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You have to be kidding, right!?!

A Nooner for my Wonderful Readers out there! NSFW

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All About Guns Allies

TRIGGER-MEISTER JERRY MICULEK WRITTEN BY DAVE ANDERSON

It ain’t magic — just hard work and the right genes.

Jerry Miculek is a fine rifleman, a wizard with a shotgun and adept with any type of handgun. His skill with a revolver is legendary. Simply stated, he’s the best revolver shooter in the world, arguably the best who has ever lived. And he’s generous about sharing his knowledge.

Jerry ’splains he could even teach Dave to shoot a wheelgun.

The Grip

“Let’s have a look at your grip.” I uncased my old S&W 19 and holding it around the frame with my left hand began seating it in the web of my right hand.“Ah, a bullseye shooter,” smiled Jerry. “That’s a fine grip for a single action auto, or for a cocked revolver where the trigger hardly moves. It’s not so good for really fast double action shooting with a trigger movement of half an inch. With your bullseye grip the trigger finger has to be fully extended to reach the trigger, and you’re putting some pressure on the side of the trigger. During a fast double action string you’ll likely be pushing your shots to the left.” Ah so.

“Shift the hand more to the right side of the gun (for a right-handed shooter, duh). Extend the trigger finger through the guard so the finger touches the trigger between the first joint and the knuckle. You won’t shoot like that, but it gets the hand in the correct position.” This may be one of those “secrets” we hear about.

“Move the trigger finger back so the pad of the finger, halfway between the tip and the first joint, is on the trigger. For best leverage it should be low on the trigger, certainly no higher than midway. The base of the finger is well away from the frame, and there’s about a 90-degree angle at the knuckle. Now you can press and release the trigger straight back and forth, along the axis of the gun, without putting on side pressure.”

Jerry also has another way of teaching the proper revolver grip.

“Stand with your heels against a wall and pick out a target squarely in front. Hold the revolver around the frame with the left (weak) hand and align the sights on target. Now just bring the right hand up and grip the gun without disturbing the sight alignment and you should have the correct grip.”

Study this grip.

It works!

Lady Shooters

“The biggest obstacle for ladies is bad advice from husbands or boyfriends,” laughed Jerry. “About the worst advice women get is to put small grips on their handguns. Actually most women need grips about the same size as men. Small grips just cause problems. I became aware of this when I tried one of Kay’s 1911 match pistols (Kay Clark Miculek, four-time USPSA women’s national champion, two-time IPSC world champion). I have a fairly large hand but my fingers aren’t extra long. I like a short trigger on a 1911 so I can get the trigger finger squarely across the trigger face.”

“Kay uses a long trigger on her 1911s. This didn’t make sense to me. Then one time I was holding a pop can and happened to notice how far my trigger finger reached. I asked Kay to hold the pop can so the web of her hand was where mine had been. I was surprised to find her trigger finger reached further around the can than mine. It seems my hands are not only bigger than Kay’s, they’re thicker. When I wrap my hand around a handgun grip the trigger reach (from web of hand to tip of trigger finger) is actually less.”

My wife Simone was with us, so we tried the pop-can trick. Darned if Jerry wasn’t right. Her trigger reach (pop can reach?) was within a quarter-inch of mine. Miculek then showed her how to hold the S&W. Jerry tried to move the revolver muzzle around and seemed surprised when it hardly moved. “I’ve tried this with some big tough special forces guys and I can move the gun muzzle around like it was a wet noodle. How did you develop such strong wrists,” asked Jerry?

“Twenty-five years of farming and gardening,” she grinned. Still, I doubt the military is going to start looking to retired farmers and gardeners for recruits.

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All About Guns

Mauser Schnellfeuer: The Official Full Auto C96 Broomhandle

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A Victory! Leadership of the highest kind The Green Machine War

Colonel Henry Mucci, a truly bad-ass guy (March 4, 1909 – April 20, 1997

Henry Mucci and the Rangers – from The American Exprience

Mucci was so charismatic you couldn’t believe it… If you ever had to go to war, that’s the kind of man you wanted to go with.” — Alvie Robbins, PFC.

We all would have died for him, he was the very best.” — Vance Shera, Sergeant.

We knew he was selling us the blue sky, but we would have followed him anywhere.” — Robert Prince,<;C Company Captain

Extraordinary Fighters
General Walter Krueger and his top G-2 man, Horton White, were the ones to choose Mucci. As Krueger and White considered the raid, they knew they would need an elite  fighting force. Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers, writes: “[They] would need a group of men trained in stealth techniques and the tactics of lightning assault.

The expeditioners must be in exceptional physical condition, as they would have to walk some 30 miles on foot in each direction, marching around the clock. They would have to be versatile, self-reliant, and extremely proficient with light arms, as the odds were better than good that they would encounter major enemy resistance along the trek.”

Intensive Training
Mucci had just such an outfit. In fact he had trained them: the 6th Ranger Battalion. Mucci was a man of vision. It was he who took the unit of Army mule skinners and turned them into the elite jungle fighting force known as the Army Rangers. For one year, in the mountains of New Guinea, Mucci trained his team, one of the first American special operations fighting forces.

Mule Skinners Become Rangers
The men Mucci had started with were for the most part boys from the farms and ranches of middle America — big, strong men. Known as “mule skinners,” they had been recruited to train in the mountains of New Guinea with heavy artillery carried on the backs of pack animals. By 1944, the Army considered the mule skinners obsolete, and General Krueger was looking to train a new special unit. Mucci was his man.

Testing Physical Limits
Ranger training under Mucci bordered on inhuman. A boxer, judo-expert, athlete, and former West Pointer, Mucci believed in training his men to the absolute limits of their physical capacities. He personally taught them all aspects of fighting: hand to hand combat, knifing, bayoneting and marksmanship. He led them on torturous exercises across the tropical New Guinea jungles, through treacherous rivers, and up mountainsides in the ferocious heat. Jungle combat, night combat, amphibious combat; Mucci taught and reveled in it all.

John Richardson, 6th Army Ranger, recalled: “I thought he was going to kill us. He called us rats, he called us everything but a child of God. And he told us, “I’m going to make you so d—– mean, you will kill your own grandmother…. I wondered why he was putting us through so much, but before it was over, there was no question about it, I knew why. And once he got us trained and picked out, he loved us to death. And there wasn’t anything too good for us…. He knew what he was doing when he was training us.”

Slave Driver — With a Purpose
Bob Anderson, 6th Army Ranger remembered, “He worked us so hard that sometimes I’d think I hate that man and I’d double-time back to my camp and say, ‘You can’t kill me, I can do more. You can’t give me enough, I can do more than you can give me.’ So he had us in shape and once he got us trained he was the nicest man you ever saw. But he knew how to train men.” No doubt, Mucci got his men in peak physical condition. They were ready for the raid. They were ready for anything.

Superb Leader
Sometimes the fit is perfect. Mucci was the right man to train and lead the Rangers. He had all the qualities of a superb military leader: he knew men, he had vision, and he was decisive. Robert Prince said, “He made a Ranger battalion out of a bunch of mule skinners, and he inspired us and trained us — and any success we had belongs to Colonel Mucci.”

Honors
The rest is history. Mucci’s actions and decisions on the raid were flawless. General Douglas MacArthur awarded Mucci the Distinguished Service Cross and said that the raid was ” magnificent and reflected extraordinary credit to all concerned.” The military promoted Mucci to full colonel.

National Hero
Upon his return home, Mucci was treated as a national hero in his home town of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress and later became an oil representative for a Canadian firm in Bangkok. An athlete till the end, he died at 86 in Florida from injuries related to swimming in rough surf.

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N.S.F.W.

Have a great week my Dear Readers! NSFW

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All About Guns Ammo

BALLISTIC FRUGALITY DAVID AND GOLIATH, NOMAD VERSUS SCAR WRITTEN BY WILL DABBS, MD

For a real deal bugout survival defensive situation, are you better off with the
$4,500 black rifle or the no-frills single-barrel shotgun that only set you back a C-note?

 

You’re hard at work, beta testing whoopee cushions and fake dog turds at the Fartco Novelty Company. Though it was the glamor of the thing that first drew you, after 17 years, even this seems like a grind. The new battery-powered flatulator is performing well, but it’s been a long day. You’re looking forward to a quiet evening with the family. Then you feel a scant rumble through the floor.

You direct your attention outside. Smoke rises on the horizon, and you see crowds of terrified people fleeing some unseen menace. An electric buzz runs through the office as fear spreads over your coworkers like a contagion. But not you. You’ve prepared your entire life for
this moment.

In a flash, you are downstairs and atop your moped. In the heady excitement of the moment, you intentionally eschew your helmet. Given this has all the makings of a proper apocalypse, you’ll take your chances with the traffic wardens.

Traffic is snarled, but you are immune. You bounce the curb and cut through sundry yards and parks, puttering past terrified victims who lacked your foresight. Nineteen minutes later, you pull up at home.

Your family has drilled for this, and they are waiting for you. The government-surplus Hummer is packed and ready to go with food, water and fuel enough for at least three weeks on the road. Your wife even had time to throw together a few tuna fish sandwiches. The kids are strapped into the back, and your bride rides shotgun. You slip into your body armor and throw open the door to the gun safe. There in the front row resides a tricked-out FN SCAR 16S, alongside a Nomad single-barrel break-open 12-gauge shotgun. The Hummer is already cubed out, and you’ve only got room for one. Which gun do you grab? The kids are getting impatient, and the plaintive cries from the street are growing closer.

 

The ATI Nomad 12-gauge is arguably the simplest firearm on the planet.
There is little on the gun to break.

The ATI Nomad 12-gauge is the tire iron of the firearm world. If you are smart enough to run a screwdriver, you can shoot this gun.

Practical Tactical

 

Who are we kidding? Of course you take both. Strap junior to the roof if need be, but now that doomsday has finally arrived, you’re not going to split hairs over ordnance. However, what if you really could only take one? For a real deal bugout survival defensive situation, are you better off with the $4,500 black rifle or the no-frills single-barrel shotgun that only set you back a C-note? I would assert the answer, as painful as it is for guys like us to hear, is the shotgun might be the better choice.

The tricked-out SCAR 16S with a Holosight, magnifier, tactical light and sound suppressor legitimately costs more than four grand all up. For this simply breathtaking investment, you get unflinching reliability, decent stealth, proper combat accuracy and a prodigious magazine capacity. The SCAR chassis serves with American Special Operations Forces deployed downrange as I sit typing these words. It is one epically cool rifle. It will reliably make you stand out in a crowd. Now hold that thought.

By contrast, the ATI Nomad is stripped-down and austere. The 18″ barrel folds back onto the buttstock. The resulting package is so easy to store it could conceivably ride in a book bag. Even amidst the current ammo drought, you can still find 12-gauge rounds. Buckshot and slugs will drop most anything that walks, gallops or slithers. Cheap birdshot will keep the cooking pot stoked with tree rats or bunnies and wing shoot subsistence birds. This weapon is the heir apparent to your granddad’s favorite farm gun. This means it doesn’t scare people or mark you as special. Under certain circumstances, this attribute could itself be quite valuable.

 

The tricked-out FN SCAR 16S is a tactical beast. It also reliably draws
a crowd and costs as much as your kid’s orthodontia. However, all that
tactical bling makes you conspicuous.

The rigid charging handle on the FN SCAR 16S is reversible
and reciprocates with the bolt.

The buttstock on the FN SCAR 16S is more complicated than the
U.S. Tax Code, but it is undeniably effective.

At 8 meters, the FN SCAR 16S shoots five rounds through the same hole.

Technical Details — the SCAR 16S

 

SCAR stands for Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle, and it is indeed the apex predator among the world’s modern military weapons. A thoroughly state-of-the-art design, the SCAR orbits around an aluminum receiver and includes ample polymer furniture. The GI issue SCAR-Heavy fires 7.62x51mm. The SCAR-Light is 5.56x45mm. The SCAR 16S is the semi-auto civilian version of the military SCAR-L.

I happened upon my SCAR at a law enforcement auction for seized guns, so I got it at a good price. However, a cheap Rolls-Royce is still expensive. You don’t get into a SCAR cheap unless a relative dies and leaves you one.

The SCAR runs a short stroke piston-driven action inspired by that of the Armalite AR180. This design keeps heat and crud up front and away from the gun’s entrails. It is inimitably reliable as a result. The gun is designed to disassemble easily and maintained in an austere environment.

There is plenty of rail space for optics and accessories. The buttstock is more complicated than the human female but remains eminently practical. The stock is easily adjustable for both length of pull and comb. It also folds with the push of a button. The SCAR comes with a nice set of folding iron sights that stay out of the way when not in use.

The charging handle on the SCAR reciprocates with the action and is readily reversible without tools. This means you can take a boot to it in the unlikely event the action ever gets sticky. However, it also means the handle zips back and forth when firing. With a bulky optic installed, it is easy to rap your fingers while charging the weapon.

The SCAR 16S accepts standard STANAG M4 magazines and drums. The end result is versatile, effective and cool. In the world of Modern Sporting Rifles, literally nothing is finer.

 

The ATI Nomad is made in Turkey and is the very image of simplicity.

The primary strength of the ATI Nomad 12-gauge is its ammo versatility.
Different loads can be configured for different applications.

The Nomad breaks open just like your granddad’s old single-barrel
squirrel gun and collapses back onto itself for easy portage or storage.

The ATI Nomad 12-Gauge

 

By contrast, the ATI Nomad is as simple as kindergarten art class. If you can tie your own shoes without assistance, you can run the Nomad. It’s just stupid-proof.

Pull back on the trigger guard to break open the action, drop in a shell, close the action and cock the hammer manually. Now point the gun at something you dislike and squeeze. Repeat as necessary.

The Nomad doesn’t have a safety. The manual hammer is all the safety you need. Don’t cock the gun until you’re ready to shoot and you’ll be fine.

To fold the gun for storage, you just open the action and then wrap the muzzle back to the toe of the buttstock. The steel is nicely blued, and the furniture is polymer and nigh indestructible. The sights consist of a simple brass bead and a groove in the top of the receiver. It’s not complicated because it doesn’t need to be complicated. The Nomad comes with a set of steel sling swivels on the bottom. The chamber is cut to accept 3″ shells.

American Tactical offers the Nomad in three different gauges and various barrel lengths. The gun is also available as part of a turnkey survival rig with its own backpack.

The real strength of the Nomad is in its ammunition versatility. Birdshot is available most anywhere at a good price. Buckshot and slugs, at appropriate ranges, offers unquestionable downrange authority. There are even less-than-lethal options should the need arise.

 

To paraphrase Dirty Harry Callahan, at a typical 8-meter engagement
range the ATI Nomad 12-gauge, even loaded with cheap 7 ½ birdshot,
would take a man’s head clean off.

Improvised Firepower

 

What follows is related for historical interest only. DO NOT DO THIS YOURSELVES! Forgive my shouting, but most of our readership is guys. As any woman will attest, sometimes prattling on for hours on the subject, we’re all just a little bit stupid.

My grandfather was born in 1901 and came of age during the Great Depression on a rural Mississippi farm. Like many to most Americans of that era, they didn’t have anything. They eked out an existence between their crops and subsistence hunting, but had to make do without a lot of resources.

My grandfather’s family sold enough produce to afford a little birdshot for their old single-barrel 12-gauge shotgun. Buckshot and slugs were available, but they were more expensive. As a result, my grandfather improvised.

For close range engagements against whitetail deer, my grandfather made his own slugs. He would take paper-hulled 12-gauge rounds and ring them amidships with his Barlow knife such that he separated the top of the shell right about at the wad. He then wrapped a single layer of masking tape around the shell to hold everything in place and put a drop of glue on the nose. He told me at close ranges, these improvised slugs were extraordinarily effective at keeping their table graced with venison.

 

The manual hammer is the Nomad’s only safety.

Pulling back on the trigger guard breaks open the action.

Practical Tactical

 

The SCAR 16S will ventilate a man-sized target out to half a kilometer or so and look cool doing it. Magazine changes set the standard for everything else, and the gun is one of the most reliable autoloading weapons I have ever fired. With the suppressor and optics in place, it is a room-clearing machine. However, whenever brandished in public it does invariably draw a crowd.

By contrast, the Nomad tucks into a proper daypack without anyone being the wiser. It packs plenty of downrange thump against predators whether they walk on two legs or four. It is also a much better tool for dropping birds on the wing or harvesting a rabbit than that fancy black rifle.
Forgive my seeming a pansy, but the Nomad kicks like Chuck Norris doing the cancan. The gun is extremely lightweight, and physics can be a cruel mistress. However, it works every single time.

More importantly than all this, however, is the Nomad lets you move around in crowds without creating a scene. Scary black rifles are fun on the range, but amidst a street liberally populated with flaming dumpsters and rampaging anarchists, it is the Nomad that helps you retain your anonymity. Anybody who has ever been in one for real appreciates the best fight is the one you never have to have.

 

Denouement

 

So sure, if you have the space, grab both. The SCAR 16S reaches out way beyond where the humble 12-bore stutters and dies while being markedly more intimidating. However, there’s a lot of stupid stuff you can drop a hundred bucks on these days. In fact, I have dumped that sum taking my family out for dinner and movie back when the kids would bring along a friend or three. In the ATI Nomad, you will find a robust single-barrel shotgun your kids’ kids won’t wear out that will eat a wide variety of ammo. The argument could be made it is indeed the better defensive gun.

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Dear Grumpy Advice on Teaching in Today's Classroom You have to be kidding, right!?!

Look familiar, doesn’t it?  It isn’t. It’s Mars.  Cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Soldiering The Green Machine

Just like every other W.O’s that I knew in the Green Machine

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Experimental Romanian Paratrooper PKM

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Gear & Stuff

The Shillelagh – An Irish Fighting stick, walking stick, and club