*THERE MUST BE similar lists in other militaries.
21 of the US military’s most-overused clichés
“There are certain phrases military service members hear on the regular, and by regular, we mean they are over-used like crazy.
“While every workplace has its own cliche buzzwords – we’re talking about you there, “corporate synergy” – the military has plenty to choose from. The WATM team put its collective heads together and came up with this list of the cliche phrases we’ve heard way too many times in the military.
“1. “All this and a paycheck too!”
Usually uttered by a staff NCO at the moment of a 20-mile hike where you wish you could just pass out on the side of the road.
“2. “If you’re on time, you’re late.”
Military members are well aware of the unwritten rule of arriving 15 minutes prior to the time they are supposed to be somewhere. Of course, if there’s a senior officer involved, that might even mean 15 minutes prior to 15 minutes prior.
“3. “We get more done before 6 a.m. than most people do all day.”
The time can always be changed, but the phrase remains the same. Military members across the world are usually waking up way earlier than most, and as the saying goes, it probably means they have done personal hygiene, conducted an insane workout, ate breakfast, and started training before average Joe hit the snooze button on the alarm clock.
“4. “Don’t call me sir. I work for a living.”
Among the enlisted ranks, it’s a common cliche that officers don’t do any real work. “There’s a reason why they have office in their name” is a popular saying. So when an enlisted service-member is incorrectly addressed as “sir,” this is one of the most popular responses.
“5. “If it ain’t raining, we ain’t training.”
No matter what the weather, the U.S. military is guaranteed to be training or conducting some sort of exercise. But this cliche phrase is guaranteed to come out when a torrential downpour hits your unit.
“6. “This ain’t my first rodeo there, cowboy.”
Let’s not ask the sergeant any stupid questions. He knows what he’s doing, because he’s done this a million times before. Cowboy.
“7. “Best job in the world!”
Calling your particular field in the military “the best job in the world” usually happens during the times when you would never think it’s the best time in the world. These times include freezing cold on patrol in Afghanistan, running out of water while training in Thailand, and/or not showering for a month-and-a-half.
“8. “Complacency kills.”
You’ll find this phrase spray-painted to every other Hesco barrier on the forward operating base, on a sign outside the chow hall, and on the lips of every sergeant major in a half-mile radius. Troops need to stay alert while they are out in combat, and this one gets drilled into the dirt.
“9. “Keep your head on a swivel.”
This one is similar to “complacency kills” but is often said to troops about to go into dangerous situations. Before heading out on patrol, a squad leader might tell his troops to “keep their head on swivel,” meaning: keep alert and look everywhere for potential threats.
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“10. “Got any saved rounds?” or “Any alibis?”
At the end of a briefing, you’ll usually hear either of these phrases. “Any questions?” just doesn’t pack the same punch as using terminology straight off the rifle range.
“11. “Another glorious day in the Corps!”
It could be the Corps, the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force, but it’s always a glorious day there, according to whoever utters this phrase. This is meant to motivate but it’s usually met with eye-rolls.
“12. “This is just for your SA.”
This is another way of saying FYI, but with a military spin. SA, or situational awareness, is all about being aware of what’s happening around you, so this is often said by a subordinate to a leader so they know what’s going on.
“13. “We’re putting on another dog and pony show.”
We’ve never actually been to a real dog and pony show, but we have put on plenty of them in the military. A military “dog and pony show” is usually some sort of ceremony or traditional event for troops to show off their weaponry and other stuff. For example, Marines may put one on by standing around and answering questions about their machine-guns, rocket launchers, and other gear for civilians who are visiting the base for an event.
“14. “Roger that.”
This is a phrase that should be uttered only over the radio (it’s actually just “roger, over” and “roger, out,” respectively), but troops often say this instead of saying “I understand.”
“15. “Bravo Zulu.”
Bravo Zulu is a naval signal that can be conveyed via flag or over the radio, and it means “well done.” But plenty of troops will use this as a way of saying good job or congratulations. (…)
HARRIS COUNTY, Texas – Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick is looking to give prosecutors in the Lone Star State a powerful tool against violent criminals.
“We have to put these people in jail a mandatory decade. Use a gun in a crime, ten years mandatory,” said Patrick.
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Patrick’s calling the crack-down measure a “priority” in the coming legislative session.
“We’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of criminals, this Wild West nonsense out there,” said Patrick.
The concept of additional time for gun crime is drawing support from Harris County’s District Attorney Kim Ogg.
“Mandatory minimums work wonders when it comes to actually holding people accountable for certain crimes. They are always expensive because a mandatory minimum means a person will serve a certain sentence when convicted of a violation of that law. Where it will help is keeping the truly dangerous, the most dangerous criminals off the street longer,” said Ogg.
By inclination and necessity, a crusader against violent crime, Ogg says more than 1,300 accused murderers are currently free on bond in Harris County, representing a clear and present threat to public safety.
She believes a majority of crime weary Harris County residents, both Democrat and Republican, are likely to support Patrick’s proposal.
“I think that people are so upset. They are suffering from crime that has plagued our urban areas, especially violent crime, that they may want this. It is a sign of the times,” said Ogg, who says Patrick’s legislation should include prosecutorial discretion.
At first light on 20 May 1941, Hauptmann Dieter Linz sat, lost in thought alongside his 16 fellow paratroopers inside the belly of a noisy Junkers Ju 52 transport. His Auntie Ju was part of the first wave of Unternehmen Merkur, or Operation Mercury, the German airborne invasion of Crete. Linz’ Fallschirmjagers had acquitted themselves well during the recent conquest of the Low Countries. Now they formed the backbone of the largest airborne assault in military history to date.
The jumpmaster had Linz and his men up and ready before the planes cleared the coastline. Linz knew that the Luftwaffe pilots were doing the best they could, but he could feel that they were both too low and too fast. Flak erupted all around the plane, sounding like so much gravel thrown against the Ju 52’s corrugated skin. The jump light flashed from red to green and Hauptmann Linz leapt headfirst into hell.
The parachutes used by the Fallschirmjagers attached at a single point behind the neck and were in no way steerable. They jumped without reserve chutes. At these altitudes, there would be no time to deploy one anyway. This equipment necessitated a dive out of the aircraft and a harsh face-first landing. It also meant Linz and his men had to jump without their primary weapons.
They called it jumping naked, and it left them utterly vulnerable once they hit the drop zone. Linz carried a gravity knife, his Luger pistol, and a pair of stick grenades. In the unfettered chaos that was the DZ, he was one of the precious few to find his fallschirmbombe. This was the weapons canister that was dropped from the belly of his Junkers alongside his stick of paratroopers.
Linz popped open the canister and retrieved his 9mm Italian Model 38A submachine gun. Though a bit longer and bulkier than the more common German MP38 or MP40, Linz loved his 38A. He had traded a drunken Italian officer out of it during a joint training exercise six months earlier.
Linz took cover in a shallow ditch to avoid the incoming fire that crisscrossed the drop zone and blew his whistle. In clots of ones, twos and threes, the surviving paratroopers rallied to his position. By the time they got their weapons sorted and established some kind of organization, he had already lost half his strength. Regardless, he reached over the top of his subgun and jacked the bolt to the rear. Ready or not, this war started right here.
Model 38A Origin Story
The Italians are typically known for pretty girls, great food and a plethora of moldy old ruins. The exhaustive list of modern Italian war heroes is undeniably brief. However, the 38A submachine gun in 9mm shines on its own as a stellar exception. I’ve run them all, and the 38A is my favorite WWII-era subgun.
The Model 38A was originally designed in 1935 by famed Italian small arms designer Tullio Marengoni. An evolutionary development of the WWI-era Villar Perosa pistol-caliber light machinegun from WWI, the Model 38A features a rigid wooden stock and open-bolt operation. The 38A also includes several uniquely superb features.
The safety on the gun is a sliding lever on the left aspect of the receiver. This appendage is readily manipulatable by the left hand when shooting right-handed. The fire control system is built into the dual trigger assembly. Pulling the forward trigger produces semi-auto fire; the rear, full-auto. Nothing is faster.
The gun feeds from 10, 20, 30 or 40-round magazines and includes an efficient muzzle brake and bayonet lug. Oddly, the weapon charges on the right and ejects to the left. That means that to charge the piece, a right-handed shooter must reach across the gun to access the charging mechanism. This knob does not reciprocate with the bolt and includes a sliding sheet steel dust cover. The leather sling attaches on the left side of the weapon as it should.
How Does She Run?
In a word, swimmingly. The long 12.4″ barrel yields superlative accuracy in semiauto mode. Switch to the rear trigger, and the gun runs at a published rate of 600 rpm. In my experience, it seems slower than that. Doubles and triples are easy for the disciplined trigger finger, and you can put all forty rounds inside a pie plate at 20 meters without trying too hard. The magazine release is small but is located behind the magazine for easy access with either hand.
The rigid wooden stock means that the gun is tougher to pack than a comparable MP40, but the practical result is a superbly stable firing platform. The Model 38A runs much like the rifles of its day. Additionally, the standard 40-round magazine seems to last about forever, particularly in comparison to the 20 and 32-round mags used by competing subguns.
The Rest of the Model 38A Story
Operation Mercury was an unprecedented slaughter. While the Germans did ultimately wrest control of the island from the Commonwealth troops who defended it, they did so at a simply breathtaking cost. The 3d Battalion of the German 1st Assault Regiment had 400 of its 600-man complement killed in the first day of the operation. One of its subordinate companies had 112 killed out of a total of 126 on the rolls. Though successful in meeting its military objectives, the invasion of Crete was such a bloodbath that Hitler refused to authorize any further large-scale airborne operations for the rest of the war. The Fallshirmjagers fought on until the bitter end as elite Infantry.
In addition to their unique stubby helmets and baggy “bone bag” jump smocks, the Fallschirmjagers wielded some unique weapons. The FG42 paratroop rifle represents the golden ring for the most rarefied of military weapons collectors. Additionally, the German paratroops were fairly prolific users of the Italian Model 38A submachine gun. Smooth, accurate, handy, and just a little bit weird, the Model 38A was, surprisingly, one of the finest weapons of the war.
Special thanks to World War Supply for the cool-guy gear used in the preparation of this article.
Categories
The Last Lever Gun I’d Eve
Philadelphia gas station owner Neil Patel hired security guards with AR-15s to deal with all the “nonsense, drug trafficking, hanging around, [and] gangs” endangering his employees.
Patel, who has a Karco gas station, hired “Pennsylvania S.I.T.E Agents clad with Kevlar vest and AR-15s or shotguns” to keep his employees safe, FOX 29 reports.
“They are forcing us to hire the security, high-level security, state level. We are tired of this nonsense: robbery, drug trafficking, hanging around, gangs,” Patel said.
The guards he hired wear Kevlar vests and train regularly, maintaining firearm proficiency.
Prior to hiring the guards, Patel’s car was vandalized and an ATM was stolen from his gas station. But FOX News notes Patel’s observation that crimes–including loitering–ended once he hired security.
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.
————————————————————————————– If the state won’t do its job than somebody is going to have to pick up the slack. I really think that we are going see a LOT more of this coming down the pike! Grumpy
Categories
Blunderbuss – Buckshot Patterning
The top firearm manufacturer in America is not only an American company but one of the oldest. Established in 1852, Smith & Wesson now enjoys annual sales of more than two million guns of all types a year, enjoying a comfortable lead over competitors.
Smith & Wesson is probably the most historically significant, consistently successful firearms country in the United States, with a history of innovation that has brought iconic guns and ammunition into widespread use.
In 1852, Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson founded the Smith & Wesson Company in Norwich, Connecticut. The company designed and manufactured some of the first metallic-cased firearms using the “Volcanic” cartridge. The use of a self-contained cartridge that included bullet, powder, and primer streamlined the feeding system, leading to a rate of fire practically limited to the loading rate of the weapon.
The cartridge was combined with a tubular magazine and lever-action loading system and brought to market in both a pistol and rifle form. The company was renamed the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company before Oliver Winchester, a major investor, forced the company into insolvency, eventually spinning off lever-action guns into his own company—The Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
Smith & Wesson regrouped and started a new company, The Smith & Wesson Company, just as Samuel Colt’s patent on the revolving handgun cylinder expired. The two designed and began production of a new revolver, the seven shot .22 Rimfire Seven Shooter, eventually known as the Model 1, in 1857. Sales took off during the Civil War as soldiers purchased the compact pistols as backup weapons. Between 1857 and 1881 the company sold 261,000 Model 1s. In 1861 the company released a larger version, the Model 2, available in .32 Rimfire.
The company’s third revolver, the Model 3, catapulted it into the world of international recognition. The .44 caliber Model 3 was a so-called “top break” revolver, in which a lever caused the barrel and cylinder to rotate ninety degrees on a hinge, instantly expelling spent shell casings and making the revolver ready for fresh ammunition. The simplified reloading process made the Model 3 was particularly useful for mounted cavalry. In addition to the U.S. Army the Model 3 was also adopted by Russia, Argentina, Japan and Turkey. The Model 3 was also popular on the Western frontier, and fans included legendary lawman Wyatt Earp.
Smith & Wesson steadily rolled out new technologies in firearms, introducing a line of double action revolvers in 1880, a hammerless revolver in 1887, and in 1899 the .38 caliber Military & Police revolver, later known as the Model 10, which eventually gave birth to the .38 Special revolver round. Six million Model 10s were sold during the product’s lifespan.
The early to mid-twentieth century saw the company produce eight hundred thousand Model 10 revolvers for World War II and introduce revolvers in .357 Magnum (1935) and .44 Magnum (1955), then the most powerful handgun cartridge in America. The Smith & Wesson Model 29, designed for the .44 Magnum cartridge, saw sales explode after being featured in the 1971 Clint Eastwood film “Dirty Harry.” The year 1955 also saw introduction of the Model 39 double-action pistol, the first adopted by a law enforcement agency in the United States.
Smith & Wesson concentrated primarily on revolvers during the latter half of the twentieth century, which left the company poorly positioned to take advantage of the explosion in popularity of high capacity nine millimeter Luger revolvers in the 1980s, the so-called “Wonder Nines.” However, the company quickly recovered and launched its own line, the 4006 series. The company also released a new pistol round, the .40 Smith & Wesson, which subsequently became popular with law enforcement agencies interested in a round more powerful than nine millimeter.
Today Smith & Wesson fields a diversified line of firearms, from revolvers of every caliber to its own highly successful M&P 2.0 series of high capacity double action pistols. In 2003, the company began selling its own version of the iconic M1911A1 .45 handgun. The company also produces its own line of AR-15 rifles under the M&P line. The company was first overall in firearm sales in 2016, selling 1.7 million handguns and nearly four hundred thousand long guns. In an industry where corporate mismanagement has often lowered quality and instituted numerous, potentially dangerous recalls, Smith & Wesson has maintained a reputation for reliable, safe firearms.
Image: Smith & Wesson.
Image: Creative Commons.
Image: Smith & Wesson.
Smith & Wesson’s appeal lies in its historical significance, record of innovation, and reliability. A wide product line means consumers looking for a particular type of handgun usually can count a Smith & Wesson among their choices. Add in a dollop of popular culture, from Westerns to the streets of San Francisco, and Smith & Wesson is a compelling choice. All of these factors combined will keep the iconic gun company ahead of the pack for the foreseeable future.
Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy , War is Boring and the Daily Beast . In 2009, he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch .
Disney CEO Bob Iger: Those of Us in Positions to Influence Laws, Shape Culture ‘Have an Extra Responsibility’ to Push Gun Control
3:06
Disney CEO Bob Iger attended a Sandy Hook Promise Benefit and referenced people in influential positions and suggested that those who shape culture “have an extra responsibility” to push gun control.
Sandy Hook Promise is the group with to whom country singer Tim McGraw donated concert proceeds for a gun control fundraiser in July 2015.
On April 16, 2015, Breitbart News pointed to McGraw’s planned participation in the fundraiser and he responded to the coverage by telling MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “I lead my life leading with my heart, I do the things that I can do and support the causes that I support, try to help in the areas where I can help, and I do that with my heart. If I have a decision to lead with my head or my heart, I’m going to lead with my heart every time.”
The Hollywood Reporter noted that Iger, Barack Obama, and actor Matthew McConaughey all gathered in New York Tuesday, where they honored the work of Sandy Hook Promise and continued the push for more gun control.
Iger said, “As a grandfather, as a father, as CEO of The Walt Disney Company, I believe there is no greater or more important task than ensuring the safety and well-being of our children.”
He added, “Those of us who are in positions to affect change, whether it’s by influencing laws of shaping culture or supporting organizations on the frontlines, I think we have an extra responsibility.”
Obama also made comments, lamenting the failure to pass Second Amendment restrictions wanted by the gun control lobby:
Perhaps the most bitter disappointment of my time in office, the closest I came to being cynical, was the utter failure of Congress to respond in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings. To see almost the entire GOP, but also a decent number of Democrats equivocate and hem and haw and filibuster and ultimately bend yet again to pressure from the gun lobby.
Universal background check legislation was the key proposal pushed under the Obama administration following the attack on Sandy Hook. It failed as an emphasis was placed on the fact that the Sandy Hook attacker used stolen guns, thereby eliminating any benefit of the passage of more point-of-sale gun controls.
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.