensive and labor was comparatively cheap.” Parts were fitted by hand by skilled machinists who could take the time to tweak and polish the fifty-seven parts that made up a Colt Python until it ran like a watch. The Python may have been the last mass-produced handgun built with a nod to Old World craftsmanship.

I don’t know.  The Smith & Wesson Performance Center makes a pretty fine revolver, and I’ve really liked my Ruger GP100.  It’s trigger is as good as any wheel gun made by Smith.

With that said, I’ve never shot a Colt Python.  It’s too rich for my wallet, the lowest starting at just under $3000, and going up to more than $6000 for pristine condition.  I will probably never in my life shoot such a gun.

Here’s an interesting and humorous story for readers.  I have a very dear friend, who had a very dear wife, and we were visiting with them talking and showing guns and grilling steaks one evening.  It was when I did the cheap plastic gun scene and before I threw them all away (traded them in) for nice 1911s and wheel guns.

My dear friend trots out a beautiful Colt Python, SS 6″ barrel, in a beautiful Walnut case, and it had never been shot (except for the obligatory shot by the gunsmith).  It was in pristine condition.  My mouth fell open and I put my cheap plastic gun away.

The humorous part is the story behind it.  One day his wife wanted to kill a snake in their back yard, and he arrived home to find his wife sporting a gun, ready to shoot.  The gun she chose was that Colt Python, and it was a black snake.  My friend managed to stop her by shouting her down.  Don’t ever touch that gun, and don’t shoot black snakes.

And thus he saved several thousand dollars by preventing a single shot.  And that Colt Python is still in pristine condition.  And I’ll still never have one.