Government Groping – Hetero vs Homo

[Brant Gaede]

11/19/2010

(Stupid) TSA Story of the Day

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 1:47 pm [Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Whatever one thinks of the TSA, it's really hard to defend this first hand account at Red State just on a basic principle of intelligence. Some soldiers were returning to America from Afghanistan. They had to stop over in Ireland and deplane. The author, a soldier himself, explains a key detail:

It's probably important to mention that

we were ALL carrying weapons

. Everyone was carrying an M4 Carbine (rifle) and some, like me, were also carrying an M9 pistol. Oh, and our gunners had M-240B machine guns. Of course, the weapons weren't loaded. And we had been cleared of all ammo well before we even got to customs at Baghram, then AGAIN at customs.

For reference purposes, this is what a M-240B looks like, according to wikipedia:

So they go to get back on the plane, and complete stupidity breaks out.

So we're in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they're going to confiscate his nail clippers. The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can't take those on the plane.

Soldier: What? I've had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You're not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I'm allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can't use it to take over the plane. You don't have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f**k out of here. I'll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

Gosh those government guys are soooo smart, let's have them run healthcare!

That's basically the same machine gun we trained with in basic in 1964, the M-60. I think it was made for Europe firing the 7.62 NATO cartridge, as did the M-14, a fine successor to the M-1 Garand, also an execelent weapon.

Never saw it again. In advanced individual training, small arms, we used the older .30 cal. gun we also used on airboats in Vietnam. I do think the 7.62 was used by other, conventional, units in Vietnam. It was a wonder in long range firing at Ft. Ord, CA. One in five bullets was a tracer. You'd fire your gun and watch the bullets fall down on the target and adjust according to what you saw. For some reason I never received the highest qualification on any small arm, just the next down, even when I had to switch from left hand to right hand with the M-14 because rain drops were obscuring my glasses and I had 20/20 in my right eye and only 20/40 in my left. My bro, I heard, set the course record at Camp Pendleton with the same gun. ("This is my rifle, this is my gun. One is for fighting, the other for fun.")

The SFC in charge of our airboats ran them too close to the treeline using recon by fire. I was only a SP4 so I deferred to him too much. I wanted to warn him when I got the chance that we were giving up all our advantages, but kept my lip zipped which was consequent to the stupid way young men were trained qua discipline in the US army in those days. Like we were told they only wanted one of three answers to any question: "Yes, Sergeant," "No, Sergeant," and "I don't know, Sergeant." Ten minutes later he got a machine gun bullet almost right between the eyes. I escorted his and another body to the morgue in Saigon, signed some papers. Six days later we went into Cambodia, airboats, helicopter assault and naval hovercraft, and inflicted 56 KIA and took one WIA. We weren't expected. We withdrew when we found out we were in Cambodia. General Abrams arrived the next day for a debriefing. The Prince in PP complained. We shot a North Vietnamese flag off their God-damned flagpole too. That's right. Some twit ran out and hoisted a NV flag on their flagpole on their like out-west fort and we shot it off with .30 cal. bursts. That's after we shot off their VC flag.

--Brant

1966

Edited November 21, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Selene]

Brant:

Interesting.

It reminded me of the B.A.R. which is the only light machine gun I ever fired.

M1918A2

After the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. Military had belatedly realized it had no portable squad light machine gun, and attempted to convert the BAR to that role with the M1918A2. Its success in this role was mixed at best, since the BAR's fixed non-replaceable barrel and small magazine capacity greatly limited its utility in comparison to genuine light machine guns such as the Bren or the Japanese Type 96. The weapon's rate-reducer mechanism proved difficult to clean and was susceptible to damage from moisture and corrosion.^[8] This in turn either rendered the weapon inoperable, or prevented it from firing in the automatic mode.^[8] The bipod and flash hider, being easily removable, were often discarded by troops to save weight and improve portability.^[8]

In combat, particularly in the Pacific Theatre of war, the BAR effectively reverted to its original role as a portable, shoulder-fired automatic rifle. The BAR was often employed at the point or tail of a patrol or infantry column, where its firepower could help break contact on a jungle trail in the event of ambush.^[9] After a period of service, ordnance personnel began to receive BARs with inoperable or malfunctioning recoil buffer mechanisms. This was eventually traced to the soldier's common practice of cleaning the BAR in a vertical position with the butt of the weapon on the ground, allowing cleaning fluid and burned powder to collect in the recoil buffer mechanism.^[8] Additionally, unlike the M1 Garand, the BAR's gas cylinder was never changed to stainless steel. Consequently, the gas cylinder frequently rusted solid from the use of corrosive-primered M2 service ammunition in a humid environment when not stripped and cleaned on a daily basis.^[8]

The BAR was issued as automatic fire support for a squad, and all men were trained at the basic level how to operate and fire the weapon in case the designated operator(s) were killed or wounded. In an attempt to overcome the BAR's limited continuous-fire capability, U.S. Marine and some army units used two BAR fire teams per squad. One team would typically provide covering fire until a magazine was empty, whereupon the second team would open fire, thus allowing the first team to reload. While not without design flaws (a thin-diameter, fixed barrel that quickly overheated, limited magazine capacity, complex field-strip/cleaning procedure, unreliable recoil buffer mechanism, a gas cylinder assembly made of corrosion-prone metals, and many small internal parts), the BAR proved rugged and reliable enough when regularly field-stripped and cleaned.

During World War II, the BAR saw extensive service, both official and unofficial, with many branches of service. One of the BAR's most unusual uses was as a defensive aircraft weapon. In 1944, USAAF Air Transport Command Captain Wally A. Gayda reportedly used a BAR to return fire against a Japanese Army Nakajima fighter that had attacked his C-46 cargo plane over the Hump in Burma. Gayda shoved the rifle out his forward cabin window, emptying the magazine and apparently killing the Japanese pilot.^[10][11]

[edit] After World War II

Korean War, 1951: Taking cover behind their escort tank, a U.S. soldier returns fire on Chinese positions with an M1918A2. After World War II, the BAR continued in service in the Korean War, and the early stages of the Vietnam War, when the U.S. delivered a quantity of weapons to the South Vietnamese. Quantities of the BAR remained in use by the Army National Guard up until the mid-1970s. Many nations in NATO and recipients of U.S. foreign aid adopted the BAR and used it into the 1990s.

The BAR proved a popular civilian weapon in the U.S., although fully automatic models were greatly restricted in the 1930s, which made them much harder to own and transfer. Importation of machine guns for U.S. civilian transfer was banned in 1968, and U.S. production of machine guns for civilian transfer was banned in 1986. Transferable civilian-owned BAR models remain, however.

Clyde Barrow, of the infamous Barrow Gang, used a shortened BAR (stolen from a National Guard armory) during his spree in the 1930s. The six lawmen who killed Bonnie and Clyde used a variant of the BAR called the Colt Monitor in their ambush.

This weapon was also used in the police shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in May 1974. The rounds used in this gun were Armor piercing .30-06 rounds. Police that took part in that shootout said that the deep ominous sound of that rifle struck great fear into them.^{[citation needed]} No officers or civilians were killed in that shootout.

A modern manufacturer of firearms has produced a semi-automatic version of the Browning Automatic Rifle known as the 1918A3 SLR ("self-loading rifle").^[12]

I also fired a Thompson sub machine gun which had to be the most difficult weapon I ever tried to control. It tore forcefully up and to the left with heavy recoil from the .45 caliber ammo.

Thompson M1928A1

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

The BAR was described to me by a light weapons sergeant as a very complicated gun. The M-14 was probably much better and lighter. The idea with the M-14 was that only a few were usable in auto-fire to conserve ammo. The rest of the squad was restricted to semi-auto. An auto M-14 came with a bipod. There was an insert with some kind of key that would convert an M-14 from semi-auto to full auto. This gun was designed for Europe and long range if need be and only used briefly in Vietnam until everyone got an M-16. I taped a cleaning rod to the barrel of my M-16 to ream out the cartridge case when it jammed. Sometimes the extractor would strip the case and leave the empty cartridge in the gun jamming it. Subsequently, the M-16 was improved. We always loaded 18 rds into a 20 rd mag or it was guaranteed to jam. Same with the 30 rd mag. where we loaded 28. Our little A-Team got the first 30 rd mags in Vietnam shipped from a friend of a teammate from Ft. Ord where they were being tested. I found semi-fire from an M-16 was probably more effective than full auto, but I used full auto in Cambodia.

--Brant

the .45 cal grease gun was a piece of shit only good for close in inside work--gimme a Thompson!

Edited November 21, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

Ah, the S. Army and Patty Hearst. The best man at my uncle's wedding was her father, about 60+- yrs ago.

--Brant