birb_cromble
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User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
10hr ago
I address that in the original post. He shoves a screw into the trigger assembly. I don't consider that no reason, but I could entertain the notion that it is indicative of a deficient design.
birb_cromble
11hr ago
Doesn't the service variant have a manual safety?
birb_cromble
11hr ago
If somebody can show me a set of manipulations that can set off the primer without touching the trigger, SIG should face criminal charges.
Air Force Command Pauses Use of M18 Handguns After Security Airman's Death
An Air Force command is temporarily barring the use of issued Sig Sauer sidearms amid an investigation into the death of an airman at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming over the weekend.
For those of you who do not pay attention to small arms development or small arms procurement, the story of the M18 is an interesting one.
Several years ago, the US military published a request for a new sidearm for all of its branches, called the modular handgun system (MHS). They asked for several highly specific features, including the ability to replace grips and change slide lengths at the armorer level.
Multiple companies tendered submissions, including Glock, Beretta, HK, SIG, and a few other smaller players. After years of examination and multiple lawsuits (that are worth examination on their own), the department of defense settled on the SIG P320, which they labeled the M17 and M18, depending on the barrel and grip length.
As a result of the contract, multiple law enforcement agencies across the US standardized on the P320 as a service weapon.
Unfortunately for SIG, users discovered that the P320 was not drop safe. If dropped from several feet onto a concrete surface at the correct angle, the mass of the trigger shoe could cause the trigger to pull itself due to inertia.
While SIG did not issue a recall, it did offer a "voluntary upgrade" program that replaced the heavy trigger shoe with a lighter polymer model, which was the one used on the M17 and M18. This variant did not have enough mass to pull itself when dropped from a height onto a hard surface at a specific angle.
However, the pistol now had a reputation. It was The Gun That Goes Off For No Reason. SIG rapidly found itself playing defense against a torrent of lawsuits where individuals claimed that the pistol discharged with absolutely no user intervention. Claimants argued that since the gun was once, in specific circumstances, able to fire without human intervention, that it was fundamentally and inherently unsafe. Even though no one could ever describe a mechanism for uncommanded discharge, SIG lost two of those cases because they shipped a trigger shoe that did not have a Glock-style trigger safety, which would have hypothetically prevented an uncommanded discharge that occurred due to an undescribed mechanism.
Fast forward to now. A US Airman has died, allegedly because the service pistol fired a round while it was sitting in a holster on his desk.
A YouTuber and a redditor have both claimed to be able to repeatedly create an uncommanded discharge. The "gun community" has taken this as permission to Hate SIG, and has begun to do so with gusto.
Here's the thing: both the YouTuber and the redditor manipulate the trigger in their reproduction steps. The YouTuber shove a screw into the trigger assembly, and the redditor literally pulls the trigger with his finger.
To my knowledge, no one has figured out how to make the gun fire without touching the trigger.
I feel like this series of events has culture war implications.
The first reason is because it seems like a lot of culture war activity seems similar to a concept in the gun world called "fuddlore". "Fuddlore", to those who haven't heard about it, is received wisdom that has only a tenuous connection to reality at best, but is nonetheless extremely sticky in the mind of a certain class of person. An example would be someone saying something like "I'd never use an AR-15 because it shits where it eats and constantly jams". You could show them dozens of long duration tests across multiple environments and duty schedules, from multiple sources with different biases, that all prove the modern AR-15 is a solid, dependable rifle that will keep firing in even the most vile conditions. They'll nod their head, then a week later say "I'd never use an AR-15 because it shits where it eats and constantly jams". In the case of the M18, it's the Gun That Goes Off For No reason now, and it's firmly embedded in the fuddlore even though nobody can figure out how to do it.
You might recognize that same mindset from stories here. I've seen people mention it around politics, romantic relationships, COVID, and Lord only knows what else.
The second parallel to the culture war is that a lot of people hate SIG for a few different reasons. Some are fanboys of other brands. Some think they're cheating on the federal contracts. Others just think they're Too Jewish (don't ask me. I don't get it). The end result is that they're using motivated reasoning to make a point of believing the stories. It feels similar to Scott's old arguments as soldiers story.
I don't if I have anywhere else to go with this, but it's wild to see concepts discussed here show up in a different subculture.
birb_cromble
1d ago
They want peers who can fit in with their social and work circle and who will advance alongside them.
Don't marry her unless she can secure an alliance with the Burgundians.
birb_cromble
1d ago
Bears is definitely US or Norway. No way it’s Russia- it’s just too poor to win on widespread species. Canada, Japan, Scandinavia, all have bears.
I think I wrote that while I was trying do do some per Capita GDP vs megafauna math. If it's just "has animals", you're definitely right.
birb_cromble
1d ago
I have a few thoughts.
Bears: I'm going to throw in a vote for the US. Black bears, brown bears, and grizzlies are all common. Russia might be in the running too.
Big cats: are you only including panthera, or "cats that are big"? The US might come back into the running with mountain lions if it's the latter.
Canines: the US probably wins here hands down if you include the larger eastern coyote. If you don't, it gets a lot murkier.
Big snakes: this might be the US these days. The Burmese python population is out of control in Florida, and they get enormous.
You might want to include a few more categories as well.
"Large browsers" are different from "large grazers". The US and Canada have moose and elk. Several countries in Africa have giraffe.
"Crocodilians" have representatives in the US, China, India, multiple South American countries, and at least Egypt. This probably goes to the US or China
"Aquatic mammals" is another interesting one, with freshwater dolphins (India, China, South America), manatees, and dugongs. This probably goes to the US, unless the dugong is more common in the Taiwan straight than I thought.
I'm not sure what the technical term is, but "giant honkin' birds" would be tricky. You have ostriches, and emus, but a few other that might fit as well. This gets complicated by the fact that the big two have been exported and farmed all over the world.n Australia probably wins here?
I was driving through an extremely rural suburb of a city the other day that was also extremely wealthy. There was a wildly high end custom furniture store next to a Walmart. As I drove home, I saw an Amtrak station in the city, then realized there was another out in the middle of nowhere.
It made me realize that a lot of the things that people use as tribal or economic indicators in the US might not be as cleanly distributed as people think.
For me:
- About 100 miles
- About 150 miles
- About a quarter mile (Holsteins)
- About 35 miles
- About five miles
- About 110 miles
I'd actually love to know the same numbers for non US individuals, if only because the Amtrak bit would be hilarious. Your equivalent long distance commuter train equivalent would also be interesting.
birb_cromble
2d ago
I've been noticing a lot of interesting trends as I read comments here, and I have a few questions for anyone who would be willing to answer.
For these distances, I'm only looking for rough numbers.
- How far away is the closest symphony orchestra that pays it's musicians?
- How far away is the closest bespoke suit shop?
- How far away is the nearest commercial farm (not hobby), and what do they farm?
- How far away is the nearest Amtrak station?
- How far away is the nearest Walmart?
- How far away is the nearest international airport?
birb_cromble
3d ago
nowadays they're so ubiquitous among young people that I don't think there's a strong correlation at all.
I don't have the disgust reaction that a lot of people here seem to have. I do, however, tend to think that for the cost of a full sleeve you could do something that gets you a fun story and some interesting scars.
birb_cromble
4d ago
The most common suspender wearers that I see are older guys who have put on enough weight and lost enough muscle that belts don't properly hold up their pants anymore.
birb_cromble
4d ago
Is the man in suspenders a slender, bearded twenty-something man from Brooklyn, or an overweight septuagenarian?
birb_cromble
7d ago
They genuinely feel bad about this and want to restructure society so that this isn't done anymore in the future.
Have any of them left the positions in question? This sounds a lot like rationalization for pulling the ladder up behind them.
birb_cromble
8d ago
If that's the case, then isn't ISW admitting Russian advances an even stronger signal of accelerated Russian gains?
birb_cromble
8d ago
If the institute for the study of war is trustworthy, or at least consistently biased enough to use as a metric, it does look like the Russians are making some real pushes.
Check today's map from one on this day two years ago for comparison. They're nibbling at the edges of the northern border.
birb_cromble
8d ago
Do the officials in question even have that power?
TBH, that's part of why I posted this. My experience with the federal government is largely limited to contract compliance. Once you get into questions of who has the power to do anything, I rapidly get out of my depth.
Would the recent supreme court decision about independent agencies have any impact on that power?
birb_cromble
8d ago
I hadn't considered how Congress fit into all of this. Thanks for giving me something to ponder.
birb_cromble
8d ago
RFK Jr. fires two top staffers in leadership shakeup
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has fired two of the department’s top aides in a leadership shakeup, a spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
There are two things I'd like to discuss here: the procedural and the inside baseball.
One of the most interesting aspects of the second Trump presidency is that unelected officials are being fired, and that the news is reporting on it.
Historically, firing high ranking officials was not uncommon. In recent years, however, it seems like it has gotten more difficult to do so, up until 2025.
What has changed? Is this entirely downstream of recent court precedent, or has the executive fundamentally changed in some way compared to Biden and Trump I?
There's a lot of supposition and kremlinology below, so if you're not into that, feel free to skip this section.
Moving on, I've seen a few rumors floating around that these firings are due to the officials in question approving the Moderna COVID vaccine while RFK jr was on vacation. If this is true, and that's a big if, it's interesting for a few different reasons.
Historically, federal officials had a lot of power to ignore and subvert the will of their bosses. Usually though, it's passive behavior. Appointed bosses come and go, so sandbagging on unpopular orders is a common strategy. Sometimes (like military leadership lying about force dispositions in Syria), they'll go so far as to elide or bend the truth on topics that won't get back to the president until its too late to matter. Rarely though, do they engage in something that would go against the will of their appointed Boss in a way that is both active AND verifiable.
Give all that - if the reason for the firing is true, it has some interesting implications.
- It's possible that these officials knew RFK jr didn't want the approval to go through but did it anyway, with full knowledge of the consequences
- The officials thought they could get away with contravening the wishes of the appointee Boss without consequences
- They genuinely thought that the approval was in accordance with the wishes of their appointed Boss.
- Somehow the bureaucracy is so automated that these officials didn't even know the approval happened at all.
To be honest, I'm not sure which possibility is most interesting, because they all have a lot of downstream implications for federal government.
- If #1 is true, this is a rare case of a public official making a principled stand and accepting the consequences. I respect that, even if I disagree with the stand itself. It makes me wonder if it might cause other officials to take similar stands.
- This possibility (#2) is interesting because it makes me realize that I don't actually know what the stated purpose of agency officials is. Is their highest goal to serve the purpose of the agency, or the will of the electorate? Even if they claim one or the other, what processes do we have to ensure that's true?
- Possibility #3 is interesting because it implies that these individuals either see a VERY different RFK Jr than the public sees, or they have a fairly warped view of his positions. It seems odd that someone could climb the DC power ladder and lack the skills to suss out the intentions of their appointed Bosses, so if this is true, it suggests that RFK jr has very different public and private positions.
- Possibility #4 is more terrifying than interesting. The fact that it's boring and awful and suggests that no one actually has a hand on the tiller makes me think it's also the one that's most likely to be correct.
birb_cromble
9d ago
Southerners who didn't care about good food.
birb_cromble
9d ago
Yes. I am satisfied, mostly because you're not trying to cram me into a WC-shaped hole.
birb_cromble
9d ago
That is... That is an uncharitable take on what I said.
First of all, I'm not WC. Please do not treat me like I am WC. Please do not put WC's words in my mouth. Please do not assume that my intentions and his are the same. We are not the same person. We have different goals and intentions.
Now that's out of the way, you're reading a much stronger version of what I wrote than what I intended to write. Did I say "hellhole" anywhere? No, I did not. That's your interpretation through the lens of whatever other biases you have. WC might have said it, but I did not. I didn't mention Black Americans either. I'm not even sure why you're bringing it up now.
What I did say is that, in my experience, crimes get weirder as illegal immigrant migrant labor increases in small communities. I provided some examples of that. I did not make inferences about larger civilizational impacts, because once again, I am not WC and I do not share in his motivations.
All I can say is that you can tell me that I'm wrong, but I'm still the one that spent an afternoon hosing human shit out of my cousin's toolbox.
birb_cromble
9d ago
This seems like some remarkably bad faith on your part.
First, you claim that nothing like this happens. Then you Darkly Hint that no one will provide examples, because they have a convenient excuse not to do so.
Then two people provide an example, despite your Dark Hinting.
After that, you employ what I can only call a reverse isolated demand for rigor to blow it off as an isolated incident and not useful as any kind of corroboration for lived experience. You and other mods have banned people for that kind of bad faith behavior in the past.
At this point, I'm going to ask you outright. What would you actually require to believe anything that I have said? Because from where I'm standing, it seems like your mind is already made up.
How do smaller companies like Wilson combat make aftermarket grips at a profit? Are they using a different manufacturing technology, charging more, or riding on the original SIG R&D?
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