Free Republic

The ancient Romans had a saying. Si vis pacem, para bellum—“If you want peace, prepare for war.” George Luger took that statement seriously. The result was a pistol known for its accuracy, the ammunition it introduced to the militaries of the world and the evil reputation it later gained. The P08 nine-millimeter Parabellum—or Luger—pistol was the brainchild of its namesake inventor, and it served Germany faithfully during both world wars. Often associated with the Nazi regime, it was the handgun of the Kaiser’s Soldaten before Hitler took power. Yet it’s more closely associated with the latter. If you watch a...

Way before 3-D printers were around, gun bans have been circumvented by the slapping-together of crude-yet-effective weapons. Yet another reason 'gun control' will never control anything, except perhaps the innocent citizenry made to be sitting ducks by unjustified obstacles to legitimate firearm ownership/supply. Even if too stoopid to make weapons themselves, all street criminals will surely find a HUGE black market in the wake of any US gun grabs or bans instituted by the vile, lawless Obama regime. The Left loves to preach how 'we could never deport 30M Mexicans'... I'd like to hear how they plan to corral 300M guns. And...

Militias in Libya have captured chemical weapons from storage areas in southern and central parts of the country, the Arab media reported on Saturday. “Unfortunately [chemical weapons] exist in locations known to the militias, who have seized large amounts of them to use in their war against the [Libyan] army,” a Libyan military official told the London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat. The former regime of Muammar Gaddafi had held the chemical weapons and the official warned that Islamic State could obtain the chemicals, which include mustard gas and the nerve agent Sarin. “Before his death, Gaddafi left approximately one thousand cubic...

HEADQUARTERS MARINE CORPS, WASHINGTON — The Marine Security Force left the American embassy in Yemen for the movement to the airfield as part of the "ordered departure" with only personal weapons. All crew served weapons were destroyed at the embassy prior to movement. None of them were 'handed over' in any way to anyone. The destruction of weapons at the embassy and the airport was carried out in accordance with an approved destruction plan. Upon arrival at the airfield, all personal weapons were rendered inoperable in accordance with advance planning. Specifically, each bolt was removed from its weapons body and...

In the 1968 Star Trek episode Bread and Circuses, Capt. James Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. Leonard McCoy beam down to Planet 892-IV, a parallel to Earth in almost every way—except Rome never fell. The aliens capture the Enterprise’s familiar trio. Kirk has a predictable romantic encounter. There are televised gladiatorial games that pit the crew against sword-wielding warriors named Flavius and Achilles. The episode even lampoons the cutthroat competition between television broadcasters and their search for ratings. When one of the gladiators refuses to fight with his usual vigor, the master of the games snarls, “You bring this network’s...

U.S. officials consider removing Castro regime from terror listU.S. officials are considering removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, even as Cuban allies continue to launch military attacks and trade for weapons. As part of President Barack Obama’s announcement in December that he would normalize relations with Cuba, Obama instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to review Cuba’s terror designation and issue a report in six months. While reports indicate that the administration is leaning toward removing Cuba from the terror list, such an action would conflict with the Cuban regime’s support for Colombian militants, Iran, and...

Ambassador David Hale said the equipment includes more than 70 M198 howitzers and over 26 million rounds of ammunition and artillery "of all shapes and sizes, including heavy artillery." Islamic extremists have launched several attacks on Lebanese troops over the past months in areas near the Syrian border, killing and wounding scores of troops. The most serious attack occurred in August, when members of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State group captured two dozen Lebanese soldiers. They have killed four of them and still hold the rest. Lebanese and American officials attended a handover ceremony Sunday at Beirut's...

<p>KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) - Police in Jamaica say authorities have seized 3,300 missile warheads and a machine to make missiles and bullets.</p> <p>Deputy Police Superintendent Steve Brown said Friday that custom officials discovered the weapons late Thursday aboard a ship at Kingston Wharf.</p>

In 2002, former British Army soldier Colin Berry was in Afghanistan working as an agent for MI6, the United Kingdom’s secret intelligence service. Berry’s mission was to buy as many Stinger and Blowpipe man-portable surface-to-air missiles as he could before they wound up in Al Qaeda’s arsenal. Western government had given the weapons to the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s to help them shoot down Soviet attack helicopters. But now governments worried the SAMs, in terrorists’ hands, could shoot down civilian airliners.

On Jan. 29, 1945, First Sgt. Leonard Funk, Jr. faced a determined German army officer ready to kill him with a pistol. Armed with a Thompson M1A1 submachine gun, the U.S. Army paratrooper had just led an assault against 15 houses occupied by German troops in Holzheim, Belgium. It was part of an operation by the 82nd Airborne Division to clear German soldiers from the area following the Battle of the Bulge. Leading a makeshift headquarters platoon of clerks, Funk and his unit captured 30 prisoners. He left them with several dozen more prisoners—under guard—and returned to the fight. While...

The U.S. Navy’s surface fleet is getting more aggressive, with new tactics and weapons. The United States Navy plans to re-organize and re-equip its surface fleet by grouping ships into small surface action groups and increasing the number of anti-ship weapons on more platforms. The U.S. Navy calls this tactical shift “distributed lethality.” Breaking Defense quotes, Rear Admiral Peter Fanta and his rough summary of the concept of “distributed lethality”: “If it floats, it fights, that’s ‘distributed lethality’ (…) Make every cruiser, destroyer, amphib, LCS, a thorn in somebody else’s side.” Fanta, the director for Surface Warfare on the Navy...

In 1999, the Indian Army fought a three-month-long undeclared war with Pakistan. It was also the combat debut of India’s new Insas battle rifle. The Insas is a very bad rifle. During the conflict—waged over the disputed and mountainous Kargil district in the province of Kashmir—the Indian troops’ rifles jammed up, and their cheap, 20-round plastic magazines cracked in the cold weather.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Accused Chinatown gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow has refused to sign on to a protective order that will allow defense attorneys to receive evidence from federal prosecutors, including audio recordings and video surveillance, from a five-year undercover investigation that led to his arrest, and the arrest of 26 others in March. Attorneys for the federal government on Thursday filed a motion to compel Chow to cooperate, noting that nearly all the other defendants have signed on, and only one other defendant has not signed because of a likely substitution of counsel in the near future. According...

Shocking enough are the allegations that a long-perceived unassuming state senator tried brokering an international arms deal with military-style rifles and rocket launchers, but Leland Yee may have narrowly escaped an even more ominous label: supporter of terrorism. Yee, whose arrest after an FBI undercover sting shook the California political world last week, would likely have been charged with aiding terrorists if not for a bureaucratic label missing from the militant Filipino group that he is accused of sourcing for an international arms deal, counterterrorism experts told this newspaper. His ties to the group, whose leader has said he personally...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The California State Senate held an "ethics refresher course" for its members after federal indictments were issued against two senators and a third was convicted. Senate leaders are hoping to regain the public's trust. The purpose of the course is to teach members and their staffs to avoid potentially compromising situations. It's the latest in a series of moves by senate leaders aimed at putting political distance between them and their colleagues facing criminal charges. The leader of California's state senate stopped all regular business on Wednesday so everyone could go "back to school" in a...

**SNIP** The San Francisco Democrat was a fairly high-profile member of the California Legislature, but not a flamboyant one or one who was the subject of gossip and rumor. And that’s probably why the news in March landed with such a bombshell, when the 66-year old former psychologist was arrested and charged with not only corruption, but also with allegedly participating in a scheme to smuggle illegal weapons into the United States. The irony was impossible to miss: gun trafficking charges against a Democrat who made a name for himself as a fierce advocate of gun control, a politician who...

According to some analysts, the development of hypersonic weapons creates the conditions for a new arms race, and could risk nuclear escalation. Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons? The United States is building hypersonics for two reasons. First, we want to kill people fast, without the messy danger of a global thermonuclear war. Second, we want to be able to punch through the defensive systems of peer competitors.

DARPA's Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program conducted the first successful live-fire tests demonstrating in-flight guidance of .50-caliber bullets in the spring of 2014. This video shows EXACTO rounds maneuvering in flight to hit targets that are offset from where the sniper rifle is initially aimed. EXACTO's specially designed ammunition and real-time optical guidance system help track and direct projectiles to their targets by compensating for weather, wind, target movement and other factors that could impede successful aim. The EXACTO program is developing new approaches and advanced capabilities to improve the range and accuracy of sniper systems beyond the current...

'We Still Have More Work To Do'' The State Department's Rose Gottemoeller, under secretary for arms control and international security, spoke at the Brookings Institution Thursday where she reaffirmed the United States' "unassailable" commitment to putting the nuclear weapons genie back in the bottle. Gottemoeller told the attendees at the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative-sponsored event that "the U.S. commitment to achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons is unassailable." She went on to note that the nation's stockpile of active weapons is down 85 percent from maximum cold war levels, falling to 4,804 in 2013...

Stockholm (AFP) - Sales by Russian arms manufacturers continue to expand thanks to Moscow's investments despite a downturn in global defence spending, a Stockholm-based think-tank said Monday. "The remarkable increases in Russian companies' arms sales in both 2012 and 2013 are in large part due to uninterrupted investments in military procurement by the Russian government during the 2000s," said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Sales by Russian-based arms firms grew by 20 percent in 2013, according to SIPRI. However, figures for the 100 biggest arms-dealing nations excluding China declined for the third year...