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What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying... | |||
2016-06-15 | |||
by Gersh Kuntzman [NYDailyNews] It feels like a bazooka — and sounds like a cannon. Seriously? I doubt you ever fired a bazooka, or the modern day equivalent, the AT-4 or even a LAWS rocket. Or been anywhere near the blast cone of a big gun, like the 105mm.
But mostly, I was just terrified. There's no hope for you. I kind of enjoyed it. AR15's a nice little gun, though I'm fond of old-fashioned bolt actions. If I had the money and I still hunted I'd love to own a Kimber Mountain Ascent. If I were in a position to do some shooting for a hobby I think the AR-15 is exactly what I'd get. Many gun shops turned down our request to fire and discuss the AR-15, a style of semi-automatic rifle popular with mass killers such as San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook and Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen. They turned you down because of the extra effort to swab off the femininity of the writer touching it.
I'd be surprised to empty an entire 40-round magazine (not clip -- the bullets you put in the magazine come in a clip) in less than five seconds. I'd be even more surprised if I hit anything. “There should be expanded background checks — extending into your family, friends and associates,” he said. “And there should be a mental health screening. In Europe, if you want to buy a gun, you have to see a doctor (for a psychiatric examination) to see if something’s not right.” Euros love them some government..
If he advocates theft and murder, which antigun advocates advocate, he is no gun advocate. He is instead a statist, just like the writer. There are situations where a person should give up his/her/its/zer guns. Depression springs to mind. So does lunacy. I haven't been shooting in years because I can't see as well as I used to. But it was my choice to get rid of the guns. He also said he never sells a gun to someone who “looks a little bit funny,” and he claimed he had prevented many guns from getting into the wrong hands because the would-be purchaser “asked stupid questions” like, “What happens to me if the gun is stolen?” You mean like, what happens if you're a straw purchaser? But very few gun shop owners do anything close to Stelmach’s sniff test — and he acknowledged how easy it is to find another gun shop owner willing to make the sale. A shop owner doesn't get an awful lot of opportunity to diagnose depression or lunacy in his customers. It's more like: "Hello. May I help you?" "Yes, thank you. I'd like to buy a rifle." "What did you have in mind?" "Do you have anything in green?" Very easy. In fact, as Philadelphia Daily News columnist Helen Ubinas showed today, you can get a military weapon in seven minutes in this country. Military style. You can't legally buy an M16 or an AK47 or a Thompson submachinegun, even if you own a violin case. Stelmach doesn’t think it should be easy. But he thinks it should be allowed. The general public hasn't been allowed to buy a .50 caliber machine gun since the thirties, if I recall. He loves the AR-15 for cops, soldiers, hunters and target shooters. “It’s fun to shoot something like that,” he said. Its a nice gun. I find it's configured a little awkwardly to get a natural butt weld. Not in my hands. I’ve shot pistols before, but never something like an AR-15. Squeeze lightly on the trigger and the resulting explosion of firepower is humbling and deafening (even with ear protection). The AR-15 is loud to be sure. I didn't think it was all that loud in comparison to .308. You can also buy one chambered in .308, which surprised me. I'll bet the .308 version's even louder. The recoil bruised my shoulder. It's built on a light frame, but when the M16 was introduced some of us described it as a ladies' gun. The M1 or the M14 had some kick to it. An afternoon at the range would leave you with some bruises to show. Take an old Mauser 98k and you might want to take the next day off. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. Must be left-handed. They eject to the right. They don't cross your face if you're right-handed. It's designed that way. They may even make left-handed models. The Steyr Aug comes with an ambidextrous ejection port. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. It's just gunpowder. It doesn't call up Lucifer or anything. It shoots a bullet. They say you can hit a target at 600 yards, though I never have. 300's about as good as my eyes got. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary case of PTSD. There's no such thing. Until you've been under significant artillery or your plane's been shot down quit being a frigging snowflake. L.S.M.F.T. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable. Funny, an hour after I get back from the gun range I am relaxed. As with any sport, your shoulder has to toughen up after firing any rifle a few times. I test fired an AR-15 I helped a friend build this past winter. I found the recoil to be like a kitten kicking. A Mosin-Nagant would probably kill this guy. This is a guy? I thought it was a girl. Does he wear a skirt? He refers to it as a "kilt"... Even in semi-automatic mode, it is very simple to squeeze off two dozen rounds before you even know what has happened. Only if you're an absolute dipshit. You gotta pull the trigger or nothing happens. In fully automatic mode, it doesn’t take any imagination to see dozens of bodies falling in front of your barrel. Problem. Even with semi automatic, the barrel climbs, making it difficult to keep it on your target. It takes training and discipline to keep just a semiautomatic on target whenever you rapid fire the rifle. And the AR-15 doesn't have a fully automatic mode. The writer is an ignoramus. All it takes is the will to do it. Will is the key. It takes a special kind of asshole to gun down unarmed innocents and to keep doing it repeatedly for a couple of hours. It is the will to kill that did those people in The AR was just the tool. Forty nine people can be gone in 60 seconds. The only gun I still own is an old Marlin .22. It has a 15-round capacity. The fact that it's a gun doesn't mean I hold the lives of 15 people in my hands. It's a gun. A tool, to be used. I used a hammer today. It's also a tool. If I had used it to cave in someone's head I wouldn't have been using it properly. | |||
Posted by:badanov |
#28 #27 You can stop a single guy firing an AR-15 with a small Beretta. Just sayin' This same point came up in LA a decade back when a few guys wearing bullet-proof vests created hours of chaos because none of the responding officers were capable of (or focused on) a head-shot. |
Posted by: Crusader 2016-06-15 22:45 |
#27 You can stop a single guy firing an AR-15 with a small Beretta. Just sayin' |
Posted by: European Conservative 2016-06-15 21:19 |
#26 Apparently he has responded. Hilarious. I wonder how he traveled to Philly. I hope he didn't drive. Seriously, anxiety blackouts..loud noise jumpy..faint from funny smells..poor physical constitution. Shit, I wouldn't even take him bowling, nevermind his opinion. Living vicariously with the victims so he can talk loudest at the cocktail party...its a bit sick. |
Posted by: swksvolFF 2016-06-15 19:30 |
#25 Hi Angie! Good stuff as usual. |
Posted by: Shipman 2016-06-15 18:11 |
#24 I saw this somewhere else and laughed like a loon. Here is a picture of an oddly-dressed middle-aged woman (yours truly) firing an AR-15 without breaking or bruising her delicate arm. |
Posted by: Angie Schultz 2016-06-15 16:37 |
#23 I find the body shock about like making good contact on a nail with a hammer. Which my four year old does up and down the deck. Last I saw 40 round clips, it was in a box marked Office Depot. |
Posted by: swksvolFF 2016-06-15 16:09 |
#22 .300 Whisper. You gotta try it. . |
Posted by: OregonGuy 2016-06-15 13:34 |
#21 My personal favorite: The fifty caliber handgun has a little kick. Any bets the girl in the video is more masculine than "pajama boy"? |
Posted by: Frozen Al 2016-06-15 11:47 |
#20 Hey, I wear a kilt. Leave the kilt out of it. I have an 1873 Sharps cavalry carbine in 45-70. It will bruise your shoulder. I find it impossible to believe he actually fired one. There is no sulfur smell, either. |
Posted by: Deacon Blues 2016-06-15 10:44 |
#19 Ok, as long as we are voting - Quigley's rifle - though I'd want a 50-120: http://www.shilohrifle.com/shop/product.php?productid=115 |
Posted by: M. Murcek 2016-06-15 10:22 |
#18 I'll let him fire "Thumper". It is a 1898 30-40 Krag. 5 rounds WILL bruise your shoulder no matter how well you hold it. Otherwise this "guy" is a complete beta male and needs to be mocked. Openly and often. |
Posted by: DarthVader 2016-06-15 10:15 |
#17 Tyrannosausus Go Boom video... |
Posted by: magpie 2016-06-15 10:02 |
#16 I was going to say Ruger Model 1 Tropical in .458 Win Mag, but, what the hell - T-Rex .577 https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=t-rex+.577&view=detail&mid=C5F3F73FCFA0FCBB8C10C5F3F73FCFA0FCBB8C10&FORM=VIRE |
Posted by: M. Murcek 2016-06-15 09:58 |
#15 It's nice to see the Dave D. resurgence! |
Posted by: Frank G 2016-06-15 09:57 |
#14 ...ahh, come on, give him an 1862 Springfield to feel the kick while you're at it. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-06-15 09:55 |
#13 "People like Kuntzman should be traded to Europe for people constitutionally able to be Americans." Herewith, a nomination for Snark Of The Day. Spot on! Seriously, if you take a neurotic, hysterical, anxiety-wracked ninny like Kuntzman to a rifle range and hand him an AR-15 (or any other gun) and let him shoot it, of course he's going to be surprised: guns do go BANG! when they're fired, and all of them-- even small guns-- are very, very loud. That's why we wear ear protection while on the range. You want REALLY loud? Try a short-barreled .357 Magnum revolver. As for recoil, few guns have LESS recoil than an AR-15 or other .223 Remington autoloader, in part because the .223 is a fairly light round to begin with but also because the recoil spring and other autoloading mechanism parts absorb much of the energy that would otherwise go into felt recoil. You want REAL recoil? Again, try a short-barreled revolver chambered in .357 Mag-- preferably an ultralightweight model like the 11.4 oz. S&W Model 340PD. My son and I test-fired one of those, once. One shot for each of us was enough; it hurt like Hell. But an AR-15? It doesn't even have enough recoil to disrupt your sight picture when taking follow-on shots. Like Pappy said: an over-civilized twink. |
Posted by: Dave D. 2016-06-15 09:38 |
#12 Sorry Pappy, I gotta disagree there. He is not OVER civilized, he is a prime example of Dunning Krueger civilized. The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it is But you got the twinky spot on. ;^) |
Posted by: AlanC 2016-06-15 09:14 |
#11 The musings of an over-civilized twink. |
Posted by: Pappy 2016-06-15 08:44 |
#10 Rear loader on a 105 Recoilless Rifle. See the flames, feel the heat, feel the suck. Pajama Boy can't handle what hundreds of thousand of women have done in basic training? With their usual deep Freudian projection, now we understand why they believe everyone else is liquoring up the ladies to have comatose sex for reproduction. One, he's obviously not quality DNA material for the ladies, and two, he couldn't handle an awake/alive active partner. |
Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-06-15 08:31 |
#9 The stupid is strong with this guy. So many fails in the article Having fired everything from a Daisy Pal to a 155mm howitzer (including RPGs n Gustavs), I'll keep my trusty Sig 239 in 9 and the 870. Don't really need more than that. |
Posted by: Bangkok Billy 2016-06-15 08:02 |
#8 I've tried a number of different guns over the years. Never owned one 'cuz the wife didn't want one in the house with kids., now both over 30. In the last year she's been telling me to get a license cause things are out of hand. To me that means that lots of folks are getting scared. No other reason is needed for the rise of Trump. If this wussy wants something with a kick and a boom he should try a .50 sniper rifle. I shot it once at a gun club open house type event........oh my goodness. Now THAT's loud and has a real kick. Also tried an M16, an old .30 carbine like my Dad carried in WWII (that's little more than a .22), an M1 Garand (liked that one) and a number of different pistols. The .45 had quite a kick but the .357 mag seemed to be worse. People like Kuntzman should be traded to Europe for people constitutionally able to be Americans. |
Posted by: AlanC 2016-06-15 07:43 |
#7 The recoil bruised my shoulder. MJ had a bruised shoulder after his arrest as I recall. Once Opinions were like Exhaust Ports, everyone had one. Now it seems everyone that has words can post them, and they are perceived by both author and readers to be equally valuable, when they really are just exhaust. |
Posted by: Skidmark 2016-06-15 07:22 |
#6 Biggest calibre weapon I've fired is a .45 calibre handgun, The noise and recoil is quite a shock the first time. |
Posted by: phil_b 2016-06-15 05:13 |
#5 Snowflake. |
Posted by: gorb 2016-06-15 03:29 |
#4 The weapons issue is clearly an Abilene Paradox exercise. Not sure why we continue to go there, other than for sake of diversion. |
Posted by: Besoeker 2016-06-15 03:16 |
#3 Kuntzman: a lover not a fighter? |
Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-06-15 02:19 |
#2 From yesterday's Rantburg: NARRATIVE FAIL: Orlando Islamic Terrorist Did NOT Use An AR-15 |
Posted by: Chuck 2016-06-15 02:12 |
#1 Gersh Kuntzman? YJCMTSU... |
Posted by: M. Murcek 2016-06-15 00:41 |