What is it with liberals and their desire to undermine the very soldiers who are risking their lives to protect them?
Just who is the “Baghdad Diarist”?
It is a question that many people are asking The New Republic, the Washington political magazi…

Like almost everyone associated with the military who has read it, professional journalist Thomas Lipscomb thinksthe TNR “Scott Thomas” story stinks to high heaven. But according to the Democracy Project, he also perceives lack of depth in the Weekly…

Excellent explanation Herikutsu!

When I first read about the “on the street” ID of cartridge brass as being from a Glock (assuming the intent was to refer to a rectangular – not square- marking on the primer face and not an actually square cartridge) I instantly thought of a CSI Miami episode where Callie picked up spent brass at a crime scene and immediately identifies it as being from a Glock due to the rectangular primer marking. Now I can’t swear that I actually saw that on a CSI Miami episode but I am darn near positive that I did. If my memory is correct, that may be the genesis of Scott Thompson’s fairy tale.

I have 3 Glocks, all have the same striker design, the tip of which sort of looks like a small wedge (or the tip of a dull arrowhead), accounting for the quasi-rectangular shape that it leaves in the primer.

Herikutsu on July 21, 2007 at 1:15 AM

The Springfield Arms XD .40 and .45 for 2 examples can leave a similar primer marking to the Glock when looked at with the naked eye. The reason for this is that in some pistols the striker tip drags slightly across the primer face as the ejection begins, thereby elongating what would otherwise be a round indentation. Depending on the ammunition, sometimes this results in a keyhole shape or in a rectangular shape very similar to the Glock primer marks. I compared spent brass I had collected separately from my XD .45 and from my friend’s Glock 30, also .45 caliber (well used so this may not apply to a brand new Glock striker). With the naked eye it is not readily apparent with many primers which came from which pistol. Furthermore, I have read that while a Glock’s striker marking can often (not always) be distinguished from other brands of pistols, it requires significant magnification to do so reliably.

Someone reached down and picked a shell casing up off the ground. It was 9mm with a square back. Everything suddenly became clear. The only shell casings that look like that belong to Glocks. And the only people who use Glocks are the Iraqi police.

Everything suddenly became clear!
Now we’ll explain the connection that we want YOU to make!
9mm with a square back.
Uh huh.
No one who actually is familiar with guns would ever make a phrasing mistake like that, even if a poor writer. But a writer who’s handy with prose, but not guns, could make it easily.

I think I’ve found the explanation.

RedWinged Blackbird on July 20, 2007 at 6:32 PM

Now thats pretty cool. I may have to get myself one to go with my real G17.

Although the compressed charge that forms the “case” (gunpowder plus some sort of resin and maybe the primer) is more or less square in cross section, the salient point about caseless ammo is, uhmmm, there is no case left behind after you fire it.

I have 3 Glocks, all have the same striker design, the tip of which sort of looks like a small wedge (or the tip of a dull arrowhead), accounting for the quasi-rectangular shape that it leaves in the primer.

The rim of the casing is the little lip on the back end that the extractor uses to grab the spent case and pull it from the firing chamber before it is ejected by (you guessed it) the ejector. In some designs, it can also serve as a stop to help ensure that the bullet (the part that flies out of the barrel) is properly positioned the right distance in the chamber, ensuring the correct headspace. (Other designs use other parts of the cartridge to do this.)

The base of the case is the part that the primer goes into. Most people might call it the bottom.

The quoted article unambiguously states that the back was square. There is no part of a brass casing that is called the “back.” In casual speech this can only mean the combined base and rim. There is no intelligent way to reinterpret a square back as the indention left by the striker.

There is no standard sidearm, 9mm or otherwise, that uses a cartridge with a square rim/base.

For the benefit or PRCalDude, in a striker system, all the trigger does is free the striker, which is then propelled forward by a spring. When the slide is pushed back by the recoil impulse, the motion of the slide compresses the spring and a latching mechanism (the trigger bar cruciform pressing against the striker dog-leg) holds the striker back until the trigger frees it for the next shot.

It’s not quite that simple because several safeties are involved, but that is the general idea of what happens.

In a pistol with a hammer and firing pin (like the 1911s)the trigger releases the hammer, usually via a mechanism called a sear. The pull of the trigger only provides cocking energy for the first round on a double-action pistol. On a single action pistol you have to manually cock the gun for the first round.

In a pistol with a striker mechanism, the striking energy for the first round is provided by racking (pulling back) the slide.

(Every time you see some idiot actor rack the slide in a movie to show they are serious about shooting somebody’s head off, you can have a good chuckle. Since a round never flies out, it means the gun had not been loaded until that moment.)

After that, recoil energy is used to recock the firing mechanism for all types of pistols (as distinct from revolvers where the recocking energy is provided by the trigger or the thumb).

Liberal Democrats: still genocide loving monsters after all these years.

All of this is among the reasons that we produce Vent. Vent is about what we want to say and when we want to say it, on whatever topics we choose to address.

Bryan on July 20, 2007 at 3:41 PM

Good job on your vents and independent news blogging.

Great detailed B.S. detector.

I can’t say unequivocally that no other make of gun utilizes a square firing pin, but Glocks are certainly the most ubiquitous. If you do find a handgun casing with a square firing pin imprint, you’d be safe to bet significant money it came from a Glock.

Not that the stories in question aren’t BS. In fact, this might be stronger evidence that they are than not: An author who knows nothing about the real properties of a Glock could easily hear about them leaving a square impression in the backs of casings, then garbled the information into the false claim that the backs of the casings themselves were square.

This would be soooo delicious if Scott Thomas was actually Stephen Glass messing with TNR’s head again.

Oh thank God, someone finally stated the freaking obvious.

Even in the position of ‘occupiers’ would we be ISSUING firearms to the Iraqi police? I mean, I can see us contracting for the purchase, handling the distribution and training the Iraqis in the use of them.

But when I hear the word issue, the implication is that ‘we’ retain ownership and the ultimate responsibility for the use and disposition of them.

I have no problem with US being the middle man in this deal, but the Iraq government sure ought to be paying for them… And if they are, I don’t think ‘American issued’ is a proper or honest term. If we ARE paying for them and indeed ISSUING them, we better darn well take them back when we leave.

My main issue is with the word issue ;-) (No, I’m not drunk, even though this post certainly could be taken as evidence that I am… Sorry for the lack of coherence.)

In Baghdad, a busted infrastructure has left entire neighborhoods navigable by vehicle only. The sector we soldiers patrol is known unaffectionately as “Little Venice” because of the dark brown rivers of sewage that backwash from broken pipes. The biggest fear in these parts isn’t sniper fire or IEDs, but a flat tire that forces you to wade through the reeking fluids. Occasionally, that fear is realized–like on the day when I met Ali.

aren’t Humvees equipped with a centralized mechanism to pump air into punctured tires so that they can still drive with a blow out (say from a bullet hole). Is it possible they really couldn’t drive on this tire long enough to pull out of a three foot deep river of sh%*.

And then?

WWS pal Stuart Koehl, who is regularly quoted here as an expert on all things technology-related and who first chimed in on this story to explain that there was no way a Bradley driver could see a dog to the right of the vehicle as “Thomas” describes in “Shock Troops,” now writes in to cast doubt on this story as well.

Koehl says,

HMMWVs [Humvees] are equipped with a special type of “run flat” tire–there is a solid rubber doughnut wrapped around the rim inside the pneumatic tire. If the inflatable gets punctured, the vehicle settles down on the run-flat insert, which allows it to be driven out of the battle area. The adjustable tire pressure system might keep the tire inflated if it has only a small hole, but its real purpose is to match ground pressure to the road surface for maximum traction. HMMWV tires are huge, heavy, and most vehicles don’t carry a spare. A drop-down spare tire carrier has only recently become available as an option on Up-Armored HMMWVs.

there is a lot more at the link…

First, our soldiers were made out to be kids, then they were made out to be victims, now they are made to be monsters.

All in the same day, sometimes.

I realize that you are just quoting someone else’s article… but…. When did America EVER issue Walthers? And Glocks are not a regular issue item, although have been issued to a few special type folks.

Yes, I’m shocked that the NYT was sloppy ’bout the descriptions, but (a) I am cutting them enough slck to believe they saw such guns in store windows, etc.; and (b) the US certainly did provide Glocks to the Iraqi police (indeed, there were those in the US upset that Glock was picked, as opposed to a US company). Thousands of these Glocks have gone missing (see my first link). So Jamil Thomas is either hoaxing or an idiot when he immediately concluded the Iraqi police were involved in the death.

LegendHasIt on July 20, 2007 at 5:32 PM

It’s possibly what we’re issuing to the Iraqi military, but the quote is indeed strange. The bit about the “pristine unused kalishnikovs” is also likely uninformed. There are tons of AK variants, and they’re likely “pristine” because they’re “brand spanking new” not leftover from some scary sounding eastern bloc country.