Last month, I wrote a post about how Better Half and I gave up on Top Shot, but continue to watch Sons of Guns for a variety of reasons mostly centering around drama, entertainment value, and genuineness.
This month, I have to admit they are starting to lose me, but not for the reasons you think.
In one episode, Will and his crew take a Mk19 40mm grenade launcher, slap a suppressor on it, and give it the ability to shoot semi-auto in addition to fully-auto. Why? Because the police apparently might need to launch a tear gas grenade into a house from hundreds of yards away, and do not want to give away their position.
*blink*
Excuse me? To begin with, so far as I know, no tear gas / CS rounds are produced for the Mk19 grenade launcher, and Global Security seems to back me up – non-lethal rounds are the sole realm of the M203 and M79 40mm Grenade Launchers, which can share ammunition with each other, but not with the Mk19 (the formers’ rounds are 40x46mm, while the latter’s is 40x53mm).
So let me ask this very plainly – why does a police department need a 1,500-yard-effective-range grenade launcher that only throws out HE or HEDP rounds, no matter how "controllable" or "quiet" the device might be? So far as I know, there is no way for a non-law-enforcement-officer civilian to own such a system legally, so there is no market there, and the military is quite happy with its fully-automatic model, thankyouverymuch (and the still-in-testing replacement model is, you guessed it, fully-automatic too, and un-"suppressed" to boot), so what the hell?
Can anyone say "militarization of police"? I knew you could…
But wait. It gets better. Apparently some company wants to put machine guns on their helicopters for "clients". That article names them as "Paradigm", and another article calls them "Paragon Security", but they really seem to be Paradigm SRP, a branch of a a helicopter tour and photography company out of Houston. Yeah, that gives me some warm fuzzies… In any case, their webpage seems to just about peg the "high speed low drag" meter, but is awkwardly short on any specific information… not like I am expecting them to name their clients, or possibly even their instructors, but the webpage reads like a buzzword dictionary barfed up some HTML.
In any case, I will admit that I am not entirely up-to-date on the related laws, but I am pretty sure that the federal government generally frowns upon private organizations of almost any type weaponizing aircraft for use in America, which probably means these guys’ "clients" are operating in the Sandbox. Great, and I wish them godspeed with that.
But, from the perspective of an average viewer at home here in America, who cares? While we could potentially purchase the helicopter, and while we could potentially purchase the MAG58/M240 (assuming any were added to the civilian ownership records before 1986), we could never put them together in this kind of fashion, and even if we could, why would we not use a pre-existing solution that the military already employs in numerous aircraft, instead of some kitbashed thing that looks like a shop student’s rejected first project?
Oh, and the actual efficacy of the whole gyro-stabilized machine gun mount? Yeah, dubious, at best. It might have been arguably more accurate than a normal machine gun mount, but calling it "accurate" is a rather unnecessary abuse of the dictionary, given how much "walking the rounds onto the target" there was.
One of the primary draws of Sons of Guns, at least for me, has always been the, "Oooh, shiny!" factor, but one of the prerequisites for that reaction in me is the ability – no matter how remote – of actually owning what we are talking about. Take that ability away from me, and I might find what you are talking about academically interesting, but hardly engaging enough for me to invest an hour into.
And when you start talking about highly destructive toys I cannot own and how you are equipping local police forces with them, I start getting very concerned with your motivations, and whether or not you are aware of the larger picture, much less even looking at it.
Then there are anonymous online comments like this one, for whatever they are worth:
I’m a Police Officer in East Baton Rouge and I’ve been on the “set” (range) while they shot footage for a few shows. First of all everything is staged, nothing is “reality”. All the “customers” are set ups and not in any way shape or form a real customer their to buy any of the ridiculous triple machine guns or grab ass rocket launchers….its all preset up and the “pressure” of the time line crap is bogus as shit. Hell, their “store” isn’t even open to the public without an appointment, what kinda gun store operates that way?!?!?!
… And this really not-helpful news report:
An FBI official says a rented moving truck parked at a curb at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport caused a brief scare on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
FBI official Kevin Gentry says the truck was driven by a crew member of the Discovery Channel show "Sons of Guns." Investigators were suspicious because the driver said, "I got a couple of guns," but Gentry says he was just waiting for a co-worker.
I do not know Texas’ laws regarding having firearms on airport property, but even if it is legal, might the crewperson have thought that bringing fully-automatic hardware onto an airport on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 might not be such a good idea? Guess not.
If helping the police become more like our military (which is a horrible idea if there ever is one, especially given the increasing prevalence of excessive use of SWAT raids) and fabricating things I could never hope to own are going to be come more-common themes on Sons of Guns, I will probably end up finding other things to fill up my DVR with… Time will tell.
I keep going back to a 204 quote from Battlestar Galactica: “There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
That said, is it just me or are we steaming full-speed towards the cyberpunk future Gibson & co. predicted in the 80s? SWAT teams that resemble armored cavalry, downtown battle zones, corporate entities with private armies… I even reckon we’ll have direct neural interface to the internet by 2020. But dangit, where are the cybernetics?
I’m starting to tired of the “pressure cooker” environment that is so obviously staged it is an insult.
I’ve been wondering how to write up the show truck left unattended at the airport incident. I’ve been greatly wondering if there was an ulterior motive for such action. (Can any one say “Free Publicity”?)
In Texas, it is legal to carry concealed or leave firearms secured in your car on airport property.
@ Erin Palette:
The dystopian future will be televised…
(and sadly, spellcheck doesn’t recognize “dystopian” and wants to change it to “utopian.” Just like a democrat.)
I also have a love hate relationship with that show. I don’t need a web forum to tell me that it’s all staged for tv, it just plain looks fake and staged but then all of tv is that way. I still watch Top Shot but with the fast forward button real handy.
As a Texan I will add a few notes. It’s legal to carry a gun on an airport in the Non Secured side. You can check a gun at the ticket counter before you go to security. I fly a lot and was pulled over by airport security inside the airport for lane changing without signaling and speeding. I had a gun in my truck and handed the cop my gun license during the stop. No issues. I explained that it’s 2am and my flight landed 4 hours late so he let me go with a warning.
Also you can hunt hogs in a helicopter with a gun in Texas. With the right paper work, and enough hogs, that gun can be an NFA “fun” gun. It works if you can use the bird to drive the hogs into a corner. Nothing like bacon and gun smoke for breakfast.
Oddly I don’t watch TV, I just use the net. Heck I have a TV, and no cable. My Partner and I play games and watch movies. TV just seems to annoying and depression. Sometimes I miss a certain show, but then I remember Netflix and The Net.
Good News!
SEASON FINALE! WEDNESDAY AT 9PM E/P
SONS OF GUNS showcases one of America’s most skilled and creative gun works, Red Jacket Firearms, and its owner Will Hayden. While pursuing its bread-and-butter work with customizing and improving AK-47′s, the Baton Rouge-based Red Jacket team delves into the world of historic and classic weapons.
Bad News:
There will probably be a third season.
Sons of Guns lost me this week when they mounted a Taser to the end of their (I think) select fire Saiga shotgun. Anyone that thinks that it is anything but a monumentally bad idea to mix less-than-lethal with lethal on a single firearm needs to watch the San Francisco BART video until the light bulb goes on (cop draws Glock instead of Taser with lethal result if you haven’t seen it). Stupid, stupid, stupid.
@ Erin Palette: You have no idea how hard it was not to include that quote in this post… I think of it almost every day now as I thumb through the news.
Hell, SWAT team overlords are telling local commanders to “poach” work to continue their quest for relevancy… Apple is invading people’s homes looking for evidence of corporate theft, and claiming to be police. Prophetic or not, those guys surely have been coincidentally accurate.
@ Bob S.: Yeah, the non-stop “We’re going to do this in a week, and I am going to be a dick to my shop workers to make sure it happens!” bullcrap is really starting to grate on the ISyE inside of me. That is a horrific way to run any business, much less one that fabricates containers for small, directed explosions.
@ bluesun: I think it already is…
@ Dropcrate.com: Sounds about like TN, except that all of the airports in the state are posted properties. The state has no problems. The airport administration does. Go figure.
As for hunting hogs, my understanding is that those are still person-mounted weapons – i.e. they are not hardmounted to the airframe. Bolting things to aircraft tends to attract the ire of people in black suits, from my understanding.
@ Terriligunn: TV is my guilty pleasure, and things like Eureka and Warehouse 13 keep me coming back. Sons of Guns is turning into the proverbial cannot-look-away trainwreck.
@ Miguel: Hell, there have been how many seasons of Top Shot now? Artificial, induced drama sells.
@ deadcenter: The boss’ sole motivating factor seems to be the bottom line. Not that there is anything wrong with that, per se, but when fabricating weapons that will supposedly actually be used, one must also actually pay attention to basic things like “safety” and “engineering” and stuff like that… and I have my doubts as to how much he does so.
And strapping a non-lethal to the business end of a lethal is just a world of stupid.
Top shot lost my eyeballs when they decided to humanize two TSA goons.
I haven’t watched it since and kind of wonder how shooting without their blue gloves affects their scores.
[...] early on in the 1st season. I am stunned they are still on. Linoge points to another trend.And when you start talking about highly destructive toys I cannot own and how you are equip…AKPC_IDS+="5803,";wpa2a.script_load();No related posts.Tags: Sons Of Guns Categories: [...]
I’ve seen one episode, that being the one with the triple AR. They lost me right there.
@ Kurt P: Two by two, hands of blue? Had no idea they had TSA weenies on the show… just as well, I suppose
.
@ Beaumont: See, that one kind of fascinated me, in the “would that really work?” kind of way. The way they went about it, however, was damned near enough for me to completely lose it…
All you have to do is figure that show is 99% BS & go from there!
[...] http://www.wallsofthecity.net/2011/09/well-this-is-awkward.html [...]
@ chris: See, I was kind of hoping for better than that when it started…
[...] do it again, only harder! 3 comments | 1203 24Sep11 | written by Linoge By now, you are aware of my reservations about the Discovery Channel’s show "Sons of Guns", but, apparently, those were only the tip of the iceberg. We are still a few episodes behind thanks [...]