Winner has been in Kiev for five years - apparently before the current Chicago land version of the Potomac shuffle
Granted it has been mostly fleet and commercial vehicles -.... actually I suspect that is the bulk of the business model - corporate perk mobiles the average populace is still far out of reach for private autos
The difference between town & country is remarkable.
Kiev was full of clean, late model European cars mostly. While in the sticks it's still old Ladas, Skodas, & older clapped-out western imports.
You see the "untouchables" though, parked outside one of our hotels in Luts'k was a brand new S-Class with a private plate MOCKBA it said. The owner must be well protected or have cojones of steel.
never fired the 357 sig I really like the reliability and conceal of the SP101 - simple,stupid,bang on for what I need. IF I have to pull it - It is a last resort, not a laying lead type thing.
but yes, back in the day of the Squadron - we used to have Fallon exercises right before the end of the fiscal year. Orders were - light em up boys - use what you got, and everything that is on tarmac; we made some amazing kabooms.
Really, the DHS buying a pile of ammo seems completely normal to me. It's a fungible item, stores well, and gets used up if you actually train. It'd be stupid to buy it in 50 rd boxes from Walmart, when you get a much better deal by the ton.
Actually sounds like an end of budget cycle purchase. If you don't spend it, you don't get it next cycle. I know, I know, it's fracking insane, but it's the nature of Bureaucracies. Think they did it that way in Rome. But a big pile o'ammo is a wise thing to use unspent funds on. Ditto staples. Paperclips.
Posted on Saturday, September 01, 2012 - 08:32 pm:
I get tired of watching a tv show news or drama where they are simply wrong on personal firearms. So.... Skipping cannons, since they tend to be hard to carry on a Buell...
A brief and non technical history of the personal firearm.
Understand, Gun geeks, like Computer geeks and other gearhead type geeks, will argue endlessly about obscure technical details. For gun geeks/computer geeks it's thousands of an inch/megahertz, Cartridge shapes and dimensions/processer architecture, position of switches and how they work/position of switches and how they work..... etc.
The thing to remember is these geek discussions really ARE about stuff that matters in the real world. But if you are not an enthusiast, you really don't care.
I'll skip that stuff. Sizes, dates, etc. will be very approximate. More or less. If I make an error, I'll be happy to hear about it, but if I'm off by a tiny bit...bear with me. Please.
Over a thousand years ago, the Chinese invented Gunpowder. They used it in fireworks, cannon, bombs, grenades, for war and celebration.
The Europeans got into gunpowder about 3/4 of a thousand years ago. The first Gonnes were a stick with a little cannon on it, that you stuffed gunpowder & a Bullet into the open end, the muzzle, and touched a lit slow match to a touch hole drilled into the side of the closed, breach end. ( a slow match was a hunk of rope soaked in chemicals to keep it burning, like modern cigarettes ) This ignited the gunpowder, making fire and high pressure gases, and threw the bullet out the open end. Usually. The bullet was about an inch across, usually a stone or lead ball.
Technology moved on. About 600 years ago guns had a stock of wood to hold on to and a lock, or gizmo to hold the slow match and move it into the touch hole. This high tech advancement came from copying Crossbows. Bullets ran from about an inch to 3/4 of an inch. Still, the darn things were hard to use in the rain ( as are bows ) and Gun Men were noticeable by their big wide brimmed hats, burns on the face, hands and arms, and black marks on the face from unburned & burning gunpowder tattooed into the skin. The trouble with touch holes is that if fire can go in...it can come out.
About 500 years ago, the Wheel Lock was developed, a spinning wheel with flints like a Zippo lighter hooked up to a clock spring. You would fire the gun with a tiny lever called a trigger. At last you could carry a gun, and use it, without having to stop and start a fire. Guns became popular with cavalry units.
Another big invention was the rifle where spiral grooves are made in the inside of the barrel to make the bullet spin, like a good football pass, improving accuracy. ( Rifles tended to be slower to load, because of closer tolerances )
Over the next 100 years, they invented new ways to light the fire, and ended up with the flint lock. Much simpler to make, maintain and use, many people still hunt with them today.
For the next 200 years, pretty much more of the same.
Then, about 200 years ago, the percussion cap was invented, and this metal version of the little plastic caps now used in cap guns let you carry a rifle in the rain, and much more reliably make it go boom. Bullets ran from about 3/4 to 1/2 inch.
The Industrial revolution was upon us and stuff started to happen real fast, now.
They want to be able to load faster.. so Paper "cartridges" were invented, like a cigarette with gunpowder and a bullet inside. ( there was actually an Army Regulation that soldiers had to have at least 2 opposing teeth to bite the paper, to pour the gunpowder into the barrel. )
One problem with flint locks and percussion cap guns was they were usually loaded from the muzzle. This is a lot easier if you are standing up, since many rifles were over 5 feet long.
Unfortunately, that meant you were standing up while people shot their guns at you, not the best idea. So they came up with a variety of ways to load from the Breech end. ( breechloaders! ) Experimental models were used in the American Revolution. ( or the Ungrateful Yankee rebellion to you in the UK )
Various ideas were tried to make a gun shoot more than once, or more than one bullet. The most successful of these ideas was the Revolver where you had a cylinder with multiple breaches you could load, then fire one at a time by pulling a lever and rotating the cylinder to line the breeches up with the barrel.
From this massive increase in fire power came the phrase.. "God didn't make man equal, Sam Colt did." For the first time, a small man or woman could fight multiple attackers on fairly even ground. This seriously revolutionary fact changed everything.
About 150 years ago, the metallic cartridge with the percussion cap built in was invented. Used with much success in the Civil War, this allowed a whole new concept, the repeater. Mechanisms were devised to toss aside the spent cartridge, and load an unfired one, by working a lever. Magazines of various types were invented to hold multiple cartridges. Stuff was getting modern!
New gunpowders were invented ( after a thousand years! ) that burned cleaner, and worked better... leading to...
A bit more than a hundred years ago, Repeaters became more reliable and common, and a few genius types ( John Moses Browning, for example ) figured out how to use the recoil or hot gases that firing a gun created to work the levers that reloaded it. The Self Loading gun was at hand. Then, they made the self loading guns fire not once per pull of the trigger lever, but fire continuously as long as you had cartridges in the magazine and held the trigger down/back. ( switches and how they work, remember? ) We now had the Machine Gun.
150-100 years ago. Bullets now ran from 1/2 inch to about 1/4 inch.
100 years ago to today. We use plastic instead of wood for stocks, sometimes. That's it. Bullets are about 1/3 to 1/4 inch, usually....
There have been lots of advancements in the last 100 years, but mostly geek stuff, more precision in manufacturing, and higher expectations of reliability.
Interchangable parts, mass production, telescopes mounted on a gun, all were invented 100 to 200+ year ago.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. *******************************************
Most feedback I get on Kel-tech guns is that it works, it needs to be broken in before trusting, ( true with a lot of stuff, and actually in the manual for Kahr and some other companies ) and you just don't expect to use Kel-tech for high volume competition for a long period of time. The durability, long term may be lacking. That doesn't mean their guns are crap, just light.
I wouldn't use a KSG for weekly sporting clays, putting thousands of reloads a month through it, and expect it to live as long as a Browning.
OTOH Browning doesn't make nearly as handy a thing with the same capability. I'm also a big fan of Bullpups, though I don't have one....Hmmm. How much is that KSG? Or maybe a RFB.
Aesquire, you completely skipped over the Gatling gun. OK you did say you were ignoring cannon history and they were cannon sized. They did shoot more of a rifle sized bullet though. I believe they came to fruition during the "War of Norther Aggression". Early ones used a gravity feed mechanism, later replaced with more reliable belt feeds. I just think they need a mention as part of the development of rapid firing weapons.
True, the Gatling Gun was Used in the war of northern aggression. The invention of Metallic cartridges made it practical. ( the original used paper cartridges, and had issues )
Still in use today. For the young folk, the 30mm cannon used in the A-10 Warthog is probably the most familiar example. Also, in 20mm, used as the main gun armament in most of todays U.S. fighters, and Gunships.
I lumped it under crew served weapons, like cannon, in my mind, and skipped the Gatling for brevity. ( yeah, right! )
If I could afford one, I'd buy one of the modern reproductions. The "1877 Bulldog" in Bronze is available, and even the packing case is museum quality... I'd love to take one down to the range, they'd freak out. Only 3 problems. Price, ( I'm not rich enough to justify it.. ) Ammo, ( I'd really have to reload 45-70, and letting people try it out is half the fun ) and I'd have to carry this thing down to the man cave to put it on display. I doubt I can get away with the living room....
It's an incredible piece of Industrial Age sculpture.
Zombies? Hah! Just the thing for defending the castle.
I skipped designs like the Mitrailleuse, a multi barreled monster that works quite well, and other designs like those by DaVinci, With multiple barrels laid side by side in a frame, and fired from one end to the other, using an iron plate preloaded with paper cartridges ( actually meant to be manufactured as complete volley units ).
These guns while somewhat effective, ( I'd not like to charge against them! ) didn't have the same long term success of the Gatling Gun, for obvious reasons.
I also gave Hiram Maxim short shrift in the above history. he is credited with the invention of the true machine gun.
The Needle gun, and many other useful, if short lived innovations were skipped, because I thought the Geek factor was higher than needful in a "brief history".
The use of Titanium, etc. in modern arms was not mentioned, because the basic mechanism on many guns using "exotic" modern materials is really the same, in most cases, as developed by Peter Paul Mauser, or John Moses Browning back in the 19th century.
Plastic stocks OTOH, are nearly ubiquitous today, and the only real change to a gun you can carry around for the last century.
That's why the anti-2nd amendment people's cry that "modern" guns are too dangerous for civilians is utter bull.
I'll do another rant on the history on gun control another time.
history of the personal firearm. 
