Divemedic

In comments to my recent test of firearms, a conversation began where I said this:

Selective fire means, under Federal law, machine gun. Having a variant that is a machine gun is not the same thing as being a machine gun. You are also incorrect, in that ALL of the weapons above have a select fire variant.
Pretty much every weapon (or its variants) were designed for military use, and that includes knives. My statement stands: Only two of the above weapons were never issued to a military for use by soldiers. Calling an AR-15 an M-16 is misleading at best.

In response, an anonymous poster said this:

The M1 Garand was NEVER produced for issue in a selective fire variant. The “selective fire M-1” was ether the BM-59 or the M14. Nether one is an M-1. The AR-15 IS NOT an M-16. 99% of all the firearms ever designed were made for civilian-not military- use. You really don’t know very much about firearms , do you?

1. I apparently know more than you. For starters, the M1 Garand had at least one select fire version:

U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30 T20E2
Operation: Gas, select-fire
Automatic operation: 700 rounds per minute
Rifle Weight: unloaded, without accessories: 9.63 pounds
20-round magazine weight: empty: .55 pounds; loaded: 1.69 pounds
Grenade launcher: .47 pounds
M1 Bayonet: 1.0 pound
Overall length: 44.88 inches
Barrel length: 23.7 inches,
Rifling: 4-grooves, right hand twist, 1:10

The testing and evaluation at the Aberdeen proving ground was completed, and the US ordered 100,000 of them for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, but the war ended before they went into production and the order was cancelled. The design was modified into what later became the M14 rifle.

2. I still stand behind the statement that pretty much every weapon (or its variants) were made for military use.

3. i never called the AR15 an M16, but other than the fire control group and bolt carrier, they are the same weapon. Due to restrictions on full auto fire control group parts, it is not easy to convert the AR15 into its full auto cousin, but there is a lot of parts commonality.

Name ten firearms that were designed from the ground up exclusively for civilian and not military use, and are not just a variant of a military design.

I compiled a list of the 19 deadliest attacks in US history. In compiling this list, I only included killings that were the result of a single event. In researching this post, I found that there were serial killers who carried out their crimes over years or months, and those were not included in this list.

1 On 9/11, there were 2,996 dead and over 6,000 injured. The weapons used were box cutters and airplanes.

2  October 31, 1999: Gameel al-Batouti cried out “I entrust myself to Allah” 11 times in Arabic as he deliberately piloted a plane full of passengers into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 217 people.

3 The Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995. There were 168 dead and over 680 injured. The weapon used was a bomb made from fertilizer and diesel fuel.

4 The Hartford Circus Fire. 167 dead, 682 injured. Weapon used: fire

5 The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. There were 120 settlers killed when their wagon train was ambushed by Mormons. (I hesitated to include this one since it was a group of 20 Mormons who committed the killings, but if you are going to include 9/11, I figured you should include this one.)

6 The Happy Land fire of 1990: 87 are killed when a man sets a nightclub on fire.

7 The Pulse Nightclub shooting, 2016. 49 dead, 53 injured. The weapon was an MCX rifle.

8 The Bath School massacre of 1927: 45 dead, and 58 injured. The weapon used were a pair of bombs.

9 Pacific Air Flight 773 of 1964: 45 killed when a man murdered the pilot and copilot of an airplane, which subsequently crashed.

10 Continental Flight 11 bombing of 1955: A man blew up the plane with a bomb.

11 Pacific Southwest Flight Flight 1771 of 1987: 43 people were killed when a man shot and killed the pilot and copilot of the plane, which subsequently crashed.

12 New York Bombing of September 1920: There were 38 killed and several hundred injured. The weapon was a bomb.

13 National Airlines Flight 2511 of 1960. 33 people killed by a bomb on an airplane.

14 Virginia Tech massacre of 2007. 32 dead. The gunman was a South Korean student that had been showing signs of mental instability.

15 The Upstairs Lounge Fire in New Orleans on June 24, 1973 was an arson that was intended to kill the patrons of a gay bar. It worked, killing 32 and injuring dozens. It was started with a Molotov cocktail.

16 Newtown School shooting of 2012. 33 dead. The shooter used an AR-15 rifle that he acquired by murdering his mother.

17 Dorothy Mae Arson of 1982. 25 killed. The arsonist claimed he didn’t mean to kill anyone, and only set the fire because he was stoned on marijuana and angry at his uncle, who was in the building.

18 The Luby’s Cafeteria Massacre of 1991. A total of 23 people were killed by a spree shooter.

19 The LA times was attacked with a bomb in 1910, killing 21.

Murder weapon
Of the above 19 killings:
4 of them included an airplane as the murder weapon
6 of them were committed by people using a bomb
4 of them were committed by arsonists or people with an incendiary device
4 were spree shootings
1 (The Mountain Meadows Massacre) was committed by a group of people with multiple weapons, including gunfire, knives, and clubbing)

The fact is that guns have nothing to do with spree killings. In fact, 80 percent of spree killings were not performed by firearms.

The first is a 12 year old playing Texas Flood:

The second is a guy playing Pride and Joy on a toy guitar at Wal Mart.

We keep hearing how not all Muslims are terrorists, and how Islam is the religion of peace. Since I love looking at data, we will do that here.

There are 3.3 million Muslims in the United States. According to a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of the Muslim-American population are first-generation immigrants, and 61 percent of the foreign-born arrived in the 1990s or this decade. In fact, the US admits approximately 250,000 Muslims per year into the country.

In the fifteen years since 9/11, approximately 2 million Muslims have immigrated to the US.

Since June 17, 2015, there have been 5 confirmed terror attacks on US soil, involving at least 8 suspects. There have been a total of 73 killed and 86 injured.

Eight terrorists out of 2 million doesn’t sound like a lot, since that is only one terrorist out of about 250,000 people, until you realize that this is far higher than any other demographic.

Chattanooga TN military attacks, five dead and two injured. The attacker was a Muslim born in Kuwait.
San Bernardino shooting, sixteen dead and 23 injured. Two immigrant Muslims are the suspects.
Ohio machete attack, one dead and four injured, the suspect is a Muslim Immigrant.
UC Merced stabbing attack, one dead and four injured, US born Muslim attacker (first generation)
Orlando nightclub shooting, 50 dead and 53 injured, an US born Muslim attacker who was a first generation American, with his Muslim Jordanian wife, who has since disappeared.

For some reason, the earlier post about Gary Johnson and gun control is having issues.

Here is the video of a Libertarian campaign spokesman:

He favors it, as long as it is done right, and as long as they let him have pot and hookers, I guess.

I despise that companies with anti-gun and pro-child molester policies, like Disney. However, far too many of my friends want to go there, so I have passes to all of the major Central Florida theme parks: Sea World, Disney, and Universal Studios.

These parks are all what is called a “non permissive” environment for people with concealed weapons. That is, no one is permitted to have weapons on property, but this is only a corporate policy, not the law. It is perfectly legal to have a concealed weapon on your person, but if you are caught with one, they will ask you to leave. As far as I know, this includes police officers who are not on duty. To enforce this policy, security has a mandatory bag inspection and randomly runs those entering through a magnetometer. For some events, ALL persons entering are required to pass through the magnetometer.

I have used my pass to thoroughly test the theme park security systems. They all failed spectacularly. Let me explain the flaws that I saw:

1 About a month ago, I went to one of the parks and, as usual, skipped the bag check because I had no bag. As it turns out, every person who didn’t have a bag was asked to go through the magnetometer. The security failure here is that the magnetometer is not random. If a person had a bag, they were not being asked to go through it. So, bring a bag, and no magnetometer. Non random checks are easy to beat. I had no firearm on me that day, because we were there to experience some adult beverages with some friends, and I do not carry firearms when drinking alcohol. Even so, the search still missed a can of pepper spray and a push knife.

2 When going through the bag check, the security guards only give a perfunctory look into the main compartments of a bag. On multiple occasions, a Coronado Concealed carry Hobo bag, with its hidden compartments, was used and not thoroughly searched. As a result, a Smith and Wesson 642 was missed every time this method was tried.

3 Even if you are asked to go through the magnetometer, it proved easy to beat as well. Wear a belt with a large metal buckle, like this one. Then carry a small handgun like a Smith and Wesson Bodyguard or a Smith and Wesson 642 in a Thunderwear holster or a pair of boxer briefs with a pocket for a cup. (The Bodyguard is more comfortable in these holsters). When the security guard wanded the front of my body, the detector went off…exactly as expected when the detector is placed in close proximity to a large metal belt buckle.  I lifted my shirt so he could see the buckle.  When the alarm sounded, he already expected it and attributed the alert to the belt buckle instead of the gun stashed just underneath it.  The rule is: “show security what they expect to see.”  The guard expected that his wand would go off when passed over a large metal belt buckle.  It’s up to me to use this expectation to my advantage when I conceal my weapons.

Keep in mind that most of these places are paying security somewhere in the area of $12 an hour or so. These rent a cops are not that sharp, or they would be making double or triple that as real cops. They are being asked to screen tens of thousands of people a day, and just like garrison troops, they become lazy and complacent. They must sit there and check thousands of people in the hot Florida sun for hours on end, and do it for very little pay. They aren’t going to be thrilled to investigate your crotch too closely, and if they do, it is inevitable that they will eventually get sued, so they don’t.

In short, it is easy to get a weapon into a non-permissive environment with just a little forethought and ingenuity. I am sure that there are other ways, but these have worked for me so far. Let me point out a couple of things:

Nothing that I did here was illegal. If I had been caught, the most that would happen is that I would be asked to leave, and perhaps given a trespass warning. Don’t carry a weapon in any place where you are prohibited by law from doing so.  Use these techniques only in places where it is LEGAL, but against company policy, to carry a weapon.

One other thing to keep in mind.  It was EASY for me to get weapons into a “secured” venue.  I could have very easily taken more or larger weapons.  Do you think that an active killer or terrorist couldn’t do the same thing?  Don’t think you are “safe” because there is a rent-a-cop with a metal detector at the front door of the event you are attending. If this were to happen, don’t think for a minute that Disney, or any other large company, is going to take the blame for what happened. You will be dead, and they will absolve themselves of all responsibility for creating a defenseless victim zone.

We already know that the Orlando shooter looked at Disney theme parks as a potential target. ANY place where people gather is a potential target for terrorists. Keep your eyes open, stay armed, and be ready to take action.

To all of you who support Gary Johnson and his “weed and hookers” platform, he is now in favor of destroying due process and using a secret list to deny firearm rights.

EDITED TO ADD: Here is the link I should have included.