Largest Gun Ever Built

via Gizmondo

The Gustav had a bore diameter of 800 mm (just under a yard) and used 3000 pounds, more than a ton, of smokeless powder charge to fire its two primary shell types: a 10,584 lb. high explosive (HE) shell and a 16,540 lb. concrete-piercing shell—roughly the weight of an unladen 71-passenger school bus, travelling at 2700ft/s.

With a maximum elevation of 48 degrees, the HE shell could hit a target 29 miles away, while the bunker-buster could nail anything within 23 miles—both with reasonable accuracy. The Gustav could basically fire a shell over the widest point of Long Island, NY and hit nothing but water. If it did hit, the HE would leave a 30-foot deep crater while the piercing round could penetrate as much as 264 feet of reinforced concrete (or height of the Seattle Exchange Building).

The Gustav, luckily, saw only very brief action. It fired 300 shells on Sevastopol (at a rate of about 14 shells a day) and 30 more during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 before being captured by Allied troops and chopped up for scrap. Its 7 million Deutsch Mark sister, the Dora, was destroyed by the Germans themselves to keep it from falling into the hands of the Russians. The rest of the Nazis' evil War Machine would fall by 1945 after Allied forces finished curb stomping them back across the Rheinland.

Where Have the War Protesters Gone?

Salon published a fascinating article on what happened to the anti-war movement.

The movement's drawing power was limited from the start, and then, once the war was on in earnest, it felt -- realistically -- that it had run smack against the brick wall of George Bush's manic pigheadedness. Demonstrators are unlikely to invest their energies in what look from the start like very lost causes. And the demonstrations also tailed off because the mainstream media didn't pay attention -- refused to pay attention. The story line they were promoting was: America kicks ass, new era begins!

I thought that made pretty good sense.  In fact, I'd say one word, "apathy" says it all.  But the author took the article in another direction.

But also, in the new century, once war was on in earnest, the demonstrations dwindled because many former or potential demonstrators gravely doubted how nice the outcome would be if the expeditionary forces left -- or at least, lacking a tragic sense, downplayed the human costs of withdrawal.

From there he goes on with some type of apology for the current wars, comparing them to Viet Nam. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, "getting out" it was the right thing to do, but not today.

What's your opinion? Do you think even anti-war folks feel that our getting out of such places as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya might be wrong?

I don't think that and I don't think anti-war activists think that. For me personally, the awful realization came gradually during Obama's 2nd year in office. We are powerless to change what "the owners," as George Carlin called them, want. From there apathy and cynicism set in, which unfortunately, would take the steam out of any movement.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Another NRA Martyr

Nice:

The father of a Cooperstown teen who has admitted trying to kill a classmate last year because he was black has been accused of recently stalking the 17-year-old victim, authorities said Monday.

Anthony Pacherille Sr., 44, however, believes that the fourth-degree stalking and first-degree harassment misdemeanor charges he now faces are the Otsego County district attorney’s way of getting revenge for disparaging remarks Pacherille Sr. has made publicly.
These latest charges come just days before Pacherille Sr.’s son, Anthony Pacherille Jr., 17, is due to be sentenced in Otsego County Court Friday morning to 11 years in prison after previously pleading guilty to attempted second-degree murder.
During his plea April 29, Pacherille Jr. admitted that he chased Wesley Lippitt into the Cooperstown police station, where he shot Lippitt once in the arm before then turning the gun on himself in a failed suicide attempt on April 2, 2010.
After that proceeding, Pacherille Sr. furiously expressed his belief that his mentally ill son had been “railroaded” by the judicial system, that Lippitt’s family had vengefully sought their “pound of flesh,” and that District Attorney John Muehl would have “blood on his hands” if anything happened to his son in prison.

For Laci and Microdot and the other Art Lovers among Us, with an Interest in Firearm Violence

This post amused me tremendously.  I hope the other readers on MikeB's blog appreciate it as well.  Not the kind of intellectual art criticism with which I was brought up, but ...oh, well....it does have a certain directness and interactive quality with the art work, I'll give it that.  For those not familiar, MIA is the Minnesota Institute of Art.

From Eyeteeth, A Journal of Incisive Ideas:

Gun-shot Avedon still at home in a Minneapolis German restaurant

A Minneapolis German restaurant is home to a work by famed photographer Richard Avedon, but the tale of the work's current state -- peppered with a few bullet holes -- makes it an even better story (via @artsmia).

Minneapolis Institute of Arts associate curator of photography Christian Peterson blogs about Avedon's 1963 work Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In town for a 1970 MIA show of his work, Avedon frequented the Black Forest Inn a few blocks away and befriended its owners, Erich and Joanne Christ. Before leaving town, he gifted the first print of the photo to his new friend, and it still hangs in the restaurant's bar today. But it now bears two signs of age: Many years later, a customer pulled out a gun and shot it.

Writer Christy DeSmith chronicled the event in a 2004 piece for The Rake:

Sixteen years later, Ellis Nelson, a regular at the bar, was sitting on his favorite stool when he pulled out a revolver and opened fire on the photograph. “That was a wild day,” remembers Erich, who was walking his wife and infant son through the parking lot when the shooting occurred. “People came running out of every hole in the place shouting ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’ and I said to myself, ‘Ellis, this time you really did it.’” When police later questioned the shooter, trying to uncover a motive, Nelson was reported to have answered, “That photo always bugged the hell out of me.”

"[S]ince you could smoke in the bar until fairly recently, those holes are now rimmed in a distinctive nicotine brown," writes Peterson.

The Black Forest nicely chronicles its art on its website, but only nods to the photo's history by calling it "infamous." The restaurant's online image of the work, however, shows evidence of the two shots -- a chest wound and an eye shot -- that make two of the Daughters of the American Revolution look more like soldiers in the American Revolution.

About a Girl

An Armed Society is a Polite Society™:
Authorities pronounced one man dead at the scene. The other man was taken to an area hospital where he, too, was pronounced dead.
The shooting seems to have stemmed from an ongoing feud between the two roommates, possibly over a woman, Crump said. The men had been at a party until early Monday morning before the shooting occurred.


Investigators said they are not looking for any suspects, because they believe this was a murder-suicide.

™ courtesy Glenn "InstaCracker" Reynolds.

A Gun Violent Criminal Isn't Happy in Jail? All together now......Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, too damn bad.

Now THIS works for me as an appropriate occasion to apply the Castle Doctrine

I would however point out a couple of things:

1. this very heroic older gentleman is a DEMOCRAT; and

2. Iowa is typcally a BLUE state - you know, LIBERAL

3. the Congressman didn't require a gun to confront the intruder, just training.

By way of MSNBC news staff and news services:

Congressman, grandson fight off armed intruder

77-year-old Rep. Boswell wrestles man who attacked his daughter at Iowa farm home; grandson grabs a shotgun

DES MOINES, Iowa  — An eight-term congressman from Iowa helped fight off an armed man who invaded his farm house in Decatur County and attacked his daughter on Saturday night, according to a statement from his office.

The attack occurred around 10:45 p.m. on Saturday at a farm in Lamoni, where Rep. Leonard Boswell, a 77-year-old Democrat who represents Iowa's third congressional district, was spending the weekend with his wife, daughter and grandson.

"The intruder entered the front door of the farm house and physically assaulted Cindy while demanding money at gunpoint," read the statement from Boswell's office.

After hearing his daughter's screams, the congressman "entered the walkway of their house and immediately went for the guy's gun and was wrestling with him. They were both on the ground," Boswell's chief of staff Grant Woodard told local news station KCCI.

Charlie Neibergall  /  AP file

Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, helped fight off an invader at his farm house on Saturday night.

While the two scuffled, Boswell's 22-year-old grandson Mitchell Brown grabbed a shotgun from a nearby room and confronted the intruder, who then fled into the surrounding field and reportedly was still on the run.

"The congressman just did what anybody would do if he knew his family was in trouble," said Woodard. "He jumped right into the situation and helped his daughter."

"Besides some scrapes and bruises, Congressman Boswell and his family are fine," read the statement. Boswell lives in Des Moines and owns the farm in southern Iowa.

The Decatur County Sheriff's Department and state and federal authorities are investigating. The sheriff's department said Saturday that the intruder had not been caught.

"The congressman says the military is the best training for situations like this," said Woodard, referring to Boswell's 20-year military career. "It's a wakeup call to everybody to take precautions and do what they need to do to keep their family safe."

Reuters contributed to this report.

Well done, Congressman!