Watch a Knife Attached to a Rocket Going 150 MPH Slice The Hell Out of Meat and Fruit

Now this is some fun times. The Backyard Scientist strapped a kitchen knife to some homemade sugar rockets, put it on a track sprayed with graphite lubricant so it could murdercut things while zooming down at 150MPH, and then put various sliceable items on the other end to reach their imminent doom (for our infinite viewing pleasure).

A whole chicken, a chuck roast, a toy car, a pineapple and all sorts of other fruits got sliced in half before you could even realize what happened. The rocket knife flies down in a blinding fury and then the next thing you know, everything just slides apart because it got cut the hell up. It’s so easy to chop things up with a rocket knife that you don’t even see it happen.

via Gizmodo
Watch a Knife Attached to a Rocket Going 150 MPH Slice The Hell Out of Meat and Fruit

What we can learn from the OSU terrorist attack

by Greg Ellifritz

On November 28, an Islamic terrorist attacked students at the Ohio State University using both his vehicle and a butcher knife. Eleven students were injured. Fortunately none were killed.

If you haven’t heard about the attack, check out this article for a brief summary. The terrorist drove his car over the curb and struck six students who were outside a classroom after evacuating from a fire alarm. When his car was disabled, he got out of the car and cut five more students with a butcher knife. An OSU police officer happened to be very close by and responded immediately to the incident, shooting the terrorist and killing him. You can read an eyewitness account here.

This attack has a personal connection for me. I graduated from OSU (twice) and currently work for a community that borders the campus. That morning, OSU police called neighboring agencies for mutual aid. Four officers from my department responded. I was called into work early in the event additional officers were needed. They didn’t end up needing more people, so I spent the morning listening to the events unfold on the police radios in my cruiser.

In the last couple weeks since the incident, I have spoken with our officers on the scene as well as members of OSU’s police department and some Columbus police officers who were on the scene. The information I share comes from officers involved in the incident, but is not classified in any way.

First of all, there are some who doubt this was a terrorist attack, instead thinking that it was a mentally ill kid who did the killing. That is categorically untrue. ISIS formally claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Clarion Project looked at the terrorist’s Facebook page immediately before the attack and noted the following:

“In a Facebook post shortly before launching Monday’s stabbing attack, Artan denounced American foreign policy and called on Washington “to stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah.”

“By Allah, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims. You will not celebrate or enjoy any holiday,” he added, according to CNN.

He also praised American born Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whose online propaganda sermons have been linked to the radicalization of a number of terrorists worldwide.”

This was clearly a terrorist attack and not the work of a lone mentally ill student.

Why it happened and why we can expect more attacks in the future.

What many people don’t understand is that Western Civilization is under a coordinated attack by Islamic Terrorists. The terrorists’ ultimate goal is to establish a world where Sharia law is enforced everywhere. The terrorists tell us what they want and how they are going to accomplish their goal. Very few people actually listen.

According to the terrorist publication Dabiq, the attacks are explicitly designed to create discord between Muslims and members of other religions. The Intercept describes this tactic as follows:

“The attack had “further [brought] division to the world,” the group said, boasting that it had polarized society and “eliminated the grayzone,” representing coexistence between religious groups. As a result, it said, Muslims living in the West would soon no longer be welcome in their own societies. Treated with increasing suspicion, distrust and hostility by their fellow citizens as a result of the deadly shooting, Western Muslims would soon be forced to “either apostatize … or they [migrate] to the Islamic State, and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens,” the group stated, while threatening of more attacks to come.”

“Through murderous provocation, the Islamic State seeks to trigger a civilizational war between Muslims and the West, violently dragging both parties into such a battle if need be.”

This is the PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED STRATEGY of Islamic terrorism, yet people refuse to accept we are in a war with Islamic radicals.

Don’t believe it? Read the Atlantic’s article What ISIS Really Wants. It’s a long article, but will give you a tremendous amount of background information about Islamic terrorism and what the terrorists see as plans for the future. Some highlights:

“Following takfiri doctrine, the Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks. Muslim “apostates” are the most common victims. Exempted from automatic execution, it appears, are Christians who do not resist their new government. Baghdadi permits them to live, as long as they pay a special tax, known as the jizya, and acknowledge their subjugation. The Koranic authority for this practice is not in dispute.”

” In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

“Nonetheless, the caliphate has continued to embrace slavery and crucifixion without apology. “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,” Adnani, the spokesman, promised in one of his periodic valentines to the West. “If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

“Choudary took pains to present the laws of war under which the Islamic State operates as policies of mercy rather than of brutality. He told me the state has an obligation to terrorize its enemies—a holy order to scare the shit out of them with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict.”

These attacks will not end. We will see more and more of them as the ISIS propagandists inspire and radicalize more of these “lone wolf” terrorists.

Why Vehicles and Knives?

Besides the obvious reasons regarding ease of access, these weapons are a terrorist favorite because they are what ISIS leaders tell them to use! Did you know that ISIS has several online magazines and websites providing instruction to terrorists wanting to attack the West?

One of the terrorist propaganda outlets is the online magazine called Rumiyah. According to this article, the most recent edition of Rumiyah directs terrorists to use vehicles as weapons:

“The latest issue of Rumiyah, a new magazine from the terror group aimed at English-language speakers, included an article titled “Just Terror Tactics” that outlined ideal vehicles to use in terror attacks as well as ideal targets.

“Though being an essential part of modern life, very few actually comprehend the deadly and destructive capability of the motor vehicle and its capacity of reaping large numbers of casualties if used in a premeditated manner,” the article said.

The article also cited the attack in Nice, France, in July, in which a supposed ISIS supporter killed 86 people by plowing into a crowd with a truck on Bastille Day.

“Vehicles are like knives, as they are extremely easy to acquire,” the article said.”

The same issue of Rumiyah also advises terrorists about using blades as weapons. This article describes the advice:

“In the latest PDF edition, which has been distributed widely on social media, supporters were urged to arm themselves with readily-available weapons and launch a ‘campaign of knife attacks’ in which the attacker ‘could dispose of his weapon after each use, finding no difficulty in acquiring another one.’

In a call to arms, an article in the magazine says: ‘One need not be a military expert or a martial arts master, or even own a gun or rifle in order to carry out a massacre or to kill and injure several disbelievers and terrorize an entire nation.’

Urging followers to carry out brutal acts of violence, the article continues: ‘Many people are often squeamish of the thought of plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh. “

“It is a discomfort caused by the untamed, inherent dislike for pain and death, especially after ‘modernization’ distanced males from partaking in the slaughtering of livestock for food and the striking of the enemy in war.

‘However, any such squirms and discomforts are never an excuse for abandoning jihad.’

The shocking article even goes on to advise would-be terrorists on which weapons to use.

‘It is explicitly advised not to use kitchen knives, as their basic structure is not designed to handle the kind of vigorous application used for assassinations and slaughter,’ it reads, adding: ‘to avoid troublesome knives, those that can cause harm to the user because of poor manufacturing.’ “

Is it any wonder that the OSU terror suspect used his vehicle and a knife? That’s what the ISIS leadership told him to use! Think about the recent truck attack in Nice, France and the recent shopping mall knife attack in Minnesota. These terrorists were inspired and instructed by the same sources.

Both Dabiq and Rumiyah are open source magazines and easily found online. I will not link to them here (instead linking to other articles describing the texts) because I don’t want to give them more web traffic. I also urge my readers to exercise caution when visiting sites like these because they are undoubtedly being monitored by our intelligence agencies. You probably don’t want to end up on that list.

It is important, however, to be aware of what the terrorist leadership is advocating. The terrorists are publishing their playbook. They are telling us exactly what they are planning, yet few Americans can be bothered to study terrorist tactics. We need to be smarter than that. Do your homework and study your enemy if you want to prevail in this inevitable battle.

Issues specific to the OSU attack

1) Be careful when the fire alarm is triggered. Recognize that numerous terrorists and active killers have exploited victims’ actions after fire alarms are activated. When the alarm goes off, large groups of people congregate in very predictable locations, making them easy victims of a terrorist attack.

According to sources at OSU, it seems that this terrorist did not pull the fire alarm himself. It appears to be a crime of opportunity. The terrorist saw a large group of people close to the road and decided to attack.

When the fire alarm is pulled in a public building, be ready for anything. It might be an active killer attack. Don’t go to predictable evacuation locations. Don’t evacuate to a parking lot. Stay away from any location where large groups of people are physically close to a roadway open to vehicular traffic. Be alert as you evacuate.

2) Callers reporting the terrorist act overwhelmed the police/medical dispatch system. This isn’t the fault of OSU. All terrorist attacks everywhere overwhelm dispatching resources. More than 1000 phone calls were fielded by four police dispatchers in the one-hour time period following the attack. Many of those callers provided bad information that misdirected responding officers.

Several people reported there was a second attacker (a male armed with a rifle) who fled the scene. No such person actually existed. Five SWAT teams were mobilized based on these reports. The teams spent nearly two hours searching buildings and parking garages where the mystery man with the rifle was supposedly located. It was a colossal waste of time and manpower.

It seems self evident, but you shouldn’t call police in a crisis situation if you don’t have importantly information to share. Get GOOD descriptions of offenders. Concentrate on the person’s sex, age, hair color, clothing color, direction of travel, and vehicle description. If you don’t have this kind of information. don’t call 911! Let the dispatchers focus on people who have the most useful information to share.

You should also avoid sharing second or third hand information with police on the scene. If you didn’t see it, don’t report it. Like the “telephone game” repeated information quickly becomes inaccurate and wastes valuable resources.

3) Prepare for non-typical terrorist attacks. Not every terrorist attack is going to be conducted with bombs and guns. You must be ready to deal with vehicles, knives, fire, or anything else the terrorists can come up with on the battlefield. Expect the unexpected.

The terrorists are deliberately targeting areas where there are lots of defenseless victims. If no one can fight back, the killer gets a much higher body count. If you visit or work in “gun free” zones (and obey the law) you won’t be armed with your pistol to stop the attack. How good are your empty hand skills? Can you evade or disarm a knife-wielding attacker? Do you know how to use your own knife to incapacitate a terrorist?

If you are truly concerned about your survival, you should probably invest in a few empty hand or knife classes instead of taking another “run and gun” carbine class.

4) Medical skills are important to have. Officers at the scene stated that there were 11 injured people at the attack site along with a whole bunch of student onlookers. No one provided any type of medical care to the injured people until the cops and medics showed up. Eleven serious injuries and none of the bystanders even considered doing something to save the injured people’s lives?

Fortunately, the lack of first aid at the scene didn’t cost anyone his life. This occurred in a big city with a very fast police and fire response time. If the medics were fewer in number or had to travel a large distance to get to the scene, some of those victims could have bled to death.

You must get some quality medical training. I teach quite a few battlefield medicine classes every year. You can check out my schedule here. If you can’t train with me, take a class from either Dark Angel Medical or Lone Star Medics. I’m friends with the guys who own both companies and have taken training classes from both. They are top notch medics and instructors. Having the skills they are teaching may mean the difference between life and death if you get caught up in a terrorist attack like this one. If you can’t make it to a good medical class, at least read my article Field Medicine for Terrorist Attacks to familiarize yourself with the concepts involved in treating a knife, gunshot, or blast injury.

Folks, these attacks are not going to stop anytime soon. Recognize that and take the steps necessary to ensure your own safety.

Greg Ellifritz is the full time firearms and defensive tactics training officer for a central Ohio police department. He holds instructor or master instructor certifications in more than 75 different weapon systems, defensive tactics programs and police specialty areas. Greg has a master’s degree in Public Policy and Management and is an instructor for both the Ohio Peace Officer’s Training Academy and the Tactical Defense Institute.

For more information or to contact Greg, visit his training site at Active Response Training.


via Buckeye Firearms Association
What we can learn from the OSU terrorist attack

KFC Is Giving Away Sunscreen That Makes You Smell Like Fried Chicken

KFC Is Giving Away Sunscreen That Makes You Smell Like Fried Chicken

The summer is drawing to a close, but there’s still time to catch some rays, get a glowing tan, and smell like extra crispy fried chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken—or KFC as it likes to be called now—is giving away tubes of sunscreen that make you smell like you’ve slathered yourself in the Colonel’s secret 11 herbs and spices. That’s a good thing, right?

KFC Is Giving Away Sunscreen That Makes You Smell Like Fried Chicken

In addition to protecting its customers from the harmful effects of too much sun exposure, this bizarre promotion is clearly an effort by KFC to turn sunbathers, swimmers, and everyone at the beach into walking subliminal advertisements for the chain’s fried fast food.

In one way, it’s genius. In another way, it sounds utterly disgusting. But whatever you feel about the promotion, just make sure you don’t lick your fingers after applying the sunscreen—it’s not edible.

You don’t need to buy anything to snag one of the limited edition tubes, you just need to head on over to KFC’s website and cough up all of your personal details, including a shipping address. And if you miss out, you can probably have the same experience by just smearing real fried chicken all over your body before heading to the beach. It will also give you an opportunity to get real friendly with the local seagulls.

[KFC via Twitter – BurgerBusiness]

via Gizmodo
KFC Is Giving Away Sunscreen That Makes You Smell Like Fried Chicken

GOP Gubernatorial Candidate’s Latest Ad Is Just Him Shooting a Machine Gun for 20 Seconds


GIF

Good people of Missouri, former Navy SEAL (and former Democrat) Eric Greitens would like to be your next Governor. Now please watch him fire off a Gatling machine gun for 20 seconds.

Greitens won the Missouri primary just days ago, positioning himself as an “outsider” who will “take aim at politics as usual.”

Greitens isn’t a single issue candidate by any means, though. He also released an ad where he shoots this gun:

In addition to Missouri voters, Greitens has also garnered the attention of conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who donated $200,000 to Greitens’ campaign.

So, Eric, how are you feeling on the heels of your big win?



GIF

We bet.

[h/t @shadihamid]

via Gizmodo
GOP Gubernatorial Candidate’s Latest Ad Is Just Him Shooting a Machine Gun for 20 Seconds

Embracing The Scout Rifle (Part 1)

cooper scout rifle

Once upon a time not so many decades ago I was a lot more of an outdoorsman than I am now. I fished nearly every day, and hunted whitetail deer in the swamps and woods of eastern North Carolina as frequently as I could. By necessity I was sometimes relegated to hunting from a tree stand or ground blind, but what I enjoyed most was still hunting.

Ghosting along the edges of swamp thickets required good eyes, patience, a feel for prevailing winds, and soft feet in order to see the deer before the deer heard, spotted, or scented you. The post WWII .30-’06 Remington 721 I carried on these forays belonged to my father. It was mounted with a department-store 3-9×40 Tasco scope and a padded nylon sling. It was solid from a treestand or ground blind, but was a little too long and a little too heavy for long stalks, with an annoying tendency to seemingly snag on every briar or vine.

At roughly the same time I was stalking deer in the Carolina swamps, Jeff Cooper was developing his concept of a short, light, fast-handling rifle that would excel in field conditions such of these.

Flash forward almost 30 years.

Today Cooper’s concept of a scout rifle is well-documented, if not completely understood in a tactical-rifle-focused world. Fortunately for me, Gunsite Academy hosted the first Scout Rifle Conference since the 1980s just two weeks ago, and I was privileged to be one of a half-dozen firearms journalists invited for the five-day event.

The first three days of the scout rifle conference were focused on training, with a fourth day dedicated to a friendly competition to put the rifles and 19 shooters through their paces. The fifth day was an opportunity to try our guns and gear from different manufacturers in the morning, followed by a conversation period where the participants could tell manufacturers what they liked about their products, and where they thought there was room for improvement.

steyr scout

I was one of seven conference participants shooting the Steyr Scout. It was paired with a Burris 2-7×32 Scout Rifle Scope and low rings (more on that later), with 155-grain BTHP Hornady American Gunner .308 Winchester ammunition. The other major rifle manufacturers represented were Ruger, with four Gunsite Scouts, Mossberg with six MVP Scout, a Savage 11 Scout,  a Brockman’s Rifles-customized Winchester Model 70, and a Merkel RX Helix. almost everyone ran low-powered, extended eye-relief scopes, though Monte Long of  XS Sights used his company’s iron sights, and Andy Langlois of Andy’s Leather used a micro red dot.

maxresdefault

Our Rangemaster, Il Ling New (above), also brought her personal scout rifle, built from a Remington Model 7.

Mario Marchman and Gary Smith were the other two Gunsite instructors working with our group. Scout rifle expert and gun writer Richard Mann did most of the work in pulling the event together, and was nice enough to bring a number of his personal scout rifles for us to gawk at during the trip.

What is a scout rifle?

When Col. Jeff Cooper was hashing out his concept of the scout rifle, he was envisioning a hard-hitting, lightweight, fast-handling rifle for field use primarily in the Americas and Africa. It needed to be light and compact to be carried long distances sometimes in heavy brush. It needed to use a common but hard-hitting caliber that could be resupplied throughout the world, and it needed to be rugged and capable of a snap-shot on man or beast in a compressed amount of time.

A lot of people hear of the concept of a scout rifle and get hung up on the idea of a scout rifle being something for a military scout/sniper in the late 20th century, which is decidedly not the case. It was instead inspired by military and frontier scouting traditions dating back to the late 19th and turn of the 20th centuries, and instead of a weapon designed for interpersonal conflicts, it was primarily designed as a wilderness rifle for men who moved lightly through rough country, sometimes for days or weeks on end.

Cooper had a rather lengthy list of criteria for scouts, and as the concept matured over time, some of those criteria (such as the ability to take stripper clips) were superseded by others (detachable magazines). The basics, however, have remained the same.

The rifle

  1. 1 meter or less in length
  2. Chambered in .308 Winchester (or at least uses the .308 as a parent case)
  3. short-action
  4. 18-20 inch barrel
  5. good trigger
  6. light weight (ideal was 3 kilos or 6.6 pounds with sights, scope, and sling; max was 7.5 pounds with sights, scope, and sling)

The sights

  1. low-mounted, long eye relief optics with low magnification, mounted forward of the action
  2. ghost-ring rear sight, and a post front sight

The sling

  1. CW or Ching sling
  2. flush-mounted sling swivel sockets (no protruding hardware)

Day 1

We started the first day with a welcome to Gunsite Academy for that who had not attended previously, where we went over site and safety rules, met our instructor cadre, and got a crash course on the scout rifle concept and what Col. Cooper was attempting to accomplish with his “one rifle” solution. After that, we hit the range was to check our rifle zeros to see if they’d shifted in travel. I discovered that the low rings I had been sent for the 2-7×32 Burris scope were too low. The scope was touching the barrel, and I didn’t have backup rings. Fortunately, Mike Nischalke of Steyr Arms had a backup Leopold 1.5-4×28 scope scout with pre-mounted rings. I got it zeroed, and was quickly back in business.

Day 2

snap-shooting

We jumped right into on the second day, making snap-shots from 25 yards as a warm up. Cooper believed that a good scout rifle shooter could make a shot on a 4″ target at 25 yards in less than 1.5 seconds from an offhand ready position.

From the warm up, we went through the various intermediate positions.

  • kneeling
  • braced kneeling
  • squatting (“rice paddy prone,” one of my personal favorite positions for intermediate range shots on level ground)
  • sitting

We also talked about both the standard prone position and  the flattest and the lowest and most stable of all field shooting positions, Hawkins prone (below). In Hawkins prone, your support side hand grabbed the sling at the front sling swivel and makes a rest for the barrel, while the butt of the riflestock is on the dirt, snugged into your shoulder. Rumor has it that the position was created by a World War I sniper in the trenches of France trying to keep as low as possible to keep from attracting the attention of enemy snipers.

hawkins prone

The support-hand Hawkins position turned out to be a valuable technique when we hit Gunsite’s infamous Scrambler. The Scrambler is a (typically timed) field problem course. There are seven positions and seven targets, and you can fire up to twice on each to make your hit.

I don’t have any video of someone shooting the Scrambler with a scout rifle, but I do have video of my Townhall Media colleague Katie Pavlich make the run with an AR-15, which should give you an idea of the kind of intermediate field shooting positions the Scrambler is designed to induce.

Our group—all the Steyr shooters—then rotated over to the York range to do a “guide/hunter” drill.

We were paired up, and one shooter played the role of the hunter, while other other played the role of  the guide. We would walk towards a steel target, and then drop into an intermediate position when the instructor’s shot time buzzed. The “hunter” had one shot to get a hit on target. If the “hunter” missed, the “guide” had to immediately get a hit with 1-2 follow-up shots. If we missed all three shots on the pepper popper, we had to conclude that the lion/tiger/bear/oh my had successfully made it’s charge, and we we being ripped into tasty bite-sized pieces.

We concluded the day with a a drill where we approached a fixed target front 35 yards away, and when we reached the 25 yard line, we had to make a quick hit from all three sling positions:

  • African Carry (5 shots)
  • American Carry (5 shots)
  • European Carry (5 shots)

If you’re not familiar with the three different positions, you’re in luck. Our Scout Rifle Conference rangemaster, Il Ling New demoed, these three positions during a series of videos she did for Ruger when they launched their Gunsite Scout Rifle last year.

Day Three of the conference turned out to be much more dynamic day, where we had moving targets, turning targets, and another one of Gunsite’s legendary field courses, the Vlei.

We’ll dive into Day 3 of the Conference and the Scout Rifle competition in Part 2.

The post Embracing The Scout Rifle (Part 1) appeared first on Bearing Arms.

via Bearing Arms
Embracing The Scout Rifle (Part 1)

Larry the Lobster Rescued From Restaurant, Dies Getting Shipped to Aquarium

Larry the (unfortunate) lobster, seen here still alive (ABC News via YouTube)

Animal rights activists were appalled when they learned that a 15-pound, 100-year-old lobster was about to become someone’s dinner in Florida. So they organized to “rescue” it and deliver it to an aquarium in Maine. They even gave it a name: Larry.

Well, Larry has now gone to that big ocean in the sky. Which is to say that Larry’s dead. Cause of death? Overeager animal rights activists, it would seem.

After Larry was spotted on the local news for his gigantic size, an organization called iRescue raised money to pack Larry in ice and gel packs and ship the lobster from Sunrise, Florida in a styrofoam container. Larry’s journey up the east coast to Maine was only supposed to take one day. Instead, Larry didn’t arrive until over a week later.

When Larry was first packaged for shipping last week, FedEx refused to take him. The restaurant’s styrofoam container was said to be leaking and iRescue, the animal rights organization that was paying for the “rescue,” had to pick up the package and arrange for Larry to have a temporary home in some tank somewhere else.

The iRescue team packed up Larry again eight days later and used different gel packs and a different styrofoam container—presumably one that wouldn’t leak. Larry was finally shipped successfully on Tuesday, but when Larry finally arrived at the Maine State Aquarium around noon on Wednesday he was dead.

And frankly, it sounds like iRescue should’ve used some more cold gel packs if they wanted to give Larry a shot at surviving the journey.

“This lobster had a bit of a, you know, circuitous route from its origin,” Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the Department of Marine Resources told the Portland Press Herald. “You need to really surround it in gel packs. This container really only had three.”

But even with all this effort, other animal rights organizations weren’t too keen on Larry living out his life in some no good aquarium like a common Sea Monkey.

“PETA is calling on the Maine State Aquarium to let this elderly crustacean live out his golden years in freedom and peace,” the always level-headed organization said in a statement before Larry met his unfortunate demise.

Larry was originally purchased for a family dinner at the Tin Fish restaurant in Florida. It’s not clear what’s being done with Larry’s body now, but he probably wasn’t fed to anything at the the aquarium given the strict quarantine rules.

My guess is that Larry probably wound up in a dumpster. RIP Larry. We hardly knew ye, but you were obviously too delicious for this world.

[Portland Press Herald via ABC News]

via Gizmodo
Larry the Lobster Rescued From Restaurant, Dies Getting Shipped to Aquarium

This Concealed Carrier Saved An Officer Under Attack

concealed carrier

An concealed carrier in Ohio has been presented with the Citizen’s Award of Valor for stepping in with a drawn handgun to stop a meth abuser who was fighting a Mount Vernon officer for control of the officer’s gun.

The suspect stopped fighting Cpl. Michael Wheeler, and when Wheeler looked up, he saw the suspect staring down the barrel of Dylan DeBoard’s pistol.

Cpl. Michael Wheeler of Ohio’s Mt. Vernon Police Department owes his life to a brave civilian who stepped forward with a drawn gun.

Wheeler said he was being attacked by a homeless man who later acknowledged to officers that he was high on crystal meth. Knocked to the ground and fighting to subdue the “very irritated and out of sorts” attacker, Wheeler ended up on his back with the man straddling him.

“I’ve never been in that situation before,” the 14-year department veteran told InsideEdition.com Wednesday. “I’ve always been able to take control of a situation.”

Earlier this week, Wheeler was able to reward Dylan DeBoard, the man who saved him, with the city’s Citizen’s Award of Valor. Every day, he remembers that day last year when things could have turned out far, far worse.

He often stops by DeBoard’s home, Wheeler said, just to say thanks. “Every time I see him I let him know how much I appreciate what he did.”

On that day last year, Wheeler’s shoulder microphone had been ripped off in the tussle, so he couldn’t call for back-up. And then the man started going for Wheeler’s gun. And that’s when Wheeler began to think he was running out of options.

“I pulled him in close to me to try to restrict his range of motion,” Wheeler said. But the suspect just kept “trying to reach my belt.”

And right about then, the man sat back and put his hands up. Wheeler wondered ‘What the …?’

He lifted his head and looked in the direction the man was staring. There stood another man, with a gun.

After DeBoard announced that he was a concealed carrier, Cpl. Wheeler flipped the drug abuser off him and cuffed him. Wheeler credits Deboard for saving his life.

The post This Concealed Carrier Saved An Officer Under Attack appeared first on Bearing Arms.

via Bearing Arms
This Concealed Carrier Saved An Officer Under Attack

Motorized Handheld 5.56mm Gatling Gun: The XM556 Microgun

Empty Shell, LLC: their website home page reads “Unique Firearms Design,” and they’re not lying.

The one we’re talking about here is called the XM556 Microgun, and it’s a motorized gatling-style gun that fires 5.56 NATO ammo like it’s going out of style. Oh, and it’s designed to be handheld, which makes it the first of its kind.

(Image: Empty Shell, LLC)

(Image: Empty Shell, LLC)

Here’s a quote from their website:

After working in the firearm industry… [we saw] a consistent pattern. Products typically evolved from companies looking around at current trends and trying to get on board before they caught on.

When we founded Empty Shell in 2014, it was decided that we would not go that route. We will only bring products to market that add value to the industry and have a large advantage to the end user. We will never sell something that you can find easily somewhere else. We also only add team members and vendors that understand our vision and are talented enough to produce parts with the same commitment we have in developing them.

About the XM556, they have this to say:

The XM556 is a new platform system… designed from scratch. The parts are not just a smaller imitation of the larger M134. An absolutely all new style of bolt was conceived and designed to eliminate current known issues with the M134. The bolts combined with many other improvements have been made to not only extend the life of the gun but reduce wear and reduce or eliminate stoppages.

Right now, they’ve uploaded a total of three short videos on Youtube. This first one shows the gun chewing & spewing 100 dummy rounds of ammo.

This next one shows a very short test.

And finally, the video below shows a “belt” of linked rounds being fed into the gun and then fired. This thing sure goes through the ammo quickly!

Here are some specs:

  • Caliber: 5.56mm
  • Barrel Length: 10″ or 16″
  • Total Gun Weight: 16 lbs (subject to change)
  • Rate of Fire: 2000/4000 (subject to change)
  • Total Length: Handheld 22″
  • Total Height: 6″
  • Total Width: 9″
  • Feed System: M-27 Linked Ammunition Belt
  • Fire Mode: Full Auto Only
  • Power Requirement: 24 Volts DC
  • Barrel Life: TBD
  • System Life: TBD
  • Status: Prototype/Still in Development

Want…

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Motorized Handheld 5.56mm Gatling Gun: The XM556 Microgun

My Safe Has Better Guns Than Star Wars

When my family and I watched the entire Star Wars series in high definition, we realized that unfortunately some of the props were not created to look good in high def. Star Wars was way cooler back when was released, but even as a young gunslinger I was confused as to why a “highly trained” army of clone soldiers were such bad shots, and rarely (if ever) used cover.

In a world of Star Wars computer technology, why the heck is every gun 1) humanoid targeted, 2) must be fired exclusively from the hip, and 3) apparently made to such horrible standards that it has less accuracy potential than a slingshot?

Judging from the alleged intense training of Jango Fett and the DNA lineage of the Empire’s Clone Army, one can only assume that the guns are at fault. On the other hand the Rebellion handgun, carbine, and rifle blasters don’t seem much better, with accuracy only marginally better than a kid throwing rocks at windows.

Accuracy seems a little finicky. If Luke needs to shoot out a tiny blast door panel 75 yards across the shooting stage, he does it in one shot — but if he needs to pick off Clones standing 10 feet from him offering perfect frontal shots, he has to “spray and pray,” and he misses over and over.

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The logical assumption is that all these shooters are well-trained, so the only logical conclusion is that the weapons themselves are garbage from a power and accuracy perspective. Watch any scene in any Star Wars movie, and you will be appalled at the hit ratio at even sub-seven-yard ranges. I didn’t get all nerdy and count shots, but the average hit ratio between either side with personnel-carried arms has to be close to 10%-20%.

That hit ratio is close to the U.S. military average hit ratios on 300-yard targets, but the distances of the typical Empire/Rebellion engagement appears to be at less than 50 yards. Keep in mind that the average Star Wars blaster is shooting an energy pulse (aka laser) which should be stunningly accurate considering there are no issues with rifling, bullet spin dynamics, wind deflection, etc.

The Blaster produces an laser blast which should, based on current laws of physics, have perfect zero-MOA accuracy at any range with no hold-over required. The only logical explanation is that the optical laser blast delivery lens system on every blaster is loose on every gun in the galaxy, which causes erratic accuracy.

I would blame the accuracy on the optics, but it seems that actually aiming a weapon is against the Galactic War Convention and shots can only be taken via a modified 1970s Spaghetti Western shoot-from-the-hip style.

Also amazing to me: None of the Star Wars weapons have anywhere close to the same firepower as a minigun or even full-auto fire like a standard Military M4 has. Even worse is the rate of fire the average blaster is able to produce, which seems to be about 60 rounds a minute at best.

If you had a 100-round blaster, wouldn’t you be doing your best imitation of Jerry Miculek to rain suppressive fire upon the clone soldiers standing without cover attacking you? So rate of fire I suppose was limited as well with the Star Wars blasters.

Logically, none of the Star Wars weapons make sense to me. I can drop a LaserLyte 9mm Laser Training insert in my H&K P30L and get more accuracy with a higher rate of fire than any weapon I saw on Star Wars.

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The weight of the blaster appears to be about the same as you average-sized earth firearms, so why do these blasters suck so much?

Based on the impact take-outs of hero/anti-hero clone soldiers by Wookies, wrenches, and other hard objects throughout the movie series, we can only assume that the armor of the clones would be easily defeated by any modern firearm round.

Let’s contrast this with a few excellent firearms in my inventory which all have 1″ or better accuracy at 100 yards. My Remington 700 SPS 308 could have delivered one-shot kills of surface drones and random Clone soldiers out to 1000 yards. The semi-automatic DPMS GII 308 offers 20-50 round magazine-driven options for a lot of takedown power at a high rate of fire even in semi-auto.

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From a troop-issued carbine/rifle perspective, my BPM Barnes Precision Machine AR and futuristic IWI Tavor appear to be amazingly advanced firearms with exponentially higher rates of fire, similar or greater power, and better accuracy… with about the same weight. Bonus: they can even be aimed at targets, which the Star Wars Blasters were not particularly well-suited for.

If we look at the hip-carried Star Wars pistol blaster, the Glock 20 in 10mm would be a hands-down winner. In a couple scenes I thought I saw Han Solo having to do double taps on a Clone or two. Conversely, the FBI has deemed the 10mm to be nearly magical, so I hardly doubt any handheld blaster could equal the 10mm power… I mean the FBI says so.

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And let’s not even get into the topic of body armor and camouflage. What is the purpose of bright hard plastic that makes a ton of racket every time you move, inhibits mobility, and apparently offers nothing in the way of protection? I am pretty sure the clone army would have been better-served to run around buck naked or in one of those creepy unitard suits with just a blaster in hand.

Final Thoughts

Admittedly I am a Sci-Fi nerd. I love this stuff, but I found myself screaming all the shooting fundamentals at the screen this time around. It is actually a wonder with all the muzzle sweeps and finger-on-trigger gun handling that no one was accidentally shot in each scene. The bottom line is this: I feel well-armed, even by the advanced standard of Star Wars (although I do not have a Millenium Falcon to — usually — make the jump to hyperspace).

This article is what happens when you watch Star Wars after three glasses of Scotch, but I hope you enjoyed the comparison.

 

 

The post My Safe Has Better Guns Than Star Wars appeared first on AllOutdoor.com.

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My Safe Has Better Guns Than Star Wars