MilSpec

"No civilian should have a military specification handgun!" paraphrased because I cannot be arsed to find the actual quote.

Found it! 

Well, ignorant gunbanner, this is a Revolver, .45 Caliber, M1873, "Altered."  Not quite state of the art in 1892 but still military issue and a genuine weapon of war.

I notice you never mention six-guns when you're frothing about "military" guns.

In point of fact, every single bolt-action hunting gun has a lineage that can be traced back through some military arm.  Some retain more of that lineage than others, but a staggered internal box mag on a bolt gun is a military innovation.

This is Kaylee.

Kaylee is my first AR-15.  She started life as an attempt to make a clone of an XM177E2.  Unfortunately, I didn't know much about XM177E2's when I started; in fact I thought CAR-15 was the proper designation.  I later made a much more faithful clone of an XM177E2, and then I decided to make Kayee more of an Israeli  carbine.

This Israeli carbine, in fact.

But as time passes, plans change.  Kaylee was entirely too similar to The Lovely Harvey's Cheyenne.  Cheyenne is a clone of an R653-P because Harvey loves the carbine carried by SSG Barnes in the film Platoon.

Because she felt I was stepping on her toes, I changed Kaylee's furniture.  Then did some swapping with some Arfcommers and ditched the carry handle.

What we have here is a Del-Ton carbine kit that I have modified.  The 16" HBAR barrel that came with the kit was replaced with a 14.5" 1:7 nitrided Palmetto State Armory barrel with an A2 flash-hider (not shown is the $200 piece of paper that lets that be legal).  The C7 upper has been replaced with an Aero Precision flat-top and Matech BUIS.  The lower receiver came from Anvil Arms, who are no longer in business.  Surplus Colt M4 pistol grip, Damage Ind. M4 stock with QD and Colt M4 handguards.  Bravo Company mil-spec receiver extension and H Buffer.

Complete history after the fold.  There have been a lot of starts and stops along the way while I figured out what I wanted to do with her.  And yes, I give my rifle's girl's names.  And yes, you've seen this post before, it gets bumped and updated as I make changes.

Click Me For The Full Post

9/- To 13

You find yourself in Poland, near Kalisz, in the year 2000 and your commander has just said, "Good luck, you're on your own," just before a big explosion takes out the TOC...

After a few days of dodging Soviets and marauders you decide you're fed up with the 3-round burst mode of your M4.

You remember your dad talking about how they got authorization, during the Gulf War to "bend" something in the fire control parts that disabled the burst and allowing full-auto fire.

What are you going to bend?

Well, dad doesn't know the whole story.

The fast way to remove the burst mode is to remove the burst interrupter, but that will let the normal interrupter to slide too far left to right in the trough in the trigger, giving a Malf of 16 in full auto fire.

Inserting a spacer the same thickness as the burst interrupter solves this issue.

If you're never going to put the 3-round back in, you can use the burst interrupter as the spacer by simply filing off both hooks.

Knowing this and doing this is Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms).  If you don't have this skill, the default is Engineering/TL8 (Small Arms) -5 or Guns/TL8 (Rifle) -5.

But there's another way!

If there's an M16, M16A1, M4A1, C7, C8, C8A1, or L119A1 laying around that's deadlined for some reason besides the fire control group; you swap all the trigger and hammer parts between them and et voila!

This will give a +3 to your Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) roll because it's so much simpler. 

Please note that none of this will change a semi-automatic civilian version of an AR to a select fire weapon.

For that you need to do some drilling (and machining with some lower receivers).  That's an Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) roll at -2 because of the precision required in modifying the lower receiver.  Then you toss the semi-auto hammer-trigger-sear parts and plop in the full-auto or burst parts.

Even if you make a drop-in auto-sear with an Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) you're still going to need the full-auto or burst parts.

Changing semi-auto parts into full auto parts requires adding material to the parts and some finesse.  Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) -5 and appropriate tools are required.

Neutering full auto parts to delete select fire is Armoury/TL8 (Small Arms) +5.

Doing all of this legally...  If you already own a legally registered machine gun, you can swap parts to your heart's content.

If you don't have a legally owned machinegun, the police will want to have a chat and you will be booking a room in one of the worst hotels on the planet for an extended stay.

In the world of Twilight: 2000, all bets are off!  There's a slim chance of coming back under control of the chain of command who will object to modifications you've made to your issued weapon.

80 Years

80 years ago, this very moment, Enola Gay released Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima marking the first time a nuclear weapon was detonated in war.

Ironically, ground zero Hiroshima looks better than downtown Detroit today.

We Were The Only Ones Who Could

The GBU-57A/B is the only weapon capable of getting at facilities like Fordow. 

The MOP can only be carried by a B-2A.

The B-2A is only used by the USAF. 

I figured we'd send a couple over sooner or later just to make sure the place got taken out.

I've long thought that our response to our embassy being attacked should have been a lot more dynamic than President Carter's actions.

I guess he was busy with fucking Rhodesia and couldn't spare the time?

I was always surprised that Operation Preying Mantis didn't go further than it did or that we didn't find some excuse to hit them during the reflagged tanker period.

Iran has repeatedly acted like there was a state of war between them and the US.

I always think it's strange they're surprised whenever the US response has been, "OK! War it is!"

And they keep being surprised that all of our weapons do what we claim they do.  You'd think people would learn that we can't keep a secret from 60 Minutes so we don't really bother hiding the capabilities all that much. 

Remiss

Yesterday, in 1945, the third atomic weapon ever detonated exploded just above Nagasaki, Japan.

Also noteworthy:

Second detonation of an implosion, plutonium device.

Last use of atomic weapons in war (so far).

78 years and counting since the last atomic war!

In 1950, I'll bet you wouldn't have found a single expert that would have predicted we'd have made it to 1965 without a second atomic war, let alone to putting the Soviet Union in its grave without one.

Zip Boom

TL: 8

Weapon: KBP 9M133-1 Kornet (152mm)

Damage: 6dx3(10) cr ex / follow-up 6dx11(10) cr ex / linked 8dx5 cr ex  <-- That's a tandem warhead.

Acc: 4+3

Range (speed/max): 275/6,000

Weight (empty launcher/round): 76.5/64

RoF: 1

Shots: 1(10)

ST: 21M

Cost: $45,500 plus $26,000 per round.

LC: 1

Notes: [1] Missile has a minimum range: 110 yards.  [2] Hazardous backblast (see description).  [3] Guided attack (see p. B412).  Gunner uses Artillery/TL8 (Guided Missile) to attack.

The 9M133 Kornet (NATO AT-14 Spriggan) was intended to supplant the 9M113 Konkurs (NATO AT-5 Spandrel) but had only entered limited service by the time the war started.

The missile rides a laser beam projected by the launcher.

The 9K135 Kornet system includes the 9P163-1 launcher/tripod and 1P45-1 guidance device (which includes a 1PN79-1 thermal sight (treat as Thermal-Imaging Sensor High Tech p. 48)) and a 9M133 missile container.  Backblast: 8d burn.

PS: I need to find out what kind of battery the launcher uses so I can make stats for it.  That becomes VERY important in T2K.

PPS: In a lot of ways, in game terms, it's exactly the same as a TOW II...

Infamy

81 years ago Imperial Japan dared to wake the sleeping giant.

Admiral Yamamoto warned against such an action and only survived the decision by less than a year and a half.

Once woken, the US invented an entirely new form of weapon and used it to end the war.  In less than four years.

Since then we've not bothered to wake up for a war.

Personal 5.56 History

In the way back...

I was fully convinced that the absolute best 5.56 rifle was the Stoner weapons system because it looked so entirely cool on pages 2403 to 2404 of volume 22 of Weapons and Warfare.

I've never even seen one in person.

My lust moved to the Galil next.

It was perfect and because it had 35 or 50 round magazines in Twilight: 2000's RDF Sourcebook it was better than any other 5.56 rifle.  The Galil had also appeared on my radar in Top Secret.

Plus, looked damn cool.  Besides, does your assault rifle have bottle opener built into it? *mic drop*

I had no idea, at the time, that the IDF had essentially dropped the Galil in favor of the M16A1 by then.

The first 5.56 rounds I ever fired were from a buddy's AK just before I left for the Army.  Taki was a 'Nam vet and MAC-V SOG Marine.  What he learned about shooting and fighting didn't apply to anything I'd see later.  Very short sight distances, very short ranges, nearly always in the dark.

I didn't take to the M16 in the Army thanks to assholes being assholes and demanding a level of cleanliness that was not needed for the function or longevity of the weapon.  It throws one off one's feed about a rifle.

But I didn't think there was anything about 5.56 that was inherently bad for most personal problems. (Que Willard and a treatise (that I'll agree with) on the superiority of 7.62x51mm.)

In the wide world of sports, just like the Primary Arms scope vs an ACOG; 5.56 vs 7.62 is a matter of "ideals vs good enoughs" and 5.56 will do for nearly everything I am legally allowed to do with a rifle in a self-defense or anti-looting scenario.

The advantages 7.62 brings to the table become overkill, bulky and heavy for my now civilian butt.  The Willard treatise will explain why this isn't necessarily true in a war; especially for feeding a machine gun.

But, back to me, post-ETS and getting into guns.

As with so many catalysts in my life, FuzzyGeff is to blame.  He decided, out of the blue from my perspective, to buy a semi-auto rifle.  Because I knew a lot more about guns than he did (and as it turns out, not near as much as I thought I did) he asked my opinion on the "best" gun.

Once we'd determined that the Bush Import Ban had made the obviously best gun, the Galil, unaffordable; we discussed the alternatives.

FuzzyGeff's drill sergeant shaped scars were deeper and more painful than mine with regards to the AR, and the only AR you saw in Iowa in 1991 was a Colt with all of the neutering they could muster.  Plus they were expensive.

This led us to consider the Mini-14.  There didn't appear to be anything wrong with them, they were in a price range we could afford and...  Wow you could accessorize the shit out of them.

Shortly afterwards, I bought one too.

Then Software Janitor, then Technomad... and three other friends.

We all standardized on the Mini and prepared for the end of the world that never came.

Remember all that accessorizing?

I made a heavy pig out of a light, handy carbine.  Polymer folding stock, Harris bipod, B-Square scope mount and Aimpoint 1000.  Plus replacing the front sight with a flash-hider/bayonet lug combo.  It was heavier than a Galil by the time I'd finished.

And the zero wandered.

The front sight combo thing didn't stay put, so the sights moved around.

The B-Square scope mount didn't hold zero between sessions if you removed it, and we always removed it...

It was a love-hate thing.

Then the AWB hit.

Suddenly magazines were scarce.

AR magazines were plentiful.

So I sold the Mini to Anglave and got me a Daewoo DR200 with a thumbhole stock.

MUCH lighter than the Mini, decent military sights and a pedigree of being made by a nation who might just be going to war in a moment (just like Israel!).

'Round about here two of the Mini-14 converts changed 5.56 guns.  One, just as the AWB took effect, went to a Bushmaster AR from parts.  FuzzyGeff went with a Bushmaster M17 bullpup (because we hadn't yet learned that bullpups suck and the M17 took AR mags).

Then I moved to Florida.

ACE Limited even made a stock conversion that conformed to the 922r rules and let me have a normal pistol grip on my DR200.

I still had it in 2007 when I started getting into ARs...

Top to bottom: My DR200; FuzzyGeff's M17S; FuzzyGeff's first AR, Olga; my first AR, Kaylee; Marv's first AR.  We still own the bottom three, but none of them still look the same.

 It's Software Janitor's fault.

He started rolling his own AR's as soon as the AWB expired.

That led to me learning that my problems with the AR stemmed from assholes yelling at me and inadequate cleaning materials being milspec issue.

You might even have noticed that I have a couple three 'round here now.

Even FuzzyGeff overcame his scars to own a couple.

That Had To Be Hard To Write

The LA Times admits that Benitez's ruling is probably going to stand.

One quote stands out, "Newsom contends that the AR-15 is “nothing more than a weapon of war.”"

Let's go there, Gavin!

I direct you to Miller v US where the case was remanded back to the lower court because nobody could show that a sawed-off shotgun was a weapon of war.

If Miller had been busted for having a BAR, the entire NFA would have been gutted like a trout in 1939.

So, pull at that thread, Gavin; the only thing that's kept it from being reaffirmed is the court's ignoring the 2nd Amendment and a flat refusal to incorporated it under the 14th.

Cue Bob Dylan...

The times, they are a changin'.

Thanks! Cocaine Mitch! because the 9th Circuit, today, doesn't look like it did thirty years ago.

My AR Is Useless Against The Might Of The US Military

Two words:  Warsaw Ghetto.

A very small group of people with nothing left to lose took a handful of handguns and held off the most powerful military in the world.

The method was as old as war.

Use the inferior weapon to get a better one from an enemy soldier, hand the inferior weapon to the next guy on your side.

Warsaw was only taken when the National Socialists gave up on capturing it intact and leveled the place.

That going to fly here?

The Germans had nobody they knew or cared about living in Poland.  Their only reason for wanting Warsaw somewhat intact was spoils.  Loot.

It's a refrain that repeats over and over.

A tiny group of determined resistors can pin down gigantic militaries.

Something that hasn't happened yet is a resistance spawning from a place were guns were present in one of three households before the shooting started.

If a handful of handguns can hold off Nazi Germany, how will millions of AR's fare?

If around 700 IRA terrorists can stop The Royal Army for decades, how will millions of gun owners fare?

Militaries hate counterinsurgency.  The US military, by the way, isn't good at it.  Our endgame is always to give up and go home.

A domestic insurgency will not have that option.  They're already home.

Their supply lines are very dispersed thanks to pork-barrel spending policies.  How long does that whiz-bang drone keep flying when there's no transportation out of Wichita for a few days and a widget becomes unavailable?  Then, when they solve that outage, another component is delayed from Titusville?

Never mind the antenna farms that allow those things to work are fixed installations HERE and are WAY more accessible to an American resistance fighter than around the planet like in Afghanistan.

The really sad thing is its not necessary.

"Don't start none, won't be none," is actually in place.  The American gun owner isn't committing crime and wishes to be left alone.

But keep poking at them and eventually there's going to be a violent reaction.  Remember what I said about the Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, "nothing left to lose."

NEVER back someone with nothing left to lose into a corner.

Non-Equatable Skills

There was once a time where I'd thought that my skill with sword and shield from The SCA meant that I'd be good at fencing saber.

I was dissuaded of that notion nearly instantly.

A sword is a sword, no?

GURPS even makes them different skills.

Fencing as a sport isn't a melee weapon skill at all, in fact.  It's Combat Sport (fencing weapon) as opposed to Melee Weapon (fencing weapon).  They have the same difficulty and default to each other at -3.

What I was trying to do was to use my Melee Weapon (Broadsword) for Combat Sport (Saber).  There's no direct default between these skills.  It's skill -4 to go from Melee Weapon (Broadsword) to Melee Weapon (Saber) and another -3 to go from Melee Weapon (Saber) to Combat Sport (Saber); so a -7 to Broadsword if the GM allows it.

I wasn't very good at Melee Weapon (Broadsword) to begin with...  Prolly a skill of 10 or 11 max.  So a 3 or 4 with a fencing saber.

The same divide is present between Kendo and Kenjutsu where Kendo is a combat sport skill and using a war katana is Melee Weapon (Broadsword) or (Two-Handed Sword).

Military Features

Like on a weapon of war?

There's not a single advance in firearms which is common on everyday civilian guns which wasn't used in war.

In fact, most advances in firearm technology were explicitly for military firearms.

The prosaic bolt action in particular.

The Lebel 1886 and Gew.88 were the AK-47s of their days.

As was the Garand.

Personally, I ain't skeered of my fellow man possessing any and all manner of military features.

If such things were really an issue, there'd be no denying it.

There's millions of the things out there now, there weren't back in 1994.

If It DOES You've Been Doing It Wrong

Army says new war ready M17 pistol will change modern combat.

Handguns are as close to superfluous as any weapon still carried can get.

Yes, they have a role.

Before you latch onto that too hard remember, so does a bayonet.

A role isn't the same as having a large role.

The radio is still the number one most dangerous weapon on the battlefield.

I'm willing to bet we spent an order of magnitude more on getting the M17 than we did getting radios.

A new pistol just isn't a game changing weapon.

I cannot find the quote from a Marine general who was ruing over how much we'd wasted on all the previous handgun programs and that if they'd just cut him a check for not even half that he could equip every member of all the armed services with a new pistol from any of the major manufacturers.

He said something to the tune that as long as everyone can shoot issue 9mm NATO, they were golden.  If everyone was using the same magazine, they were platinum.

Not A Tantal

 From my GURPS: Twilight 2000 conversion:

 Tulamash AKM-R (5.45x39mm): As the AK-74 supplanted the AKM in service, and the expanding war with China increased weapon losses, large numbers of AKMs were rebarreled and modified to fire the AK-74's 5.45mm cartridge to maintain standardization of supply while taking advantage of a mountain of surplussed rifles.

Willard's gun is an AKM-R!

It's got a receiver that's more AKM than Tantal or AK-74.  His stock and handguard are AKM pattern.

This is a fine example of an AKM-R made in a Polish arsenal.

I'll bet Willard thought he was safe from being sucked into my T2K silliness too!

Stop With The Weapons Of War

A lot of hay is being made by calling the AR-15 a weapon of war.

I understand this is because of its strong resemblance to an M16 or M4.

Want to know what else is a weapon of war?

But, Thag, that's a bolt action hunting rifle!

It is NOW, but in 1892 it was a state of the art design with an incredible rate of fire.  40 aimed shots a minute!

It replaces another weapon of war, what's known as the Trapdoor Springfield.  A single shot rifle it too had an incredible rate of fire of 15 aimed shots a minute!

Cartridge guns were the assault rifles of their day.
Magazine fed guns were the assault rifles of their day.
Semi-automatic fixed magazine guns were the assault rifles of their day.
Now assault rifles are the assault rifle of the day... but they're not semi-automatic.  They're selective fire.

AR-15's merely look like their military counterparts.  There are small, but important differences in the guts that make them shoot much more slowly.

Oh, that reminds me.

This:

and this:

Are direct descendants of this:

Not only a genuine weapon of war, but a weapon used in WW2.

"But, Thag, those guns are obsolete!"

If you don't think that .30-06 can still kill, I invite you to wear a deer costume in hunting season.

Charles Whitman made the majority of his 47 hits with a Remington 700, it too being derived from a military bolt-action rifle like pictured above.

By the way, Whitman was stopped by a combined effort of the police and armed citizens.  People whom didn't hesitate to charge into the gunfire and try to stop the murderer.  Many people were injured or slain attempting to help those who'd been shot previously.

Reasons

Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

Wait.  Wrong intro.

I am a Twilight: 2000, or T2K, junkie.

I've updated the T2K 1.0 ruleset to GURPS no less than three times.  Twice for 3e and ongoing for 4e.

The scenario laid out in the game made enough sense that it influenced what branch of the Army I joined.

I've played it long enough that it's gone from speculative fiction to alternate history.

My M16A2 clone is a double nostalgia trip.  The tank was issued one and it's still the primary weapon of the US Army in T2K.

That photo is a recreation of one of the game's book covers!

The nostalgia trip to make an AK-74 stems from this game too.

The original scenario of the game begins with the last big battle of a big war where the opposing forces are essentially and finally spent against each other near Kalisz, Poland.

The next five adventure modules are set in Poland as well.

The Poles went their own way on weapons design so the Kbk wz.88 is distinctively Polish, and appropriately period for the game.

The M16A2 project is also my first foray into more serious hobby gunsmithing.  She started out as an 80% receiver because I wanted a specific markings and serial numbers.

Building the wz.88 from a parts-kit continues the tradition.

Probably Not What Was Meant

One of the speakers at GRPC cautioned that the liberals and anti-gunners make moves with payoffs in 50 years.

He proudly mentioned that in Massivetwoshits they got the definition of assault weapon made the same as the 1994 Federal AWB and that they managed to get the language of one law changed from "suitable person" to "prohibited person".

Folks, this shit is exactly what I mean about fighting an expert holding action, yet never being on the offensive.

The best we have been able to manage at the Federal level since 1986 has been to let a law sunset and two (it seems) easily twisted to not do anything Supreme Court decisions?

There was a lot bad for NFA attached to the FOPA along with the good, and much of the good has been downright eliminated in the places it was supposed to help the most.

We're not even doing much holding in this holding action!  We're subverted at every turn.

GRPC in their OUR resolutions session resolved that an attack on one kind of gun is now an attack all kinds of guns.  That's NFA, that's scoped FUDD, that's evil-baby-killing black guns, everything!

I am appalled that we "had" the president and congress and not ONE pro-gun bill made it to Bush's desk.

Not one.

Zero.

Goose egg.

Nada.

Zip.

Why would they submit such bills?  They get an 'A' rating without doing anything at all.  Where's their incentive to actually fight FOR us?  They get the highest rating for merely not fighting against us, and we don't understand why they do nothing?

The NRA rating has an incumbent bias, preventing worthy primary challengers from mounting serious challenges.  It also has a huge blind spot in focusing solely on the gun voting record of candidates and ignoring votes that come back to bite guns later.  If you're going to call it "America's First Freedom" you have to pay attention to the others.

We have to start doing better than the status quo.  We have to advance, even if in inches, rather than be proud we weren't defeated.

History is littered with examples of people who were never defeated, yet still lost the war.

War On Poodles

I think some folks need to accept that 5.56x45mm isn't going anywhere.

It's been around for more than 50 years and it's been thoroughly vetted by real fighting.

The flaws and virtues have been extensively explored and it's sufficient.  It's killed effectively from war to mass shootings to self defense to hunting.

So adequate, that even with the known flaws, that nations are replacing rifle designs but keeping the cartridge.  If it were a completely useless clusterfuck we'd see these new rifles in a new round and NATO standardization of that new round.

This sufficiency is predicated on the weapon fitting into its proper place in a combined arms military.  Your survivalist/prepper needs may vary due to the lack of artillery and air support.

Although, it may be just fine for social purposes because of the legalities of shooting a looter WAY down the street should society return to normal rather than going Wetdream Omega Man®.

I say all this as an owner of ARs in 6.8x43mm and an FAL in 7.62x51mm.

The replacement of the rifle rather than the cartridge might bring to light the real reason ol' two-twenty-three is so hated.  There's some who just cannot stand the rifle that introduced them to the round.  Those scars run deep.

There's also an undercurrent of what constitutes the best rifle.  The best rifle ever designed is virtually always the first rifle that worked when you absolutely needed it to and never didn't.  The worst rifle ever designed is virtually always the first rifle that failed when you absolutely needed it, if even only once.

There's certainly a body of people who went to war for the first time with an M14 or an FAL, cementing those as the BEST rifle for all time.  Likewise, someone stuck with an M16 when it was in its birthing problems stage or an L85A1 is, forever, going to hate those rifles.

Vaezghoekhghoeng

Also known as Kiki.  Go ahead, pronounce Vaezghoekhghoeng.  Go on.  What?  You don't speak Gvegh?

She was a Vargr starship engineer that I created because of a problem in my campaign.

Engineer was the only open slot on the ship and we had a new player, thus a new engineer, every week for like four months.  They'd show up, make a character, play, say, "see you next week", then we'd never see them again.

This also led to FuzzyGeff implementing a "you get paid at the beginning of the next game session, not the end," policy.  That saved the ship's fund a lot of money.

A big problem with our fresh player engineering pool was there were many times where a player's character couldn't have just disappeared.

So I made it an NPC position and the next three players stuck.

She's originally from Kedzudh Aeng in the Gvurrdon sector, just coreward from the Spinward Marches.

She speaks Gvegh, Galanglic and Zhodani.  The players never knew that last one.

The campaign was set just after the 4th Frontier War ended, and I had a subplot planned to make her a Zho spy if the players couldn't find trouble any other way.

She'd served with the Kedzudh Patrol on corsair busting duty during the war who were opportunistically attacking along the border between Vargr and Imperial space.

She's become utterly devoted to FuzzyGeff's captain character.  A devotion that surprised a couple of players more familiar with Vargr.

She was once challenged for the engineering position, and it led to a duel.  She chose swords.  When the signal to begin sounded, she swung at her opponent's weapon, shattering it.  "A real engineer could have seen that weak spot on the sword and chosen a different one.  I win!"