Posted on 08/04/2012 5:40:26 AM PDT by marktwain
In 1989, I came close — we’ll never know how close — to shooting a producer and cameraman with a TEC-9 assault weapon.
We were at a suburban gun range with a law-enforcement agent doing a story on how semiautomatic weapons can be illegally modified into automatic weapons, making them deadlier still.
The gun I was given to fire was a fully automatic TEC-9 pistol with a magazine of bullets. The target was straight ahead. My crew was far off to the right and safely — or so we all thought — out of the way.
But with one trigger pull, the weapon took control. My right arm jolted in an arc upward and to the right.
My crew, with lightning speed, dropped to the ground. The whole thing took just seconds.
Terrified?
We all were.
You could argue that’s what happens when an inexperienced person handles an assault weapon.
Tom Ahern, senior special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Chicago and an expert marksman, would tell you otherwise.
“I’ve been shooting for 32 years,” he said by phone Thursday. “If I fired a fully automatic TEC-9 one-handed, it could jump up or down, right or left . . . the gun could flutter . . . and you could dump a 50-round clip in under five seconds. It’s going to spray all over the place.”
And holding it with both hands, he said, won’t significantly improve accuracy.
Why are we talking about this?
Because on the streets of Chicago, there are all kinds of guns — legal and illegal. And all kinds of people getting shot — intended victims plus people who end up as the collateral damage of a barrage of bullets.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
Far off to the rear is the safest place to be!!
When I was about 8 or so I went shooting with my grandpa and a couple of uncles. I kept begging to shoot Grandpa’s shotgun so he finally relented. They set me on the hood of the car and showed me how to hold it, etc. Knocked me backwards off the car and thought I had broke my shoulder. lol I never asked to shoot that gun again.
Don’t you just love it when a member of the MSM reports to the entire world they are in FACT an idiot.
Mz Marin fails to identify the organization of the “law enforcement agent” which set up the Tec-9 demo. She makes no mention of being taught even basic gun safety procedures nor of shooting any semi-automatic pistol to get a feel for recoil, noise, etc. Sounds as if she was handed the full auto conversion Tec-9 and told to point and yank the trigger. Don’t know if the “LEO” was ATF or local but his agenda is quite clear. And he found the perfect willing dupe to broadcast it.
Bet they had some great anti-gun footage of panic at the range, people eating dirt, lots of noise, and some “holy s***” screams”, as well her shaky frightened voice over. Perfect theater.
From her lead, it sounds as if the “LEO” ran through quick DIY conversion instructions. ‘See how easy it easy, any fool can do this.”. And by extension implying that all semi-auto handguns can be modified in similar fashion.
And the closer comes at the end after presenting the model victim.
“No gun was recovered, so we don?t know if it was an assault weapon that blew a hole in their lives. But what we do know is that, as a category of gun, assault weapons serve neither sporting nor marksmanship purposes.
Assault weapons just spray death.”
See proof doesn’t matter, ‘it’s the seriousness [sic] of the charge that matters.”
The problem is that even in America, a large minority do not know enough to know that the reporter is an idiot, and in the rest of the world, a large majority do not know enough to know that the reporter is an idiot.
There are only a few countries like Switzerland and Israel where a majority would know.
I found her argument about a trigger getting easier to operate at variance with the laws of physics and basic metallurgy.
A spring does not loosen in a single actuation or even a few dozen. It is repeated actuations, in the 200,000 range that may have some nominal effect on a spring and more in the 2,000,000 range for a spring to start to show signs of metal fatigue and begin to relax in an amount that might be discernible to an inexperienced user.
I was reminded of Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies.
The author is an idiot and Tom Ahern is no marksman if he’s saying crap like that.
I’ve been shooting full auto weapons for over 30 years and if you know what you’re doing in any fashion, you aren’t going to loose control of the gun at all.
Friggin morons.
No matter where in the world you go, anyone above the level of idiot, knows she’s an idiot.
In Chicago they're mostly all illegal. And the laws must be effective, because guns are far less common in the City of Chicago than they are in the Chicago suburbs and rural Illinois. Maybe the reporterette should ask herself, "Chicago has fewer guns and more crime. Why is that?"
> The target was straight ahead. My crew was far off to the right and safely — or so we all thought — out of the way.
Which tells me that the producer and cameraman were downrange, thinking that by standing off to the side of the target, they'd be able to get some great dramatic footage of her firing the thing. They broke the 180-degree plane.
This woman is a moron. The producer and cameraman are morons. The law-enforcement agent who put this weapon in her hands without adequate training and the suburban gun range that let them set up their photo shoot this way are criminally negligent morons.
If she'd killed the producer and cameraman you could have put the cause of death down as "evolution in action."
what fool handed this woman a fully automatic weapon and didnt give her at least some basic instruction in how to operate it safely
Glads to see the barf alert. I get so sick of liberal lies and liberals in agencies like the FBI aiding and abetting the lies ...
It’s unreal isn’t it? People get a general idea of what it might be like but if they ever saw it in action, no one but a kool aid kid would EVER trust a single thing they saw/read from a news outlet.
If a journo tells you water is wet, check to make sure. and that’s the truth. My fave was the standard speech from the Eds. Several I’ve worked with pretty much said the same thing. “This is how ‘I’ do things...”
And truth and honesty be damned. Out of all the journos I ever worked with, I can say one for certain was honest and one other was ‘situationaly’ honest. The rest were total hacks.
I have on of these in semi-auto 9mm.
It is a piece-o-crap weapon not worth owning.
Surprised me whenever it fired a full magazine without jamming.
Been locked up in the bottom of a chest rusting away for over 10 years now.
“Gangsta Cool Looking” +1
Practical / Reliable -10
A good example is my HK4: my standard drill includes cocking it for the first shot with my weak-hand thumb -- so all trigger pulls are smooth, light and with a crisp let-off. Stiff, long trigger pull is why I dislike most double actions...
The dumbroad writer had, apparently been allowed to shoot such a semiauto pistol, and (deliberately?) no one explained the first-shot problem. And she was too stupid (or prejudiced) to ask...
A person with no familiarity or training should think twice before handling a weapon.
Yep, he's an authority.
It makes you wonder how many bullets she launched skyward to come down where?
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