They allow cops, mental health professionals and worried family members to get a firearm taken away from a person believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
“We have heard too many times from those who knew a mass shooter who had expressed concern in advance about that mass shooter’s intentions,” Whitmer said earlier today. “We’ve seen situations where local police flagged someone or even spoke to them about their violent statements but weren’t able to take any further course of action.
“With Extreme Risk Protection Orders we have a mechanism to step in and save lives.”
But there are questions about the legality of the laws – with officials in places like Livingston County thumbing their noses at them.
Sheriff Mike Murphy said last month he would not enforce the red flag program, saying there is a violation of due process.
“If all the gun safety laws work so well, we wouldn’t have issues like Chicago,” said Colleen Quinn. “So, we are standing by our commissioners and our sheriff, we are very proud of them.”
Quinn attended Monday night’s meeting of the Livingston County Board of Commissioners. It is a body that recently declared itself a “Constitutional County” meaning they will not back any laws that violate the Second Amendment in their view.
“So I feel our commissioners did a great job, our sheriff, we are behind him 100 percent,” Quinn said. “And these laws aren’t going to move the needle.”
Governor Whitmer was asked about local authorities who refuse to enforce the Extreme Risk Protection Orders.
“I think that every prosecutor takes his oath to uphold the laws of the State of Michigan,” she said. “And that’s the expectation.”
Here’s how the red-flag laws would work:
A judge will have 24 hours to decide on a protection order once it is filed. If granted, the judge would have 14 days to set a hearing which would then give the red-flagged person a chance to prove why they are not a risk to themselves or others.
Another layer to the enforcement element is, Attorney General Dana Nessel has said if the local law enforcement chooses to not follow through on a red-flag order, she will find someone with the jurisidiction who will.
Norinco (North Industries Group Corporation) is one of the largest arms manufacturers and exporters in the world, with annual sales of about $80 billion. Norinco specializes in land-based systems for the Chinese military as well as a growing list of export customers.
While some high-tech components are reserved for Chinese military versions, export customers can get anything else and even receive equipment modified so that specific non-Chinese components can be installed. Norinco will do just about anything to get a sale or please a customer. Norinco doesn’t sell much to Western countries, except for commercial grade hunting and police weapons and accessories.
In this market Norinco quality is competitive and their prices even more so. All this has enabled Norinco to become one of the top ten arms manufacturers in the world and the first Chinese firm to join a list dominated by American and Western multinational firms.
Norinco is often the supplier of high-tech weapons to nations that are first-time users of these systems. Such was the case with Nigeria, which purchased some Norinco VT-4 tanks. This is a popular export item based on the Russian T-72 design and a very capable system costing about $5 million per vehicle. In 2022 Norinco received user dissatisfaction reports about VT4 tanks sold to Nigeria. The Nigerian tank crews reported that in combat it took them 30 minutes to load and fire a 125mm shell. The problem turned out to be lack of training and poor maintenance. These two items have long been a problem for complex exports like tanks, artillery and warplanes. Some VT4 (also known as MBT3000) users reported problems that did not involve poor maintenance or poorly trained crews. China said it would take care of any problems, even training and maintenance. The recent discovery of a major design flaw in all T-72 type tanks was another matter.
Norinco export tanks are often less capable (and cheaper) versions of the ones China builds for its own forces. In some cases, the export models lack new features China considers secret and not for export. In most cases export models simply get less advanced and cheaper tech. Such was the case with the VT series of tanks. These are exported and not used by Chinese forces. The VT4 (also known as MBT2000) was the export version of the Chinese Type 90 tank. Actually, the Type 90 was not accepted by the Chinese army, which instead went with the 54-ton Type 99, a superior T-72 variant that entered service in 2001, underwent a major upgrade (the 58-ton Type 99A) in 2011 and is still in production with over 1,200 in service so far. The Chinese have over 6,000 tanks, with 2,500 of them modern designs. The rest of them are based on the Russian T-54/55. China developed many variations on this 1950s design and built them under license as the Type 59. In addition to the Type 99 there are 1,500 of the earlier Type 96, which began as the Type 88 in the 1980s as China began to develop and build variations of the Russian T-72. The Type 96 and 99 are, like most current Russian tanks, further upgrades of the successful T-72 design.
By adding better engines and other mechanical and electronic components, improved armored protection and 125mm main guns, the Chinese have managed to create a force of modern tanks superior to what the Russians have. China now has more modern tanks in service than Russia, which has had to put a lot of its most modern tanks in storage because it cannot afford to maintain and operate them.
Unknown to the Chinese was the fact that T-72-type tanks have a fatal flaw that was only discovered during combat with a foe equipped with Western anti-tank weapons. This was the case recently in Ukraine. The fatal design flaw was due to the use of an autoloader for the 125mm gun. This led to the total destruction of Russian tanks hit by a top-attack ATGM (Anti-Tank-Guided Missile). None of the Russian ATGMs used top-attack because of the additional cost and the fact that Western tanks did not use autoloaders, were not automatically destroyed by top-attack ATGMs, and were often equipped with features that defeated top-attack.
Most Chinese tanks use an autoloader. Only the older T-54/55 clones don’t. The fix for this is a new turret that includes the design features found in Western tanks and require an additional crew member to load the shells. A new turret would store the 125mm ammunition in an armored area behind the main gun. That storage area would have blow-out panels. This means that if the ammo storage area is penetrated by a shell or top attack ATGM, the crew would survive because the force of the explosion would be outwards, away from the crew because the armor between the storage area and the crew is much sturdier. The new turrets would cost more but how much more depended on whether the auto-loader was retained or the turret had the more conventional (and safer) manual loader and four man crew. Most Western tanks retained the four-man crew and installed more safety features in the turrets and their tanks in general. One of the few exceptions is the French Le Clerc, which uses an autoloader that is less vulnerable to the top-attack vulnerability.
China has always tried to keep the price of its tanks cheap, for its own troops as well as export customers. China would have built more Type 99s were the tank not so expensive ($3-4 million each). That is why so many of the cheaper (less than $2 million each) 43-ton Type 96 tanks remain in service. In addition to being cheaper, the Type 99 and the Type 96 are considered adequate for most potential battlefield opponents. Western tanks tend to cost about 40 percent more ($7 million each) and continue to defeat T-72 type tanks regularly.
The top-attack problem was a surprise to the Russians and turned out to be a fatal and largely unknown flaw in Russian tank designs. It presented a major problem to most users of T-72 -type tanks. There are many variants of the T-72 design and what makes them different is the quality of the components used. The T-72 was the most successful Russian post-World War II tank design and the basic model was, in theory, pretty solid and reliable. The T-72 also proved to be a good platform for variants that added new (or more) armor, better electronics and improved engines. This resulted in some impressive tank models. The most outstanding of these has been the Russian 46-ton T-72B3. As proof, consider that most of the “new” tanks the Russian army has received since 2000 have been refurbished and much upgraded T-72B3s.
At the end of 2021 the Russian Army had about 2,600 tanks in service and most (65 percent) were T-72B3s, which you hear little about. The new breakthrough design, the T-14, never worked properly, never entered production and probably never will because of design flaws and a need for new tech that has not been perfected yet. The T-14 is mostly about publicity. The T-90 has been produced in large quantities, but not for Russia. The T-90 was a 1980s project that was to incorporate T-80 features into many upgrades of the T-72. Originally it was designated the T-72BU but when Russia finally began production in 1993 it was renamed the T-90. That succeeded in making the tank an export success and most (84 percent) of those produced were for export. In fact, India and Algeria each have more T-90s in service than Russia. Worse, Russia has quietly put over a third of its nearly 550 built T-90s into a reserve. While the T-90s were loudly proclaimed to be the next big thing, the Russian army preferred the refurbished T-72s in the form of the T-72B3. These proved to be more reliable, something that got little publicity. While all the upgrades (new engine, gun, fire control and protection) made it nearly as expensive as the T-90, it was preferred by the troops and the older officers quietly agreed that it was a better tank than the new T-90/T-72BUs.
The best Chinese T-72 mod is the Type 99, which is 25 percent heavier than the T-72B3 and even more expensive to build. That’s because the Type 99 has better armor protection and electronics. The Chinese can afford this while the Russians cannot, it’s as simple as that. Chinese manufacturing capabilities are, on average, superior to what the Russians had when the Cold War ended and this makes a big difference for tank design and production. India and Pakistan have not been able to match Russian or Chinese production standards or development capabilities, which is largely due to corruption and government regulations that make it difficult to innovate and excel. Most of the best South Asian (India and Pakistan) design and production talent moves to the West. A glance at the design and development stars in the West, especially the United States, shows a lot of these South Asians playing leading roles. China managed to keep more of this talent at home and even attract some that had settled in the West to return. In the end high-tech, like everything else, is about the people creating it. Because of this Norinco can modify a VT4 to eliminate the autoloader and add a Western style 12omm smooth-bore tank gun in a VT4. Brazil asked for this and Norinco said they could do it. It’s unclear if Norinco is doing something similar for the Chinese army tanks.
On Tuesday, a U-Haul crashed into a barricade outside the White House grounds. Immediately, speculation that the driver was a “white supremacist” after a Nazi flag was allegedly pulled from the wreck. In fact, the flag was spread out and displayed for reporters by the FBI agents on the scene.
Why did they do that? Someone will have to ask them, but the narrative became a lot more complicated after the driver was identified as Sai Varshith Kandula. Needless to say, he didn’t exactly fit the “white supremacist” profile.
Now, in a move that is sure to spark much speculation, the DOJ has suddenly downgraded the charges involved. The original charges were as follows.
While authorities have not provided specific details on the alleged threat, the US Park Police said the man faces the charge of threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on a President, vice president or family member.
The driver also was also arrested on charges of assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, destruction of federal property and trespassing, according to the Park Police.
According to a new report (The New York Post), those charges have all been wiped away, and Kandula only faces a single count of depredation of property of the United States.
He had allegedly planned the attack for six months, with his goal to “get to the White House, seize power, and be put in charge of the nation,” records show.
Kandula was accused of threatening to “Kill the President If that’s what I have to do,” and praised Nazism and Hitler.
He was originally charged with threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on a president, vice president or family member, as well as assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, trespassing and destruction of federal property, US Park Police said.
His federal charges have since been downgraded to a single count of depredation of property of the United States in excess of $1,000.
Prosecutors told the court Kandula is not a US citizen, according to Fox News.
The first thing that jumps out when reading that excerpt is that Kandula is clearly mentally ill. To the extent that he has any actual ideology, it’s overshadowed by the fact that no sane person would think they could seize the White House and be installed as the nation’s leader. That makes the media’s rush to paint this as some kind of right-wing “white supremacist” attack appear rather silly in retrospect. There was no plan here, and I’m pretty sure a guy named Sai Varshith Kandula isn’t actually a white supremacist. Whether he’s a real proponent of nazism at all is even in doubt.
The other thing to note is that Kandula is not a US citizen. Given that, it sure does feel like the federal government is just looking to sweep all this under the rug, after the preferred narrative collapsed in on itself. Of course, I’m speculating, but why else would they go so soft on the charges after the fact?
In the end, I would guess that Kandula being obviously mentally ill was the biggest factor in downgrading the charges, but shouldn’t that offer a lesson for everyone involved? Perhaps the press shouldn’t jump to rash conclusions in order to try to paint one side of the political aisle with such a broad brush. And perhaps the FBI shouldn’t be displaying nazi flags like trophies without knowing the full context of the suspect’s background. Of course, no lessons.
————————————————————————————- Yeah I know that this has almost nothing to do with guns & such. But just when I think that I am way too skeptical & cynical. This sh*t comes around. Grumpy
Amid growing concerns of security risks to members of Congress, more than 50 senators have been issued satellite phones for emergency communication, people familiar with the measures told CBS News. The devices are part of a series of new security measures being offered to senators by the Senate Sergeant at Arms, who took over shortly after the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The satellite phone technology has been offered to all 100 senators. CBS News has learned at least 50 have accepted the phones, which Senate administrative staff recommend senators keep in close proximity during their travels.
In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee last month, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson said satellite communication is being deployed “to ensure a redundant and secure means of communication during a disruptive event.”
Gibson said the phones are a security backstop in the case of an emergency that “takes out communications” in part of America. Federal funding will pay for the satellite airtime needed to utilize the phone devices.
A Department of Homeland Security advisory said satellite phones are a tool for responding to and coordinating government services in the case of a “man-made” or natural disaster that wipes out communication.
Gibson has also opened an office “demonstration space” in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building to offer senators and staff an exhibition of new home state office security upgrades. The demonstration room offers exhibitions of “duress buttons,” mail screening devices and safety glass to reduce the risk of attacks.
U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on April 25, 2023 in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
In her testimony before the Senate panel in April, Gibson reported, “Our team provided initial physical security enhancements for 31 offices and improved existing security for 52 others in 2022. Maintaining security systems in good working order is a priority, and to support this effort our team conducted over 622 service calls to maintain, repair, and or test and inspect state office physical security systems in 2022.”
Senate administrators have also offered “stop the bleed” training to better equip staffers to respond to medical emergencies and victims of attacks.
In April, the House Sergeant at Arms William McFarland told legislators there is “robust participation” in a program to help House members secure their home residences. McFarland said that House administrators are coordinating with local police departments to help protect members of Congress who hold events in their home states and to help better secure the homes of members.
A spending bill passed in late 2022 provided additional funds for hometown security measures for Congress. The legislation required security administrators to “enhance member protection including providing a security program for Congressional Leadership, expanding Dignitary Protection Division services and expanding USCP field office presence,” which would deploy and broaden Capitol Police protection in cities outside of Washington.
Though the U.S. Capitol complex is shielded by a force of nearly 2,000 Capitol police employees, there have been growing concerns about hometown security for members of Congress. A California man was charged in a 2022 attack at the San Francisco home of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The assailant was allegedly targeting Nancy Pelosi when he confronted and attacked Pelosi’s husband Paul with a hammer.
In a May 15 attack at the Fairfax, Virginia, office of Rep. Gerry Connolly, one of Connolly’s constituents is accused of attacking two of the congressman’s staffers with a metal baseball bat. Both were briefly hospitalized and are recovering.
This is how pretty much every ship-to-ship combat action of this era is depicted in film. It’s predictable, but I still like it.
It’s a trope of pirate movies everywhere. Two massive galleons slug it out with their long nines before heaving alongside battered and broken. With masts shattered and rigging in disarray, the two mighty vessels collide like punch-drunk fighters, grapnels spanning the gap as soon as they come within range. Marines, stewards, and able seamen crouch behind the heavy oak with cutlasses and pistols in hand, ready to go. At the Captain’s command, the melee begins.
Master and Commander was a truly superlative movie. Its filmmakers did a better job than most depicting the gritty reality of shipboard life in the early 19th century.
There’s always somebody who swings Tarzan-fashion from one ship to another amidst sleeting musket fire. As these are movies the injured do not scream for their mothers and those destined to die just fall over without a great deal of fuss. As a species, we have forgotten the details of what happens when two groups of desperate men go at each other with blades. The end result in the real world, particularly onboard an 18th-century Man-o-War with no medical facilities beyond a near-sighted cook with a dirty bone saw, would be gruesome beyond imagining.
What the heck is this thing? I have a fair amount of experience with helicopters, and I’ve never seen anything like that.
The recent Tom Holland epic Uncharted had a variation on that theme that made me want to hurl. In this case, two 16th-century derelict treasure ships once helmed by Ferdinand Magellan are rigged as sling loads beneath these weird twin-rotor Chinook/Skycrane cyborg helicopters. Forget for a moment that the smallest of Magellan’s carracks, the Victoria, weighed 85 tons or 170,000 pounds. Two matching helicopters nonetheless hoist the two supposedly-fragile antique ships out of the Filipino jungle and fly off with them.
At least in this promotional still from the gonzo movie Uncharted, they used a sort-of real helicopter.
There results that same basic ship-to-ship combat set piece only this time it is executed while both vessels are suspended underneath helicopters in flight. Eventually, the Good Guys even use the 500-year-old cannon on one of the ships to shoot down a helicopter. I thought I would be sick. However, it seems not everybody agreed with me. The movie returned $401 million on a $120 million investment and was the fifth-highest-grossing video game movie adaptation of all time. I’m sure we will see sequels until the sun burns out.
This is the destroyer escort USS Buckley during sea trials.
While the repel boarders scene in Uncharted indeed savaged credulity, there was an actual exchange on the high seas off the Cape Verde Islands on the evening of May 5, 1943, that was itself pretty darn weird. The epic fight between DE-51, the destroyer escort USS Buckley, and the German U-boat U-66 involved, believe it or not, the weaponization of coffee mugs, empty brass from the American destroyer escort’s deck guns, and a coffee pot. The end result was the last ship-to-ship close-quarters fight in American naval history.
Oberleutnant Gehard Seehausen was by all accounts a gallant U-boat skipper. Things did not end well for him.
The evening was clear with a bright moon. U-66 was a Type IXC U-boat and the seventh most successful German submarine of the war, having sunk 33 Allied merchant vessels. U-66 was on her ninth war cruise. She had been at sea for four months and was perilously low on fuel. The skipper was Oberleutnant Gehard Seehausen.
This is an image of U-66 under attack while on the surface being resupplied by U-117. U-117 was sunk with all hands. U-66 escaped to fight another day.
Unknown to the Captain and crew of U-66, a US Navy TBM Avenger launched from the American escort carrier USS Block Island on antisubmarine patrol had picked up her radar return and pinpointed the boat’s location some 20 miles from the USS Buckley. The German Kriegsmarine used massive replenishment U-boats called Milk Cows as well as dedicated submarine tenders to resupply their tactical subs with fuel and ordnance while patrolling downrange. On this crisp clear night, U-66 was desperate for a nocturnal rendezvous.
This is the chart plot from the Buckley’s engagement with U-66.
The Buckley’s skipper, Lieutenant Commander Brent Able, headed toward the boat’s location at his best possible speed–around 23 knots. It was LCDR Able’s 28th birthday. Seven miles out he picked up the U-boat on his own radar. Presuming a stationary German submarine on the surface was waiting for resupply, LCDR Able took a gamble and approached the German boat boldly hoping the enemy Captain might mistake him for the expected sub tender.
The destroyer escort USS Buckley was well-suited for close-quarters surface action with a German U-boat.
Once within range, the U-boat skipper fired three red flares, the prearranged signal between his boat and their supply ship while under radio silence. Able closed the distance to 4,000 yards before Seehausen realized his mistake. In desperation, the German skipper ordered a torpedo snapshot in the darkness. The crew of the Buckley was not aware of this until they noticed the German fish passing harmlessly off their starboard side. In response, LCDR Able positioned his ship such that the U-boat was silhouetted in the moonlight and opened fire with everything he had.
This is the bow of the Buckley while in dry dock after its encounter with U-66. The initial impact twisted the ship’s hull badly.
For the next two minutes, the American destroyer pummeled the surfaced U-boat with withering fire from her 3-inch deck guns, 40mm Bofors, 20mm Oerlikons, and .50-caliber machine guns. High explosive rounds were observed tearing into the conning tower and superstructure of the boat. Seehausen fired another ineffectual torpedo before beginning to maneuver randomly. By now the Buckley had pulled to within twenty yards of the stricken boat. When the geometry was perfect, LCDR Able gave his vessel a hard right rudder and rode the nimble warship up onto the deck of the U-boat. At this point things got real.
The Close Fight
The surface fight was chaotic and pitiless.
Now realizing their dire straits, the German skipper ordered his men up and on deck. Some attempted to surrender, while others continued the fight. In the bright moonlight, the next ten minutes were unfettered chaos.
The tight confines of a U-boat deck on the high seas in the dark would have been a terrifying place to fight.
The crew of the Buckley had time to prepare for this moment, and the small arms lockers had been emptied. Under the immediate command of the U-boat’s First Officer Klaus Herbig, German sailors began swarming up and onto the forecastle of the destroyer escort. Pintle-mounted .50-calibers and Thompson submachine guns exacted a horrible butcher’s bill, yet the desperate Germans pushed forward still. When the enemy sailors started clambering onto the deck the Americans took it personally.
Apparently when wielded with enthusiasm this can be a formidable weapon.
Two of the attacking enemy were struck in the head with thrown coffee mugs. The crew of the second 3-inch gun was unable to depress the weapon sufficiently to bring effective fire onto the U-boat so they began throwing the heavy empty cases down on the swarming Kriegsmariners. Despite their valiant efforts, five German sailors still managed to make it onboard the American vessel.
The Thompson submachine gun was the ideal tool to clear a U-boat’s deck of attacking sailors.
The boatswain’s mate responsible for the forward ammunition party came face to face with a German sailor heaving himself over the deck coaming. The American sailor pulled his 1911 pistol and shot the man dead, his body pitching backward and falling into the sea. The Chief Fire Controlman’s duty station was on the bridge, and he had a Thompson. With a clear view of the chaos below he swept the deck of the German boat with long bursts of automatic fire, obtaining what the skipper later described as, “Excellent results.”
One of these puppies upside the head can be a powerful motivator.
One of the rampaging Germans did manage to make it into the wardroom. He was then confronted by a ship’s cook who doused him in hot coffee. The steward proceeded to give the guy a proper pummeling with the coffee pot. At this point, five Germans have accessed the American vessel and LCDR Able wanted some breathing room. He ordered reverse screws and pulled his destroyer escort off of the ventilated U-boat. The five Germans were captured in short order and then escorted below by a sailor armed with a hammer.
The 40mm Bofors was designed primarily as an antiaircraft weapon. When directed against something soft and squishy its high explosive rounds were devastating.
The damaged U-boat was still making turns for about 18 knots, so the fight immediately became dynamic yet again. One German attempted to unlimber the U-boat’s main deck gun. Once again per LCDR Able’s after-action report, his body, “disintegrated when struck by four 40mm shells.” As the U-boat scraped along the Buckley’s starboard side a dead-eyed American torpedo man lobbed an armed hand grenade through the open hatch to the U-boat’s conning tower. The Buckley’s gunners continued to rake the enemy ship with quarter-pound high explosive 20mm rounds. Then the GI grenade detonated with a sickening crump within the bowels of the German vessel.
The crew of U-66 had very little time to get clear of the doomed U-boat.
Before the Americans could react, the U-boat veered into the side of the Buckley near the stern. The crushing impact tore a hole in the engine room and sheared off the starboard screw. With flames spouting from the conning tower and multiple cannon holes, the Germans abandoned ship.
The Aftermath
At close range, the .45ACP is a devastating round.
The entire engagement spanned some sixteen minutes. During the course of the fight, the crew of the Buckley expended 300 rounds of .45ACP, sixty rounds of .30-06, thirty rounds of 12-gauge 00 buckshot, and a pair of fragmentation grenades. This is obviously in addition to the dinnerware and coffeepot.
This happy mob represents about half of U-66’s surviving crew. They look like such children.
Over the next half hour, the Buckley recovered 36 German sailors, roughly half of the U-boat’s crew. Oberleutnant Seehausen went down with his ship. Despite some not inconsiderable damage, the Buckley returned to Boston under her own power. She was refit and returned to active service in June of 1944. After 23 years on the reserve list, the Buckley was scrapped in 1969.
Service aboard a German U-boat during World War 2 was tough duty. Relatively few survived.
Oberleutnant Seehausen was posthumously promoted to Kapitainleutnant and awarded the German Cross in Gold in 1944. He already held the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd classes. He was 26 at the time of his death. U-boat service was the most hazardous posting in the German military. Roughly 75% of U-boat crewmen perished before the end of hostilities.
LCDR Able left the Navy after the war for a successful law practice.
The USS Buckley earned a Navy Unit Citation for the action. LCDR Brent Able was awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy’s second-highest award for valor. Because of the intimate nature of the engagement, the crew of the Buckley was authorized to wear a combat star on their European-African Theater ribbons. The sinking of the German U-boat U-66 was likely the only naval engagement in history to be waged with ammunition drawn from the ship’s galley.
Questions remain on enforcing new red-flag gun laws in Michigan
