Monthly Archives: November 2013

Saturday Matinee 2013 048: Colditz (TV, 2005)

Colditz 2005 DVDWe looked at the earlier (1971) Colditz: Escape of the Birdmen movie a few weeks ago; this is another in the long line of jailbreak-from-Nazis-films that began with the Colditz Story in 1955. This version is a two-part, three-hours-total miniseries from fifty years after the original, with no digging tunnels, no building gliders, no masses of Americans who weren’t in the real OFLAG IVc, but some fairly realistic escape scenes and methods, using the sort of escapes that the Colditz escapees — the few who made a “home run” and the many who were recaptured — actually used. Some, in fact, are exact analogues of real escaps, although they’re used in the service of a dramatic plot with rather more twists and turns than the mundane lives of real prisoners actually had.

One of the best features is the portrayal of MI-9, the clandestine assistance organization for escape and evasion. MI9 is run by jovial, Establishment officer, Lt. Col. Fordham, played by veteran actor James Fox.

Willis and Jack, on the run.

Willis and Jack, on the run.

But the movie is not a documentary. It’s a dramatic production, complete with that old staple, the love triangle. It begins with three Britons escaping from another camp. They are English officers Jack (Tom Hardy) and Willis (Laurence Fox, one of James’s sons and, it turns out, a talented actor in his own right), and Scottish lance-corporal Nicholas McGrade (Damian Lewis, in a character miles apart from his other well-known miniseries performance, Dick Winters in Band of Brothers). None of these characters is a historical figure. Tom’s love interest, whom he left behind in England, is Lizzie Carter (Sophia Myles, made up with a period hairdo which is very rare in modern movies). Lizzie is working as an Air Raid Precautions warden. 

McGrade, back in London and up to no good.

McGrade, back in London and up to no good.

McGrade is resentful of officers and quick to quote leftist cant about the workers and the revolution, but it becomes clear that what is driving him is envy and not love of his fellow proletarian. (It’s rare to see lefty characters portrayed as unsympathetically as they are in Colditz… if you’re a bit of a bolshie yourself, you’ll get angry). In a daring and desperate encounter on the Swiss border, McGrade gets away; Jack and Willis are recaptured and sent to OFLAG IVc at Colditz. The last thing Jack asks McGrade is: to look up Lizzie and tell her Jack’s OK. 

McGrade makes it out, where he’s taken under the wing of MI9, and looks up Lizzie. 

Jack and Willis, back in the clink.

Jack and Willis, back in the clink.

Fritz Werner (Rüdiger Vogler), the security officer at Colditz, tells the gathered escapers that they won’t be able to do it from Colditz. Attempts earn prisoners, including Jack and Willis, time in solitary. Meanwhile, McGrade excels with MI9, despite his is commissioned — he breaks out laughing at the very idea of him in officer’s uniform — and, attracted to Lizzie, tells her a lie: Jack is dead.

The scene is set for a confrontation. In fact, there are several confrontations.

While the love triangle and the inter-British conflict is a bit forced, and some of the subplots are simply puzzling, the prison escape attempts — successful and not — are compelling. Unlike the interpersonal action, the escapes are mostly modeled closely on real Colditz escapes. That was, to us, the strong point of this production.

Acting and Production

The actors are all good. Even Jason Priestley, in a small role despite his high billing in the American DVD, delivers well what the script drops on him — a somewhat unbelievable Canadian flyer, addicted to morphine (his addiction has profound consequences). Laurence Fox, new to us, does very well in a stiff-upper-lip role. Tom Hardy, as a guy whose love for a woman clouds his judgment, is pretty good; we spent most of the movie trying to get over “Dick Winters” speaking with a Scots burr. As we deal with No True Scotsman around here all the time, we have no idea whether Damian Lewis’s accent is correct or not (He’s actually English and an Old Etonian; we didn’t pick up on that in Band of Brothers, so maybe he’s just got a great ear for accents, or a great speech coach).

From the outside, it looks charming. From the inside, with the Nazis locking you in, not so much.

From the outside, it looks charming. From the inside, with the Nazis locking you in, not so much.

The show’s exteriors were largely shot, like the 1971 film, in Colditz.

The castle itself is a major presence in every one of the four major Colditz projects. Its cliffs, forbidding stone walls, and mysterious ancient passages and attics are almost a character of their own, both in the true sage of the Allied prisoners, and the many movies about their heroism and exploits — including this one.

Accuracy and Weapons

Not many guns served all sides during World War II, but the Holeks' vz. 37 did.

Not many guns served all sides during World War II, but the Holeks’ vz. 37 did.

From the very beginning, the Germans have all the guns, and they seem to be fairly correct. For example, guards have Mausers, MG34s, and Czech Těžký kulomet vz. 37s, a gun that was officially used by both Britain (license built as the BESA) and Germany (as the MG 37(t)) in World War II. (Prison guards would probably be equipped with captured or second-line guns, and period photos seem to bear this out).

The use of Colditz itself as a set helps the movie work. In scenes set in London, period vehicles abound and guards have correct British weapons. The Germans’ vehicles are largely not quite right, although the three-wheeled van used by “Willi the Electrician” (which figured in film and in a real escape) was convincing enough.

The movie has little shooting (in the history of actual Colditz, only one officer was shot dead while escaping) and, mercifully, no visible CGI.

The bottom line

The Germans couldn't prevent every escape, but they could make them incredibly difficult -- and did.

The Germans couldn’t prevent every escape, but they could make them incredibly difficult — and did.

Colditz is a good film in the escape genre. With the love-story subplot, it’s one you can watch with your significant other, or several insignifcant others, but it also makes a decent guy flick.

At this point, we’ve reviewed two of the four major Colditz shows: this one and 1971’s Colditz: Escape of the Birdmen. If you’re only going to watch one of the two, this one beats Birdmen, on both accuracy and cinematic grounds, althought it’s a thrill to see the glider make an ahistorical flight (the glider is never mentioned in this show). 

We’ve watched the others, 1955’s British The Colditz Story and the 1971-72 British TV series, and you may well be seeing reviews of them, but not in what’s left of 2013. We don’t want this site’s reviews becoming “all jailbreaks, all the time.”

For More Information

This is a new section of our standard Saturday Matinee format. This section shows will always link to the Amazon, Internet Movie Data Base, and Internet Movie Firearm Data Base pages for those who want more information.

Colditz is available at Amazon (at this writing, for $4.24). The Amazon reviews are usually helpful in making a buying decision.

There is a Colditz page at IMDB. 

There is no reference to Colditz (or to any of the four Colditz movies and TV shows) at IMFDB.

When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have cats

Devil cat? Well, maybe there's some kitty crazy in the eyes….

Devil cat? Well, maybe there’s some kitty crazy in the eyes….

Shiny the cat looks innocent enough, but in England, where guns are really outlawed, this mild-looking moggy has been holding a whole village hostage.

A pet cat has been accused of launching a series of attacks across a village and putting residents and pets in hospital.

The black tom called Shiny has been nicknamed the ”Devil Cat” after being reported to the police fives times over its violent behaviour.

Locals say Shiny chases children, picks fights with dogs and even bursts into people’s homes to claw and scratch them.

Its victims say they are so scared they retreat behind locked doors and arm themselves with hoses and mugs of hot tea whenever they see the black cat prowling the streets.

Despite being reported to the police officers are powerless to act because laws designed to combat dangerous dogs do not apply to cats.

Shiny’s owners say they are trying to curb his behaviour and he has been neutered and booked in to see an animal psychologist.

But many residents in the Cornish village of Little Treviscoe want to see Shiny put down.

Victim Paula Burton, 42, was rushed to A&E in July after Shiny clawed her arms and legs. Miss Burton managed to fight him off but suffered bruising and cuts that required antibiotics.

via ‘Devil cat’ hospitalises villagers in attacking spree – Telegraph.

How ineffably British. They have nothing to fight this feline from Steven King with, but a cup of hot tea; and the bobbies would love to help, but they’re tied up in red tape. “It’s more than me job’s worth, missus”. (That sort of craven, contemptible character that says such a thing is known in English slang as a “Jobsworth,” naturally).

While it’s hard to take cat-scratch wounds terribly seriously, consider that Shiny and his millions of cousins come equipped with very sharp teeth in a mouth full of bacteria, very sharp claws which are themselves usually a petri dish of microbiological badness, and their own little microenvironment for mammalian parasites, some of whom would just as soon make their homes on, or in, a human.

Plus, there’s the annoyance and iritation of having one of these tuna-powered buzzsaws coming at you.

Of course, the logical answer: the family who own Shiny and have no trouble with him, keeping his neighbor-biting and -clawing self indoors, doesn’t seem to have been considered.

Now, we know some of the readers of this blog are or have been big-city cops in such garden spots as Detroit, Chicago and Houston. And we have to wonder what they think about the cops in Cornwall who’ve been called out five times to take statements from cat-attack victims. Our guess for what they think about a police force that has to deal with crises like that: “Are they hiring?”

Exercise for the reader: instead of a village in Cornwall, imagine Shiny pulling this stunt in, say, a village in West Texas.  What’s the over-under on Shiny’s life expectancy, and what caliber would the fatal wound be?

Disclaimer: No cats were harmed in the making of this blog post. We can’t vouch for injuries to English villagers.

Solid Concepts Prints Exotic-metal .45

“WeaponsMan,” we can hear you thinking. “Dey already done dat.” Well, not exactly. Sure, they printed a gun before, but this time they did something pretty amazing: they printed all 34 non-spring parts in a single go (see the photo of the parts below, fresh from the laser-sintering machine with only the unused powder removed yet). And they printed it of Inconel 625, which you’ve probably never used in a gun before (but if you’ve ever flown in a jet airplane, it was probably the turbofan engine’s hot-section shaft and several other critical parts.

Worlds-2nd-3D-Printed-Metal-Gun1-1024x768

Inconel is fairly expensive and is normally not used in firearms for three reasons: (1) cost, (2) lack of necessity (steel, aluminum, and stainless steel have gotten the job done for the last century), and, (3) until now, it’s been fairly difficult to work with.

 

Indeed, one of the greatest applications for Direct Metal Laser Sintering (and SLS and other metal-sintering additive manufacturing processes) is to make things out of those materials that break or wear down subtractive-manufacturing tools, or need exotic tool bits or inserts. That includes Inconel and Titanium alloys, of course, but we also hear rumors that sintering Tungsten is possible. How recursively self-referential does it get? Imagine 3D printing the tools you need to do final milling on 3D printed parts… that tomorrow could be today very soon.

Our second iteration is composed entirely of Inconel 625, a material that is stronger than Stainless Steel (and a bit heavier) save for the springs which were not 3D Printed. The gun is once again composed of thirty-four 3D Printed components. Our second gun will be stress relieved and post processing will be by hand once again.

This is an important note, that last sentence above. The parts don’t come out of the DMLS machine ready to be snapped together — not parts for a precision machine like a firearm. But they go on to note that they’re learning as they go:

Inconel 625 is a harder, stronger alloy than 17-4 Stainless Steel. We modified the geometry for this second iteration to incorporate different tolerances in order to make hand finishing sufficiently easier. With our first prototype, we had to hand sand to perfect a few tolerances, but our tweaks to the design should remove the need for such sanding. Our first gun is now up to 700+ rounds.

 

Because it’s taken a while for us to bring you this, that 700 rounds is not up to date:

 

 

We’re thoroughly enjoying this research-development-improvement process for an internal project. The implications of its success for our customers’ future projects – from aerospace to medical – are very uplifting! Thanks to our followers for their support and enthusiasm, it has been quite the ride.

via World’s 2nd 3D Printed Metal Gun – Solid Concepts Blog.

There are still some things we’d like to know about what Solid Concepts is doing. One is whether the powder from which the products are sintered is recycled or not? Aerospace firms working with Inconel parts produce a great deal of waste: chips from milling and drilling, and dust and powder from grinding. It would be great if that waste material could be transformed readily into raw material for a new process.

We’re high on additive manufacturing here, an exploding new sector with new concepts, technologies, and even a new magazine, which we read avidly. It has applications far beyond guns, but guns are a natural application for this technology — if it’s not strangled in the crib. Who would do that? Well, the only enemies guns have, some wag has said, are rust and politicians. Neither of the SC printed guns is very prone to corrosion due to the materials used, but additive manufacturing and home prototyping are being targeted in Congress by, who else, anti-gun politicians. The two leading the charge are Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Steve Israel in the House. Both are New York Democrats of a liberal bent.

Their proposals may not impact Solid Concepts (the firm has a manufacturing FFL, which will insulate it from some of peaks and valleys of Congressional misunderstanding). But they will affect all of us indirectly. Somewhere, maybe even in the New York so poorly represented by those two gentlemen, a 20-year-old kid has the potential to be the next John Browning or Gaston Glock, or even a Steve Jobs of physical things. (Schumer and Israel were not in Congress in the 1970s to ban homebuilding of computers).

We see incredible new vistas of the imagination. (Imagine bringing Grandpa’s broken shotgun back to life by printing a new hammer, after scanning the parts of the broken old one. Imagine having that technology in your gunsmith shop). Will people misuse the technology? You bet. Will criminals print guns? Maybe. Criminals are not the masterminds you see on TV, but in 10 years you won’t need to be, unlike today’s early adopters who are paying thousands for technology that will very soon be obsolete. But we can easily imagine unethical restorers printing, say, matching parts for a mismatched Luger and aging them. (Even that is only unethical if the result is passed off as original).

Many things that were out of reach once are not now. Also, the economics of manufacturing may be changing, to favor small runs of valuable items.

Imagine a commemorative gun for your Army unit or Navy ship. “The USS Miami plankowner .45”. The decoration could be designed right in — it would cost no more to make a highly customized gun than a slabsided standard one. (Guns are a tiny market for this technology. Think of what Bridezillas will do with the ability to have something shiny, of stainless steel, and personalized for every member of the wedding party and guest. Imagine hot-rodders printing different-length fuel-injector runners to accommodate a reprogrammed timing chip).

The upside of this technology is scarcely imaginable. This could be as big as the 1970s computer revolution, and all of us can be part of it. We just need to keep those with fascist tendencies (we’re heil-ing you, Schumer and Israel) from strangling it in its crib. And that’s where we are as 2013 closes: at an inflection point between revolutionary science, and reactionary politics.

History tells us how this ends: science wins. But not without our help.

Geissele Reaction Rod Black Friday Deal

Reaction Rod Armorer's PackageGeissele Automatics, best known for their excellent AR triggers, is offering a few Black Friday Deals. The one that caught our eye was on the Reaction Rod and some other tools. .

We like tools, and we’ve mentioned before how much we like the Reaction Rod. For $110 plus shipping, Geissele sells you the Reaction Rod and throws in a Trigger Fitting Pin (very useful for doing trigger work; the pin is the one with the knob on the end) and some gas block tools (the Roll Pin Tool is the one that resembles a pencil) specifically for the light, compact Geissele gas block.

Description: Armorer’s Package Includes:

– AR15/M4 Reaction Rod
– Fitting Pin
– Gas Block Roll Pin Tool
– Gas Block Punch List

via Armorer’s Package – AR15/ M4 Reaction Rod – Black Friday 2013.

(They have a similarly discounted Armorer’s Package for AR-10/SR-25s, and some trigger deals as well, at their main Black Friday page). Now, if you’re Old School like us and mostly use fixed front sight bases, you might not ever want to install a Geissele gas block; this may not be that great of a deal for you.

For example, if you just want the Reaction Rod, Brownell’s regular price is $99.  That’s the street price you can expect on the Reaction Rod at most online high-volume dealers. (Midway for example has the same price, $99, and their Black Friday deal is $20 off every $100 of regularly-priced merchandise — but the catch is, excluding many brands including, naturally, Geissele).

Still, the deals are out there. Most Black Friday deals run through the weekend.

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have pigs

feed the pigsFor Francesco Raccosta, the 13th was truly unlucky. Captured by rival mafiosi, the Italian mobster was beaten with iron bars and then — still alive — fed to pigs.

Francesco Raccosta was allegedly fed to the pigs, which are prized for their ability to dispose of most of a human body, as part of a bloody turf war between two clans belonging to the ‘Ndrangheta mafia of Calabria, in the far south of Italy.

[Gangster Simone Pepe] described the killing in chilling terms to a friend in a telephone conversation that was intercepted by police.

“It was satisfying to hear him scream…Mamma mia, how he squealed, but I couldn’t give a shit. Someone said a few bits of him remained at the end of it all, but I couldn’t see anything, for me nothing remained at all. I said, wow, how a pig can eat!”

via Mafia ‘fed rival to pigs while he was still alive’ – Telegraph.

Tony Soprano was not available for comment.

The Italian mob makes many millions from enterprises both criminal and legitimate, and has no shortage of firearms. The point of Raccosta’s murder-by-swine seems to have been the naked delight that Pepe recounts taking in the rfightfulness of it.

Pepe is all of 24. The Italian cops have him in custody, but the charges they will lay against him are not yet clear. They could tack on a charge of cruelty to animals, by feeding them an improper diet.

Next time you’re dining in sunny Italy, you might want to give the pork a miss. Just sayin’.

Gurkha had a reason for Talib beheading

A Kukri has its own nomenclature. From khukrimuseum.com

There’s an art and a science to the lopping-off of heads… not to mention a tradition. A Kukri has its own nomenclature. From khukrimuseum.com

We covered this Nepalese soldier of the Queen’s plight back in August, and noted that he returned to duty in July, after initial media reports that he beheaded a prisoner were proven false.

Earlier news reports had the British commander of troops in Afghanistan, Richard Kemp, condemning the Gurkha private, and anonymous British staff officers calling him a war criminal.

[I]nvestigation showed that the headless Talib was a combat casualty, not a desecrated corpse…

So, for whatever reason, the attempt to throw the book at this young soldier got cut off at the… knees. The amazing, Lord Love a Duck aspect of the whole thing is that the ruperts attempted this in the first place. What were they thinking?

Turns out, he did whack the guy’s head off (the Talib in question already having shuffled off this mortal coil). But he had a good reason, which was not reported at the time. Now comes the Daily Mail with more detail:

The private, from 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, was involved in a fierce firefight with insurgents in the Babaji area of central Helmand Province when the incident took place earlier last July.

The Nepalese soldier, who is in his early 20s, apparently made the decision to remove the head in a misunderstanding over the need for DNA evidence of the kill.

His unit had been told that they were seeking a ‘high value target,’ a Taliban commander, and that they must prove they had killed the right man.

The Gurkhas had intended to remove the Taliban leader’s body from the battlefield for identification purposes.

However, Army sources revealed at the time that he told investigators he had unsheathed his kukri – the symbolic weapon of the Gurkhas – after running out of ammunition.

‘Thankfully he has been returned to normal duties having had a question mark hanging over his future for some time,’ a military source told The Sun.

‘This particular Gurkha is good soldier and has a good record.’

The deceased, now headless, Talib turned out not to be the HVT the Gurkhas were hunting — that time, anyway. The final disposition of the Talib’s head is unknown.

Anyone for buzkashi?

What percentage of guns and ammo are used in murder?

Ingsoc Thoughtcrime policeWe wrote in one of our “when guns are outlawed” posts:

Here is a thought about guns. About 3.5 million guns are manufactured every year, and about 10 billion rounds of fixed small arms ammunition. The anti-gunners say 30,000 “gun deaths” occur annually (a figure they get to by lumping murders, justifiable homicides by police, ditto by citizens, and suicides — which alone are two thirds of “gun deaths” — into a single number). So less than 1% of one year’s production of guns is used in a “gun death”, and about 3 one-hundred-thousandths of a percent of one year’s civilian ammo production is used in a “gun death.” Change the denominator to homicides, and even using CDC’s padded number, the percentages drop to 0.31% and a vanishingly small 0.00011% — eleven hundred-thousandths of a percent. We’ll elaborate on this in a post in the next few days.

Herewith the promised elaboration.

There are few credible sources of gun crime data, and fewer still of production numbers; companies consider the latter to be proprietary information and the numbers they furnish to government agencies may not be complete or comprehensive. For example, Pitman-Robertson Act excise taxes are on value, not units, and encompass many non-firearms goods which are sometimes made by the same companies that make guns, so P-R tax information is worthless to us.

As an aside, some people have expressed concerns about Government purchases of small arms ammunition distorting the market. The statistics suggest that this is not happening. While total production figures vary from SAAMI and NSSF, and can only be considered estimates, Government purchases are made under public contracts. The 10-billion-round figure comes from press releases and media quotes from those sporting-and-self-defense-arms trade groups, and seems to be their go-to number in 2013.

Ammo StockpileThe US Government (mostly DOD but also civilian agencies) does buy a lot of small arms ammunition: about 160 million rounds a year. But that’s a drop in the 10-billion-round bucket. That means civilian, general public ammo purchases are about  9.84 billion. That number can always be rounded off — to 10 billion.

The Government statistics for gun homicides between the FBI and the CDC don’t agree. This may be due to different methods and purposes of data collection. The Bureau collects statistics from state and local jurisdictions for law enforcement purposes and publishes them (with many warnings about how to use and not to use them), but the CDC collects statistics primarily from medical epidemiological surveillance nets, for purposes of promoting gun control proposals. The FBi slices and dices their data several ways, the CDC obscures its sources and seems to inflate its firearms-related data.

There are about 13,000 unlawful homicides a year. Of these about half are with handguns and another rough 800 with other known firearms, and nearly 2,000 with unspecified firearms (which are probably handguns, but proof is absent). In all there are about 9,000 gun murders a year. There are, in addition, less than a thousand justifiable homicides (some 400 by police and 250-300 by citizens annually). CDC reports nearly 40,000 total suicides and 120,000 accidents for their most recent data set, 2010. CDC claims that 19,000 of the suicides and 11,000 homicides (CDC admits no difference between murders and justifiable homicide) were by firearm in 2010, their latest data. CDC also apparently blends firearms accidents into their homicide total; that and the justifiables might tend to explain why their data is higher than the FBI’s.

(This is where anti-gun groups get their number of “30,000 gun deaths,” plumping up the murder stats with accidental shootings and justifiable shootings by police and private citizens. In some jurisdictions, justifiable shootings amount to half or more of homicide totals).

Even taking the antis’ and the CDC’s dodgier statistics, and assuming that one gun and one cartridge was used per homicide, the numbers are vanishingly small.

percentages_of_guns_used_in_deaths

These tiny numbers are also inflated at least two other ways. The fraction or percentage we’re interested is Guns used in Killings divided by Guns in Circulation. First, this table overstates Guns used in Killings because it assumes 1 gun per 1 crime. Criminals often use one gun to commit multiple crimes. (Occasionally more than one gun is used in a single homicide, but that is very rare; whereas, consider the murder-suicide event, a depressingly common eventuality that usually yields two or more deaths from one gun). Therefore, the numerator of our fraction is seriously overstated. Conversely, we do not use Guns in Circulation here, but Annual Gun Production, which is a very poor proxy: guns are among the most durable goods extant, with a useful life of centuries; every year 3.5 million new ones are made, and perhaps a couple of hundred thousand destroyed. Credible estimates of guns in US circulation are in the 300 million range, but using that as the denominator of our fraction would have yielded numbers so small they would have to be expressed in scientific notation. Therefore, the denominator of our fraction is even more seriously understated.

Therefore, it follows that the very small numbers in the table, to the extent that they are inaccurate, are almost certainly inaccurate on the high side. We consider them a very generous upper bound to the likely real number of guns and ammunition used in homicide. We also believe that every attempt has been made to us the gun control establishment’s own data, however questionable, and the data most favorable to their argument. This should give you some idea of how weak their data actually are, and some understanding of why they prefer emotionally-based to factually-based argumentation.

One is reminded of the old lawyers’ aphorism: “If the law is on your side, pound on the law; if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts; if neither the law nor the facts are on the side, pound on the table.” The only thing that is missing to be a description of anti-gun messaging is the necessary coda: “For The Children™.”

Things to be thankful for this year

Freedom

Life and health

Friends and family

Turkeys. The farm-bred one that gave up its life for our lunch today, and the seven wild ones that walked across the backyard at about 0500 this morning, alike. Is it possible that even as Franklin was wrong about the eagle, he was right about the turkey?

Work to keep the mind engaged

…and all you guys and gals who drop in here.

What with the holiday, and a power outage, and this and that, it’s been slow lately. We have not forgotten you; indeed, we’re keenly aware that we’re neglecting you.

Colorado anti-gun doings

Free ColoradoEvie Hudak waddles off into the sunset…

With internal polling showing her recall a certainty, Colorado’s embattled anti-gun extremist Evie Hudak resigned to keep the seat in the Democrats’ corner. With an open seat, her party (in the person of anti-gun Governor John Hickenlooper) gets to appoint another anti-gun Democrat to hold the seat until he next general election; the recall would have put a pro-gun Republican in.

Hudak was notorious for abusing a rape victim who was trying to testify about how much she would have liked to have a chance to defend herself. Hudak’s message, essentially, was that a dead rapist was a terrible thing, but being raped was no big deal. Coloradan women should just grin and bear it. B!+c63s had it coming.

Hudak on DeckThis was not exactly what Coloradans wanted to hear, and Hudak’s seat was going the way of fellow anti-gunsters John Morse and Angela Giron, despite having (as they had) a huge advantage in funds from unaccountable out-of-state billionaires and pinky-ring union bosses.

In her resignation, she called her anti-gun positions, which in the past have included bans on handguns and all semi-auto weapons, “sensible.” At that point, her party’s only hope was to pull out the rulebooks and seek a technicality. It’s unclear what will happen to the hundreds of thousands donated to the Hudak counter-recall campaign by out-of-state gun-ban groups and trade unions.

So Coloradans male and female get raped once again, as Hudak punches out in the only way left to thwart her recall.

Remember “A Whole Lotta People for John Morse?”

That was the name of the Astroturf group supporting the late unlamented Colorado State Senate President, who was elected as a 2nd Amendment supporter only to turn on lawful gun-owners once safely in office. “A Whole Lotta People for John Morse” turned out to include one Wall Street billionaire, and not a whole lotta Morse’s nominal constituents, who turned him out of office convincingly in a September recall. Morse has resurfaced as the head of an “anti-gun group” that turns out to be just the next step in his evolution as a hireling of Bloomberg.

Some group. Mike and all his Benjamins.

Prostitution is illegal in Colorado, but there’s probably an exception for politicians. Most laws, most places, theyr’e careful to put one in.

Will the Bloomberg entity for which Morse is the figurehead now hire Evie Hudak, possibly the only pro-rapist politician in American history?

Exit Thought

Recalls have been very rare in Colorado history. This year, three have been attempted, all of politicians who made gun bans their signature issue, and all three politicians have been ousted, although one did frustrate her would-be hangmen with an act of political seppuku.

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners’ Dudley Brown says: “This historic event should put every gun-grabber in the Capitol on notice for the 2014 Elections.” He’s focused on Colorado, naturally, but Hudak’s head joining Morse’s and Giron’s on the metaphorical pike is going to terrify a lot of people across America, people for whom the greatest terror in the world is being out of office.

Does it bother anybody that such people are terrified?

Update

(The Colorado Statesman, a near-moribund Democratic weekly, has its spin here).

When is 42 Smaller than 26? When it’s a Glock!

Matt at Jerking the Trigger has an interesting analysis of a Glock teaser:

I went all CSI on the teaser photo and adjusted the brightness and contrast of the image (below). You can see that the entire outline of a pistol is visible and, if it is to scale with the Zippo lighter shown, it would be roughly the size of other compact, polymer frames .380s on the market like the Ruger LCP and S&W Bodyguard.

Here’s Matt’s adjusted image. You could go Read The Whole Thing™ to see the before and after versions, and much more informed specularion (including in the comments).

Glock-G42-Tease-Adjusted

A Glock 42 that’s a .380 would be big news. A Glock that’s a .380-sized 9mm would be even bigger news. “January” is the least surprising time for a new-gun introduction: the 2014 SHOT Show will run from from January 14-17 at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. In fact, Glock has been letting the community know that the G41 and G42 are coming at the show.

A guy who attended Glock Armorer recert recently posted the following:

I was doing some ordering for the shop this evening, and found that the new models are already in our distributor’s system.

One model will be the Glock 41. SKU numbers are PG4130101 and PG4130103, which indicate adjustable sights, and a low-cap and hi-cap version. The Glock 41 is more expensive than any of Glock’s other pistols to date; based on the wholesale cost I’m seeing, street price will be $779.95 at my shop. Given that, my official guess is that the new Glock Model 41 is going to be an optics-ready, competition-oriented pistol to compete with the S&W M&P CORE and FNH-USA FNX-45 Tactical.

The other model will be the Glock 42. SKU number is UI4250201, which indicates US-made, fixed sights and a low-capacity (10 or less) magazine. Wholesale price on this is only slightly above the Gen3 models, so street price should be $539.95. I think this is a new single stack .380 or 9mm of some sort.

For those of you not retail-savvy. SKU or “stock keeping unit” is the basic unit of inventory in modern retail informatics. It means the item in its box as will be delivered to a retail customer. What this guy has done is parse the Glock SKUs, comparing them to existing models’ numbers.

Downthread in the same discussion, someone has this alleged data pull:

GLOCK UI4250201 GLOCK 42FS 380ACP 3.26″ FS 764503910616 0 $352.00 $399.00

And one retailer already has this up, although without a picture.

GLOCK 41 GEN 4 45ACP 5.3 AS 13RD GLOCK PG4130103  $645.00 $774.99

 

Glock has been hinting at a competition-ready pistol for some time. If they’ve been hinting at a compact carry Glock, we haven’t seen the hints, but the customers have been bellowing their desire for such for many years now.

If the price of $399 retail and ~$350 street is remotely correct, a number of pocket pistol manufacturers just got a jolt of ice water to the heart.