Lone Wolves in the USA (new title)

[carl]

Stanley McChrystal's new career depends upon his uttering the conventional wisdom as it is understood by the inside the beltway elite. He is going to do that anyway because when they get to multi-star level, they are in the heart of that elite. In other words, he will be the media darling if he says the right thing which he is inclined to do anyway. It is good for his career.

As far as his remarks about the fabled lethality of the 5.56 round, a lot of that comes from the initial effort to sell the M-16 to the military and can be directly traced to a pilot program that they ran in VN in 1962 or 63. They gave the weapon to some ARVN troops and used the results in promoting the weapon. The 'hit in the arm and the arm comes off' stuff came from there

This is very well related in The Great Rifle Controversy, which was a great book by the way.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Rifle-Co...le+controversy

Ken White at one time somewhere or other said that as far as lethality goes, a 30.06 tops a 7.62x51 which tops a 5.56x45. I figured he would probably know. If you want a really lethal bullet try a modern big or medium game cartridge in something like 7mm or 25.06. Or if you want to go back further, I've read that the old British .303 cartridge was very bad, a 174 grain bullet with an initial velocity of around 2500 fps with an unstable bullet that tumbled on impact.

McChrystal sensed an opportunity to further his career and he grabbed it.

[carl]

Ken! There you are. Every time you go off the comments for a while I worry that something has happened to you.

[Ken White]

Selling house and getting ready to move to be near the kids to help us old folks cope. Whoever came up with that 'Golden Years' foolishness was a blithering idiot.

Agree with your comments on system and Stanley. Sad. Bad...

Guns and mag capacity aren't the problem, lack of familiarity with firearms among kids and an appreciation for the damage they can do and the state of mental health support are far greater issues. Can't stop nut jobs by limiting the tools, they'll just use another if the one they'd prefer isn't readily available.

Media repetitive over hyping doesn't help. Nor do gratuitous specious comments by public figures.

[carl]

lack of familiarity with firearms among kids and an appreciation for the damage they can do...are far greater issues.

That is a very good observation. I read somewhere once (I wish I could find the ref) that kids who have had some kind of formal firearms training, and it doesn't have to be very extensive, are far less likely to abuse firearms, even in the criminal sense.

[jmm99]

All modern bullets have a tendency to "tumble" (yaw) when impacting something that will deflect them. The .303 British (which is very similar to the 30-06) had more yaw tendency because its lead base was relatively heavier than most comparable bullets. E.g., the difference in handling of a rear engine - rear drive vehicle vice a front engine - front drive vehicle. Basic Wiki stuff: Ballistic trauma and Yaw (rotation).

Regards

Mike

[Kiwigrunt]

I think the silly myths regarding evil military projectiles may have started with the dum-dum nonsense. And the myths just won’t die.

The evilness of the 5.56 can perhaps be seen as America’s own equivalent to the dum dum myth.

Here is another excellent write-up about dum-dum bullets, with some other interesting links on that page, some of which may help to highlight the (historical) contrast regarding gun culture in the UK versus US.

[davidbfpo]

A short FP article by Dr. Jeffrey Simon, I assume prompted by the Boston bombing and this passage caught my attention - citing their creativity:

What makes lone wolves so dangerous is their ability to think outside the box. Since they operate by themselves, there is no group pressure or decision-making process that might stifle creativity. Lone wolves are free to act upon any scenario they can dream up. This freedom has resulted in some of the most imaginative terrorist attacks in history. For example, lone wolves were responsible for the first vehicle bombing (1920), major midair plane bombing (1955), hijacking (1961), and product tampering (1982), as well as the anthrax letter attacks in the United States (2001).

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._one?page=full and the author's website:http://www.futureterrorism.com/