A Walk Down Memory Lane
Recently I found myself in a situation where a person asked me why I carried a “hot weapon” in a situation where they thought I shouldn’t have the Sig Rattler (300 BLK) in battery with a loaded magazine. My response was to more or less ignore the comment. What good is a weapon that is not ready to fire?
Many years ago, during the First Gulf War (Desert Shield/Storm/Saber) I found myself deployed to Ras Al Mishab, Saudi Arabia on the (Iraqi Occupied) Kuwaiti border. The US Navy was operating out of what was then a Saudi base on the Gulf.
We didn’t have name or service branch tapes on our BDUs, and we’d drive over to a USMC battalion to eat almost every day because we were training with them, waiting for the balloon to go up. We didn’t have a joint mission with them on paper, but it was a good experience for us and them to learn to work together hands-on. The USMC carried “security ammo” with them inside the perimeter. I thought nothing of it.
The Army arrived to discuss joint training wearing their blueish camo. Yes, this is going to be an Army story.
I was the N-2 for the Naval Special Warfare element and I had a chief and I think a third-class petty officer with me and we were standing around our Jeep (we had desert patrol vehicles and Jeeps, no HUMs.), drinking Gatorade and BSing.
Somebody was yelling at us. I turned to find an Army staff sergeant addressing me there on the USMC base. (We wore no rank, I was a senior LT (O-3) at the time.)
SSG – “Why is there a magazine in your handgun soldier?”
Me – “Soldier?”
SSG – “Are you deaf, soldier?”
Me – “Because I never know when I’m going to need to kill somebody but today is a good day, staff sergeant.”
SSG – “Are YOU threatening ME?”
Things deteriorated and the staff sergeant then noticed that the M-4s that the two men with me were carrying had loaded magazines and the melt-down intensified. Some people from his command finally showed up and calmed him down. The Army had different rules about weapon handling, and the SSG assumed that the policies that applied to him automatically applied to everyone else in other chains of command as well.
I’m just another old man with a can on the rattler, now but the dispute continues. I think that a lot of it has to do with Army rules.
In the case of the incident above, SSG Dingleberry ended up apologizing and thanked us for not killing him. I assured him, “Killing you on base and in public is illegal, staff sergeant.”
Bullet Points:
** RINOs have decried Tucker Carlson’s release of January 6 footage that was withheld from the public which directly refuted the phony “insurrection” narrative. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) led the RINO charge against Carlson for airing footage from the Capitol that had been hidden from the public for years, citing a letter sent to the U.S. Capitol Police force by Chief Thomas Manger, who denounced Carlson for spreading “offensive and misleading conclusions.”
“I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief and the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6,” McConnell said as he held up a copy of the letter. “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”
They really don’t want Pres. Trump to run for office again.
** (Breitbart) A number of mass migration lobbying groups, often corporate-funded, as well as Democrats told Politico that their latest venture includes pitching President Joe Biden’s administration to increase legal immigration levels so as to funnel foreign workers into green energy jobs. “There’s no question that addressing our broken immigration system in America would address many workforce shortages,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) told Politico. “There’s employment needed right now. Jobs are available.”
** Lake has been talked about as a potential running mate to former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024. She won a straw poll at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference and was on one news site’s list of four women Trump might pick if he wins the GOP primaries.
Corruption in the USA and in Mexico
A friend of mine was recently decrying the state of corruption in Mexico. Is Mexico a narco-state? Yes, it is. The proceeds of narcotics trafficking from or through Mexico to the US and elsewhere completely dominate the economy. The cartel organizations have invested in every non-narco business in the country and they control the hospitality, energy, construction, and agricultural sectors. Control of key industries extends to political muscle even if currency doesn’t change hands directly.
Corruption in the US surrounds the interests of the permanent DC establishment (the Swamp) so it looks different but the impact is very much the same. (10% for the Big Guy). Situations like the FTX-Ukraine money laundering scandal are emblematic of much larger and deeper problem. For example, how much (by percentage) of US foreign aid makes its way to the Democrat Party (and to the uniparty)? If you run an NGO and are administering millions or billions in foreign aid programs, you either pay to play or you don’t play.
Mexico doesn’t have a trillion-dollar defense budget (and nearly matching intelligence/secret budget) that provides welfare for the middle class, but they can make do with the trickle-down from narco dollars/pesos. Everybody has their favorite sins that somehow seem less problematic than other people’s favorite sins.
I keep telling people corruption in the west is usually just hidden better and less honest. It’s no less corrupt.
X2
X3…especially with that crowd.
“This is my safety” doesn’t go well with uptight sergeants? (Blackhawk Down reference)
No, it doesn’t because people are not sufficiently trained.
I wonder how many of those corruption dollars have filtered thru just across the boarder?
You mean just today? Billions. I was just on the phone with DEA about a few measly hundred million.
The dope comes north along one set of routes and the money goes south along other routes. +10% for the big guy or for the Swamp.
I disagree, slightly.
10% is to but one 3rd tier player. How many bad actors occupy that tier? Implied, obviously, is the existence of multiple tiers, each occupied by a number of individuals and orgs. As for what percentage of U.S. foreign aid makes it to intended use, I say 0% to 100% with 0% closer to the mean avg.
Keep in mind that a dollar (traceable unit for purpose of discussion) does not always remain in motion. It may be deposited to a legitimate account but languish there unused for some period of time. Later, that dollar is then moved to an illegitimate spot so that it now becomes yet another source for the skim.
Such method is to transcend fiscal or calendar years. This way, the skim (expressed as % of total amount) appears as a lower value than actual because the total length of time exceeds the time covered by an audit for each fiscal or calendar year.
A dollar may travel fairly rapidly through a complex network designed to hide the graft. Or, it may stop/start over time, also intended to conceal the grift and the illegitimate players/bad actors. The element of time is used to further distance the bad actor from the original, legitimate source.
Does this make sense/is understandable?
BTW; the photo of the AK with full mag from the other day excited me. Consider this an awkward expression of appreciation. Haha
Oh yeah, ‘Army’ rules vs. Navy/Marine rules… sigh… And that Sig is a nice little set up. You using subsonics? Re Swamp/vs Mexico, you are exactly correct!
Subsonics with the can.
“The Army had different rules about weapon handling”
1960’s we never had ammo for our weapons when walking guard. When we went to Bremerhaven for the monthly payroll (we were paid in cash) we carried 200 rounds. While there weapons and ammo was turned in until we left. Guess the possibility of someone hijacking helicopter was on the minds of the brass.
I would have paid one hundred dollars, probably more, to have seen L-L’s vignette with SSG Shi-thead play out in real time. Fkn Legend!
Once in a while, not often these days, people ax me why I got the hell out of the goddam army after three years. H/T to Bobby Troop, BTW, for the description. Usually, these same people will go on to cheerfully tell me that they “missed” having to go to Viet Nam.
Heh-heh. These simpletons are just SO precious!
I was trained to carry in Condition 3 with a semi-auto pistol in the Air Force. My daily carry is a S&W model 65-2.
I WANT to see a Trump/Lake ticket…for grins…and just to watch the Swamp-ers squirm then stand on their weasel red-faced heads trying to drum up more false narratives that tromp The Constitution.
“Tucker Carlson must be silenced!” — Chuckie Cheesehead FROM the Senate floor.
Geez, can this clown get anymore asinine…and obvious? Probably.
Mexico is and has been a failed state ever since it’s release from France. From Benito Juarez to WWII there was not one Mexican president that lived to complete his term. Poor ole General Obregon, the one armed general, only made as far as the inaugural banquet.
It is a shit hole. And, it has been since back then. Violence and bribery have been the status quo since forever.
We are in deep kemchi, (sic). We have have allowed millions of people into this country who have no desire to become Americans. They just want the $$$. And we, stupidly, give it to them. Just print more.
From an OP/SEC standpoint we are in a deep mudhole.
I suspect that God is not going to have mercy on this nation.
peace to y’all.
Even worse than millions of invaders who have no desire to become Americans, our foreign policy is run by people who seem NOT to put being American at the top of their list of job/office priorities. Being American is below generational vendettas, and apparently also below practicing and promoting faggotry. (What’s the acronym FSO mean again?) Oh yeah, “Homeland Security” is also run by someone like that.
“Are you accusing me of dual loyalty?”
Of course not. I’m denying that you have ANY loyalty to the United States or the Constitution.
(Never get into an argument about “dual loyalty”. It’s a “hate term” and any attempt to engage you on the topic is a trap.)
FSO:
Foreign Service Officer
Faggot Serving Overseas
Every gun I (don’t, cough cough) have has a loaded magazine and one up the spout. Why? Because if I need the damned things, I don’t need to be running around finding magazines, loading magazines, and loading the magazines into the guns and then racking a round.
I have not had any ‘formal’ training. No thousand dollar classes, which makes me the enemy of the gun writers. No military service because though the military would have been good for me, I would not have been good for the military (health reasons, like being allergic to most anything green.) I have had a 5 minute class on old school combat shooting with a revolver from my dad, where you hold the revolver in both hands with the butt against your stomach and you use your whole body to aim (for close range only)(and now that technique is poo-pooed by the ‘operators’ even though it works.)
What I do have is a functioning brain cell or two and the ability to understand ‘loaded means potentially dangerous if all the proper steps are taken’ so don’t put your finger on the trigger.’
It is the simplest safety, and works on all weapons from hande gonnes (don’t put the match or flame near the touchhole until such time as one wishes the gonne to go off) to the most complex weapon system (don’t press the go button after all the positive safety locks have been removed.) Including “When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not your friend.”
Seriously, how hard is it to not screw up with a weapon? Geez, some people. And if your weapon is so damned sensitive it goes off by being touched not on the triggering mechanism, then that is a very unsafe weapon and you probably don’t need to be futzing with it.
i hear cocaine mitch took a fall at a party and is in the hospital, prolly the same one fetterman is in, lol. i try not to wish bad on folks, it usually bounces back on me, but….we had a 2lt send a round thru the female seahuts attempting to clear his m9 at the chow hall (required), TWICE. yes, twice, with instructions clearly posted right in front of the clearing barrel. our sgm fell out of his humvee, drunk, and sent a round across the whole camp. that’s why the army needs stupid rules….i carry everything condition one except the 1911 which i keep hammer in half cock on a loaded chamber, but i train to thumb cock it on the draw regularly…..the mexico kidnappees looked to be there to score a load and ran afoul of the cartel which i hear are having issues w/ the haitian “refugees” trying to muscle in. nobody ever said haitians were smart, lol.
I guess McConnell figured if John can’t come to him to be groomed then he’ll go to him.
With the 1911, it would be better to carry it hammer fully down, if you don’t trust the safeties of the design. The problem with using the half-cock notch is that it is possible to break it off the hammer if the spur is hit, which may lead to the firing pin being hit hard enough to ignite the primer. I’ve also seen a hammer that would allow the sear to sit on the edge of the notch, and that setup would fire if the trigger was pulled after the hammer was lowered. Something was dimensionally off, but I don’t recall the details.
Normally, when the hammer is down against the plate, the firing pin is too short to protrude beyond the breechface, and so an impact against the hammer can’t fire the gun. It only protrudes when hit hard enough to override the firing pin spring and bounce out to hit the primer. One should check for proper pin length by pushing the hammer end of the pin flat to the plate with a pencil eraser and looking at the breechface to confirm it is not protruding. I’ve seen one that was way oversize, and did protrude with the hammer down.
That “half-cock” setup was originally intended to catch the hammer if you lost control of it while lowering it, but I don’t think it was intended for a carry option.
Fun fact: the original design by JMB didn’t have a thumb safety, just the grip safety.
(contrary to the commonly stated screed that the Army made him add the grip safety. Go look at the Army Trials guns to confirm this, not a thumb safety will be seen. Also, JMB kept one of the Trials guns for a carry piece, it seems.)
After acceptance by the Army, they requested that a thumb safety be added, and then negated the use of it by mandating hammer down on an empty chamber when holstered.
JMB was left-handed, ambi thumb safeties were delicate and expensive to add, so he favored the grip safety and used it on multiple gun designs.
Love the photo of you on the range, note wildflowers and what a good day! Let’s do it again.
That in mind, this post reminds of ages ago at a Sandhurst 30 meter range on an acquaintance visit. There we were, firing SLRs at paper and what a lot of fun, so much easier than .303s. Anyway, on the way to lunch one of the kids asks our watchful and guiding Sergeant, “Have you ever fired a shot in anger?”
Staff (?) looks down on the miserable malefactor, “Son,” he was Scottish, “I never kill people when I’m angry.”
That’s stayed with me over the decades.