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S&W Model 65 in .357 Magnum
From the CCRKBA . . .
Democrats in the Washington State Legislature put politics ahead of constitutional rights Saturday when they voted 27-21 to approve House Bill 1240, which bans the future sale, manufacture and importation of so-called “assault weapons,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
“Contrary to Democrats in Olympia, who sound like they’re reading from the same script, modern semiautomatic firearms are not ‘weapons of war’,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “This ban will not improve public safety, as proponents such as Attorney General Bob Ferguson have asserted. It will only impair the rights of law-abiding citizens, while doing absolutely nothing to prevent criminals from committing murder and mayhem, and they know it.”
The legislation, which goes back to the House for concurrence, does not ban possession of semiautomatic rifles, shotguns or handguns by people who already own them.
“One or more lawsuits challenging this legislation will almost certainly be filed within days, if not hours, of Gov. Jay Inslee’s signing,” Gottlieb predicted. “Ultimately, we expect this law to be nullified by the courts as a violation of the Second Amendment and Washington State’s constitution. In the meantime, of course, Evergreen State gun owners will continue to be treated like second-class citizens by the self-righteous zealots behind the ban, while the criminal element will remain undeterred and unencumbered.
“Proponents of this legislation have touted the results of a poll done last year by the Northwest Progressive Institute showing that 56 percent of Washington voters support a ban,” he continued. “What they overlook is that constitutional rights are not subject to popularity polls, a fact we expect the courts to remind them about in the days ahead.
“The truly sad part about this is that people who have been gulled into believing a gun ban will have any major impact on violent crime are going to find out the hard way they were misled by the gun prohibition lobby,” Gottlieb observed. “All this accomplishes is that it gives anti-gunners an excuse to celebrate at the expense of law-abiding Washington citizens who have committed no crime, and whose only sin is that they choose to exercise a constitutionally protected right. Where’s the justice, or even the logic, in that?”
The fight for Bakhmut in east Ukraine continues as Russian forces close in and Ukrainian soldiers repel them. In one fortified gun position, Bakhmut’s defenders are using a machine gun first invented almost 140 years ago. The Maxim gun, a belt fed machine gun, has become one of the reliable iconic weapons of the war.
“It only works when there is a massive attack going on…then it really works,” Borys, a soldier fighting for Ukraine, told the BBC. “So we use it every week”.
Ukraine has become a battlefield where advanced weaponry such as the IRIS-T air defense system and hypersonic missiles are being used for the first time. It’s a place where drones dominate the airspace and social media pages fill up with footage of every success and failure. But it’s also shown that older tactics and proven weapons can still be useful in a conflict as brutal and protracted as the war in Ukraine.
First invented in 1884, the Maxim Machine gun was the first fully automatic machine gun. The gatling gun predates it, but required someone to turn a crank to fire. The version of the Maxim that’s become popular in Ukraine is the M1910 model.
Maxims have been used in the Russo-Ukraine war nearly since the conflict began. Russia first invaded Ukraine with proxy forces in 2014 and the earliest footage of the weapon comes from a Ukrainian news network in 2016.
The M1910 Maxim was mass produced in Tsarist Russia. Its use has now outlived both the Tsar and Soviet communism. The antique weapon design is still popular because it’s easy to use, easily modified, and fires a standard 7.62x54mm cartridge that’s been used in Russia since 1891. It’s belt fed and water-cooled. A well-serviced Maxim can, theoretically, fire indefinitely without overheating so long as it’s fed both ammo and water.
That kind of reliability makes it a boon when a soldier is holding an entrenched position and fending off a heavy assault from infantry. That’s the position some of the Ukrainian defenders of Bakhmut currently find themselves in.
Soldiers in Ukraine are also heavily modifying the Maxim gun, making the 1910 model look and fire like a more modern weapon. The arms researcher Calibre Obscura surfaced a video of Ukrainian soldiers using a Maxim gun outfitted with modern optics, basic camouflage, a stock, and a suppressor. This is a weapon that typically sets in an entrenched position mounted on a heavy piece of steel. This modified version is a quieter, but not silent, burst fire weapon.
In another pair of videos pulled from TikTok, soldiers in Ukraine have attached four Maxim guns to a remote controlled rig that can spin 360 degrees. A video of a test fire showed a soldier aiming all four Maxim guns at once, each belt fed from ammunition canisters strapped to the rig.