For fans (like me, and many of you) of the 1911, there is a newcomer to the scene called the 2011.  It’s a shiny new variant of the 1911 design, with a double-stack 9mm magazine.  It’s usually designed for competition shooting, and there is no reason a law enforcement organization which exists on the public dollar needs something like this.

Today the latest version of American Rifleman (paper copy) came out, and on page 28 under “U.S. Marshals Get Trendy New Rig,” it says this.

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) recently announced the adoption of some interesting and illustrative new gear for its Special Operations Group (SOG).  The heart of the operators’ new service sidearm is STI’s Staccato-P pistol … topping the slide is Leupold’s DeltaPoint Pro red-dot sight, backed up by the Universal Optic System from Dawson Precision – co-witnessing iron sights pairing a black notch rear with a fiber optic front.

I’m covering this because I hadn’t seen it before now.  Guns.com has further information on the procurement of the STI Staccato-P.

Price?  MSRP is a cool $2500 for this model.  A competition pistol, $2500, for the U.S. Marshals Service, ahem, “Special Operations Group.”

Because SpecOps.  It’s not just for real operators who sign up and do it across the pond.  And big dollars.  It’s  not just for rich people.  It’s for FedGov who gets to tax and spend until their heart is content.

Perhaps you feel safer because of this.

This came from reddit/firearms.  But the sources are mine.

Before.

Bolivia has enacted its first firearms legislation, which may be unlikely to have a dramatic impact on the country’s already low murder rate, but will at least provide the state with the tools to tackle arms trafficking.

Laying out strict limitations on who can own a weapon, the Firearms, Munitions, Explosives and Other Materials Control Law was passed on September 18 — four years after it was first proposed in 2009 — reported El Diario.

The legislation sets a six month period for current gun owners to register or turn in weapons before becoming subject to a maximum six year sentence for ownership or five year sentence for carrying an illegal weapon, with longer sentences for military-grade weapons, reported Los Tiempos. It also establishes a maximum 30 year sentence for any member of the security forces caught trafficking arms.

As well as regulating arms, the law allows for the production of “any kind” of weapon at the request of the armed forces or police, pending approval from the interior and defense ministries, reported La Razon.

After.

I am writing from Bolivia just days after witnessing the November 19 military massacre at the Senkata gas plant in the indigenous city of El Alto, and the tear-gassing of a peaceful funeral procession on November 21 to commemorate the dead. These are examples, unfortunately, of the modus operandi of the de facto government that seized control in the coup that forced the recently re-elected president Evo Morales out of power.

The coup has spawned massive protests, with blockades set up around the country as part of a national strike calling for the resignation of this new government. One well-organized blockade is in El Alto, where residents set up barriers surrounding the Senkata gas plant, stopping tankers from leaving the plant and cutting off La Paz’s main source of gasoline.

Determined to break the blockade, the government sent in helicopters, tanks, and heavily armed soldiers in the evening of November 18. The next day, mayhem broke out when the soldiers began tear-gassing residents, then shooting into the crowd.

I arrived just after the shooting. The furious residents took me to local clinics where the wounded were taken. I saw the doctors and nurses desperately trying to save lives, carrying out emergency surgeries in difficult conditions with a shortage of medical equipment. I saw five dead bodies and dozens of people with bullet wounds. Some had just been walking to work when they were struck by bullets.

A grieving mother whose son was shot cried out between sobs: “They’re killing us like dogs.” In the end, there were 8 confirmed dead.

The next day, a local church became an improvised morgue, with the dead bodies — some still dripping blood — lined up in pews and doctors performing autopsies.

You hate to see more examples of what history has already taught us, but those who refuse to learn the lessons of history suffer for their refusal.

Over the weekend some very interesting things happened.

Whiskey Warrior 556 aka Alex Booth’s standoff with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office has ended peacefully. Booth, 28, is an Afghan war veteran who served in the U.S. Army.

A sheriff’s office spokesperson confirmed to Heavy.com just before 1 a.m. on November 24 that nobody was hurt as Booth surrendered to officers. The standoff took place in the town of Mahopac, just under 60 miles north of New York City, in Westchester County.

Alexander Booth goes by Whiskey_Warrior_556 on Instagram, where he streamed parts of the Putnam County NY police standoff and posted videos and sent messages to his followers.

“The negotiators were very close many times to getting the individual to come out of the residence peacefully and the posts that were on Instagram were just inviting him,” Carmel Police Chief Michael Cazzari told NBC New York. “This is a person in crisis having mental illness and having issues and he didn’t need the people on social media telling him that his rights were being violated.”

The six-hour standoff ended about 9 p.m. on Saturday, November 23. Booth was booked at the Putnam County Correctional Facility at 12:35 a.m. on Sunday, November 24, online records show. He remained in custody Sunday afternoon.

A press release from the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office said that an officer went to the home at 2:19 p.m. on November 23 after a deputy heard what he thought was a gunshot coming from Booth’s home. Nearby homes were evacuated and back-up was called to the scene. At that stage, the sheriff’s office says that Booth became barricaded in his home.

“The officer hearing what he believed to be a gunshot come from the residence requested backup,” the press release said. “When additional officers arrived Mr. Booth was observed in the doorway acting in an agitated state before returning inside his garage apartment and barricading himself. As a safety precaution officers evacuated the neighboring houses and alerted the Putnam County Emergency Response Team and Negotiation Team.”

[ … ]

The Carmel Police Department said that Booth was subsequently arraigned on multiple charges related to incidents connected to a past domestic incident involving his wife. Booth was wanted on a felony warrant issued by Thomas Jacobellis charging him with second-degree burglary, a felony, and several misdemeanors, including criminal trespass, criminal contempt, aggravated harassment and petit larceny. Booth is not facing any charges in relation to the standoff. His arraignment was held at Carmel Town Justice Court.

The press release concludes by saying that no weapons or ammunition were seized from Booth’s home despite “false social media posts to the contrary.” Many on social media believed that Booth was a victim of the Red Flag Law in the state of New York.

It may be useful to watch this video from Mrgunsngear.

My goal isn’t to fisk what happened or why.  I really couldn’t care less for the purposes of this post.  Perhaps the video is correct and this had nothing to do with red flag laws.  Or perhaps it did.  In either case, my goal is to make a few related observations.

Most military writers and would-be military scholars talk about “swarm theory” at some point in their career to make themselves look smart.  To most writers, a “swarm” is when a lot of fighters show up at once.  To a bee keeper, this is nothing like the truth, and most military writers have no idea what they’re talking about.

I’m not a bee keeper, but my son is.  He’s seen guard bees pull the wings off of drones and evict them to the ground where the ants eat them.  Bees are relentless in their preparation for keeping the hive alive, and a drone does not gather nectar or pollen.  Bee colonies are brutal.

What bees are good at, however, is subtle signals between the hive that only they understand, sometimes chemical signals, that alert the colony that something important is going down.  It might be swarming behavior if the colony decides that there isn’t enough room for storage of nectar for the winter, but in any case, the entire colony acts in concert if it thinks it needs a larger or different hive.  You can spend your own time on a Google or Bing search of “waggle dance.”

It’s difficult to shut this down, although there are strategies for it for a bee keeper just as there are in swarm behavior in humans.  What happened in the case of Whiskey Warrior 556 and those who came to his defense is the behavior you might see in a bee colony, at least in one aspect.

Interestingly, Mrgunsngear found that his Instagram and Facebook posts were deleted, perhaps at the behest of the police involved in the incident.  Social media went viral with this event, and within hours as many as a hundred people showed up at his home as a warning to the police should he be deprived of his right to keep and bear arms.

Learn from this incident.  Swarm theory isn’t just for bees, and understanding how to shut this down (and how to get around defeaters) isn’t just for bees either.  Swarm theory isn’t about a whole lot of anything showing up to an event or incident.  It’s about communication.

Shooting Illustrated.

I guess we all learned to shoot watching old movies because most folks emulate the actors and bring the rifle down off the shoulder, especially to run a bolt or lever. This practice wastes time and encourages failing to follow through, that is, re-acquiring the sight or the reticle after the shot. We should run the gun from the shoulder and be ready for the next shot as needed, and this takes a bit of practice. You can drill this by doing dry practice then setting up a target at 25 yards and firing a string of 3 to 5 shots, standing, working the gun from the shoulder.

I’m not certain what he’s saying here.  If he’s saying that you must shoot a bolt action rifle differently than an AR, I agree.

If he’s saying that the “plate-forward aggressive” stance for an AR must be corrected, I disagree.  I think his explanation could have used some work.  And I didn’t learn to square up against a target with an AR from watching movies.

Barr:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said his concerns were prompted by the numerous irregularities at the New York jail where Epstein was being held. But he said after the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general continued to investigate, he realized there were a “series” of mistakes made that gave Epstein the chance to take his own life.

“I can understand people who immediately, whose minds went to sort of the worst-case scenario because it was a perfect storm of screw-ups,” Barr told the AP as he flew to Montana for an event.

So I guess Epstein did indeed kill himself, according to Barr.

And for those of you who really believed that anyone in the bureaucracy would actually take on the deep state … sucker.

News from Baltimore.

BALTIMORE (WBFF) – Baltimore City Solicitor Andre Davis said the city will consider suing gun manufacturers if lawsuits related to the Sandy Hook shooting are successful.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled Sandy Hook families can pursue legal action against Remington Arms.

Councilman Zeke Cohen brought up the matter at Tuesday’s city council hearing asking Davis what the city is doing to hold gun manufacturers accountable now.

Solicitor Davis told Cohen every city in America is monitoring what’s happening with the Sandy Hook lawsuits.

Davis said if they are able to succeed in their cases, Baltimore will then considering holding gun manufacturers responsible.

“America would be tremendously served if the courts could find a way to say to the gun manufacturers, ‘You do have some responsibility here,’ so we are very definitely monitoring it,” he said.

Former Baltimore City Police Commissioner Ed Norris says it’s civil remedy to a criminal problem that won’t solve anything.

“So you sue a gun company, and you win hypothetically, what has that done for the city of Baltimore? How have we improved? Are fewer people going to die? No. What is the point of this exercise? I just don’t get it,” he said.

Forget for a moment what a travesty of justice something like this is.  The point is that the Supreme Court refusal to shut down the Sandy Hook lawsuits may open the flood gate to lawsuits against every manufacturer in America, leading eventually to their bankruptcy.

Their goal, of course, is to do exactly that, with a few notables surviving for supply to law enforcement.  They shouldn’t be indemnified for their malfeasance, but this doctrine is so ensconced in the American “justice” system that the firearms manufacturers will be protected when cops shoot innocent people, just not when anyone else does it.

When the government kills someone, it’s called war.  If you do it, it’s called murder.  If a cop shoots an innocent person, it’s called the “thin blue line,” “serving and protecting,” and other claptrap.  If you do it you go to prison.

Do any readers have experience using the “Echo Trigger?”

Via reader Fred, this idiotic missive from a Duke University professor with whom we’ve crossed paths before.

The main problem with relying solely on text, history and tradition, however, is that it doesn’t provide useful guidance for modern-day regulations that respond to modern-day gun violence. The text alone can’t tell you whether a machine gun is an “arm” or whether convicted felons are among “the People” the Second Amendment protects. The 27 words of the amendment are silent on many questions, and history and tradition don’t speak with one voice—there were and are significant regional differences in approaches to gun regulation, as well as divisions between urban and rural areas.

Perhaps in some extreme cases (a total ban on public carry, for example), text, history and tradition would provide relatively clear rules. But for most standard forms of modern gun regulation—restrictive licensing schemes for public carry, for example, or prohibitions on high-capacity magazines or on gun possession by people convicted of domestic violence—all of the work would be done by analogical reasoning. Judges would have to decide for themselves whether certain modern guns or gun laws are relevantly similar to laws from 150 or 200 years ago.

Hey dumbass, the constitution isn’t a guidance document.  It’s a covenant, and you break it at your own peril.

David Codrea.

“The Ohio Supreme Court will hear arguments in February to decide whether a law prohibiting gun owners from carrying firearms while intoxicated should be applied inside a gun owner’s home,” the Associated Press reported Saturday. Seeing an opportunity for a new and intrusive way to catch more gun owners in the disarmament net, the gun-grabbers are arguing that upholding an arrest is necessary for “the safety of Ohio residents and responding police officers.”

That dovetails nicely (for them) with an overall strategy to disarm citizens convicted of driving under the influence. And it moves things from the public setting right into the home, which is where the long game goal has always been.

My former professor, Dr. C. Gregg Singer, used to point out that the temperance movement was a manifestation of the social gospel, which itself was social Darwinism, or further back, followed Hegel (German synthesis/antithesis and evolutionary philosophy).  Guns are the new alcohol.  Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for the sake of his infirmities.  But “wine is a mocker.”  It depends on the person.  Guns protect the lives of the innocent, but kill the innocent, depending upon their use.  It’s the person behind the trigger, just as it is the person holding the glass.

It’s the same thing with Pete’s abject failure at understanding anything to do with Christian theology when he connects the Christian faith to a “world without weapons.”  In Pete’s world, no one really needs God, they just need themselves with good leaders, good as defined by Pete and his ilk.  The world isn’t really fallen, we just all need the Bohemian, peacenik, flowerchild Jesus as our example and the world will be a better place.  And little children love puppies, fluffy blankets and unicorns flying over rainbows.

There is nothing new under the sun.  Mankind tried this at the tower of Babel.  God knocked it down.  End of story.  Man cannot work his way to perfection, he has to believe in his heart and confess with his mouth that Jesus is Lord and that he can’t do nothing to save himself.  That’s the scandal of the gospel, and the reason so many men oppose it.

Opposition to the gospel is never an epistemological and philosophical problem.  It always has ethical roots.  Pete’s chosen lifestyle is evidence of his high-handed sin against the Almighty.

Gun control is just another tower of Babel, but I do find it ironic that this latest manifestation includes alcohol.  How appropriate.