Category: Safety

Dad agrees with me that all these ‘slipped through the cracks’ don’t add up to mere ‘incompetence’.

‘It’s Just Incompetence’: There Were Red Flags Everywhere With the Buffalo Shooter

Rebecca covered this over the weekend. Tragedy has struck Buffalo. A mass shooter gunned down and killed 10 people at the Tops Friendly Market. The shooter, Payton Gendron, was taken into custody. There is a 180-page manifesto that the FBI is currently authenticating. Gendron appears to be a racist and targeted this area due to its high concentration of black Americans.

Unlike other mass shootings, like Boulder in 2021 and the most recent New York City subway shooting, this one will remain in the news. Gendron is white. He’s racist. He’s everything the liberal media wants when an incident like this occurs. Boulder’s mass shooting was committed by a Syrian. The New York Subway shooter was black. Both stories vanished into the ether rapidly because they didn’t fit the liberal narrative. Yet, there’s another common element with this story: the shooter exhibited red flags that authorities knew about but did nothing. 

Gendron threatened to shoot up his high school and was brought in for a mental health evaluation (via Associated Press):

The shooter, identified as Payton Gendron, had previously threatened a shooting at his high school, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia confirmed at a press conference that the then-17-year-old was brought in for a mental health evaluation afterward.

Federal law bars people from owning a gun if a judge has determined they have a “mental defect” or they have been forced into a mental institution — but an evaluation alone would not trigger the prohibition….

Gendron had appeared on the radar of police last year after he threatened to carry out a shooting at Susquehanna Valley High School around the time of graduation, the law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the investigation.

New York State Police said troopers were called to the Conklin school last June for a report that a 17-year-old student had made threatening statements. He spent a day and a half at the hospital before being released, authorities said, and then had no further contact with law enforcement.

So, what gives? Why was there no follow-up? I’m sure we’ll know in due time, but the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018, which sparked another wave of anti-gun activism, was also preventable. In fact, that might be an understatement. Students interviewed after the shooting were not shocked that Nikolas Cruz committed his heinous crime. Also, all three levels of government, state, federal, and local, knew about Cruz’s mental health issues and never did anything. 

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Again, this IOT (Internet Of Things) with everything digitally connected through the web turns out to not be all it was cracked up to be.

Bluetooth hack compromises Teslas, digital locks, and more

A group of security researchers has found a way to circumvent digital locks and other security systems that rely on the proximity of a Bluetooth fob or smartphone for authentication.

Sultan Qasim Khan, the principal security consultant and researcher with NCC Group, demonstrated the attack on a Tesla Model 3, although he notes that the problem isn’t specific to Tesla. Any vehicle that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for its keyless entry system would be vulnerable to this attack.

Many smart locks are also vulnerable, Khan adds. His firm specifically called out the Kwikset/Weiser Kevo models since these use a touch-to-open feature that relies on passive detection of a Bluetooth fob or smartphone nearby. Since the lock’s owner doesn’t need to interact with the Bluetooth device to confirm they want to unlock the door, a hacker can relay the key’s Bluetooth credentials from a remote location and open someone’s door even if the homeowner is thousands of miles away.

How it works

This exploit still requires that the attacker have access to the owner’s actual Bluetooth device or key fob. However, what makes it potentially dangerous is that the real Bluetooth key doesn’t need to be anywhere near the vehicle, lock, or other secured devices.

Instead, Bluetooth signals are relayed between the lock and key through a pair of intermediate Bluetooth devices connected using another method — typically over a regular internet link. The result is that the lock treats the hacker’s nearby Bluetooth device as if it’s the valid key.

As Khan explains, “we can convince a Bluetooth device that we are near it — even from hundreds of miles away […] even when the vendor has taken defensive mitigations like encryption and latency bounding to theoretically protect these communications from attackers at a distance.”

The exploit bypasses the usual relay attack protections as it works at a very low level of the Bluetooth stack, so it doesn’t matter whether the data is encrypted, and it adds almost no latency to the connection. The target lock has no way of knowing that it’s not communicating with the legitimate Bluetooth device.

Since many Bluetooth security keys operate passively, a thief would only need to place one device within a few feet of the owner and the other near the target lock. For example, a pair of thieves could work in tandem to follow a Tesla owner away from their vehicle, relaying the Bluetooth signals back to the car so that it could be stolen once the owner was far enough away.

These attacks could be carried out even across vast distances with enough coordination. A person on vacation in London could have their Bluetooth keys relayed to their door locks at home in Los Angeles, allowing a thief to quickly gain access simply by touching the lock.

This also goes beyond cars and smart locks. Researchers note that it could be used to unlock laptops that rely on Bluetooth proximity detection, prevent mobile phones from locking, circumvent building access control systems, and even spoof the location of an asset or a medical patient.

NCC Group also adds this isn’t a traditional bug that can be fixed with a simple software patch. It’s not even a flaw in the Bluetooth specification. Instead, it’s a matter of using the wrong tool for the job. Bluetooth was never designed for proximity authentication — at least not “for use in critical systems such as locking mechanisms,” the firm notes.

How to protect yourself

First, it’s essential to keep in mind that this vulnerability is specific to systems that rely exclusively on passive detection of a Bluetooth device.

For example, this exploit can’t realistically be used to bypass security systems that require you to unlock your smartphone, open a specific app, or take some other action, such as pushing a button on a key fob. In this case, there’s no Bluetooth signal to relay until you take that action — and you’re generally not going to try and unlock your car, door, or laptop when you’re not anywhere near it.

This also won’t typically be a problem for apps that take steps to confirm your location. For instance, the auto-unlock feature in the popular August smart lock relies on Bluetooth proximity detection, but the app also checks your GPS location to make sure you’re actually returning home. It can’t be used to unlock your door when you’re already home, nor can it open your door when you’re miles away from home.

If your security system allows for it, you should enable an extra authentication step that requires that you take some action before the Bluetooth credentials are sent to your lock. For example, Kwikset has said that customers who use an iPhone can enable two-factor authentication in their lock app, and it plans to add this to its Android app soon. Kwikset’s Kevo application also disables proximity unlocking functionality when the user’s phone has been stationary for an extended period.

Note that unlocking solutions that use a mix of Bluetooth and other protocols are not vulnerable to this attack. A typical example of this is Apple’s feature that lets folks unlock their Mac with their Apple Watch. Although this does use Bluetooth to detect the Apple Watch nearby initially, it measures the actual proximity over Wi-Fi — mitigation that Apple’s executives specifically said was added to prevent Bluetooth relay attacks.

NCC Group has published a technical advisory about Bluetooth Low Energy vulnerability and separate bulletins about how it affects Tesla vehicles and Kwikset/Weiser locks.

Chicago homicides in 2022: 204 people have been slain. 

Information about homicides is released daily by the city of Chicago. The release of homicide victims’ names is delayed by two weeks to allow time for the victims’ families to be notified of a death by Chicago police.

The homicide figures do not include killings that occurred in self-defense or in other circumstances not measured in Chicago police statistics. Homicide data from Illinois State Police, which patrols the city’s expressways, also is not included here.

Here’s a TTP ( Tactic, Technique, and Procedure) that I’ll pass along.

The time honored ‘Mozambique Drill’ – 2 to the Chest/1 to the Head – as the ‘go to‘ failure drill has been obsolete in Close Quarters Combat training for quite a few years.
While it is still in the bag of tricks, the new discipline is – 2 the Chest, then go ‘downstairs’ to the pelvic region if those didn’t work.

In these days where actual body armor is more and more prevalent, and in the case of the murderer in Buffalo also adding in a helmet; going for a head shot that will ‘seal the deal’, requires more accuracy than smiting someone hip and thigh.
And while yes, blowing someone’s brains out of their skull will stop things and that right now, there’s lots of major body weight bearing bones, nerves and large blood vessels in a much larger and easier to hit area that extends from just below the navel down to the groin that will stop someone in their tracks too.
And just to reinforce the point, outside of full ‘Rattle Battle’ military armor systems, most body armor stops at that point, just below the navel.

I’m not the only one to take into consideration that it’s likely to be a lot more sporty out there as the spring and summer roll along to election season, so let’s keep up the level of situational awareness.

San Antonio-area school district will now allow qualified teachers to carry a concealed firearm on campus
Teachers who want to carry will have to complete 40 hours of training

A small school district about 25 miles east of San Antonio will now allow certain qualified teachers and staff members to carry a concealed firearm on campus.

The La Vernia Independent School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved the Guardian Program on Monday.

In addition to already having a license to carry, staff members who want to become guardians must complete 20 hours at a firing range, 20 hours of classroom training, pass annual psychological exams, and take random drug tests, KSAT reports.

About 80% of La Vernia ISD staff supported the Guardian Program in a survey that was taken before the board approved it, according to the local news outlet.

Aside from the Guardian Program, Texas schools can also have one school marshal per 400 students who can carry a firearm.

America increasingly is not just gun country but permitless concealed carry country

Second Amendment advocates scored a string of victories in recent years to expand to 25 states the right to carry a concealed handgun without a permit, or what is known as “constitutional carry.”

The trend is poised to continue and tip the balance to more than half the U.S., with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, pledging to get a constitutional carry law through the Republican-run Legislature.

Gun control activists and some law enforcement view the trend as a threat to public safety because it enables people to carry concealed firearms without background checks or other requirements such as firearms training.

Gun rights advocates say background checks and other safeguards are applied nationwide for handgun purchases.

Except for Vermont, which has never regulated carrying guns, states only recently adopted permitless carry. A wave of Republican-run states began passing constitutional carry laws in 2010 after a concerted lobbying effort by the National Rifle Association.

Iowa, Montana, Texas, Utah and Tennessee adopted constitutional carry laws last year. In 2019, Kentucky, South Dakota and Oklahoma approved permitless concealed carry. From 2010 to 2017, laws went into effect in Arizona, Wyoming, Arkansas, Maine, Kansas, Idaho, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Dakota, New Hampshire and Missouri.

Alaska was early to permitless concealed carry, making it state law in 2003.

The popularity of constitutional carry, Bearing Arms Editor Cam Edwards said, is that the constitutional right to bear arms “shouldn’t require a permission slip.”

He said the success of constitutional carry is a continuation of the right-to-carry movement that began in the mid-1980s.

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Pointless Red Flag Laws

“Red flag Laws”, which allow police to seize the firearms of people accused of being at risk to misuse them, have been passed in 19 states. Do they do what proponents say they do? A recent study by Veronica Pear, PhD and Garen Wintemute, MD, and co-authors says the answer is clearly, “No”. It appeared as “Firearm Violence Following the Implementation of California’s Gun Violence Restraining Order Law” on JAMA Network April 5.

In looking at California’s Red Flag law they used methods that are better than those of earlier similar studies. They focused especially on San Diego, whose city attorney was a strong proponent of Red Flag Law use and looked at what changed when California’s Red Flag law went into effect. Using data from hospital reports they studied injuries due to aggressive use of guns. They looked as well at self-harm using guns, again reviewing hospital reports.

Based on data from a number of California counties, trends through the years 2005-2015 were determined regarding aggressive use and self-harm. The authors wanted to see If adopting California’s Red Flag law was followed by a reduction in these incidents below the trends predating the law’s going into effect, which occurred in 2016. Examining 2016-2019 they found that neither aggressive use of firearms nor self-harm from gun use was reduced by the new law. In fact, they found that after the introduction of the law the number of acts of self-harm involving firearms exceeded the prediction, although this result was not statistically significant.

The authors say that their methods were more rigorous compared to others who have examined these questions. Another strength of their study was that itincluded injuries rather than just deaths. They emphasize that one factor in finding no change following the new law may be the availability of illegal guns: if the government takes away guns held legally, those who want to harm themselves or others may seek to obtain guns illegally.

Different states have adopted these laws under different labels, including: Extreme Risk Protection Orders, Extreme Risk Firearm Protection Orders, and Risk Protection Orders. Gun Violence Restraining Orders is the term used in California. “Red Flag Law” is a general term that encompasses all these.

Proponents stress their potential to prevent harm although, as this study by Pear and associates indicates, this is highly questionable. At the same time, the threats to Constitutional rights are minimized or ignored, which go beyond just threats to the Second Amendment. These threats include undercutting the right to due process. Is the person whose gun may be seized entitled to the presumption of innocence? What is the standard of proof – clear and convincing evidence? Or just a preponderance of the evidence? Is the subject entitled to legal representation? Shall rules for the admissibility of evidence be followed?  Readers can no doubt think of other similar questions.

Strangely, if a Red Flag process leads to your losing your guns in Indiana, they may be destroyed! If you lose your driver’s license, is your car crushed? If you’re disbarred, are your law books burned?

Throughout their report Pear et al stress the shortcomings of laws in preventing violence, and with regard to aggression the authors pay little attention to the perpetrators.

The NRA has seemed to tread cautiously on Red Flag Laws. This may involve not wanting negative press regarding this issue to contaminate efforts to support the Second Amendment in other ways. The NRA has at least called attention to the due process issues, some of which are noted above.

The bottom line: There’s little to recommend Red Flag Laws. The findings of this study reinforce what gun owners have been saying all along. The surprise is that it comes from Wintemute’s group, which usually finds ways to endorse firearm restrictions. 

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While I don’t agree with the premise that possession stats should be publicized, the fact that ‘more guns’ means ‘more safety’ is undeniable.

More guns, more safety

Late in 2008, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, a leading Tennessee newspaper, unleashed a whirlwind of controversy when it decided to publish a database of all state residents with permits to carry handguns. The information was already available through the Tennessee Department of Safety, but the state website wasn’t especially user-friendly.

With the publication of the newspaper database, however, it became easy to search for people with gun-carry permits by name, ZIP code, or city. For a while, the database was the most viewed item on the newspaper’s website, with more than 65,000 page views per day.

Firearms owners and their advocates were furious, as WMC-TV reported at the time:

Some Mid-South gun owners are outraged over a website that lists handgun carry permits, claiming the site gives away too much personal information.

Tom Givens, who runs the Range Master pistol range, said the database, published by the Commercial Appeal, has many of his clients upset.

“First, it’s an invasion of privacy,” Givens said.

Using the database, a visitor to the website can look up the name of anyone who has a permit to carry a hand gun in the state of Tennessee.  Information listed includes the owner’s year of birth, along with his or her city, state, and ZIP code of residence.

Givens said his phone has been ringing off the hook from clients upset about their personal information being so accessible.

“By publishing this database your employers, your co-workers, church members, even relatives that may not know you have a permit, now know that you’ve got one,” he said.

On gun owners’ message boards, complaints abounded. A common concern was that residents with carry permits would be put at particular risk, since the paper’s database enabled any would-be thief looking for a gun to steal to know exactly where to find them. “I’m not happy about it at all,” fumed one resident on the City-Data web forum:

I’m not a criminal — just a law-biding citizen who has a clean background and has undergone background checks in order to exercise my right to protect myself from all the thugs in this world. I could see the database used to “shop” for homeowners to rob who probably have guns in the house. I see no legitimate reason to have this information online other than to demonize permit holders in some way.

The National Rifle Association’s CEO and executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, denounced the Commercial Appeal for engaging in what he called a “hateful, shameful form of public irresponsibility.” Added another NRA official: “What they’ve done is give criminals a lighted pathway to [burglarize] the homes of gun owners.”

But the paper’s editor, Chris Peck, argued that newspapers should be a comprehensive source for community information, and that it was neither illegal nor unethical for the Commercial Appeal to make public records more accessible to the public. In fact, he pointed out in a lengthy column, the Commercial Appeal eliminated street addresses and birth dates from the Department of Safety data it published. That meant that the “posted list of permit holders for concealed weapons has less information about individuals than the phone book, your voter registration form, or the credit card you use to buy dinner at a restaurant.”

As for the potential danger to gun owners from burglars looking for weapons to steal, Peck turned that argument on its head:

Think about it for a minute. Many, if not most, households in Memphis possess a firearm. So you don’t really need a list to find a house with a gun.

And, if criminals were checking the permit-to-carry list before picking a target, would they likely choose a house where they know the owner could be carrying a gun, or would they more likely steer away from that house to avoid a possible confrontation?

Neither logic nor common sense is carrying the day on this issue. It’s emotion.

Peck went on to explain why, in his view, there was “a powerful case to be made both for a permitting process to carry concealed weapons and for keeping that permitting process public.” The Commercial Appeal, he insisted, “isn’t anti-gun” but “pro-news and -information.”

I thought it was a good column, though I doubt it changed the minds of LaPierre and the gun owners who were certain the Commercial Appeal’s reasons for publishing the database weren’t benign. I’d guess, too, that they didn’t buy Peck’s contention that, far from endangering them, the database would lead criminals to avoid their homes.

But now we know: He was right.

After Memphis-area gun permit data was published, districts where more residents were licensed to carry saw a decrease in crime.

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Just how many defensive gun uses are there each year?

Gun control will be a hot topic for a very long time. However, one area that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough is the total number of defensive gun uses.

While the media spends a lot of time talking about how many people die from gunshots each and every year–typically conflating suicides with homicides–in an effort to advance a gun control agenda, they ignore the many times law-abiding citizens use firearms defensively every year.

But just how many defensive gun uses are there?

How often are firearms used defensively in the United States? According to the most-recent study, about 1.6 million times annually. Over a lifetime, about a third of gun owners will use a firearm defensively at least once. This recent data is broadly consistent with decades of social-science research.

The first pollster to ask about defensive gun use (DGU) was the Field Poll in California in 1976. Over the subsequent 18 years, polling companies such as Gallup, Hart and Tarrance, as well as scholars and media, conducted their own surveys of DGU. They reported results as low as 764,000 annually (Tarrance, 1994) and as high as 3.6 million (Los Angeles Times, 1994).

In 1993, Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck conducted a survey that was much more methodologically sophisticated than all the above polls. Kleck included safeguards designed to weed out respondents who might misdescribe a DGU story. Kleck and his coauthor Marc Gertz found a midpoint estimate of 2.5 million DGUs annually, with a possible range of 2 to 3 million. Their study is described in the Kleck and Gertz article, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun,” in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology (1995), which is available on the web, and is further described in Kleck’s 1997 book Targeting Guns. The book and the article also examine all previous surveys.

Oh, but some claim, Kleck’s work has been debunked.

Has it, though?

The same journal issue that published the Kleck & Gertz study also published a response by Marvin Wolfgang. He had long been the most-influential criminologist in the English-speaking world, and he was past president of the American Society of Criminology. Wolfgang wrote: “I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country … . I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns … .

Nonetheless, the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear … . The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well.”

Wolfgang isn’t exactly an NRA supporter.

Of course, most of us have long known these numbers. We knew how many millions of defensive gun uses there are each year. It well outstrips the number of lives claimed by gunshot wounds, that’s for sure.

However, it’s interesting how even the smallest estimates for defensive gun use outstrip those numbers as well. Literally no credible study shows otherwise. Even the more heavily biased studies that put defensive gun uses at 100,000 each year still argue there are twice as many lives saved by guns than taken.

Why is the media ignoring this reality?

We all know why. They can claim they are simply neutral parties in the debate all they want, but they always seem to miss this. Even if they report the studies themselves, they never seem to make it into later stories about guns and gun control.

But the number of gun deaths always does.

Funny how that shakes out, isn’t it?

Well, Whaddya Know… Stats Validate What Gun Owners Have Been Saying For Years

A common narrative from anti-gun activists asserts that more guns equal more crime. But those of us who own guns have known this storyline to be false all along. It never made sense, and now we have data to prove it.

According to a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, there is a direct correlation between gun ownership and crime, but that correlation doesn’t align with the storyline from the “guns are bad” crowd. In fact, shocker… it shows just the opposite.

The NBER analysis used Tennessee’s database for handgun carry permit holders, and then cross-referenced that data with crime statistics in those zip codes. It was determined that once information from the database was publicized, in areas where gun ownership was highest, burglaries were correspondingly lower. Conversely, in areas with relatively low gun ownership, burglaries were considerably higher:

“Our analysis suggests a post-publicization relative decrease – both in absolute and in percentage terms – in burglaries in zip codes with higher numbers of gun permits, relative to zip codes with median numbers of permits, and a post-publicization relative increase in zip codes with fewer gun permits: our estimates suggest an 18% relative decrease of burglaries in those zip codes with the largest number of gun permits.”

Well, who could have guessed such a sharp contrast? Anyone with half a brain, that’s who.

If a criminal is considering what areas and homes they want to target, there are a few factors they will weigh. Certainly, a burglar is going to want to focus on a residence that will have valuable belongings which they can take, but the first thing they’re going to assess is their own well-being. It’s human nature.

A house or apartment with a big Rottweiler or Dobermann Pincer? That could certainly deter a burglar. The same can be said regarding a residence with a sophisticated security system. Burglars certainly want to avoid getting bitten by a big dog or having police arrive at the scene of a burglary while it’s in progress. But as much as criminals dislike dog bites and jail time, what deters them most is the prospect of getting their heads blown off in an attempted burglary.

Responsible gun ownership is a good thing. Gun owners give criminals a serious reason to reconsider burglarizing someone’s home. Government officials thinking of becoming overly tyrannical must remember that they have an armed populace; and in some cases, that populace is heavily armed. Even foreign adversaries can be deterred by America’s gun-toting public, as was the case with both the Japanese in World War II and the Soviet Union years later.

It turns out that bad guys avoid messing with good guys who have guns.

By Jordan Case

M&P 15/22s Banned At Appleseed Events After Out Of Battery and “Run Away” Discharges

While I can’t seem to tear myself away from Bearing Arms long enough to head west to the home range at Ramseur as much as I would like, I am still an instructor at Project Appleseed. In my opinion, it offers some of the best positional rifle marksmanship training you can obtain anywhere for the price, and you’re treated to an incredible civics lesson with the cost of admission. I highly recommend it to everyone.

A warning was issued a short time ago on the Appleseed instructor forum that the popular Smith & Wesson 15-22 is banned from Project Appleseed events nationwide after a series of out of battery discharges recorded at several events.

I’m not going to embellish or sugarcoat anything for you; this is the notice, as it was written.

To: All Appleseed Instructors

Subject: TEMPORARY BAN ON SMITH & WESSON M&P 15/22 USE AT APPLESEED

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, THE USE OF SMITH AND WESSON M&P 15/22’S AT AN APPLESEED IS HEREBY BANNED UNTIL SMITH & WESSON FORMALLY INVESTIGATES THE PROBLEM AND ISSUES AN OFFICIAL CORRECTIVE ACTION. THE AOC WILL NOTIFY THE CADRE WHEN THIS BAN IS LIFTED.

The AOC has received a rash of reports regarding safety issues with the Smith & Wesson M&P 15/22, including a shooter getting injured as a result of an out-of-battery discharge (see reports below).

As responsible Instructors, we have a duty to maintain safety at our events. If we know a rifle to be potentially unsafe, we shouldn’t allow it on the line at all.

At this time the least risk course of action would be to exclude the Smith & Wesson M&P 15/22 from future events until Smith & Wesson formally investigates the problem and issues an official corrective action.

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There’s an old joke:
Want a 5.56 NATO chamber? Fire 1000 rounds through your .223.
Nowadays, it’s less expensive to just have the throat reamed.

.223 Remington vs. 5.56 NATO: What You Don’t Know Could Hurt You

Is firing a 5.56 NATO cartridge in your .223 Remington chambered AR15 dangerous? Or do Internet forum-ninjas and ammunition companies selling you commercial ammo instead of surplus overstate the dangers?  Believe it or not, a real danger exists, and some gun owners who think they are doing the right thing may not be safe.

The Cartridges

The .223 Remington and 5.56×45 NATO cartridges are very similar, and externally appear the same.  But there are some differences that lie beneath the surface.

The 5.56 case has thicker walls to handle higher pressures, meaning the interior volume of the case is smaller than that of a .223.   This will alter the loading data used when reloading 5.56 brass to .223 specs.

Some 5.56 loads have a slightly longer overall length than commercial .223 loads.

The Chambers

The significant difference between the .223 Rem and 5.56 NATO lies in the rifles, rather than the cartridges themselves.  Both the .223 and 5.56 rounds will chamber in rifles designed for either cartridge, but the critical component, leade, will be different in each rifle.

The leade is the area of the barrel in front of the chamber prior to where the rifling begins.  This is where the loaded bullet is located when a cartridge is chambered.  The leade is frequently called the “throat.”

On a .223 Remington spec rifle, the leade will be 0.085”.  This is the standard described by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc. (SAAMI).  The leade in a 5.56 NATO spec rifle is 0.162”, or almost double the leade of the .223 rifle.

A shorter leade in a SAAMI spec rifle creates a situation where the bullet in a 5.56 NATO round, when chambered, can contact the rifling prior to being fired.  By having contact with the rifling prematurely (at the moment of firing), chamber pressure can be dramatically increased, creating the danger of a ruptured case or other cartridge/gun failure.

The reverse situation, a .223 Rem round in a 5.56 NATO gun, isn’t dangerous.  The leade is longer, so a slight loss in velocity and accuracy may be experienced, but there is not a danger of increased pressures and subsequent catastrophic failure.

How serious is the danger of firing 5.56 ammo in .223 guns?  Dangerous enough that the SAAMI lists 5.56 military ammo as being not for use in .223 firearms in the technical data sheet titled “Unsafe Firearm-Ammunition Combinations.”

ATK, the parent company of ammunition manufacturers Federal Cartridge Company and Speer, published a bulletin entitled “The Difference Between 223 Rem and 5.56 Military Cartridges.”  In this bulletin, ATK stated using 5.56 ammo in a .223 rifle could result in “…primer pocket gas leaks, blown cartridge case heads, and gun functioning issues.”

However, the danger may be lower than SAAMI or ATK suggest.  In Technical Note #74 from ArmaLite, the company states “millions of rounds of NATO ammunition have been fired safely in Eagle Arms and ArmaLite’s® SAAMI chambers over the past 22 years,” and they have not had any catastrophic failures.

According to ArmaLite:

“Occasionally a non-standard round (of generally imported) ammunition will fit too tightly in the leade, and resistance to early bullet movement can cause elevated chamber pressures.  These pressures are revealed by overly flattened primers or by powder stains around the primer that reveal leaking gasses.”

What Do You Have?

So, if you own a rifle chambered for the .223 for 5.56, do you know for which caliber it is really chambered?

Many match rifles are chambered in .223 Remington (SAAMI specs) for tighter tolerances, and theoretically better accuracy.

Many of the AR-15’s currently sold on the market are made for the 5.56 NATO cartridge.  If you own one of these, you should be fine with any .223 or 5.56 ammunition.

However, ATK dropped this bomb in the bulletin on the .223/5.56:

“It is our understanding that commercially available AR15’s and M16’s – although some are stamped 5.56 Rem on the receiver – are manufactured with .223 chambers.”

So, even if your AR is stamped 5.56, is it really?  Check your owner’s manual or call the company directly and make sure you get an answer you feel comfortable with.

As if the confusion regarding the .223 vs 5.56 chambers wasn’t enough, there is a third possibility in the mix, that is being used by at least one major manufacturer.  The .223 Wylde chamber is a modified SAAMI-spec .223 chamber that allows for the safe use of 5.56 NATO rounds, but maintains tighter tolerances for better accuracy.

Yeah, yeah… What’s the bottom line?

Here’s the bottom line.  If you want to follow the safest possible course, always shoot .223 Remington ammunition.  The .223 Rem cartridge will safely shoot in any rifle chambered for the .223 or 5.56.

If you want to shoot 5.56 NATO rounds, make sure you have a rifle designed for the 5.56 military cartridge.  Shooting 5.56 in a normal .223 Rem rifle can result in bad things.

Duh.. Violent crime increasing the most in high crime neighborhoods

Mapping gun violence: A closer look at the intersection between place and gun homicides in four cities

The rise in gun homicides in the United States is having reverberating political ramifications at the federal, state, and local levels, with many elected officials falling back into “tough on crime” policies to curb the violence. This punitive turn can be seen in President Joe Biden’s proposed federal budget, in which he calls for “more police officers on the beat” and allocates an additional $30 billion for state and local governments to support law enforcement. Many local leaders are mirroring this approach, centering their gun violence prevention strategies on increasing funding for police and rolling back criminal justice reforms.  

What these enforcement-based approaches fail to recognize is that the recent rise in homicides is more nuanced than it appears. Rather than a widespread dispersal of gun violence within cities, the increases in gun homicides are largely concentrated in disinvested and structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods that had high rates of gun violence to begin with. This geographic concentration is a persistent challenge, not a new one—and it requires targeted solutions to improve outcomes in disinvested places rather than reverting to the old “tough on crime” playbook. 

This piece takes a deeper look at patterns of gun violence in four cities—Chicago, Nashville, Kansas City, Mo. and Baltimore—and finds that each city’s gun homicide increases were driven predominantly by increases in neighborhoods where gun violence has long been a persistent fixture of daily life, alongside systemic disinvestment, segregation, and economic inequality. These patterns point to the longer-term need to address the place-based factors that influence violence and invest in the critical community infrastructure that has not only been proven to make communities safer, but can also help them thrive.

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BLUF:
The concept that an openly armed person is a provocation to attack appears to flow from a simple premise on the left: A person doing something a leftist does not like is a provocation to attack them. It is part of the broader philosophical abandonment of the rule of law.

Evidence for this theory exists in the left’s theory of speech from any opponent. Speech from an opponent is considered to be violent, and worthy of attack. Violence, from the left, on the other hand, is considered to be speech………..

Defining open carry of weapons as a legal provocation is Orwellian word manipulation.

Is Carrying a Gun Provocation to be Attacked

In the law of self-defense of almost all states, If a person is attacked, and reasonably fears for their life, they may legally defend themselves with deadly force. A small minority of states require a person to retreat from the situation if they can do so in complete safety.

In all states of which I am aware, a person may not use deadly force in self-defense, if they provoked the attack with the intent of using deadly force.

It is not legal to start a fight so the person who started the fight can kill someone who they provoked.

Mere possession of an openly carried weapon is not a legal provocation to attack.

The Left has been floating the idea that mere possession of a weapon is a provocation. They contend the sight of someone in possession of a weapon is sufficient provocation for a person to attack the person who possesses the weapon.

This creates a bizarre world where mere open possession of a weapon is sufficient to justify a deadly attack on the possessor. Apply this to the police. They almost always carry a deadly weapon, openly.

This concept is contrary to common sense and the experience of thousands of years.

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As Crime Grows, Biden’s Radical War On Self-Defense Is Alienating Voters

President Joe Biden’s unpopular gun control moves are doing little to appease his gun control donor class. Worse, those same moves are distancing him from voters that clearly see crime as a central issue and gun ownership as a right to be protected.

Among the unpopular policy positions dragging down his presidency is his myopic focus on gun control instead of crime control. The Biden White House has pursued the most far-reaching and radical gun control agenda of any president, previously naming a gun control lobbyist to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) whose nomination was defeated when not even all Senate Democrats could support the nominee.

Biden has since nominated Steve Dettelbach, who once campaigned for public office on a gun control platform. President Biden is also circumventing Congress’s authority to write laws by issuing an administrative rule to redefine frames and receivers and ban arm braces on AR-style pistols and instituting a top-down policy of “zero tolerance” inspections that would revoke licenses of firearm retailers instead of working with small business owners to correct minor clerical errors.

On top of that, President Biden is facing two additional factors not working in his favor on gun control and lawful gun ownership. Gun control groups are livid that President Biden hasn’t delivered their goal of disarming the American population. He was rated just a “D+” by gun control groups exasperated that he hasn’t ruled like a dictator to unilaterally ban entire classes of firearms and delivered a laundry list of gun control “must-haves,” including a Cabinet-adjacent position that’s outside of Senate confirmation to push even more gun control policies.

Voters Are Worried About Criminals, Not Legal Gun Owners

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Are Gun Grabbers or Gun Owners Empathic and Distrustful?

Both sides of the gun debate feel that their position is correct. Both sides agree that horrible people do horrible things. Both sides of the debate want to stop that. That small point of agreement is where progress in the debate usually ends. I think both sides are empathic and distrustful but they are paying attention to very different things. A way to get farther in the debate is to ask a deeper question.

The anti-gun side says that the bad guys would become better guys if they were disarmed, and that the other side loves guns more than they love people. The self-defense side replies that gun-control disarms far more victims than criminals. They note that disarmed bad guys are still bad guys, and the vast majority of violent crimes are committed with fists, clubs, and knives rather than guns.

The pro-gun side of the debate says that the victims of violent crime would be less victimized if they were allowed an armed defense. The anti-gun side of the debate answers that guns are just tools of violence and violence is never an optimal solution.

Neither side changes their opinion because the argument never touches their core beliefs. I want us to join in the debate by asking a more fundamental question; can we be trusted with violence?

Most of us need to do some homework before we can put an answer together. Let’s look at the question piece at a time.

Can you judge when violence is justified? Have you studied enough to make that decision in a short amount of time? Can you recognize when violence is not only justified but a necessary evil that avoids a greater evil? Taken to the obvious limit, can you use a lethal tool to kill another person?

Those are difficult questions, but this isn’t a philosophy course where we have a semester to debate each answer. The hard part about the questions is that we will answer on our own in a very limited amount of time. We have neither the time to ask, nor is there an informed authority who knows our situation in enough detail to give us accurate and useful answers about what to do.

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The DC Project, Women for Gun Rights, a nationwide grassroots organization of women dedicated to safeguarding the Second Amendment, today released a new video titled, We’re on Offense Now.

Do Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapons Laws Still Reduce Crime?

A review of the literature studying the effect of right-to-carry laws shows that the weight of evidence indicates that such laws reduced violent crime.

However, more recent studies, using more recent data, tend to find that these laws cause increases in various kinds of violent crime, raising the possibility that circumstances have changed since 2000, causing these laws to become detrimental.

We suggest that these recent studies, which do not use all the available data, are seriously compromised because they compare states that only recently have adopted right-to-carry laws with states that have had these laws for many years, instead of comparing against states with more restrictive laws.

Early adopting states experienced relatively large reductions in crime corresponding to large increases in the number of right-to-carry permits. Late adopting states passed rules making it difficult to obtain permits and exercise the right to carry concealed weapons. Ignoring the fact that these late adopting states with stricter rules on obtaining permits issue relatively few permits can produce perverse results where coefficients imply an increase in crime even though the opposite is true.

We demonstrate this effect with a simple statistical test.

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