For the past 10 years, a bunch of straight-shooting roughnecks from Colorado, New Hampshire, Arizona and California have been targeting feral hogs each spring somewhere special in South Texas. As a defense industry exec focused on advanced warfighter aiming and illumination technology, I’ve coached these hunters along the technology curve. The hog, coyote, bobcat, raccoon and jackrabbit body counts have significantly increased each year as the group embraces advanced night-vision technology and works on marksmanship with MSRs and bolt guns.
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Good news, prices are dropping fast. You do not need to spend $5,000 or $10,000 anymore. I am having good success with a sub $3,000 384×488 thermal scope with a 50 mm lens assembly. Good luck and straight shooting at night.
Great. The picture associated with the article shows two guys with lights, NODs equipment, thermal imaging scopes, and PEQ-10s. How much does all of that cost?
It would be nice if some company could come up with a reasonably priced set of alternatives to all of this for those of us who aren’t millionaires or funded by the taxpayer.
After #antifa were dispersed by police following the attack on the East Precinct, they tried to blind a woman at her home with lasers and attacked her.
After #antifa were dispersed by police following the attack on the East Precinct, they tried to blind a woman at her home with lasers and attacked her.
Antifa have gone into residential parts of the city after moving on from attacking federal courthouse. pic.twitter.com/mKcrgHixmC
This is remarkable video. The communists have found an effective weapon short of using firearms. So the question is necessarily posed, what can you do about this threat? The answer isn’t easy or clear short of deadly force (and this in fact may be the best option, but it may be difficult to effect that end for reasons we’ll discuss below).
Most of this post will be the result of studying I did on laser safety for a very specific examination, and it has been a long time since that study, so some of it will be incomplete, and some may be inaccurate. As readers stumble on better data, knowledge and analysis, feel free to post it here. I make no claims as to the complete accuracy of everything in this post. I offer it up as a starting point. I can follow it up with more information, but I’ll need reader assistance to do that.
To begin with, you need to understand the concept of optical density (OD) calculations. According the ANSI Z136.1-2007, a class IIIa laser is visible and limited to 1-5 mW. Nothing more powerful can be sold in the U.S. without special licensing (if the communists in Portland are using lasers more powerful than 5 mW, then this poses a special and expanded problem, even worse than I am assuming).
I could post calculations of OD, but it’s best simply to watch this short video if you want to pursue it (for folks who have an aversion to math, here is an online application that will do these OD calculations for you). Now listen carefully. He credits the blink, or aversion, reflex in his calculations. The blink reflex is 0.25 seconds. The blink reflex is also credited in laser protection eyewear for green light lasers (532 nM).
The ANSI Z136.1 Standard bases the “blink reflex” MPE on an exposure on 0.25 second exposure. This yields an MPE of 2.5 mW/cm2. When this irradiance is spread over a “worst case” 7mm pupil opening (0.4 cm2), the total power entering the eye can be then computed as follows: Power = (2.5 mW/cm2) x (0.4 cm2) = 1.0 mW. This suggests that laser pointer type devices might be limited to an output of 1 mW (Class II).
In some darkly lit environments, and at some wavelengths, a 1 mW pointer power is perhaps an option, but in rooms with a high ambient light level and if operation is at the longer 670 nm wavelength, 1 mW is just marginal for visibility and, therefore, 3-5 mW is generally required for better visibility. Note that if the exposure is raised to a maximum of 5 mW (Class IIIA), then an eye filter with an optical density of 0.7 would be required for protection in the event of an intrabeam exposure of 0.25 seconds. This suggests that caution is needed when the pointer emits near the 5 mW power level!
When they speak of optical density, remember that lasers emit radiation, and just like radiation emitted from the nucleus of an atom (laser wavelengths are emitted from the electron shell), it is attenuated exponentially (or in this case, log base 10 will describe the effectiveness of eyewear). You don’t stop it – you just attenuate it.
OD1+ = 10% gets through
OD2+ = 1% gets through
OD3+ = .1% gets through
OD4+ = ..01% gets through
This video shows you how poor the cheap eye protection purchased from EBay and Amazon might behave.
It’s up to you. You can opt for the cheaper stuff being marketed to military and law enforcement, or you can purchase ANSI Z136.1 rated and tested eye protection marketed for industrial laser safety use. Either way, remember that in all cases of which I’m aware, no eye protection can enable you to stare directly into a laser nonstop with no aversion response (or maybe a better way of saying it is that the OD calculations would show an extreme level of protection that no one sells to be able to look at a laser nonstop). All eye protection design assumes the blink reflex of 0.25 seconds.
Also, it may be that wearing this eye protection isn’t conducive to good vision at night and in a threatening environment where you need all of your faculties and senses. In the case Andy Ngo links above, the lady under threat has perhaps dozens of green light lasers pointed at her, little time to respond, and the communists are gleefully taking video of the suffering of the innocent.
The best bet in case of threat from visible lasers is to not be around those who would threaten you. If you do happen to be in proximity of those threats, then remember that looking into an array of lasers in order to try to effect self defense isn’t advised, even if you are wearing eye protection. Blink. Be averse to this threat. Get away from it.
This is a serious threat folks. Being tactically careless or thoughtless in dealing with the threat isn’t recommended.
So as best as I can figure, a dude associated with the New Mexico Civil Guard tried to defend a monument along with his fellow members, and ended up retreating from rioters and eventually having to shoot an assailant.
One man was shot in Old Town as a protest over the “La Jornada” sculpture in front of the Albuquerque Museum erupted into violence Monday evening.
The shooting occurred during a clash following a peaceful protest to remove the controversial sculpture, a monument that features conquistador Juan de Oñate. The FBI is assisting in the investigation, according to an APD spokesman. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, meanwhile, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the shooting.
The night began with peaceful protest and prayer but tensions began to escalate when protesters took a pickaxe to the statue and members of the heavily armed New Mexico Civil Guard, a civilian group, tried to protect the monument.
Before the night was over Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other officials condemned the violence and those who instigated it.
“Although we are still learning more about the situation, I am horrified and disgusted beyond words by the reports of violence at a protest Monday night in Albuquerque,” Lujan Grisham said late Monday in a statement. “The heavily armed individuals who flaunted themselves at the protest, calling themselves a ‘civil guard,’ were there for one reason: To menace protesters, to present an unsanctioned show of unregulated force. To menace the people of New Mexico with weaponry — with an implicit threat of violence — is on its face unacceptable; that violence did indeed occur is unspeakable.”
Mayor Tim Keller reacted swiftly following the shooting, tweeting that the city would be “removing the statue until the appropriate civic institutions can determine next steps” in order to contain the public safety risk.
“The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city,” the mayor wrote in a statement. “Our diverse community will not be deterred by acts meant to divide or silence us. Our hearts go out the victim, his family and witnesses whose lives were needlessly threatened tonight.”
It didn’t look peaceful to me. So the rioters got their way, the members of the militia were face down in the street and are currently under arrest (I presume), the state wanted to allow the destruction of public property under diversity, and refuses to support the only people who attempted to stop it.
This is humiliating for the militia.
I don’t have many comments, except: [a] don’t go into crowds, [b] don’t carry weapons if you don’t intend to use them, [c] if you intend to retreat, then retreat, don’t waste time, [d] know when your battle will be a losing battle. Without vastly superior projection of force to both the rioters and police, it was always going to end this way.
The rioters were … well, rioters. The police were there in greater numbers and were organized, and were there to protect the rioters anyway, not the militia or state property. The individual cops were there to protect their rank and pensions. By the way, take a look at the armored vehicle in the background.
If you cannot or do not intend to engage in force projection, then operate discretely. As it is, the militia has done damage to their cause, whatever that was.
“They all started out as ‘weapons war,’ you lying dumb@$$!” I’d love to hear somebody within microphone range yell back. Having “every other terrible implement of the soldier” is what the Founders intended “the people” to keep and bear. Even the rigged Miller opinion admitted the plan was for their arms to have “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia [or] that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”
I’ve pointed out before ” …the next time some loud mouth tells you that “civilians” should not have “weapons of war designed only to kill others,” inform them that every soldier or Marine is first and foremost a civilian (in that he came from our ranks and will return to our ranks), and that every weapon that has ever been designed, or improvised, by an insurgency or uniformed army, is a weapon of war. There are no exceptions, from sticks to rocks, from shotguns to rifles, from revolvers to pistols, from bolt action long guns to machine guns.”
Literally. The Marine Corps used shotguns to clear rooms in Now Zad, Afghanistan. Carlos Hathcock used a Winchester model 70, as did the Marine Corps in Desert Storm. Revolvers were in use in WWI, perhaps during parts of WWII (I truly wish I could find a picture of use of revolvers in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – that would make my day, and I and readers could celebrate an astounding victory!). The Marine Corps infantry officer course in Quantico still teaches the use of improvised weapons in the bush, including rocks and sticks in hand-to-hand fights. I have a 9mm pistol, but John Moses Browning’s 1911 is still my favorite gun to shoot, as it is with Clint Smith.
The enemy didn’t like the trench broom one bit. In September 1918, the German government issued a diplomatic protest, complaining that the Model 97 Trench Gun was illegal because “it is especially forbidden to employ arms, projections, or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering” as defined in the 1907 Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land. When the Americans rejected this, the German high command then threatened to execute any soldier caught with a Trench Gun or even just Trench Gun shells. General Pershing replied that, henceforth, any Germans caught with flamethrowers or saw-bladed bayonets would be lined up and shot. As far as is known, no American or German POWs were executed under such circumstances.
So the next time some loud mouth tells you that “civilians” should not have “weapons of war designed only to kill others,” inform them that every soldier or Marine is first and foremost a civilian (in that he came from our ranks and will return to our ranks), and that every weapon that has ever been designed, or improvised, by an insurgency or uniformed army, is a weapon of war. There are no exceptions, from sticks to rocks, from shotguns to rifles, from revolvers to pistols, from bolt action long guns to machine guns.
That’s a Red Herring anyway. They don’t care about the details. They just want you disarmed of all weaponry. You’re easier to control that way.
I simply cannot see that fully automatic M14 being controllable by anyone, and by any stretch of the imagination. And why would you have a fully automatic M14 that is magazine-fed, only to interrupt fire to change magazines? To me, an M249 SAW (fed with drums) is a much better weapon for the purpose.
On the other hand, if all you have is the M14 series of guns, having one capable of selective fire isn’t a bad idea. It’s just inferior to the SAW.
4 years, 3 months ago
