I’m going to share a little secret, just between the two of us; I always get nervous, during gun control debates, when the topic turns to the technicalities of different types of guns.
Don’t get me wrong; illiteracy about guns is one of the things that gun controllers exploit to ram down their factually-vacant, emotion-laden “points”. When the vast majority of people, and even some shooters, don’t know the difference between an “assault rifle” (an intermediate-caliber (less powerful cartridge than a rifle!) selective-fire long arm) and an “assault weapon” (a set of fluid cosmetic characteristics that have nothing to do with lethality), it’s impossible to have a literate debate.
Which, to gun controllers, is a feature, not a bug.
But this reared its head in an illuminating way in the Dallas shooting.
Exactly as predicted by Berg’s Eighteenth Law of Media Latency, the media got everything wrong about the Dallas shootings for the first 24-48 hours. It was not a group of men “triangulating” their prey – it was one guy, Micah Jackson.
And he was not shooting the official boogeyman (also: only gun most media people can name, other than “Glock”), the AR15.
There are many configurations of AR15.
He was in fact shooting an “SKS” – a World War II-vintage Russian design.
It’s as rugged as any other Russian design; it’s bone simple to maintain; it’s just about the least-expensive military-grade rifle available on the legal market in America (still widely available for under $350; a few years ago, they were around $100 apiece). It’s become an incredibly popular hunting firearm.
And, since “big magazines” are the boogeyman-du-jour, it holds ten rounds, in a non-detachable magazine, in its unmodified form.
Some gun-rights supporters jumped on this, to note that this, in and of itself, invalidates the “assault weapons” debate entirely.
It does – but not in the way the pro-gunners think it does.
Because while the SKS isn’t a modern, utterly modular design that can be rebuilt in a nearly infinite variety of permutations like the AR, it is the basis for some ingenuity. There are parts on the aftermarket to turn an SKS into a poor man’s AK47:
This, too, is an SKS – with aftermarket adjustable stock, replacement magazine well that uses AK47 magazines, and an aftermarket forearm with an accessory rail holding the foregrip and bipod, this “tacti-cool” SKS is not one degree behind the fashion curve.
Now, while parts of the media are announcing that Jackson used an SKS (after frantically learning how to spell it), not a single outlet (as this is written) has shown a picture of the murder weapon.
Maybe they don’t have it.
And maybe they do, but it resembles the first SKS – a humble, unadorned, vaguely antique-looking rifle that looks like an awkwardly-designed hunting rifle.
My point: like the AR, almost any rifle can be modified into an almost-unrecognizable form.
There are, as we’ve seen above, SKSes that metamorphose from awkward, boxy antiques to menacing-looking Hollywood specials.
And there are AR15s that are modified to look and function little differently than Grandpa’s hunting rifle:
Wood furniture, ten round magazine. That’s not threatening, is it?
Even better example: the Lee Enfield Mark1 “SMLE” was the standard rifle of the British army from the early 1900s to the late 1950s.
An “SMLE” Enfield that served in both World Wars, and quite possibly well beyond. It looks like a hunting rifle, because these days it is.
It looks like a hunting rifle – and indeed it was, and is, used as one in vast numbers in the US (although the ammunition is hideously expensive; $2 a around. Ask me how I know).
Early in World War 2, when the British Army had left most of its equipment in France, there wasn’t enough production capacity to build enough machine guns to equip the Australian and New Zealand armies. An Australian officer invented a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption based on an Enfield that turned it into a light machine gun:
Yep – it’s a Lee Enfield rifle, with a bunch of home-made parts bolted on, turning it into a machine gun.
The real point being, cosmetic and even technical definitions of firearms are virtually meaningless in the long run; even under Nazi occupation, machinists built fully-automatic submachine guns in machine shops for the various resistance movements (the “NRA” of their day, in the various Nazi-occupied countries).
One of these two was built in Enfield, England. One was built in a machine shop somewhere in occupied Poland. Take a moment and guess which is which.
No, cosmetics, and even abstruse technical terminology, has absolutely nothing on the motivation and, sometimes, ingenuity, of the person doing the shooting. Some, like the Polish guerrillas and the Australian Army, use those motivations and ingenuity for good (or “as good as we can get”, anyway).
Micah Jackson’s technology was more or less irrelevant; he could have committed precisely the same mayhem with any number of common hunting rifles. Maybe more.
Although the aftermarked Rambo SKS modification uses a magazine that has the same “banana” shaped magazine as an AK, they are not interchangeable. The SKS has an extension in front that engages the frame.
http://image.sportsmansguide.com/adimgs/l/1/106840_ts.jpg
The SKS magazine conversion is clumsy, and doesn’t allow for quick magazine changes; personally I preferred the stripper clip on the couple that have cycled through my collection. In fact, changing anything on the “as-issued” SKS turns a so-so, cheap ammo plinker into junk.
Swiftee,
I agree. Not that I know anything about SKSes, or any gun for that matter, since guns are scary and I’d never own any.
Hmm… SKS is an AK predecessor with same round and similar action. As such, it is not very accurate, especially at long distances (greater than 100 yards), and even moreso with non-match ammo (we do not know which ammo shooter used). That SKS, if that is indeed what it is, had to have been very extensively modified. Or, shooter was one heck of shot. Or, it was not an SKS but an RPK. Or something else entirely.
JPA – same round, similar cosmetics (piston tube over the barrel), very different action (tipping block locking system vs rotating lugs, two-part gas piston system).
And I think it’s designed and built to shoot a little tighter than an AK, with tighter tolerances.
But fair points all the same.
JPA, I believe the range at which the shots were fired was much less than 100 yards–just really far enough so that pistols couldn’t target him accurately. At least that’s what the crime scene map and the recordings of the atrocity suggest–that he fired a lot of rounds that didn’t hit a person, thank God.
BB, then SKS would definitely be sufficient.
Mitch, difference noted.
I’m with Swiftee, spending money on custom parts for a SKS is like spending money on performance parts for a Yugo, a useless waste of money. That said it’s fun for targets/plinking. You could use one for deer but it would never be on my list of choices. At any real distance it would be more spray and pray than anything else.
I’m still trying to find out if Jackson was shooting a tacti-cool SKS or a stock one.
Regarding what kind of weapon it actually was, unless the stock was basically vaporized by the blast, it’s rather strange that nobody has listed what it was. They are rather concentrating on how the killer was assembling some kind of arsenal without mentioning what weapons he had–and given his previous military service, it would be strange if he wasn’t aware of the relative advantages and disadvantages of each platform.
Put differently, he made a rather odd choice, and nobody outside of the “gunnie” movement appears to be asking why. Which is, really, an odd choice for an institution that theoretically operates printing presses and websites for the purpose of getting the truth out.
“Regarding what kind of weapon it actually was”
Maybe it was a 6.5mm Carcano M91. I’d keep that quiet too.
Here’s the gun he used: https://goo.gl/images/gxnTRO
Anyone knowledgeable enough to identify it from that?
Here’s the full article complete with a more graphic picture. Fair warning if anyone needs to shelter in place to prevent getting triggered, or if anyone needs to retreat to a safe space:
http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/07/10/graphic-picture-of-micah-johnson-the-dallas-shooter-after-he-was-killed-by-a-robot-bomb/
I’ll look for some kind of corroboration.
While CBS said he used an SKS, this is an AK-pattern piece; that lever on the side, above the trigger, is an AK-pattern safety catch (the SKS safety is a little switch at the right side of the trigger guard). The receiver is an AK pattern; the SKS has a stock, either original wood or aftermarket plastic, down the sides. The AK has the rectangular ejection port and the charging handle out the right side; the SKS ejects out the top, and has a bolt handle attached to the sliding bolt carrier.
The magazine looks like it’s for 5.56mm NATO ammo (used by the AR15 and Ruger Mini14), not the AK’s and SKS’s standard 7.62mm Kalashnikov round. There *are* AKs chambered for 5.56 on the civilian market.
OK. Further proof of Berg’s 17th Law.
While CBS cited Homeland Security in saying Jackson used an SKS, the Wall Street Journal says he used an Izhmash-Saiga, an AK-pattern rifle chambered for 5.45mm (the standard Russian-army round since the eighties, and their version of 5.56mm).
Personally, I thought it looked familiar; the Saigas, including the 5.45mm version, are commonly available at Fleet Farm (along with versions in 7.62 Kalashnikov, 12-gauge shotgun, and I believe 5.56NATO).
You know, lefty reprobates often scoff at the idea a populace armed with small arms could stand up to a rogue military force.
The mujahadeen of Afghanistan and one pissed off BLM activist with a piece of shit Rambo knock off withstanding.
an AK-pattern rifle chambered for 5.45mm
Commonly referred to as AK-74.