Nov 06 2014

The Breakfast Club (Bang! You’re Dead)

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgMy late Uncle called the History Channel The War Channel because of it’s steady drumbeat of World War II documentaries and other celebrations of armed conflict which, along with the “Great Man” theory of history, Marx shows us is a mere outgrowth of underlying economic dynamics.

Not that he was a Marxist, nor am I.  I’m a proud Anarcho-Syndicalist and we kick Marxist butt from here to Barcelona.

Anyway among the objects of their fascination are guns of every shape, size, and description because big explosions are good Television.

Just what about bigger do you not understand?

So I’m a factoid factory about firearms even though I do not now and never have owned one (though I do have a dusty old NRA Pro Marksman certificate which attests I can hit a sheet of paper if it gets close enough to threaten me).

For the purposes of today’s story we’ll start off with the mechanics of basically every gun until 1808.

Now we all have this vision of a frontiersman in his coonskin cap carefully pouring powder from his Powder Horn into the Pan of his Kentucky Long Rifle, lowering the Frizzen and putting the Hammer on Half Cock, putting the Stock on the ground and pouring more powder from his Horn into the Muzzle, grabbing a Patch of cloth and a lead Ball from his pouch and carefully seating them in the Barrel, and finally pulling out his Ramrod and tamping it all down, returning Ramrod to its sleeve, then raising the Rifle, pulling the Hammer to Full Cock, aiming, and firing.

That’s completely wrong.

It actually matters a great deal just how much powder you use and if you want consistent results (and incidentally a gun that doesn’t blow up in your face) you’ll monitor that quantity quite carefully.

In fact since the 1500s most militaries haven’t used loose powder at all.

Well, except for priming the Pan and at that they’d have carefully crafted quills which they would dip like a cooking measure into flour to procure the desired amount.

Instead they have used a paper cartridge which has powder and ball enclosed in a waxed or oiled paper wrapper.  You tear off the seal (usually just a twist like a candy) of the powder end and pour that down the Barrel.  Then you seat the Ball end of the cartridge (with paper replacing the Patch) and ram that down.  The waxing not only contributes to waterproofing the powder (let’s keep it dry Democrats) but also makes it easier to slide down the Ball.  Rumours that the British were using Lard and Tallow to grease their cartridges was one of the proximate causes of the Sepoy Rebellion.

Still, it’s a pain in the ass.

Starting in 1808 we see the emergence of cartridges designed for Breech loading using Percussion Caps for ignition.  While many designs used paper and other self consuming material to contain the charge it was eventually found that Brass would expand to prevent leakage of the propellant into the Breech while maintaining enough integrity to be easily extracted to accept the next round, and they were waterproof to a large extent.

Plastics

By now you’ve heard all the panic about 3-D printed guns and frankly there’s a lot to be worried about.  They are 100% plastic and don’t show up on metal detectors.  They’re made of commonly available materials by reasonably ($400) priced machines according to specifications easily downloaded off the Internet.  All this technology is thoroughly dual purpose and essentially unregulatable.

Until now the only problem has been that they are single shot and have a tendency to blow up because the Barrel and Breech are not quite strong enough.

A machinist from Pennsylvania has solved that problem (well, the blow up part at least, but that’s the key).  Instead of using a Brass cartridge he uses a Steel one to contain the detonation at its highest pressure point.

Now his is machined and takes about an hour a round to make, but you can reload it and the design could just as easily be stamped (if you have an industrial stamping machine, Kalashnikovs are stamped for instance).

Now perhaps you think this a radical breakthrough, yes in some respects, not so much in others.  Behold the Colt Paterson 1836–

The revolvers came with spare cylinders and the practice of the day was to carry spare cylinders loaded and capped for fast reloading.

Yup, and that was without smokeless powder in a basically Ball and Cap design.

Technologically this is essentially a dead end.  Plastics with the requisite characteristics and the machines to create them will continue to evolve but don’t be too worried, even today if you know what you’re doing you can construct a fully automatic AR-15 out of a $35 receiver you can buy unregistered over the Internet and some “spare” parts.

Are you ready for the Zombie Apocalypse yet?

The Bullet That Could Make 3-D Printed Guns Practical Deadly Weapons

By Andy Greenberg, Wired

11.05.14

As 3-D printed guns have evolved over the past 18 months from a science-fictional experiment into a subculture, they’ve faced a fundamental limitation: Cheap plastic isn’t the best material to contain an explosive blast. Now an amateur gunsmith has instead found a way to transfer that stress to a component that’s actually made of metal-the ammunition.

Michael Crumling, a 25-year-old machinist from York, Pennsylvania, has developed a round designed specifically to be fired from 3-D printed guns. His ammunition uses a thicker steel shell with a lead bullet inserted an inch inside, deep enough that the shell can contain the explosion of the round’s gunpowder instead of transferring that force to the plastic body or barrel of the gun. Crumling says that allows a home-printed firearm made from even the cheapest materials to be fired again and again without cracking or deformation. And while his design isn’t easily replicated because the rounds must be individually machined for now, it may represent another step towards durable, practical, printed guns-even semi-automatic ones.

“It’s a really simple concept: It’s kind of a barrel integrated into the shell, so to speak,” says Crumling. “Basically it removes all the stresses and pressures from the 3-D printed parts. You should be able to fire an unlimited number of shots through the gun without replacing any parts other than the shell.”

Last week, for instance, Crumling shot 19 rounds from a 3-D printed gun of his own design created on an ultra-cheap $400 Printrbot printer using PLA plastic. (He concedes his gun isn’t completely 3-D printed; it uses some metal screws and a AR-15 trigger and firing hammer that he bought online for a total of $30. But he argues none of those parts affected the gun’s firing durability.) Though the gun misfired a few times, it didn’t suffer from any noticeable internal damage after all of those explosions. Here’s a time lapse video that shows 18 of those shots.

…

Crumling’s steel-shelled rounds seem to control their explosions well enough to protect printed guns created with even the very cheapest printing techniques. “This guy has refined 3D printed firearms such that they can be reliably printed on very low end 3-D printers,” says Sullivan. “It’s so brilliantly simple. I love it.”

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The Obligatories, News, and Blogs below.

Obligatories

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

I would never make fun of LaEscapee or blame PhilJD.  And I am highly organized.

This Day in History

News

90-year-old among Florida activists arrested for feeding the homeless

Richard Luscombe, The Guardian

Wednesday 5 November 2014 15.19 EST

Church leaders in Florida were preparing for a second confrontation with Fort Lauderdale police on Wednesday over a controversial new ordinance than bans them from feeding the city’s homeless.

Pastors from two local churches and the 90-year-old leader of a long-established food kitchen were arrested at a park on Sunday, two days after the law took effect, for attempting to serve meals to homeless residents. Each received a citation threatening 60 days in prison and a $500 fine.

Dwayne Black, pastor of the downtown Sanctuary Church, said he and church members would set up their regular feeding station at Fort Lauderdale beach on Wednesday in defiance of the ordinance. He said he expected to be arrested again and to spend the night in jail.

Finland warns of new cold war over failure to grasp situation in Russia

Simon Tisdall, The Guardian

Wednesday 5 November 2014 08.43 EST

Western countries are at the gates of a new cold war with Russia, sparked by the Ukraine crisis and a continuing failure to grasp the depth and seriousness of Vladimir Putin’s grievances with the US and EU, the Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, has warned.

Speaking to the Guardian at his official residence before Thursday’s conference in Helsinki attended by the UK prime minister, David Cameron, and Nordic and Baltic state leaders, Niinistö said Finland had a long tradition of trying to maintain friendly relations with Russia. But it would not be pushed around.

“The Finnish way of dealing with Russia, whatever the situation, is that we will be very decisive to show what we don’t like, where the red line is. And that is what we are prepared to do,” Niinistö said, referring to recent violations of Finnish airspace by Russian military aircraft.

“We put the Hornets US-made Finnish air force F-18 fighter aircraft] up there and the Hornets were flying alongside the Russian planes … [The Russians turned back. If they had not, what would we have done? I would not speculate.”

Texas oil town makes history as residents say no to fracking

Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian

Wednesday 5 November 2014 13.31 EST

“It should send a signal to industry that if the people in Texas – where fracking was invented – can’t live with it, nobody can,” said Sharon Wilson, the Texas organiser for EarthWorks, who lives in Denton.

An energy group on Wednesday asked for an immediate injunction to keep the ban from being enforced. Tom Phillips, an attorney for the Texas Oil and Gas association, told the Associated Press the courts must “give a prompt and authoritative answer” on whether the ban violates the Texas state constitution.

…

“It was more like David and Godzilla then David and Goliath,” Wilson said. But she said residents were fed up with the noise and disruption of fracking, and the constant traffic and fumes from wells and trucks operating in residential neighbourhoods.

The town is probably the most heavily fracked in the country.

The industry has drilled wells on church property, school grounds and on the campus of the University of North Texas, right next to the tennis courts and across the road from the sports stadium (and a stand of giant wind turbines).

In Texas, as in much of America, property owners do not always own the “mineral rights” – the rights to underground resources – so typically have limited say over how they are developed.

Texas court overturns man’s death sentence due to withheld evidence

Jessica Glenza, The Guardian

Wednesday 5 November 2014 13.24 EST

The decision from the Texas court of criminal appeals to send the case back to a lower court comes more than one year after the original trial judge Mark Kent Ellis requested Brown receive a new trial, even asking the appeal court to “Please hurry,” according to the Chronicle.

The decision to overturn Brown’s conviction hinged on evidence of a phonecall.

…

A record of the call was eventually found when a homicide detective was cleaning out his garage last year. The find was not only potentially exonerating, but also a violation of a guiding principle of prosecutorial conduct, called a “Brady” violation. The Brady case precedent requires prosecutors to turn over evidence to defense attorneys.

Ebola outbreak in Koinadugu, Sierra Leone, prompts call for help from chief

Lisa O’Carroll, The Guardian

Wednesday 5 November 2014 09.39 EST

Koinadugu had prided itself on being the only district in Sierra Leone to have been Ebola-free after local chiefs imposed a quarantine, barring travel and creating a system of official distribution vans and trucks to help farmers and traders get their product to neighbouring markets.

However, after two unexplained deaths in October were investigated, it emerged that Ebola had reached the chiefdom of Nieni and its three villages of Fankuya, Sumbaria and Kumala.

…

Mara, who is from the area, said: “We discovered there had been 25 deaths already, some of them unexplained. Prior to this, the district went six months without Ebola. On 15 October there were two cases of unidentified deaths. The situation is not really good because we have just got the results that show there are 15 new cases, on top of 23 we already knew about.”

Another big winner in Tuesday’s elections: Transportation

By Curtis Tate, McClatchy

November 5, 2014

A long-term federal funding solution for the nation’s highways and transit systems has been elusive. While some lawmakers have pressed for an immediate fix, it’s not clear whether the Obama administration can reach an agreement with the newly bolstered Republican majorities in Congress before a temporary funding bill expires in May.

As federal efforts have stalled, the power to solve transportation problems has been put in the hands of governors, state legislatures and voters. According to a post-election analysis by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, a trade group, voters approved two-thirds of the transportation-related initiatives on the ballot Tuesday.

…

Beth Osborne, a former acting assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, said that transportation performs better than most issues on the ballot.

“People can’t rely on the feds to come up with new money,” said Osborne, who joined Transportation for America, a coalition of transportation advocates, earlier this year. “States are the ones that are making it their priority.”

Indicted? Facing criminal charges? So what!

By Greg Gordon, McClatchy

November 5, 2014

Voters in Pennsylvania’s 2nd and New York’s 11th congressional districts don’t seem to mind that Congressmen Chaka Fattah and Michael Grimm might be spending a good deal of their time fighting for a different sort of cause: keeping themselves out of jail.

On Tuesday, they elected West Philadelphia powerhouse Fattah to an 11th term in the U.S. House, not narrowly, but with an overwhelming 88 percent of the vote even though federal prosecutors are zeroing in on the Democratic congressman. Indeed, just hours after Fattah took a victory lap, a Philadelphia political consultant pleaded guilty Wednesday to agreeing to route an illegal, $1 million contribution to the 2007 campaign of an unidentified politician who is without doubt Chaka Fattah.

In New York, voters reelected Republican Grimm to a third term with 55 percent of the vote although he already faces a 20-count federal tax fraud indictment related to a restaurant he ran in 2010 before winning his House seat.

The New York Daily News reported that Grimm compared himself to Rocky, in the movie series starring Sylvester Stallone, as he speaks to his son in the fifth sequel.

“You know it’s not how hard you can hit; it’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward,” Grimm parroted, asserting that Democrats “gave it everything they had” and he still won.

Fattah’s case is tangled, but the second guilty plea in recent weeks suggests that prosecutors are piecing together a case with promises of leniency to those who fess up and pledge cooperation. In August, former Fattah aide Gregory Naylor admitted to conspiring with his unidentified boss to pay down portions of the politician’s college debt by illegally using federal and local campaign funds, the Justice Department said.

Former ‘forever prisoner’ leaves for Kuwait

By Carol Rosenberg, Miami Herald

11/05/2014 7:57 AM

Fawzi al Odah, 37, was held for nearly 13 years at Guantánamo, starting off in the crude outdoor prison of barbed wire and chain-link fences called Camp X-Ray. He was never charged with a crime.

…

It also came within a day of midterm elections that were roiled by debate over Obama’s Guantánamo closure ambitions. In Kansas, for example, incumbent GOP Sen. Pat Roberts campaigned on a pledge to prevent relocation of Guantánamo detainees to the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth. He won as the Republicans took control of the Senate for the first time in eight years.

The transfer left 148 detainees at Guantánamo – 79 of them, like Odah, approved for release with security assurances. A U.S. Defense Department official predicted that as many as a dozen of them could be released in coming months.

…

Military intelligence in 2008 suspected that Odah had links to Osama bin Laden; the al-Qaida founder’s son-in-law and sometime spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, and a group of followers of a radical Muslim cleric in London – apparently all based on other captives’ interrogations at Guantánamo in the first years.

Iraqi military, bolstered by Shiite militias, poised to attack idled oil refinery

By Mitchell Prothero and Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy

11/03/2014 8:18 PM

The refinery on the outskirts of the predominately Sunni Muslim town of Baiji has been surrounded by a mix of fighters that includes local Sunni tribes hostile to the Shiite-dominated central government, the Islamic State and smaller units of former Baathist military commanders, who have formed a loose alliance since taking over Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, in June.

While most of central and northern Iraq quickly fell to the rebels in the aftermath of the Mosul takeover, a small unit of Iraqi special forces – since reinforced by a handful of Shiite militiamen – retained control of the central control compound of the Baiji refinery. That left the facility offline but out of the hands of the Islamic State, which has aggressively pursued oil, gas and refinery capability in both Iraq and Syria as a way to fund its nascent caliphate. But the facility being offline has cost the Iraqi government a huge economic price, as it represents nearly 40 percent of the country’s gasoline refinery capability, forcing the import of much more expensive refined products even as Iraq faces by far the worst economic crisis in its modern history.

Although the Iraqi security forces continue to lose significant ground in Sunni-majority western Anbar province, the offensive by government forces into the central province of Salahadin has seen more success, retaking portions of Tikrit, relieving a siege on a major Shiite shrine in Samarra and now, according to officials and local residents, much of Baiji. In contrast, the Islamic State and tribal allies recently have taken over the town of Hit in Anbar, massacring hundreds of uncooperative tribesmen in the last two weeks. The militants also have seized key military bases and significant portions of the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Alex Rodriguez’s DEA confession: Yes, I used steroids from fake Miami doctor

By Jay Weaver, Miami Herald

11/05/2014 9:41 PM

For 21 tumultuous months, New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez has defiantly maintained he never used banned substances from a Coral Gables anti-aging clinic, that he was the victim of a “witch hunt,” that his suspension from baseball was unjust and that he would fight to the end to clear his name.

But in a Weston conference room back in January, facing federal drug agents and prosecutors who made him swear an oath to tell the truth, baseball’s highest-paid player admitted everything:

Yes, he bought performance-enhancing drugs from Biogenesis of America, paying roughly $12,000 a month over about two years to fake doctor Anthony Bosch. Yes, the Biogenesis owner gave him pre-filled syringes for hormone injections into his stomach, and even drew blood from him in the men’s room of a South Beach nightclub. And yes, Rodriguez’s cousin, Yuri Sucart, was his steroid go-fer.

In exchange for coming clean behind closed doors, Rodriguez got immunity from prosecution.

Publicly, however, he never veered from his I-am-innocent narrative.

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