Jul 23, 2015

Standing guard for the recruiters?


Subject: USAREC Policy – Armed citizens at recruiting centers ATO’s,
Situation: The USAREC COC has received reports from two Brigade ATOs, social media and TV coverage that law abiding armed citizens are standing outside of our recruiting centers in an attempt to safeguard our recruiters.
Execution:
1) Recruiters will not acknowledge the presence or interact with these civilians. If questioned by these alleged concerned citizens; be polite, professional, and terminate the conversation immediately and report the incident to local law enforcement and complete USAREC Form 958 IAW USAREC 190-4 (SIR)
2) Do not automatically assume these concerned citizens are there to help.
Immediately report IAW USAREC 190-4 (Suspicious Behavior)
3) Immediately report any civilians loitering near the Station/Center to local police if the recruiter feels threatened. Ensure your recruiters’ clearly articulate to local police the civilian may be armed and in possession of a conceal/carry permit. Ensure recruiters include any information provided by local police in their SIR reporting the incident.
4) Ensure all station commanders implement FPCON Charlie 6 (Lock and secure entry points) addressed in previous email.
5) I’m sure the citizens mean well, but we cannot assume this in every case and we do not want to advocate this behavior.
*** The timely and accurate submission of 958s (SIR) is imperative to track these incidents and elicit support from TRADOC, ARNORTH and NORTHCOM.

USAREC 190-4 is available here (pdf warning).

If I'm reading this right - and that's a big "if" since it's a government publication...

Pages 5 and 6 list out the rough chain of events, and since they are treating volunteer guards as "Suspicious Incidents" and Force Protection ... short form: within 24 hours, and likely within 12 hours, your information will be passed through the chain of command for that station up to Branch CID. You're going to be on One More List. Is that worth it? Your decision.

(Side note, I saw an absolute hand-wringing panicked headline that one or two of the Marines in Chattanooga may have returned fire on their attacker - and how dare they, how could they, because they aren't allowed to have guns. *spit* is all I can say to that.)

Jul 14, 2015

Something new...

... except something old.

We wandered through a just-opened Scheel's over the weekend, and I left a few noseprints on the glass gun cases. The Winchester 1895 in particular caught my eye, although I was a bit puzzled when I looked at the hang tag and saw it labeled as "Caliber: .30-06".

I craned my neck around and the breech was marked ".30 GOV 03". I'd been expecting ".30 US", aka .30-40 Krag, and this was a new one on me.

I did some research on the phone real quick before I said something to a clerk about a mis-labelled hang tag, and learned...

.30-03 was a midpoint cartridge between the .30-40 Krag and .30-06 Springfield, with some features of both. The long and short of it, near as I can tell, is that it is safe to shoot .30-06 in a .30-03 chamber, but you may see some cracked case necks. What I could find also suggested sticking to the 180gr and heavier bullets, as the .30-03 was designed around the 220gr bullet of the .30-40 Krag and most have twist rates to match.

Nifty.