Author: Grumpy
In an article titled simply “How Much Ammo?” Divemedic offers his opinion on how much ammunition you should be stockpiling against the day that it may no longer be available. I generally support his conclusions.
Some people seem to think this is a silly question; that there’ll always be ammunition available in stores, and from US manufacturers. That’s a dangerous assumption. There have been innumerable threats made to shut down online ammunition vendors, and some states no longer allow it (or surround it with so many restrictions and conditions that it’s burdensome and time-consuming to meet them all). There’s also the ATF’s ongoing crusade to shut down as many firearms dealers as possible, based on paper problems rather than actual crimes (which they get to define as such). Finally, every shooting increases pressure on supermarkets such as Walmart to stop selling ammunition at all, removing a major source of supply from the market. As such pressures ratchet up, the day may come that ammunition becomes vastly more expensive than it is now, with a much reduced selection and severe restrictions on how much you can buy. It’s to safeguard against that potential problem that we should maintain a useful reserve of ammunition for ourselves.
I emphasize the utility of .22 Long Rifle ammo and weapons. You can get .22LR adapters to fit AR-15 rifles and others, and there are many .22LR handguns that handle in ways very similar to defensive handguns. Furthermore, .22LR is relatively cheap compared to centerfire ammunition. If you accept that a minimum (I emphasize, minimum) annual training requirement is 500 rounds (which is nowhere near enough to maintain full competency with rifle and handgun), then I think putting aside ten years’ worth of .22LR is not a bad idea. Personally, I plan on at least 1,000 rounds per year, and want more than a decades’ worth of ammo on hand to support that. YMMV, of course. That can substitute for quite a lot of centerfire ammo, but not all. After all, the recoil, report, etc. of full-house rounds is much greater than rimfire, and one has to become (and stay) accustomed to that. I’d say that for every 10 rounds of rimfire ammo we fire, we should be shooting one round of centerfire ammo. Again, YMMV.
There’s also the unpleasant thought that if a state of emergency is declared, the authorities may try to confiscate guns and ammunition from civilians. We all know what happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and “woke” states in particular probably won’t hesitate to do the same thing given any excuse that comes to hand. I therefore suggest that one should conceal at least part of one’s stash in a safer place, where it’s less likely to be found and more secure against confiscation. How you do that is your business. I think off-site storage is probably a good starting point – and I don’t mean a storage unit, because those are most likely to be targeted by both looters and law enforcement during a crisis when they’re looking for stuff. The same goes for storing stuff with friends – their homes are just as likely to be searched as yours is. Use your imagination. Think outside the box – and stash enough ammo and firearms that if all the rest of yours are no longer available, you’ll still be able to defend yourself and your loved ones.
(I’m not encouraging you to break any laws that may forbid such steps, of course. I’m not going to condone criminal conspiracy. Perish the thought!)
Peter
Commonly known as the father of the modern U.S. Marine Corps sniper program, former NRA Secretary and retired USMC Major Edward James “Jim” Land Jr. has had a life full of significant accomplishments, challenges
and change.
Edward James Land, Jr. was born in 1935 and was raised on a farm in Lincoln, Nebraska. Land graduated at 17 from high school in 1953. He had a full scholarship to the University of Nebraska Agricultural College because of his work on his family farm with soil conservation. “Most of the time when we sat down for a meal, the only thing at the table that didn’t come off the farm was salt and pepper,” said Land. A few days after he graduated high school, Land changed course and enlisted in The Marine Corps.
Planning on serving his country and then using the GI Bill, Land was transferred to Marine Barracks 8th & I which is where he met his wife. They were married and welcomed a daughter while stationed there. Somewhere along the way he changed his plans and wanted to become a Marine Corps officer. He started taking college courses and reenlisted for recruit training to become a Drill Instructor (DI). In 1957, Land went to Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) San Diego for Drill Instructor School and upon completion of their 9-week school became a DI. After 22 months Land was selected for Officer Candidate School (OCS).
After 12 weeks of training at OCS, located at Marine Base Quantico, Land was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He had 9 months of training at The Basic School (TBS) and was transferred to the 4th Marine Regiment in Hawaii. After being a platoon commander at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for a year, Land began to grow restless. “Mrs. Land pointed out that I had achieved my goal to become an officer. She said ‘You need a new goal, that’s your problem.’” Land said it made a lot of sense to him since he had always had goals to aspire towards, so he set a new one. To get his college degree.
Land was scheduled to go to Marine Corps Reconnaissance Company that was attached to the Brigade in Hawaii. Before joining Recon Company, he had orders to Panama for Jungle Warfare School. Ten days before his departure, Land was informed by his battalion commander that his orders had been canceled and he was now going to Division Matches. “I had no idea what the division matches were, and I had never shot competitively,” said Land. They won the Pacific Division Match Team Championship his first competition. He was then selected to join the FAF PAC Rifle & Pistol team.
Land worked with CWO Arthur Terry to found the Corps’ first modern sniper course. “We decided you can only give the commanding general so many pot medal trophies…we needed to provide a service,” said Land.
“So we were trying to find something that could provide a service.” Land got the idea from an Army shooter who attended a Canadian sniper school. “So that got me started on the sniper business.”
“My mom used to have a saying ‘If you want to hear God laugh just tell him your plans.’ Because I was going in one direction and he took me somewhere else,” said Land.
Land went to Vietnam as Officer in Charge (OIC) of the 1st Marine Division Sniper Teams. It was in Vietnam that he was the Commanding Officer of legendary Marine Corps sniper, Carlos Hathcock.
After his time in Vietnam, Land was Inspector-Instructor (I&I) for a reserve unit. In 1973 he was sent back to Washington, DC, this time to Headquarters Marine Corps Henderson Hall to be a briefing officer for the Commandant. Due to the high-stress environment of the position, briefing officers were only given a 6-month billet. Land was then assigned as the Marksmanship Coordinator for the Marine Corps, making him responsible for all the marksmanship training across the Corps. Unfortunately, the sniper program had been canceled in 1972. Through his efforts and the help of several fellow Marines, Land managed to get the sniper program started again.
Land was able to reestablish the MOS (military occupational specialty), got the table of organization (TO) and the table of equipment (TE). And finally, the Commandant approved the first permanent Marine Corps Scout Sniper School in Quantico, Virginia. It is still in full operation today.
“The good Lord gave me the contacts that helped me make this possible,” said Land. “I had no idea how to function at that high level of bureaucracy of the Marine Corps. I had many help and guide me along the way.”
When Land retired from the Marine Corps in 1977, he had finally achieved his goal that was set back in Hawaii. He graduated with a Bachelor of Political Science from George Washington University in 1976 and upon his retirement he found himself unemployed and again, without a goal. 6 days later he was hired by the National Rifle Association (NRA), and he would start the second career path that would lead him to be the Secretary of the NRA for 21 years.
In 2015, at the age of 80, he retired from the NRA after being there for 31 years. Shortly after his retirement, his wife of 60 years passed away. “When I was on I&I duty in 1976, I was a Casualty Assistance Officer,” said Land. “I knocked on 211 doors for casualty notifications to families, and one of the things I always told them was not to make any major decisions for at least a year.” He took that advice after his wife, Elly, passed and tried to come up with a new plan.
He purchased a small farm in rural Virginia that he says was “the only thing that kept me going at the time.”
Land starts each day as he always has, with his “plan of the day.” He works on projects out at the farm, hunts and encourages other veterans, many of them his former Marines, to continue living life to the fullest. He has a bucket list of items that he checks off as he completes them and has no plans of slowing down.
Also on his list of projects are motivational sayings that he has come up with and used over the years:
“Establish your priorities and get to work.”
“Nothing will work unless you do.”
“Done is better than perfect.”
He looks at this every day to keep him on track and encourages others to do the same.
Not too bad for a “friendly drill instructor.”
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Desert Eagle 50 AE Pistol
In May of 2017, a father of three named Troy Johnson donned a ghillie suit and stalked a 12-year-old girl as she was heading to school in New South Wales, Australia. The 31-year-old abducted, subdued, gagged, and raped the child. Police searched his home and seized several items of evidence that supported the resulting charges. There were allegations of other assaults and attempted assaults as well. This freaking loser supposedly suffered some kind of medical episode after his arrest and was subsequently hospitalized. He appeared in the Wyong Local Court after his discharge and was ultimately sentenced to 28 years in prison.
I struggle to comprehend what could drive a person to do something like that. Not meaning to sound uncharitable, but whatever his “medical episode” was, I can only hope it was something fairly agonizing. Most anything involving a power drill, a propane torch, or an intractable intestinal blockage would be OK with me. What makes this whole sordid tale pertinent to today’s discussion, however, was his attire. The ghillie suit has a long and fascinating military history.
Origin Story
Gille is a Scots Gaelic term that describes a young man who works outdoors. Gille Dubh translates to “Black-Haired Youth” or “Dark-Haired Lad.” The Gille Gubh is some kind of bizarre earth spirit adorned in moss and leaves that figures prominently in Scottish mythology. The general understanding is that ghillie is a poorly-translated version of this term.
Our Australian comrades call their ghillies “yowie suits.” This is a reference to the yowie, a mythical aboriginal creature akin to the Sasquatch. While there are a dozen or more local names for this thing, they all describe a hairy ape-like hominid that stands and walks upright. I rather suspect the yowie accounts for more than a little lost sleep among Australian children.
The ghillie suit is simply a camouflage outfit designed to meld a sniper into the background vegetation and leave him essentially invisible on the battlefield. In years past, ghillie suits were handmade as part of sniper training. Traditionally, this involved sewing strips of burlap of various colors onto an old camouflage uniform until the end result was adequately leafy and bulky.
The first recorded use of the ghillie suit in combat was by the Lovat Scouts during the Second Boer War. This Scottish Highland Regiment was mustered by Simon Fraser, the 14th Lord Lovat. The first batch of troops for this motley band was drawn from gamekeepers, professional stalkers, and similar men of the earth who toiled on Scottish estates.
The Lovat Scouts were initially commanded by the Honorable Andrew David Murray with Lord Lovat as 2IC. After 17 months in action, Murray was killed and Lord Lovat took command at age 29. He served until the end of the war in 1902.
At the dawn of the 20th century military tacticians were still trying to define themselves in the age of long-range repeating rifles, high explosives, smokeless powder, and belt-fed machineguns. In the Lovat Scouts we find soldiers well informed in fieldcraft and marksmanship. When combined with some innovative leadership these rugged men ultimately changed the way wars were fought.
The Lovat Scouts were attached for a time to the Black Watch, but that relationship ended in the summer of 1901. A year later the Lovat Scouts returned to England and were disbanded. With chaos on the horizon in Europe, the Lovat Scouts were reformed in 1903 as two regiments. From these troops were drawn a group of dedicated sharpshooters that became the British Army’s first operational battlefield sniper unit. The unit was dissolved and reconstituted another time or two before finally finding itself deployed as two separate regiments in September of 1915 to Gallipoli.
The First War to End All Wars
The WW1-era Lovat Scouts Sharpshooters were formed into ten platoons. Each platoon was led by a commissioned platoon leader and consisted of 21 soldiers and NCOs. That first sniper unit totaled 220 specially-trained men. In a fairly prescient bit if tactical acumen, each platoon was subsequently attached to a particular Army Corps to be tasked out to subordinate units as needed.
These sharpshooters were indeed renowned for their facility behind a rifle. Their weapons were typically variations of the standard-issue Short Magazine Lee Enfield (SMLE) that equipped most of the British Army. The SMLE was itself exceptionally capable for its day. However, it wasn’t necessarily their facility as snipers that so endeared the Lovat sharpshooters to their supported units.
These early snipers were highly esteemed for their covert intelligence-gathering skills. On a battlefield bereft of drones and spy satellites, the accurate establishment of enemy locations and dispositions made the difference between success and failure. While using little more than 20-power spotting scopes these skilled warriors could offer great detail on enemy movements within ten miles and still offer reliable insights out to twenty. Major Vernon Hesketh Prichard, a legendary soldier and adventurer whose story we will no doubt explore eventually in this venue, was quoted as having said of the Lovat sharpshooters, “Keener men never lived…if they reported a thing, the thing was as they reported it.”
The Guns
When faced with the prospects of protracted trench warfare, the British set out to equip their sharpshooters with precision rifles worthy of their mission. At first, these dedicated marksmen were equipped with a motley array of repurposed scoped hunting weapons. However, by 1915 the British government began mounting 3x and 4x scopes atop SMLE and P14 Enfield rifles. During the course of the war roughly 10,000 rifles were thusly converted. The optics on these weapons were not standardized until 1918.
Though the SMLE fed from a detachable 10-round box magazine, most loading was still undertaken by stripper clips from the top. As a result, early scopes featured offset mounts to allow access to the rifle’s action from above. Later versions were center-mounted to facilitate a more effective cheek weld. These weapons had to be either loaded from the bottom using magazines or loaded from the top one round at a time. A skilled rifleman was expected to fire between 20 and 30 aimed shots per minute.
The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk I was first introduced in January of 1904. The SMLE’s 25.2-inch barrel represented the sweet spot halfway between that of the original Lee-Enfield rifle and the carbine version. The SMLE was distinguishable at a glance by the stubby little bayonet boss protruding just below the muzzle. The subsequent WW2-era Mk IV sported a small length of barrel at the nose. The definitive WW1 version of the rifle was the slightly-modified Mk III introduced in 1907. British Tommies affectionately referred to the SMLE as the “Smelly.”
The Suit
The basic ghillie suit changed very little for nearly a century. If properly executed such a contrivance was almost unnaturally effective. However, those traditional burlap ghillies had their downsides.
Frayed burlap is notoriously flammable. On a battlefield contaminated with such vile stuff as white phosphorus, incendiary rounds, smoke grenades, and similar pyrotechnics the ghillie suit can be a simply epic fire hazard. Two snipers assigned to the 11th ACR burned to death during combat operations in Iraq when their ghillie suits were set ablaze. Additionally, burlap soaks up moisture like a sponge. Once a burlap ghillie suit gets wet it becomes unnaturally heavy. Wet burlap close to the skin for long periods in cool climes can precipitate hypothermia as well.
Modern sensors rely upon thermal detectors and IR imagers that can significantly degrade the effectiveness of traditional visual camouflage. While a generation ago such gear had to be mounted in the nose of an attack helicopter and cost as much as my hometown, nowadays thermal sights of surprising effectiveness are within financial reach of your typical middle-class pig hunter. As regards thermal technology, with each passing year the prices go down and the capabilities go up. Traditional ghillie suits don’t do much to conceal a person’s thermal signature.
While this might not seem like a big deal, a ghillie suit also attracts burrs and twigs like some kind of magnet. Once you’ve rolled around in the brush in one of these things for a while it becomes a gigantic mass of prickly crap. Most normal people wouldn’t care, but it’s impossible to keep a field-worn ghillie suit tidy.
The Next Generation
We Americans have a well-earned reputation for smothering our problems in science and technology. In 2007 the US Army Soldier Systems Center undertook a program to develop an enhanced ghillie suit material. Where burlap or jute had all those detriments described earlier, this new stuff was purportedly water-repellent and fire-resistant. After extensive field testing at the Sniper School at Fort Benning, this new material was incorporated into the FRGS (Flame Resistant Ghillie System). Testing began in 2018 on the IGS (Improved Ghillie System), a modular design intended to be even safer, more comfortable, and more effective.
Though they have really changed very little over the past century, the ghillie suit remains an integral part of the modern sniper’s kit. Wherever men institutionally kill each other there will be precision marksmen decked out in fluffy earth tones creeping about in the brush visiting death upon their enemies. Born in South Africa in the late 19th century, the ghillie suit remains a timeless sniper tool even today.
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