Flint

Tanqueray Malacca Gin

Bianca Beauchamp

Ovila

Duel after the Masquerade

Perspective

Ace of Aces

Erich Alfred Hartmann

Self Explanitory

Battle of Trafalgar 1805

H&K MP-5 (Informative & Funny)

Link to Article on the Lead-out Room

 

H&K MP-5 Sub-machinegun: Famous but not Friendly

 

The MP-5 was the go to submachine gun of the cold war.  It was a Hollywood chick magnet and the sex symbol of a generation.  Where it came from and where it went is a twisted tale of terrorism and ballistics.

This story begins as Nazi Germany ends, the team with the prettiest uniforms lost, due in no small part to their sophisticated weapons which they could not mass produce.  In 1949 Heckler & Koch (the Germans pronounce it Heckler and  Cock.  They never did figure out why Americans find that funny) was founded by engineers Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch, and Alex Seidel formerly of the Mauser rifle company.  I never could find out why Seidel didn’t get his name on the sign.   H&K made machine tools, sewing machine parts, and gauges and dreamed of the day they would again make guns.

After Germany’s World War Two development of the original Assault Rifle, the StG44 and the more advanced StG45,  various German engineers continued refining the concept in France and Spain.  In 1956, H&K sold the Spanish model B CETME design to the Bundeswehr (German Federal Army).  They called it the G-3. During the 1960’s in an interesting reverse of the way the StG44 concept started as a submachine gun and became the first assault rifle, H&K took the G-3, chambered it in 9mm and shrunk it into a submachine gun, warts and all.

In the 60’s almost all sub-guns fired from the open bolt. This means that the bolt stayed open and when the trigger was pulled, the bolt slammed forward shifting the weight and making precision fire difficult. The MAC-10, Uzi,Sten gun, MP38 and the M-3 Grease Gun all fired from the open bolt.
The birth of modern counter terrorist units coincided with the MP-5’s development. It was reliable and fired precisely from the closed bolt. America’s Delta Force started with the M-3 and quickly figured out they were unsuited for hostage rescue.  After the British  SAS had their pictures go around the world holding MP-5s at the Iranian Embassy, it became a legend.

The things I am about to tell you may seem strange. I did not learn them on the internet. I learned them at H&K MP-5 Instructor School and Armorer School. I do not have an imagination colorful enough to make this up.

Let’s talk about ergonomics. Why is the original MP-5 impossible to use left-handed? In the German Army, it was forbidden to shoot left-handed. Why is the selector/safety impossible to manipulate with the right hand? The “master grip” of the right hand must never shift. You use the left hand to reach over the gun and manipulate the selector. You put it on auto when you cross the border and put it on safe after the enemy’s capital is captured.

The original MP-5 had a fixed stock. This stock sloped down to put the sights at eye level. This was a solid easy-to-shoot design. Later came a collapsible stock. This stock was designed to shoot in a rifle stance. It is long and when it is extended into its single length, it wobbles. The collapsible stock is higher than the fixed stock. A cheek weld is difficult and to put your eye behind the sights requires you to fold your face around the stock. When you shoot it, you get the sensation of being hit in the face with a piece of rebar.

 

I took our team guns and had our armorers cut an extra notch into the collapsible stock, so the length of pull would fit when we were wearing body armor. I actually measured the pull for each man to an optimal custom length like a fine English shotgun. This had the additional benefit of removing that irritating wobble. When they noticed the rough cuts in my short stock in the MP-5 Armorers class, they looked at me as if I had just burned a Koran. They were nearly apoplectic and told me such modifications were unnecessary and forbidden. (That would sound better in the original German “Verbotten”).

 

The British SAS found the stock so worthless that they shot with it collapsed and just pushed the gun into the sling. It was the only way they could figure out how to shoot the MP-5 with a gas mask.

 

Magazine changes; now there is a story in itself. Apparently, Europeans don’t drop magazines. One of my mentors was involved in bringing the Sig handgun to the Arizona Department of Public Safety to replace their revolvers. The magazine base plates were popping off. This seemed so bizarre to the Sig that they flew an engineer to Arizona to investigate. This malfunction had never before been observed. With deft Teutonic insight, he quickly determined the problem. He angrily called back home and said “Mien Gott, they drop the magazines on the ground!”

 

I guess in Europe, human life is cheap and magazines are scarce and valuable. Having paid retail for H&K magazines, I can understand some of that. Sooo, let’s get started. The first thing you have to do is figure out if the magazine is empty. There is no bolt hold open on the MP-5. When I asked one of my H&K instructors about this, he sneered and said “You don’t want your enemy to know when your gun is empty.” I replied, “I think at least one of us should know.”

 

The first step in the MP-5 reload; guess your gun is empty. You never know for sure until the hammer drops on an empty chamber. Now we have to reach forward and pull the cocking handle back and lock it to the rear. On the typical reload, this launches a live round on to the ground. I guess ammo is plentiful in Europe too. Then you grab the magazine and hit the flapper with your thumb. This design forces you to grab the magazine.

At this point, you may as well retain the magazine because this is not a quick process and hey, those are some pricey mags. The 30 round mags hold 31 rounds. This is a mixed blessing. They will not load under a closed bolt with more than 30 rounds. If you attempt to cheat the H&K design features and tactical reload on a closed bolt, you are flirting with disaster. You may have an empty chamber. You may not be able to insert the mag if you have 31 rounds. Once you get a new mag in position, you lock it in, slap the cocking handle, allowing the bolt to go forward, chambering a round.
You may not want to try this under pressure without extensive practice.

H&K makes a mag clamp that holds two magazines together. They are expensive. I found that if I put both mags pointed up, it shifted my arm out disrupting my tight CQB shooting position. When the mags are both up, you shift it quickly to the right and reload. Since you have to retain the mag anyway, it is a good idea. I put one up and one down so that the extra magazine remained on the left side of the gun.

When I showed up for the MP-5 instructor class, my H&K instructor told me gently (read this with a German accent) “Your magazine is upside down.” I explained my situation and my solution. I had been carrying the MP-5 as a duty gun for 3 years at that point. He smiled as though speaking to a moron. He said (again with the accent)  “How do you reload?” I dropped the mag, rotated the gun 90% to the right, the mag 90% to the left and reloaded. “Like this” I said. He looked at me as though I had just killed a kitten. After several seconds, he said “Do not do that here” and walked away. I was not the honor graduate of the class.

Disassembly is not too difficult. It is harder than an AK and easier than an M-4. It takes a bit of head scratching to figure out the delayed roller blow back system. One of the things I found endearing about the fixed stock was the two holes in it. The take down pins are stored in these holes when the gun is disassembled. How orderly!

The trigger is OK. The original SEF trigger group is simple and rugged. (So called because the markings are literally SEF; in German this stands for Safe, One, Fire) Once the American DEA started buying H&K guns, things changed, they wanted to buy a 3-round burst rather than teach trigger control.  Those genius bastards at Oberndorf crammed three times as many parts into the same space and invented a working 3 round burst which, unlike the Colt M-4, resets, so every burst is 3 rounds. It is a masterpiece of the engineering like those which lost WWII.

The bad news. They had to send the trigger groups back to Oberndorf for repair because they couldn’t explain it in English. They later corrected this. This is also when the pictographs (pictures of rounds next to the selector) appeared. Not only could non-Germans figure it out, even illiterates could shoot it!

The DEA contract guns had a flash hider, night sights, ambidextrous selector (which can equally not be manipulated by either hand) and an ambidextrous sling. This sling hangs the gun from the pin that holds the stock on the gun. If the bolt loosens up, the gun will disassemble itself. That is some high adventure stuff right there.

The MP-5 is pretty reliable. It will shoot dirty but it does not tolerate debris in the locking cam detents. There is one part that has to be replaced routinely, the extractor spring.  It is made from a steel paper clip that is plated in copper and it just breaks after a while.  I have read that NASA (yes that NASA) security has one MP-5 they have logged over 1 million rounds through. It is so over-designed I have no difficulty believing this.

The  most common wear or breakage parts on the MP-5 are the copper colored extractor springs & the roller retainer. With that said, you still should get thousands of rounds use from both items before needing to replace either item. All in all the MP-5 is a super robust firearm with very little maintenance required.

Zeroing? There is a special sight tool, known in the field as “the $75 Phillips head screwdriver.” This device has a Phillips head which adjusts windage, and a two-horned contraption which depresses two detents to adjust elevation.

This goes back to another quaint European idea. Shooters shouldn’t adjust the sights. Expert craftsmen in Obendorf adjusted those sights; you will just screw it up. The sight tool is designed to PREVENT the adjustment of sights unless you pay the toll. There is a rotating drum with different size apertures. These don’t change the point of impact; they just provide different amounts of light in.

 

Accuracy? It is difficult to hit a head at 100 meters. Out to 25 meters it is surgical. There are optics mounts which grip the lugs on the MP-5 receiver. A dot sight on one of these mounts goes a long way towards making the collapsible stock eye relief work.

The MP-5K (K=Kurtz, German for ‘short’) is a specialized variant which is short. Without a stock, it is hard to shoot and the only advantage it has over a pistol is the 30 round mag.

 

The coolest thing H&K ever did was build a special briefcase designed to shoot the MP-5K. It even caught the brass! The Personal Defense Weapon (PDW) put a stock on it and gave aircrews some full auto capability that strapped to a leg. If I was a downed pilot, I would probably shoot one at a time.

The MP-5 SD (SD = Schalldämpfer, German for “sound suppressor”) is quiet with a CDI (Chicks Dig It) factor off the scale. There is, however, an ugly secret. In 1989, you could find these low signature babies in the arms rooms of every elite unit in America.
On December 20th, 1989, all of that changed.

During the early hours of Operation Just Cause in Panama, some of these units shot PEOPLE with these guns. You see, the barrel on the MP-5 SD is short and it has holes in it. It takes most 9mm rounds below the speed of sound. This is why it is quiet. This is why it is non-lethal. Shooting paper, it makes terrifying rips and tears.

After shooting people with poor results, the M-4 became America’s sweetheart and the MP-5 became the retro gun favored by people who don’t understand physics.

While it is no longer the gun of choice on the battlefield, the MP-5 is a piece of history and a very reliable 9mm platform.  Americans can still get these in all flavors from HK-94 to MP-5SD as well as G-3 clones.



Scouts' Honor

 By Kathleen Arnn

Books Discussed in this Essay:
The Official Handbook for Boys, 1st Edition
Boy Scouts' Handbook, 12th Edition

The Boy Scouts of America celebrated their hundredth anniversary last year, and this year is the centennial of The Handbook for Boys, their first official manual. Comparing it with the current edition of the handbook—the 12th, published in 2009—shows that the small outpost of civilization manned by the Scouts holds on bravely in America. But decades of aggressive political correctness have had their effect, and the Scouts have lost some of the confident American boyishness that loves heroes and makes for heroes. This is too bad for the more than 3 million boys enrolled in the Scouts today, and for the society in which they will grow up to become men.

The Original Handbook

The Boy Scouts were founded in Britain in 1907 by Robert Baden-Powell, a lieutenant-general in the British army who authored a series of military training manuals, including one for boys. Scouting was made American in 1910, and since 1911 the Boy Scout Handbook has accompanied every Scout as he ascends in rank, providing "advice in practical methods, as well as inspiring information." By the time he reaches Eagle Scout, a Scout's handbook is dog-eared and well worn, his achievements and camping trips logged in the back.

The first edition of the handbook is beautifully written and endless fun to read. It bursts with information, featuring chapters on Scoutcraft; Woodcraft; Campcraft; Tracks, Trailing, and Signaling; Health and Endurance; Chivalry; First Aid and Life Saving; Games and Athletic Standards; and Patriotism and Citizenship. Teaching through stories and examples, it is an invitation to challenge and adventure. Reading it makes you think it no accident that 11 of the 12 men who have walked on the moon were Scouts. "Do you love the woods?" asks Chief Scout Ernest Thompson Seton at the beginning of the handbook. "Do you desire the knowledge to help the wounded quickly, and to make yourself cool and self-reliant in an emergency?" In the chapter on Scoutcraft you learn that the pioneers and the military "scouts of old...left everything behind them, comfort and peace, in order to push forward into the wilderness beyond," and the Boy Scouts must do the same.

The early pages of the 1911 handbook explain that a Scout must learn "riding, swimming, tramping, trailing, photography, first aid, camping, [and] handicraft," and nearly two thirds of the manual is devoted to teaching these outdoor skills. There are diagrams showing 15 or 20 different knots; how to make a bow and arrow; Morse, Myer, and Semaphore code; the difference between dog, cat, and muskrat tracks; the proper method for paddling a canoe; the Pleiades; and the fireman's lift. The manual's chapter on First Aid and Life Saving covers all manner of crises, including the usual burns, scrapes, and scalds, but also snake bite, frost bite, runaway horses, and mad dogs: "The first thing to do is kill the mad dog at once...."

Being a Scout means camping, hiking, and paddling canoes, but Scouts must learn "Life-craft as well as Wood-craft," moral virtue and patriotism along with knowledge of the outdoors. In the original handbook, Scouts' honor is explicitly traced back to the chivalry of the ancient knights. The Pilgrims and the American pioneers carried this knightly virtue to America, and the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) have taken up their standard. Honor, as the handbook explains, is sacred to a Scout: It "will not permit of anything but the highest and the best and the manliest." "A good Scout must be chivalrous," it tells us:

[H]e should be as manly as the knights or pioneers of old. He should be unselfish. He should show courage. He must do his duty. He should show benevolence and thrift. He should be loyal to his country. He should be obedient to his parents, and show respect to those who are his superiors. He should be very courteous to women. One of his obligations is to do a good turn every day to some one.

The handbook doesn't shrink from invoking shame to motivate Scouts. For example, under Courage: "It is horrible to be a coward. It is weak to yield to fear and heroic to face danger without flinching." There are examples, like the dying Indian who "faced death with a grim smile upon his lips and sang his own death song" and the cowardly knight who fled the battle of Agincourt, much to the disappointment of his lady at home. The original handbook teaches through heroes, providing Scouts with a host of manly examples to emulate. Above all, it cultivates spiritedness, teaching Scouts to defend their honor, their friends, and their country like the great men of the past who "were accustomed to take chances with death" for the sake of the things they loved.

The original handbook assumes that one must know something about the United States to be a citizen of it. The chapter on Patriotism and Citizenship is long and impressive. Several pages detail the first singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, the meaning of the stars and stripes, and rules for flying, folding, and retiring the flag. Much of the chapter is a lesson in American history, covering the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the gradual conquest of the frontier.

We learn about America's great moments through the heroes who lived them: George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, Betsy Ross, Johnny Appleseed, and most of all, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is a hero among heroes, a central figure in the handbook's discussions of patriotism and of virtue. He is "in heart, brain, and character, not only one of our greatest Americans, but one of the world's greatest men." The manual relays the whole story of his life, from his lowly beginnings that taught him the value of hard work, to his education, and to his presidency and untimely death ("the emancipator of the slave, the friend of the whole people and the savior of our country died, a martyr to the cause of freedom.") This discussion ends with the closing paragraph of the Second Inaugural, "words with which every boy should be familiar, voicing as they do the exalted spirit of a great and good man."

After the history comes a lesson in American government, covering the role of the president, congress, and the courts; majority rule; the difference between local, state, and federal governments; and property rights. The civics lesson is mostly reliable, though written as it was at the height of American Progressivism, it shows some Progressive tendencies, for example in a brief discussion of trust-busting. But it is largely the manly and independent Progressivism of Teddy Roosevelt, an ardent supporter of the BSA and its first and only Chief Scout Citizen. Further along on the Progressive highway, the new handbook suffers from the influence of a cultural liberalism that goes much deeper and is not nearly so benign.

The New Handbook

The Boy Scouts of America have endured their share of criticism over the years, to be sure. Before the First World War, they were accused of being militaristic. More recently, they have been attacked for excluding girls, for insisting that belief in God (any god) is a requirement of citizenship, and especially for being anti-homosexual. This last indictment has taken the BSA all the way to the Supreme Court; in Boy Scouts v. Dale (2000), the Court upheld the right of the organization, as a voluntary association, to refuse to hire homosexual scoutmasters. Criticism on this theme has continued since the ruling, and seems to have gotten even nastier in the ensuing decade. The Boy Scouts today bear the scars of these attacks, and their latest handbook reveals that they have succumbed in some ways to these relentless demands for political correctness.

The new handbook retains the traditional focus on the outdoors, with much of the same information on how to camp, hike, fish, sail, and fend for oneself in the wilderness. But its discussions of these things have been pared down and lack the verve, punch, and adventurous spirit—the manliness—of the original handbook. Whereas the first edition imparts tough-minded common sense, the 12th edition brims with cautionary tales and safety checklists, emphasizing timidity rather than adventure. The front cover contains a pull-out manual for parents on How to Protect your Children from Child Abuse. It's as if the first thought our boys should have is that they are potential victims.

The old handbook takes a soldierly approach to health and nutrition that sounds amusing to our 21st-century ears ("a boy ought to take a good soap bath at least twice a week"; "the average boy ought to have and usually does have an appetite like an ostrich.") But one has to admit that its advice is generally sound. The new handbook, concerned and cautious, includes diagrams of the food pyramid and a lesson on how to read nutrition labels. Several pages of the nutrition chapter are devoted to the dangers of smoking and drinking, including page-long infographics on how to resist peer pressure and what will happen to your lungs if you smoke. The Introduction boasts that this is the first green edition of the handbook, printed on recycled paper.
Its discussions of character and of citizenship are very different, too. Character formation is still a top priority for the BSA, but the latest handbook has largely replaced the traditional language of virtue with the progressive language of leadership, and this is not an improvement. The chapter on Chivalry has been completely removed, and the chapter on Leadership, which is presumably meant to replace it, has little to say about moral virtue beyond the Scout Oath and Law. Instead, it presents the EDGE method of teaching (explain, demonstrate, guide, and enable), describes the difference between short term and long term goals, and lists tips for using the internet to become a leader in your community. These may be tools of leadership; but tools are useless or worse in the hands of the wrong people and, compared to the original, the new handbook does little to explain how not to be the wrong kind.

Boy Scouts are still taught to follow their consciences: do the right thing, even though it may be difficult, which is sensible advice as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough. The old handbook treated the subject as if the conscience needed to be formed before it could be followed. Scouts needed to be habituated to the virtues through study and practice, dutifully doing the right thing until it became second nature. This was a stern discipline. Many would not succeed at it; those who did could be proud.
Today, there is a different approach to leadership: "success begins with a vision—picturing yourself where you want to be." And because anyone can have a vision, anyone can be a leader. "You are a collection of wonderful talents, ideas, and experiences," the new handbook's Leadership chapter begins. "What do you want your future to look like tomorrow?"

The old handbook spoke proudly of the chivalric tradition; the new apologizes for the antiquated example of the knights. It sandwiches a few cursory paragraphs on moral virtue between a lengthy discussion of drugs and alcohol and a section on sexual responsibility. Moral choices are reduced to healthy choices. Doing the courageous thing becomes equivalent to refusing a cigarette at a party.

Instead of an exciting chapter on Patriotism and Citizenship, the handbook now offers a perfunctory discussion, re-titled just "Citizenship." In the new handbook Scouts are citizens of their country, but also of the world. There are the same detailed instructions for folding and flying the flag, but the accompanying history lesson has been shortened and stripped of its vividness. There are, by my count, four heroes in the book. They are the founders of Scouting: British founder Robert Baden Powell, the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, outdoorsman Daniel Carter Beard, and James E. West, who led the BSA through its first 30 years. Each gets a sentence and a picture. American heroes, so numerous and colorful in the original handbook, are almost absent. Washington and Lincoln are each mentioned one time. Here is their sentence: "We remember the sacrifices and achievements of Americans with federal holidays, including observances of the birthdays of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."

Private associations like the Boy Scouts are precious nurseries of civic virtue, all the more precious because our public institutions have become so incapable of bolstering our democracy and teaching our citizens to make the most of their freedom. The first American Boy Scouts imagined themselves as unofficial defenders of the nation and the good things in it. Like the army scouts, a Boy Scout belonged "on the danger line...or at the outposts, protecting those of his company who confide in his care." Now it is the Boy Scouts themselves who are in danger.

Robert Mazzuca, the Chief Scout Executive of the BSA, has been quoted as saying that the organization is suffering from "a little arthritis" but is making efforts to modernize. If this means using Gore-tex boots on hikes and ripstop nylon tents instead of canvas, the Boy Scouts may be all right. If it means teaching leadership rather than moral virtue, and timidity rather than manliness, that's another story entirely—one of obtuseness, trendiness, and decline.

Yet even today, all Boy Scouts swear the Scout Oath: "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." The oath is in spirit and in substance essentially the same as the oath Scouts took a hundred years ago. In this and in many other ways today's Boy Scouts are as good as ever, and better than their handbook. But their handbook suggests what their leadership believes, and foreshadows what they may become.

The Free Market Is a Beautiful Thing

The Free Market Is a Beautiful Thing

Relaxation

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions

Think about that.

Your (Or the politicians) intentions are good.  He/she wants to help and then, because their intentions are good and just they decide to do something that is evil indeed.  They pass a law which invariable takes away a freedom.  Those freedoms then are eroded away by further laws which use the first as a basis and an argument.

The founders of the United States knew this and formed a Republic.  Note a Republic is NOT a Democracy as everyone in the media would like you to believe, and that most US citizens are blindly unaware of.  The Government should exist to protect its citizens from an external threat and to enforce an equal legal system for its citizens to work out differences.  It should also enforce the peoples rights and limit the powers of government as the constitution states.

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."

-Patrick Henry

It seems we are beyond that now.  We refuse to learn from history, we refuse to accept the reality and refuse to acknowledge the evils and prefer to live in our own self made utopia which is doomed to fail.

Foil

Checkmate. Lew Horton S&W 29-10

Wellington's Squares at Waterloo

View Wine Bar & Kitchen

http://www.viewwinebar.com/

Spring Break

The Difference