July 2022 - Page 15 of 38 - You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

We admittedly do a lot of pondering and send the occasional robot to Mars, but human beings aren’t really so far removed from your typical baboon.

It is a lamentable aspect of the human condition that we seem inexorably driven to destroy ourselves. We drape our culture and our society in the mantle of civilization, but we are not really all that different from baboons or jackals. Ours is a tribal species, and our response to affront or perceived injustice is typically violence, even this deep in the Information Age.

Humans expend truly extraordinary quantities of sweat and treasure trying desperately to kill each other.

The numbers are frankly breathtaking. The warring powers during the Second World War produced enough bullets to shoot every human being on the planet forty times. If you took every penny spent by the US on defense from the end of WW2 to the end of the Cold War you could raze and rebuild every man-made structure in the United States. Despite our extraordinary capacity to reason and solve problems, we homo sapiens have become quite adroit at offing one another.

As a veteran myself, I love drones. Being able to smite one’s enemies without putting soft friendly flesh in harm’s way makes the armed drone the coolest invention since the flush toilet.

Modern combat is at its base simply infuriating. In the age of drone warfare, the enemies of our Great Republic are faced with quite the maddening lot. Day or night, fair weather or foul, it really doesn’t matter. Death comes for you out of the ether in the form of a Hellfire missile launched by an armed UAV piloted by some former cheerleader-turned-Air Force pilot operating out of an air-conditioned building in Nevada. That has got to drive those dudes crazy.

Sniping on the Information Age battlefield is a high-tech art. Back during the American Civil War it took every bit as much skill and was comparably terrifying.

The traditional faceless killer on the battlefield is the sniper. Artillery always racks up the biggest numbers, but there is something viscerally horrifying about catching a sniper’s bullet from an unexpected quarter. For as long as there have been accurate rifles, there have been soldiers behind them sowing havoc. This was certainly true during the American Civil War.

The Making of a Killer

John W. “Jack” Hinson was born in 1807. A wealthy Scots-Irish farmer in Stewart County, Tennessee, Hinson was known as “Old Jack” to his friends. He was a prosperous slave owner who attempted to remain neutral in the face of the brewing Civil War. He lived on his tobacco farm with his wife and ten children and was known for his temper.

US Grant broke bread with Jack Hinson before Hinson turned into a full-bore psycho Yankee-killing death machine.

When the Federal General U.S. Grant rolled through the area with his army, Jack welcomed him into his home. In February of 1862 Grant moved on to attack Fort Donelson and Fort Henry. As he departed, however, Grant left a Federal garrison behind.

The Patriot was a superb action movie wherein an Australian actor played an American Revolutionary War hero. It was, however, a fake made-up Hollywood story. By contrast, “Old Jack” Hinson was the real freaking deal.

“Bushwhackers” was the term applied to unconventional guerilla fighters who attacked Union forces from positions of concealment. In the fall of 1862, Hinson’s sons 17-year-old Jack and 22-year-old George were out deer hunting near their homestead. They came across a Union detachment that mistakenly took the two boys for bushwhackers. The Federal soldiers tied the two young men to trees, shot them to death, paraded their bodies around town as a message to others, and then stuck their heads on the gateposts back at the Hinson homestead. This turned out to be a really bad idea. You’ll note a similar plot arc drives the Mel Gibson Revolutionary War epic The Patriot. However, unlike The Patriot, this really happened.

The Crusade

This is the actual rifle “Old Jack” Hinson used to spread terror and chaos through the Federal ranks.

At age 55 Jack Hinson sent his family away to safety and contracted with a local gunsmith to build him a very special .50-caliber Kentucky Long Rifle. This custom-built weapon sported a 41-inch barrel as well as set triggers and weighed a whopping 18 pounds. Hinson used this weapon to engage in a one-man sniper war against the occupying Federal troops. He sniped Union soldiers both in garrison as well as in military columns and transports. He also engaged Union gunboats while they were slowly plying the waters of the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. His first two victims were the Lieutenant and Sergeant responsible for murdering his two sons, both shot cleanly from ambush.

The rapscallion Nathan Bedford Forrest was arguably the most cunning Cavalry General of the American Civil War.

Hinson eventually fell in with Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalry mob and served as a local guide during their attack on the Union supply base at Johnsonville. Jack’s son Robert was of age and led a band of unconventional guerillas in the area of Tennessee they called home. However, this young man was killed by Union forces on September 18, 1863.

Jack Hinson would pick off Union sailors manning Federal riverboats like this one from positions of concealment.

Using that obsolete muzzleloading long rifle “Old Jack” Hinson accumulated more than 100 kills. He sniped Union naval personnel off the decks of their warships and shot men out of the saddle as they passed by in supply convoys. His longest confirmed kill was nearly half a mile. Ultimately units from four different Federal regiments tracked him unsuccessfully.

The Rifle

The Kentucky Long Rifle represented a quantum advance in accuracy and downrange precision over the smoothbore muskets of the day.

The Kentucky Long Rifle was also known as the Pennsylvania Rifle or the American Long Rifle. At a time when men lived or died based upon their facility with a gun, the accuracy and firepower afforded by the Long Rifle was coveted indeed.

Gun-making in Jack Hinson’s day was all handwork and art.

Rifle locks back in the day were handcrafted and unique. There were very few interchangeable parts used in guns before the Civil War.

“From a flat bar of soft iron, hand forged into a gun barrel; laboriously bored and rifled with crude tools; fitted with a stock hewn from a maple tree in the neighboring forest; and supplied with a lock hammered to shape on the anvil; an unknown smith, in a shop long since silent, fashioned a rifle which changed the whole course of world history; made possible the settlement of a continent; and ultimately freed our country of foreign domination. Light in weight; graceful in line; economical in consumption of powder and lead; fatally precise; distinctly American; it sprang into immediate popularity; and for a hundred years was a model often slightly varied but never radically changed.”

— Captain John G. W. Dillin, The Kentucky Rifle

The unprecedented accuracy potential of the rifled musket gave rise to the modern concept of the battlefield sniper.

The Long Rifle was first developed in Southeastern Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. These early guns were crafted entirely by hand with little thought to interchangeable parts or mass production. When compared to the smoothbore muskets of the day these rifles were markedly more accurate. It was actually the advent of the rifled musket that facilitated the rise of the sniper on the modern battlefield.

The smoothbore Brown Bess musket helped establish and maintain the expansive British Empire.

The British Brown Bess musket that carried the Redcoats through the American Revolution was a smoothbore design with a 0.75-inch bore. The gun fired 0.69-inch balls. These intentionally undersized projectiles made the weapon notoriously inaccurate. However, given the profound amount of fouling that resulted from the crude black powder of the day, these dimensions ensured that the gun could remain in action through protracted firings without cleaning.

Patched balls offer high velocities and precision, but they are both slow to load and messy.

Rifled muskets like the Long Rifle offered much greater accuracy and velocities. These early rifles typically fired patched balls that were gripped tightly by the weapon’s rifling. However, the tight interface between ball and bore resulted in rapid fouling in action and demanded laborious reloading. The development of the Minie Ball helped alleviate this vice.

Minie balls incorporate a soft lead skirt that swells to engage a weapon’s rifling upon firing.

This is a human femur struck by a Minie ball during the American Civil War. Wow, that would really suck.

The Minie Ball was a cast lead hollow-based bullet designed by Claude-Etienne Minie. Minie Balls first saw widespread use during the Crimean War in the 1850s. The Minie Ball sported three grease-filled cannelures on the outside and a malleable skirt on the bottom. Upon firing powder gases tended to expand the skirt such that the bullet engaged the rifling without being unduly snug during loading. When carried in paper cartridges and fired through relatively precise weapons, like Jack Hinson’s Long Rifle, the Minie Ball afforded a decent rate of accurate fire as well.

The Rest of the Story

After the war “Old Jack” Hinson returned to his farm and what remained of his family.

After the war “Old Jack” laid down his arms and returned home to Stewart County, Tennessee. He settled the estate of his son George, one of seven Hinson children who had succumbed to combat, occupying Union forces, or disease during the course of the war. While he bumped up against the law from time to time, for the most part, Hinson didn’t bother anybody and few people bothered him.

19th-century medicine was fairly primitive. In response to serious medical challenges most folks simply died.

On April 28, 1874, Jack Hinson was at his new residence in Houston County, Tennessee, and complained of severe upper back pain. The local medical practitioner was summoned, and the usual treatments undertaken. Six hours later Hinson died. His presumptive diagnosis was meningitis. I obviously wasn’t there but given the rapidity of onset and tearing sensation between his shoulder blades I’d put my money on a dissecting aortic aneurysm myself. Old Jack was 67 at the time.

This is the handmade lock and set trigger on Jack Hinson’s custom-crafted Kentucky long rifle.

Jack Hinson peened these little circles into the barrel of his Kentucky rifle to signify Union officers he killed in combat. That’s a lot of circles.

Jack Hinson’s shopworn .50-caliber Kentucky Long Rifle survives to this day. The gun bears the marks of 36 kills. However, the number of 100 or more seems more historically reliable based upon period sources. It has been suggested that Old Jack only documented the officers he shot on his deadly implement of violence.

The Finnish soldier Simo Hayha was likely the most successful sniper in military history. Hayha killed 505 enemy troops in 100 days, typically at short to medium ranges using either a Mosin-Nagant rifle over iron sights or a Suomi submachine gun.

Chris Kyle epitomized the modern special operations sniper.

The Finnish sniper Simo Hayha was likely history’s most successful sniper with more than 500 verified kills, all taken at fairly close range over the span of 100 days. Numerous Soviet snipers racked up counts in the hundreds during World War 2. The American Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle had 160 confirmed. However, each of these warriors used fairly modern equipment. Back in the 1860s, a Tennessee farmer with a grudge used a muzzleloading single-shot Kentucky Long Rifle to terrorize thousands of Federal troops. His exploits stand in bitter testament to the chaos that can be wrought by a single determined rifleman with a gun.

“Old Jack” Hinson’s story was one of betrayal, loss, heartbreak, and revenge. His tale was larger than life.

Mesa, AZ — As we previously reported, the Justice Department is investigating the police response to the horrifying shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 4th grade children dead along with two teachers. As the world quickly learned in the days after the shooting, police were more concerned with preventing parents from saving their children than they were with stopping the mass murdering psychopath inside the school.

Unless they can find actual evidence of a crime, none of the officers involved will likely face any consequences. This is due to the fact that police officers have absolutely no legal duty to protect you.

The leading case on the topic is Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981) when the Court stated that the “fundamental principle of American law is that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”

Being a hero is not a requirement of a cop. In fact, case after case has shown that while there are certainly many cops willing to throw themselves into harms way and risk their lives to help others, far more of them are more than willing to take cover and save their own skin while others suffer.

We’ve seen this play out in multiple school shootings, street fights, and, as the following incident shows, in house fires. Earlier this year, a police officer from the notoriously violent and corrupt Mesa Police Department had a chance to be a hero as a fire engulfed an apartment with two children inside. But badges and guns don’t make heroes — courage does.

As the officer’s body camera shows, residents were telling the officer that two children were inside the apartment and their screams were audible. Instead of climbing inside the window to pull out the trapped toddlers, the officer throws rocks as the children suffocate inside, yelling for them to “come to the window.” He might as well have yelled, “I’m not doing a damn thing, rescue yourselves.”

Fortunately for the trapped children, however, an actual hero was nearby and ran straight into danger. Unlike the officer throwing rocks, this good Samaritan did not have on a gas mask which would have allowed him to breathe a little better in the fumes. The good Samaritan had nothing but selflessness and courage — and this is what saved the lives of the children trapped inside.

As the cop continues to throw rocks, the unidentified hero climbs up to the window, jumps inside the apartment and grabs one of the children and removes her from the apartment. By the time he gets the first child out, smoke is now billowing out of the window heavily but this does not deter the anonymous hero and he runs right back into danger.

Moments later, he emerges with the second child, saving her life as well. Had he not been there, this officer would have thrown rocks at an apartment as the children inside burned to death. Luckily, he was there and the children were taken to the hospital, treated for smoke inhalation and made a full recovery.

Rest assured that if the Mesa cop would’ve been the one who jumped into the burning building with his body camera rolling, we would’ve certainly known his name and seen multiple nightly news specials on his courage. But this good Samaritan didn’t do it for the fame and glory and after he rescued the children, he left the scene without telling anyone his name.

“According to all who were there, if it wasn’t for the citizen who assisted, the outcome of this incident may have been different,” said Richard Encinas, a spokesperson with the Mesa Police Department. “He saw the fire from a distance, jumped a wall to the apartment complex, and ran towards the fire to help.”

He added that “the citizen did not want to be identified but said he only wanted to help rescue the kids if he could.”

Below is a video that proves the notion that merely possessing a badge and a gun does not make you a hero — being heroic does.