Two 12-year-old German girls found a branch (above) hiding inside a pile of wood into which someone had inserted nine live rounds of ammunition. The woodpile was to be lit on fire during an Easter celebration the next day. The girls were climbing on the woodpile when they found the branch buried deep in the heap at a local shooting club. Shooting clubs are known for organizing Easter bonfires, which are a tradition in Germany. It was clear that someone purposely drilled the holes and placed the cartridges in them with the intention that they’d go off in the fire. Whether they intended harm or just surprising explosions is unclear. After several days of investigation, police still had no suspects. Read on for the first Lockdown of the Day™ in a few days . . .
Your Lockdown of the Day™ comes from San Diego, California, where the Naval Base Point Loma was locked down for about two hours on Thursday morning after a sailor waved a weapon from a sixth-floor barracks room window. The weapon turned out to be an airsoft gun, and the sailor admitted that he fired the weapon at a mirror in a parking garage. When the sailor was first sighted at about 10 a.m., all base personnel were told to stay inside and away from windows and doors. The sailor surrendered to NCIS officers around 12:30 p.m. and was taken into custody. Naval Base Point Loma is home to seven submarines, Third Fleet Command, Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command and several other major units. The base has about 7,000 people on board during the day.
Magpul is introducing a couple new armorer’s tools this week. First up is the Armorer’s Wrench, made in the USA from solid steel with a grip-enhancing phosphate finish. Fits standard and pin-style barrel nuts, standard sized flash hiders, and castle nuts, with extended teeth for use with Magpul’s ASAP plates. It has a socket to accept a 1/2″ torque wrench, and torque specs are engraved on the body of the wrench for reference. $79.95 from Magpul.com. The second new tool is the BEV™ Block, a vise block for AR assembly that has a steel interface for engaging the barrel extension, so the torque of installing barrel nuts and flash hiders is distributed to the strong barrel rather than just a slot in the aluminum receiver. The rest of the block is made of polymer so it won’t damage the softer aluminum of the receiver. Price is still TBD.
New York City is getting picky about who will be allowed to buy the NYPD’s spent brass shell casings and recovered lead from now on. Often the stuff goes to scrap dealers, but two years ago the winning bidder for more than 28,000 pounds of spent brass was our friends over at Georgia Arms. Georgia Arms is a major reloader and seller of once-fired ammunition, which the New York Times points out they then sell “to the public, no questions asked.” The article then points out that what makes the transaction even worse is that it occurred right around the time of the Aurora, CO theatre shooting. Never miss a chance to wave the bloody shirt, right? Anyway, the picky part. This time around, NYC has more than 67,000 pounds of brass for sale (which could be converted into “millions of bullets” according to the NYTimes), but not so fast, Georgia Arms. This time, bidders must be metal recyclers. They must sign an affidavit stating that the metals “may not be reused for reloading purposes under any circumstances” and “shall be recycled in such a way that they shall be rendered useless for reloading purposes under any circumstances.”
This went up on Colion Noir’s channel this afternoon.
Cue the folks telling us how bad the NRA is. No, I mean the ones purportedly on our side. You know what? If the NRA is bad, then I’m bad. Because I am the NRA.
Demolition Ranch is back with Fifty-cal Friday, and they’re putting it up against 5000 sheets of paper. 10 spaced out 500-sheet reams. Whee, confetti!
Those exit holes are pretty amazing. Almost like a frozen-in-time expansion cavity.