The Semmerling LM-4 Pistol: Sleek, strange, secretive, sought
Sure, it looks like a smooth little semi-auto mouse gun but, as with many things in this crazy world, under it’s sleekness hides some strangeness. First, it’s not a pee-shooter, but rather a 5-shot .45 ACP hardballer. Second, its not semi-auto at all but rather more of a pump-action. It’s the Semmerling LM-4, and though it may look like a swan to some, at its heart it’s still one odd little duck.
Since the beginning of modern time, there have been rough handed individuals whose services are retained by certain quiet branches of the government to maintain a fragile system of covert operations. These individuals are sent to exotic places, meet interesting people, and occasionally have to fight for their lives to make it back home.
In the 1970s, a small shadowy company in the Boston area by the name of the Semmerling Corporation began producing a compact little gun for the special purpose of arming such individuals. The primary tenants of the pistol was that it be a small and durable as possible, with absolute reliability but crucially pack a decent punch—no mouse guns, as the gun was to allow a covert agent working deep cover, to have a concealed firearm to engage in violence if they could not otherwise extract themselves from the situation.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
Coast Guard Bringing Lost WWII Airmen Back Home
The service today began the public process of searching for a company who can bring three airmen killed in the line of duty – on November 29, 1942 – back home to U.S. soil.
The difficulty is that the three men, two from the Coast Guard and one from the Army, are encased in ice, 40 ft. below the surface near Koge Bay, Greenland, in their amphibious J2F-4.
The Grumman J2 Duck was one of the great unsung little aircraft of WWII. One of these planes has just been found 40 feet under the ice in Greenland with its two USCG crewmen and a rescued US Army aviator entombed.
“The United States Coast Guard has located a downed J2F-4 Grumman Duck aircraft in the arctic of Greenland that was lost during World War 2,” reads the sources sought notice in today’s Federal Business Opportunities website. “The aircraft is in a remote region of the arctic and buried under 40 feet of ice.” Onboard, presumably, are Coast Guard Lt. John Pritchard, Petty Officer 1st Class Benjamin Bottoms and U.S. Army Air Force Cpl. Loren Howarth.
Keep reading at Aviation Week
Never let it be said that the U.S. Coast Guard doesn’t take care of its own in addition to others.
3D Printed Pistol Gets Shut Down by State Department
Cody Wilson, maverick firearms geek behind the printable gun craze is back in hot water again. This time its for the design of his new single shot (single use) Liberator pistol. The thing is, he didn’t even sell it, he gave it away. This brought the ire not of the ATF, FBI, or some other law enforcement organization– but instead, the State Department.
After all the original Liberator was designed as a throwaway ‘gun to get a gun’ that could be dropped to resistance fighters behind enemy lines during World War Two. It seems that some overseas governments may be scared of letting this genie get out of the bottle.
As crazy as it sounds, this is for real.
Read the rest in my article in Firearms Talk.com
Put a Saiga Mag on Your 870 or Moss 500
Black Aces Tactical has done it again by listening to the marketplace and giving the shotgunners what they want– a retrofit kit that will enable your humble Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 to accept detachable box magazines. Not only is this not just a theory, it’s a reality and they are selling them now.
Shotguns are not new. They have been around for hundreds of years, it’s just that in the past century, or so we have decided to increase their magazine capacity. Early shotguns were single shots, with the double barrel being brought on the scene to increase magazine capacity by 100%. In the late 19th century, the first tubular magazine shotguns came out. They allowed faster follow-up shots as well as being more tactically sound in a combat situation. Today almost every serious rifle in the world uses detachable box magazines– so isn’t it time that the shotgun caught up with the times? Black Aces thinks so.
Read the rest in my article at Firearms Talk.com
Woman Saves Hubby with Empty Shotgun
Don’t tell Joe Biden but it looks like the humble shotgun has triumphed again in one of the most amazing tales of home defense you are likely to read. It involves a shotgun, a bear, two senior citizens, and a cautionary tale about training.
Outside of the small village of Silver Cliff (pop 529) in Marinette County, there was a small cabin. A rural, back-to-nature way of life is central to this part of the country as the area’s two main rivers, the Peshtigo and Menominee, and many lakes, streams, and forests make it an outdoor destination. As reported by the IBTimes, WPRI, the Green Bay Gazette and others, it was here that 74-year old Gerre Ninnemann and his 71-year old wife Marie were spending a quiet spring day relaxing. That was until Gerre noticed their pet dog barking and went to see what the commotion was all about….
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk
Is Everything Returning To Normal?
As soon as I saw the guncase, I knew things were getting closer to being like right. The case had spent most of the past few months being empty, save for a few miscellaneous 22 rifles and the occasional shotgun. It was the firearms case of a local big box– and it had several .223 caliber semi-auto modern sporting rifles in it. It was then that I knew, things were slowly getting better.
Inside the case that I had grown to casually inspect every time I passed through the Big Box, I had gotten used to not seeing anything more technologically advanced than a bolt-action rifle or pump-action shotgun. Both of these concepts had come about in the 1880s. Sure, there was a lot of polymer and synthetics in the guns that were there, but you couldn’t really call them modern. With everyone afraid that pending legislation would forbid access to more current designs, the modern sporting rifle had vanished from store shelves in January 2013.
Now, five months into the year, to walk by this case and see no less than four semi-auto centerfire rifles with pistol grips, detachable box magazines, and accessory rails swelled by heart.
Finally, supply was starting to catch up to demand….or so it would seem…..Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk
The L85 British Bullpup: The last Enfield
It’s hard to imagine today but for over 150-years the UK firearms arsenal at Enfield armed the world. Their 3-band rifles were the go-to gun of the US Civil War and their Short Magazine Lee Enfield bolt guns kept London from having the street signs redone in German through two world wars. Then in 1985, everything went pear-shaped.
In 1954, RSAF Enfield and BSA began production of the 7.62x51mm NATO caliber L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle for the British military to replace their long-serving stocks of Short Magazine Lee Enfield Rifles, a design that had lasted the Brits for nearly 70 years. The L1A1 was a version of the Belgian FN FAL rifle, set up in semi-auto and using SAE or ‘inch-pattern’ templates rather than metric. It proved a hard serving rifle and saw use in the Suez, Malaysia, Aden, Northern Ireland and the Falklands as well as being adopted by close allies Canada, Australia, and New Zealand among others. However by the late 1970s, the L1A1 was a bit long in the tooth, and well, a bit long overall (45-inchs) as well. With most of NATO at the time already using smaller, 5.56mm-chambered rifles such as the M16, FAMAS, and HK33, the UK decided to get on the smaller caliber/smaller weapon bandwagon.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
The Rough Parts of Going while Carrying
No matter whether you call it dropping a deuce, hanging 10, the call of nature, a trip to the water closet, or going code brown, everyone has to seriously relieve themselves at some point. Often this situation presents itself when you are out and about in a public venue. If you are armed this leads to the dilemma of what do you do to keep your firearm safe while you drop trou. Here are the options:
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
(Which one of these stalls would you pick? If you choose the one with the dead wall on the strong hand side that your firearm is on…good choice!)
Tour inside a 1960s Personal Fallout Shelter…complete with Tang
A South Florida family found an almost perfectly preserved fallout shelter in their backyard dating from the 1960s complete with Tang, a fallout meter, and Toilet paper. It’s nice to see that even with flawed fifty year old designs (the shelter had 1-2 feet of water inside it when opened), that they are still viable after a half century. Keep that in mind preppers!
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