Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Interesting link here about how texting and ‘mobile devices’ saved the day for folks in Haiti. (By the way, according to the article, for a country of around 9 million folks theres about 4 million cellphones. Either cellphones are heavily subsidized or we’ve been misled about the poverty in the country.)
Unsurprisingly, phone networks get overwhelmed in disasters. Perfectly reasonable…everyone is calling their family and friends to check on them or say that theyre ok, right? What many folks don’t know, however, is that text messages use much less bandwidth than voice messages and, in some case, use different routing systems/protocols. The upshot of this is that when you cant get through by voice because ‘all circuits are busy’ you may be able to get through via text.
This isn’t necessarily news, though. During the 9/11 event many people came to discover this quirk. As the networks became overloaded (esp. since some carriers had their towers atop the World Trade Center and thus lost a chunk of their capacity when the buildings went down.) many people found that voice calls were impossible but, surpisingly, text got through.
So, the lesson here is that if you have a phone or device capable of text messaging and you find yourself in a position someday where you cant get through on voice you might be able to get your message out in text.
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Speaking of guns, I took delivery of a gun for a customer today. The gun in question was a Hi-Point pistol. I have heard mixed things about these guns, and everything I read says their carbines are actually quite good. The pistol however……meh. It has a magazine disconnect, which is a nice touch, because if I pull the trigger hard enough the safety lever will move to ‘fire’ and the striker will drop (or strike, or whatever..its really a linear motion rather than an arc.) The gun is strictly blowback. When you get above .380 caliber you don’t see a lot of blowback guns. The way they make it work is twofold – huge slide mass and a stout recoil spring. Dealer cost? $155 in .40 S&W. For all I know, this thing may actually be reliable and accurate but just between you and me I’m not counting on it. If it feeds ball ammo reliably I’d be surprised. It seems like a lovely gun for your average drive-by shooting before you drop it the Gowanus Canal. (Famously referred to as the only body of water in the world that’s 90% guns.)
My point is that if $155 is all you can swing for a pistol…well, keep sweeping those floors and delivering those pizzas because for another $200 you can get a used police trade-in Glock and know the thing will go ‘bang’ every time you pull the trigger.
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Speaking of guns, the fedgoons have determined that sometimes a shotgun just aint a shotgun. 18 USC 921(a)(5) says a shotgun is a weapon ‘designed or redesigned’ to be fired from the shoulder. Okay, sounds average enough. BUT…some shotguns come from the factory these days equipped with pistol grip stocks instead of shoulder stocks. Thus, according to the pointy-headed thugs at ATFE, a pistol-gripped shotgun is NOT a shotgun but “a firearm other than a rifle or shotgun”. So, according to these idiots if you wanna buy a pistol gripped shotgun you must be over 21 (instead of 18 for a regular shotgun) and must be resident of the state of purchase (unlike with a regular shotgun). In short, its treated like a handgun except that, as we all know, handgun shotguns are AOWs and already pretty restricted.
Your .gov at work folks. Is there a workaround? Probably. Throw a shoulderstock on it and – presto – its redesigned to be intended to be fired from the shoulder and is thus back in NormalLand. Have the customer bring the stock back the next day or something. At least…its seems like that would be keeping within the letter of the law.
Think I’m making this stuff up? Page 2 of November 2009 FFL newsletter…also available from www.atf.gov.
Speaking of bureaucracy, that November 2009 newsletter? Yeah, that showed up today. Three months after the fact.
And people wonder why I have such a low regard for these weasels…………
