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Teen kills 2 suspected home invaders with shotgun in Channelview: HCSO
HOUSTON – Officials say two would-be home invaders in Channelview were killed overnight Saturday and a third remains at large after they were confronted by a teen inside armed with a shotgun.
According to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, three men in masks tried to break into a home in the 16000 block of 1st St. in east Harris County near Channelview First Baptist Church.
The men were armed and inside the home were a 12-year-old boy and two teenage boys, both 17. One of the 17-year-olds, according to investigators, got a shotgun and fired it several times at the invaders.
Two of them were hit and pronounced dead at the scene by responding officers.
Meanwhile, the third took off in a dark-colored, 4-door sedan, and as of this writing remains at large.
No other injuries were reported, but Sheriff Gonzalez said the case would be presented before a grand jury, as an investigation into the incident remains underway.
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Rigby Falling Blocks
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Making an obsolete cartridge case on a lathe
The S&W Model 15 revolver that remains in service, largely as a K9 training tool, can trace its lineage all the way back to the S&W .38 Military and Police Model first issued to service members back in 1899. Now, some 122 years later, this tried and true revolver is finally headed out to pasture in favor of the Defense Department’s new pistol du jour, the Sig Sauer M17 and M18 series. The last remaining Model 15 revolvers in service will likely fire their final rounds by this coming summer, ending an era.
Revolvers are a different kind of cool. The classic sixgun may never be as efficient as an automatic pistol, but it’s tough to argue that they don’t carry a certain mystique. Revolvers have had a place in national militaries for over 200 years, starting with the Colt Dragoon. They were largely phased out of service with the adoption of the M1911, but a shortage of viable service pistols during both World Wars kept these contraptions in the hands of GI’s throughout. Believe it or not, the military has kept a single revolver in its arsenal until, well, very recently.
The Air Force’s Model 15 revolver has served honorably since 1956, and the gun can trace its lineage back to 1899.
Related: The strangest Spec-Ops firearms in SOCOM’s armory
The History of the Model 15
Let’s go back in time, and I mean, let’s start at the M15 and walk backward with it. The M15 was originally known as the K-38 Combat Masterpiece. In fact, the gun wore the K-38 moniker when it saw adoption by the Strategic Air Command Elite Guard of the United States Air Force. This wasn’t an Air Force wide purchase, but for a specific unit who apparently liked a revolver more than the M1911, the K-38 became their piece of preference. I can’t find clear evidence of why, but my assumption would be that the Air Force was likely having a tough time getting M1911s in a post-WW2 and Korean War world.
Why a Revolver?
Smith and Wesson had the K-38 as a COTS, or commercial off the shelf, product. While specialized hardware is great for the warfighter, COTS makes adoption easy. The K-38 gained its name from the medium frame that S&W designated as a K frame, and 38, which stood for the .38 Special caliber round it used. The K-38 then became the M15 when Smith and Wesson moved to number designations entirely.
Let’s keep walking back further. The K-38 Combat Masterpiece descended from the K-38 Target Masterpiece by trimming the barrel and changing the front sight. The K-38 Target Masterpiece became the Model 14, but it’s directly descended from the Smith and Wesson Model 10. The Target Masterpiece added a long six-inch barrel, a slight rib for a level sight plane, a Patridge front sight and a micrometer adjustable rear sight, with a short-throw hammer and an adjustable trigger.
Related: The 5 worst service weapons the US ever issued its troops
Roots in World War II
The K-38 Target Masterpiece’s legacy comes from the famed Model 10. The Model 10 is the classic .38 Special revolver. This six-shot, double-action / single-action design utilized a swing open cylinder and an exposed hammer. The Model 10 premiered after World War 2 and descended from the Victory Model.
The Victory Model by Smith and Wesson was produced from 1942 to 1944. The serial numbers had a V prefix. After a half million of these guns were produced and distributed under lend/lease programs during World War 2. Another 350,000 were produced for use by the United States during WW2.
A really long name
Before the V prefix and the Victory model designation, we had the S&W .38 Military and Police Model. The M&P 38 Special traces its lineage all the way back to 1899. The Army and Navy ordered three thousand S&W .38 Hand Ejector Models that year, chambered in .38 Long Colt. Smith and Wesson cashed in on some easy marketing after this order and renamed the pistol to the Military and Police model.
The 38 Long Colt tended to be anemic, so S&W developed the .38 S&W Special, aka the .38 Special. Over time the Military and Police model had various changes and improvements. So, the famed Model 15 that is still in some armories today descended directly from a revolver that was first fielded in 1899.
Related: Molotov Cocktail: The world’s most prevalent firebomb
Why the Model 15 revolved has stuck around so long
It worked, and Air Force security forces acted as police officers and worked in rather safe areas. The old M15 revolvers worked well, and they stuck around long after the adoption of the M1911. The M15 served with the U.S. Air Force police from 1962 up until 1992, when the Beretta M9 saw widespread adoption.
1992 is a long way from 2021, however, so why is it still in Air Force Armories? Well, it ties back to the Air Force’s Military Working Dog training program. This program trains K9s and the M15s are used with blanks to accustom the dogs to the sound of gunfire. There Beretta pistols did not have a blank firing adapter, and revolvers simply didn’t need them.
The M15 revolver was an easy choice and a smart financial one. Why replace what works? Well, since these guns have been issued longer than my Dad’s been alive, they are likely getting worn out. Even this long-serving revolver will eventually stop training K9s and have to go the way of Old Yeller itself.
Related: Why the M1 Carbine became an American legend
What’s Replacing the Model 15?
The SIG M17 and M18 series will replace or are in the process of replacing the M15 revolvers across the Air Force. Unlike the M9, these guns will have a blank firing system and will cycle blanks for training purposes. The adoption of the SIG M17 and M18 series will not be complete until August 2022. I doubt there is a huge rush to arm the K9 school, so it’s likely some Model 15s are still in use, or at least still in armories, and may be well into the coming year.
It’s fascinating that the Model 15 stuck around so long and that the design traces its lineage back to the service revolvers of 1899. Has anyone in the comments ever handle an M15 in service? Let us know what you think about it.
A List Of 33 Things We Know About The Coming Food Shortages
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Things are far worse than you are being told. Over the past few months, I have been carefully documenting facts that show that global food production is going to be way down in 2022. Unfortunately, most people out there don’t seem to understand that the food that isn’t being grown in 2022 won’t be on our store shelves in 2023. We are potentially facing an absolutely unprecedented worldwide food crisis next year, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem very alarmed about this. So I would encourage you to help me get this warning out by sharing this list with as many people as you possibly can. As you will see below, we now have so many data points that it is impossible to deny what is coming.
The following is a list of 33 things we know about the coming food shortages…
#1 The hard red winter wheat crop in the United States this year “was the smallest since 1963”. But in 1963, there were only 182 million people living in this nation. Today, our population has grown to 329 million.
#2 It is being projected that the rice harvest in California will be “half what it would be in a normal year”.
#3 The U.S. tomato harvest will come in at just 10.5 million tons in 2022. That is over a million tons lower than a normal year.
#4 This will be the worst U.S. corn harvest in at least a decade.
#5 Year-to-date shipments of carrots in the United States are down 45 percent.
#6 Year-to-date shipments of sweet corn in the United States are down 20 percent.
#7 Year-to-date shipments of sweet potatoes in the United States are down 13 percent.
#8 Year-to-date shipments of celery in the United States are down 11 percent.
#9 Total peach production in the U.S. is down 15 percent from last year.
#10 Almost three-fourths of all U.S. farmers say that this year’s drought is hurting their harvests.
#11 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Oregon is down 41 percent.
#12 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in New Mexico is down 43 percent.
#13 Thanks to the endless drought, the total number of cattle in Texas is down 50 percent.
#14 One beef producer in Oklahoma is now predicting that ground beef “could eventually top $50 per pound”.
#15 At least 40 percent of the United States has been suffering from drought conditions for 101 consecutive weeks.
#16 Overall, this is the worst multi-year megadrought in the United States in 1,200 years.
#17 Europe is currently experiencing the worst drought that it has seen in 500 years. In some parts of central Europe, river levels have fallen so low that “hunger stones” are being revealed for the first time in centuries.
#18 Corn production for the entire EU could be down by as much as one-fifth in 2022.
#19 We are being warned that there will be crop losses in France of up to 35 percent.
#20 It is being projected that crop losses in some areas of the UK could be as high as 50 percent.
#21 It is being reported that there will be crop losses “of up to 50 percent” in some parts of Germany.
#22 Some farmers in Italy have already lost “up to 80% of their harvest”.
#23 Agricultural production in Somalia will be down about 80 percent this year.
#24 In eastern Africa, the endless drought has already resulted in the deaths of at least seven million animals.
#25 In China, they are facing the worst drought that they have ever experienced in recorded history.
#26 India normally accounts for 40 percent of the global rice trade, but we are being warned that production in that country will be way down in 2022 due to “considerable rainfall deficits in key rice producing states”.
#27 A third of the entire nation of Pakistan was under water after recent floods absolutely devastated that nation, and agricultural areas were hit particularly hard. As a result, the vast majority of the crops in the country have been “washed away”…
It has also been estimated that roughly 65 per cent of the country’s food basket — particularly crops like rice, cotton, wheat and onion — have been washed away.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in an interview to CGTN earlier this week, offered an even starker outlook by saying that “about 80 to 90 per cent” of the country’s crops have been damaged by the floods.
#28 The prices of some fertilizers have tripled since 2021, while the prices of some other fertilizers have actually quadrupled.
#29 One payment company is reporting that the number of Americans using their app to take out short-term loans for groceries has risen by 95 percent.
#30 Demand at U.S. food banks is now even worse than it was during the height of the COVID pandemic.
#31 The World Health Organization is telling us that millions of people in Africa are now potentially facing a very real possibility of starving to death.
#32 According to the World Food Program, 828 million people around the world go to bed hungry each night. Needless to say, that number will soon be much higher.
#33 UN Secretary General António Guterres has publicly stated that he believes that it is likely that there will be “multiple famines” in 2023.
As global food supplies get tighter and tighter, so will the risk of civil unrest.
In fact, this has already been happening…
The risk of civil unrest has surged this year in more than half of the world’s countries, signaling a coming period of heightened global instability fueled by inflation, war, and shortages of essentials, a new analysis says.
According to Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm, 101 of the 198 countries tracked on its Civil Unrest Index saw an increase in their risk of civil unrest between the second and third quarters of this year.
In recent weeks, we have seen absolutely massive protests in cities all over the planet.
But conditions aren’t even that bad yet.
So what will things be like in 2023 when it finally becomes exceedingly clear that there simply will not be enough food for everyone?
Wealthy countries will have the resources to buy up much of what is available on the market, and that means that many poor countries will deeply suffer.
If everything that you have read in this article sounds familiar, that is because we have been warned for years that such conditions were coming.
In 2023, there will be famines and civil unrest all over the globe.
This is not a drill. An extremely serious global food crisis has already begun, and I would encourage you to get prepared for what is ahead while you still can.
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