3/4/13 BLOGROLL: OF DRONES, CACHES AND ZIP GUNS

http://iiipercent.blogspot.com/2013/03/dhs-purchases-2700-light-armored-tanks.html

 http://theknightshift.blogspot.com/2013/02/i-just-downloaded-functional-22-pistol.html

I just downloaded a functional .22 pistol

In two months' time DEFCAD has garnered more than three thousand visits an hour and nearly a quarter-million downloads.  What makes up the bulk of that traffic?

Guns, guns, guns.  Parts for guns.  Accessories like suppressors.  Ammo casings for NATO and Warsaw Pact small arms and rifles.  Even combat munitions like hand grenades.

And they all work too.

Provided you've a 3D printer, the right materials and a few other items that can be bought at most any hardware store, you or anybody else can spend a nice relaxing evening or weekend putting together a small arsenal in your home office.

Sorta brings whole new meaning to desktop publishing a magazine, huh?

I just downloaded a .22 single-shot pistol from DEFCAD, designed by a user named "caboose".

http://iiipercent.blogspot.com/2013/03/there-are-no-secrets.html

There are no secrets...

I believe it was Mister Franklin who said it best: Three may keep a secret so long as two are dead.

If you think your dear wife of 40 years will keep that secret of yours, you are probably right...until the moment the man with the Luger points it at one of her children or grandbabies.

When I was camping with the Feds, you'll simply have to trust me when I say the intel network in place by the population was vastly superior to anything and everything had by the keepers of the keys - and they had audio and video and even snitches.  You see, it's easy to spot the snitches and use them to your advantage.  Anything you wanted, from shrimp to DVDs that had not yet been released to theaters to women (complete with tent outside of camera range) was available.  The currency might surprise you.  "I know a guy outside who lives in your AO, I need to get him a message..."

What does any of this have to do with my recent posts about Drones tightening the net and a deliberate conspiracy to deny your 2A without you ever pointing a rifle at the culprit?

In an article I will link below, the statement is made that "...avoidance and Detection systems for drones are still 2-5 years away."

I still maintain that if every Patriot reading this blog would simply go out tonight and leave 5 Enemies of Liberty hog-tied across your AO (curbside, in the back of their cruiser, in their office, in their basement, whatever) all of this Communization of America would end overnight.  But Patriots won't do that.  Some of you are preparing for toe-to-toe slugfests.  Some of you are preparing for shoot & scoot asymmetric fights.  Sadly, some of you are even preparing to bury your gear "...for use later..."

For those very few who have what it takes to gear up, go forth into Harm's Way and offer double-taps, the most critical resource you will have is not your slicked & Tricked (TM) AR or the ammo to feed it.  It will be Intel, as it has always been.

 http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2013/03/nothing-new-on-menu-of-federal.html

Nothing new on the menu of the Federal Leviathan's appetite. Remember the "ATF Air Force"? Story on DHS drones causes trip down memory lane.

My link this morning to the Declan McCullagh story "DHS built domestic surveillance tech into Predator drones" evoked a trip down memory lane for a long-time friend of mine. I received an email this morning which read, in part:

Mike -- not sure you saw Jim Pate's piece back around 1995 in SOF about how the ATF was planning to get "surplus" OV-10 Bronco's that the USMC was getting rid of...

Only Jim's article stopped this idiocy.

At the time, the Washington Times picked up the story which was in turn picked up by Senator Charles Grassley:

ATF Air Force

ATF'S PURCHASE OF 22 OV-10D AIRCRAFT (Senate - July 18, 1995)

[Congressional Record, Page: S10188)

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, a news article in this morning's Washington Times says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms recently purchased 22 OV-10D aircraft from the Defense Department.

These aircraft were used by the Marine Corps in the Vietnam war for close air support in combat. They were also used in Operation Desert Storm for night observation.

The aircraft are heavily weapons-capable, especially from a law-enforcement perspective. ATF says the planes have been stripped of their weapons. Their purpose, according to ATF, is for surveillance. The planes can locate people on the ground by detecting their body heat.

It's no secret that the ATF is undergoing intense public scrutiny. It has done some real bone-headed things. It has been criticized for enforcing the law while crossing the line of civil rights protections.

ATF's credibility will be even further tested the next 2 weeks when joint committee hearings are held in the other body on the Waco matter. And the Senate Judiciary Committee also will hold hearings on Waco in September.

I raise this issue today, Mr. President, because the purchase of these aircraft in the current climate might continue to feed the public's skepticism, and erode the pubic's confidence in our law enforcement agencies.

For that reason, it is incumbent upon ATF to fully disclose and fully inform the public as to the purchase of these aircraft.

First, what, specifically, will they be used for?

Second, where will they be located?

Third, what assurances are there that the planes will remain unarmed? The sooner these questions are answered by ATF--openly and candidly--the less chance there is that the public's skepticism will grow.

Mr. President, the continued credibility of the ATF is on the line, in my judgment. At times such as these, when scrutiny is at its highest, the best strategy is to go on the offense. Spare no expense in disclosing fully and swiftly. Because full and swift disclosure is the first step in restoring credibility.

The ATF's credibility is important not just for itself, but for law enforcement in general. There is much work to do to restore the public's trust and confidence. I hope that ATF will step up to the challenge and provide the necessary assurances.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Washington Times article, written by Jerry Seper, be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

From the Washington Times, July 18, 1995

ATF Gets 22 Planes To Aid Surveillance

WEAPONS-CAPABLE AIRCRAFT REPAINTED

(BY JERRY SEPER)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has obtained 22 counterinsurgency, heavy-weapons-capable military aircraft.

The 300-mph OV-10D planes--one of several designations used by the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War for gunfire and missile support of ground troops, and by the Air Force during Operation Desert Storm for night observation--have been transferred from the Defense Department to ATF.

The turboprop aircraft, which will be used for day and night surveillance support, were designed to locate people on the ground through their body heat.

When used by the military services, the planes were equipped with infrared tracking systems, ground-mapping radar, laser range-finders, gun sights and 20mm cannons.

ATF spokeswoman Susan McCarron confirmed yesterday that the agency had obtained the aircraft but noted they had been stripped of their armament. She said that nine of the OV-10Ds were operational and that the remaining 13 were being used for spare parts.

`We have nine OV-10Ds that are unarmed; they have no weapons on them,' Ms. McCarron said. `They are being used for surveillance and photography purposes. The remainder are being used for spare parts.'

Ms. McCarron said the aircraft were obtained by ATF from the Defense Department `when DOD was getting rid of them,' and that other agencies also had received some of the airplanes.

General Service Administration records show that some of the unarmed aircraft also were transferred to the Bureau of Land Management for use in survey work, while others went to the California Forestry Department for use in spotting fires and in directing ground and aerial crews in combating them.

Other models of the OV-10 also are being used by officials in Washington state for nighttime surveillance of fishing vessels suspected of overfishing the coastal waters.

The transfer of the aircraft to ATF comes at a time of heightened public skepticism and congressional scrutiny of the agency's ability to enforce the law without trampling on the rights of citizens.

The ATF's image suffered mightily in the aftermath of its 1993 raid and subsequent shootout at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, during which four agents and six Davidians were killed. It sustained another public-relations blow after it was revealed that ATF agents helped organize a whites-only `Good O' Boys Roundup' in the Tennessee hills.

Hearings of the Waco matter begin tomorrow in the House. A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the racist trappings of the roundup is scheduled for Friday.

One Senate staffer yesterday said there was `some real interest' in the ATF's acquisition of the aircraft, and that questions `probably will be asked very soon of the agency' about the specifics of their use and locations where they have been assigned.

According to federal law enforcement sources and others, including two airline pilots who have seen and photographed the ATF planes, two of the combat-capable aircraft--known as `Broncos'--have been routed to Shawnee, Okla., where they were painted dark blue over the past month at an aircraft maintenance firm known as Business Jet Designs Inc.

Michael Pruitt, foreman at Business Jet Designs, confirmed yesterday that two of the ATF aircraft had been painted at the Shawnee site and that at least one more of the OV-10Ds `was on the way.' Mr. Pruitt said the aircraft were painted dark blue with red and white trim. The sources said the paint jobs cost the ATF about $20,000 each.

The firm's owner, Johnny Patterson, told associates last month he expected to be painting at least 12 of the ATF aircraft but was unsure whether he could move all of them fast enough through his shop. Mr. Patterson was out of town yesterday and not available for comment.

According to the sources, the ATF's OV-10Ds, recently were overhauled under the government's Service Life Extension Program and were equipped with a state-of-the-art forward-looking infrared system that allows the pilot to locate and identify targets at nights--similar to the tracking system used on the Apache advanced attack helicopter.

Designed by Rockwell International, the OV-10D originally was outfitted with two 7.62mm M-60C machine guns, each with 500 rounds of ammunition. It also was modified to carry one Sidewinder missile under each wing, Snakeye bombs, fire bombs, rocket packages and cluster bombs.

The OV-10D can carry a 20mm gun turret with 1,500 rounds of ammunition. During the Vietnam War, two OV-10Ds were used for a variety of missions during a six-week period and flew more than 200 missions in which they were credited with killing 300 enemy troops and saving beleaguered outposts from being overrun by the communists. -- [Page: S10189]

 http://chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/01/15/my-life-as-a-tyrant/

NOTE: JUST READ THE PART OF THE ARTICLE I CUT AND PASTE, THIS GUY SPENDS THE REST OF THE ARTICLE KISSING PIG ASS

My life as a tyrant

15Jan13

I’m going to say something that will undoubtedly cause me to lose some police officer friends. But I feel it needs to be said anyway. I’m willing to take the heat for it.
Keep in mind, I became a police officer because I wanted to be a good guy. Even though we’ve all seen reports of police brutality and corruption, I still believe we cops are the good guys. I’ve seen cops perform brave, selfless acts for strangers on countless occasions. Even the worst cops I’ve ever known would risk their lives to defend the innocent. But I have to say this anyway. Before you start throwing shoes, hear me out. I have a good reason for saying it.
If you think our police are no threat to your freedom, you’re living in a fantasy world.
Now I’ll explain what I mean. I worked for the United Nations Police Mission in Kosovo for eighteen months. I wasn’t there as a soldier. I was a civilian cop, living in town, basically a Kosovo PD officer. For part of my tour I worked patrol with a group of international officers and local police. We had officers from America, the UK, Germany and Greece, plus local Kosovar Albanians. The Americans were regular street cops from police departments all over the United States.
One of the American officers in my station came from a very wealthy suburban police department. My cop stories were about murders, fights and chases; his were about citizens having garage sales without permits. For some reason, citizens selling things without permits aggravated him to no end.
In postwar Kosovo, many tens of thousands of war refugees lived in the capital. Not enough jobs existed to support them all. Many of them became vendors in a sprawling, dirty bazaar. They supported their families by selling cheap Turkish and Pakistani housewares and trinkets. Under old Yugoslav law, which was still the legal standard, those vendors had to have permits. Few bothered to stand in line at a dilapidated government building to pay for a permit.
This officer – I’ll call him Joe – became infuriated every time he patrolled the bazaar. He’d find vendors without permits, then ticket and berate them. He’d make note of other illegal vendors so he could ticket them later. He’d even drive through the bazaar off-duty to spot illegal vendors for future targeting. He’d vent his anger about illegal vendors at us, which always made me laugh. I didn’t care the least bit about vendors without permits, and thought Joe would eventually get over it. I was wrong.
Joe got so mad at illegal vendors that he researched Yugoslav law. We had been advised not to do anything that violated the Bill of Rights, but officially Yugoslav law was still in effect. And Joe discovered he could use Yugoslav law to do something about those damn illegal vendors.
Joe put a plan together. Officers from a couple of stations, along with some NATO troops, would go through the bazaar, identify which vendors had no permits, and confiscate all their merchandise. Local Albanian Kosovo Police Service (KPS) officers would assist. A large NATO truck would follow the officers so they could load all the confiscated items. All the seized property would immediately be donated to charity organizations.
When I heard the plan, I was amazed. Then I got angry. Why would anyone, in a country which had suffered through a horrible war less than two years earlier, think vendors without permits were such a big deal? We didn’t have a crime problem in the bazaar, the only reason we were going in there was because Officer Joe had a personal issue with the vendors. And wouldn’t an operation like that violate people’s rights?
I argued against the operation, and was overruled. Since Yugoslav law allowed it, we were doing it. I was ordered to take my team of KPS officers and participate.
The day of the operation, I forced myself to show up for work. My KPS officers were angry, frustrated and hesitant. They didn’t want to do to their people what we were about to make them do. But their jobs and livelihood, like mine, depended on following those orders. So we walked out of the station toward the bazaar.
An officer from a European country met me outside the bazaar, held out a stack of papers and sternly ordered, “Take these. You’ll need them to document what you confiscate.”
I kept my hands down. “I’m not taking them. I think this is wrong. We can’t just take people’s property.”
The officer held the papers out further. “It doesn’t matter. They’ve been warned. Take the forms.”
I didn’t move, or respond. The officer maintained his stern demeanor for a few seconds. Then, seeing that I wasn’t going along with it, he backed down.
“Okay, fine. Just take some forms, in case you change your mind.”
I took a few forms and stuck them in my pocket. The next time they came out, later that afternoon, I dumped them in the trash.
The operation began. Dozens of officers entered the bazaar, followed by NATO soldiers and their cargo truck. The vendors initially didn’t know what was happening. Then cops walked up to stalls and asked for permits. Nobody had them. The cops grabbed everything they had and threw it into the back of the truck.
Hundreds of vendors picked up their wares and ran. The slow ones were accosted and stripped of their possessions. KPS officers swarmed me, saying, “We can’t do this! This is what the Serbs used to do!” I stood back, watching the chaos in angry silence, and said something in Albanian. It was a phrase I never in my life expected to say.
“Ne jeme komunista sot.” We are communists today.
Our KPS officers were ordered, forced, to join in. They grudgingly helped take the property, although a few from another station were enthusiastic about it. Customers in the bazaar stood close by and yelled insults at the KPS officers, or screamed things like “Why are you doing this?” One KPS officer almost got into a fight he didn’t want to be in, over something he didn’t want to do, with one of the customers. Guilt was obvious on the KPS officer’s face. That was hard to watch.
I stayed back. Officer Joe, the illegal vendor hater, picked out an old man selling bananas. The old man, who looked about eighty but was probably younger, struggled to pick up boxes of bananas before the truck arrived. Officer Joe reached the old man’s stall, tore a box from the old man’s hands and threw it in the truck. The old man grabbed the next box. Joe fought it away.
I remember standing there in impotent frustration, thinking, So now we’re literally wrestling food away from old men. This is disgusting.
I finally managed to grab a handful of KPS officers and leave. I stayed at the station until the operation ended, angry at what we had done and at myself for being part of it. I had stood by and done nothing as a fellow cop turned us into petty tyrants. That still bothers me.
Joe beamed with pride when he came back to the station. As he promised, all the confiscated property was donated that day. No vendors had been ticketed. None received receipts for their property. None had recourse to recover what had been taken. If police did that here, they would be charged with a crime.
Later that day I argued my way up the chain of command that the operation had been wrong, we shouldn’t have done it and should never do it again. An Irish officer agreed with me. But a senior American officer listened to me with a disinterested expression and said, “Look man, it’s legal here. So I don’t have a problem with it.”
I learned a lot from that operation. Prior to it, I had been something of an idealist about cops. I thought American cops would go by what’s right and wrong instead of looking for what they can legally get away with. I know now that cops like Joe have no problem violating people’s rights, as long as they have some “official” way to do it.
Maybe you’re thinking, “But this was in another country, so it’s okay.” I don’t think so. I took an oath to defend the Constitution, not to enforce any law no matter what it is. If I go to Afghanistan as a cop, I’m not going to beat women for walking the street without a male relative, even if it’s legal there.
So why do I tell this story now? This might seem like an abrupt topic change, but it isn’t. It’s directly related.
I keep hearing we don’t need the 2nd Amendment. I keep hearing the 2nd Amendment is an anachronism. I keep hearing that it was written for a time long past, when we had to worry about foreign invasion and government tyranny. I keep hearing the 2nd Amendment should be repealed because there’s no threat of tyranny today.
I’ll agree that we don’t currently worry about foreign invasion. But we ALWAYS have a worry about government tyranny. Don’t tell me, “it can’t happen here.” I know better. I was there when Officer Joe stole people’s property, because he had a personal vendetta and knew he could get away with it. Don’t tell me police officers won’t engage in tyranny. I’ve seen it.

Map of Drone Authorizations:




http://www.domesticdronecountermeasures.com/mapofdomesticdroneauthorizations.html