Hollywood Logistics

I paid a visit to a friend I met in California last week.   He calls himself “Joe from DC” (no, not Washington, and not the comics, although in that respect you are getting closer).  I’ve known this guy for awhile, but only recently found what he actually does.  Perhaps the relatively older generations would remember Tim Burton’s production of Batman.  One line in the movie comes to mind: “Where does he get those wonderful toys?’

He gets them from Joe.  Joe’s company specializes in special items manufacture, as well as a couple other services.  Here’s a prime example of his work.

HLW-9Kr Assault Weapon:  This comes in an extreme variety of models and accessories, but most have the same capabilities:

1.  Weapon is easily smuggled, hidden, and undetectable.

2.  Magazine holds 9000 rounds of “Super-Boom” ammunition.

3.  “Super-Boom” ammunition is a self-variable ballistics load.  Manufactured in any caliber and configuration of weapon.  Common effects vary from simple projectiles to extended range and explosive capacity.  For example, the same round used for killing an “extra” will also ignite a fuel tank and destroy the vehicle despite being a non-tracer/non-explosive load.  Grenades are manufactured specifically to yield explosions equal that of 40 sticks of TNT and make a very impressive fireball.

4.  Weapon features included are self-setting sight mechanisms for always on-target precision shooting (no training required), full warranty flawless operation (warranty expires for dramatic effect), futuristic “cool” appearance, heat proof even during extended firing, and muzzle flash enhancer for overall effect.

He doesn’t sell to any of the usual governments or agencies, but deals only with super-secret operations and questionable characters with elaborate schemes of destruction in mind.  So the question you might have is, “How come I’ve never seen one of these guns?”  I can assure you that you have encountered them: have you been to the movies in the last 20 years?

Flat Tire

Just a quick update, I won’t be plinking for a short time due to having acquired a new job and I simply don’t have time to litter the internet with pictures of hole-punched targets. I’ll get back on it as soon as I get my guns back.

Weapons Training for Children

As I mentioned in my Weapons Handling post, I would cover the subject of why I would teach children how to handle weapons properly.  Many people do not feel teaching children about guns is right, but I see no difference between a gun, a bicycle, automobile, lawnmower, or any other implement the human species employs. Granted, the reason a gun was invented was to be more efficient in killing, but it is still just a tool (Rule 2 of Weapons Handling).

There are some who disagree, as well as those who would ban guns if possible, but each of their reasons come down to what I call “The Basic 4 Causes”.  These 4, or any combination of them, are responsible for every gun related incident ever, and are the reason I have 6 principals for weapons handling rather than the usual 4 I’ve heard all the time.  If you think about it, they are actually responsible for a lot more than weapons-related incidents.

Here they are

 1:  Partial or total ignorance for what you are dealing with.  Remember Rules 1 and 3?  If you don’t know what you are doing, you’re asking for trouble.

2:  Careless use in handling and operation.  Rules 2, 4, 5, and 6.  Follow procedures, and know what is around you.

3:  Malicious use.  Anyone attempting to ban guns due to crime rates is a fool: a gun left to it’s own will not murder anyone.  Even if you don’t want anything to do with guns, you should realize that even if they were completely banned, there are still enough guns and machinery capable of thier manufacture to ensure their proliferation into society, thus ensuring that “only a criminal would have a gun”.  However, if you allow people to own guns, a burglar or would-be assailant rolls the dice on which person or house has the capability to put a shot in his ashtray, thus giving him more to consider.  Also, the movie Red Dawn comes to mind.

4:  Complete accidents.  Weapon or ammunition malfunction from an unknown defect; bird flew into the range causing the bullet to ricochet into a rock and bounce back, etc.  These are incidents that occur from completely odd circumstances that are unpredictable.  You do what you can to prevent them, but odds are that something will eventually happen sometime.

   Our species has always invented.  Everything we invent operates by it’s own rules.  Injuries and deaths from anything we invented stem from any or all of these 4 listed.  Guns could be used for recreation or as a requirement of the situation.  Just as it is my duty to teach them how to ride a bicycle AND know how to ride in and out of traffic, I feel it my duty to ensure my children KNOW how to handle a gun.  Once they are old enough to understand my principals, and what they mean, I will begin training them.  Whether they want to later in life is their decision, but I will ensure they know.

Chow Hall Promotions

   Due to the popularity of my previous post, I’ve decided to experiment in stories from my days in the U.S. Military; testing the market of my one viewer to see what fish stories I can sell.  This is also my first post that doesn’t involve shooting anything.

   I enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in ‘98.  I’ve several things that stick in my mind from then, but today is about the good times spent at the chow hall in Basic Training.

   Somewhere around halfway through basic, they assign a week for the recruits to disperse throughout the base to help with the regular units.  Usually, it’s low jobs they need lots of numbers for.  My pick (that is, picked for me) was duty at the mess hall.  During formation to assign jobs, they ask for volunteers for each job.  Having an incomplete mastery of the English language, I volunteered to find out what the word “Scullery” actually means.  In this case, it meant pots and pans, and the kind of hand-scrubbing that was necessary because a dishwasher wouldn’t even touch this stuff.  This was HARD work.  Constantly hot and sweating, gotta’ move fast due the sheer number of dishes that would stack up, and about the time you finished, lunch hour just kicked off.

   The bright side of having the worst job is it can only get better.  The scullery did have the advantage of no cadre in charge of it, and it was too hot for a drill instructor to want to show up either.  Under these conditions, we could get away with a small amount of “smokin’ and jokin’ “.

After a day and a half, they looked for a hard-worker in my “office”.  It seems a recruit in the bakery was caught eating cookies, so they decided to switch his place with my own.  I then went to THE prize job in the bakery (where I DIDN’T get caught eating cookies).  I spent the afternoon in a plush job, where work could progress at a reasonable pace.  There were a couple cadre cooks in charge, but they were cool if you worked hard.  It got even better when the floor blew up.

   Just after the lunch rush we were finishing up on cleaning.  I just got done putting away the mop, and coming back I saw a puddle on the floor.  Just two inches wide, so I wiped it up with a rag.  As  headed for the sink, one of the guys said I missed one, so I went back, noticing it was the exact same spot with a 4 inch puddle this time.  I wiped it up, then saw a 8 inch puddle form and start to run as the tile floor seemed to bulge.  There was a crack, and water proceeded to pour into the floor, bringing with it dirt from the building foundation.  One recruit ran for the Master Sergeant’s office while the rest of us proceeded to stack pans and towels in a manner to duct the flow out the door.  As the water entered the hallway, other areas complained about their clean floors until they realized we didn’t just spill anything, then they began closing off their doorways until the flow was sent out the back door and off the loading area to a small patch of woods.

   It seems a 25+ year old water main under the building ruptured.  They eventually got the water shut off, and we spent a frantic 45 minutes carting 8 inches of mud out of the bakery, during which, the Commanding Officer showed up and surveyed the damage (while the Drill Instructors came in and rattled our tea-cups by asking “What did you recruits do?”)

   Once we got the mud out and cleaned up again, we only had a floor buckled 6 inches, and some re-arrangements on water supply, otherwise, you wouldn’t know what happened (except for a big mud streak out back, which we left to those recruits on the cushy job of lawn maintenance).  The Commander actually congratulated us on our “Dam Ingenuity” and commented how quickly we scrambled to clean up.

  On the plus side, I got the rest of the day off.  It seems with half the bakery closed down, they needed an extra on the night shift, and they sent me back to barracks to sleep (AT 4 PM!!!!!  A RECRUIT’S DREAM COME TRUE), so as to arrive at 10 PM that evening to begin work.  If the bakery was good, Night Shift was better (where I STILL didn’t get caught eating even MORE cookies).  Still had to work,  but with even less supervision, no Drill Instructors, and a bit more time to generally catch up on things and actually goof off a bit.

   All good things end, and having completed our week, we returned to regular training at our units.  Of course, our Drill Instructors must have had an idea of what I never got caught doing, and proceeded to just run the crap out of us for a few days.  Then again, maybe I just got used to work instead of being acclimated to Fitness Training.  Or maybe it was the cookies.

Hit or Miss

During my time in the Marine Corps, I’ve been to the range almost every year. The Marine Corps, during my day, practiced “Hit or Miss” on thier general rifle qualifications. The targets were a roughly man-size and shaped silhouette; either simulating an upper torso or the head and shoulders of a man looking from a fox-hole. The idea was to hit the black. Even if it is right at the edge, it was still a hit. We tried to get adjustments to center of course.

What's this story got to do with Plinking? Not much, but it's just what I've switched my off-time shooting to. Just for fun, I've give up precision attempts and just try to hit the target.

The last time at the range was interesting, because we not only bagged a crow and almost got a deer, but we had to teach someone to shoot. The crow was flying around the range during fire and caught someone’s random shot. As for the deer, well it had to be nuts: 75 Marines locked and loaded and they were 1 second away from calling “targets” when it ran across the range. “CEASE FIRE” was never called with as much urgency as then (Military bases nowadays work closely with Fish and Game: fool around with the wildlife and you might as well have been caught whizzing in the Commandant’s coffee maker for the trouble you get).

Still, you wonder how does a guy get away with not being able to shoot on a Marine Corps range? Well, I was on third string firing, and while first string was setting up, I happened to look over to the man on second string. There was something just not right about his uniform. It wasn’t just that his ammo vest was inside-out and he had rifle magazines sitting in the grenade pouches, it was his rank insignia: this guy was Navy. Sure, the Marines are part of the Navy, but when they show up to work with us for awhile, you gotta’ wonder how well-liked they were at their own command.

Anyway, I decided to check out his story, so I struck up some coffee-talk (sans-coffee: stupid range rules) and found he was somewhat of a part-time security detail for his billet, and that he’s never live-fired a weapon. Even in Basic Training! Well, that’s kind of sad, but we decided to give him a real treat today. We first told the range Corporal that we need to switch him to fourth string, then we proceeded to get his Ammo Vest straightened and adjusted, all the time asking him about what he knew about the weapon. Relief was with us, as, although he never disassembled or cleaned one, he knew the handling, controls, and function of the M16A2 based on the electronic model they used in Boot Camp, as well as a little of how to sight in. We elaborated on this to a small extent on how best to do so, but mostly we left final details to his own preference. Finally, we had him watching second string and myself on third string to understand range procedures.

The Marines have three rifle qualification grades. Going lowest to highest, they are Marksman, Sharpshooter, and Expert. I volunteered for a Tuesday (early) qualification day and got Expert qualification. What I really did though was get myself done and lend a hand coaching the Navy man (who didn’t need it by Wednesday) and pulling targets, which, I swear is the SAME system they’ve been using since World War I. What the heck, we were Marines, right? Pulling targets and cleaning your rifle isn’t bad if you avoid the “hurry up to get a free half-day added to the weekend” and just go with it for the fun of having punched some paper for a good cause. I took my time cleaning the weapon, just having a good time sippin’ a soda and listening to the radio while I worked it over. (unintentionally) being the last one for inspection, the armory personnel didn’t have to examine long to see how clean my rifle was.

But the coolest frost on this beer can was having the Navy man say “Thanks for the help. It was fun” while the sun reflected off his Sharpshooter’s badge.