ZeroHedge.

Less than six months after gunmaker Kimber Mfg. moved from New York to Alabama due in part to ‘gun and business-friendly support’ from the red state, Smith & Wesson is moving out of Massachusetts – and will relocate its headquarters to Maryville, Tennessee in 2023, according to Bloomberg.

The nation’s largest gun manufacturer cited restrictive legislation currently under consideration in Mass., which if enacted, would prohibit the company from manufacturing certain guns in the state they’ve called home for nearly 170 years.

“These bills would prevent Smith & Wesson from manufacturing firearms that are legal in almost every state in America and that are safely used by tens of millions of law-abiding citizens every day exercising their Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights, protecting themselves and their families, and enjoying the shooting sports,” said SWBI CEO Mark Smith.

“While we are hopeful that this arbitrary and damaging legislation will be defeated in this session, these products made up over 60% of our revenue last year, and the unfortunate likelihood that such restrictions would be raised again led to a review of the best path forward for Smith & Wesson,” he added.

The move will bring 750 jobs to Maryville, along with a $125 million investment, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development.

Lower cost of living was also a factor in the move, according to Smith.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said in a statement that the move will cost the city 550 job, which he described as ‘devastating’ for the families involved. The city said they would attempt to work with the gunmaker to try and retain 1,000 remaining jobs.

According to a person familiar with the move, the company will keep some production in Springfield.

The good.  S&W is moving.  What took you so long?  You should have made this move a long time ago to grab a part of Gun Valley Moves South (and here is Part II).

The bad.  You should have made this move a long time ago.  You waited too long, just at the time when housing prices are at a peak.

The ugly.  You’re leaving some manufacturing in Massachusetts.  This is a bad move, and you’ll live to regret it, from unionization from one plant to another, to further restrictions on firearms manufacturing.  What – you don’t really think this is the last, do you?  It’s better to get it all done at one time.

Seriously?

Determined to keep track of their guns, some U.S. military units have turned to a technology that could let enemies detect troops on the battlefield, The Associated Press has found.

The rollout on Army and Air Force bases continues even though the Department of Defense itself describes putting the technology in firearms as a “significant” security risk.

The Marines have rejected radio frequency identification technology in weapons for that very reason, and the Navy said this week that it was halting its own dalliance.

There’s nothing like giving your enemy a rapid review of troop locations for artillery targeting.

The same people who came up with the plan to close Bagram Air Base must have thought up this genius plan.

Military.com.

Most importantly, the new M16A1 came with a cleaning kit, lubricant and an entertaining field manual, drawn by Will Eisner, the former Army comic artist who designed vehicle manuals in World War II. It was called “The M-16A1 Rifle: Operation and Preventative Maintenance,” otherwise known as “Department of the Army Pamphlet 750-30.”

[ … ]

The comic was easy to read, entertaining and — above all — a familiar look to American GIs in Vietnam. Many of them would have been familiar with “The Spirit,” a comic about a Batman-like masked vigilante he created before the United States entered World War II.

By 1968, more American troops in Vietnam began to accept the use of the rifle as malfunction incidents decreased dramatically. The powder used in the 5.56 cartridge was upgraded to reduce the fouling of various parts of the weapon. By 1969, the M16A1 was fully accepted as the standard infantry weapon for the U.S. military.

I’ll bet if you had an original of this it would be worth a lot of money.

If you recall when discussing the Beretta 1301, I posed the question why Ernest used mineral spirits to clean shotguns rather than routine stuff (e.g., Hoppes solvent).  I never got any answers from my smart readers, so I posed the question to Langdon Tactical, and got this answer.

Hoppes is a Bore solvent only. Mineral Spirits cleans the inside and outside and doesn’t leave any residue. We recommend Lucas gun oil, we have found that it is the best overall oil.

Slugs are personal preference, you’re able to use them no issues, but it’s all preference whether to use rifled or not. We don’t recommend any chokes, we believe what the gun comes with works the best!

I may have to try out Lucas gun oil.  I don’t have any of that.

I thought you might be interested.

Ammoland.

Mr. Mann told me he is producing 35 million to 45 million rounds of ammo a month. The operation runs seven days a week for 21 of every 24 hours in a day. There is no margin for error and there is no wiggle room to make up production. It is that critical. If there is a two-day statewide electrical power outage causing Ammo Inc to shut down operations, there is a very limited possibility to make up those two days of missed manufacturing.

The article also focuses on primers and how they are the bottleneck of the production campaign, as well as in the comments it’s pointed out that the safety protocol is expensive to ensure during the process.

It’s a shame, I think, that the new manufacturing capability is located in Wisconsin.  I wonder why the company chose that state, and why they didn’t choose North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Texas?

But there is also bad news for muzzle loading hunters.

Hodgdon Powder Company announced it would cease manufacturing operations at the GOEX blackpowder manufacturing facility in Camp Minden, La., effective immediately. The closure eliminates the only domestic source of blackpowder in the United States. According to a company press release, Hodgdon will evaluate “strategic options for the blackpowder business,” including a potential sale of the company.

The Camp Minden facility will wind down operations during the evaluation process. All affected employees will be retained through Dec. 31, 2021, to assist during the closure of the facility and will receive severance commensurate with their years of service. “The Hodgdon Powder Co., Inc has been honored to have been a part of the GOEX Powder legacy and sustains a fond appreciation for sporting customers who have enjoyed shooting GOEX Powders,” the release reads.

From the Hodgdon site.

Established in 1947 by Bruce and Amy Hodgdon, today, sons J.B. and Bob have grown Hodgdon Powder Company into the largest US supplier of smokeless, blackpowder and blackpowder substitute propellants. The company distributes gunpowder under the Hodgdon®, IMR®, Ramshot®, Acccurate®, Winchester®, Pyrodex®, Triple Seven®, Blackhorn 209® and GOEX® brands.

This is sad news.  Tomorrow or some time this weekend, I intend to make a trip to load up on “white hots.”  If you do the muzzle loader scene, I suggest you do the same thing.

Fauci.

Fauci also said that the boosters don’t keep people alive, just from experiencing severe symptoms.

What?

What?

What does that even mean?  Can you perish without experiencing severe symptoms?

In other news that makes better sense when looked at in the aggregate, 14 fully vaccinated residents in a French nursing home develop Covid-19.

Here is news from Australia.

Pay close attention to what Victoria, Australia, Health Minister Martin Foley says at the 2:45 minute mark of his comments.

Health Minister Foley announced 867 new COVID cases recorded yesterday.  During the statistical outline Foley identifies 375 people as hospitalized, 81 people in intensive care and 61 people on a ventilator.   Then comes the statistic everyone in government and media ignore.  Amid the recorded cases “78% of the hospital cases are fully vaccinated, and 17% are partially vaccinated (1 dose)”….

That means 95% of the COVID patients in Victoria hospitals are vaccinated.

356 people out of 375 patients are vaccinated, yet 81 people are still in intensive care with 61 on a ventilator.

In America, with special sympathy for the elderly.

A whistleblower has provided government data documenting 48,465 deaths within 14 days of COVID-19 vaccination among Medicare patients alone, according to medical freedom rights attorney Thomas Renz.

The announcement Saturday was made by the Ohio-based attorney, who remains involved in several major cases brought against federal agencies relating to fraud and violations of medical freedom rights.

In his presentation, Renz expressed his appreciation for whistleblowers who were coming forward to provide the public with such important information from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS). He described the CMS database as the largest available in the U.S. for the study of COVID-19 trends because it contains the data of approximately 59.4 million Medicare beneficiaries.

One slide showed that the number of “persons who died within 14 days of a COVID-19 vaccine” equated to 19,400 for those younger than 81 years old, and 28,065 for those 81 and over, totaling 48,465 deaths.

“Do you want to know why 14 days is important?” he asked. “Because if you die with 14 days, you’re not considered vaccinated.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one is not considered as being “vaccinated” until 14 days after their completed injection regimen, raising the question of whether government authorities have been classifying these fatalities as something other than vaccination-related deaths.

I think we all know the answer to that.

So the title of the post is The Covid Vaccine Doesn’t Work.  This is a bit tongue in cheek.  It works if the intent was to destroy the immune system.  It works like a charm.

I was watching “13 Hours” again a few nights ago, and recalled when Delta showed up at the airport in Tripoli, and when asked where Delta was, one of them said, “We’re it, brother.”  There were two of them.

Now, I won’t rehearse the air power assets that could have been brought to bear from Sigonella, the lies that surrounded the event from the administration, the pre-planned execution of the attack (which involved combined arms, known coordinates, fighter assets in position, etc.).  Nor will I rehearse what my own readers pointed out about these things, nor the fact that General Ham went quietly into the night without saying so much as a word (probably because of an NDA).

But I will observe something I didn’t know about Delta that night at the airport (and their actions in Benghazi).  First, they were there for document destruction, and they did that to the best of their abilities.  But they also assisted the fighting, and did so heroically as did the other men in that engagement.

But did you know this?  One of the Delta operators was a Marine.

Jolly, who declined a request for an interview, would ultimately be awarded the Navy Cross for his heroism there. The soldier with him, Master Sgt. David Halbruner, received the Army’s Distinguished Service Cross. The valor awards are exceeded only by the Medal of Honor.

Little has been known about the Jolly’s actions in Benghazi. There was no public ceremony when he received his valor award and, until recently, his name has not been publicly tied to the mission in media reports.

His hometown paper in North Carolina, the Wilkes Journal-Patriot, recently reported that the 36-year-old who’d graduated from high school about 90 miles north of Charlotte was the Marine who’d gone above and beyond to save other Americans. Jolly recently retired as a master sergeant.

According to testimony, public documents and the person familiar with his actions, Jolly was calm in the face of deadly chaos. He and Halbruner are credited with saving numerous lives that day.

With a rifle strapped to his back amid an onslaught of mortars and machine-gun fire, Jolly tended to the wounded, at one point throwing a man onto his back and shuffling him down a ladder amid a barrage of enemy fire. He helped some get back into the fight and provided vital care to others with life-threatening injuries.

Here’s how then-Gunnery Sgt. Jolly helped get other Americans to safety during a situation that caused a years-long political firestorm thousands of miles away in Washington, DC.

Jolly, an infantry assault Marine, was assigned to a Delta Force detachment in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attack. It’s rare, though not unheard of, for Marines to join the elite Army special-operations teams.

The Marine had deployed to Iraq twice before joining the secretive counterterrorism force, spending about five years carrying out clandestine missions before the Benghazi attack and another five after, according to information about his career obtained by Military.com.

He racked up more than a dozen total deployments with Delta Force.

The Navy Cross Jolly received for his actions in Benghazi was his fourth valor award. He has two Bronze Stars with combat “V” devices – one of which he earned for undisclosed reasons during his time with Delta Force, and a second from a 2004-2005 deployment to Ramadi, Iraq.

Jolly also earned a Navy Commendation Medal with combat distinguishing device and a Purple Heart for injuries sustained during that deployment.

On the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Jolly was about 600 miles away from Benghazi in Tripoli – roughly the same distance between Chicago and Washington, DC. Since Jolly and Halbruner were some of the only troops in-country, the operation was coordinated not by US Africa Command, but the CIA.

Team Tripoli, made up of Jolly, Halbruner and five others, arrived in Benghazi at about 1:30 a.m. That was about four hours after the attack began and two since Ambassador Christopher J. Stevens had last been seen alive.

The team was led by Glen Doherty, a Global Response Staff (GRS) security officer and former Navy SEAL, who was later killed. He was Team Tripoli’s medic.

The plan, according to the person familiar with the mission, was to leave the airport and head to the hospital, where they believed Stevens was being treated. When they found out Stevens had died, the first ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1979, the team headed to the consulate to bolster the diplomatic security personnel and GRS, a group of private military contractors who were fending off the attackers.

“It could’ve gone really, really bad,” said the source familiar with the mission. “It could’ve become 30 American hostages in North Africa. There were seven shooters going in to protect people who don’t shoot for a living.”

By the time they arrived, Sean Smith, a State Department foreign service officer, had also died. It was still dark, just after 5 a.m., according to a congressional timeline of the attack. Within minutes, the first mortar hit.

The attacks continued, with one witness estimating there were as many as 100 insurgents spotted surrounding their location in 20- or 30-man groups. It was a skilled enemy, one of the troops there later told members of Congress.

“It’s not easy … to shoot inside the city and get something on the target within two shots – that’s difficult,” the witness testified. “I would say they were definitely a trained mortar team or had been trained to do something similar to that.”

“I was kind of surprised,” the service member added. “… It was unusual.”

They were there a matter of hours, but at times witnesses said the team feared they wouldn’t make it out alive. It began to “rain down on us,” one of them told lawmakers.

”I really believe that this attack was planned,” the witness said. “The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries.”

In total, six 81-millimeter mortars assaulted the annex within a minute and 13 seconds, a congressional report on the attack states. Doherty and Tyrone Woods, another former SEAL with the GRS, didn’t survive.

[ … ]

Jolly and Halbruner were determined to save them. Amid the fight, they were tying tourniquets to the men’s bodies.

Ubben is alive because Jolly helped move him from the rooftop to a building where diplomatic personnel were hunkered down. Gregory Hicks, who became the acting chief of mission after Stevens died, later described how the gunny did it during a congressional hearing.

“One guy … full of combat gear climbed up [to the roof], strapped David Ubben, who is a large man, to his back and carried him down the ladder, saved him,” Hicks said.

Jolly and Halbruner also went back out to the rooftop to recover the bodies of the fallen.

“They didn’t know whether any more mortars were going to come in. The accuracy was terribly precise,” Hicks said. “… They climbed up on the roof, and they carried Glen’s body and Tyrone’s body down.”

It was for Jolly’s “valorous actions, dedication to duty and willingness to place himself in harm’s way” to save numerous unarmed Americans’ lives that he earned the Navy Cross, according to his citation.

I’m not so sure about that last part.  In the movie there’s a lot made of the fact that the “D boys” threw the bodies off the roof because there wasn’t time to do it any other way and the enemy was still shooting.

Anyway, We Are The Mighty has coverage as well, as does Wilkes Journal-Patriot and Military.com.

In addition to Tate Jolly, David Halbruner was there for Delta.  I can’t find any information on him.

I feel that there’s a whole lot of information I still don’t know about this engagement, and it would be good one day to interview participants in the event, as well as construct a detailed time line of everything that happened.

One thing is for sure.  We’ll never hear the full truth from FedGov.

Small Wars Journal, The Afghans That Fought.

The Commandos were built by the U.S. Army Special Forces, commonly known as the Green Berets, and designed as an elite light infantry force similar to U.S. Army Rangers.  While selection of Commando candidates did not differ significantly from that of the average Afghan National Army soldier, each had an additional twelve weeks of training and were regularly partnered with small elements of Special Forces advisors.  In practice the Commandos were frequently used as shock troops, shuttled from key battle to key battle, rather than used as special operations forces.  While they were partnered with American elements, especially Special Forces teams, the Commandos usually fought and performed capably.  The presence of critical U.S. enablers, such as air support, medical evacuation, and intelligence that went along with being partnered with Americans often stiffened the resolve of the Commandos to the point that they were generally a dependable partner.

They could fight at night, conduct limited internal sustainment, and hold their own against the Taliban.  Through airframes and ground vehicles within the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command, the Commandos could provide emergency resupply for their forces that enabled them to operate in combat for up to 72 hours.  Some even could call in their own air support and conduct intelligence driven operations.  Commandos suffered far more casualties than American forces, and their headquarters element even set up a wounded warrior program to allow injured fighters to be able to continue to serve in non-combat roles within the organization.  A set of Special Forces officers and sergeants even attempted make the force capable of operating with minimal internal logistic support that was prepositioned at each of the Commando bases, such as “chuck wagon” style mobile feeding and mortars for fire support rather than aircraft.  Unfortunately, senior leaders decided instead that the Commandos should operate inside a functional Afghan military logistics system for any operation that lasted more than 72 hours.  That fatal flaw, building a force in our image logistically, proved to be the Commandos’ Achilles heel.  American Army units are designed to function in a resource intensive logistics system which can provide just in time delivery of critical supply needs.  Yet when faced with Afghanistan’s infrastructure challenges of few roads and vast distances, even our logistics system strained.

As the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorated and province after province fell, many Commando units continued fighting.  Around Kandahar City, Commandos and other security forces battled the Taliban for more than a month.  When the U.S. contracted logistics withdrew and the Afghan supply system collapsed, the Commandos were not able to perform as they were designed: supported by a heavy logistics footprint that could resupply them on demand.  Commando elements began to run out of ammunition, food, and water.  Some surrendered after extended sieges or battles, putting themselves at the mercy of the Taliban.  At least one Commando unit was summarily executed, likely a warning by the Taliban to those who would similarly resist.  Even after the fall of Kabul, several Commando units refused to give in and began the slow march to the Panjshir, where a nascent resistance to the Taliban was building.  Other units moved to Hamid Karzai International airport and helped secure the outer perimeter during the U.S. led evacuation.

Amateurs talk tactics.  Professionals talk logistics.

So the notion that the Afghan army was filled with cowards and ne’er-do-wells is just not accurate.  Oh, to be sure, some of the regulars were that and much less, but there were some well-trained fighters.

They were built in our own image, relying on a heavy logistics footprint, and when we withdrew leaving them no means of fulfilling that footprint, the entire schema collapsed because it was built on a foundation of first world fighting doctrine, not Afghanistan.

And because rather than kill the Taliban, we wanted to play armed social worker and try out fancy COIN doctrine with ROE that disillusioned and disemboweled the American fighting man.  I still have record over this blog of folks in the Helmand Province literally begging the Marines to go after and kill the Taliban rather than stick around and try to “win hearts and minds” and build the society.  So in addition to leaving them with a doctrinal understanding more suited to American warfare, we left them with an enemy that had not been substantially weakened.

Because we had idiots in charge – idiots that killed the sons of America with their malfeasance.

I think this is what Lt. Col. Stu Scheller has been saying all along.  Michael Yon also has thoughts.

Finally, an answer to Fred’s question.

Discussion at Outdoor Life.

I’ve seen in-field tests.  These things have limited capability, and are no replacement for having a parka or being able to start fire (which underlines my constant attention to redundant means of fire start).

If anyone has an experience with survival blankets, please indicate in the comments.