All About Guns Archives - Page 1434 of 1836 - You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

During the Vietnam war, the Sea, Air and Land special operators (SEALs) were just developing their covert techniques that would eventually make them into the finest fighting force in the world. Most of what these men did—the war stories and how they accomplished what they did—remains classified. Some facts eventually do leak out, and one of them was the existence of the “Hush Puppy” pistol, a modified Smith & Wesson Model 39 with a screw-on suppressor that was named the Mark 22 pistol by the U.S. Navy.

The SEALs were given the freedom to utilize non-standard military arms because of their special-operations status. At first, the Navy bought a handful of Model 39s for testing purposes. The fledgling SEALs got hold of them and found them useful. The Model 39 is a 28-oz. 9 mm double-/single-action semi-auto pistol with a 4” barrel and a single-column, 8-round magazine. At 11 ozs. less than the Model 1911A1, the compact 9 mm seemed to offer exactly what a covert operator needed in a sidearm. Its light weight and smaller profile were highly desired features by the early SEAL operators.

Then, as today, the guys in the field started pining for modifications to the standard Model 39. Relatively few were modified into Mark 22 status. Those modifications included a slightly longer barrel threaded at the muzzle to accept the suppressor, high-profile sights that could be seen and used with the suppressor, and a grip reconfigured to accept originally a Browning P35 double-column, 13-round magazine—later to accept a Smith & Wesson designed 14-rounder. A slide-lock switch was added to the frame to prevent the slide from operating, thus making the pistol a single shot. This was done to prevent the enemy from hearing the pistol operate. The suppressor was so effective with subsonic ammunition that the loudest part of the gun was the cycling of the slide. A detachable wire shoulder stock and holster were also part of the weapon package.

That suppressor, called the Mark 3, was 5” long and weighed 8 ozs. Because the frogmen often operated in a marine environment, a chamber plug and muzzle cap made from phenolic were included in the Mark 22 kit. Special ammunition, Mark 4, featured a 158-gr. FMJ bullet with a green tip and loaded to 900 fps. Also included as part of the kit was a spare suppressor insert tube with extra heavy rubber wipes. These wipes were reputed to be serviceable for a couple of dozen rounds or so before needing replacement.

If that seems rather fragile, remember this pistol was not intended as a quintessential self-defense weapon; rather it was designed around the need to take out sentries very quietly. SEALs were—and are—superb combat marksmen and were fully capable of neutralizing a target with a single round.

Altogether, the “Hush Puppy” Mark 22 package, including the pistol, can and a loaded 13-round magazine weighed in at 40 ounces, only an ounce heavier than a 1911A1 pistol. It was replaced in 1991 by the Mark 23 pistol, a 12-round-capacity .45 ACP made by Heckler & Koch. Though larger, heavier and more powerful than the first Mark 22 pistols, the concepts developed more than 50 years ago for a covert pistol for SEALs and other special operators still remain the foundation of such weaponry.

Very few—some say only two—original Mark 22 Hush Puppies have found their way into private collections. I was unable to find a “going rate” for such a collectable, but it would likely be astronomical.

The Model 39 Smith & Wesson remained cataloged for 27 years—1955 to 1982. Eventually Smith & Wesson made a commercial model of the Hush Puppy pistol, the 14-shot Model 59—sans the can, shoulder stock and extra-high sights. Later generations of these pistols were among the so-called “Wondernines” during the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Hush Puppy image courtesy Small Arms Review.

German Rifles of World War 1

Supreme Court looks to medieval England in gun rights case David G. Savage LA Times

The Supreme Court is preparing to decide whether the 2nd Amendment gives Americans a right to carry a loaded gun when they leave home — and some justices are looking back to the England of 1328 for an answer.

a large building: At issue: Do Americans have a right to be armed when they travel in a car, walk down the street or march in protest rally? (Associated Press) © Provided by The LA Times At issue: Do Americans have a right to be armed when they travel in a car, walk down the street or march in protest rally? (Associated Press)At issue is the meaning of the “right to keep and bear arms” that was added to the Constitution in 1791 and expanded by the high court in 2008.

In a dispute to be argued Wednesday, a newly strengthened conservative Supreme Court majority will have an opportunity to go even further in broadening the rights of gun owners.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia sent the court on a search through history when he wrote the first opinion upholding an individual’s right to be armed.

Until then, the 2nd Amendment had been interpreted by the court as applying to the states’ right to establish a “well-regulated militia,” rather than to an individual’s right to own guns.

But Scalia, who died in 2016, successfully argued for interpreting the Constitution based on what he viewed as the original understanding of its terms. He said the 2nd Amendment “codifies a preexisting right” that was brought from England to the American colonies.

“By the time of the founding” of this country, he wrote in District of Columbia vs. Heller, “the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects.”

That 5-4 decision struck down an unusually strict gun-control ordinance in Washington D.C., and held that law-abiding residents had a right to keep a handgun at home for self defense.

Now the court faces a far more consequential decision in a New York case to be heard this week: Do Americans have a right to be armed when they travel in a car, walk down the street or march in protest rally?

It is a test of gun rights as well as originalism.

One group of prominent historians recently told the court that even by using Scalia’s rationale of relying on the understood gun rights of old England, the court should conclude there is no right to carry weapons in public.

They said England had no “right to carry firearms or other dangerous weapons in public based on a generic interest in self-defense. For centuries, both English and American law have restricted individuals’ right to publicly carry arms — especially in populated places and especially in the absence of a special need for self defense — in order to preserve the public order and public peace.”

Beginning in the late 1200s, kings had issued proclamations prohibiting being armed when traveling in public or entering the city of London, the group noted.

And in 1328, the parliament adopted the statute of Northampton which said “no man great nor small … except the King’s servants in his presence” shall “go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs, markets … nor in no part elsewhere” or “forfeit their armour … and their bodies to prison at the King’s pleasure.”

This statute, which stayed on the books until the mid-20th Century and was adopted by several colonies in the late 1700s, has emerged at the center of the debate over the “preexisting right” that became the 2nd Amendment.

Gun-rights advocates dismiss the medieval law and say it was intended only to restrict “dangerous and unusual weapons” that would “terrify” the public. But others, including most historians, say it reflects a 700-year old tradition of restricting dangerous weapons in public places.

Saul Cornell, a historian at Fordham University, is among the leading skeptics of a broad right to arms coming from England to this country.

“They are inventing a historical tradition, not discovering one,” he said of the gun-rights advocates. “There are very few English historians who believe there is or ever was a broad fundamental right to travel armed wherever you want.”

Brown University historian Tim Harris grew up in south London and earned his degrees at Cambridge. He, too, finds it “bizarre” that Americans would look to England as a source of gun rights.

He noted the Game Acts of 1671 and 1693 restricted firearms to the landed elite who owned a substantial amount of property and were subject to poaching.

“In my view, the English legal precedents have been misunderstood and misapplied in order to try to support a more expansive interpretation of the 2nd Amendment,” he said.

New York, like California and five other states, sharply restricts who may obtain a permit to carry a concealed gun with them. Typically, gun owners are required to show they have “proper cause” or “special need” to be armed.

Those laws had been upheld for the past decade, despite the Heller decision and over dissents from Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch.

However, earlier this year, after Justice Amy Coney Barrett arrived, the court agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to New York’s law. It arose when two men from the Albany area sued after a county judge turned down their request for a general license to carry a handgun because they did not face “any special or unique danger.” They were given licenses to carry firearms for hunting and target shooting.

Washington attorney Paul D. Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general and Scalia clerk, represents them and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn.. He is urging the court to rule that the right to “bear arms” protects the right to carry a gun in public.

“The text and the well-documented history of the right to bear arms in England and America” as well as the Heller decision “make clear that the 2nd Amendment protects not only the individual right to keep arms for protection inside the home, but also the individual right to bear arms for protection outside the home,” he wrote in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen.

He cited the statute of Northampton, but says it was meant to limit only “unusual weapons,” not “ordinary arms for self-defense.”

Like Scalia, he relies heavily on the English Bill of Rights of 1689. After James II, a Catholic, had been deposed for, among other offenses, disarming Protestants in Ireland, Parliament adopted a declaration of new rights.

One said “the subjects, which are Protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.” Clement argues the 2nd Amendment had its “roots” here when the English established the right to have “arms for self-preservation and defense.”

Lawyers for New York portray a different history. “From the Middle Ages onward, laws on both sides of the Atlantic broadly restricted the public carrying of firearms and other deadly weapons, particularly in populous places,” they told the court.

The most thorough court opinion on the history of gun rights and the 2nd Amendment was written by Judge Jay Bybee, an appointee of President George W. Bush. In March, he spoke for a 7-4 majority of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and rejected the idea of a right to be armed in public.

“Our review of more than 700 years of English and American legal history reveals a strong theme: government has the power to regulate arms in the public square,” he wrote in Young vs. Hawaii.

“Indeed, we can find no general right to carry arms into the public square for self defense,” he wrote. “The contours of the government’s power to regulate arms in the public square is at least this: the government may regulate, and even prohibit, in public places—including government buildings, churches, schools, and markets — the open carrying of small arms capable of being concealed, whether they are carried concealed or openly.”

Not all the history in this case is of medieval vintage. A brief filed by retired Judge J. Michael Luttig and several top Washington lawyers urged the court to focus on the Jan. 6 insurrection by supporters of President Trump, and to imagine thousands of armed protesters descending on the Capitol.

Two days before Trump’s planned “stop the steal” rally, the police chief in Washington warned that carrying guns is illegal in the District of Columbia and would “not be tolerated.”

That warning “indisputably prevented even more bloodshed and doubtless saved many lives during the insurrection” and “may well have prevented a massacre,” they wrote.

If the court were to rule in favor of a broad right to be armed, “imagine the difficulties law enforcement would face if future protesters — whether motivated by conspiracy theories, police shootings, or anything else — arrived on the streets legally armed with loaded guns…. Adopting a right to carry,” they say, “would be to throw gasoline on the fires of our nation’s future political conflicts.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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GOD BLESS SCALIA!!!!! Grumpy