While running with scissors is often frowned upon, running with guns can actually be both fun, and very safe. Organized events where amateur runners become amateur sharpshooters and vice versa are becoming popular across the country.
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com
The following list was released today, including the vessels set to decom next year. Looks like the last of the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates are toast. Two ships are going to mothballs, one (Observation Island) to the scrappers, one submarine to be recycled, a minesweeper laid up for parts, and the rest possibly given to foreign governments.
“The projected FY14 ship inactivation schedule for inactivating U.S. naval ships is promulgated as follows to facilitate fleet planning efforts to conduct an inactivation availability:
Ship Name Inactivation Post Decom Status
USS FORD (FFG 54) 31 Oct 2013 See Note 1
USS THACH (FFG 43) 15 Nov 2013 See Note 1
USS NICHOLAS (FFG 47) 17 Mar 2014 See Note 1
USS DE WERT (FFG 45) 04 Apr 2014 See Note 1
USS RENTZ (FFG 46) 23 May 2014 See Note 1
USS HALYBURTON (FFG 40) 08 Sep 2014 See Note 1
USS ROBERT G BRADLEY (FFG 49) 28 Mar 2014 See Note 1
USNS OBSERVATION ISLAND (T-AGM 23)01 Apr 2014 See Note 2
USS AVENGER (MCM 1) 30 Aug 2014 See Note 3
USS DALLAS (SSN 700) 26 Sep 2014 See Note 4
USNS BRIDGE (T-AOE 10) 30 Sep 2014 See Note 5
USS DENVER (LPD 9) 30 Sep 2014 See Note 5
Note 1: Designated for foreign military sale (cold). It is Navy policy that ships designated for FMS transfer shall not be stripped. Stripping of ships provides diminished operational capability to maritime partners and corrodes our efforts to build maritime partner capacity. TYCOMS are required to ensure strict adherence to this direction. NAVSEA PMS 326 will issue additional guidance via SEPCOR to Fleet TYCOMS identifying non-transferrable technology. Except in the case of C3/C4 emergent CASREPS, no removals of installed equipment (e.g., Combat, C4I, HME SYSTEMS, etc.) will be permitted except as specifically authorized by OPNAV N9I in response to a record request submitted by PEO IWS or respective NAVSEA ship program office no later than 90 days prior to the ships official retirement date that includes: a comprehensive list (by ship) of specific installed equipment desired for removal; justification for the removal that includes evidence that the Navy supply system, TYCOM/RMC is unable to fulfill the requirement; an assessment of the requestor’s ability to restore the equipment in operational condition in the event the vessel transfers as a cold FMS ship; and coordination via the respective Systems Command. All other equipment/supply removals are to be conducted per ref (a).
Note 2: Dismantlement (scrap). MSC shall submit a naval message per ref (b) NLT 90 days prior to the ships’ inactivation to CNO WASHINGTON DC //00/09/N4/N42/N9/N9I//, COPY COMNAVSEASYSCOM WASHINGTON DC//SEA 05/21/, INACTSHIPOFF PORTSMOUTH VA//00/01// and supporting activities advising of the planned retirement, disposition, and funding ISO the ships’ inactivation. MSC shall coordinate directly with NAVSEA 21I regarding lay-up requirements and custody transfer to either NAVSEA or MARAD. MSC shall adhere to refs (b) and (c) status reporting requirements.
Note 3: Utilize as a logistic support asset primarily ISO remaining ships in its class.
Note 4: Date inactivation begins in a naval shipyard and the unit is no longer available for operational tasking. Official status of the vessel will be in-commission/in-reserve (ICIR) pending final decommissioning. Final decom date shall be reported to the CNO and NVR Custodian per refs (b) and (c).
Note 5: Retain in a retention status under NAVSEA custody ISO future mobilization requirements. 3. Per refs (b) and (d), COMPACFLT and COMUSFLTFORCOM shall coordinate with their respective Type Commanders and submit an organizational change request (OCR) with enough lead time for OPNAV to staff and approve the final decommissioning/inactivation of a naval vessel. 4. Per ref (b), all ship Commanding Officers/Masters or Ship Immediate Superior in Command (ISIC) shall send a separate naval message announcing that the actual retirement date has occurred. It shall be addressed to CNO WASHINGTON DC//00/09/N1/N2/N6/N4/N3/N5/ support activities, COMNAVSEASYSCOM WASHINGTON DC//SEA 05C/SEA 21// and NAVHISTHERITAGECOM N8/N9/N9I//. Info addees shall include the chain of command, all appropriate WASHINGTON DC. Message should give a brief history of the life of the ship to include significant events. 5. Adjustments to a ship’s official inactivation date that crosses the current fiscal year must be coordinated with OPNAV N9I per ref (b) due to the reporting requirement that Navy must inform Congress on execution year force structure changes that differ from what Congress authorized/appropriated and signed into law by the President. OPNAV shall promulgate changes to the inactivation year as required.
We get it. Today you’ve got so many high-tech concealed carry pieces vying for your attention it can get tiring. But let’s just take a break from all that for a moment and look at a few guns of a generation or three past, that, although dated, with the right loads and leather can still serve as viable personal protection guns (and have a long track record to prove it).
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
Picture if you will the Eighties: The Gipper was president, Stretch Armstrong was king of the schoolyard, and Atari was cutting edge. It was also the age of the Wonder Nines: high capacity nine-millimeter pistols for everyone and their brother. And like Yakov Smirnoff and shoulder pads, Bill Ruger’s P85 is a forgotten favorite of this not soon forgotten era.
In the early 1980s, word got round the firearms industry that the largest military force in the free world, the US Army, was going to conduct a series of handgun trials to select a new pistol. The winner of the testing would possibly get a series of huge contracts to not only replace the vaunted but aging stocks of 1911 .45 ACP guns, but also a myriad of .38 revolvers for the entire military. The Army, making things easy, asked for each pistol submitted to meet no less than 85 requirements. With such a huge carrot being dangled, the firm of Sturm, Ruger started designing a new military handgun.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
“Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.
“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.
“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.
As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images. “
The rest in a pretty in-depth NYT article here
Sounds like an old Yakov Smirnov joke.
When you think about fine fully auto machine pistols, the Glock 18, Micro UZI and Beretta 93R come to mind. What you may not know is there is an even smaller one handed buzz saw out there, and it comes from south of the border.
The small family run firearms concern of Armas Trejo SA was a powerhouse for durable 100% domestically made pistols in Mexico for over two decades. Founded in 1948, Mr. Abraham Trejo Solís and his father Don Gabriel Trejo firearms company set up shop in the Puebla state town of Zacatlán de las Manzanas. The town was well known for its local apple orchards and therefore, all of the Trejo family pistols were emblazoned with a stylized version of that fruit.
With a staff of family and friends, they produced a steady output of about 75 completed pistols per week. Between 1948-70, the company produced an estimated 100,000 quality semi-auto and select fire handguns in a number of models. While most of these were semi-auto knock offs of the Colt 1911 design (more on this to follow) about 13,000 had the capability to truly rock and roll.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=zimmerman%20riot&src=typd
I told myself I wasn’t going to look.
Then i did anyway.
I cant believe the stuff people say on twitter…
“It has been 16 days since the infection reached Maricopa. No traffic lights are working and all cable, WiFi and phone service is dead. The zombies are everywhere, shuffling their feet and moaning throughout abandoned streets.
Maricopa resident Keith Lostritto huddles with his family and neighbors in his boarded up home with a loaded arsenal laid out on the carpet in front of him. He is unafraid. He has been planning for this for years. ..”
General George S Patton called the M1 Garand, “The greatest battle implement ever devised.” And with good reason: this hard-hitting 30.06 armed the ‘Greatest Generation’, as well as a few that came afterward.
After World War 1, the US Army had literally millions of Springfield, Enfield, and Mosin rifles lying around. While these were all adequate for the Doughboys of the Western Front, the military knew that these bolt-action rifles were all essentially 19th Century technology. Through a series of trials and tests in the 1930s, the Army experimented with various semi-automatics that could deliver a much higher volume of fire. By 1936, a single design by Mr. John C Garand stood at the top of the pile and was adopted as the “US Rifle, Cal. .30, M1”.
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk
Just before the US was torn apart by the disaster that was the Civil War, a New York doctor by the name of Smith invented a nifty carbine that fired a rubber-cased bullet. This gun has proven to be much more poplar now than it ever was then.
Dr. Gilbert Smith of Buttermilk Falls, New York, had an enduring interest in tinkering with firearms and between 1855 and 1857, he took out no less than three patents (14,001, 15,496, and 17,644) for an ambitious new military rifle. He had 300 of these ‘Smith rifles’ made up for testing by the Army, some of which were reportedly passed on to the Pony Express. The military tried the Smith at the Washington Arsenal in the spring of 1860 and liked it enough to accept it placing an order for several thousand (after all, there was a war coming).
But more about that later. Let’s look at the gun.
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com