Author: Grumpy
Certain names are indelibly burned into the foundations of the modern gun world. Kalashnikov made a few rifles, while Stoner’s radical black gun has ably served American troops for more than half a century. And you might have heard of a certain fellow named John Moses Browning. But we must not forget about Georg Luger.
Towering Teuton
Georg Johann Luger was born in 1849 in Steinach am Brenner, Tyrol, and raised in Italy. He was trained as an accountant. Luger volunteered for military service in 1867 and found that he had a knack for marksmanship. This awakened a latent gift for firearms design.
While in the employ of Ludwig, Loewe, and Company, Georg travelled to the United States in 1894 to demonstrate the radical Borchardt-Selbstladepistole C-93 to the U.S. Army. Uncle Sam had little interest in the complex and finicky Borchardt gun, but Herr Luger came home with their documented criticisms prepared to do better. Using the C-93 Borchardt as a starting point, Luger crafted the improved Parabellum pistol that he successfully patented in 1898.
While Herr Luger was working on his Parabellum pistol he also designed the 9x19mm cartridge it typically fired. This modest rimless round ultimately became the most produced handgun cartridge in human history. Modern bullet design has made the 9mm the world’s most common defensive pistol round even more than a century after its introduction. Not bad for a guy trained in accounting.
Switzerland was the first military customer for Luger’s radical Parabellum pistol in 1900. The Kaiser’s Navy bought the gun in 1903. The German Army followed suit in 1908.
The Parabellum pistol briefly had a shot at becoming the standard U.S. Army combat handgun. In 1907, Herr Luger provided a pair of Parabellum pistols chambered in .45 ACP along with 746 handloaded .45 ACP cartridges to compete against the 1911 and Savage offerings. Luger eventually pulled his guns, and the 1911 obviously won the day. That first .45 ACP Luger was purportedly destroyed during testing. The second is supposedly in private hands today and is potentially the most valuable collectible handgun on the planet.
A Specialist’s Weapon
In July of 1913, the Kaiser himself authorized the development of the Lange Pistole 08, or LP08. The new design effort was spearheaded by a German Army officer named CPT Adolf Fischer. This modified Parabellum pistol sported a 7.9″ barrel, an eight-position ramp-adjustable rear sight and a detachable board-type shoulder stock. The world came to know the LP08 as the Artillery Luger.
The Artillery Luger was an amazing piece of work. The rear sight, for instance, incorporates a cam mechanism that moves the assembly left as the unit is elevated to compensate for spin drift of the 9mm round at long ranges. That’s pretty ridiculous given that this round drops 35 feet at 500 meters, but it is mechanically fascinating, nonetheless.
The Artillery Luger draws its name from its intended mission. Artillery crews had their hands full servicing their field pieces and required a compact weapon that wouldn’t interfere with their primary duties. Should their positions be threatened, however, they could bring their little Luger carbines into action in the close fight.
The Artillery Luger came equipped with a complicated 32-round snail drum called the Trommelmagazin that substantially enhanced the gun’s onboard firepower. The Trommelmagazin was effective enough in action, but it required a dedicated loading tool that was almost as complex as the magazine itself.
Artillery Lugers were typically issued along with a wooden storage box called a P-Kasten. This case carried five drum magazines as well as the magazine loader and twelve boxes of ammunition. Complete versions of this kit are rarer than honest politicians these days.
The resulting nifty little carbine caught the eye of lots of folks other than artillerymen. Before Antony Fokker perfected his synchronization gear allowing belt-fed machineguns to fire through a propeller arc, Artillery Lugers were sought after by early German aviators. The Germans actually conducted tests to determine if the 9mm Parabellum round was effective when fired against a running aeroplane engine (it wasn’t terribly).
The Lange Pistole also saw widespread use by the Imperial Stormtroopers who specialized in close quarters operations later in the war (to learn more about “Trench Raiders” of World War I, click here). The weapon’s compact dimensions made maneuvering among hostile trenches an easier chore than might be the case with a full-sized infantry rifle. Waffen SS troops even used the Artillery Luger in a limited fashion during the Second World War as well.
A Sprinkling of Human Anatomy
You can take an unloaded example of Georg Luger’s Parabellum pistol, press the muzzle against a firm surface, and observe the man’s inimitable genius. The action was inspired by the mechanics of the human knee. A recoil-driven design, as the barrel assembly cycles backwards upon firing the cam built into the frame pitches the toggle up and open, with the force required to “bend the knee” keeping the action closed long enough for safe operation.
This movement unlocks the gun’s bolt and allows it to cycle backwards to extract and eject a spent case. A coil spring in the butt shoves everything forward again to repeat the sequence. The exposed nature of the design left it susceptible to battlefield grime, but the gun was nonetheless a revolutionary advance over the revolvers against which it competed during its development.
Practical Tactical
The magazine release on the Parabellum pistol is underneath the right thumb where it should be, and the toggle action is comparably accessible with either hand. The safety is a thumb lever on the left. Forward is fire. Magazines do not typically drop free but do include a dimpled wooden floorplate to aid their extraction.
The assembled rig is fairly awkward, but it would still beat its competition in the trenches by a wide margin. While with the benefit of hindsight the Artillery Luger seems more like spy kit than an infantry combat weapon, it was an evolutionary stepping stone to later, greater things. The LP08 Artillery Luger is indeed a First World War icon.
Special thanks to www.worldwarsupply.com for the cool replica gear used in our photographs.
A policy proposal heading for Board of Supervisors approval next week would explicitly authorize San Francisco police to kill suspects using robots.
The new policy, which defines how the SFPD is allowed to use its military-style weapons, was put together by the police department. Over the past several weeks, it has been scrutinized by supervisors Aaron Peskin, Rafael Mandelman and Connie Chan, who together comprise the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee.
The draft policy faces criticism from advocates for its language on robot force, as well as for excluding hundreds of assault rifles from its inventory of military-style weapons and for not including personnel costs in the price of its weapons.
Peskin, chair of the committee, initially attempted to limit the SFPD’s authority over the department’s robots by inserting the sentence, “Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”
The following week, the police struck out his suggestion with a thick red line.
It was replaced by language that codifies the department’s authority to use lethal force via robots: “Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to SFPD.”
This could mark a legal crossing of the Rubicon for the city: Robot use-of-force has never before been approved, nor has it ever been prohibited, in San Francisco. A version of this draft policy was unanimously accepted by the rules committee last week and will come before the full board on Nov. 29.
“The original policy they submitted was actually silent on whether robots could deploy lethal force,” said Peskin. He added that he decided to approve the SFPD’s caveated guidelines because the department had made the case that “there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option.”
Advocates and lawyers who oppose the militarization of the police are less convinced.
“We are living in a dystopian future, where we debate whether the police may use robots to execute citizens without a trial, jury, or judge,” said Tifanei Moyer, senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Moyer leads the organization’s work on police misconduct and militarization.
“This is not normal,” she wrote over email. “No legal professional or ordinary resident should carry on as if it is normal.”
The SFPD has 17 robots in its arsenal, 12 of which it describes as fully functional. According to police spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca, they have never been used to attack anyone. The robots are remote-controlled, and are typically used to investigate and defuse potential bombs or to surveil areas too awkward or dangerous for officers to access.
Uses defined in the new draft policy include “training and simulations, criminal apprehensions, critical incidents, exigent circumstances, executing a warrant or during suspicious device assessments.”
And, in extreme circumstances, they can be used to kill.
How are robots used lethally?
In 2016, the Dallas police force strapped plastic explosives to a robot and used it to blow up a sharpshooter who had killed five officers, in the first U.S. instance of a police robot killing a suspect. One of the SFPD’s robots, the Remotec F5A, is the same model as the one used by Dallas police.
More recently in Oakland, a policy on lethal robots came before the city’s police department’s civilian oversight council. One device they discussed was the PAN disruptor, a device that can be attached to a remote-controlled robot and uses a blank shotgun shell to disable a bomb by blasting it with pressurized water. Oakland police acknowledged that, in emergencies, they could arm it with live rounds. The SFPD also has multiple PAN disruptors that can be attached to robots and fire shotgun shells.
Last month, Oakland police ultimately backed down and removed language that would have allowed them to kill using robots. They said they hope to pursue the option in the future.
Rueca said that the San Francisco Police Department “does not have any sort of specific plan in place” for how lethal force would be applied with robots as “the unusually dangerous or spontaneous operations where SFPD’s need to deliver deadly force via robot would be a rare and exceptional circumstance.”
Why is this happening now?
Cities across California are currently drafting new policies on the use of military weapons by local police forces, thanks to a state law called AB 481, which passed last year. Figuring out the force options of robots is one small part of the law’s remit.
The law mandates that every police force in California must annually report its stock of all military-style weapons, their cost, how they can be used, and how they were deployed in the prior year. The law gives local authorities — in San Francisco’s case, the Board of Supervisors — the ability to annually reject or accept the rules governing how the weapons are used.
The Board will also be required to sign off on any new military-style equipment before purchase, although the police will be able to replace any existing equipment up to a value of $10 million without approval.
Most advocates opposed to the militarization of the police hail AB 481 as a step in the right direction for accountability and transparency. But concerns have been raised that some jurisdictions have not gone far enough in limiting how military-style weapons can be used.
Jennifer Tu, a fellow with the American Friends Service Committee, has been tracking how police departments across the state are implementing AB 481.
“My suspicion is that most policies will have left room for robots to use force,” said Tu. She said that it was her understanding that most departments have not mentioned robots at all, which means they are subject only to generic restrictions.
The ACLU has published advice on the use of robots by police, and notes that the limited situational awareness of robots, compared to in-person officers, make it more likely that force is “used inappropriately and/or on the wrong targets.”
“There is a really big difference between hurting someone right in front of you, and hurting someone via a video screen,” said Tu.
What else is in the draft policy?
Tu contended that, on top of the issue of robot force, there are other problems with San Francisco’s draft policy, as it currently stands.
In its initial submission, the SFPD omitted all of its 608 semi-automatic assault rifles, 64 machine guns, and 15 submachine guns from the new use-of-force policy. According to Peskin, these were added in when he pushed back on their omission. But in the department’s latest version, which is set to come before the supervisors next week, 375 of the semi-automatic assault rifles are missing again.
The rationale given for the removal of these assault rifles from the policy: The Chief of Police defines them as “standard-issue service weapons.”
Others disagree with that assessment. “We don’t see regular officers walking around with assault rifles,” said Allyssa Victory, staff attorney with the criminal justice program at the ACLU of Northern California (and recent Oakland mayoral hopeful). “Just writing a policy doesn’t make it so.”
Victory added that shotguns and handguns can be omitted because they are standard issue, according to AB 481, but no such exemption applies to assault rifles.
“The law defines ‘military weapons,’ not the chief of police,” wrote civil rights lawyer Moyer over email. “San Francisco is not the only department to attempt to redefine ‘military weapons’ so as to justify hiding their use, costs, and upkeep from the public.”
“If the law defined military weapons as bubble gum, then the police department would have to disclose their use of bubble gum,” she wrote.
Tu added, “I really think it is confusing to the public if we don’t have those assault weapons reported.” Their omission would mean that in future annual reports, the police would not need to declare how the guns had been used or who had been injured by them.
Another point of contention with advocates is that the SFPD has not included personnel training or maintenance times in their valuation of the cost of their military-style weapons. This appears to be required by AB 481, which states that costs must include “acquisition, personnel, training, transportation, maintenance, storage, upgrade, and other ongoing costs” of the weapons.
But the SFPD rejected a suggestion from the American Friends Service Committee to include personnel costs. The department said that maintenance and training occur during normal work hours, and that their human resources management system cannot track different types of work done by officers, so “there is no compelling reason to track in the suggested manner.”
It remains to be seen if the policy, as it stands, will be approved by the Board of Supervisors, and what limitations will ultimately be placed on the police department’s military-style weapons, including its robots. And, once the rules are settled, the process will begin again with the Sheriff’s Department, which will need to create its own policy to stay in compliance with AB 481.
“The great news about this thing is that it can be evolved,” said Peskin, adding that policy must be scrutinized and approved every year if the SFPD wants to keep using its weapons.
“And I think we are starting off in a good place.”
This policy will be discussed at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday November 29. The meeting starts at 2 p.m. and the police equipment policy is agenda item 28. More details can be found in the full meeting agenda.
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Pity that this was not Patton’s 3rd Army but it turned out okay in the long run! (Except for all the German women that were raped by the Russians as their “reward” given by Stalin) Grumpy
Salisbury Fire Department photo
SALISBURY, Maryland – Firefighters in Maryland say an 11-year-old boy suffered minor burns after racing back into a burning apartment building to rescue his 2-year-old sister.
The blaze broke out Tuesday evening on the second floor of a two-story apartment building in Salisbury, which is in Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
According to the state fire marshal’s office, the boy fled the building when smoke alarms started going off, but then he realized his sister was still inside. That’s when he went back up to the burning second floor to rescue her, suffering a minor burn to his arm in the process.
Salisbury Fire Department photo
The boy’s injuries were so minor that he did not need to be treated at the scene. His sister, meanwhile, was not hurt.
The children’s names were not released.
Salisbury Fire Department photo
Salisbury firefighters had the blaze under control within 10 minutes, but two of the eight apartments were left uninhabitable as a result of the fire. The Red Cross was helping the displaced residents.
Investigators ruled the fire accidental, blaming an “unspecified electrical event” in a second-floor bedroom outlet.
1:42
The resident of a home in DeKalb County, Georgia, opened fire on four alleged robbery suspects, killing one and wounding three, around 5 p.m. Friday.
The Associated Press reports that one of the four suspects allegedly had a gun and “exchanged gunfire” with the resident.
FOX 5 notes that police arrived on scene and found three wounded individuals outside the home. Those individuals were “23-year-old Jacqueze Grier, 18-year-old Taneaious McCune and a 15-year-old boy.”
McCune later died a short time later at the hospital.
A fourth robbery suspect, 30-year-old Telvin Thomas, was apprehended later in the night when he showed up at a hospital.
Investigators believe the shooting was “justified” and are not pursuing charges against the resident.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com
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