Rantings of an Okie

In a report in the Army Times, we hear how the M4 the current carbine used by our troops failed miserably compared to other carbine offerings. Those of use who don’t dress like Tacticool Tommy and have wet dreams about Guns and Ammo magazine understand the inherent flaws in the Stoner design. The whole shit where you eat thing being the most obvious beside caliber. So here the Army ran a test for stoppages in sandstorm type environments with the M4 against the FN SCAR Light, H&K XM8, and H&K 416. Needless to say the M4 had roughly 4 times the stoppages of the next worst platform the H&K 416. The report is quite telling. I have argued before with guys about the M16/M4 whom said all you have to do is maintain it. In war though you will not always have that time. Why chance it during a firefight. Read the article, it is quite good.

Newer carbines outperform M4 in dust test

 

By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Dec 19, 2007 11:54:45 EST

The M4 carbine, the weapon soldiers depend on in combat, finished last in a recent “extreme dust test” to demonstrate the M4’s reliability compared to three newer carbines.

Weapons officials at the Army Test and Evaluation Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., exposed Colt Defense LLC’s M4, along with the Heckler & Koch XM8, FNH USA’s Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle and the H&K 416 to sandstorm conditions from late September to late November, firing 6,000 rounds through each test weapon.

When the test was completed, ATEC officials found that the M4 performed “significantly worse” than the other three weapons, sources told Army Times.

Officials tested 10 each of the four carbine models, firing a total of 60,000 rounds per model. Here’s how they ranked, according to the total number of times each model stopped firing:

• XM8: 127 stoppages.

• MK16 SCAR Light: 226 stoppages.

• 416: 233 stoppages.

• M4: 882 stoppages.

the results of the test were “a wake-up call,” but Army officials continue to stand by the current carbine, said Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, commander of Program Executive Office Soldier, the command that is responsible for equipping soldiers.

“We take the results of this test with a great deal of interest and seriousness,” Brown said, expressing his determination to outfit soldiers with the best equipment possible.

The test results did not sway the Army’s faith in the M4, he said.

“Everybody in the Army has high confidence in this weapon,” Brown said.

Read the rest of this entry »

On many occasions I get frustrated and mad by the platitudes I hear from talking heads and politicos. They take asinine concepts and reword them to make them sound appetizing. These people would drop a turd on your plate for dinner and talk to you about its amazing tenderness and velvety consistency. We all recognize them when we see them. They are the spinmeisters like Karl Rove or James Carvel who will will spin, neigh lie to you to make situations look favorable to you. They are also people who call themselves journalists who will leave out data or manipulate it to meet their political views.

I find this extremely irritating and the thought of it makes blood shoot out of my eyes. We see the spin, a.k.a. lies, everyday. We see it with every major issue be it the border, guns, health care, or abortion. I am tired of the spinning, lying, that I am constantly bombarded with. I am tired of the manipulation of words and their meanings to suit one’s particular needs. Shit is still shit. So with this I came upon John Farnam’s Quips. John is a respected firearms trainer and commenter. I came upon his 9/28 post called Everything but the Truth and I thought y’all might further understand my frustration after reading this. It perfectly states the problem, we all just need to no longer tolerate it.

Everything but the truth! This sad commentary from a currently-deployed officer, in Country:

“Having spent three decades on active duty, here is my view:

Damage inflicted upon our military culture by MacNamara/Johnson, Carter, and Clinton has been irreversibly institutionalized, and the current Bush Administration has done precious little to turn it around:

Being promoted has taken precedence over mission accomplishment and devotion to Duty. Eg:

(1) Good men, needlessly killed and maimed during contact with the enemy, as a direct result of ill-preparedness and poor training, is not career-ending. Training injuries are!

(2) Good men, killed/maimed as a direct result of being inexplicably unarmed while occupying remote outposts in hostile territory, is not career-ending. NDs are!

(3) Failure to accomplish the mission is not career-ending. Failure to dot an “I” or cross a “T” in some insignificant/irrelevant, multi-ream document is!

(4) Deployed soldiers, morbidly fearful of (and blatantly unfamiliar with) their primary weapons, is not career-ending. A single loose round of ammunition, discovered in the pocket of some tired, hapless soldier eating lunch, is!

… ad nauseam

Those few of us who are still devoted to the defense of the Constitution and to our Duty, and who are still trying to actually make the System work have grown weary of mind-numbing sound-bites, whose purpose is to make lies sound truthful, sleazy misdeeds sound respectable, and lend a suggestion of substance to pure wind:

“Peace, with honor;” translation: “Ignominious defeat”

“Workable solutions;” translation: “Ignominious defeat”

“Satisfactory resolution;” translation: “Ignominious defeat”

“Redeployment;” translation: “Ignominious defeat, combined with cowardly flight”

“Surgical strike;” translation: “Futile pin-prick, which serves only to confirm our lack of resolve”

“Ongoing negotiations;” translation; “Excuse-makingin progress”

“Safety concerns;” translation “We don’t trust you with guns”

… ad nauseam

We still have courageous people in uniform, but even we daily have to make potentially career-ending decisions regarding our personal safety.”

Comment: History has incontrovertibly demonstrated this truth:

THERE IS ONLY ONE THING THAT WILL RELIABLY STOP EVIL MEN WITH GUNS, AND THAT IS GOOD MEN WITH GUNS. Our Soldiers and Marines need to be (in fact, not myth) professional gunmen. Seasoned Operators, always armed, and with irreproachable purpose and devotion to Duty. Conversely, unarmed sheep will accomplish nothing, syrupy sound-bites notwithstanding!

/John

Well said John.

Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski shows her anti-gun bias after Jeanne Assam’s heroic stopping of the Colorado Springs shooter. Yet she has the audacity of thinking of herself as an objective journalist. Sickening. Thankfully nobody watches MSNBC.

As if their total ban on handguns, a spectacular failure in its own right, wasn’t bad enough, now the Home Office is going to take the Samurai swords as well. There is a reason why the term “British Subject” is more germain now then since the monarchy was thrown off as the main ruling group. It appears that without much effort they will be added swords to the list of Offensive Weapons. Never mind that since they banned handguns, handgun crime is at its highest level yet. To cover their stupidity the government says the problem is how easy weapons are to get in Europe. Au Contraire, but I digress. Here is the article from Reuters.

LONDON (Reuters) - The government said on Wednesday it would ban the sale of samurai swords because the weapons had been used in a number of serious, high-profile attacks.

The Home Office said the swords would be added to the Offensive Weapons Order from April next year, meaning they could not be imported, sold or hired.

However collectors of genuine Japanese swords and those used by martial arts enthusiasts would be exempt from the ban.

“In the wrong hands, samurai swords are dangerous weapons,” Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said.

“We recognise it is the cheap, easily available samurai swords which are being used in crime and not the genuine more expensive samurai swords which are of interest to collectors and martial arts enthusiasts.”

The Association of Chief Police Officers said the swords were not a common weapon but they had been used in a number of significant incidents.

In 2000, Robert Ashman murdered a Liberal Democrat councillor at the offices of Cheltenham MP Nigel Jones, who was also seriously hurt in the attack.

A year earlier, Eden Strang seriously wounded 11 people when he went on the rampage with a samurai sword at a Roman Catholic Church near his home in Thornton Heath, south London.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Tim Castle)

Soon enough with the bullshit that happened in CO and NE we will hear the shrill call for more gun control and more restrictions on us and our privacy. Both of which will not provide one ounce of safety, but will do more to erode our rights as citizens moving us more and more to being subjects. We often hear from Sarah Brady who uses the Reagan shooting in which her husband was shot as an excuse for gun control. Never mind that not a single restriction she has introduced would have stopped the shooting of her husband or that every gun she has tried to ban wasn’t involved in his shooting, no she is given a moral high ground stance because of that shooting. Here is Suzanna Hupp providing testimony to Congress against the Clinton AWB of 94. She watched as her parents were shot by the scum sucking madman who shot up Luby’s in TX. She doesn’t get the same press at Brady, but unlike Brady her family members were killed. She even had a gun, but due to the law had to keep it in her car. She makes the best case for civilian gun ownership and carry. Watch this and tell me you wouldn’t like a PT-24 police baton to wipe that annoyed, smug look of Chuck Schumer’s face. What an arrogant fuck this jackass is. It is lucky we don’t meet up in a dark alley outside of NY. In NY I can’t carry but Schumer can and that is their mentality. I can carry but you, the lowly citizen/subject can’t and it is because I am important and you aren’t. That arrogance is infuriating. So here the argument from someone far more eloquent than I.

Well yesterday we bundled up and headed to the USSA facility for IDPA Safety Officer training. We had to get up early for a Saturday so we could make the trek up to USSA. It was misty, cold, and windy upon arrival. The first part from 0800 till 15:00 was classroom training on the role of a SOs within IDPA and IDPA rules since the SO is the person responsible for each shooting bay. The instructor was Jerry Biggs who has been shooting IDPA for quite some time and is a 4 category Master. The class room part was very informative. After that we headed to the bays to shoot an IDPA match where everyone got to SO a shooter for each stage. It was great to run the shooters and take the book learning and apply it practically. We had to cut the match short due to darkness, but we all shot 4 stages. Afterwards it was the written test which Kim and I both passed in the 90th percentile. So Kim and I are now IDPA certified Safety Officers. This is great since I plan on working the Badlands, which is a large sanctioned match in OK every year. Not to mention it was great to shoot no matter how miserable the conditions are. It will not always be a nice sunny day when you need to use your weapon.

Gabe says it better than I can.

OMAHA - WHAT WENT WRONG AND WHOSE FAULT IS IT?

Once Again…the Law failed…and The First Responders Were Irrelevant.  How many more times will things like this happen before we stop relying on feel-good measures to keep us safe?

Right now, the witches and warlocks of government are plotting how to use this.  The Kerrys, Kennedys and Pelosis are stirring their cauldrons as the Boxers and Feinsteins of the nation toss in their “eye of newt” to turn this event into a political platform from which to push their agendas.

They will say the  19-year-old Hawkins was a troubled young man.  They will want to institute mandatory testing for all kids to determine their “danger quotient” so they can be “diverted” at birth.

They will call for more laws against the civil rights of all Americans in spite of the fact that there were already laws that would have prevented young Hawkins from possessing a firearm…had he obeyed them.  Local records show Hawkins had a felony drug conviction on his record as well as several misdemeanor cases filed against him.

The focus of course will be the, “SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle — the same type used in the shooting”  I would not be surprised if they painted the evil “assault rifle” as the main culprit with Hawkins as a poor impressionable American Boy trapped by the evil weapon’s spell.

“But there were laws preventing this”, the pundits of the left wing media will say.
“We need laws to get these guns off the street”, Sarah Brady will shriek from her broom on the way to work this morning.
“We need more police in Omaha”, someone else will say.

We have heard it all before…at Virginia Tech, Tacoma, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Columbine.

There are in fact laws and rules.  But laws and rules are only for the good, as the bad never pay them any mind to begin with.  There were laws keeping Hawkins from having a rifle, yet they failed.  There were laws keeping Hawkins from killing so many people.  But, as in Virginia, Tacoma, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Columbine, the law failed, as it will always fail.

I am told by one who was there that Nebraska just passed their Concealed Carry Law, joining the rest of America in recognizing the God-given rights of its citizens enumerated in the Constitution.  Yet there was one law that seemed to work.  It was the one that said – “NO WEAPONS IN THE MALL”.

Indeed! I wonder how many will obey that stupid rule today?

We will hear abut the “evil” assault rifle as well.  I suggest that all of you who do not have an AK, or an SKS, or even an AR, that you go into debt today and get one.  Get one this week!.  If we get the wrong sort into office next year, and it is quite likely we will, you can bet your bayonet that they will seize on events like this to ban even the mere picture of an SKS.

And the first responders…ah yes…the ones that arrive to save the day.  Here is what the media said, “By the time police arrived they weren’t sure how many shooters they were dealing with. They surrounded the mall, and once they were set up, shoppers and employees had to come out with their hands raised in the air.”

Very nice.  Very nice.  Thank you Mr. First responders for saving the day once again.  You push for laws to take the guns out of the hands of common people and then arrive late to every single event that may have required their use.  Shame on you.

Who is to blame?  Well the murderer Hawkins is top of the list of course.  But then there are those in power who sought to stall the Concealed Carry Law.  They are at fault as well.  And then the managers of the mall with the sign, “NO WEAPONS IN THE MALL”.  They are equally at fault.  I would like to see the survivors sue the state of Nebraska for dragging its feet on CCW and the owners of the Mall for preventing the legal exercise of rights.

In the meantime, buy all the guns and high capacity magazines you can.  I think we can expect hard times for the civil rights of all Americans in a short time.

I couldn’t agree more.

So by now everyone has heard of the Omaha shooting. What isn’t being report except by those of us with whom the title journalist is shunned is that the mall this asshole shot people in was….wait for it…..wait for it……a gun free zone. Yet again we have further proof that gun control, in this case a gun free zone, doesn’t work. Yet again innocent lives were lost in an area, in a state, that allows people to be armed, but the antis who own this place didn’t allow people with a gun to carry there. It is time that places that have this policy start getting sued. Huge multi-million dollar settlements against asshole’s who would disarm you would change things quite a bit. It is time to quit putting up with rules, regulations, and laws that keep honest people from having the implements to defend themselves. The police took 6 minutes to get to the mall, a respectable response time, but it was way to late. The shooting was already over. Again multiple people dead.

So you ask where is the bad reporting part to this equation? Well, look for the articles out their from all over the world and you will see that none mention that this mall was a gun free zone. You will hear all kinds of wild stories about the guns, including articles calling it a machine gun, but nothing mentions that the citizens there where at this asshat’s mercy because even with a permit, the mall was off limits to those who chose to defend themselves. Yet again journalist, through sins of omission, lie or distort the story so it will conform to their ideology. This is the world we live in now, where you cannot and should not trust what you see and hear and read in the mainstream media.

*****UPDATE******

Pictorial proof of citizen’s with permits being banned from the mall. This is from their mall across town.  Thanks to the ever funky Michael Bane.

So President Bush is pushing for same old Mideast Peace crap that every President seems to waste their last few years in office on. Israel makes a good faith effort as in the past. Even the Palestinian [sic] leadership, in this case fractured leadership, says they are for it as well. What happens in the Gaza Strip though? Protests by the folks who chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. Why do we keep wasting our time with these losers? They want nothing but death to us, why try to reason with those to whom reason doesn’t exist? If they would like to continue to live in squaller, fine. The problem is that we will still try to broker some deal. The issue is that even if all involved agree, the majority will not. Do you feel for a second that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, PLO, or Fatah will abide by it? Never. Their stated goals is the complete and utter destruction of the Jews in Israel. Hamas has it as part of its charter.

Yet here we are again trying to broker Mideast peace, something that at this point is impossible. Wasting more taxpayer money on a political dream that can’t be made into a reality. How about we quit wasting time and money on savages and spend it paying down our national debt which is killing us or securing our border?

Happy Thanksgiving to you all today. May you be eating good food and enjoying the company of those you love. May we not forget all those in service to us that cannot be with their families because they are the vanguard of freedom. Never forget them.