Previous Post
Next Post

Have a hankering for a Tommy gun? . . . Ohio sheriff to auction Depression-era submachine gun valued at $37,000

A relic of the Al Capone era that has been sitting in the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s office for 83 years will be sold at auction next month to help pay for modern policing equipment for deputies in the northeastern Ohio community.

The office will auction a Thompson Model 1921 machine gun on Sept. 11. It was purchased by Sheriff Abe Laird on May 13, 1934.

Current Sheriff Orvis Campbell is unsure why Laird bought it, but Campbell speculated that deputies might have been used it during riots at deep mines in Tuscarawas County during the Great Depression.

But I’ve been told having a gun is more dangerous for the gun owner than the bad guy . . . Seminole, Florida, stabber stopped by — drumroll, please — a gun

Once again, it’s the Second Amendment to the rescue.

A mass stabber cutting into three victims in Seminole, Florida, was apparently stopped dead in his tracks when his fourth target pulled out a gun.

Don’t expect this story to make CNN headlines.

Does anyone really care enough about Britney this much any more? . . . BRITNEY SPEARS Bum-Rushed Onstage ‘HE’S GOT A GUN?!’

Britney Spears got bum-rushed by a guy who is probably hurting this morning, because her dancers and bodyguards annihilated him.

It went down Wednesday night in Vegas at Britney’s Piece of Me show at Planet Hollywood. As Britney sang “Till the World Ends” …  a man crept onto the stage and made his move.

Security and the dancers lunged at the guy as Britney seemed oblivious to the danger. You hear her ask if everything is OK. Check it out … Britney’s knee buckled as she clutched a security guard and asked, “He’s got a gun?”

What caliber for goat . . . It took 4 shots and 2 guns to kill an aggressive goat in Portland

Two deputies used two different firearms and fired four shots before they were able to put down a truculent goat that escaped a Northwest Portland farm last weekend.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office released a police report detailing the events of Sunday, Aug. 6. The move came after various reports of an incident that left a goat allegedly worth $1,200 dead in a Portland neighborhood.

“While we believe the use of force was appropriate given its prolonged aggressiveness towards the deputy,” Deputy Jeff Talbot wrote in an email to the media Wednesday, “we are also saddened for the goat and the owner.”

Don’t worry, you’re in good hands in secure gun-free zones . . . Airport workers not properly trained for Fort Lauderdale shooting, union says

A lack of emergency training for civilian airport workers aggravated the chaos that followed last January’s mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport, according to a report by a union that represents baggage handlers, cabin cleaners and other employees.

“Most passenger service workers reported being asked by passengers in various levels of panic about what was happening and what they needed to do,” states a report from the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which says it represents more than 600 of these workers. “…. Sadly, workers reported frustration at not being able to assist passengers with their queries, as they themselves did not know what was happening and what to do.” . . .

The chaos broke out after the arrest of Esteban Santiago for fatally shooting five passengers and injuring six others at a baggage claim area. More than an hour later, reports of additional shooters spread through all four terminals, prompting passengers and workers to barricade themselves in stores, closets and restaurants and stampede through the exits. Dozens of people were injured in the panic. Law enforcement officers found no other shooters, as thousands of passengers waited outside for hours.

It’s complicated . . . An intruder, a handgun, and what happened next

In May I went to my local firearms store to buy a shotgun for my city home (I already have one at our weekend place). I was persuaded by the readers who advised it. Shotguns are less likely to lead to fatalities, and they are effective for home protection. It’s also hard to accidentally shoot yourself with one. After the mandatory California waiting period (I’m reminded of Homer Simpson’s words, “Five days? But I’m mad now!”), I went to two different rifle ranges to practice. The people at the gun shop and at the ranges were friendly sorts. I told them my home invasion story and that it ended without me using my weapon.

Their replies surprised me. These were people who depend on widespread gun ownership to earn their living. I imagined they might be vendetta-crazed, vigilante-minded, ready to kill any man, woman or rodent that got in their path. None of them called me a coward for exiting the house. All were genuinely pleased that the situation was resolved without violence. Two of them patted me on the back. One of them didn’t charge me for my range fees, and praised my responsible gun ownership.

The UK is always looking for new, innovative ways to disarm its subjects . . . Nosy neighbours and the outsourcing of UK gun control

Police forces are cracking down on gun owners in the wake of heightened concerns over terrorism. Some lawyers are now claiming that the police are even revoking legal firearm owners’ licences and guns because of a new array of “indicators” which show a lack of suitability to own them. These include spent convictions, depression, domestic disputes and discord and even neighbour conflicts.

The caricature of the nosy neighbour has been a staple of many a popular sitcom, from Australia’s Neighbours to the UK’s Ever Decreasing Circles and One Foot in the Grave. Even when neighbourly relations turn sour, they continue to entertain. But the question is whether we should be criminalising legal gun-owners and outsourcing the job of the police to the neighbourhood watch?

Crowdsourced policing is not new. Cybercrime vigilantes have been helping the police solve crime for some time. See, for example, the case of the British woman who put a live cat in a wheelie bin. In this case outraged online communities rallied to help identify her and bring her to justice. But does this suit gun control?

 

Previous Post
Next Post

48 COMMENTS

  1. “Some lawyers are now claiming that the police are even revoking legal firearm owners’ licences and guns because of a new array of “indicators” which show a lack of suitability to own them. These include spent convictions, depression, domestic disputes and discord and even neighbour conflicts.”

    *Exactly* as I predicted.

    In their goal of universal civilian disarmament, the Leftists will make more and more things grounds for terminating gun rights.

    Get into a heated argument? You’re not stable enough to own a gun. A simple speeding ticket will be considered proof you are too reckless to be ‘trusted’ with a gun.

    “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime…”

    • “Show me the gun, and I’ll show you the crime” is more like it. What should we use as an Orwellian word for possessing these undesirable objects that they’re too weak to ban anymore but too stubborn to accept in our possession? Wronghold? Badhave? Double-plus ill-own?

    • The danger with this is the same as what is happening in CA. Turn all the gun owners into criminals and the word looses its meaning and/or stigma.

      I no longer care about people who are carrying a gun illegally nor owning an unregistered firearm.

      The law has just turned to many into regulatory criminals.

    • This isn’t particularly new, over here, unfortunately.

      The licensing system works slightly differently for O/U, S/S or capped semi/pump shotguns (Shotgun Certificate: Section 2) and rifles, high capacity shotguns, long barrel pistols, muzzle loader pistols, etc. (Firearms Certificate: Section 1)… roughly as follows:

      1. Apply for SGC or FAC (fill in loads of paperwork including personal references, consent to speak to your Doctor, address history, details of any convictions), and pay a fee of about $75 equivalent

      2. Police in theory use this information to check for criminal history, and to get a sense of comfort from your personal referees and Doc that you aren’t hearing voices or planning to whack POTUS on his next visit.

      3. Police arrange a time with you to visit, meet you in person and look you in the eye; also to inspect your storage arrangements (which are tightly legislated for Section 1, less so for Section 2).

      Assuming no adverse indicators are thrown up in these steps, you wait a couple of weeks and get your SGC/FAC which are both valid for five years, after which they need renewal.

      In the case of a SGC, the presumption is that absent a “compelling reason” to deny (onus on the Police to prove), and provided that storage arrangements are up to code, the license is shall-issue.

      However, in the case of a FAC the onus is on the applicant to show: (a) a safe place to use the weapons applied for / owned, and (b) a “good reason” to need them. This sounds like an excuse to deny, but in practice is quite rarely abused: if you live rurally, you probably have sufficient land or can ask permission from someone who does to shoot most calibres of rifle pretty safely, and you can similarly justify the “good reason” as pest control (varmint shooting), target practice, etc. If you’re an urban dweller you can join a gun club – membership about $100/yr in most cases – or again if you know anyone with appropriate land space who will grant you permission, your FAC will simply have a condition added to the effect that that’s where you use it even if you keep it in town.

      Far from perfect – but the excerpt makes it sound even more woeful than it actually is…!

  2. Goat? Something bigger than a 9mm. But goat sure makes a fine meal. Hope the goat (why did a goat cost THAT much?) was put to good use after.

    • An “aggressive” goat…please. It’s a “billy”, a male, and yes, they are aggressive as well as smelly. But still, it’s a goat, not a bull, not a bison, not a bear, a goat. It stands maybe 3 ft tall at the shoulder. Are the cops so cowardly and incompetent that they couldn’t find a piece of rope (or cable or cord) to use around those handy horns? Probably the latter (incompetent), along with the “kill first” attitude they usually have with animals (including your pet dog, if they show up at your house). How would they handle an “aggressive” rooster? …with the usual fusillade of bullets?

      • Now, we can’t expect cops to show the same amount of bravery that little kids in petting zoos exhibit. One of those fine officers might have had a tin can collection he was protecting. Obviously shooting the goat saved us all from the Goatpocalypse or was it a Goatnado?

      • I’ve had a few tangles with goats myself and they can act pretty mean but really they’re kind of fun. There was no need to shoot the animal, that was just laziness.

      • It had to be one hell of a stud. Where I live male goats don’t run near that much. But I know that “designer farm animals” is a new thing with the hippie type farm animals.

  3. Looks cool, but they weigh a metric ton, and their effective range is limited well inside 100 yards…its actually more like 50. It reminds me of the 1911…because both guns would be much better guns in 9MM.

    • Well if you have noodles for arms or dont exercise, its heavy. Accounts from WWII and Korean were pretty positive on their effectiveness. And unlike the 9mm, it steals your soul, so there is that….

      T he police department I worked at had one…most fun I have ever had shooting it and carrying it in my trunk. Way more intimidating than a MP5

      • I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite work outings was at a demonstration of firearms with the FBI from Norfolk, VA. We went to a range across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and had the opportunity to shoot a Tommy gun in full auto, about ten rounds if I remember correctly. On that day I also shot the MP5, and a number of other weapons. We were treated to a marksmanship display of an egg, laying in the grass, being shot from many yards away, with the shooter prone and also on the grass. I was impressed. On that same day we ate grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and had a keg available. Different times back then, folks. (My wife worked for the FBI. I was in the Navy).

    • 9mm ammo didnt even exist when the tommy and the 1911 were created.
      Why remake a gun with less stopping power?
      Shooting a chicago streetsweeper was an awesome opportunity. Glad i was able to do it. Grinned ear to ear for days.

      • The 9×19mm Parabellum, also known as 9mm Luger is a cartridge that was designed by Georg Luger and introduced in 1902 by the German weapons manufacturer Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) (German Weapons and Munitions Factory) for their Luger semi-automatic pistol.

      • “Why remake a gun with less stopping power?”

        The .45 ACP has marginally more muzzle energy than the 9mm Luger, but the cartridge weighs twice as much. So with a 9mm version of the same gun, you could theoretically carry twice as many rounds without increasing total weight.

        And when you’re shooting a gun with a giggle switch, you can run out of ammo in a hurry.

        • Thats my bad. Its what happens when i dont drink coffee during the day.
          I would still take 45acp over 9mm. Marginal power increase and increased diameter are an acceptable trade off to me.

        • I want to build a gatling gun. It may never happen, that’s quite a project. If I do, I will likely build it in .22LR. I think a .38Spc would be a ton of fun, the additional costs money wise and the extra weight to haul the thing to the range are offputting.

          Similarly, in a submachine gun, you get more rounds for less money to run with 9MM. And it’s not like the round doesn’t have sufficient stopping power should you ever need it. Not to poo poo on the .45, it’s a fine round with a fine history of use in sub machine guns. I’d personally just opt for the lighter, more affordable option.

      • I’m pretty sure most people who bash the Thompson have never shot one. Definetly the funnest handheld gun I’ve ever shot. It’s actually very accurate inside 100 yards. I’d honestly choose to carry it over other modern SMG’s like the MP5.

        • Fun, for sure. But I wouldn’t want to carry one a long distance. They weighed about 11 pounds. And then the ammo. M1, Lee Enfield, Mosin Nagant and the 98k Mauser were a good pound lighter than the Tommy gun. Used all of those. The rifles balanced better, also. But still a lot of fun.

          .45 acp is not as good, imho, as 9mm for subguns. Ammo is heavier, bulkier and doesn’t hold up as well at distance.

  4. They should have used one of those armor piercing assault rifles in .9 mm on the goat – I read somewhere they’re high powered and deadly…. 😉

  5. oooh 4 shots from 2 guns? So…both guys fired their gun with a double-tap each? Not that impressive.

    “I was persuaded by the readers who advised it. Shotguns are less likely to lead to fatalities, and they are effective for home protection. It’s also hard to accidentally shoot yourself with one…”

    Well, 2 out of 3 isn’t bad.

    • “oooh 4 shots from 2 guns? So…both guys fired their gun with a double-tap each? Not that impressive.”

      Read the article. Three shots from a handgun (with the shooter obviously having zero hunting experience), and the kill shot from a rifle.

  6. Having shot cattle, horses, pigs and goats with a .22 up close when still on parents farm two things help with animals-

    A quiet approach
    Shot placement

    I’ll take bets neither happened.

    Pedigreed breeding male could easily be worth $1200

    • I’ve only ever heard, and this was many years ago, of one goat ever killing a man. Something about head butting him in the gut hard enough to rupture his insides. But if I remember the story correctly the animal had been mistreated by the dead guy.

      Started my life on a farm, also. The .22 was the choice for putting animals down. If it ain’t broke…..

  7. I’m waiting for some rural sheriff to find Colt R80 (Monitor) and put it up for sale, one of my “obscure object of desire.”

  8. I had a Tommy gun when I was in Vietnam – it was liberated from the Hue City armory during the battle in 1968. We Marines were having a terrible time with hand-to-hand fighting (first urban combat the Marine Corps had seen since 1950) because the buttstocks would break off an M16A1 when used for a horizontal buttstroke. So the WWII weapons in the armory were desireable to us troops because they held together. My Thompson was the M1 model – no buttstock and I carried it at the hip on a jungle sling over my shoulder. As I recall, the cyclic rate was fairly slow – about 450 rpm – so it was easy to control on three-round bursts. I only had two 30-round mags for it, and because a .45 pistol wasn’t my assigned weapon, I had a hard time justifying getting ammo from supply for the Thompson. It was heavy, too – made from machined steel – no stampings. Anyway, it was a hoot to possess, but I eventually had to turn it in when “unauthorized” weapons were collected. The M1921 model in the photo looks great – somebody is going to have a GOOD time with that one!

  9. Shooting a full auto Thompson is indeed a lot of fun!
    There were a few select fire Thompsons made by converting .45’s to 9 mm
    Auto Ordnance makes both semi auto 9 mm Thompson and aluminum framed ones
    No one would choose a Thompson over a modern submachine gun
    The weight is awful and the controls are not ergonomic
    I have a CZ Scorpion with a Bair Arms bumpfire device that I like much better than my buddy’s Select fire Thompson

  10. Excellent video at the end of the article; one of my brothers is right-handed, left-eye dominant. He writes and eats with his right hand, but when it comes to billiards or gunfire, he’s a lefty.

  11. Please, people…
    When you make comments on the Daily Digests, make is abundantly clear which portion you are commenting on.
    Or, at the very least, put comments on different parts in different paragraphs.
    Having to re-read a comment, and then try to parse what’s written, especially when the comments are written on mobile devices and autocomplete takes over, is hard.
    And sometimes leads to hilarity, but that’s rare.

  12. Carefully observe the photo of the cop with the tommy gun. What you are seeing is an actual “polished turd”. And they said it couldn’t be done…

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here