Must read from William Grigg: "Praetorian Presumptions"

My thanks to cntrline45 for forwarding me "Praetorian Presumptions," William Grigg's latest essay, found here. It is a must read.

Mike
III

"Beyond the Pale": David Neiwert doesn't like being "dead," even if he's not. Not even if it was only in the brief dream of somebody he libeled.

German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Rector of the University of Freiburg, speaks to a Nazi Party rally in late 1933. Intellectuals like Heidegger provided a philosophical excuse for Nazi ideology.


Martin Heidegger (26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was an influential German philosopher. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. Heidegger remains controversial due to his involvement with Nazism. . . . Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Heidegger was elected Rector of the University of Freiburg on April 21, 1933, assuming the position the following day, and on May 1 he joined the Nazi Party. Heidegger delivered his inaugural address, the Rektoratsrede, on May 27. It was entitled "The Self-Assertion of the German University," and became notorious for its praise of Nazism. -- Wikipedia.

David Neiwert doesn't like being "dead," even if he isn't. As my regular readers know, I never say anything to anyone electronically behind their back, and I am always careful to copy the person I'm talking about via email and/or snail mail.

Thus it was with David Neiwert, when I wrote And thus the abyss beckons: "David Neiwert died violently last night" found here.

But David didn't like it, not one little bit. He was so rattled, he got my name wrong in the email he sent asking that I pull down the post.

Subject: RE: And thus the abyss beckons: "David Neiwert died violently last night."
Date: 7/27/2009 2:30:25 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: dneiwert@hotmail.com
To: georgemason1776@aol.com

OK, Mark, this is beyond the pale.

Put your own name in place of mine and think of what it would be like if someone wrote this about you.

Please take this post down. -- DN

Well, I must confess I was bit nettled by the fact that he got my name wrong. Call me anything you like, but at least get the name right. And so, I sent him this reply back:

Subject: Re: And thus the abyss beckons: "David Neiwert died violently last night."
Date: 7/27/2009 3:21:55 P.M. Central Daylight Time
From: GeorgeMason1776
To: dneiwert@hotmail.com

The name is Mike, not Mark. Mike Vanderboegh. And I actually did substitute my name on one read-through, just to make sure I had the flavor right. It didn't scare me none. I've been prepared for my violent death since the 90s. Ever since, in fact, collectivist light-weight liars like you, Dees and Pitcavage have been laying the intellectual excuse for the government intervening to take my liberty and my life. You have more in common with Herr Doktor Martin Heidegger than you care to admit.

Ho Chi Minh once said, "Cherish your enemies, they teach you the most valuable lessons." Try to accept it as a cautionary tale for the next time you slander the motives and character of someone you disagree with politically, but have actually NO idea what kind of person they are.

You know, before you wrote that screed, you might have contacted me. My email address is just about everywhere on the Net, and was, even back then. The fact that you made no attempt says that you are no journalist, just a collectivist hack.

On a lighter note, I don't believe it was a premonition or anything. Now if my good friend Lillian, who is three-quarter Cherokee and has "the sight" dreams about your imminent death, THEN you need to make sure your will is up to date. Until then, don't sweat it.

Maybe, like Scrooge, you can put it all down to something I ate. Or, maybe, something YOU ate.

Mike Vanderboegh

The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.

PS: If your preconceptions can stand the shock, you might try reading Professor Churchill's book. You could even learn something. Unless, of course, your mind is completely closed.

"Going beyond the pale."

Now I'm sure Neiwert used the phrase "beyond the pale" in the modern sense of going beyond the limits of law or decency. But do you know where that term came from?
Wikipedia tells us:

The Pale (An Pháil in Irish) or the English Pale (An Pháil Shasanach), was the part of Ireland that was directly under the control of the English government in the late Middle Ages. . . The Pale boundary essentially consisted of a fortified ditch and rampart built around parts of the medieval counties of Louth, Meath, Dublin and Kildare, actually leaving half of Meath, most of Kildare, and south west Dublin on the other side. The northern frontier of the pale was marked by the De Verdon fortress of Castle Roche, whilst the southern border roughly corresponds to the present day M50 motorway in Dublin.

The following description is from The parish of Taney: a history of Dundrum, near Dublin, and its neighbourhood (1895):

In the period immediately after the Norman Settlement was constructed the barrier, known as the "Pale," separating the lands occupied by the settlers from those remaining in the hands of the Irish. This barrier consisted of a ditch, raised some ten or twelve feet from the ground, with a hedge of thorn on the outer side. It was constructed, not so much to keep out the Irish, as to form an obstacle in their way in their raids on the cattle of the settlers, and thus give time for a rescue. The Pale began at Dalkey, and followed a southwesterly direction towards Kilternan ; then turning northwards passed Kilgobbin, where a castle still stands, and crossed the Parish of Taney to the south of that part of the lands of Balally now called Moreen, and thence in a westerly direction to Tallaght, and on to Naas in the County of Kildare. In the wall bounding Moreen is still to be seen a small watch-tower and the remains of a guard-house adjoining it. From this point a beacon-fire would raise the alarm as far as Tallaght, where an important castle stood. A portion of the Pale is still to be seen in Kildare between Clane and Clongowes Wood College at Sallins.

So the "Shasanach" within the perimeter of the Pale (which comes from the Latin "pallus," or fortification stake) -- the leading gentry and merchants -- lived lives not too different from that of their counterparts in England, except that they lived under the constant fear of attack from the free Irish, "beyond the pale."

In a sense then, I would agree with Neiwert. I am, in that definition, the Irish definition, "beyond the pale." I am free and I intend to remain so.

Firearms Training by Michael Gaddy

My thanks to Armdcav for forwarding this piece by Michael Gaddy at LewRockwell.com. I invite your comments.

Mike
III

Firearms Training
by Michael Gaddy

"You play the way you practice" was a favorite saying of my high school football coach back in the day. This statement is just as relevant to firearms training as it ever was to football. A large number of people, both those who are new to firearms self-defense and those who have been shooting for years, consider practicing at bull’s-eye targets adequate for self-defense. Such training will only be adequate in the unlikely event an individual is attacked by a target with rings and numbers. Mental and realistic training is paramount when it comes to defending your life.

The majority of what passes for firearms training today centers around approval for concealed carry (CCW) permits. I find it hard to believe that those who hate and fear the state are willing to submit themselves to the authority of the state when it comes to their right to defend themselves. CCWs exist as revenue producing programs for the state and those it sanctions as trainers. It also provides the state with a database of what they consider to be "domestic terrorists" and/or their greatest threat. To beg and pay the state for permission to do that which one already has the right to do is beyond the pale.

The very idea that only those sanctioned by the state have the right to defend themselves should be repugnant to all who claim to cherish freedom.

Firearms instructors teach from theoretical or practical experience. The vast majority of instructors have never been in a situation where they were forced to defend their lives or the lives of others with deadly force. They teach theory, that which they have read or studied. The advantage of being taught by an instructor with practical experience is obvious. Would you rather your pilot have actual flight experience or someone who has only read a manual on flying? Staying the night at Holiday Inn Express does not work in this situation either.

Firearms instructors who actively support politicians who do not support the Second Amendment are not worthy of your time or your money. Many of the "premiere" firearms trainers continue to politically support the "lesser of two evils," while proclaiming true 2A supporters such as Ron Paul to be unelectable. These people are simply shills for the state.


Firearms instructors who profess undying allegiance to the right to defend oneself from personal attack and tyrannical government who support a candidate such as Bush or Condoleezza Rice is analogous to a man professing his wife to be faithful because she is only sleeping with three other men!

Very few are the firearms instructors today who teach comprehensive self-defense, mental preparation, threat assessment, engaging multiple threats, situational awareness, firing while injured and instinctive shooting from actual experience.

One recent trainee, a beautiful lady from South Florida, told me her total rounds fired when qualifying for her CCW was seven; and they call that training. She readily admitted she was keeping her firearms under lock and key in a closet because she felt unprepared to use them, even though the state, with the issuance of a CCW, had judged her qualified to do so. The state and its vetted instructor had their money and could care less whether the lady was properly trained to defend herself in a life-threatening situation.

Preparing to defend yourself or your loved ones with a firearm should be given the most serious consideration. If you would not trust your money to Paul Krugman; your religious beliefs to Pat Robertson; your foreign policy to Dick Cheney; the future of this nation to Obama or the right to defend yourself to Charles Schumer, why would you trust your self-defense training to someone who teaches based on theory and supports the lesser of two evils when it comes to politicians?

July 27, 2009

Michael Gaddy , an Army veteran of Vietnam, Grenada, and Beirut, lives in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest.

And thus the abyss beckons: "David Neiwert died violently last night."

Michael Brescia, former Catholic choirboy from Philadelphia, member of the Aryan Republican Army bank robbery gang, likely OKC Bombing conspirator and the man who allegedly threatened to slit the throats of my children while I was forced to watch. Oh, yeah, and an all around nice guy according to his neoNazi friends.



Like France during the Wars of Religion, Spain under the Second Republic (1931-1939) was divided into two broad and mutually hostile segments that differed from one another in numerous fashions and eyed one another with mixed suspicion, hostility, and contempt. In blunt terms, one can characterize this as a cleavage between Left and Right, these distinctions being simultaneously socioeconomic (the Right drawing its primary support from the bourgeosie and its clients; the Left from the working classes) and political (Marxists, libertarians and most republicans on the Left; monarchists -- of varying stripes -- Falangists, Radicals . . . on the Right).Regional divisions further complicated the picture . . . Religious considerations also figure: Whereas the Right was generally supportive of, and supported by, the Catholic Church, the Left was openly -- and in varying degrees, militantly anti-clerical.

Three times between 1931 and 1936 elections were held . . .a procedure that can be described as the normal ritual whereby modern democratic states are periodically reconstructed. For here, not only are the formal structures and dominant ideologies of such societies legitimated, but rival parties and factions are also integrated as they cooperate in waging a rule-governed competition for (temporary) control of state power. In this case, however, little was gained either by way of political stability or of national unity. Rather, all three campaigns -- the first and third of which were won by the Left, the second by the Right -- were bitterly fought, and the rival segments of Spanish society emerged from each one more deeply estranged than ever before. In parliament both blocs sought to press their advantage when they had the upper hand and sought to stymie the other's programs when in opposition. Moreover, within this short period, both sides had increasing recourse to direct and often violent action by way of strikes, lockouts, capital flight, land occupation, insurrection, and assassination. -- Bruce Lincoln, "Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain; On the Brink of Civil War: July 1936" in Discourse and the Construction of Society, pp. 103-104

I think civil wars begin with the smallest of social estrangements and work their way to Gotterdammerung along an escalating path strewn with unthinking banal discourtesies, deliberate slights, virulent name calling and finally assaults -- first on the truth, then on the law and, at last, on each other.

I say this because David Neiwert died violently last night, and when told, I didn't give a hoot in hell. I actually grimly smiled and muttered, "Serves the lying collectivist bastard right."

Then I woke up.

I know where the dream came from (I refuse to call it a nightmare, for there was no fright involved on my part, a little lack that oddly bothers me more than if there had been). I was looking for a quote of mine for a chapter heading on Absolved and came across this once again by accident.

Weeding out those racists

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

There's a perfectly simple reason that white supremacists and far-right extremists keep popping up in the immigration debate: the anti-immigrant right is just talking their game. They're naturally drawn to the cause because it is their cause. . . Neither is it a big surprise that the leading anti-immigrant enterprise, the Minutemen, is constantly being infiltrated by neo-Nazis, or that so many of their spinoff groups are riddled throughout with extremists and racists, some going so far as to ally themselves with neo-Nazis.

The Minutemen, of course, make much ado about their efforts to "weed out the racists," though of course the reality is that their success is mixed at best.

What nobody seems to ask, though, is why they have to "weed out the racists" in the first place. If the core of their appeal isn't racial in nature, then why do they draw so many people for whom it is?

This is not a problem for most liberal groups -- say, the ACLU, or MoveOn.org. This is a problem largely on the right, and it's particularly pronounced among the nativist right in the current immigration debate.

Down in Alabama, a Minuteman leader made news by publicly drumming out a white supremacist:

An activist who distributed copies of a white supremacist newspaper at a rally against illegal immigration was banned from future events by the group that helped stage the rally, a leader of the organization said Wednesday.

Mike Vanderboegh, a spokesman for the Alabama Minutemen, said a woman he identified as Carolyn Edwards wasn't welcome at future demonstrations by his group, which helped put on a rally Tuesday in Birmingham during a national caravan against illegal immigrants.

Vanderboegh identified Edwards as a longtime activist with the white supremacist Christian Identity movement.

People like Vanderboegh serve a useful function to groups like the Minutemen: they avidly try to expell white supremacists and loudly publicize it when they do so, even though their efforts amount to a finger in the dike.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has more on Vanderboegh:

After spending parts of October patrolling the border in New Mexico, Mike Vanderboegh and the two or three others who made up his Alabama Minuteman Support Team decided they'd had enough. Despite the presence of an alluring array of military toys -- "night vision devices, global positioning systems, portable seismic intrusion detectors and ham radios" -- the men, all once associated with the militia movement of the 1990s, decided to call it quits. Apparently, their citizens' patrol, aimed at keeping illegals out of America, proved less than thrilling.

As of Nov. 1, the tiny group gave itself another name -- the Alabama Minuteman Surveillance Team -- and the mission of making life miserable for any business that hired undocumented workers. "We hereby put exploitative employers and crooked politicians on notice," Vanderboegh declared after ending the patrols and deciding to return to Alabama to concentrate on the situation there. "We intend to make it toxic for anyone doing public or private business to use illegals. If I were a politician in Alabama right now, I'd start getting REAL careful about who I accepted money from. Because we're fixin' to flip on the light switch."

Vanderboegh makes a useful illustration of this PR-driven sleight-of-hand, because he performed almost exactly the same function as a member of the militia movement in the 1990s:

I remember Vanderboegh vividly as a bellicose fellow who decided he was going to drum the racists out of the militia movement. At one point, he got into a very public Usenet spat with Kirk Lyons, who was fresh off a victory of sorts in helping negotiate an end to the Freemen standoff in Montana.

Lyons, you see, was closely associated with a number of racist-right figures, and was also the attorney for one Andreas Strassmeier. Because he was a sometime resident of the white-supemacist enclave Elohim City in the Ozarks -- a place Timothy McVeigh was believed to have stayed in during the runup to the Oklahoma City Bombing -- Strassmeier was linked by a number of conspiracy theorists to the bombing as well.

One of the first of these was Vanderboegh, who operated an anti-SPLC Web site for awhile called Dees Watch, and at one point was a spokesman for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Vanderboegh had been affiliated early on with the Gadsden Militia, and then formed his own branch.

It was from there that he launched his attacks on Lyons. Vanderboegh had a special spin on the Oklahoma City tragedy: that it had been a government setup, using Strassmeier and a gang of bank robbers in an arcane plot to frame the militia movement. So when Lyons posted on a Usenet forum devoted to militias, Vanderboegh wrote a polemic denouncing Nazis' presence in the militias and insisting they be run out. A portion of it:

I'll leave it to the gentle readers to decide who, and what, you represent. Nazi or Nazi snitch? It matters only to your inlaws, your "clients" past and present, your paymasters, and to the juries that will judge you, here and in the Hereafter. It's crimes I'm concerned with, Kirk. Specifically, a certain mass murder in Oklahoma that you and your client(s) know a hell of a lot more than your "little ole me?" manner wants to admit.

As Dan Yurman reported at the time, much of Vanderboegh's fulminations formed the basis for an actual cottage industry in conspiracy theories about Oklahoma City.

Vanderboegh's schtick, really, hasn't changed. He's every bit as impotent in terms of effectively driving the racists and extremists out of the Minutemen as he was in the militia movement.

Part of the reason is that Vanderboegh -- protests notwithstanding -- is pretty clearly an extremist himself, prone to conspiracy theorizing and violent talk about armed uprisings. As the SPLC report notes:

Vanderboegh has consistently portrayed himself as a moderate, first in the militia world and now in the anti-immigration movement. But he hasn't always sounded that way. Back in the mid-1990s, he wrote a document entitled "Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War" in which he discussed the utility of snipers using "violence carefully targeted and clearly defensive: war criminals, secret policemen, rats (Pitcavage take note)."

But the larger problem is that the Minutemen's core appeal is not to freshly awakened post-9/11 concerns about border security, but rather deliberately fomented racial fears about preserving "white culture" [see: privilege]. This has always been the racist right's bailiwick, so of course they're going to come swimming around when the water is rich with familiar scents, as sharks are wont to do.

That was certainly the case with the militia movement as well. Perhaps more tellingly, the common dynamic was for seemingly "normal" conservatives to be increasingly radicalized by the movement, to the point of becoming outright extremists.

Neiwert and the Narrative of 1995

There is so much factually wrong about this piece that it is hard to know where to begin. At the time it was brought to my attention I was quite ill and never, to my recollection, responded comprehensively to it.

I suppose at this point, I should hasten to make plain that, as far as I know, David Neiwert is still above room temperature. He remains a major proponent of what Professor Robert Churchill calls "The Narrative of 1995," (see To Wave Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face, University of Michigan Press, 2009), which elides and conflates the very real differences between the constitutional militia movement and the racists who sought to infiltrate and take it over. (Much as the same dynamic seen in the efforts of the various communist parties in the Sixties and Seventies to infiltrate and manipulate the broader-based anti-Vietnam War movement, something I know about first-hand.)

An early example of this can be found here in a 1997 article for the Montana Law Review Symposium entitled Ash on the Sills: The Significance of the Patriot Movement in America.

Of course it is in the political and economic interests of the pimps of the Narrative of 1995 to lump us all into a big, sticky ball of excrement with the neoNazis, the Klan and the "Christian" Indentities. By inflating the racist collectivist balloon man, they hope to obscure the larger body of non-racists so as to be able to ignore our very real concerns and arguments -- issues of rapacious government and police violence that have absolutely nothing to do with race -- concerns and arguments that the Founders would have certainly understood better than the collectivism of Neiwert and Associates.

The bitter irony for folks like me who have spent just about their entire lives fighting neoNazis and their racist running dogs like the Klan and Identity is that people like Neiwert, Morris "the Molester" Dees, and Mark "the Hindenberg" Pitcavage (who started out selling names culled from trolling on militia Internet sites to the FBI and now provides "the brain trust" on "extremist" subjects for the ADL) only talk about fighting collectivist racism and anti-Semitism, whereas we do it, every day at street level, incurring considerable risk to ourselves and our families in the process.

Although Strassmeir had been allowed to flee beyond the reach of the law, other associates of his remained within grasp. Glenn and Cathy Wilburn, who had been tracking Strassmeir, filed a civil suit in 1996 naming Strassmeir and Michael Brescia along with McVeigh, Fortier, "and other unknown individuals" for the wrongful deaths of their grandsons Chase and Colton Smith, two of the day-care center children killed in the bombing. Brescia, who had played in a skinhead rock band at Elohim City, disappeared for several months after Strassmeir's return to Germany. Late last year he turned up at his parents' home in Philadelphia. On January 30, 1997 he was arrested and charged, along with three other Elohim City habitues from Pennsylvania, in the ARA bank robbery spree. Considering how long Brescia and his associates had been allowed to wander about freely, it is fair to ask whether federal authorities ever would have arrested them except for the pressure brought by the Wilburns and others.

Shortly before federal agents swarmed in to arrest Brescia, members of various militia groups had begun a campaign to draw attention to the conspicuous disinterest of the Justice Department in the Elohim City resident who bears a resemblance to the sketch of the suspect known as John Doe No. 2. In January, Arlin Adams and other members of local militia groups began putting up "Unwanted" posters on telephone poles in Brescia's neighborhood and throughout Philadelphia. The posters read, "UNWANTED by the FBI - Michael Brescia aka 'John Doe #2,'" and provided several paragraphs of text on Brescia, as well as his parents' Philadelphia address and a photograph of Brescia beside the familiar sketch of the bombing suspect. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was in Philadelphia to photograph the poster effort and reported on it in the January 26th issue of the Sunday Telegraph. In a matter of days, Brescia and three of his cohorts were arrested - although not for the Oklahoma City bombing. -- William F. Jasper, Elohim, Terror and Truth, The New American, 31 March 1997

In January 1997, right after we embarrassed the FBI into arresting Michael Brescia and the rest of the Aryan Republican Army bank robbery gang, I got a call from Philadelphia. It was a reporter, someone I had worked with on the poster campaign. The reporter wanted to tell me something he'd heard from a Philly cop/source of his. A jailhouse snitch who shared accomodations with Michael Brescia had ratted that the former choirboy was raving about me and the posters that my friend Arlin Adams and the 1st Militia PsyOps Company (with critical help from the New Jersey militia) had put up. Brescia blamed us, quite rightly, for his arrest.

"He says that if he bonds out, he's going to come to Alabama and kill you, but only after he slits the thoats of your children while you're forced to watch."

At the time, my daughters were ages six and four. By then, my son was eighteen and no longer at home.

I did not tell my wife.

I did call Adams to tell him to be on the lookout for guys with "88" tattoos. (I miss my good friend Arlin, a kind, gentle veteran of Vietnam, he was a traditional Episcopalian and great Christian. Shortly after he found and married the love of his life and moved to Missouri, he was found dead on the floor of his new home. They said it was from natural causes. He was a man who understood, and practiced, spiritual warfare. His death was a loss I still feel.)

When Brescia was denied bail I began to breathe a little easier. He had carried bombs into banks multiple times, each count of which carried a mandatory life sentence. I had reckoned without Brescia's curious pull with the federal government. He made a deal for five years total and was out in four. As far as I know, he still walks the streets. If he ever shows up in my neighborhood, I'll shoot first and ask questions later. That is the reality I live with. That is the price I have chosen to pay, and I expect no pity for it. As David Brin observed in The Postman, you can love the big things, but don't expect them to love you back.

Later, as part of Operation White Rose, constitutional militiamen engaged in a campaign of intimidation of specific neoNazis linked to the ARA and the Oklahoma City bombing. They were getting, some of them, a free pass from the FBI. We wanted them to understand that they did not have one from us. Of course, they threatened back.

When effete pencil necks like Neiwert, for reasons of money or politics or both, sneered at the differences between me and my friends and the filth we were fighting, it was (and still is) very hard to take. For if you think all of this accumulated stress and fear -- the threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, having to look out the window before you walk out the door, making the family stay inside while you go out to start the car, and always, ALWAYS, packing, having firearms handy everywhere in the house -- did not have an effect upon my family, they can tell you now.

It did.

(It is interesting that Professor Churchill, who was reading the same Internet postings at the time as Neiwert, came to a much different conclusion than he did. Churchill correctly identified early on the differences between the constitutional militias and what he called the "millennials" who had much less aversion to racists and neoNazis. I suppose the difference between Churchill and Neiwert was and is intellectual honesty.)

And it is not as if Neiwert had no way of knowing this. He most certainly knew about the poster campaign that led to Brescia's arrest -- he pays too close attention to "racist right" doings to miss it. But because the collectivist "left" has long ago decided that during Democrat administrations, the FBI is "their" FBI, it would have been biting the hand that fed them to admit that the constitutional militias were waging a war against racist terrorists, one that the FBI was reluctant to prosecute themselves. It did not fit with their meme. Not neat. Not neat at all. So they ignored our efforts, they slandered us, and they continue to slander us. Yet slanders do not go unnoticed by the slandered.

So last night, just before bed, I happened again upon his old screed, and I went to sleep pissed off once more. In the night, not coincidentally, circumstances of civil war killed him in my dreams. But as he did not die by my hand in the REM shadows, I do not feel guilty, merely sad.

I am sad because it is one simply one more example among thousands of that estrangement, that slow division of what used to be one nation and one people, that will likely one day slide us all into bloody civil war. And it will be because, after all of the accumulated lies and slights and slanders, we no longer care whether the liars, the slighters and the slanderers live or die.

And thus the abyss beckons, from the accumulated estrangement of lies and slanders.

David Neiwert did not die last night, although the abyss he has eagerly helped create may yet one day claim him.

"People who live in grass houses shouldn't throw lawnmowers." SPLC cockroaches toy with Lou Dobbs' lightswitch.

SPLC's new headquarters: a grass house.

Folks,

First I would like to thank Jackie J. for forwarding me a copy of this. More from me on the other side.

Mike
III

SPLC President Calls on CNN to Remove Lou Dobbs from Air, Cites Newsman's Support for Extremist-Inspired 'Birther' Claims

The following is a letter from SPLC President Richard Cohen to CNN President Jonathan Klein.

July 24, 2009

Jonathan Klein
President
CNN/U.S.
1 Time Warner Center
New York, N.Y. 10019-6038

Dear Mr. Klein,

As an important and respected news organization, CNN has a special responsibility to ensure the accuracy of its reporting. We have written to you before about our concern that Lou Dobbs repeatedly fails to live up to this standard in his reporting on immigration. Now, Mr. Dobbs is again trading in falsehoods and racist conspiracy theories, questioning President Obama's American citizenship.

On the July 15 edition of "Lou Dobbs Tonight," Mr. Dobbs questioned the official certificate provided by the president and the State of Hawaii and complained that President Obama has not made public the "original document." On his radio program, Mr. Dobbs has repeatedly questioned the president's fitness for office, demanding he "show the documents" and, at one point, jokingly suggesting President Obama may be "undocumented."

The truth about the president's birth is not in dispute. It has been verified by Factcheck.org, among many other serious news organizations, and his official birth documents have been made public. CNN itself has repeatedly reported on the falsity of the claims of the "birthers," and the network's esteemed legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, recently called those claims "a joke." As you know, even Mr. Dobbs' frequent fill-in anchor, Kitty Pilgrim, debunked the birthers on the July 17 edition of Mr. Dobbs' own CNN show. The fact that Mr. Dobbs suggests otherwise on CNN ? while real CNN reporters telll the truth ? is both deplorable and an embarrassment to all serious journalists.

As he has in several other instances, Mr. Dobbs, in taking up the birthers' claims, is adopting an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that originated on the radical racist right. As Gawker.com has reported, this particular conspiracy theory was first developed by an open anti-Semite and circulated by right-wing extremists who cannot accept the fact that a black man has been elected president of the United States. Among its adherents was neo-Nazi James von Brunn, the alleged murderer of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., this June. Von Brunn had helped spread the birthers' claims on the Internet and attacked the "dishonest & conspiratorial Media" for not taking them up.

This is not the first time Mr. Dobbs has pushed racist conspiracy theories or defamatory falsehoods about immigrants. We wrote you in 2007 to bring to your attention his utterly false claim that 7,000 new cases of leprosy had appeared in the United States in a recent three-year period, due at least in part to immigrants. (The real number, according to official statistics, was about 400. Mr. Dobbs took his spurious information from the late right-wing extremist, Madeleine Cosman.) In addition, Mr. Dobbs has reported as fact the so-called Aztlan conspiracy, which claims that undocumented Mexican immigrants are part of a plot to "reconquer" the American Southwest. He has suggested there is something to a related conspiracy theory that claims the governments of Mexico, the United States and Canada are secretly planning to merge into the "North American Union." He has falsely claimed that "illegal aliens" fill one third of American prison and jail cells. And Mr. Dobbs has routinely disparaged, on CNN's air, those who have had the integrity to point out the falsity of these and similar claims.

Respectable news organizations should not employ reporters willing to peddle racist conspiracy theories and false propaganda. It's time for CNN to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves.

Sincerely,
J. Richard Cohen
President

Ricky Cohen, suicidal SPLC cockroach in search of a CNN light switch.

Uh, huh. Well, a number of things occured to me when I read this latest SPLC classic. I distilled them down in the form of a letter to Lou Dobbs. Here it is:


"People who live in grass houses shouldn't throw lawnmowers." -- Officer Judy, Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 1968.

Dear Mr. Dobbs,

As you well know by now, Ricky Cohen of the inappropriately named Southern "Poverty" Law Center has demanded that CNN remove you from the air, by means of a perfect jeremiad of a letter which is shot through with the same conflations, elisions, half-truths, deliberately sloppy logic and guilt-by-associations that have long characterized the SPLC trademark.

My first thought upon reading it was that it must be fund-raising time again. Certainly SPLC's fortune has been nastily depleted by the economic downturn. Yet one wonders why the well-paid Mr. Cohen, who possesses a mind crafty enough to serially shake down gullible folks of their hard-earned money, would violate Mark Twain's famous dictum: "Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the gallon."

This incaution may come from the fact that the state-run media in this country has never taken a really close look at SPLC's history and modus operandi, a bag of dead cats that their own hometown newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, once dubbed "Marketing the Militias."

Non-profit watchdog groups have long condemned SPLC's practices and penchant for internal secrecy. They have in the past been sued for their own racist practices by former staffers.

Indeed, their defense of the ATF at the time of the 1995 Good O' Boys Roundup scandal, when Morris Dees gave political cover to racist federal agents (who handed out "Nigger Hunting Licenses" and infamously depicted "The Birth of the Black Race" in a skit by pulling a black baby doll from a watermelon) by declaring the videotape of the affair taken by Alabama militiamen to be a fake was wholly inconsistent with their alleged mission statement. The tape was subsequently proven to be legitimate by FBI forensics expert Frederick Whitehurst, but Morris Dees was more interested in protecting his sources of information within the ATF -- an unholy and illegal alliance reflecting an identity of interest. Dragonslayers need the threat of scary dragons to frighten the villagers into providing their next free meal.

Many veterans of the Civil Rights struggle here in Alabama despise Morris Dees, calling him a "civil rights pimp" and "hustler" who "makes money off dead black boys." Were you to interview these genuine footsoldiers of the Fifties and Sixties, they would give you plenty of quotes that would take the hide off Dees and his "civil rights" organization.

Yet the most dangerous aspect of SPLC's activities over the years is not their unscrupulous fund raising nor the poor quality of their so-called "intelligence reports" but rather the way they have managed to insert their own world view into all levels of law enforcement. This "Narrative of 1995" is dissected quite professionally by historian Robert Churchill in his new book, "To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face." (University of Michigan Press, 2009) You have only to see the horrendous "Right Wing Extremism" report by DHS or the equally fallacious Missouri MIAC report to recognize the fingerprints of SPLC's leftist lie machine.

And the sad thing is that it is all done for money. There is no "poverty" in the SPLC's bank accounts, nor in their fund-raising methods (unless it is a poverty of scruples). All of which brings me back to Ricky Cohen's incaution. "People who live in grass houses shouldn't throw lawnmowers," warned Officer Judy of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968. Yet that is just what Cohen has done.

He has picked a fight with someone who, if they don't buy ink by the gallon, certainly has plenty of electrons available to turn a very bright, white-hot light on SPLC's activities over the years -- activities that will not bear critical scrutiny. So why this particular political cockroach is toying with the light switch that can send him scurrying is beyond me.

Perhaps you should ask him. On prime time.

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

Obama eats crow on police Sergeant Crowley. Doesn't like taste.

"You can't make me eat my own words. I don't wanna."

Oh, how bitter even a non-apology apology tastes to the Narcissist-in-Chief.

Obama Seeks to Clarify 'Stupidly' Comment, Praises White Policeman.

President Obama stopped short of an apology to Sgt. James Crowley for saying he "acted stupidly" for arresting black Harvard scholar Henry Lewis Gates Jr., but said he should have chosen his words more carefully.

President Obama stopped short of an apology to Sgt. James Crowley on Friday for saying he "acted stupidly" for arresting black Harvard scholar Henry Lewis Gates Jr., but said he should have chosen his words more carefully.

At an impromptu appearance at the daily White House briefing, Obama said he spoke with Crowley over the phone, and said he wanted to share a beer with Crowley and Gates at the White House.

"Because this has been ratcheting up and I helped contribute to ratcheting it up, I want to make clear that in my choice of words I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically and I could have calibrated those words differently."

"My sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve it the way the wanted to resolve it," Obama added.

Earlier in the day Friday, the Cambridge and area police unions voiced their support for Crowley and called for an apology from Obama for his statement.

"His remarks were obviously misdirected but made it worse yet by suggesting somehow this case should remind us of a history of racial abuse by law enforcement," Dennis O'Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, said at a news conference.

O'Connor also referred to statements made by Governor Deval Patrick -- the state's first black governor -- who called the arrest "every black man's nightmare."

"Whatever may be the history, we deeply resent the implications and reject any suggestion that in this case or any other case that they've allowed a person's race to direct their activities. However we hope they will reflect upon their past comments and apologize to the men and women of the Cambridge Police Department," O'Connor said.

Obama has said he was surprised by the controversy sparked by his comments. White House spokesman Roberts Gibbs said early Friday that the president regrets that the media have gotten all worked up over the controversy and been distracted from other more substantive issues such as health care.

Obama's remarks sparked outrage among many police officers who say the criticism could make it harder for police to work with people of color and set back the progress of race relations that helped Obama become the nation's first black president.

Gates was arrested July 16 by Crowley, who was first to respond to the home the renowned black scholar rents from Harvard, after a woman reported seeing two black men trying to force open the front door. Gates said he had to shove the door open because it was jammed.

He was charged with disorderly conduct after police said he yelled at the white officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after Crowley demanded Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home. The charge was dropped Tuesday, but Gates has demanded an apology, calling his arrest a case of racial profiling.

Obama was asked about Gates' arrest at the end of a nationally televised news conference on health care Wednesday night and began his response by saying Gates was a friend and he didn't have all the facts.

"But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry," Obama said. "No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 -- what I think we know separate and apart from this incident -- is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that's just a fact."

Threeper Patch and Nyberg Flag Update

OK, first about the patches. Currently, they still have both Woodland and 3 Color Desert available. They are still $4.00 per patch postpaid. (That cost may go up on the next re-order, so get yours now.)

For ordering information, email ravenswoodent@sbcglobal.net.

USPS money orders, certified or cashier's checks process immediately; orders with personal or company checks are held until cleared.



Now, as to the Nyberg Three Percent Flags, I was shown a production sample from the manufacturer this week and although the sewing quality was good, we were all very disappointed with the colors used. Both the red and blue were "washed out." They are going back to the manufacturer to get the colors straightened out, and then flag production will begin.

As with the patches, the flags will be available from Raven's Wood. I think they're looking at $20.00 per flag on the cost, again postpaid. That ain't bad.

Forward any questions to:

Raven's Wood Enteprises, LLC
http://www.ravenswoodenterprises.com
ravenswoodent@sbcglobal.net

Praxis: And the M-4 Carbine goes rolling along.

I'm going to start a thread here that I just KNOW is going to prompt fire and brimstone. I have one M-4gery (semi-auto flat-top short-barrel AR in 5.56mm). I may soon have another. One is assigned to my 16 year old daughter. The next one will go to my 18 year old daughter. I like the little carbine for a couple things, and a couple things only. It is chambered in a standard caliber easily obtainable and it is light and handy, just the sort of weapon for slight-statured youngsters and especially female youngsters.

Things I don't like about McNamara's rifle and the 5.56mm round it chambers:

The system, to put it bluntly, craps where it eats. This is the principal cause of over forty years of weapons malfunctions from South Vietnam to Iraq. Men have died because of it, when their finely tuned and equisitely fitting actions became fouled with a combination of burnt powder and environmental detritus -- mud or sand -- and turned them from full-auto rifles into single shots, or worse, clubs. My son so distrusted the M-4 he was issued during OIF-1 that he tried to get his 101st superiors to let him carry an AK-47. Request denied. He settled for an M-4 with an M-203 40mm grenade launcher slung underneath. He KNEW the M-203 would work.

I never liked the recoil spring in the plastic stock, making the action far too susceptible to catastrophic failure. The fixed stock version of the AR-180 (I used to own a Costa Mesa Armalite) seemed to me to be much more sensible -- reliable piston action and even if you broke the folding stock off, you still had a working firearm. They were far cheaper to produce, as well.

I was always a fan of the full-sized cartridges -- .30-06 and 7.62 NATO -- and the absolutely reliable weapons chambered for them: the M-1, the M14, the FN/FAL and the H&K 91. What is cover to a 5.56 turns into mere concealment for a 7.62 NATO or .30-06.

In addition, the larger cartridge is able to out-range the smaller by a considerable margin, thus giving you a leg up on the "three hundred meter war."

All of that said, the fact is that the M-4 is here, and here to stay for a while, thanks to that iron rule of bureaucracy -- "This is the way we've always done it."

These observations were prompted by CAMPYBOB, a moderator over at AssaultWeb.net, who posted this article from Army Times back on 6 July:

Army acquires rights to M4
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jul 6, 2009 17:53:53 EDT

As of July 1, the Army has taken control of the design rights to the M4 carbine from its sole maker, Colt Defense LLC. Translation: With an uncertain budget looming, the service is free to give other gun companies a crack at a carbine contract.

The transition of ownership of the M4 technical data package marks the end of an era and Colt’s exclusive status as the only manufacturer of the M4 for the U.S. military for the past 15 years.

In late November, Army senior leadership announced the service’s intent to open a competition for a new carbine this fall in preparation for the June 30 expiration date of Colt’s hold on the M4 licensing agreement.

The Army is slated to finish fielding the last of its 473,000 M4 requirement some time next year.

Army weapons officials maintain that it’s good to have the option of inviting other gun companies to compete to make the M4 as it is now, if the need arises, said Col. Doug Tamilio, project manager for soldier weapons.

“We probably won’t do anything with it right now. ... We have what we need,” Tamilio said. “The good news is we will own it now; that gives us the flexibility to do what we need it to do.”

Small-arms companies waiting for the chance to compete for the Army’s next carbine view Colt’s loss of the M4 TDP as a new beginning for the industry and for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Now that the sole-source era is over, we hope to see free and open competition of any interim or long-term solution for the service rifle or carbine for the American soldier,” said Jason Schauble, vice president of the military products division of Remington. “Now there is a chance to get something better in the hands of the soldier. Why not do it? If Colt wins again, God bless them.”

Colt officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Some in the small-arms industry say Colt’s 15-year control over the M4 is a natural part of the gun-making business.

“If a company designs and develops a product, they don’t do that for fun; they have a whole factory of people to feed,” said George Kontis, who is now the vice president of business development for Knights Armament Company but has worked for multiple small-arms firms since 1967.

“This is not anything new in history. It has always happened this way,” he said.
The next competition

For now, the Army is planning to begin a competition in October that could produce a new carbine by sometime in 2012, but there are no guarantees, weapons officials maintain.

Before that can happen, the Army’s updated carbine requirement — the document that lays out what the service wants in the future weapon — still has to clear the senior Army leadership and win joint approval, he said.

Funding is another uncertainty, he said. The Army can’t begin the request for proposal process this year if the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill doesn’t include the start-up costs for the venture, Tamilio said.

“I don’t need a lot of money,” Tamilio said. “I think it’s less than $10 million for fiscal year 2010. ... It’s obviously tied into the president’s budget in 2010.”

Colt still owns the TDP for the M16 rifle, but its status as the sole supplier for the military ended in the late 1980s, when FN Manufacturing LLC won its first contract. The Army still uses versions of the M16, but stopped buying them when it decided to field M4s to all deploying combat units in 2006.

The M4 became the subject of congressional scrutiny in 2007 when lawmakers expressed concerned about whether soldiers had the best available weapon.

In November 2007, the weapon finished last in an Army reliability test against other carbines. The M4 suffered more stoppages than the combined number of jams by the other three competitors: the Heckler & Koch XM8; FNH USA’s Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle, or SCAR; and the H&K 416.

Army weapons officials agreed to perform the dust test after a July 2007 request by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. Coburn took up the issue after a Feb. 26, 2007, Army Times report on moves by elite Army special operations units to ditch the M4 in favor of carbines they consider more reliable.

U.S. Special Operations Command decided to move away from the M4 in November 2004 when the command awarded a developmental contract to FN Herstal to develop its SCAR to replace its M4s and older M16s.

In November, gun makers from across the country attended an Army small-arms industry day in November designed to give weapons officials a look at what is available on the commercial market. There, Army Secretary Pete Geren announced that he had directed the Army’s Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Ga., to update the carbine requirement in preparation for a search for a replacement for the M4.

“If there are no significant issues, I think [the updated requirement] can move through” the Army validation process and receive the blessing of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, Tamilio said.

If that happens, the Army plans to release a draft request for proposal to the small-arms industry in October and a formal RFP early next year, weapons officials maintain.

The first round of testing will likely begin late next summer and last though summer 2011.

Once a weapon is selected in late fiscal 2011, weapons officials hope to have operational testing and a full rate-production decision by late summer in 2012, Tamilio said.

One of the most critical parts of this process will be the three to five months between the draft RFP and the release of the formal RFP, when the industry has the chance to digest and understand what the Army wants in a new carbine, he said.

“Those discussions we have with industry will be vital to getting the real RFP on the street and that should really make for a solid competition,” he said.

Now, frankly, one of the neat things about the M-4 is all the gizmo's you can hang on it. It is the ultimate modularized infantry weapon. This poster gives you an idea:



Yesterday, I received a complimentary copy of the latest Army Times in my post office box, with an article on the cover titled Pimp Your Carbine from their regular column, Gear Scout.

http://militarytimes.com/blogs/gearscout/



Pimp Your Carbine

27 July 2009

Want to become a more effective rifle operator, or just spend a bit of that re-enlistment bonus on something less dangerous than a motorcycle? GearScout is here for you. We went to the units with deep pockets and 50,000 yearly round counts per man and asked them what they ran on their carbines.

We gave an open-ended survey to active-duty and recently retired career operators and trainers to get their desert-island list of carbine upgrades. We compiled the results using a point system and came up with this wish list, ranked in order or what they would add to their weapons first.

Operator’s Choice #1: Sight



The red-dot reflex sight has become the reticle of choice for close-quarters battle. Accurate under stress to about 300 meters, the sight goes with the carbine-length M4 like milk goes with cookies.



Operator favorite: Aimpoint Micro T1 ($650). When the Micro T1 came out at SHOT Show a few years back, it started showing up on everything: soldier's rifles, competition shooter's [ostols, probably even kids' slingsshots. Weighing in at only 3 ounces, it's 42 percent lighter than the M68 and the lightest battle sight out there. One set of batteries will last as long as five years continuously using a medium intensity setting.

Operator’s Choice #2: Light



You can't hit what you can't see. Better to flood a shadowy recess with a momentary blaze of light to look for bad guys. Suoer-bright rail-mounted LEDs with remote switches allow rapid identification of a target without affecting your weapon grip or readiness.

Operator Favorite: SureFire M600C scout Light ($425). The scout Light is the lightest (3.5 oz.) and most compact rail-mount light available in its brightness range. It's a simple, single-brightness LED that will light up a target at 150 meters while still providing good peropheral light. It runs on two CR123s for a couple of hours.

What they said: "Curing close-quarter battle, most buildings will have limited visibility inside, even during the day. A white-light illumonator, combined with the proper training, allows the war fighter the ability to maneuver on the enemy and rapidly enagege the threats accurately."

Operator’s Choice #3: IR Target Designator



U.S. troops do their best work at night, thanks to formidable low-light tech that lets you see the enemy before he can see you. Night vision goggles by themselves are a pain to use with optical sights. An infrared pointer lets you ID and aim in through NVGs and engage targets in total darkness.

Operator Favorite: Insight Technology advanced Target Pointer, Illuminator, Aiming Light. available only to military and law enforcement. The An/PEQ-15 delivers a visible laser pointer along with an IR pointer and IR illuminator that make a deadly combo when used with NVGs. The IR pointer is slaved to the visible laser for easy aiming. It runs from a CR123 for six-plus hours and, best of all, it's about half the size of the older AN/PEQ-2.

Operator’s Choice #4: Extended Rail



The 1913 Picatinny rail is the defacto mounting system since devices can be quickly and solidly attached or removed using cam levers or thumbscrews. Items are indexed using set spacing on the rail, and most items will retain a zero after remounting.

Early handguards were short and rail-less, meaning you needed expensive custom mounts for front-mounted accessories. Later came a short bolt on rails that gave a common mounting system and more real estate, but the rails were clamped around the barrel and that affected accuracy.

Recent rail systems are longer and free floating, meaning they attach to the barrel nut instead of the barrel. This single point of contact means no matter how many gizmos you mount on your heater, the weight won’t cause any barrel deflection or point-of-impact shift when shooting with a supported handguard. New alloys mean the guards can extend the usable area of a handguard considerably without effecting weight, stability or heat transfer performance.

What they said: “A free-floating handguard improves accuracy by isolating the barrel from external pressure. It provides a solid mounting platform for other accessories, keeps the front end light and feels more like a rifle than a giant Lego brick.”

Operator Favorite: JP/VTAC Modular Handguard ($175)

Ditch the cheesegrater and use all that space on your extended handguard to actually hold your carbine instead of a foregrip. The tubular handguard with user-mounted rail sections mean you mount small sections of rail where you want your devices and leave the rest light and clean.

Also mentioned:

Daniel Defense RIS II ($400)- One of the few free-float rail systems that offers a removable bottom rail that allows the mounting of an M203.

LaRue Tactical ($250-$300)- LaRue is a traditional-style handguard with a pin-indexed barrel nut and rails that hug the barrel for a lower profile.

Operator’s Choice #5 Sling



Too many service members consider a sling an afterthought, not really part of the primary weapon. But our operators told us a good two- or one-point sling can have a profound effect on the effective use of your carbine. Modern military operations call for an adaptable sling that accommodates fast roping and climbing while allowing quick and effective weapon presentation. No way this is going to happen with a Vietnam-era three-point sling.

One-point slings are popular because they keep your primary at the ready and allow lightning-fast transitions to your pistol. Adjustable two-point slings give you the ability to present quickly while making it easy to sling a rifle across your back and snug it down for climbing or fast-roping.

What they said: “As everyone knows, if you are moving with a single-point sling and don’t have at least one hand on the carbine, eventually you will catch a hot barrel in the legs or groin — and try climbing a rope or wall and see what kind of circus that turns into. The three-point sling is the best-kept secret in spec ops, and the secret is that it sucks.”

Operator Favorite:

Both the VTAC Sling ($35-$41) and the Blue Force Gear VCAS ($45-$105) were popular in our survey. Both two-point slings come from operational experience gleaned while working behind the fence at Ft. Bragg. The major difference is the adjustment system. The VTAC has a loose tail that you pull to tighten and a stout, spring-loaded buckle tab you pull to loosen. The VTAC is designed to snug up during engagements to make a more stable shooting platform. The VCAS has no loose tail and uses a custom sliding buckle on a loop to gather or loosen the sling. Both slings offer a balance of adjustability and simplicity that have proven equally popular across SOCOM.

Operator’s Choice #6 Trigger



When it comes right down to it, a shooters most intimate point of contact is the trigger. So it makes sense that some of our participants tossed the stock-heavy GI triggers and installed precision two-stage jobs that enhance the feel and accuracy of their weapon. Two-stage means you pull through the first stage up to the break point, then snap through to fire. Upgraded trigger groups provide a more consistent and predictable break, but some aftermarket triggers are too light — great on the range but dangerous in combat. Do your homework on this one.

What they said: “Geissele SSA trigger, the best there is. Non-adjustable, drop it [in] to enhance hit probability, especially in the mid-range under stress.”

“Most factory triggers are not that good out of the box. No one makes a better, more reliable trigger group than Geissele. They hold their products to exacting standards.”

Operator Favorite: Geissele SSF ($250)

Hard to find and harder to pronounce (Guys-Lee), this is a drop-in, two-stage trigger with no adjustment. The pull is set at the factory and remains constant for the life of the trigger. The SSF is designed for combat and has been praised for its simplicity and durability. The SSA ($175) is the non-select fire version of the drop-in trigger .

Operators Choice #7 Back Up Iron Sights



Although you can find photos of cracked, shot and crushed Aimpoints and EOTechs that refused to die, one day those iron sights are going to save your butt. There’s only one trait to consider here: Reliability. The rear sight will likely be folded obediently beneath your optic until you really need it. At that point you want it to flip up without extra button-pressing or knob-twisting. You also want it to be able to hold a zero and not pop up when it’s not needed. Same goes for the front, but some guys roll with a non-folding front sight so they can aim over the top of their optic for really close fights.

What they said: “If your primary sight uses batteries, eventually it will have an electrical problem. I hope that when it happens, it’s not when you’re fighting for your life. But if it is, BUIs and training will hopefully allow you to prevail.”

Operator Favorite: Troy Folding BattleSight set ($250)

Troy was widely chosen as the backup iron sights of choice. They stay closed until needed and flip up easily with no controls. Folding requires a hefty button press so they won’t fold until you want them to. Once they are open, it’s going to take a 1000 lb accident to shear the cross bolt holding the sight up.

Made from aluminum and stainless steel, they should last as long as your rifle. Mount them on a Picatinny rail, use a bullet tip to adjust in .5 MOA clicks and know they are there when you need them.

Operators Choice #8 Mags



Crappy magazines are one of the largest source of stoppages in combat rifles. Some guys swear by standard USGI mags and others won’t let anything but polymer in the mag well. The USGI mag is simple, but the alloy construction leaves the feed lips susceptible to damage from a drop or long-term wear. Once the lips bend out, it’s double-feed city. But they’re metal and they’ve been around forever. The other camp points to the reliability of the polymer mag, with feed lips that won’t bend out of shape and that keeps those rounds feeding smoothly.

What they said: “I shot over 40,000 rounds of carbine last year and the PMAG never once gave me an issue. I did absolutely nothing to maintain them.”

Operator Favorite: PMAG/MagLevel PMAG ($14.95/$17.95)

PMAGs were the only mags that our respondents brought up. At least three things distinguish the PMAG from the USGI mag: The polymer construction is tough. They’ve been dropped and driven over and still continue to feed smoothly. The unique self-leveling follower keeps things trucking upward inside the mag. The MagLevel version shows you how many rounds you or your battle buddy have left with a quick glance at the orange level indicator on the mag’s side.

(End of article)
**********************************************

Of course these mods add thousands of dollars to the cost of your rifle and by the time you hang all of them on the M-4, you're toting a weapon that weighs more than the M-14 series. (That said, if you find some of these laying on the trail and their former owners are past caring, you should at least know what they look like.)

Spaceage gimcrackery aside (and I must confess my eyes are so bad, I must now use an Aimpoint red-dot to hit anything), the rifle, as I said, is here to stay, probably until they come up with Captain Kirk's phaser rifle. Therefore, everyone should familiarize themselves with the system, its ins and outs.




To put on, take off and otherwise service all those doo-dads, you'll need some tools. This enables you to do all that without packing a toolbag.

AR-15/M16 MULTITASKER TOOL
Manufacturer:BROWNELLS
Price:$64.99

Pocket-Packable Multi-Tool With Everything You Need For Field Repair & Adjustment Of Your AR-15

Rugged, compact, fold-open tool contains an amazing array of tools to service your AR-15 and many popular add-on accessories, all in a package that’s barely 4" long when folded and fits in pocket, backpack, range bag, or the included nylon belt pouch. You get a castle nut wrench for collapsible carbine stocks, adjustment tool for four-prong A2-style front sights, 3/8" box wrench for accessory mounts from LaRue Tactical and others, angled carbon scraper with radiused tip, file with chisel-tip carbon scraper, 440C stainless Tanto-style blade with liner lock safety, extended-length needle-nose pliers, wire cutter, and a bit driver with five, interchangeable double-ended bits. Comes with 2 slot-head, 1 Phillips, and 5 hex-head bit tips, plus T10 and T15 Torx® head bits. Bits have a ball-detent locking system to ensure they stay securely in the driver. The Multitasker is made of hardened, tool-grade stainless steel, with a scratch-resistant, matte black hardcoat finish for exceptional strength, and grip panels of durable G10 fiberglass composite with checkered surface pattern for a firm grasp.

SPECS: Stainless steel, matte black finish, with G10 fiberglass grips, matte black. 4-1⁄8" (10.5cm) OAL folded; 6-7⁄8" (17.5cm) OAL extended. Includes 5 double-ended driver tips with rubber storage sleeve and black 1000 denier nylon belt pouch.

"Yer a braver man than I, Gunga Din": Vietnam Veteran Keeps Vow, Eats 40-Year-Old C-rat Pound Cake

As my son would say, "Only an ex-jarhead. . . " My thanks to Typeay for this example of American grit, determination and courage in face of plain common sense.

Mike
III

Vietnam Veteran Keeps Vow, Eats 40-Year-Old (C-ration) Pound CakeFriday, July 24, 2009

(Photo credit: Staff Sgt. Sun Vega/U.S. Army.) Col. Henry A. Moak Jr. digs in to an Army ration pound cake from 1973 at his retirement party.

WASHINGTON — Forty years later, Henry A. Moak, Jr., still loves his pound cake.

The Army colonel popped open an old military 'C' Ration can of pound cake from 1969 at his retirement ceremony, and dug in.

Moak got the drab olive can as a Marine helicopter pilot off the Vietnamese coast in 1973. He vowed to hang on to it until the day he retired, storing it in a box with other mementos.

After a formal retirement ceremony, dozens of friends and relatives joined Moak in the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes as he opened the can to cheers. Moak joked earlier this week that he hoped the can wouldn't explode. It let off a whooshing sound as the pressure seal broke.

"It smells good," Moak said as he put a handful in his mouth. He jokingly staggered back a few feet and loudly cleared his throat, while one person yelled out, "Eeww, gross!"

Moak pronounced the cake "good."

"It's even a little moist," he said, wiping his mouth. He dared anybody "gutsy" enough to join him, and retired Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, who was the U.S. Army Europe commander when Moak served overseas, took an even bigger piece.

"Tastes just like it always did," Mikolashek mumbled with a mouthful of cake as Moak laughed and clapped.

Moak said he wasn't worried about getting sick from any bacteria that may have gotten into the old can, because it looked sealed. But the military discourages eating from old rations.

"Given the risks ... we do everything possible to ensure that overly aged rations are not consumed," said Lawrence Levine, a spokesman for the Defense Supply Center in Philadelphia.

Levine named the threats as mold and deadly botulism if the sealing on the food has been broken, which isn't always visible.

Moat says though he warned his children over the years not to touch his pound cake, he did let them eat some other rations when they were growing up in the 1980s, including canned spaghetti and crackers.

And how did those taste? "Fine. Well ... not like from our great restaurants."

A great one from Vin Suprynowicz: "Taking away their surplus at gunpoint is 'only fair.'"

My thanks to my son Matt for suggesting this one to me from Vin Suprynowicz' blog. I wish I could write as well as he does.

Mike
III

Taking away their surplus at gunpoint is 'only fair'

Posted by Vin Suprynowicz
Wednesday, Jul. 22, 2009 at 07:38 PM

"WASHINGTON (AP) - Obama to tell nation that health reform is key to economic recovery, controlling deficit," said today's 3:06 p.m. news flash.

No, actually, the key to economic recovery and controlling the deficit is giving me 10,000 ounces of gold, a nice bungalow on Maui, and all the unblended Scotch whisky I can drink.

This is hilarious. This guy is convinced they'll believe ANYTHING. If having government pay for just the health care of the poor and the elderly has driven us to the brink of hyperinflation and bankruptcy, surely having government run THE WHOLE THING will eliminate our debts and deficits in no time ... right?

Never mind the little man behind the curtain. That being the nonpartisan congressional budget director, who last week reported the current scheme would drive costs UP, despite the fact their goal is to let old people die while they wait their turn for increasingly out-of-date medical treatments. (See: "Life expectancy, Soviet Union.")

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to say "the key to economic recovery, controlling deficit" is slashing taxes and repealing Medicare and Medicaid, letting patients go back to negotiating their fees with their doctors?

Besides, what happened to "cap-and-trade"? I thought "cap-and-trade" was the key to economic recovery. Or was it card check? Yeah, I thought card check was the key.

One thing I have to say for the socialists; at least they're finally out of the closet. A letter writer this week complains our recent editorials "basically argue there is something unjust about the top 5 percent of wage earners in our country paying 60 percent of the income tax. ...

Since the top 5 pecrent of wage earners hold 60 percent of the wealth in our country, your objection is against what? Fairness?"

This, of course, while based on the same principles of jealousy and armed robbery, actually goes beyond communism, it having been Joe Stalin who famously said the best machinist in the factory should be paid more than the others, in order to keep him at his job, thus increasing the productivity of the whole joint.

One wonders how such characters escaped learning the lessons most of us picked up at our first summer job, watching the slackers and goof-offs get permanently sent home, while those chipper young characters with the ready smiles, always eager to pitch in and do a little more, got quickly promoted to "assistant shift supervisor," with a concomitant hike in pay.

Which do you suppose has a nice house and car, today? I'm hoping it's both; actually, though, if only because the slacker who got fired actually LEARNED A LESSON — one which still doesn't seem to have sunk in for our whining "equalizers."

Pragmatism doesn't seem to weigh on these folks, at all.

The fact that (unless Uncle Sam grabs it all) "the rich" have nothing to do with their "excess" but invest it in dividend-paying schemes that create jobs for everyone else? Just an unproven theory! Communist Cuba is going to spring forward as a new economic powerhouse, any day now!

The fact that higher pay is designed to encourage those with the rare skills necessary to be a doctor or an engineer to pursue those rigorous and exhausting fields?

That if the government required everyone to get "equal" paychecks, the best surgeon might just decide to go read a magazine while manning the counter of the slowest bait-and-tackle shop in town, waiting for his pathetic government "paycheck," while the guy scrubbing up to take out your appendix today would instead be whoever walked by the hospital early this morning and said, "What? Surgeon wanted? Wow, I've always wanted to give THAT a try!"?

No, apparently no practical, real-world considerations can trump the simple doctrine of "fairness" that those who have scrimped and saved and worked and worked to finally find themselves earning in the six figures in this, the final decade before they retire, must shoulder the tax burden of the great majority who have taken an easier path, because it's "only fair."

OK. Let's try one more lesson from earlier days. The young man turns 16 and informs his dad he no longer intends to either go to school or find a job. Instead, he intends to spend his days in bed, smoking, drinking whisky, and perusing girlie magazines.

We all know the answer, don't we?

(Assuming there IS a father in the house. "Single moms" sometimes seem to fail this test.) The answer contains the phrases, "When you're ready to move out and pay your own way," followed at some point by "As long as you're living under my roof and I'M paying the bills. ..."

Fairness? If our goal is "fairness," then explain to me why the top 5 percent of wage earners, now paying 60 percent of the taxes, should not get to cast 60 percent of the votes in all our elections?

Wouldn't that be "merely fair"? Any time you decide to pay the same amount that they're paying, you can vote, too.

Call me goofy, but I love reading about this stuff.

Amphorae from a Roman shipwreck are seen on the seabed near the Italian island of Ventotene. Archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a "graveyard" of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks near the island.

I suppose if fortune had taken another turn, I might have ended up a marine archaeologist. I did once, during the drought of 1988, locate the wreck site of a Civil War-era sternwheeler which sank in 1862 while on Federal service in the old bed of the Mississippi between Arkansas and Mississippi downstream from Memphis. Of course I had to hire a professional MA out of Baton Rouge with a magnetometer to confirm the wreck site.

Unfortunately, although the river went elsewhere after the war, the wreck lies in a federally protected wetlands. No can dig. So sez both the EPA and the Corps of Engineers. Too bad, it is a significant wreck from a transitional phase of steamboat construction, and it had some nice sutler's stores and other goodies on it when it went down.

Anyway, this story below jumped out at me while I was checking my email a bit ago, and I thought I'd share it with you. Of course I can't dive myself. Bad inner ear. Can't get beyond twenty or thirty feet. But I can wish, can't I?

Mike
III

Explorers Find Ancient Shipwrecks
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO,
AP

ROME (July 24) - Archaeologists have found five well-preserved Roman shipwrecks deep under the sea off a small Mediterranean island, with their cargo of vases, pots and other objects largely intact, officials said Friday.

The ships are submerged about 300 to 500 feet off Ventotene, a tiny island that is part of an archipelago off Italy's west coast between Rome and Naples.

The ships, which date from between the 1st century B.C. and the 4th century, carried amphorae — vases used for holding wine, olive oil and other products — as well as kitchen tools and metal and glass objects that have yet to be identified, Italy's Culture Ministry said. The spot was highly trafficked, and hit by frequent storms and dangerous sea currents.

The discovery is part of a new drive by archaeological officials to scan deeper levels of the sea and prevent looting of submerged treasures.

Discoveries of shipwrecks are not unusual in the Mediterranean, but these ships are far better preserved than most, which are often found scattered in fragments, said Annalisa Zarattini, the head of the ministry's office for underwater archaeology.

Because the ships sank at a deeper lever than most known wrecks, they were not exposed to destructive underwater currents, she said.

The ships also sank without capsizing, allowing researchers to observe their cargo largely as it had been loaded, Zarattini said.

"It is like an underwater museum," Zarattini said. The finding also sheds light on the trade routes of ancient Rome, marking the area as a major commercial crossroads, she said.

Treasure hunters usually dive down to about 100 feet underwater, but new and fast-spreading technology will make it increasingly easier for them to dive deep, Zarattini said. "It's important to arrive first," she added.

The ships were found during explorations concluded earlier this month by the ministry and the AURORA Trust, a U.S. group that gathers maritime researchers and provides equipment to explore the sea.

The researchers used sonar technology to provide imagery of the seabed and then employed remotely operated vehicles, the Culture Ministry and the AURORA Trust said.
The oldest of the ships has a cargo of wine amphorae from southern Italy, some stacked in their original position, AURORA said. Another one was carrying moratoria, large bowls used to grind grains. Another was loaded with African amphorae carrying garum, a fish sauce that was a delicacy in ancient Rome.

The largest wreck measures more than 65 feet.

A handful of objects were taken out to be studied and will be put on display in Ventotene.

A Combination Praxis and Intel Report: "The Ammunition Factor."

Mr. A. Nonymous tossed a bit of intel over my electronic transom this morning:

"FYI and it may or may not be significant-

The Feds, probably multiple departments combined, just let a contract for about 745K 223 barrier penetration rounds. These rounds are not used by DOD."

The rounds Mr. Nonymous is referring to are the Winchester Ranger 60 grain Partitions, Q3238, pictured above. This is the FBI standard issue load. According to sources, my own and Internet forums, the current back-order time for this is about one year. State and local police departments who standardized on it cannot obtain it for love nor money.

Depending upon the priority assigned to this contract by the agency, this order could now be slipped in line ahead of all other backorders. As the tip did not come with an open source provenance, I am unable to say which agency let this contract. The round itself was first adopted as standard with the Fibbies in August of 2005, according to this announcement at the time at PoliceOne.com:

Winchester® Wins Multiple Awards for Duty and Training .223 Ammunition for the FBI

Winchester Ammunition has recently won the competition for .223 duty and training ammunition for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In order to meet the tough standards established by the FBI for their duty ammunition, Winchester collaborated with Nosler® and used their outstanding .223, 60 grain Partition® Bullet. This high performance bullet coupled with Winchester's stringent loading capabilities provided the best balance between penetration, expansion and retained weight through all of the barriers in the tough FBI Barrier Testing. . . This New Winchester Ranger® Partition product will be available soon to all Law Enforcement Agencies under the symbol Q3283.

Mr. Nonymous also kindly provided this link from LawOfficer.com, which discusses an evaluation test of the Q3283 and competitors.

The Ammunition Factor
Choosing ammo for your patrol rifles
Jeff Chudwin
Law Officer Volume 4 Issue 11
2008 Nov 20

Patrol rifle ammo must be able to punch through auto glass and heavy clothing to incapacitate offenders. (Photos Jeff Chudwin)

Recent events call for a review of the choice of street ammunition for the police patrol rifle. Why concern ourselves with such specialized information? A bullet is a bullet, and if we do our part in terms of aimed fire, what difference does it make?

Answer: It can mean the difference between winning and losing the fight for life.

As Sergeant Phil Messina (NYPD ret.) of the Modern Warrior training group has taught us, you have only so much time in a fight to do something productive to defend your life and stop the threat. In that wedge of time, your actions will either prove effective, or you allow the offender the opportunity to use that time against you.

As Messina so ably teaches, you can't buy time back in a fight. This is why we must not make choices in tactics and gear that relinquish time to the offender.

In several recent gunfight incidents, the ammo chosen for the patrol rifle mission was reportedly unable to penetrate the sheet metal or glass of the offender's auto and effectively strike the criminal shooter. The bullet came apart after hitting metal and glass, and the remaining fragments had no effect in stopping the attack.

Not surprising, because the officer was using ammunition that wasn't designed for this type of fight.

A number of bullet designs address different tactical needs, and the street fight requires barrier penetration. Firing multiple rounds at the active shooter with no effect due to the wrong choice of ammunition is an example of the time vs. effect equation as taught by Messina. Critical time and opportunity was lost to no good effect, and the gunman continued to fire on officers.

As the training cadre for Illinois' Mobile Training Unit #3, we demonstrate this point in every Patrol Rifle Instructor class we conduct. Using the IWBA/FBI ballistic gelatin protocols, we shoot various bullet types against multiple barriers so officers running their agency's firearms training gain a first-hand understanding of terminal ballistic performance. Most have never seen this testing nor even know of its existence. Using barriers that range from heavy clothing and soft body armor to auto glass and sheet metal, testing either validates the ammo choice or shows why it will fail at the most vital moment.

Other than testing in some consistent and validated manner, how is duty ammunition chosen, and by whom? In some cases, the department's choice was made by those in command who lack ballistic knowledge and expertise but were convinced they must avoid excess penetration due to liability concerns. Of course, the greatest liability is officers and citizens exposed to gunfire without officers having the means to put an end to it. Knowingly choosing less-effective ammunition due to unfounded fears is the same as setting up patrol cars so that officer's speed is restricted to 50 mph. It makes no sense.

As revealed by extensive testing of police-duty ammunition by the FBI, the vast majority of .223-caliber ammo fails to make anywhere near the penetration level needed to deliver effective wounding capability across all testing parameters. With lightweight varmint-type bullets, this is true where no intervening barrier exits other than clothing or even bare skin.

Considering that many of the deadly force events that take place involving patrol and SWAT occur on the street, we must focus on equipping officers with ammunition that's ballistically effective in overcoming violent offenders located in and around autos. The bullet must defeat the barrier in front of the shooter, not fragment and break into lightweight pieces, and retain sufficient velocity to penetrate and strike vital organs and blood vessels deep in the offender's body, causing immediate or rapid incapacitation.

Making the Choice

To determine what you need, you must know what you want. Consider where and under what conditions you expect to meet deadly force threats. Then study the information from the ammunition manufacturers and FBI.

For this review, I will focus on the most common patrol-rifle caliber, the .223 Remington (also designated 5.56mm by the military.) This is the caliber of choice nationwide and has been used by the military since the mid-1960s.

Common .223/5.56mm bullet loads range from 40–77 grains and come in a number of designs. Unlike the military, law enforcement isn't restricted by bullet type. We can choose between full metal jacket, hollow point, soft point, frangible or open tip match. Of those choices, we can choose from bullets designed with light jackets and soft lead cores, or the type classified as barrier penetrators with tough jackets and hard lead-alloy cores or a single formed alloy.

The difference is vital for the police mission. Light-construction bullets universally fail to get through intervening barriers such as sheet metal and glass with sufficient bullet weight remaining to have any effective wounding capability.

Penetration into ballistic gel by bullet fragments of very light weight seldom see the fragments go deeper than 5–6 inches. The photo on the left shows what looks like a shotgun blast to the face of the ballistic gel block. In fact, it's the result of firing a Hornady TAP round through auto glass. This fragment spread is typical of the lack of penetration performance from any of the traditional 55-grain soft or hollow-point .223-caliber bullets after striking a hardened surface such as tempered auto glass.

.223 Remington


In its written materials ( www.hornadyle.com/_img/hornady_tap_report.pdf ) Hornady describes its 55- and 60-grain TAP rounds as offering "rapid expansion, high fragmentation, and low retained weight." Their description is on the money, and when an officer needs reduced penetration, this may be the right choice. It's not what you need on a street mission, however.

XM-193

Full metal jacket types such as the 55-grain XM-193 do somewhat better, but as seen above, they also break apart on impact with bare gel. On sheet metal and auto glass, we recovered only small fragments.

In contrast to the above, bullets designed as barrier penetrators feature heavy construction in the jacket and core, and they penetrate barriers much better. I'll briefly discuss four examples below.

Corbon Barnes X www.dakotaammo.net/lawenforcement/law.htm

Corbon now offers its new Barnes X solid-copper bullet into both their 53 and 62 grain .223 barrier penetrator loadings.

Photo X shows this bullet after penetrating auto glass, heavy clothing and more than 15 inches on ballistic gelatin. Retained weight was 49 grains of the original 53, and the bullet expanded from .223 caliber to .35 caliber. This is superior bullet performance.

Corbon Barnes X www.dakotaammo.net/lawenforcement/law.htm

Federal Tactical http://le.atk.com/general/federalproducts/rifle/tacticalbonded.aspx

The FBI protocols call for penetration of 12 inches or greater to insure highest wounding capability. The Federal Tactical bonded .223 round in both 55- and 62-grain has been in used for a number of years by both federal and municipal agencies. Using a proprietary technology, the bullet core and jacket are bonded or fused together.
This offers significantly better terminal performance than traditional soft-point bullets that may look identical in form but come nowhere close in performance.

Both the 55- and 62-grain Tactical penetrated the auto glass, heavy clothing and 16 inches of ballistic gel with a retained weight of 49 grains and better, expanding as shown. Again, top performance.

Federal Tactical http://le.atk.com/general/federalproducts/rifle/tacticalbonded.aspx

Winchester Nosler Partition www.winchester.com/lawenforcement/catalog/cfrifle.aspx

Winchester uses a 60-grain Nosler Partition for its .223-caliber barrier penetrator that is in use by the FBI. As seen in the photo, it also performs well against intervening barriers. The bullet defeated the auto glass and light clothing, penetrated more than 17 inches and retained more than half its weight.

Winchester Nosler Partition www.winchester.com/lawenforcement/catalog/cfrifle.aspx

Hornady Barrier Penetrator www.hornadyle.com/_img/hornady_tap_report.pdf

Hornady makes a 62-grain barrier penetrator as seen in the photo. Unlike its 55- and 60-grain TAP round that are constructed of a light jacket and soft core, this bullet drove deeper with greater retained weight. Still, it didn't perform as well as the others we tested.

Hornady Barrier Penetrator www.hornadyle.com/_img/hornady_tap_report.pdf

Conclusion

Any .223-caliber cartridge using a varmint-type bullet is not the choice to use on the street where the fight will likely involve autos and other hard barriers. The penetrator rounds pictured above are not the only ones made, but they're a good representation of what's available. Any one of these will provide a significant upgrade for the street officer. Define the mission and environment most likely faced by your officers. Then choose the bullet best designed for that mission, and go forward with knowledge and confidence.

Jeff Chudwin serves as chief of police for the Village of Olympia Fields, Ill. A founding member and current president of the Illinois Tactical Officers Association and co-chairman of the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System Region 4, Chudwin is a former assistant state's attorney and has been a firearms, use-of-force and emergency response trainer for more than 25 years. Contact him at lawofc400@aol.com.

The FBI's Test Info

If you want to see the FBI's testing data on police-duty ammunition, order it from the agency's test facility. Your order must be on official letterhead and come from a department supervisor.

FBI Ammunition Test Facility
Quantico, VA
Tel. 703/640-1386
Chudwin's Rankings

Based on our testing, I rank the barrier penetrators as follows:

Corbon DPX
Federal Tactical Bonded
Winchester Partition
Hornady Barrier Penetrator

********************************************

In January, DocGKR, writing at M4Carbine.net, here commented:

The Winchester 60 gr JSP Nosler Partition (Q3283) load is the current FBI .223 load. In addition to the Winchester product, Black Hills also does a very nice loading of the 60 gr Nosler Partition. The previous load was the Federal 62 gr JSP TBBC (LE223T3) loading. All are reasonably good .223 barrier loads, with an advantage to the Federal Tactical bonded loads in both 62 gr, as well as the 55 gr load (LE223T1 or identical P223T2). Another option would be the Hornady 62 gr JSP TAP Barrier load. The Swift 75 gr Scirrocco and various Barnes TSX loading in 45, 53, 62, and 70 gr weights are also good projectiles. We are also in the process of testing the new 64 gr Speer Gold Dot JSP and the new 62 gr Remington bonded JSP loads, as they show good promise.

Keep in mind, that with non-fragmenting bullet designs, heavier bullet weights are not necessarily better, especially at closer ranges and from shorter barrels. As long as penetration and upset remain adequate, it is possible to use lighter weight non-fragmenting bullets and still have outstanding terminal performance. With fragmenting designs, a heavier bullet is ideal, as it provides more potential fragments and still allows the central core to have enough mass for adequate penetration. In addition, heavier bullets may have an advantage at longer ranges due to better BC and less wind drift.

Insofar as the 745,000 rounds are concerned, the FBI uses another "green" round for training. Q3283's are used strictly for anti-social work. Grist for the bloody mill.

Mike
III