We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things. Chesty Puller 12/5/1950 Battle of Chosin Reservoir
A fellow US Marine that I served with took on the mission on rebuilding a Philippines school. Here is his Gofundme page. My brother needs all the help he can get, Lets pull together and help out this fellow Marine.
His story To help, CLICK HERE I came across Cadmang Elementary school while in the Philippines. There are 193 students and 8 teachers. The school is in serious need of repairs, out of six buildings two need to be torn down due to structural failures, the remaining buildings all need new roofs. They have one functional toilet. I hope that using this site will at least allow the school to provide either a safe and dry classroom or at least functioning toilets for the kids. I have talked to the principle of the school and she is desprate for any kind of help. Imagine being a student or teacher here or if this was the only place your child could go for school.
We all have those people in our lives that have absolutely ZERO understanding of firearms, how they function, and the differences between them. As a result, they of course label everything that is not a single shot bolt action assault rifles. These people are usually the ones screaming the loudest for gun bans because they don’t know that what is being fed to them in talking points in the media is patently false. If you know someone like this, share this article with them.
Use this to explain to those who do not understand firearms or what is meant when one states “automatic” firearm. This is truly the best explanation I have seen to date and is very helpful when educating people.
ASSAULT RIFLES AND CAMERAS
If you’re not a “gun person,” the analogy I’ve found most useful is cameras.
For older cameras, you used to hit the button (*CLICK!*) which would take a picture. Then you had to do something – twist a wheel, crank a lever, etc – before you could take another picture. The gun version of that is called a “repeater”. It has a magazine that holds multiple rounds, but you have to manually cycle the action between shots. This includes bolt action rifles, pump shotguns, most revolvers, etc.
Most cameras today do everything once you hit the button. They take a picture, advance the film, and then you’re ready for another picture as fast as you can hit the button. (we’re sticking with film cameras for this analogy). This is a “semi-automatic.” I actually like the British term better – “self-loading.” When you fire, the gun uses the energy of that shot to eject the empty casing and “self-load” the next round so you’re ready to fire again as fast as you can pull the trigger. This includes pretty much every handgun other than a revolver, and most rifles (including AR15s and your grandpa’s Mini 14, M1A, or M1 Garand).
Finally, some cameras will let you use “burst mode” where you hold down the button and it takes pictures as fast as it can for as long as you hold down the button (or until it runs out of film). That’s an “automatic” weapon, or a “machine gun.” That’s what most people *think* AR15s are, what you see in the movies, what the military uses, and what costs $XX,000, takes months to years of background checks, etc, etc, etc. There are nearly no crimes committed with automatic weapons in the US.
THE PROBLEM WITH BANNING ASSAULT RIFLES…
The problem is these three are the most substantive distinguishing categories between different types of firearms.
People wonder “why don’t we just ban semi-autos,” but you’re talking about the vast majority of firearms in the US. “Assault weapon” bans are essentially attempts to define away certain semi-auto rifles based on cosmetic features – it’d be like trying to ban “race cars,” by then realizing that race cars are pretty much just cars (you’re not going to ban “gasoline engines” or “diesel engines”), and therefore defining “race car” as “a car with a spoiler, a loud exhaust, sponsor decals, and/or a large number on the hood.”
Sure, that definition covers the race cars you’re trying to ban, but it’s a meaningless definition – NASCAR could easily take the decals and spoilers off and suddenly their cars aren’t “race cars” (“zomg THE NRA IS FINDING LOOPHOLES IN THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN!!!”), and your kid’s Scion TC is suddenly a “race car” because it has a spoiler on it.
Share this article with those people on your friends list who keep calling for Assault Rifles to be banned but have no idea what they actually are.
A woman posted a selfie online without thinking much of it, then she headed out to work. Not realizing what she was sharing in the photo, she simply posted it and forgot about it, which proved to be a huge mistake when a thug found out about it.
Quinisha Johnson didn’t have much time to check her social media profile after she arrived to her job at a Walgreens in Arlington, Texas. However, her husband Ricci Bradden did, and he became enraged at what he saw. There was something different about this selfie that set the man off, which wasn’t a problem with the countless other bathroom and bedroom pictures she posted before this one, but it wasn’t his wife who would pay. Instead, an honorable veteran Marine did.
Quinisha had no clue what her husband was up to when he suddenly showed up at her work on May 2, just a few short hours after her selfie surfaced online. Within a matter of seconds, Ricci made his rage over her photo known, when he began publicly berating his wife about it, claiming she posted it for attention and was showing too much of her chest.
While that may be true of the recent black and white snapshot (below) that set him off, so did all the other selfies she posted to Facebook in the months and years up to this point. Those didn’t get the same reaction from Ricci that this one did, and when his verbal assault wasn’t enough, he went out to his car to get his gun and make his message more clear, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Quinisha Johnson in her selfie that enraged her husband
“And I was trying to explain it to him that, ‘I married you. You’re all the attention that I needed,'” Quinisha explained to WFAA. The already irate husband shot at his wife’s legs twice, hitting her once in the ankle, before realizing who else was there.
Former Marine Anthony “T.J.” Antell happened to be in the store and immediately stepped in to protect Quinisha by attempting to disarm Ricci with the use of his own gun, which he was legally carrying in his car. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned, and the thug immediately gunned down Antell, a father-of-three, before he could get his firearm out of his car. To make matters more tragic, the Marine’s wife was there to see her husband murdered right in front of her.
Ricci fled the gruesome scene, but he later turned himself in to police. He’s since been charged with murder and is being held on $500,000 bond. Meanwhile, three kids are now fatherless and a woman lost her husband, all over a selfie.
Antell was a hero for our country, which didn’t change after returning home, where he selflessly protected a stranger because that’s what he knew needed to be done. A veteran lost his life at the hands of a feral thug, yet there’s no outrage in the media over it. Had it been the reverse, it would be front page news for weeks.
VIDEO ON TAP: Pilot Orders Obama Off Of Chopper For Disrespecting A Marine - If Only Republicans Had His Backbone! - I Have The TruthWSIL-TV 3 Southern Illinois
Fallen Marine's Remains Returned To Riverside County
CBS Los Angeles
The remains of a U.S. Marine from Temecula killed in Iraq during an Islamic State attack were returned to Riverside County Saturday.
The 27-year-old, Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, was assigned to Battalion Landing Team, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines. He was killed in Iraq in a rocket attack near Mahmour where eight other Marines were also injured.
USMC Life volunteer Kristina Hammock organized an effort to get civilians to line the street to honor the Marine as he made his way home.
U.S. Marines in Europe are training to descend on embassies overrun by terrorists, active shooters or violent rioters as concerns about safety at diplomatic facilities mount following sophisticated attacks on that continent.
Members of the Marine Corps' Spain-based crisis response unit recently spent three days at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal, responding to mock emergencies. The exercises prepared the Marines for real-world missions since their unit could be tapped to rapidly reinforce security at State Department posts across Africa or Europe.
“The ability to do these kinds of missions in an actual embassy is only going to help us further down the line if and when we have to ... go and reinforce [one],” said 1st Lt. John McCombs, a spokesman for the crisis response force.
Responding to emergencies at embassies is one of the crisis response force's main missions. The Marine Corps created the land-based unit about seven months after the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.
Within months of the Marines deploying to Spain, the unit was tasked with evacuating State Department personnel from the embassy in South Sudan amid fears that a civil war was about to break out. In July 2014, the task force helped move embassy personnel from Libya to Tunisia when violent clashes between militias broke out in Tripoli.
Embassy reinforcement missions require close interaction with State Department personnel. During the mock attacks at the embassy in Portugal, the crisis response force worked alongside the Marine security guards regularly based there, as well as State Department officials and Portuguese security forces.
That allowed the Marines to troubleshoot how they would integrate with those already on the scene, said 1st Lt. Nicholas Berger, a platoon commander with the crisis response force.
“Moving out to Lisbon allowed us to work through what an embassy reinforcement would actually be like for our company,” said 1st Lt. Nicholas Berger, a platoon commander with the crisis response force. “Our role was to provide security external to the embassy, allowing them to change focus to the inside of the compound.”
Once on the ground, the Marines worked with trainers from the State Department’s diplomatic security service. In one scenario simulating a riot, role-players acting as a mob got increasingly violent, even throwing a Molotov cocktail to test how the Marines responded.
The exercise challenged the Marines to communicate quickly with diplomatic security staff in the midst of a crisis, Berger said. .
“The hardest part was finding ... what they needed from us and how we could help,” he said. “It was really putting myself in the right place, putting my platoon sergeant in the right place [and] talking to the right people.”
The scenarios also challenged infantry Marines to use the right tactics in an embassy setting with limited information about the attack, said Cpl. Zeth Horr, an infantry squad leader.
"We had to be able to take the things that we normally do in a regular or non-permissive environment and shape that to an embassy environment where you had American citizens, local nationals and a whole range of people," he said. "You had to figure out where you fit in and also apply your skills in a different manner than you might be used to."
More Marines headed to Iraq after Rocket Attack The rocket attack that killed Staff Sgt Louis Cardin and injured 8 other Marines is the catalyst for a new deployment of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Makhmur in Iraq. Roughly 3,700 U.S. troops are already deployed to Iraq. The Marine Corps Times reported that hundreds of Marines have already been “quietly” sent to Iraq to assist in the fight against ISIS. 26th MEU members conduct helicopter training. Time to take out the trashAfter ISIS attacked the Nineveh Operations Center earlier in March, the new deployment was announced. The 26th MEU has been operating with 5th Fleet in the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group, according to the Marine Corps Times. The actual number of Marines to be deployed to Makhmur is unknown. The 26th MEU contains about 4,000 Marines and sailors, and have been deployed since October.
ISIS has been active in the area of Makhmur, Iraq. Though the Pentagon claimed that Americans were not in “harms way” there, that analysis turned out to be incorrect. The Marine Corps’ new deployment is headed to the area to take out the trash. Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin, killed in ISIS rocket attack in Iraq
The death of a Marine
The name of the NCO who died in that rocket attack was released yesterday. The Marine Corps Times wrote, Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, a 27-year-old field artilleryman with Battalion Landing Team, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, was killed at about 9 a.m. Saturday when Islamic State group militants launched a rocket attack on a coalition base in Makhmur. Eight other Marines were injured in the attack on the newly established base, which is roughly 60 miles outside of Mosul… Cardin, of Temecula, California, joined the Marine Corps in June 2006 and was based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He deployed to Iraq once before and to Afghanistan three times.
First, I want to say R.I.P Brother, Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin. You will not be forgotten.
Today we learned that a U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin’s death became known to the public after Sunday’s Islamic State rocket attack that killed him and wounded several others, so became known the existence of the U.S. forward operating base he was stationed at in the vicinity of Makhmur in northern Iraq.
Pentagon officials said they had planned on acknowledging the firebase at some point. The Pentagon was then forced into announcing a current deployment of troops from an additional Marine Expeditionary Unit as well.
Lastly, it became known that Cardin and his fellow Marines were part of an artillery unit, which compromised the Pentagon’s previous stance that besides Special Operations Forces, conventional troops were just there to train indigenous soldiers.
It is believed that the U.S. Marine artillery unit had been observed by ISIS as they were performing drills on their weapons systems, which led to the rocket attack on exposed troops.
Marines give civilian media a ride in the inside the Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., March 15, 2016. The AAV SU, or amphibious assault vehicle survivability upgrade, will build upon the existing hull. The upgrades include additional armor, blast-mitigating seats and spall liners. They may also include fuel tank protection and automotive and suspension upgrades to keep both land and sea mobility regardless of the added weight.
Various parts of the new Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade are on display at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., March 15, 2016. The AAV SU will build upon the existing hull. The upgrades include additional armor, blast-mitigating seats and spall liners. They may also include fuel tank protection and automotive and suspension upgrades to keep both land and sea mobility regardless of the added weight.
The Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade is set on display at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., March 15, 2016. The AAV SU will build upon the existing hull. The upgrades include additional armor, blast-mitigating seats and spall liners. They may also include fuel tank protection and automotive and suspension upgrades to keep both land and sea mobility regardless of the added weight.
Maj. Paul Rivera, the Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade Project team lead, gives a presentation at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., March 15, 2016. The AAV SU, or amphibious assault vehicle survivability upgrade, will build upon the existing hull. The upgrades include additional armor, blast-mitigating seats and spall liners. They may also include fuel tank protection and automotive and suspension upgrades to keep both land and sea mobility regardless of the added weight.
Civilian media are given the opportunity to ride inside the Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., March 15, 2016. The AAV SU, or amphibious assault vehicle survivability upgrade, will build upon the existing hull. The upgrades include additional armor, blast-mitigating seats and spall liners. They may also include fuel tank protection and automotive and suspension upgrades to keep both land and sea mobility regardless of the added weight.
FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Maryland -- The Program Executive Officer, Land Systems Marine Corps hosted a media demonstration of the Corps’ upgraded amphibious assault vehicle at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, March 15, 2016.
The Marine Corps has been using AAV’s since 1971, and they remain the primary general-support armored personnel carrier for Marine infantry. Currently, the Marine Corps has more than 1,000 AAV’s in service.
The Corps realizes the importance of maintaining these battle-tested vehicles until being replaced by the amphibious combat vehicle. PEO LS has been tasked with adapting the vehicles to make them survive until the Amphibious Combat Vehicle replaces them.
“We’re going to modernize about a third of the fleet,” said Col. Roger Turner, director of the Marine Corps Capabilities Development. “We think we can extend the service life of this vehicle, make it perform better, and have enough survivability to be relevant in the current and future operating environments ahead.”
PEO LS created the AAV Survivability Program to provide the Marine operating forces with 392 vehicles that have a longer life span because of updated features for the current battle spaces and force protection.
“We’ve noticed in both Iraq and Afghanistan the AAV had some vulnerabilities in an IED environment, so we decided to upgrade it to increase its armor protection and also to increase its water performance,” said Turner.
The AAV SU, or Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade, will build upon the existing hull. The upgrades include buoyant armor, blast-mitigating seats and spall liners. They will also include fuel tank protection and automotive and suspension upgrades to keep both land and sea mobility regardless of the added weight.
“It does the exact same thing with some upgraded horsepower and basically more armor, so it allows the Marines to go into environment where before we couldn’t go,” said Capt. James McGowen, an infantry officer assigned to Project Manager Advanced Amphibious Assault.
These 392 vehicles can equip the Corps with four battalions for amphibious operations and additional support.
“We think that this system is going to make this vehicle operationally relevant in the current and the future operating environment for years to come,” said Turner.
AAVs allow the Corps to maximize its amphibious capabilities and the survivability program will help bridge the gap to the future of amphibious vehicles.
