Thailand is buying twenty armored limousines, for $177,000 each. These will be used by senior government officials. Since September 11, 2001, there has been a sharp increase in the use of such bullet proof automobiles. The wealthy are buying most of them. Usually they are modified SUVs and sedans, and there are now many car dealerships specializing in these vehicles.
The vehicles must, at a minimum, be protected against pistol bullets. But most now are resistant to sniper and assault rifles. Some manufacturers will also build vehicles that provide some protection from roadside bombs.
Turning a civilian sedan or SUV into an armored vehicle is a labor-intensive job. First, you have to strip the vehicle down to the bare frame. Then you install Kevlar and steel plate armor and bullet-proof glass. The standard tires are replaced with run-flat models. The additional weight (up to a ton or more) requires the installation of enhanced shocks and a more powerful engine. It takes a few hundred pounds of armor to provide protection from pistol bullets. Protection from rifle bullets requires half a ton. For protection against heavy machine-gun (12.7mm) and bombs, you need a ton or more. The first armor kits for military vehicles, like the hummer, weighed a ton. Soon that was up to two tons.
Once you have put the newly armored vehicle back together, you have to make more modifications to insure that the vehicle has the same handing characteristics as before the extra weight was added. This is crucial so that your driver does not have to learn new driving techniques to handle the rapid maneuvers needed to escape an ambush.
Fatal Russian roulette refers to death following an act of extreme bravado in which the individual spins the cylinder of a revolver loaded with at least one cartridge, aims the muzzle at the head, and pulls the trigger.
The majority of victims are men younger than 30 years who, in the presence of others, are under the influence of ethanol or other drugs.
This is a 10-year (1993-2002) retrospective review of self-inflicted gunshot wounds of the head, among which we culled and paid special attention to cases of Russian roulette, at the Medical Examiners’ Offices in Kentucky. Of the 24 incidents of Russian roulette, the majority of victims were white (79.2%), and all were men between 14 and 47 years with a mean age of 24.8 years. Compared with other cephalic firearm suicides, the subjects engaging in Russian roulette were significantly more likely to have elevated blood levels (≥0.1%) of ethanol along with various drugs detected in urine.
Although the presumed intent of the risky act is to survive, Russian roulette is deemed to be suicide, which is based on a comprehensive understanding of the inherently deliberate, volitional actions of the decedent.
Can a sniper reliably hit a human target on a small boat bobbing on the ocean, or were they taking a chance with the hostage’s life?
If the pirates’ heads were fully exposed, it would have been an easy shot. A sniper rifle is accurate to within a “minute of angle,” provided the shooter can keep his or her target in the crosshairs. That means that a good marksman can reliably hit a 1-inch target at 300 feet and reliably kill someone at 3,000 feet. The bobbing of the lifeboat would have been a factor, but snipers regularly shoot at moving targets from moving vehicles. (Advanced Navy SEAL training includes target practice from helicopters.)
There are two techniques for hitting a moving target—trapping, in which the sniper holds the rifle still and waits for the target to move into the sight, and tracking, in which the sniper moves the rifle to keep the target in the sight.
Trapping is the easier method and is preferred among less-experienced marksmen. However, the Navy snipers needed to strike all three pirates simultaneously. Once the countdown began, they could not allow their target to drop from their sight and wait for him to return. (Sniper teams generally count down from five and fire in unison on the T in “two.”)
Thousands of dolphins blocked the suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden, the China Radio International reported on Monday.
{ When the alarm goes off, the Gun O’Clock target pops up, and you have to grab the gun in time to shoot it to turn the clock off. |Gun O’Clock from Bandai }
{ The Thomson Contender ‘Encore’ .600 Nitro Express Magnum is a single shot target pistol, its very light and dangerously uncontrollable when fired. | Vince Lewis | more }
Most shoppers headed to the Toys R Us in Palm Desert on Friday morning clutching their “door buster” ads and their shopping lists. Instead of the usual frantic chaos on Black Friday, the year’s busiest shopping day, mayhem erupted in the electronics department about 11:30 a.m., leaving two men dead in a gunfight.
Joan Barrick, 40, of Desert Hot Springs said she was buying a Barbie Jeep for her daughter when two women started brawling. As the women swung at each other, the men they were with also started arguing.
The younger of the two lifted up his shirt and flashed his handgun, pulling the grip from his baggy pants pocket. The other man yanked out his own handgun and started chasing him down the aisle and firing, witnesses said.
Barrick hid behind a stack of DVDs and recited the Lord’s Prayer. (…) As the two men ran shooting through the aisles, shoppers dumped their purchases. (…)
“These guys ran into each other, they squared off against each other, they killed each other,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Daniel Wilham. “It’s a miracle that these were the only two people killed, given it was a crowded toy store.” Wilham said it appeared there was some “previous hostility” between the two couples.
It is a nationwide BUYcott of ammunition. You buy ammunition. 100 Rounds a person.
The goals of Ammo Day:
The goal of National Ammo Day is to empty the ammunition from the shelves of your local gun store, sporting goods, or hardware store and put that ammunition in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
Make your support of the Second Amendment known–by voting with your dollars!
There are an estimated 75 MILLION gun owners in the United States of America. If each gun owner or Second Amendment supporter buys 100 rounds of ammunition, that’s 7.5 BILLION rounds in the hands of law-abiding citizens!
The gun/ammunition manufacturers have been taking the brunt of all the frivolous lawsuits, trying to put these folks out of business. Well, not if we can help it! And we CAN help it by buying ammunition on November 19!
{ The police forms call him Advanced Silhouette SP-83A; in some gun shops, he is B-60. He is widely known in police and gun-club circles as the Thug, a life-size, two-dimensional paper target that every New York City police officer has shot at since the early 1960’s. }
The NYPD is expected to say goodbye to the face of the menacing paper target that officers have fired at since the 1960s, and replace him with two new targets, a Mr. Clean look-alike pointing a weapon and a faceless silhouette which looks like a mummy or a martian. (…) In police circles, The Thug is also known as The Worrell, after Sgt. Fred Worrell, a firing range instructor who retired in the 1980s whom the target closely resembles.
A bukkake shoot where the participants were to be paid in cash was reportedly robbed by an armed man Wednesday night. The production was at Van Nuys Studios in Van Nuys, Calif.
“We usually pay the first 50 guys in cash,” director Jim Powers told XBIZ. “So there’s $3,750 in individual envelopes of $75. We had everybody on the set, watching the girl, posing for the box cover, when all of a sudden Johnny [production manager Johnny Thrust] comes in, saying, ‘I’ve been robbed.’
“Apparently a man came in there, pulled the gun. Johnny thought he was kidding, but the guy put the gun in his face and said ‘Give me the money. In the drawer. Now.’ He knew exactly where it was.”
Powers thinks one of the bukkake participants was involved in the robbery.
“It was an inside job, because he came at the perfect time,” Powers said. “One of the guys in the bukkake was texting him, saying ‘OK, come now.’ It wasn’t some guy off the street ripping the place off. It was well-planned. They knew exactly when everybody was in the studio.
“It was one of the bukkake guys that was involved. Not the one who did the robbery, he got one of his criminal friends to do it.”
The bukkake went off as planned, and the participants will get paid by the production company later.
Leonard Freed, a prominent photojournalist and member of the Magnum Photography Collective who was known primarily for his in-depth coverage of African-Americans in the era of the civil rights movement, died on Wednesday, November 29, at his home in Garrison, N.Y. He was 77.
Born in Brooklyn on Oct. 23, 1929, to working-class Jewish parents of Eastern European descent, Mr. Freed first set out to become a painter. But at 24, traveling in the Netherlands, he began taking pictures and decided that that was what he wanted to do. In 1954 he returned to the United States and studied in the “design laboratory” photography class given by the Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch. He began working as a freelance photographer in 1961.
“Photography is a visual language still in its infancy,” Mr. Freed said about his own work. “The fact that millions of people can see the same visual images on television, in films or photography is communication. Saddening to think that literary traditions are being lost to a language that is only in its infancy. Challenging in that one is free to be original.”
