To shoot straight and speak the truth about Trolls, AR 15's and hard headed opinions

[Dr.Rob]

My reading here today got me thinking. (dangerous business I know for a 33 year old art director who has never been in anyone's army or police force to comment on such esoteric topics as firepower and tactical penetration and calling in the arty) But i digress...

Several topics (old faves) have popped up again like the scout rifle, the effectiveness of the 223, who said what to whom and when and rethinking the very definition of "if" in physics or geometry.

Well.. being that this is a discussion forum i feel the need to get on my soapbox. (donning nomex coveralls)

On the Elk and the 223... this is a really really bad Idea, even with a head shot. Elk live in the woods.. deep dark timber where its cold and wet and stuff freezes like oily actions and your eyelashes. Could you use one? Sure if you were paoching.. the 223 is not legal in any state I'm aware of for game as large as elk. i hunt elk in Colorado elk are big tough hombres. You owe it to that elk to make a swift, sure kill. Use enough gun.

On Col. Cooper.. you love him, you hate him, you agree and disagree. I for one (even if you buy his "concept") cannot fathom paying 2500 dollars for a bolt action rifle designed to do what a 30-30 can do. Medium sized game light handling plus defense up to 300 yards.. soulds like a Marlin 336 to me.. or a scoped short action savage. I also love his anecdotal "the scout shooters SEEMED to fair better than..." kind of writing. If someone gave me this rifle i would sell it for a number of other proven guns.

On guerilla tactics.. I for one WOULD like to know what Che had to say about firepower in the bush. The only pic I've seen of him armed was with an M-2 carbine witha 30 shot clip (he was on horseback). I'd also point out that russian snipers were winning the battle of stalingrad with a rifle you can now buy for 100 dollars. i'd say training tactics and motivation had a LOT to do with thier sucesses, as well as the steel of thier guns. Sun Tzu said.. know thy enemy.. as did Patton and Rommel. Americans aren't the only 'experts" out there.. I'm curious to see more opinions from around the globe.

On what IF scenarios and geometry and fuzzy math.. there are too many what ifs. To quote Dennis Hopper.. "you can't land on a fraction". MANY of these cannot be devined without sort of having been there or done that. I've seen 180 grain bullets explode on impact on a 150 pound antelope scoring NO penetration but an amazing instant kill.. I've seen wounded game take multiple hits with awe insprirng powerful rifles and keep going. I've seen experts and novices alike make mistakes. None of these 'sciences" is exact when Mr. Murphy is in the house and the weather is bad. practice when its dark and cold and yucky and shoot a lot.. no matter what your sport you'll do better.

On training, character and shooting...Magic bullets do not exist but trained men do. there are guys I've met who will SCARE you with how good they are.. some you'd want to sit down to dinner with and some you would not. Col. Cooper looks like someones' grandpa, Ted Nugent looks like .. well Ted Nugent.. both guys are spokesmen for our rights like it or not. Our community is made up of divergent opinions, experience levels and knowledge bases. if there is ONE thing you can take away from TFL its There are no exact answers. There are all kinds of people in our community from all over the world. I'd hate to see our brothers and sisters offended by reprinting the racial and ethnic slurs so casually bandied about in the 50's "because thats how cirillo said it" well bless his heart but can we leave out the epithets? i'm definitely not one to re-write Huck Finn or claim to be PC but i think its detrimental to our collective cause and make us look lacking in character.

On durability of rifles... my rifles are designed to go in the woods.. if I don't feel certain about their ability to work they do NOT go in the woods. if I HAD to stake my life on one rifle it would be the one I was MOST familiar with and the most reliable. Ask a german for a rifle you get gee whiz technology and extra parts, ask an american you get precision measurements and a buy american smile, ask a russian and he'll drag the rifle through a snowbank for 6 miles behind a truck, ripping off the sights and he will fire off a 30 round clip. It will weigh more, be ugly, and a fish will be able to take it apart. Which would you rather have?

And finally on trolls and strong opinions. Not every loud mouth with a rifle is a patriot, nor is every stubborn man an idiot. Sometimes we are all loud mouthed idiots, sometimes with luck we are stubborn patriots. For instance, bless his cantankerous old soul i feel absolutely ok with disagreeing with Gale MacMillan. Bless his cussed old hide I feel perfectly willing to tell Col. Cooper to eat his hat. But man, guys like them have a LOT of information to pass on.. good solid stuff that we can all learn from. So before ya stand up on your sopabox about the new guy on the block, take a minute.. just a minute to remember.. those old guys were new guys once too, we all have something to share.

oh.. and Happy New year. ;)

[Jaeger]

Well said.

[Rich Lucibella]

Amen.
Rich

[Glamdring]

Well Che might have said different things at different times, but in my copy of his book he says for a band of 25 people 10 to 15 should have single shot rifles and about 10 automatic guns split between Garands [which Che thinks very highly of] BAR's [the full auto BARs not Brownings hunting rifles], FAL's, M 14's, & simple 9mm SMG's.

I am not sure what he means [traslation problem IMO] but I think what he is saying is a mix of the true battle rifles [like Garand, FAL, M14, BAR etc] and SMG's...to go along with the single shot rifles. And also that exact weapon selection should reflect what you can get from the enemy for ammo and such.

[ballistic gelatin]

Just wanted to comment on Dr. Rob's diagnosis on long arms.
I enjoyed reading your perspective. I must say that I agree
with a lot of things you had to say. It gives me a chuckle
to realize that there are just as many opinions about guns
and tactics and everything else as there are people. It is
however comforting to me to see those perspectives that line
up with my own. I suppose it gives some false sense of
approval or confirms my own actions somehow. ANYhow, just
wanted to let you know that I enjoyed the info.

BTW The thing that scares me the most is snipers.
How can you defeat a sniper? Any suggestions.

Oh yeah, I see you are an Art Director, interesting.
I am a Graphic Artist, in Fla. I run the Mac LAN with
8 Mac workstations and a PC.

That is all.

[Art Eatman]

My own happy opinion is that Dr. Rob summed up a whole bunch of what has been said, here, there and yonder, on TFL during the last couple of years...

Mr. Gelatin, Sir: There are a couple of ways to deal with a sniper. One is to go in, up close and personal, as was done with Charles Whitman in the UT tower in 1966. One ex-GI (WW II Vet) civilian and two uniformed police who operated at the ex-GI's instructions.

Another is the favorite weapon of an ex-active USMC type of my acquaintance: The radio. You call in flyboys or artillery. (Note that LBJ suggested the USAF from Bergstrom AFB to "do something" about Mr. Whitman. Failing that, how about the NG from Camp Mabry? Yes, he did! I refuse to comment about the wisdom of certain fearless leaders, but that sort of thing might help account for my sometimes negative--nay, cynical!--attitude toward Gummint.)

RPGs are useful, also.

FWIW, Art

[BigG]

You said it, Dr. Rob! :)

[El Rojo]

You guys remember when that dude took off in an M-60 Tank and ran all over San Diego? I was wondering why they did get a gunship or anti-tank crew assembled to blast that dude. Had he not gotten stupid and ran up onto the tank trap (aka center divider), how much more damage could he have done? Of course they probably would not have really gotten an A-10 to straff him on the freeway. Depleted Uranium A-10 rounds flying down the street would do some damage. But why not a maverick, a dragon, or tow? It is San Diego, they have all sorts of resources around there.

[Hard Ball]

There is a lot of good sense in what you say, Dr.Rob.

[EchoFiveMike]

Mr. Gelatin, Sir: There are a couple of ways to deal with a sniper. One is to go in, up close and personal, as was done with Charles Whitman in the UT tower in 1966. One ex-GI (WW II Vet) civilian and two uniformed police who operated at the ex-GI's instructions.<<<<<

Whitman was NOT a sniper in the true sense of the word. In military operations a sniper will take one, perhaps two shots from a concealed position and then wait or move as he sees fit. It is almost impossible to localize on a single unexpected shot. You can use massive applications of firepower to attempt to kill snipers, but this is hugely wasteful and very often not successful. I can build hides that will withstand anything up to a direct hit from 81mm mortar delay fuze HE. Not too pleasant to be inside, but beats being converted to instant chili w/bonemeal. Honestly the best thing to defeat a sniper is another sniper. That's what we advocate. There are a number of sonic and millimetric radar bullet trackers in development. We'll see how they play out. Semper Fidelis...Ken M

[Art Eatman]

EchoFiveMike: I was a bit tongue in cheek, there...But from the standpoint of fairly long range aimed fire, Whitman was indeed a sniper. Now, if taking a shot or two and "scooting" is a sign of intelligence, you can color Whitman stupid. :)

At any rate, the methodology of sniping has varied all over the place. Our enemies used everything from hiding up in trees (WW I, Europe; WW II, Pacific) to using belltowers (WW II, France) to just an apartment window (WW II, France and Germany).

From my reading, specialized hides are rather infrequent...At any rate, you'll certainly never get an argument out of me about counter-sniping with a member of the Hathcock clan.

Circumstances, circumstances. My USMC buddy, during one mission in RVN, was taking fire from a hill not far from the coast. The only help available was from the Navy. After three salvos from the USS Missouri, Hill 509 was renamed Hill 409. :)

Art

[George Hill]

Bravo... Well said.

[HankL]

Very well put and true to my way of thinking. I would dearly love to be a fly on the wall if you told Col. Cooper to eat his hat though :D :D :D

[hickman]

Dr. Rob, IMHO, a great post. Congratulations on your thoughts and the expression of them.

[Maddock]

Hurrah!!
Well said, Dr. Rob. With intelligence and civility.

[Jeff Thomas]

;) Well put.

If you can do this weekly, I suspect you could publish your own column ...

Regards from AZ

[JWR]

Echo and Art thanks for the info; I was wondering that myself. How else can joe schmoe the civvie deal with a sniper? I had always thought that in the woods, you just had to be a better woodsman (or woman), i.e., skirt the field of fire and flank the position type of thing. I wouldn't want to play phone tag across a field with a trained sniper, so what else could I do? The posted solution to the urban sniper is the only one I could think of: assault the building and clear each room.

Dr. Rob, great post! Let's start another one on the definitions of "if" and "is" as used by gunzine writers and politicians.

[Art Eatman]

JWR, change is about the only constant. Urban snipers might be in a multi-storied building or in a house. They might be "shoot and scoot", as Lee Harvey Oswald; or suicidal, as Whitman. Like many of us, I can have "a" way, depending on circumstances. I doubt anybody on earth has "the" way.

Same sort of reasoning behind my attitude about the "best" firearm. There ain't no such animal, except for the one person for whom some firearm best fits *his* needs and is most efficiently used by that person.

Poor FSU!

:(, Art

[Solitar]

The breadth and depth of experience here runs from little more than browsing websites and magazines to years of combat with most any weapon made and in most any condition conceivable. To some a particular rifle is a web photo and ballistics are charts, to others the rifle was a 24/7 buddy upon whom they relied upon for their life and who they got to know initimately.

Given all this "diversity", we are all gun afficionados or we wouldn't be here. This makes this group a far friendlier audience to give and take with than those we might deal with in the average street or dinner encounter or public demonstration. No matter how rough it gets here, it is worse "out there" among the haters of guns and gun owners.

Though we may argue endlessly over AK vs AR or stopping power vs wounding ability, it is neat to listen to the technical talk and the swapping of experiences. It sure beats Thanksgiving dinner talking about how Gore got screwed and how great a senator Hillary will be.:barf:

[Correia]

Thanks Dr.Rob.

You wrote another essay once that I really enjoyed as well. It was about the different kinds of gun people that you had known. That was one of my personal favorite posts ever. Just thought I would say that. :)

[MAD DOG]

Dr. Rob,
Thank you for a lucid and even handed summation of the TFL Weltanschauung and Weltansicht.

I too have dared to disagree with both Jeff Cooper and Gale McMillan, but that does not mean that I have anything less than total respect for those two noble gentlemen.
(That being said, I must admit that there are those that I have disagreed with that I have no respect at all for...)
Like many others, Jeff and Gale have a lot of experience, knowledge, and of course... opinions. I value their opinions, whether or not I end up agreeing with them.
I value their exhaustive knowledge because I know how difficult and time consuming it is to acquire.
I have learned a lot from both of them and a lot of the others here at TFL.

If nothing else, they have often given me an intellectual point of departure for new (to me) thoughts, ideas, and adventures.
My only salient point here is that there ARE differing views of what is and is not appropriate for given shooting situations, and this is why there are so many different guns. Thank God! Imagine what our beloved Forums (and gun magazines, clubs, shows, etc...) would be like if the ONLY weapons we had to talk about were box stock rifles, pistols and shotguns, one model of each, and all made by the same manufacturer. Kind of like living in Russia before the wall came down, eh?