That Was the Week that Was: 2012 Week 20
Twenty weeks down,thirty-two to go. This week we got the question answered: "What does it take to get a lot of comments on a post?" Answer: break a news story that the Army is rushing to push women into Ranger School (and, we'll see in the coming week, other combat training) before a possible change of Administrations makes that harder to do. That post drew dozens of comments; as we do the Saturday night roundup, almost 200 of them (187 and counting). Previously "a lot of comments" was five or six. Please, come for the breaking news,
Yes, we are gloating a little about beating the AP by a day, and having the story mostly right when they got expertly spun by the Army's spinner-in-chief, GEN Ray Odierno. It's also interesting that we've been picked up in special-operations websites including socnet.com, professionalsoldiers.com, and armyranger.com to name only three, but the story's got no traction in the blogosphere, even the mil blogosphere, yet.
We're sitting on a lot more information now and can correct and extend the story. And one of the most interesting possibilities that grew out of a mostly mature and intelligent discussion in the comment thread, is what may be a way out that lets the Army get what it says it wants, the DOD suits to get what they say they want, the careerist women officers to get what they say they want, and the past, present and future Rangers to get what they want, which is in a word: no changes to standards, period.
Whether Odierno will have the stones to do that, or to stand by it if the numbers aren't good, is another question.
One small victory this week sends most of the persistent Brazilian spam to Coventry before we even have to see it. Without that, the comment bulge could only have been handled with real delays.
Comment of the Week
Oh, decisions, decisions, but read this:
Ok boys lets stop thinking that every women wants them to lower the standards. I want a chance, yes! But if i make it now it will just be said that they gave it to me. I think that if it makes sense to run every male officer through the school then it make sense for all officers. I’m a QM officer with an airborne BN. 95% of them are Rangers. I’m the only female officer i don’t want anything taken away from what they have done or what the boys will so after them. I don’t want to mess with thier cohesion…I just want to be a soldier.
I’m proud to support these boys but i just want to play by the same rules. I’m the mother of three boys and i want to set a good example for them. That you play by the rules and sometimes you make it and somethings you don’t. But to not let me try because you asume i can’t is just has foolish. With the downsizing of the Army it is time to cull the herd and take only the best of the best from where ever you can find them…no mater if gay, a women or even has a sleeve tattoo.
The author of that comment is Maggie Wass de Czege and she says, and we take her at her word, that she "just want[s] to play by the same rules" and warns us, "lets stop thinking that every women wants them to lower the standards." We were so impressed by the sentiment we're not even going to beat her up for the typos. Other young lady officers pointed out, essentially, the same thing: they want the chance to try, and they don't want to see standards changed -- let the chips fall where they may.
Most men in the Army today can't make the Ranger School standard and don't even try. Only half of the ones that try ultimately succeed, sometimes after brutal hardships (some of the stories are in the comments, too). Certainly, if held to the same standard as the men, most women who tried wouldn't pass. But the ones that did, and some would, because there is no overestimating human grit and determination, of either sex -- they would get respect at an unprecedented level. How much respect? Here's the runner-up for Comment of the Week, which was a gentleman Ranger's reply to another lady officer's expressed desire for a change, and no change in the standards:
If you get the opportunity to go to Ranger School and you pass performing to the EXACT same standards as my former and future Ranger Brothers, I will make an appointment to meet with you at any conus duty station and I will eat my Ranger Tab in front of your formation.
If this happens my email address is ssg1stbat@aol.com email me and I will make arrangements to come to your formation.
We think the Army is extremely unlikely to hold the standards line. But if it does, we'll try to be there to watch Ranger Kaufman eat his tab.
Tabasco sauce, Ranger. That's why they put it in MREs... acquire a taste for Tabasco and you can eat anything.
Gun Stuff We Actually Did
Nothing. Seriously, we haven't been to the range, to the gun store, or even down in the Mad Science Lab deep in the bedrock beneath stately Hog Manor. Too busy with work-work and just keeping up with the dataflow generated by the Rangerettes story.
Oh wait, there was one thing. Did some wheeling and dealing and one thing we scored was an M16A1 M203 handguard, which used to be common as dirt like all A1 parts and is now hard to find. Thinking to move the 203 from the carbine it's on to an M16A1 to duplicate a gun we had in 11th Special Forces Group. Alas, the quick-detach hardware for the newer 203 won't fit under the A1 203 handguard. The 203 goes on fine, but the guard doesn't go back on.
What We Blogged
As ever, the meat of this is the rundown on the week's posts so you can go back and catch the ones you missed. Compiling this has been painful this week, as we usually keep detailed stats, and we fell behind and had to regenerate the whole week's info from zero. It was tough, like being a Khmer Rouge cadre in 1975.
Note that initially, nothing will be linked, but we'll gradually add the links in. The stories can be found by scrolling back and using the "older stories" button, until the links turn up.
- Sunday and nothing is shakin' but the leaves on the trees -- the usual Sunday non-post
- What happens when you take a Guardsman, inspire him with a movie prop, set him to tinkering, then let Natick Labs refine the idea? You get. something that never existed before, a backpack-carried chute-fed Ammo Bearer Elininator for light machine gun gunners. Except it turns out some SF guy already invented it and a company builds 'em. And then it turns out that Armalite built a version of it for the AR-10 sometime around 1958. (Just goes to show that good ideas never die -- and they never get adopted by the Army, either).
- Some fellow made and tried to sell "Trayvon Martin targets." Idiotic and immature. The kid may have been no saint, but who was, at 17? Now he's dead forever. Let's wait for the court case to put the evidence before the public before we start mocking the poor dead bastard.
- Attorney Evan F. Nappen wrote a story about a legislature considering a "Turn Tail and Run" law. Comedy ensued as many readers didn't recognize Evan's sarcastic sense of humor, and thought it was a real initiative.
- We spotted a cool rarity on GunBroker: a semi-auto AR-10 built from a domestically made receiver and the parts from a Portuguese rifle, as used by their paras in their colonial wars. Funny, as we were just talking about the AR-10.
- The Assclown of the Ides is Bobby Thompson. Well, he isn't, actually: at this point he's a John Doe who stole the identity of the real Thompson (and many others), and is believed to have scammed one hundred million dollars with a phony veterans' charity. He's definitely not a veteran of any kind, despite his claims (his fingerprints would have come up if he was).
- Sometimes you just have to say, Lord love a duck. We broke the national story that women are going to Ranger School ("and they will be successful"). The Army says they're just "studying." Gee, why are they briefing RIs and modifying the school's physical plant to accommodate the Rangerettes? Why does their own briefing say, quote, that any remaining analysis is "analysis to execute," and that the debate is over?
- We learned that the AR-10 mentioned above has found a new home with a friend of the blog. We awaits the precioussss.
- One of the cool things about the original Uzi was its good looks and character. IWI, the current iteration of the maker, swears the new Uzi Pro is an improvement, but we have photos and video to prove that its design included a trip through the hardest-hitting branches of every ugly tree in the Ugly Forest.
- We followed up the story of Bank of America's on-again, off-again war on gun owners and manufacturers. Great way to grow market share, banksters. What, you didn't drive enough customers away with the industry's worst customer service?
- Wednesday Weapons Website of the Week was the National Firearms Museum. Our post could barely gloss over what's on that site, including art-museum photography of art-museum guns, many of which have historical value beyond their mere beauty... and many of which have beauty beyond their mere historical value. We will be pulling an occasional featured gun from there over here from time to time. The NFA is a separate nonprofit run by the National Rifle Association, and the website supposedly has images of every shootin' iron in the place.
- If you're left-handed, Cabot has a custom mirror-image 1911 for you, the South Paw. Pros: just about everything. Cons: mid-five-figure price tag. Don't feel discriminated-upon, their guns for righties are just as spendy.
- We present one of our periodic updates on paratrooper Travis Mills and his toughest fight yet -- to recover from the blast that took all four of his limbs. But his family's in his corner, and so are a lot of Americans (like us) who know him only through his wife's and other family members' info on his site.
- A funny thing happened this week… we got buried by comments on the Rangerette story, as well as by inside information from Them In The Know. A couple of informational updates in this post.
- We apologized for taking Friday “off” to deal with the Rangerette information explosion.
- Are Gun Sales finally slowing? Or, the Anecdotes from Amarillo. Slowing not because the market is saturated, but because it's so overheated that demand can't slake supply.
- Saturday Matinee - The Dogs of War. Yeah, GI Jane would have been more appropriate for the week, but really, who can watch that scabrous thing? (The Army Chief of Staff? When he's making decisions about the future of Ranger School? -Ed. Okay. You got us there).
- That was the week that was: 2012 Week 20 - This post, which brings us full circle.
What's Coming Next Week
Let's see if these really happen:
- Theodore Roosevelt, Silencer User
- Ranger Fitness
- Why the Army Wants Rangerettes Now
- More Details on the Rangerette Pilot Class
- The First Semi-Auto AKs in America
Plus this leftover from two weeks ago:
- Legendary Weapons of SF 1992-2012... to conclude the series.
Plus these leftovers from three weeks ago now:
- Some analysis on the ATF Weapons Statistics and the dreadful media.
- A local (NH) gun story that was incredibly badly botched (or dishonestly reported).
- A couple of book reviews.
How we did on Last Week's Promises
We didn't get a jeezly thing done, except the Assclown of the Ides! And we knew we were going to do that.
The Boring Statistics
18 posts, about 11,400 words (counting everything, including a estimate for the unready Saturday Matinee), and an even 200 (and counting) substantive comments.
Gun Sales finally slowing?
We've seen gun sales going crazy, and one of the nation's largest manufacturers -- Ruger -- stop taking orders because they were overwhelmed with order volume. They're not the only ones: Glock is reportedly a half-million (!) guns behind in production, almost all for the US market, which is almost eight months' production -- if no more orders come in during those eight months, they might catch up.
Economics teaches us that as demand for a good soars, until supply can catch up, prices will rise. We've seen that on, for example, GunBroker. A common and garden AR-15 clone is selling for hundreds more than it was two years ago. Used guns, which usually sell at a significant discount relative to new ones, are drawing premium prices when they're the only thing selling. Recession or not, guns are still selling.
Now, we may be seeing the next logical step: a bottoming out of supply. That's what Jessica Abuchaibe of NewsChannel 10 in Amarillo, Texas (we're told that's in West By God Texas by a native Texican) found when she visited local shops.
Area gun store owners say they are about 90% out of stock. Both new and used guns are hard to get a hold of.
Owners say sales are increasing because of higher crime rates, unemployment, and the presidential election coming up. And the manufacturing companies can't keep up with the high demand.
Panhandle Gunslingers Owner Burnie Stokes says, "There's that pressure of what if they get in, and make the gun laws change. And change the gun laws where you can't purchase them anymore. So that makes it where, well if I've got a gun I'm going to get it. I'm going to sit on it. I'm not going to sell it. Nobody wants to turn lose of any used guns that they have. And certain new guns are really hard to find right now".
Erwin Pawn Incorporated Owner David Erwin says, "Demand is so high right now. The manufacturers can't make them quick enough. They're so far behind. Of course some people do trade in guns, but most of them are holding on to them".
Customers are having a hard time getting the guns they want. Mike Berry says, "Rugers [sic] has a new 1911 out. I've been trying to get one for over a year. And I've been on the wedding [sic] list. I should be the next one in line. That's why I'm here checking".
You can read the whole thing and watch the video version of the report at the link.
From economics, again, a suggestion of what we'll see next, and may already be seeing: substitution. People who want specific guns will buy something else (something cheaper or more available), and if the supply/demand imbalance continues, some may give up on guns and choose other means of recreation or self-defense. But guns are hard to replace, especially for the latter purpose.
Disclaimer: the WeaponsMan.com owner holds positions in Ruger (RGR) and Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation (SWHC), the only two publicly held American gun manufacturers (most manufacturers here and abroad are privately held).
Update: At midnight News 10 nuked the report we quoted from above, but there may still be video at this link: Gun stores running out of stock (popup video -- no promises it'll work). If anybody finds Ms Abuchaibe's report, please put the link in the comments and we'll fix.
Sorry for taking Friday “off”
But we had one guy on duty, and he had other things to do, and we got a lot of comments -- many of them extremely intelligent and thoughtful, and a few of them that make you despair of the schools and universities -- on our Lady Rangers story. We've broken news before, but it's been on things like production numbers of 1960s Colt carbines, so a lot of comments on an article meant five or six.
We're at a hundred and fifty something and still rocking. It's big news; our little blog sent the Chief of Staff of the Army to a friendly reporter to push a well-spun report out into the media. The Chief of Staff, for civilians, isn't some coatholder; he is the top cheese who plans the Army's future and selects and buys its gear, the uniform atop the chain of command at the point where it starts turning into political suits. That position is awarded with great care to a soldier at the pinnacle of his career, and has been held in the past by men you've heard of like Macarthur and Marshall and Ridgway, and men just as great you haven't heard of, like Schoomaker and Meyer. So GEN Odierno and his position command respect.
That said, even great men blow it occasionally (ask Harry Truman, former CPT, Artillery, about Macarthur). We think GEN Odierno is blowing it with his rush to push women through Ranger School and beyond. But along with the 150-odd comments, every one of which we read and approved for publication to keep all sides of this conversation represented, we also got a data dump about the plans, and turned up other stuff with our own research. Food for future posts, and future scoops, unless the media are doing their job and beat us. (What odds?)
We do not want to be a blog all about Army policy. It's boring, and the peacetime Army is going to quickly devolve into the usual handful of great people treading water in a sea of mediocrity, led by time-serving Jobsworths dedicated to the two bureaucratic Rules of Ass: kiss up and kick down. But we are special operations guys first and always, and the past, present and future of the units and the services all hold meaning for us. We remain stakeholders.
And well-connected ones at that.
And so, GEN Odierno, with the greatest respect for your person and your position: no sir, we will not strike. We are reloading, sir, please stand by for our next volley.
A funny thing happened this week…
Ranger student, mountain phase, 2011. Not an EIB test "nerf ruck." NTTAWWT. US Army photo.
...we posted on the Army's plans for adding women to Ranger School, saying that the basic reason was for "fairness" to women officers in senior officer (particularly General Officer) promotions. We reported that it was basically a done deal, and the choices were to get aboard the train or get tied to the tracks.
This same week we beat the Brazilian comment spam problem -- most of the crap gets auto-dunked now, without having to inconvenience real posters.
And the result was an explosion of germane comment. Some of it was angry snark and war-of-the-sexes stuff that was old when Shakespeare wrote it into plays. Some of it was pure gold, both from opponents of the program (legacy Rangers like us, serving men, and some serving women) and supporters of it (mostly women officers). The bulk of the comments appear to be by real Ranger stakeholders.
Because the commentary was so interesting, and because there's a real witch-hunt for the "leakers" underway, we suspended the usual loosely-enforced Real Names policy. We do note that a lot of the substantive commenters used their real names or real permanent email addresses (which are visible to site admins, but not to visitors, and which will not be disclosed, period). And a lot of the snarky commenters used throwaway free email addresses. Kind of predictable, that.
Since then, we've seen the following developments:
- 1. The first females will probably be freshly commissioned West Point grads. They will be volunteers, Note that while all Ranger students are nominally volunteers, an infantry officer, particularly an Academy grad, who opts not to go will be explaining that decision to a superior. Infantry officers are already prepped for Ranger School at IOBC, and officers from other branches can opt for extra-session ranger prep at their basic courses.
- 2. No enlisted women. They're not the ones clamoring for a shiny.
- 3. They will be given a variety of training before the course to ensure preparation/success. So far it looks like this is not a special course like the SOPC given to 18Xs but is existing courses like the Warrior Leader Course.
-
Pre-ranger students at Fort Hood practice the fireman's carry. US Army photo.
4. The Chief of Staff has been all over the news. His message is a dual one: first, he's denying any decision has been made and insisting that this is just being studied. If that's the case, he won't mind releasing the FRAGO issued to the RTB and the accompanying slide decks, right? (Operators are standing by! -- pun intended. When the phone doesn't ring, we'll know it's GEN Odierno not calling). Second, he's confirming that the decision is essentially made, and that it's all about the officer careers:
“If we determine that we’re going to allow women to go in the infantry and be successful, they are probably at some time going to have to go through Ranger school,” Odierno told reporters. “If we decide to do this, we want the women to be successful.”
According to Odierno, about 90 percent of senior Army infantry officers have gone to the school and are qualified as Rangers. Allowing women to go to Ranger school, he said, would allow them to be competitive with their male counterparts as they move through the ranks.
Odierno's denial is not a denial, it's a set-up for a coming announcement.
- 5. The women will succeed. (Two words: Kara Hultgreen).
Things that might be worth reading:
- The WeaponsMan post that broke this story (and do read the comments, they're the best part because they broaden the discussion).
- Lolita C. Baldor of the AP's delivery of GEN Odierno's spin. Baldor is often a favored channel for DOD press release insertion -- what the KGB would have called an Agent of Influence. (One thing we've always wondered about her -- was her father the Nabokov fan, or her mother?)
- The Washington Post's story (which looks like Baldor's story, credited generically to the AP -- always classy, the Post. They lost how much last quarter? Would it have killed them to credit the reporter? Rhetorical question).
- Discussion thread at ProfessionalSoldiers.com. It is a place run by Special Forces guys for SF guys and friends. Do not register and comment there without reading the stickies or your tenure there will be short. Not every place has WeaponsMan.com's easygoing comment policy.
- Discussion thread at SOCNet.com. It is a place run by active and retired members of the joint and combined special operations community. Same caveat applies.
In the light of some comments about women maxing the normal Army age-normed and sex-normed PT test (including women who score high or max on the male scale), expect a follow-up on physical fitness standards at Ranger School and in the Regiment. The current Ranger physical fitness test is a criterion-based event that has only been administered to men so far, and is not age-normed.
Travis Mills Update
From time to time we at WeaponsMan look in on this tough paratrooper who survived an IED attack that left him a quad amputee. Travis's family (mostly his wife, Kelsey) post frequent updates here at TravisMills.org but for those of you who don't want to add their site to your orbit, we'll keep covering him here.
Actually, we're doing largely because he inspires us.
The latest -- Travis came out of the induced ketamine coma, the purpose of which was to let his brain reset to the new shape of his body, and, the doctors hoped, end the excruciating "phantom pain" he was experiencing.
Phantom pain is a bitter legacy of amputation, that most amputees experience to one degree or another. It is pain in the extremity the patient no longer has. (There can be other phantom sensations too, like itch. Imagine an itch you can't scratch because it's on a part of your body that's gone).
In any event, the treatment appears to have worked, Travis is out of the coma, being mentored by other amputees, and diving into his physical therapy. Soon he hopes to have his first prosthesis (left arm).
We categorize these posts as "SF History and Lore" because, even if Travis was not SF, the paratroopers are our cousins and a major feedstock for our units... and, well, he's certainly got heart enough.
For the latest information, direct from Travis's friends and family, check out TravisMills.org - Updates.
For lefties: Cabot Southpaw
The picture here is not reversed. The gun is. (We nearly wrote "the negative," but that would not only expose us as old enough to remember when that new "dirt" stuff came out, but would also be technically inaccurate, since the shot was almost certainly digital). The gun is the Cabot South Paw, and there are four facts you need to understand before you click over to order one, lefties:
- It's milled from solid steel bar stock.
- Yes, it's eye candy
- They do have models for the dexter 90% as well as for the sinister slice of humanity, but it's this left-handed gun that caught our eye.
- It's dauntingly expensive: over five thousand dollars. (Other Cabot guns can be half again as much more than that).
Before you order a matching Left and Right pair and get a holster maker going on a dual-carry rig, we had to drop that last downer on you. While it may be relatively straightforward to reverse a set of CNC files, extensive hand work is costly, and beauty has a price all its own. So the Cabot South Paw is probably going to wind up in more rich collectors' glass cases than working pistoleros' leather. And that's a crying shame, because they are reputed to shoot as good as they look.
The Cabot Arms website has more shiny .45s to admire -- from afar, unless one is a bit on the free-spending side.
And look at the good news: it makes the eye-popping prices of GI .45s, which are not only machined but machined from forgings (see yesterday's post on the NRA Museum for a picture), look like a bargain... off to GunBroker with us. But we will keep sneaking furtive looks at the Cabot site.
Update: We've been reminded that this is not an entirely novel idea. Randall made a mirror-image .45 about 30 years ago, but they're now rare collector guns (like all Randall .45s). Randalls were stainless and were only made from 1983 to 1985; fewer than 10,000 were produced of all versions, amd the majority were right-handed pistols with a strong plurality being standard service pistols -- exact clones of the 1911, except for being all stainless steel. Here's a contemporary review of Randall's southpaw (one word) .45 (alas, no pictures), and here's a history of the company.
Wednesday Weapons Website of the Week: National Firearms Museum
Intricate lockwork on a flintlock fowler once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte. Click to expand and you'll see that Bubba D. Gunsmith got to the screws!
You would think that something called the National Firearms Museum was a Federal institution of some kind, particularly because it's in Washington, DC. You'd think wrong, though: the NFM is a program of the National Rifle Association. The Museum is amazing; it tells the story of the United States, its history, and its place in the world more or less entirely with guns. If you don't think that's awesome, you're not at the right blog.
What makes it a WWWW is that, unlike many museums that use their websites only as a teaser, the NFM has a deep and rich website with all of its tens of thousands of weapons on display.
In some ways, the website is even better than the physical museum: they have taken care to photograph weapons from all sides. And on the website, people can still enjoy looking at the rare weapons, even as curators maintain or work on them.
No matter what interests you about firearms, you'll find something here. Want to see TV and movie guns, like the Bonanza TV show weapons or the Smith and Wesson Model 29 that Clint Eastwood used to punctuate his famous question, "Do you feel lucky?" They're here. Historic weapons? Check. Oddities? Check. Celebrity guns? In vast profusion. Military guns? Certainly.
These blocky forgings on the left are the precursors of the precisely-machined pistol parts on the right.
The most interesting things, to us, are the weapons with a human angle to them. A pistol just like millions of other 1911A1s, but this one belonged to Dwight D. Eisenhower and he gave it to a British admiral. The battered, crushed revolver that tells the tale of its cop owner's violent end in the World Trade Center in 2001.
And the next most interesting? The technology, ranging from early, bizarre and impractical attempts at making a repeater, to the raw forgings from a Colt production line displayed next to their finished counterparts.
So, take your time and visit the Wednesday (OK, Thursday and backdated) Weapons Website of the Week: The National Firearms Museum.
Bank of America Follow-up
The question Is Bank of America Anti-Gun? is still percolating out there, and the latest to tackle it is the National Association for Gun Rights. They did a fresh interview with Kelly McMillan on May 14th.
The audio of that interview is in the youTube link below.
Now, the best reason for leaving Bank of America is simply this: they're a lousy bank. They still haven't issued a credible denial of McMillan's charges. His story, unlike Bank of America's, hasn't changed. He, unlike Bank of America, is accessible, forthright, and consistent.
And recently, the reason why may have become more apparent... the bank is kicking back many thousands, possibly millions of its bailout billions to the Democrats, helping to fund the party's convention through a strange committee mechanism meant to conceal the corporate sponsorship of the convention.
Update: this post has been edited. Somehow the airheaded phrase "the audio of that video" made it past our layers of editors; it has been corrected. Fortunately, with all the rage and condemnation flowing from the Lady Ranger thing, nobody's been reading this post....
IWI UZI PRO & MICRO UZI – HD movie
We love the Uzi, rather irrationally. But it's a subgun with character, unlike so many of its soulless, stamped cousins. You can just tell that the compact Israeli shooter was designed by a guy, not by a committee. He even named it after himself -- after the short version of his first name. Would John Taliaferro Thompson have called his "trench broom" the "Johnny"?
So, we love the original, compact Uzi, but we're not so fond of some of its offspring. You can see the genesis behind things like the Mini Uzi and Micro Uzi of years gone by. ("Guys, H&K is eating our market share with the MP-5K! Better make a baby Uzi.") The latest spawn of Uzi, the Uzi Pro, leaves us cold. What's going on at IWI? (A guess: "Guys, AR-15s are eating our market share! Slap some rails on the Mini! And use some trendy plastics!" or something like that).
And, it's ugly. We're talking slap-its-mama ugly. The-estate-of-Uziel-Gal-should-sue-IWI-to-change-its-name-ugly. Go see for yourself at the IWI website. This SMG is definitely a five-beer date, and one should never mix guns and alcohol...so leave the Uzi Pro and drink as much as you need to get its image off your retinas.
Israeli Weapons Industries is the former IMI, and now is a for-profit privatized business, not a state enterprise... although you wouldn't know it from its flagship product line, which is as trendy as the Checker Marathon.
IWI UZI PRO & MICRO UZI - HD movie - YouTube.
The basic problem IWI faces is this: the pistol-caliber submachine gun is a dead concept in modern military affairs. Dead like dodo. Dead like dinosaur. Deader'n the Dead Sea, to use an example geolocalized for our Israeli friends. To some extent, they're facing that square-on with the Uzi Pro, which is really more in the line of a select-fire carbine that is primarily fired from the shoulder on semi-auto. The fact that it fires from a closed bolt means that it's built to hit targets precisely, not sling a volume of lead. (An open bolt is better for primarily full-auto weapons, it promotes cooling and prevents cook-offs).
Pistol-caliber submachine guns died on the beach in Grenada in October, 1983 when a SEAL patrol armed with MP5s found itself dangerously outranged by a single enemy with a good rifle. A compact carbine will do everything the subgun does, and let you engage targets out to at least 300 meters, too.
Here's some of IMI's promotional verbiage on the Pro:
The UZI-PRO represents a major step forward, for the UZI family, in terms of the benefits gained from modern materials and design concepts. The weapon was designed with user experience from Israeli Special Forces.
Utilizing modern polymers, MIL-STD 1913 (Picatinny) rails, ergonomic shoulder stock, and foldable handgrip, the weapon has been redesigned to be lighter, more accurate, more reliable but still concealable.
The UZI PRO has new features which give the best solutions for close combat situations. All of this has been accomplished without compromising the functionality and reliability associated with the famous UZI reputation.
- Extensive use of polymers for greater strength, modern ergonomics and less weight
- Closed bolt operation for maximum accuracy and safety
- Ergonomically designed and easy to use by right or left handed user
- Quick fitting suppressor
- Full auto and single shot
- Small, compact and concealable
- Adjustable shoulder stock with mounted cheek rest
- Designed to use optic sights
The IWI website has another laundry list of benefits and more information on the Uzi Pro.
One question this new release, even if it's a tarted-up Mini Uzi under the polymer and rails, has to raise is this: Does mean the Model 95 bullpup 9mm SMG is moribund? At least the X95 wasn't this ugly.
About that AR-10…
About that Portuguese-parts AR-10 we mentioned yesterday...? It sold for $2,775. And someone close to the blog bought it, so we should have eyes on in a week or two. Could be interesting!