On the occasion of the U.S Supreme Court's ruling on the legality of bump stocks, and also the occasion of Associate Justice Sotomayor's revelation that she fails to have any comprehension of what a bump stock is and does, I am posting the above clip from the 2018 movie Sicario: Day of the Soldato as a public service.
In this clip, Benicio Del Toro uses his left index finger to 'bump fire' a semi-automatic pistol and empty the magazine in a couple seconds.
No bump stock was necessary for him to do that, just some mechanical aptitude.
Sotomayor wrote in her dissent:
"All the textual evidence points to the same interpretation. A bump-stock equipped semi-automatic rifle is a machine gun because (1) with a single pull of the trigger, a shooter can (2) fire continuous shots without any human input beyond maintaining forward pressure.""With a single pull of the trigger" is absolutely factually incorrect. If I recall the oral arguments correctly, the USG's own expert witness repeatedly tried to correct Sotomayor on her failure to grasp the fact that a separate trigger pull is needed to fire each and every round from a semi-auto.
The trigger has to first be pulled, then released to travel forward until it resets, then pulled again in order to fire more than one round. For each and every round. If you were to just pull the trigger back and hold it back, the weapon would fire no more than one round.
A 'bump stock' is a device that speeds up that cycle of pull-release-pull, and that is all it does.
Or, as Del Toro demonstrates, you can just hold your index finger steady and push the trigger against it, using the gun's recoil to bounce the trigger back and forth. Bang-bang-bang and you'll spray a lot of rounds out without good control of exactly where they're going.
A very poor practice, if you ask me, but it makes for a good movie stunt.
16 comments:
When they came out with the 3 shot
rifle, it took the troopies about 15 seconds to figure out trigger manipulation.
I never had a 3-shot option (that was the A2? or later?), just the old M-16A1 with semi or full auto. But even on full auto you could squeeze off just a 2 or 3-shot burst with a little practice.
Sometimes I consider getting an AR15 with the 20-inch barrel, fixed stock, and carrying handle/aperture sight, just to be contrary in this age of AR pistols and mini carbines with pistol braces.
I too only had the A1, I understand the 3 shot came later. Still lead poisoning is lead poisoning. Full auto was known as Rock n Roll!
Perhaps the 3 shot went the way of the "Land Warrior"!
They improved the M16 to the point of irrelevancy. A1, A2, A3 ... finally the M4 with its 14-inch barrel and no iron sights. By that point you have little more than a pistol.
I had an M4 on State business one time. My first age-gap shock was when none of the young or even the young-ish troops in the vicinity had ever heard of a 'battle sight zero.' The second shock was when I discovered there were no sights on that little firearm that I could dial in, just a red-dot type thing.
I felt old subjectively (I'm old objectively, but normally don't feel it.)
Want to go to Afghanistan with me? I hear it's quite an experience.
I don't know. I hear it's Pakistan without the charm.
My main interest is in keeping Afghanistan over there and outta here. And that includes Mexico, where an Afghanization is underway.
Oh come on let's go, why worry about reality!
I've got a feeling that there's great political change coming. I think it's rooted in the youth and I think anyone over 50 ( such as I) has no clue what it will be, I don't think I do.
https://youtu.be/hhe3ZM7tP6I?si=1aCqkZWf_9eij_xk
That is a nice tune, thanks very much.
Also, change rooted in the youth is basically the theme in books like The Fourth Turning, and the many memes that go 'weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men, etc. I wouldn't doubt it.
I really went out on a limb predicting change through youth, lololololololol!
Oh, no, don't think that. Most people will be surprised that the current youth cohort turns out to be capable of anything other then slacking and vaping.
To quote from the great anti-hippie movie Joe (Peter Boyle), it's thought they spend all their time "Groovin'. And screwin'. Screwin' and groovin'." And that's the movie where - SPOILER ALERT - they kill Susan Sarandon in the last frame, so you know at least they got something right.
A-2
There were so many variations. A2, A3, and for all I know the A3.5, A4.75, etc.
I visited the NRA Museum once and was amazed by a whole display on the many new n' improved versions of M16 there have been. The only one I personally remembered had the triangular foregrip.
I'm such a firearms luddite that to this day I have never used any but iron sights. The young guys tell me they have no concerns about the ACOGs and such fancy devices getting dropped or running out of power, but that would be a deal breaker for me.
When your target is 50' away speed is paramount! If you let the 16(Black Magic) do it's job it'll be ok. It's always head issues with the troopies.
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