The Biden economy continues to batter ordinary Americans, CIA’s bribing experts to protect China and the deep state, Ukraine makes Russian ships and air defense systems in Crimea go boom, UAW goes on strike, and sanctuary city chickens come home to roost. Plus a personal update at the end. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Joe Biden continues to work his special brand of magic on the economy: “Real household income suffers biggest drop since Great Recession.”
Nominally, households earned more money in 2022 than they did in 2021. But thanks to inflation caused by Bidenomics, real household income (that is, income adjusted for inflation) not only fell, but fell by an amount not seen since the Great Recession.
According to Census Bureau numbers released Tuesday, median household income fell from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022, a decline of 2.3%. This is the biggest drop in real household income since 2010, when it fell 2.6%. Even at the height of the pandemic, when millions of people couldn’t work, real income only fell 2.2%.
The decline in real income was driven entirely by near-record-high inflation. According to the Census Bureau, inflation rose 7.8% between 2021 and 2022, which was the largest inflation increase since 1981.
Isn’t not being able to feed your family a small price to pay for our elites not having to deal with mean tweets? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
A ‘senior-level’ CIA whistleblower has come forward to allege that the agency bribed analysts to change their opinion that Covid-19 most likely originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, according to the NY Post.
The whistleblower told House committee leaders that his agency ‘ tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans,’ according to a Tuesday letter from the chairmen of two House subcommittees investigating the pandemic response and US intelligence, Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH).
The pair have requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s Covid-19 Discovery Team by Sept. 26.
“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the letter from the House panel chairmen.
“The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.
“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letters continue, adding that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”
Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges. A whole lot of observers think this is just an excuse to avoid indicting him (and his father) on bribery and corruption charges.
Washington refused to fully fund construction of a wall along the Mexican border as Congress obeyed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — whom Republicans bow to — and the galaxy of gangs, drug cartels, pedos, Chinese spies, terrorists and Methodists who back Democrats. There are some overlaps. My point is, Democrats cannot destroy the nation without help.
There seemed to be no stopping the onslaught. What to do? What to do? What to do?
Well, they were messing with Texas and as Texans say, don’t mess with Texas.
Its governor’s press office said in June, “In April 2022, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. The Governor added New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia as additional drop-off locations last year and most recently added Denver as a busing destination last month. Since beginning the migrant busing strategy last spring, more than 21,600 migrants have been transported to these self-declared sanctuary cities while providing much-needed relief to Texas’ overwhelmed border communities.”
Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.
Virginia Democratic statehouse candidate Susanna Gibson is complaining that there are videos of her having sex with her husband online. Gee, how did they get online? “Gibson had an account on Chaturbate, a legal website where viewers can watch live webcam performances that feature nudity and sexual activity…The videos show Gibson and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and at times looking into the camera and asking viewers for donations in the form of ‘tokens’ or ‘tips’ to watch a private show.” It did not take Columbo to crack this case. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The Democrat Party has a latent disaster on its hand vis a vis one RFK Jr.
On the one hand, they are fully dedicated to sabotaging his campaign. Under no circumstances whatsoever will he be permitted to win the nomination.
Even if he had 80%+ support from the electorate, the sick truth is that party leadership (influenced by the consultant and donor classes) would rather lose with Brandon than win with RFK Jr. because of what he’s liable to do to the Deep State and D.C. largesse were he ever to assume office. It would be a proverbial bloodbath for the administrative state and all of the grifters who feed on it.
On the other hand, they need to keep RFK Jr. within the Democrat Party fold because if he were to go rogue and run third party — which he, frankly, should have been doing all along — it would be a veritable death knell for the Brandon entity’s prospects in 2024, which are wafer-thin as it is.
Whatever perceived threat Cornel West poses to Brandon’s re-election with his Green Party run, magnify that threat by 10x, 100x and you’re in the ballpark of what RFK Jr. would do to the party. It’s not outlandish to speculate that a strong third-party run by RFK Jr. might literally break the Democrat Party for years or possibly forever. That’s how sick of the party’s BS its own members, not to mention independents and non-voters (the largest, unserviced voting bloc in the country), are.
RFK Jr. has already proven himself nearly bulletproof from relentless Democrat Party and corporate state media attacks — arguably on the same level in this regard as “Teflon” Don.
There’s a petition to have the Hays County district attorney removed from office.
The person who filed it? The Hays County district clerk.
The petition was filed by Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson on Tuesday, Sept. 12. I
It alleged that Hays County DA Kelly Higgins implemented and executed a policy or policies that refused to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense under state law.
The petition said DA Higgins has made public declarations that he would not prosecute the following:
simple drug possession offenses
simple cannabis possession offenses
procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case that they are treating transgenders
procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case they are performing abortions
According to the court documents filed, there’s been an excessive amount of felony possession of cannabis, methamphetamine and cocaine cases being declined for “random and nonspecific reasons.”
I know one of the first questions in your mind: Is Higgins a Soros-backed DA? Answer cloudy. She got $2,000 from Chip Shields in Portland, OR. Shields founded Better People, a pro ex-con thing, but I can’t find a direct Soros link to Higgins. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Things that make you go Hmmmm: “A representative of the Harris County attorney’s office told a district court judge that the county would use all legal means to prevent the deposition of the deputy director of election technology Jason Bruce.”
National Review looks back at Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t agree with everything here, but they did make some great music Back In The Day…
“14-year-old son died after attempting the ‘One Chip Challenge.’ You don’t want to jump into that sort of thing without building up your resistance first. Me, I’m pretty sure I could do it, especially if I could find a way to make money off it. Maybe I could get 100,00 people to pledge a buck for every one I eat, and then then see how many I can eat on a live-stream…
Ever wanted to hear The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz do an album of REM covers? Yeah, me neither, but here’s “Shiny Happy People.”
Also, my most recent job just ended. So here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:
I don’t usual rattle the jar, because I make good money when employed, and I’m hardly destitute, but every bit helps. If you know of any remote Senior Technical Writer positions, let me know.
New Mexico Democratic Governor Lujan Grisham declaration that she could unilaterally suspend parts of the United State Constitution by decree have gone over like a depleted uranium balloon:
New Mexico’s Democratic attorney general notified the governor, a fellow Democrat, on Tuesday that he will not defend her in litigation challenging her public health order temporarily banning firearms in certain counties and imposing other gun restrictions.
The prohibition applies to Albuquerque and Bernalillo counties.
“Though I recognize my statutory obligation as New Mexico’s chief legal officer to defend state officials when they are sued in their official capacity, my duty to uphold and defend the constitutional rights of every citizen takes precedence,” New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez wrote to fellow Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in a letter. “Simply put, I do not believe that the Emergency Order will have any meaningful impact on public safety but, more importantly, I do not believe it passes constitutional muster.”
Multiple plaintiffs — the National Association for Gun Rights, We the Patriots USA, residents of the affected counties, and Gun Owners of America — filed lawsuits against Grisham and her administration over the dictate.
Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen announced Monday that his office would not enforce the order, arguing that it is unconstitutional, according to the NM Political Report.
“There’s no way we can enforce that order. This ban does nothing to curb gun violence,” Allen said at a Monday press conference. “We must always remember not only are we protecting the Second Amendment, but at the same time, we have a lot of violence within our community. Let me be clear, I hold my standards high, and I do not or never will hedge on what is right.”
It’s well documented that Democrats love banning guns almost as much as graft and abortion. The fact that so many prominent New Mexico Democrats have said categorically that they won’t back Grisham’s insane power play is telling as to just how far out of the mainstream her illegal ban grab is.
Brandon Herrera, a YouTube influencer with a focus on firearms, has announced that he is challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for Texas’ congressional district 23 seat.
Herrera, who has over 2 million YouTube subscribers, had been hinting towards a congressional run for weeks on his YouTube channel. He previously made an appearance at a congressional hearing earlier this year after being invited by U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) to testify against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Congressional District 23 is a rural, majority-Hispanic area that encompasses western San Antonio and contains a large span of the Texas-Mexico border—including Uvalde, Eagle Pass, and El Paso county.
Herrera first announced his run at the Young Americans for Liberty conference and then in a YouTube video.
“Several Republicans who swore to defend gun rights, to protect borders, just in general, putting the rights and interests of the American people above their own, turn their back on these values,” Herrera said.
“There can be no more incumbent politicians who vote time and time again against the interests of the American people without fear of losing their positions,” he continued.
Herrera calls himself a “Second Amendment absolutist” and has repeatedly criticized Gonzales for being the sole Texas Republican member of the U.S. House to vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a Biden-backed law meant to enact stricter background checks for gun purchases.
Here’s his campaign announcement (which looks like it was filmed in a hotel room):
“I have a deep love for the values that this country was founded on, the ideas of freedom of self-governance. You see, America was never supposed to be the country that gave you everything you always wanted. It was simply a place that gave you the freedom and the opportunity to chase those things for yourself to pursue happiness to build great things.”
“I’m working with groups like The Firearms Policy Coalition, National Association for Gun Rights, and Gun Owners of America.” Notice who’s missing?
“Tony Gonzalez claimed to be in favor of gun rights, but he voted in favor of Biden’s post-Uvalde gun control and claims he would do it again.”
And here he is at Young Americans for Liberty:
“ATF is out of control.”
“They are a regulatory body that does not have the Constitutional authority to write the law, yet they write the law. They’re banning FRTs [forced reset triggers], they’re banning arm braces, they’re banning bump stocks. All things, I will remind you, comply to the letter of the law and were actually previously approved by the ATF for sale.”
“The American experiment was about having the freedom to be who you want to be, to live how you want to live to do what you want to do. Unless that means you want to fuck kids. That’s that’s when the wood chipper gets hungry.”
Here’s his website. His six highlighted issues (gun rights, immigration, budget deficits, censorship, leftwing control of education and abortion) are all solidly conservative, but he might want to throw up paragraphs about the lousy Biden economy and protecting the oil and gas industry (TX-23 includes big chunks of Eagle Ford and Permian Basin fields).
Herrera is one of the biggest gun bloggers in Texas, but sometimes it’s difficult to translate “internet famous” into electoral success. (In 2015, Fark’s Drew Curtis drew a paltry 3.7% of the vote as an independent in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race.)
On the other hand, Second Amendment rights are a hot-button issue for Texas Republican voters, and Herrera has just under 3 million subscribers on YouTube. If 1/10th of them sent him $5 each, his campaign would have enough money to run a competative race.
TX-23 used to be a full-blown swing district, with Will Hurd and Gonzalez winning by narrow margins, but it’s gotten redder thanks to redistricting and a Hispanic swing toward the GOP thanks to Biden’s feckless border policies. Swing districts tend to produce squishy congressmen like Hurd and Gonzalez.
Pretty much nothing about Herrera makes me think he’d be squishy.
The FBI is investigating after a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service was killed at a gun range at a correctional facility in Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the shooting happened at the firing range at the Federal Correctional Institutional in Phoenix, located near Pioneer Road and Interstate 17 in north Phoenix. Aimee Arthur-Wastell, spokesperson with the FBOP, said the range was being used by multiple federal agencies at the time.
The FBI specified that the agent was there for “routine” training when they were killed, but didn’t offer specifics as to how the agent was killed or if anyone was in custody.
According to Phoenix police, officers who responded to the area found a person shot, later determined to be the IRS agent. The agent was taken to a hospital with serious injuries. It wasn’t immediately clear if the agent died en route or at the hospital.
According to Arthur-Wastell, no FBOP or firing range employees were injured.
“To preserve the integrity and capabilities of the investigation, details of the ongoing process will not be released,” the FBI said in a statement.
Yeah, I bet.
You wonder just how many of Jeff Cooper’s rules were ignored here. Then again, it only takes one.
You’d like to think that federal firearms facilities take at least as much care on observing range safety procedures as the average mom-and-pop shooting range in Texas does, but given how the rest of the federal government is run these days, that’s no sure thing.
It also brings up the question of just why the IRS needs its own armed agents in the first place. Are there not enough armed agents in other branches of the federal government to provide muscle for the IRS on the (theoretically rare) occasions it’s required?
Feel free to share your own “the agent was investigating Hunter Biden and/or Hillary Clinton” jokes in the comments below.
Almost immediately, the rifles were plagued with problems. The L86A1’s bipod tended to fail to lock, were weak, and generally crappy. Additionally, the plastic melted when it interacted with bug repellant, and the metal rusted easily. The weapons were found to be unreliable in both arctic and desert environments.
The SA80 family used stamped steel, which the Brits had experience with in the form of the Sten gun. However, the Sten had much lower tolerances than the SA80. The tighter tolerances required more skilled labor and better machinery. This led to tons of waste and slow production of the SA80 family of rifles and squad support weapons.
Their first trial by combat came to be in the Gulf War and then later in African operations. It’s tough to say anything nice about these weapons’ performance in the desert. Both the L85A1 and L86A1 proved to be unreliable. The L85A1 worked best on fully automatic, and the L86A1 worked best on semi-auto. This created was the inverse of how the weapons were intended to be used.
The polymer furniture fell apart easily. The magazines and the magazine catch proved problematic. It was too easy to access and would cause soldiers to accidentally drop magazines. The top cover catch required tape to hold it in place. The weapons needed to be kept incredibly clean and could deform if gripped too hard.
The weapon overheated quickly, the firing pin was fragile and broke easily, and dirt could accumulate behind the trigger and prevent it from being pulled. The safety selector could swell when it got wet and render the weapon useless. SAS operator and Gulf War commando Chris Ryan stated that the SA80 was “poor-quality, unreliable weapons at the best of times, prone to stoppages, and it seemed pretty tough to have to rely on them.”
It’s easy to see why the rifles sucked. The British Ministry of Defence commissioned a report that stated,
“The SA80 did not perform reliably in the sandy conditions of combat and training. Stoppages were frequent despite the considerable and diligent efforts to prevent them. It is extremely difficult to isolate the prime cause of the stoppages.
It is, however, quite clear that infantrymen did not have CONFIDENCE in their personal weapons. Most expected a stoppage in the first magazine fired. Some platoon commanders considered that casualties would have occurred due to weapon stoppages if the enemy had put up any resistance in the trench and bunker clearing operations.
Even discounting the familiarisation period of desert conditions, when some may have still been using the incorrect lubrication drill, stoppages continued to occur.”
Commenter BigFire noted that Ian McCollum had done a video on the weapon, and he’s no less scathing:
“Can you hear that? I can hear it. That’s the sound of every former British service member cringing at the mere sight of this rifle. And it’s so loud you can hear it over the internet.”
“This is, probably more so than any other firearm in current service, a giant scandal of plastic and metal.”
They started with a proprietary 4.85mm cartridge, but eventually went with 5.56 NATO. Brits didn’t go with the M16 because they wanted a bull-pup (and presumably because they wanted to make them domestically).
Desert Storm: “The guns really performed poorly in the sand. And there was a report that was written detailing all of these problems and submitted to MOD in the aftermath of Desert Storm. And it got leaked to the public. And this document basically said, ‘These guns are a piece of junk, and they never work.'”
The Brits turned to Heckler & Koch (which was actually owned by a British company at the time) to fix the weapon. “And they came up with just a couple things to fix, namely everything. In the rebuild they either replaced or redesigned the bolt, the gas piston, the gas block, the front trunnion, the hammer, all of the springs, pretty much all of the pins, the magazine release, and the furniture [stock, grip and handguard], and the charging handle, and probably a couple other things that I’ve forgetting about. They basically kept the receivers as a shell and replaced everything else inside them.”
“They rebuilt about 200,000 of these rifles into what became known as the L85A2 configuration, for the cost of about £92 million.”
“They had far more problems than the M16 did in Vietnam, and yet still to this day we hear about the M16 being an unreliable piece of junk, because of some limited issues that were actually pretty easily fixed in the early days of Vietnam. Well, the L85 had much more substantial and severe problems to begin with. And even though the A2 appears to be a pretty darn good gun now, its reputation is dead forever … because of how bad the A1 was.”
Making simple weapons that can be turned out on prosumer grade CNC machines gets easier and easier every year, but designing automatic weapons that reliably work across a wide range of combat situations is still hard…
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that two Texas residents are likely to prevail in their legal challenge to a Biden administration rule that redefined firearms with pistol braces as heavily regulated short-barreled rifles (SBR), ordering the district court to reconsider issuing a permanent injunction to block the rule.
The case, styled Mock v. Garland, was brought by attorneys with the Firearms Policy Coalition on behalf of Texas residents William Mock and Christopher Lewis. The plaintiffs sought to block the administrative rule that would subject firearms, otherwise legally classified as pistols, as SBRs, which are heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
To purchase an NFA-regulated weapon, a buyer must undergo a background check, pay $200 in taxes to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and wait roughly a year. NFA firearms are also subject to a litany of additional regulations, the violation of which can subject the owner to substantial civil and criminal penalties.
Gun owners were given four months after the rule change in January to remove braces from their pistols and either destroy, register, or surrender them to the ATF, or else be subject to criminal charges after the grace period.
Snip.
The 5th Circuit’s decision noted that the rule was challenged on two fronts, the first being that the ATF failed to follow proper procedure by giving public notice of one version and then implementing a different final version with a broader application.
Because the court sided with the plaintiffs on the administrative procedural challenge, determining they would likely succeed on the merits at trial and that they meet the requirements for injunctive relief, the court stopped short of addressing the constitutional challenge. However, Justice Don Willet wrote in a separate concurring opinion that he suspects the rule would likely “not withstand constitutional muster.”
The majority opinion remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where the original judge had denied the plaintiff’s past request for an injunction blocking the rule.
For now, the appeals court is maintaining an order blocking enforcement of the rule against FPC and its members until the district court issues a new ruling on its injunction request that complies with the appeals court’s findings.
Several other legal challenges to the pistol brace rule are presently ongoing in federal district courts, with challenges from Gun Owners of America and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty prevailing earlier this year in securing injunctions to block the rule’s enforcement for the organizations’ members.
The pistol brace rule would retroactively make millions of law-abiding Americans criminals for not registering them (which, for the left, is no doubt the point). Government agencies should not be able to unilaterally and retroactively declare ownership of legally obtained goods suddenly forbidden on penalty of law.
Hopefully the pistol brace rule gets overturned entirely.
After every media-hyped shooting, ambulance-chasing lawyers come out of the woodwork to file lawsuits against the manufacturer of whatever gun this month’s eel-brain happened to lay his hands on to do the deed, despite the Protection in Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
This time they’re doing it for the Uvalde shooting, but they’ve evidently been so sloppy in filing their lawsuit that they’re facing contempt charges.
In the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 students and two teachers, California-based attorney Charles Bonner is facing heat over a federal case to sue the gun store and the manufacturer of the rifle used in the massacre, Daniel Defense.
Bonner told media in August 2022 that he had been hired by Uvalde residents, consisting mostly of families of Robb Elementary students, to file civil lawsuits against numerous entities over the shooting.
Now, he and other attorneys involved are facing both sanctions and criminal contempt charges in federal court over the lax handling of the case.
Both Daniel Defense and gun store Oasis Outback, which sold the rifle to the gunman, have been named as defendants in the federal civil lawsuit seeking $6 billion in damages. Prior to filing the lawsuit, Bonner had announced his intent to file a $27 billion class action lawsuit, but it is unclear if he intends to seek additional damages from other parties in separate lawsuits.
The case was initially filed in the Austin division of the Western District of Texas; however, the case was transferred to the Del Rio division, where the court instructed the plaintiffs to serve the defendants before the case could proceed.
This simple process is where the case began to fall apart procedurally.
Numerous documents beginning in June show federal Judge Alia Moses giving multiple orders to the plaintiff attorneys to properly serve the defendants, writing, “The Defendants must be afforded due process instead of plaintiff counsel’s apparent wish to improperly litigate this case ex parte,” accusing the attorneys of using the case to serve their interests alone.
But the lax handling of the case didn’t stop with the first admonishment by the court.
Moses set a hearing to discuss why the plaintiffs failed to properly serve the defendants, a hearing the attorneys did not attend.
“Serving defendants the lawsuit” is hardly a deep, dark secret of the legal profession. Indeed, it’s why process servers exist as a profession.
This prompted Moses to set another hearing, ordering the plaintiffs’ legal counsel to appear in a hearing where the court will consider sanctions for failing to follow its instructions and potentially issue contempt charges for failing to appear.
“The Court will consider additional sanctions for the failure to appear and will consider referring the plaintiff’s counsel for contempt prosecution based on the failure to appear at the sanctions hearing,” Moses’s order states.
Lawyers, even ambulance chasers, are supposed to be smarter than the average bear. But this is a pretty basic, stupid, unforced error on Bonner’s part…
The recoil shockwave of the .577 Tyrannosaur visibly travels through one of the Slow Mo Guys’ back muscles. It really emphasis the felt recoil of that monster.
At 82,000 frames a second, you can see a flash of light from bullet impact as it enters the ballistics gel. They talk about naming this “The Kentucky Effect.”
The bullet sucks the fireball from the initial shot in, then the collapsing cavitation of the gel reignites the gases.
4 Bore is an obsolete black-powder rifle with a (roughly) 1 inch barrel used for hunting big game in Africa. Scott at Kentucky Ballistics got a modern version of that and decided to test it against body armor. Consider this as the latest in the “BattleSwarm features videos of absurdly large rifle calibers for your viewing pleasure.”
Though it has a 2,150 grain bullet producing over 200 pounds of felt recoil, the round is too flat and slow to actually penetrate the body armor, but it packs so much force that it just drags most of the body armor into the chest cavity. The zombie torsos do not fare well.
Thanks to Dave Hardy for bringing the video to my attention.
Remember the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon, AKA the XM-5, AKA the XM-7, AKA 6.8 x 51mm? Brandon Herrera has managed to get Sig Saur to send him the prototype of the new weapon (the Sig Spear) to test, and…he has some reservations.
The caveat here is that this is not an actual 6.8 x 51mm XM-7, it’s chambered in 308 Winchester/7.62 x 51mm (two calibers that are extremely close but not exactly the same), so the ballistics and operation are likely to be slightly different. (To make matters worse, the civilian version of the round is being marketed as 277 Fury. As far as I can tell from looking at Gunbroker, 277 Fury ammunition is available now, but models of the Sig Sauer MCX Spear chambered for the round aren’t yet on the civilian market.)
Pros:
Short stroke piston doesn’t need a buffer tube, meaning that the gun can have a folding stock. “Actually pretty cool.”
Decent trigger.
“This little right side bolt release here. Kind of a fan. Feels a little flimsy, but I like the placement.”
Left side fold-out charging handle is good.
“Hand guard here offers a lot of space to mount whatever shit you want.”
Two gas settings.
Silencer works (even if not hearing-safe quality).
Likes the flat dark earth (FDE) finish. “In my opinion, it’s a pretty sweet looking gun.”
“Gun recoil impulse not bad.”
“Running it suppressed it’s not that gassy.”
Very reliable, at least over the initial 200 rounds.
The cons:
“It’s fucking heavy, dude!…Unloaded it comes in at 8.9 pounds. For reference that is one full pound, or 13% heavier, than a full-size SCAR 17, which is also a semi-automatic 308 with a 20 round magazine.”
Folding aside, the stock isn’t great and wants to slip.
“This charging handle in the back is borderline fucking unusable. It feels, really flimsy, like I feel like I’m gonna fucking break it. And it’s stiff. It is so
fucking stiff! ‘How stiff is it, Brandon?’ Joe Biden in a room full of school kids.”
Potentially the biggest combat problem: Overinsertion of the magazine. “If you put too much force on the magazine when you’re inserting it, you will actually run up past the magazine release and get the weapon jammed.” Yeah, that sounds like a huge problem, and Sig needs to get that fixed ASAP.
The spring is a bit hard to get back in.
Super expensive right now.
From the comments on the video: “The fact that he’s actually able to unironically hold up a Scar 17 as a lighter, more affordable option is just batshit insane.”
Yeah, looks like Sig needs some more work here before it’s ready to field…