Saturday, November 24, 2018
U.S. Army might have found its new rifle in Colorado Springs garage
The Army adopted its battle rifle in 1963 and has spent 55 years looking for a replacement for the M-16 and its variants.
They might have found it in Martin Grier’s Colorado Springs garage. Grier, a self-described inventor who has worked at a local bed and breakfast, built the new “ribbon gun” with a hobbyist’s tools. It looks like a space-age toy drawn by a fifth-grader.
But goofy origins and cartoon-looks aside, this could be the gun of the future. The Army is studying Grier’s gun and has ordered a military-grade prototype.
The specifications are incredible, four 6 mm barrels cut side by side within one steel block. New ammunition blocks fired by electromagnetic actuators that could theoretically give the weapon a firing rate of 250 rounds per second.
And then there’s the feature no soldier would turn down. “It’s called a power shot,” Grier said.
That’s the shotgun feature of this sniper-shot, machine-assault gun that can send four bullets simultaneously whizzing toward an enemy at more than 2,500 mph.
It isn’t science fiction. He’s built the gun and patented the technology behind it. Now his garage-based company, FD munitions, is hoping the Army will buy it.
“A multibore firearm, with several bores within a single barrel, could potentially exhibit many of the advantages of a multibarrel design, while reducing the size, weight and complexity disadvantages,” Grier wrote in his 2016 patent application.
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| The “ribbon gun” can fire multiple rounds at once. |
The “ribbon gun” can fire multiple rounds at once.Courtesy photo
He got the idea in the 1990s after a day of shooting a .22-caliber rifle with his kids.
Modern weapons aren’t that far removed from the ones used by George Washington’s army, Grier says. They use a mechanical firing mechanism that’s prone to failure. And from muskets to the AK-47, they fire one bullet at a time.
“What if a rifle could fire more than one bullet at a time and be tied to the tools of the electronic age?” he wondered.
His first invention changed the ammunition. Rather than a single shell casing, his bullets are encapsulated in blocks.
In a block with four rounds, each round is aligned with a barrel. Grier prefers to call them “bores,” because all of the barrels are in a single piece of metal.
The second invention is behind the bullet. In other rifles, the trigger is connected to a mechanical trigger pin, which fires the gunpowder and sends the bullet flying.
In his weapon, the trigger is an electronic switch that sends a signal to an electromagnetic actuator behind the block of bullets. The four bullets in the block of rounds each has its actuator. That means you fire the rounds individually or simultaneously.
Selecting the “power shot” option fires all four bullets at once.
Getting this to work requires a new kind of machining to get the four rifle bores lined up. In a traditional weapon, this is accomplished with technology that would be familiar to 19th-century blacksmiths — a drill.
With Grier’s gun, the barrels are cut by electricity that runs between a pair of electrodes through a thin wire. The high-tech method offers an incredible degree of precision thanks to computer control.
The first rifle, which weighs about 6½ pounds, slightly less than the M-16, hasn’t been cheap. Grier has poured more than $500,000 of his savings and investment by...
Police spokesman for Tijuana on migrant invasion: "75% of these persons have characteristics of thugs...The majority consume drugs.
Liberal Media will never show you this....— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) November 24, 2018
Police spokesman for Tijuana on migrant invasion:
"75% of these persons have characteristics of thugs...The majority consume drugs. We have already made about 80 arrests" pic.twitter.com/HZ2ENqUG30
10 Mind-Blowing Things That Happened This Week (11/23/18)
Keeping up with the news is hard. So hard, in fact, that we’ve decided to save you the hassle by rounding up the most significant, unusual, or just plain old mind-blowing stories each week.
This week, with the dust finally settled and the US midterms receding in the rearview mirror, it was time for stories from the rest of the world to take center stage once again. Away from American shores, Russia received an unexpected humiliation, Cambodia reopened some old wounds, and Papua New Guinea went more than a little nuts. But there were still at least a couple of stories coming from the States. And, once again, one of them involved guns. Quelle surprise.
10A Mass Shooting Hit A Chicago Hospital
Photo credit: Rick Majewski/Newscom
For years, 32-year-old Juan Lopez had cultivated a troubling track record of threatening people with guns.[1] Despite these warning signs, authorities failed to take his concealed carry permit away from him. On Monday, the inevitable happened. After getting in an argument with his ex-fiancee at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, Lopez pulled out his Glock and started shooting. He didn’t stop until responding officers shot him dead.
Lopez killed not just his ex, Doctor Tamara O’Neal, but also pharmacy resident Dayna Less and police officer Samuel Jimenez. While it’s debatable whether his actions qualified as a mass shooting (the standard definition is a shooting that results in four deaths, but not every source agrees on whether to count the perpetrator among them), they certainly qualified as yet another depressing example of American gun violence in a year that’s been full of them.
At the heart of the story was Lopez’s clear psychological unfitness to own a firearm. He’d threatened O’Neal with a gun before. He’d threatened to shoot up his old workplace. Sadly, authorities ignored these warning signs.
9Russia Lost The Interpol Presidency In A Shocking Vote
Photo credit: Kang Kyung-kook/AP
Back in September, Interpol’s president mysteriously vanished in his native China. Aside from showing that Beijing is super serious about going after anyone who stands against it, the disappearance of Meng Hongwei meant Interpol suddenly had a vacant seat at the head of the table.
This week, all 94 member nations voted on who would replace Hongwei. Going in, the strong favorite was Russia’s Alexander Prokopchuk, already vice president of Interpol. Although the US and some European nations campaigned against him, it was believed the vote was in the bag.
Well, it wasn’t. In a shock move, Interpol’s presidency instead went to its Asian VP, South Korea’s Kim Jong-yang.[2] The debacle demonstrated just how severely isolated Moscow has become following the attempted nerve agent assassination of a spy in Britain.
There was more drama at the summit on the sidelines. While Russia was getting locked out of the presidency, Russian allies Serbia were ensuring Kosovo’s application to join the body was rejected. Pristina has responded by slapping 100-percent tariffs on goods from Serbia.
8PNG’s Parliament Was Attacked By Its Own Security Forces
Photo credit: AFP
In the normal course of things, a nation’s security forces are the guys meant to stop protestors from smashing the Parliament up. But things are rarely normal in Papua New Guinea (PNG), an impoverished nation that ranks as one of the poorest countries in the world. On Tuesday, hundreds of police officers and soldiers stormed the Parliament in Port Moresby. Their reason? The government hadn’t paid their wages.[3]
Earlier this month, PNG hosted the Apec summit, an important gathering of Pacific nations that is traditionally very expensive to police. To ensure that none of Port Moresby’s violent criminal gangs made off with the delegates or anything, the government promised thousands of police and army regulars a 350-kina ($104) bonus to police the event. They then failed to pay up. Security forces took out their frustration on the Parliament.
Windows and furniture were smashed during the hours-long riot, and a small number of lawmakers were beaten up. The government seems to have now gotten the message, promising to pay bonuses as soon as possible.
7We Redefined The Kilogram
Brother of Honduran president detained in Miami for ‘conspiring to import cocaine’
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| Juan Antonio Hernandez, shown here, the brother of Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, was detained by federal agents in Miami on Friday for “conspiring to import cocaine” and “related weapons offenses,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York |
Hernandez, the brother of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, was detained Friday for “conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, and related weapons charges,” said James Margolin, the chief public information office for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, in a statement to the Miami Herald.
Margolin said Hernandez was expected to appear in federal court in Miami on Monday.
The office of the Honduran president issued a statement Friday evening confirming Hernandez had been detained. The statement reiterated previous remarks from President Hernandez that the accused deserve the presumption of innocence, but that no man is above the law.
Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, the ex-leader of the Honduran cartel Los Cachiros, testified in March during a pre-sentencing hearing for the now-convicted son of former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa that he met with Juan Antonio Hernandez to urge the government to pay a supposed debt to a company the traffickers used to launder dirty money.
The Honduran news site La Prensa reports that Hernandez “was going to get government finances to pay Inrimar,” a cartel-operated company that sought government contracts with Honduras.
Fabio Lobo, the former president’s son, pleaded guilty to cocaine smuggling, and Rivera has said he bribed both Lobos. Hernandez has denied any involvement in illegal activities.
Rivera’s cooperation with the federal government has brought criminal charges against Fabio Lobo, along with seven police officers from Honduras’ national force and several members of a powerful Honduran banking family,
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