Author: Grumpy
U.S.A. — The NICS (National Instant Background Check System) numbers for May of 2023 show the month to be a very close fourth-highest May for gun sales and the third-highest May for the NICS FBI run background checks.
The estimate for gun sales in May comes to a little over 1.13 million estimated as recorded sold through the NICS system. Last year, in May, there were a little less than 1.14 million guns estimated as being recorded as sold through the NICS system. The number of guns sold in May of 2023 is 99.6% of the number sold in May of 2022.
These are estimates because some gun sales are recorded as “multiple.” The number of guns sold as multiple on one 4473 form is estimated as 2.5 x the number of multiple sales forms recorded.
May of 2023 is the 46th consecutive month of over a million firearm (gun) sales recorded by the NICS system.
In May, where we know whether the firearm was a long gun or a handgun, 64% were handguns. 90% of gun sales are either long guns or handguns, and 10% are listed as other or multiple.
Firearm sales have topped a million firearms since August 2019. NICS went active in the last two months of 1998. Our best estimate for the number of firearms in the United States in 1998 is 256 million firearms. In the first ten years of NICS use, the number of privately owned firearms increased by 52 million to 308 million. In the next decade, the number increased by 97 million to 405 million. From the end of 2018 to the end of May 2023, the number has increased by another 91 million to 496 million firearms.
About half of the private stock of firearms in the USA will have been produced in the last 25 years.
It is almost certain the number of privately owned firearms in the United States will exceed 500 million by the end of 2023. Seven more months are available in 2023, and the number of firearms sold has been greater than a million for each of the last 46 months.
The theory of those who desire an unarmed population is: more guns equals more problems. This theory has never been validated. There is no correlation in the numbers we have to indicate more guns equals more problems. From 1945, the first year where we have reliable numbers, the per capita number of firearms has increased from roughly 0.35 firearms per capita to 1.37 firearms per capita at the end of May 2023.
Homicide rates, suicide rates, and fatal firearms accident rates all show no correlation to the number of guns per capita.
The homicide rate has varied from a minimum of about 4 per 100,000 to 10 per 100,000. The minimums occur with low per capita firearms and high per capita firearms. Suicide rates have also gone up and down and up and down as the per capita numbers of firearms continue to rise. While suicide rates have been increasing for several years, the percentage of suicides committed with firearms has dropped while the per capita number of firearms has risen. The rate of fatal firearms accidents has dropped about 94% since 1934, while the per capita number of firearms has quadrupled. With four times as many firearms per person, the fatal firearm accident rate per person has fallen by 94%!
The high percentage of voters who are gun owners is likely to have political consequences. When as many as half of voters own guns and are more familiar with them than the politicians who seek to disarm those voters, those with more knowledge will see through misleading statements and obvious inaccuracies. This makes passing legislation designed to disarm the population very difficult.
Radical Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate are using every legal and illegal stratagem in a desperate attempt to hold onto power. They are attempting to transform the United States radically. In response to domestic uncertainty and international tensions, more and more people buy firearms and ammunition for the defense of self and others.
The United States has reached a new normal where sales of less than a million firearms a month are considered an anomaly.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – A 19-year-old is facing six felony charges after he told police he accidentally fired several rounds at a home in his South Memphis neighborhood while he was “test-firing” an AR-15.
According to court documents, at 6:39 p.m. Wednesday, Memphis police responded to a shots-fired call at a home on Gleason Avenue, where the victim told officers that she, her three little sisters, all minors, and her two children were convened in a bedroom when they heard shots being fired and bullets coming through the house.
No one was injured, but officers searched the area to find the source of the gunfire.
Just south of the home, on a parallel street, police found several men sitting on the sidewalk in front of a house, with a black handgun on the ground near one man, and a sedan with the trunk open and an AR-15 rifle clearly visible inside.
Officers spoke with one of the men, later identified as 19-year-old Teric Jones, who said that the AR-15 belonged to his aunt, and he was just recently test-firing the rifle outside.
Officers saw a makeshift target on the east side of the home, near where a cemetery sits. Jones reportedly told officers that he did not know there was a house behind the target, despite it facing opposite the residential neighborhood.
Jones was arrested and charged with six counts of reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon.
Officers also confiscated the AR-15 and black handgun as evidence.
Jones was released on his own recognizance Thursday and is scheduled to appear in court Friday.
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Two men are sitting drinking at a bar at the top of the Empire State Building, when the first man turns to the other and says “You know, last week I discovered that if you jump from the top of this building, the winds around the building are so intense that by the time you fall to the 10th floor, they carry you around the building and back into a window”. The bartender just shakes his head in disapproval while wiping the bar.
The second guy says, “What, are you nuts? There’s no way that could happen. “No, its true,” the first man says. “Let me prove it to you.” He gets up from the bar, jumps over the balcony, and plummets toward the street below. As he nears the 10th floor, the high winds whip him around the building and back into the 10th floor window and he takes the elevator back up to the bar.
He meets the second man, who looks quite astonished. “You know, I saw that with my own eyes, but that must have been a one time fluke.” “No, I’ll prove it again,” says the first man as he jumps again. Just as he is hurtling toward the street, the 10th floor wind gently carries him around the building and into the window. Once upstairs he urges his fellow drinker to try it.
“Well, why not.” the second guy says, “It works. I’ll try it.” He jumps over the balcony, plunges downward passes the 11th, 10th 9th, 8th, floors. . . . . and hits the sidewalk with a SPLAT.
Back upstairs the bartender turns to the other drinker and says, “You know Superman, you’re a real mean asshole when you’re drunk”.
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And the winner is………
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300 H&H Magnum
It was November of 1974 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. While the weather in such places as North Dakota and Illinois was already abysmal, the legendary Florida sunshine still kept things warm and cheery. This day, however, there was some serious mischief afoot.
The names of the two bad guys have been lost to history, though I have read that they were originally wanted for burglary. We know that they were stopped by Officers Mike Gilo and Gary Jones of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department while driving a flashy Chevrolet Camaro. In 1974 the gas crisis had not yet castrated American muscle cars, so the Camaro still had ample spunk.
Things got tense, and Officers Gilo and Jones retrieved their long guns. In a veritable fit of stupidity, the passenger side perp produced a handgun and fired. Shooting at well-armed police officers seldom ends well.
Officer Jones leveled his issue slide-action 12-gauge shotgun and cut loose with a load of buckshot. The resulting cloud of 0.33-inch lead balls tore up the hot rod but otherwise failed to connect. Officer Gilo, however, wielded something else entirely.
Mike Gilo hefted his fully automatic American 180 .22-caliber submachine gun, jacked the bolt to the rear, and took a bead on the car. Squeezing the trigger he unlimbered a fusillade of zippy little 40-grain lead bullets at some 1,200 rounds per minute into the vehicle’s rear window.
The American 180 Submachine Gun
The American 180 was an open-bolt, selective-fire .22-caliber submachine gun loosely patterned upon the American-designed and British-produced Lewis machinegun of WW1 fame. The father of the American 180 was Richard “Dick” Casull. His original Casull Model 290 was a semiauto .22 rifle that fed from an enormous drum magazine located atop the weapon.
The 1960’s-era Model 290 was both expensive and cumbersome. Eighty-seven hand-built copies saw the light of day before the project died a natural death. Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos owned one. However, by the 1970s other manufacturers in the US and Austria took up and built upon the design.
Dick Casull was a gunsmith from Utah who also developed the monster .454 Casull cartridge along with the big-boned revolver that fired it. The .454 Casull was basically a grotesquely up-engineered .45 Long Colt round that developed nearly 2,000 foot-pounds of muzzle energy.
Casull along with Wayne Baker also pioneered Freedom Arms in 1978 to develop miniature single-action revolvers. Eventually, North American Arms acquired the production rights and covered the country in a thin patina of these adorable well-built compact stainless steel wheelguns.
Technical Details
The American 180 SMG weighs 5.7 pounds empty and 10 pounds loaded with a 177-round drum. Original magazines carry either 165 or 177 rounds, though larger capacity drums of up to 275 rounds are still in production today. 275-round drums effectively occlude the weapon’s sights. However, E&L Manufacturing, the current producer of American 180 drums, includes an elevated front sight along with your first 275-round drum purchase.
The American 180 bolt incorporates a series of grooves in the sides to channel crud out of the mechanism. The British L2A3 Sterling submachine gun features similar stuff. The body of the drum spins on top of the receiver as it empties, which is kind of weird.
There is a captive screw underneath the forward aspect of the receiver that allows the gun to break down quickly into two handy components. The stock removes with the push of a button like that of the M1928 Thompson submachine gun. The bulky pan magazine produces a cluttered sight picture, but the gun is just a ton of fun on the range.
You can die of old age while loading these drum magazines. There is supposedly a mag loader available, though I’ve never seen one. The process really is spectacularly tedious and is best executed in front of some Netflix. A single common spring-powered motor (the detachable mechanical bit in the center) can be used on multiple drums.
The American 180 was originally designed to be used in conjunction with a primitive bulky helium-neon gas laser designator. These early laser sights were enormous contraptions that ran about two hours on a single set of batteries. Oddly, there was also the option of operating the sight off of wall power. That would, of course, presuppose an exceptionally cooperative target.
A single .22LR round isn’t particularly awe-inspiring, but twenty of them in a single second will absolutely rock your world. Even at 1,200 rounds per minute recoil is inconsequential, so the gun is easy to control. The original marketing literature claimed that the American 180 would munch through concrete walls, car doors, and body armor. To eat through body armor with a full auto .22 necessitates a remarkably open-minded miscreant. The gun’s manufacturers claimed that you could place the contents of an entire 165-round magazine within a three-inch circle at twenty yards in the span of eight seconds. Wow.
Trigger Time
I found the gun to be finicky. However, the youngest civilian-legal machinegun in the registry is some thirty-four years old by now. None of these things were designed to last for generations.
The spring-driven motor for the drum magazine has to be tuned a bit. Too little tension and the gun chokes. Too much and the gun chokes. Get it just right, however, and the American 180 is every bit as cool as you might think it would be.
Burst management requires a bit of discipline, but the onerous loading cycle serves to motivate. Given an adequately expansive piece of paper, you really could write your name with the thing. Take your time and hold your protracted bursts on a single spot, and the American 180 will indeed eat through some of the most remarkable stuff.
Running the gun intimates an element of precision that is likely illusory at best. The lack of over-penetration in urban areas, when compared to centerfire offerings, was one of the biggest selling points for the gun. However, a gun that cycles at 1,200 rounds per minute is the stuff of nightmares if wielded in a slipshod fashion in a congested area. Truth be known this might not actually be markedly more hazardous than a 12-bore chucking buckshot, but both guns do demand a lot of practice for safe employment.
The Rest of the Story
Though the 12-bore failed to connect, the 180 reliably did the deed. Officer Gilo unleashed a 40-round burst that took all of two seconds. These forty little rimfire bullets chewed through the back window of the car, and the car crashed in short order.
One of the bad guys was already toasted, his critical bits thoroughly rearranged courtesy the prodigious swarm of little 40-grain slugs. His partner in crime fled the scene but was apprehended soon thereafter sporting an unhealthy collection of small caliber bullet wounds of his own.
In the 1970s there were apparently not quite so many lawyers as is the case today. In an era wherein folks sue cops over some of the most inane stuff, I suspect a .22-caliber machinegun that rips along at twenty rounds per second would likely not satisfy any modern Law Enforcement agency’s risk management department.
Ruminations
The American 180 was produced for a time in Utah and was formally adopted by the Utah Department of Corrections. The Utah DOC bought quite a few laser units as well. When wielded from a guard tower at their state penitentiary I suspect these puppies reliably kept the cons in line.
The Rhodesian Special Air Service used a few of these weird little weapons operationally in Africa. A similar gun produced in Slovenia and titled the MGV-176 was purportedly fairly popular in the sundry wars that took place thereabouts.
It’s tough to imagine what the American 180 might bring to the table that a proper 9mm subgun might not, but it is nonetheless a thought-provoking concept. I personally wouldn’t be comfortable relying upon the cumbersome drum feed system in an austere environment.
The company’s marketing efforts focused on LE sales, and I recall their advertisements in gun magazines back in the Dark Ages. Like all legal machineguns, transferable examples command a premium these days. Many of the guns available to civilian shooters today were traded out of LE arms rooms as departments grew weary of them.
The American 180 is one of the most unusual combat weapons ever imagined. Under controlled circumstances as our hapless Florida burglars discovered, the American 180 can indeed be devastatingly effective. At this point, however, the American 180 is little more than an historical footnote and recreational range beast.
Loading drums would befuddle Job the prophet, and the gun eats ammo like a monkey after Sugar Babies. However, you’d be hard-pressed to conjure a more delightful way to turn .22 rimfire ammo into noise. Novel, unique, and oddly effective within its admittedly narrow applications, the American 180 is an artifact of the golden age of gun design.
Technical Specifications
American 180 Submachine Gun
Caliber .22LR/.22 Short Magnum
Weight 5.7 pounds empty/10 pounds loaded w/177 rounds
Magazine Capacity 165/177/220/275
Length 35.5 inches
Barrel Length 8/18.5 inches
Action Blowback, Open Bolt
Rate of Fire 1,200 rounds per minute