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*The Guard, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Identification Badge is a military badge of the United States Army that honors those soldiers who have been chosen to serve as members of the Honor Guard, known as “Sentinels”, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
U.S.A. — The old saying “buyer beware” has now been extended to the Internet age. There has been an epidemic of scams proliferating the World Wide Web, and the firearms community is not immune from criminals trying to separate people from their hard-earned dollars.
These scammers target their victims with incredible deals that are hard to pass up. When it comes to the firearms community, these deals are usually for ammunition. You might see deals that proclaim to save the buyer over 50%. These deals litter the pages of social media sites like Instagram with messages like “DM for orders.”
These scammers have also launched websites with names similar to legitimate ones, including AmmoLand News. We recently received reports of a website named Ammolandusa.com selling ammunition at massive discounts. Once a user places an order, they will receive an email asking the buyer to send money through Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle.
If a purchaser sends money, the seller will disappear. The buyer will be out of their money and will never receive their purchase. PayPal has buyer protection, but most scammers insist that the money be sent via the “friends and family” option. The “friends and family” option removes all protections for the end user.
There are several signs to recognize a scam. If a deal looks “too good to be true,” it probably is an attempt to steal your money.
The markup on ammunition and firearms is less than in other industries. If real, the prices on these scam sites would mean the businesses would be selling products at a loss.
Beware of any online retailer that only sells through social media. If a company has no website and only sells through Instagram, it is most likely a scam. Since it violates Instagram’s terms of service to sell ammunition and firearms on their site, no business will put their livelihood in the hands of the social media giants.
Just because a seller has a website does not mean they are legit. Look at the site contact information for a phone number. Be very careful if a retail site doesn’t have a phone number. If a phone number is listed, call it. If the site is a scam, the number will likely not work or go to a voicemail system. Scammers tend to use services like Google Voice to appear legitimate. In the rare instances when a scammer answers the phone, they will most likely have a thick accent. Most fake companies are run out of Nigeria, India, or Eastern Europe.
If the seller does have a website, check out the privacy policy. Many scam sellers do not write a privacy policy and take the shortcut of copying the text from a reputable seller. These scammers know that most buyers will not look at these policies. Most do not take the time to remove the company names they copied from. If you are on a site that lists a legitimate site’s name in its policies, it is most likely a scam.
Ammunition Scam Sites Are Infesting The Internet by AmmoLand Shooting Sports News on Scribd
Finally, look at the payment methods. Never use PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, or Zelle. These payment methods have policies against selling ammunition and firearms; legit businesses do not use these services. Scammers know it is almost impossible for buyers to recover money from these apps. Also, never give in requests for payment via Bitcoin. Once the Bitcoin leaves your wallet, it is impossible to recover.
There is no way to prevent these criminals from attempting to scam online buyers, but we can bring awareness to the gun community. Only when the scamming stops being profitable will these scammers stop.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
I quess that I was wrong as usual on this subject! Grumpy
This is an early Colt SP1 AR15, similar to my first one bought
after year’s toil as a janitor in a print shop.
God designed us to work. Anything outside that paradigm is innately deleterious to the human psyche. I got a job about 10 minutes after I got my driver’s license and I’ve worked pretty much every day since.
Back in my day, you got your license at your fifteenth birthday. I wouldn’t trust today’s 15-year-old boys unsupervised with underarm deodorant, much less an automobile, but it was a different time. I actually took my first solo jaunt behind the wheel at 13-years-old, but that’s a story for a different time.
My very first job was arguably the coolest I have ever had. I was a janitor in a print shop and got to wear any raggedy clothes that might cover my gangly carcass. I learned to operate an offset press, run a Heidelberg windmill and clean the heck out of a toilet. I also came to appreciate that smoking can be very bad for you.
My partner in crime was a delightful soul named Maurice. Maurice was unimaginably cool, but he was also a heavy smoker. We maintained big drums of some kind of cleaning fluid used to clean the presses. It was kerosene, or nitroglycerine, or pure liquified plutonium or something. I, myself, was a bit afraid of the stuff. We dispensed it from those squirt bottles that restaurants use for ketchup.
This was the Mississippi Delta in summertime, so it was Africa-hot. The air was so thick you could tear off a chunk and gnaw on it. There was no air conditioning, so we kept the doors standing open. There was a fan, as I recall, but stirring around superheated air doesn’t help much, thermodynamically speaking.
Maurice hovered over a printing press fretting with something or other, the ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his lips. I was on the other side of the shop but glanced up just in time to appreciate the setting. As luck would have it, he was standing with his back to the open door.
Maurice squirted some of that vile elixir across the top of the press just as he took a quick inhale on his smoldering coffin nail. Gasoline is actually 15-times more energetic per unit gram that Trinitrotoluene (TNT). Though I don’t know exactly what this stuff was, it was something like that.
The explosion produced a palpable overpressure within the building. The force lifted Maurice up and propelled him backwards out through the open door. When I got to his side he was on his back and a bit singed, but otherwise unhurt, the cigarette still dangled from his lips. We even got the fire put out on the printing press without any lasting deleterious effects.
My experience working at that print shop taught me both the value of hard work and the dangers of smoking.
A Man On A Mission
I toiled away under such conditions as those for a full year, scraping and saving to buy my first black rifle. I bought that SP1 AR15 in 1982; my dad had to do the 4473 for me. It cost me $486, or the equivalent of $1,329 today — wow!
I stripped that rifle down to pins and springs and learned every nuance of its design. I bought ammo every time I could afford it — a box or two at a time — and shot it into the side of the old levee out near the Mississippi River. I didn’t own a set of ear plugs, so it’s a wonder I can hear at all today.
I once shot a squirrel with that thing but immediately wished I hadn’t. I am a strict adherent to the axiom that one should not kill anything one isn’t planning to eat, and afterwards this particular tree rat was no longer comestible. However, I did get to the point where I could run the weapon both quickly and well, skills that held me in good stead later when I was issued something similar.
Ruminations
I brought that rifle to school on occasion, most commonly to show off either to fellow students or faculty. As Satan had not yet invented school shootings, I even had my picture taken for the yearbook with it. Innocence once lost can never again be regained.
In a fit of insensate stupidity, I traded that rifle for a SIG SAUER P226 at a gun show. I have since replaced it with another made in 1966, the year of my birth, but it’s just not the same. That black rifle represented the fruits of an entire year’s toil replete with copious heat, sweat and filth. In retrospect, I think it was a steal.
The F/A-18 Super Hornet is the backbone of deployed Naval aviation.
(Source: Cibi Chakravarthi, Unsplash)
Today, we try a spot of fiction. If you like it, let us know and I’ll sprinkle in some more on occasion. If you hate it, please do likewise and you’ll never see it again.
T-Mas was a Navy Lieutenant Commander flying F/A-18F Super Hornets off of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. A graduate of Top Gun and career fighter pilot, the call sign “T-Mas” was short for “Toxic Masculinity,” something he had been saddled with as a midshipman at Annapolis. A professional playboy, T-Mas was hard, single and at the top of his game. However, at this particular moment, he was about to die.
This fight was truly righteous. An Air Force C130 carrying the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to a USO gig had been engaged in international airspace by North Korean fighters and brought down over the Pacific. Uncle Sam had tolerated Kim Jong Un’s sophomoric tantrums long enough. Rattle sabers and test fire missiles if you like but murder a military airplane full of American’s finest cheerleaders and POTUS drags out his ‘Big Stick.’
The Commander in Chief deployed the Teddy Roosevelt battle group with the directive to make things right. Two weeks later, T-Mas was an ace — the first since the Vietnam War. It turned out flaming obsolete North Korean fighter planes was positively recreational. Then this happened.
It was some kind of long-range SAM system, and it was butt nasty. His wingman had been pulverized, but T-Mas hadn’t time to mourn. He torqued his powerful fighter around in the fight of his life. Bitching Betty squawked in his ears, and he rippled off flares by rote. His jet then shook as though throttled by the hand of God and the world started spinning. The last thing he remembered was groping for the black and yellow handles between his legs.
Ejection from a high-performance fighter plane at warp speed is one of the most violent events the human body can endure. The good folks at Boeing appreciated this fact and designed their ejection system accordingly. Once you tug those rings the plane spits you out and your parachute deploys of its own accord. Upon contact with the water your life vest activates to keep you from drowning even if you’re in no shape to help out. The synergistic melding of all that tech was the only reason T-Mas still drew breath.
He dreamt he was at home asleep in his hammock. He had come of age in the piney woods of South Mississippi and the hammock in his parents’ backyard had been the place he found refuge as a kid. On some primal level, it passed for heaven now. The gentle rocking was a soothing balm. Then he slid up against something hard.
Being stuck on an otherwise-deserted island wouldn’t be so bad with the proper company.
(Source: Kurt Cotoaga, Unsplash)
His consciousness returned like a dim light gradually penetrating a fog. The warm surf sloshed over his head and displaced the darkness while the wet sand felt firm and substantial underneath. He found he lacked the strength to sit up and was subsequently at the mercy of the waves.
As he regained his wits, he slid his hands weakly across his chest. Everything moved, and, despite hurting pretty much everywhere, nothing appeared to be broken or irrevocably damaged. His heart sank as his fingers slid across his vest. His sidearm and survival radio were gone, torn away in the violence of the ejection. Before he could assimilate the significance of that discovery, he heard voices.
High-pitched and strangely familiar, the sounds grew closer. T-Mas struggled yet failed to press himself up in the surf. This part of the Pacific was dotted with islands, many of them uninhabited. His lizard brain wandered to images of North Korean interrogators or cannibals, but the higher bits pressed those thoughts aside. Strong small fingers took hold of his vest from both sides and gently dragged him out of the waves and up onto the sand before rolling him carefully over onto his back. T-Mas tried to raise his arms against the blinding sun but failed. Whoever these people were, they were soon to have their way with him. Fighter pilot and trained warrior, T-Mas was as helpless as a child.
He squinted against the blistering sun to make out the figures who knelt above him. The nearest was tanned and windblown but an undeniable looker, the kind of face on the kind of woman that graced magazine covers. Her tattered baseball cap sported a blue star and the word “Dallas” across the top. The several excited female voices melded together as T-Mas let his head drop limply back into the sand. He suddenly wasn’t so terribly distressed over the loss of his sidearm and radio.
Categories
The Death Of The Marine Corps
THE WAR IN 2039
>GySgt Knight is an Infantry Unit Leader (0369) currently serving as an Operations Chief. He has served as every billet from Rifleman through Platoon Sergeant in support of Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM. He has also served as Heavy Machinegun Platoon Sergeant, Scout Sniper Platoon Sergeant, and Weapons Company Operations Chief in support of Unit Deployment Program Okinawa.
The Marine Corps was rendered combat ineffective during the opening weeks of the U.S.-China War in December of 2039. First, Second, and Third MarDivs were systematically engaged by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) navy, air, and ground forces, which resulted in the reduction of these divisions by a combined 75 percent. China had used a specific and effective strategy to cripple the U.S. military. This process was the development of a worldwide trade route controlled by them, ceasing all trade with the United States and forcing military funding cuts.
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the development of the Belt and Road Initiative. Seventy-one countries pledged to join in the endeavor.1 China quickly began making deals with these countries to build rail lines, improve roads, and build seaports in strategic locations. They would loan the money to the host country to build each project with only one stipulation, Chinese contracted companies would be hired to assist in the construction. China knew these countries would not be able to repay the accrued debts which allowed China to employ debt-trap diplomacy to gain strategic advantages in some of these areas.
2 By 2017, the countries along the Belt received 35 percent of global foreign direct investments and accounted for 40 percent of global merchandise exports.
3 This had all been part of China’s bigger concept of Tian Xia or world domination.
4 The ground and maritime trade routes expanded their reach throughout the entire globe. This opened the trade routes and allowed China to influence a dominating portion of the trade deals made in the world. China began slowly arranging for resources to be acquisitioned from the countries along the Belt to reduce the number of materials they would need from U.S. suppliers.
During a press release in 2036, President Xi Jinping announced China would no longer receive any imports from the United States effectively gouging the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by fourteen percent. China again used debt-trap diplomacy to convince many of its partner countries to do the same.
In total, the U.S. GDP was reduced by 24 percent over the next two years. This drastically affected the markets in the United States and caused an unexpected recession for which the American people were not prepared. Many companies that relied on exports went bankrupt and millions of Americans were laid off.
The unemployment rate rose to eleven percent and the government was forced to start cutting its spending. By 2038, the defense budget was reduced by fifteen percent forcing the different branches to begin tightening their belts.
Due to these budget cuts much of the equipment the military used, including ships, could not be maintained. The Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to reduce the number of personnel in each of the branches to free up some funds to maintain its gear.
The Marine Corps was reduced to 165,000. This forced the Marine Corps to disband all three battalions of the Fourth Marine Regiment and both battalions of the Eighth Marine Regiment as well as numerous support battalions. The Navy was also required to put 30 ships in long-term storage.
The Third and Seventh Fleets took the brunt of the reduction as their ships had seen more use and required the most maintenance. This left a crucial gap in the maritime defenses in the Pacific, which Chinese military leaders exploited when they attacked the West Coast of the United States.
On 7 December 2039, U.S. Navy ships from the Third and Seventh Fleets came under fire from Chinese DF21D anti-ship ballistic missiles. These missiles were simultaneously launched from PLA Navy ships, cargo ships, and ground bases. The missiles were controlled by the Yaogan family of defense satellites they had launched between 2009 and 2012.
The PLA Navy was able to target U.S. ships by monitoring their electronic emissions from the 8G personal electronic devices used by sailors aboard the ships. This attack successfully rendered both fleets’ combat ineffective.
The PLA Navy then moved eight group armies (approximately 650,000 troops) from the PLA Ground Force to the West Coast of the United States unimpeded by utilizing ships that had been pre-staged and trade routes they had already established. Simultaneous with the attack on the U.S. Navy, the PLA Air Force conducted a massive aerial bombardment of Marine Corps Base Hawaii and Camp Butler Okinawa Japan.
This raid was conducted by Xian H-6 long-range bombers launched from the Chinese Xi Jinping Air Station on the man-made Mischief Reef Island in the South China Sea. The raid effectively targeted the infrastructure and equipment of 3rd MarDiv resulting in a reduction of 90 percent.
The PLA Ground Force invasion was contested by the 1st MarDiv as well as the U.S. Army’s 40th Infantry Division and the California National Guard. This joint task force, named Task Force Bear, was able to hold the PLA Ground Force in California until they could be reinforced by the 2nd MarDiv and the rest of the U.S. Army but not before being reduced by 85 percent. The 2nd MarDiv took 50 percent casualties during the intense fighting that followed. The loss of two of the three divisions was a fatal blow to the Marine Corps as a fighting force.
In the aftermath of the bloody U.S.-China war, Congress established a policy to prevent the country from becoming reliant on exports for such a large percentage of the GDP. This would prevent an adversary country from being able to reduce our GDP and defense budget just by monopolizing trade.
When it came to the Marine Corps, Congress was also left with a choice. Re-constitute the divisions or amend Title X thereby dissolving and abolishing the Marine Corps. Ultimately, they chose the latter. On 10 November 2040, the Marine Corps Colors were retired for the final time. The remaining personnel and equipment were absorbed into the other branches.
Notes
1. Lily Kuo and Niko Kommenda, “What Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative?” The Guardian, July 30, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2018/jul/30/what-china-belt-road-initiative-silk-road-explainer.
2. Ibid.
3. Caroline Freund and Michele Ruta, “Belt and Road Initiative,” The World Bank, March 29, 2018. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/regional-integration/brief/belt-and-road-initiative.
4. Howard W. French, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape Chinas Push for Global Power (New York: Vintage Books, 2018).