This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
10+ arrested after a rifle ambush of security at Prairieland Detention Center near Alvarado, TX on 4th july.
Shortly before 2300, some of the arrested fired fireworks at center to draw out a response, when it arrived at least two of them started shooting at the responding officers from a distance of 100-150m. Soon after, a driver (trans, seems the only one) with a van that had 2 ARs was stopped by a responding cop (map & times)
The shooters fired about 30 shots at responding cops, hitting one in the neck, suffered a jam, probably faced return fire and then started running. Shortly after cops arrested 9 of them in a field 300 m away, armed and in body armor in addition the driver in the van. At least one got away. $25k reward.
Total equipment recovered so far on the spot: 4 AR rifles, pistols, 12 sets of body armor and several helmets.
NYT article: https://archive.is/CBvms Unusually big ambush, usually it's just one guy.
Here's a twitter thread with more details. Can't vouch for the veracity of it. It seems logical - we've been hearing for years how antifa can organise and has people. These people look too clean though, antifa protesters usually look much scruffier.
This looks very.. amateurish. Sure there was a plan but it seems they underestimated the difficulty of hitting anything at night. Or just chickened out.
If I were to try and make a fancy title for my opinion on the Texas anti-ICE attack, I'd call it 'How I Had To Figure My Way Out Of A False Flag Suspicion.'
I was hoping to do a writeup on this incident, since the Antifa attack has some ties to a post last month on how the Democratic civil war will give the Trump administration a lawful basis to go after parts of the background Democratic coalition. Antifa is a fringe part of that coalition, but still a part, and this certainly counts as a basis to go after a network. I was holding off because Ngo's article- while informative- had several 'weird flag' indicators that had me raising an eyebrow and waiting for information to dispel a possible false flag / misattribution.
One of the weird things was the mix of preparation and self-affiliation. Preparation is usually a sign of competence, but self-incrimination is usually incompetent, unless it's intended for a false-attribution, in which case incompetence can be explained by even greater competence.
On the preparation side, there was clear material preparation for first, second, and even third order consequences. From the Ngo article, the plan was to use fireworks and graffitti as a flashy / damaging, but low danger, way to bring out the ICE agents. Then the responders would be ambushed by the gunmen with, well, lethal guns, even as the team had personal radios for their own communication. At least a limited firefight was prepared for with body armor. An electromagnetic blocking device, i.e. a jammer, could then be used to frustrate the secondary response units, any ICE-Police coordinations, and otherwise help with the escape. The assailants appear to have fallen back and retreated through the immediately adjacent woods. They had a getaway car plan as well.
This is a multi-step plan that supports a level of sophistication and prior thought. This is competent, dangerous, and effective small-unit tactics that comes from training and deliberate preparation.
But then you have some of the incompetent aspects that suggest the planners were going for tacti-cool rather than tactical advantage. At least seven of the militants dressed in all black, as opposed to useful camouflage or even clothes to help blending in with normal people on the escape. Pure-black 'looks good,' but it's more a uniform for official police teams to distinguish or play to light contrasts in overt contexts- it makes as much sense in a guerilla force as thinking that historical ninjas actually dressed in all black, as opposed to the black uniform being the stage-show theater dress to make it obvious. They used AR-15s, which are not, despite years of anti-gun campaigning, particularly good rifles for waging war (or insurgency). They discarded their AR-15s, leaving evidence behind in literal walking distance of the target. Some of the discarded AR-15s were found jammed, suggesting poor weapon handling... or, reported later, weapon modification attempts to increase rate of fire. This theory of 'more bullets = better' is not actually better in general, since a good part of the value of a semi-automatic rifle for small teams is that the slower rate forces better shooting fundamentals for reliability per shot, rather than wasting ammo faster for less gain.
And then there's the backpack with antifa literature. Just... why?
This, more than anything, got my 'is this a trick?' allergy going, because this is the sort of thing someone could do to try an inflame political tensions for its own sake as a false-flag action.
Leave behind left-coded Antifa literature to feed the initial view of a blue tribe attack. The right-coded AR-15s as a symbol of red tribe means. The mix of high-competence (a group who knew what they were doing) and low-competence (a group who were making incredibly basic mistakes) that could in and of itself be used to dismiss / deflect initial attributions. 'Of course it's Antifa- the literature matches the motive matches the target in attacking ICE!' could be deflected with 'Of course it's not Antifa- Antifa would be more competent, it's obviously a fake by a red tribe domestic extremist. Right wing extremists are obviously military competent, and look- they used the scary AR-15!'
This is the sort of narrative motivation that could support a broader variety of 'true' actors. Anyone with a 'maximize for heat, not light' could want that sort of recrimination spiral. It could be right-wing accelerationists. It could be the Antifa actors seeking to maximize (in)famy while invoking a circle-the-wagons effect of their left-tribe brethren. It could even be foreign agitators. If you want to accelerate a conflict in another country, the ideal false flag is to do something that elements in the target country would plausible want to or even try to do. It's not like this would be the first Antifa attack on a ICE facility.
To be clear, a false flag is not the assessment I would make from the initial information. But it's not a scenario I would rule out either. One of the most effective ways to do a false flag attack is to do something that non-trivial parts of an existing political coalition's fringes wishes (someone else) would do. And with the recent Democratic politician accounts in the (increasingly visible) Axios "Democrats told to "get shot" for the anti-Trump resistance" article, there are certainly people who think fighting ICE and Trump is the good fight.
Which is why another of the really weird things about Ngo's initial big post was how it didn't support that this was an actual Antifa cell in the first place, particularly when the initial government accounts didn't make that claim.
Ngo didn't actually provide evidence that these people were Antifa in the original article. Ngo makes the claim, but his supporting evidence in his post is that there was Antifa literature in a backpack of one of the caught shooters- aka, the sort of very easy thing to do if one wanted to insinuate Antifa. Ngo also cites fundraising by Antifa-linked people in support of the shooters... but the political tribal sympathy nature of tribal fundraising is also well established, and doesn't rely on prior association. Ngo does not actually cite any Antifa organization / social media / group that claimed the shooters as their own, or cite any of the shooters self-identifying as Antifa.
One reason I'd been holding off posting on this was hoping that follow-on media reporting would clarify the affiliation. It largely did not. The Washington Examiner released an article repeating the claim, but they did not really justify it either. The WE article did include a reachout to the FBI, but didn't attribute any Antifa attribution to the FBI. Then again, the FBI is often mum with ongoing investigations. The New York Times article does not make the antifa attribution... but this could be explained on partisan grounds of omitting politically unfavorable context. (Another weird(?) thing of the NYT article- no comment section. Not all NYT online articles get to have comment sections, but enough do that sometimes it can be seen as a choice not to.)
So I was waiting for yesterday's Department of Justice charging statement. I would imagine that at least some in the Trump DOJ would like to emphasize an antifa connection if they could. But there is no mention of Antifa in the DOJ statement.
So, not Antifa?
Well, not quite. Not only has there not been the sort of firm denunciation/separation that would be expected if a group was not affiliated with the broader political spectrum (as with other politically-sympathetic but unaffiliated political violence attempts over the years), but there's also Benjamin Song.
If you don't recognize his name from the OP article, that's because he was not one of the ten identified in Ngo's initial article, or the NYT article of the incident, or in the initial DOJ statement of charges.
The Dallas Express has published a much more extensive look at a specific (but still at large) suspect, which gives more compelling evidence of a specific connection via one (still wanted) suspect: Benjamin Song.
The Dallas Express writer is not entirely neutral- the left-skeptical political bias of which was probably why they got the presumably FBI-supported information for the article- but it provides a bit more specific claims that are contestable by others. So far none seriously have been, but these are at least falsifiable. To quote-
This, at least, is falsifiable. And elaborated upon, with a history that suggests a clear pattern of 'helping others with violence.'
And, of course, where he got his skill set-
For those unfamiliar, 'other than honorable discharge' is the 'you are being kicked out for causes that don't necessarily raise to the level of a felony' that typically accompanies the dishonorable discharge. 'Up to 60 marines' in turn scales to between a larger-than-normal platoon or a smaller-than-normal company. 'Managed' insinuates, but does not imply, a platoon leadership position- rather, when mixed with the inventory metric, suggests an administrative role. This does not imply he was not also tactically proficient, but would explain additional skill sets in organization.
And with this, some of the earlier discrepancy falls into place. We are not talking about a group of an average consistent quality that must be competent or incompetent. We can be looking at a cell with a more-competent organizer, a former Marine who taught tactical skills, and less-competent line members.
Which also helps explain another weird flag in the initial report, of how 10 suspects were arrested... but 12 sets of body armor were recovered.
And why Song is still at large.
From the Dallas Express-
This, if true, could be a result of a particularly competent technique. Two, possibly. One way to hide something valuable is to hide it in relation to something extremely visible and attention-grabbing, so that to observer's attention is drawn away. Another is to use a sacrifice play, so that the person who searches finds a first, and expendable, asset, but doesn't know to keep looking for the more valuable, and better hidden, asset.
If immediate police response finds 10 suspects fleeing a scene... what are the odds there is another still hiding for the attention to drift further away, to depart under better conditions once the initial surge of attention starts drifting and looking further away?
Of course, there are limits to this level of competence- limits that are explainable by the limits of Song and of chance. If he was a small-unit-tactics focused Marine for only 6 years, that would suggest limited exposure to the sort of investigation/exploitation awareness that might have led him to plan better on the evidence disposal. He didn't know what he didn't know, and thus didn't prepare for them, which is how investigators could unravel things relatively quickly afterwards. He might have typically-minded his Antifa cell members and not overseen them.
And, of course, the rapid capture of specific members- especially the get-away driver- allowed a rapid exploitation of evidence / safe house / etc. while he was still in his hide-and-escape phase. This was not part of the plan, and was an issue of chance, probably. If that getaway driver hadn't been caught, then the members might not have been captured, the staging base might not have been identified, and so on until Song could get back, clear out, and cover his tracks before the police found it.
Or maybe those preparations wouldn't have been enough either. Point is- the police response that found the getaway driver, something that might have been pre-empted by the jammer or if the police car had taken a different route or any number of things, created a vulnerability in the getaway plan. That's not necessarily incompetence on his part.
Song specifically has since appeared in more reputable, mainstream, and Democratic-Party-respected media like ABC, Newsweek, and CBS. This is consistent with standard media industry practice to support government requests to publicize criminals to increase their profile and make it easier to solicit tips to lead to their capture.
None of the above media sources mention Song's antifa affiliation.
Very good breakdown. You've zoned in on what I think is the important factor in this event; Song.
My working theory is that he took low value human capital and trained them the best he could for this operation. You can see a sample of his training here. Those involved acted as could be expected under pressure. Western militaries in the modern age screen for certain negative personality traits after long experience to screen them out. Some of this screening is for mental stability and downstream effects on (heh) 'Grace under Fire'.
Once bullets started flying, this incident went badly very fast. Song may justify all sorts of things in his own mind, but I think there was a very good reason he planned for himself to be in the distant tree line rather than locate himself as one of the 'distraction makers' in the car park.
edit: some words.
More options
Context Copy link
I have friends who were assaulted by Song at a protest in ft worth in 2023.
The use of AR-15’s doesn’t tell us anything; it’s the most common rifle in America and you can buy them over the counter at probably a dozen locations within two miles of the facility, and hundreds of not over a thousand in DFW. For an operation like that you want something semi-consistent and obtainable, even if you’d rather get some bespoke battle rifle. Likewise, black is just the antifa uniform, and any street trash is going to pick up on radios and getaway cars. All the ‘markers of competency’ mean is someone planned this, not that the planner was competent.
More options
Context Copy link
They're cheap, good, and half the world's nations actively use them to wage war in some capacity. If that is not a good rifle I'm not sure what is.
Yes it is[1].
But when we're actually fighting- we're shooting at targets that are actively trying to avoid being shot at, and trying not to be shot ourselves- and not just trying to score bullseyes on a static range, we want it to be as easy as possible for us to make hits. So we're going to use the lightest feasible caliber that will defeat the target over the distances at which we expect to engage (usually less than 100 yards), and carry the most bullets both in the gun and on the person in extra magazines (traditional rifle ammunition is quite heavy and is quickly self-limiting in how much you can carry).
5.56 is special in that the cartridge weighs about the same as 9mm does (as in, the standard pistol cartridge), recoils the same as 9mm loaded to its maximum potential, but is significantly more effective than 9mm is at longer ranges because ballistics magic[2]. And its magazines are shorter so you can have more bullets in the gun without making it unwieldly.
This is in contrast to, say, 7.62x39 (the AK round), where it weighs twice as much as 9mm, recoils twice as much, magazines with comparable ammunition quantity to a 9mm rifle make the gun relatively unwieldly, and isn't appreciably more effective than 5.56 given those things because of a lack of said ballistics magic.
Note that hunting doesn't have these constraints. Neither do specialized military applications like sniping. You want overkill in those circumstances because you're not going to get another shot- the fewer holes you put in the animal the more of its tasty body is preserved (in the hunting case), and for both of them, the ranges over which you need to shoot a target that's going to spook and disappear after the first shot mean you want something that's going to give you the easiest time of that at ranges further than those typical for combat (200-400 yards).
[1] The US Army's take on "we need a rifle to shoot 800 yards" reminds me of the time the British did that. Both nations invaded Afghanistan (and lost) before adopting a rifle like this- a nation whose geography lends itself to long-range ambush-style engagements will proceed to teach militaries that fight there they need weapons with that kind of range to be standard-issue.
And to be fair to the Brits, just like the Americans, perhaps they envision future conflicts against Near/Middle Eastern or African nations will benefit from a rifle like this- places that are scarcely urbanized, with an enemy whose dominant form of mechanization is the Toyota Hilux. Against peer nations in urban warfare, though, this is not a great plan. Of course, the Americans tend to be very good at expedient engineering; the AR-15 got issued in record time while the US was at war so if they need a new rifle they'll have one quick.
[2] The faster a bullet is going the more likely it's going to fragment or change course sharply when it hits the target. Getting a similar ballistic effect from a large cartridge means a heavier projectile [not getting into why] means a heavier cartridge means heavier recoil, so you get less of the things that make the rifle good in typical combat distances.
I would like to first say I appreciate your contestation / elaboration. It was certainly a quip to move that can be contested on 'well, actually...' grounds. Kudos!
That's why I am only going to clarify my intent / dispute against two sub-elements.
The rifle the AR-15 is based on is better in part for the functions that differ it from the commercial AR-15. Which is to say- deliberate design access to to limited automatic as appropriate, as opposed to reliability-decreasing ad-hoc modification access to quasi-auto. Plus the additional attachments not used here, but that's getting into broader kitting options rather than potential.
The AR-15s the anti-ICE attackers used were modified AR-15s, nominally for that additional ability, but which may have compromised their reliability. Reliability (at least when maintained) being a key point of why half the world's nations actively use the M-16 and derivatives.
But that's not what I said in what you're responding to, so fair rejoinder.
My view is that this context, the Praireland Texas attack, is closer to the shooting range context than the 'actually fighting' context. And this probably the context anti-ICE facility attacks will have for any sort of anti-ICE insurgency.
Consider the attack at The ICE attack was done at range of 100-300 meters (or more), from cover / concealment, over a relatively brief amount of time. We know this by the criminal complaint report tying the shooters to nearby woods/treelines (100m and 300m away), and only 30-ish rounds being reported despite more-than-semiautomatic weapon fire rates. The only injury was implicitly in the initial salvo, before the defenders fell behind cover, and this salvo was the surprise/opening attack in terms of introducing gunfire. At which point, the officers at the scene were suppressed until the attackers withdrew, supported by the shooters in the forest, one of whom had enough concealment to remain hidden beyond the initial search response.
This is something that should be expected as a norm for anti-ICE attacks, in part due to the sort of government building design the Americans adopted after 9-11. The American federal government has been incorporating stand-off distance in new / security / detention facilities basically ubiquitous since 9-11, and in many contexts even before. Part of this is terrorism fears of truck bombs, part of this is security fears to prevent infiltration / unauthorized access, and part of it is wildfire management.
When- as is the government's preference- it has more freedom for standoff space, this creates longer sight lines, and thus requires longer weapons range which makes the post-opening cover movements more effective, and hasty counter-fire less effective. And when- as a matter of legacy- thick vegetation is far closer, so is the concealment advantage to the shooters from within the woods, who have to set up their own sight lines through the vegetation.
I recognize you and I may have different opinions, but I'd consider either of these dynamics more akin to (semi-)static rifle ranges than the close-in maneuver / counter-maneuver that I suspect you mean by 'actual combat.'
But this, too, is not exactly what I said in what you're responding to, so still a fair rejoinder.
More options
Context Copy link
7.62x39 is a WW2 round. Every single non-vestigial military has moved on to rounds similar to .223 (which, by the way, didn't pioneer those ballistics). The British were pushing for a .280 cartridge in late '40s but Americans insisted on .308.
It's remarkable how bad Federal Americans are when it comes to guns. After WW2, it should've been obvious intermediate is the way to go, but not only did Feds refuse to that, or failed to copy the MG42 despite trying to, they proceeded to compromise their entire's bloc small arms procurement for the next 30 years.
There are late 19th century American military studies recommending intermediate cartridges. They even plainly spell out that higher velocity 6.x mm rounds would be deadlier at all ranges than much heavier slower rounds.
And yet it took almost a century for it to be realized.
More options
Context Copy link
The US was trivially correct to reject this cartridge and the British were out of their fucking minds here. In fairness, the fact they had lost WW2 [and their Empire with it] hadn't really dawned on their people yet and wouldn't come to a head until the Suez crisis.
The thing about .280 is that it's not a good GPMG round (and it's also slightly too heavy to be that intermediate- its initial loadings were more powerful than 7.62x39 is too). 6.5 Japanese had similar ballistics to what .280 would eventually have and would be ultimately replaced on the grounds of insufficient GPMG performance- and for a US-led alliance that needed to have a logistics train that much poorer countries could support (read: one caliber for everything) the infantry rifles would need to remain in the same caliber as the machine guns.
Hence a full-power cartridge, that could be retrofit to replace both .303 and 8 Mauser (7.5 French was too fat, wouldn't have worked), was required. Yes, it'd compromise the infantry rifles somewhat, but infantry rifles weren't expected to win a war with Russia whereas American logistics was.
Note also that the Russians didn't really figure the AK out until the early 1960s, and the SKS is not better from a tactical standpoint than a Garand (or M14, or FAL) is anyway. The Russians didn't need to hurry, since they already had plenty of quasi-intermediate SMGs in inventory (the PPS-43); neither did the Americans, who used the M1 Carbine for that.
30 years is an acceptable timeframe over which to replace equipment. And it really didn't hold the [mostly useless] allies back: remember, the bloc consisted of Britain (who never fought a war -> didn't matter), other militarily insignificant European nations (a good chunk of whom stuck with Garands), Britain's soon-to-be-dispossessed colonies (never fought a war beyond the ones the US also fought with 7.62x51 -> didn't matter), West Germany (conquered), and France (who stuck with 7.5 French).
Most militaries are now using two rounds, an intermediate one and a full rifle one. Why would switching to a .280 or something a little smaller wouldn't have made sense then? Manufacturing 5 million rifles is really not that big of a deal, especially if you did sensible things like looked at the Stg.44 and derived the appropriate lessons.
How many rifles or machineguns were re-barelled to use .308 post war? Some Garands. PPS-43 isn't really 'quasi intermediate', the effective range tops out at about 150m, maybe. It's also a relatively small and light bullet. Even the strongest loadings top out at under 1000J from an SMG barrel.
...what? 90,000 British fought in Korea. They also put down the communist insurgency in Malaysia and then in Brunei. I guess that doesn't count, right?
Because it's not sufficiently intermediate and it's not just the rifles (which only form a minor part of the equation). It's worth noting that both France and Switzerland both flirted with intermediate caliber rifles (in .30 Carbine), but ultimately rejected them; if you want to go "7.62 bad because fat burger country", fine, but then why did every other Western nation that was looking to change calibers and was capable of indigenous weapons development also reject the idea? They all should have been aware of the StG-44.
We have the benefit of hindsight, and the Americans had the 'benefit' that the first war in which intermediate caliber weapons were being used against them in large numbers was one of the two terrain types in which submachine gun-type weapons utterly dominate (the other being urban warfare).
Note also that the first commercially-viable .22-caliber cartridge that wasn't an overpowered meme (sorry, .220 Swift) was a 1950s invention. It's far more difficult to make a viable bullet that small; your manufacturing tolerances have to be much better than they do with the .30s or with the .264s (which appear to be the lower limit of this, considering that other than the US adopting a bleeding-edge 6mm rifle that one time in 1895, no other military would adopt a smaller cartridge until 5.56 NATO). That's feasible with 1960s manufacturing technology, but not necessarily with 1920s or 1940s (and the Russians would take into the 1970s to figure it out).
NATO adopted what it did at the right times and nobody really got screwed over. European nations used their 1950s equipment until it wore out, then unloaded it on the Africans as military aid then developed indigenous 5.56 rifles around 1980. Not really a setback.
It's not just the rebarreling, it's also to facilitate easy manufacture of already-existing designs. Britain did this with the Enfield and the Bren, Germany did it with the MG3 (and some MG42s), Spain did it with the FR7/FR8, the Italians famously did it with the BM59, and the US did it with the M1919 (as well as the M14).
Converting an existing design, especially one that had seen significant and continuous improvement due to actually being used in warfare, is generally going to produce a better product than a clean-sheet design. This is one of the reasons the FAL lost in the US' rifle trials, by the way (the other is that it's just a bad gun lol).
A war they fought with Brens and No. 4s in .303. And honestly, no, the other ones don't really matter.
They were largely not sovereign nations and forced to do so by Americans due to NATO. I'm sure that e.g. had the Germans been left to their own devices they'd have kept making Stg.44s post war as the rifle's superiority was recognized during the war.
Sure, buddy. Sure. A communist Malaysia is okay, sitting straight on an important trade route and providing oil.
Japanese adopted 6.5mm in 1897.
The Swiss and Spanish were (almost like that's why I mentioned them). The French remain relevant simply because they never adopted 7.62 NATO in any meaningful way until after the FAMAS.
The Czechs are also an interesting case, having fielded a service rifle in 7.62x45 in 1952 (more powerful than the existing 7.62x39 cartridge). So clearly the 'intermediates are the future' case isn't as clear-cut even when you have weapons available to you that are already in intermediate cartridges, but intermediate cartridges are limited in their usefulness if the gun you're using isn't a carbon copy of the StG-44 (the Czechs even had some of these actively lying around that the Soviets used to deniably arm some of its allies in North Africa).
And the StG-44 is a legitimately expensive gun to make especially if you're not well-versed in German space magic- you need magazines (and they need to be completely interchangeable; it's easier to do that with 9mm), the gun itself is more complicated (it needs to fire from a closed bolt to be viable at range), you need to supply it with enough ammunition to work (and you go through more rounds with these than you would with a full-power rifle round), and it's just as heavy as a full-power rifle is. The Czechs would eventually do the vz. 58, which is still a milled gun 15 years after it theoretically could have been made with stampings; Germany was legitimately that far ahead with the technology.
Another interesting example is Yugoslavia; they bought up most of the German surplus and were still actively using StG-44s (and AKs in 8mm Mauser, of all things) into the 1980s to supplement copies of Soviet equipment. Of course, they were and remain a relatively poor part of the world, so that wasn't as much by choice.
There was nothing stopping other countries from fielding two weapons or even to adopt it in the first place if they had sufficient logistics to do something different (or had already adopted something in large numbers re: France- who I will remind you was in possession of the future-HK engineers in charge of the StG-45); the US was doing that themselves (.30 Carbine) in the first place anyway.
So no, I'm not interested in the "stupid burger country intentionally screws up procurement" story. I will happily say that about the XM7 but in that gun's defense the US doesn't have any usable 7.62 NATO small arms in inventory aside from stuff at the end of its service life, so if they're going to switch to a more efficient (and more powerful) cartridge for a rifle and machine gun now is indeed the time.
Which is why I said
for plenty of nations fielded rifles and machine guns in 6.5mm and 7mm (the 6.5mm cartridges all use .264 projectiles, except for the Italians who used .268). The two largest ones that actually used them in combat all dumped them for something in .30 during WW2 for reasons I already stated.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Evidence of it not being a fed op like Malheur or the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping is the tend to not let the patsies actually get to the point of starting to shoot at law enforcement.
How good 5.56 vs battle rifle cartridges for war has been a debate forever. The reality is 5.56 has been used in war for decades. It 100% has the ability to kill people, and has killed a lot of people. Largely thanks to the legends at Palmetto State Armory AR-15s are relatively cheap, and practicing with 5.56 is much cheaper than full powered cartridges. Would I want take on US LEO with a 5.56 poverty pony? No. Will some of the best operators in the world take 5.56 into combat? Absolutely.
This is even debatable along certain lines.
I think the general sentiment regarding 5.56 is that it's great up until the point you have to take on armored opponents or longer range engagements. It's not without cause that the Army and Marines have been moving towards larger calibers recently. That being said, a high velocity 5.56 round hitting you anywhere except your chest plate will probably render you combat ineffective. Couple that with low recoil and it's hard to imagine a more preferable option for lightly trained persons.
5.56 out of a 20" barrel can defeat level IV plates at 100 yards, and possibly up to 200, depending on the bullet construction. Velocity is a hell of a thing.
No it can't, by the definition of what level IV plates are.
You're right. I can't type for crap tonight. I meant III, which is rated for 7.62x39
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Even total larpers have plans that include multiple steps. The difference is that larper plans don't work.
The immortal words of Mike Tyson about being punched in the mouth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The problem with false flag theory of this size is that the ten people arrested would have to be genuine. You can't find ten people willing to do a decade in prison over a false-flag attack.
And the mix of amateurish and sound seems exactly like what you'd expect from an organisation that tries to plan but doesn't have much real world experience in doing so.
Of course, the whole thing could still be a 'false flag' of the type of some red-coded psychopath devising the whole thing and selling it to Song to accelerate matters, the way FBI informants created terrorism plots. But that seems unlikely as such competent people are rare.
Well, they didn't seem to have practiced or thought this out. A competent cell could have modified rifles for fully automatic, controllable fire. I'm sure if you do a bit of research you can find accurate blueprints on how to modify the receiver to allow full auto..
As opposed to the 10 people who demonstratable were willing to do a decade in prison over a non-false-flag attack?
Present culprits aside, you should probably update your sense of scale of people willing to accept severe consequences to act against their enemies. There were more than 1000 suicide bombings, which is to say more than 1000 suicide bombers, in Iraq alone between 2003 and 2011. Iraq during that period was about 1/10th of the population of the US, and hardly had a monopoly on whatever virtue/vice you think it takes to accept guaranteed death for a chance to kill the target of your animosity. Whatever your view of the relative hardiness of the average radicalized American versus the average radicalized Iraqi, finding 10 people to take much lower risks for much lower costs is not the bottle neck.
In fact, we can find far more than ten Americans willing to risk a decade in prison merely by going to the prisons where people are serving sentences of ten or more years. These prisoners are a group who are, by necessity, a smaller subset of the group of people who take risks that could result in a decade or more of prison, since the people who did the same but were not caught/convicted will obviously not be there. And the people who are actually did take the risk is a smaller subset of the people willing to take the risk, and so on.
If your formulation was meant to specify people intending to go to jail as part of the plan would be impossible to find, that would indeed be a lot harder... but it would also be unnecessary. Getting caught isn't required for a false flag any more than it would be for a non-false flag.
They could, but this would be the sort of tacti-cool that serves as an even greater indicator of cell incompetence that works against a false flag from a competent group hypothesis. It's not that modifying for full auto is something a competent could do and this group failed to do it right, but rather that modifying for full auto for the purpose of this attack is something the competent would not do, and this group thought it would be good to pursue.
Part of this is because 'fully automatic, controllable fire' is more of a video game hollywoodism than a practical advantage for this sort of attack. The physics of recoil are why the sort of squad automatic rifles that use the AR-15's 5.56mm ammo, and larger caliber automatic weapons, are braced against the ground with bipods for full auto. It's also why shoulder-braced SMGs use correspondingly smaller ammo with less kickback, so the body can more easily absorb recoil. Recoil is why militaries train both in terms of small bursts rather than, well, 'full auto.' Unlike video games, where automatic rifles put out more shots on target for more damage, in reality the role of automatic fire is far more for suppressing the enemy for movement and maneuver. You don't control fully automatic fire onto a meatbag target unless that target is particularly numerous, like a WW1 wave attack, particularly close, or both.
And part of this is that this is the google maps image of Prairieland Detention Center. This sort of image is the bare minimum you should expect the weapon-modifiers to have for their planning purposes.
Note that the closest treeline is 100m away from the parking lot. Note that the other woods- the ones large enough to be where Song hid- are closer to 300m. These are not 'close' targets for automatic weapons to effectively hit the target.
And then there's combining the role of an automatic weapon, suppressing for maneuver, to the terrain and how the attack initiated.
From the initial criminal complaint describing the attack in the original Ngo post-
An unmodified AR-15 in its purely semi-automatic function of a shot a squeeze could go through 30 rounds in about 30 seconds.
A M16 on full-auto, the military basis of the AR-15, would go through 30 rounds in about 3 seconds.
Even if you double or triple the shots fired if the weapons didn't jam- a jamming made more likely by the modification to fire faster- you still aren't having a maneuver element do a 100-meter flank assault in 7-to-12 seconds from the closer tree line. Even Usain Bolt took over 9 seconds for his world-record 100m dash, and he wasn't carrying a roughly 6 lb / 3 kg two-handed rifle while doing it.
Again- modifying for rate of fire here is tacti-cool, not tactical. It is anti-competence to expect or pursue, and this group's effort to do so is an indicator against the false flag hypothesis.
(Which is part of why I wish Ngo's article had mentioned it from the start. It would been a helpful balance against his weird flags. Ah well.)
You think you could find 10 right-wingers or just mercenary guys willing to do 10 year in federal prison, on a lie?
Go to a serving infantry soldier and tell him LMGs are 'tacticool' and 'not actually very useful'. AR rifles are fairly controllable in full auto, and with a bipod they're probably extremely controllable. Whoever they'd have been shooting at would have been dead. Swapping out mags isn't that hard either.
Laddie, you posted the incident where the American leftwing actors were willing to risk 10 years or more in federal prison for an attack on ICE agents. You have been provided a decade-long historical example of magnitudes more than 10 people were willing to suffer far worse than 10 years in jail. Are you really going to try and insist that not even 10 of their rightwing equivalents would cross the line at a lie?
An AR-15 modified for an automatic rate of fire is not a LMG. People pretending they are the same would very much fall under the tacticool coolaid.
Spraying and praying beyond effective range not being very useful is why doing so is often teased / mocked as playing Rambo.
If all you mean by 'fairly controllable' is 'in the general direction,' this would be missing the point, much like firing at full auto at the ranges of this incident.
Unless they missed because they were playing with full auto beyond the effective range of auto. Like what happened in Texas.
@Dean @No_one That attack isn’t 10 years in prison. It’s terrorism and attempted premeditated murder of a federal law enforcement officer. Plus obstruction, weapons charges, conspiracy. This is a situation where prosecutors will be going maximally hard. That’s forty years at best and probably life. In the very likely event that one or more officers had died, that would have been the needle.
More options
Context Copy link
a) Firstly, most people wouldn't think nobody would break b) there's no guarantee anyone would even care about a false-flag attack (nobody cares about this one)
So no, I don't think you could find ten rightwingers willing to pull a false flag like this.
Effective range of light machineguns fired from a prone position isn't <100 meters.
More options
Context Copy link
I'd say false flags are much, much, different from "riding out to meet them", which is what I imagine this situation would be for a left winger. "Let's do something (we consider) evil and deranged, to show how evil and deranged the outgroup is" as you're perfectly aware you're doing the evil/twisted thing, and not the outgroup, requires a much more twisted mind. It's not impossible, there have been people that talked themselves into believing that the outrgroup is terribly evil, but managed to hide their true nature from the normie, that all bets are off, and any tactic is justified. Intelligence agencies and militaries can pull it off regularly, because they can promise impunity and recruit from the pool of amoral sociopaths. An idealist with a mind so twisted is much less likely, and getting 10 of them together would require they all be part of a cult, imo.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it's pretty easy to figure your way out of a right-wing false-flag attempt aimed to implicate antifa or the left generally: Two trans people included. This wouldn't rule out third-party shit-stirring (Chinese or Russian?) false flags, but I think your reasoning does this. Also just using AR-15s isn't really enough to implicate the right except in the minds of the New York Times.
There's one false flag that I think you haven't ruled out, though, and that's the possibility that this was yet another FBI sting gone wrong. The FBI would have recruited Song under false pretenses, provided him with the guns and some plans, and planned to arrest the bunch at some point, but the group jumped the gun and actually did it. That's probably not what happened here, but it does fit their M.O.
To support this possibility: the FBI has done much worse. https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/what-did-fbi-really-know-terrorist-attack-garland-texas
An FBI agent tagged along to document the mass shooting. Following in a different car and taking photos. Only because the mass-shooting-victims-to-be were armed and shot back was there not a slaughter.
More options
Context Copy link
I do always enjoy being reminded of the FBI's involvement in the shooting at the "draw muhammad" contest in Texas.
More options
Context Copy link
I immediately wondered if the FBI was involved. They do seem way better geared than I would have expected.
Supposedly at least some of the attackers were John Brown Gun Club nuts. Which isn't evidence against the feds being involved, but JBGCs are also pretty famously prone to collecting mall ninjas with expensive or goofy gear.
Sounds like the last time a John Brown Gun Club member attacked an ICE facility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Tacoma_immigration_detention_center_attack
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link