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Post by Beth on Feb 6, 2018 21:29:57 GMT
Ian's point is THE point. The reduction in combat power for a nearly useless (in battle) function is criminal negligence. It seems that when we draw new blood to this site, that there is a lot of coverage of ground we have trodden before. That is not a bad thing, or burdensome It serves to refresh us all. I also appreciate going over old ground. No matter how hard I try I can not get caught up and the task is becoming daunting. Besides often times it helps having new eyes while traveling old ground. BTW if anyone missed today's launch of the Falcon Heavy-it was a thing of beauty.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 6, 2018 23:32:20 GMT
Beth: Utilizing my three part importance criteria, the first - survival of civilizations - I believe that horse was out of the barn at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Win or lose at LBH the Indians had already lost nearly 300 years before. No question that it was important to the people directly involved, but as a history changing moment not so much.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 6, 2018 23:47:18 GMT
Not meaning to high jack this thread but it is currently the most active.
The deputy sheriff KIA yesterday was the third officer killed in the line of duty in 37 days here in Colorado, with another half dozen critically wounded.
An attack on any law officer, or officer of the court, is an attack on the rule of law, and to a greater extent on civilization itself. In two of these incidents the officers were out gunned by the assailant. That too must stop. There is danger in over militarization of police forces. I think we can all see those dangers, but try telling that to their widows and children.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 7, 2018 10:04:45 GMT
When the criminals out gun the police, you know your in trouble. I am not anti-gun, but I would restrict all automatic weapons to firing ranges only, lets face it who would want a machine gun in their home other then to show it off to their friends. They would have to go into the middle of nowhere to fire the bloody thing and I don't think it is a functional weapon for hunting either. Keep it to shotguns, single shot rifles and hand guns and see if it makes a difference and keep the automatics to the gun clubs were they are supervised and locked up after you leave. This might sound draconian, but sometimes you have to do with out things if you want to live in safety and stop the death toll from lunatics with machine guns.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 7, 2018 10:17:00 GMT
Wow, My roster is way off, or I seriously need new glasses. I had 55 plus 45 for McDougall. First chance I get I will re-read my roster. Maybe I need a new one. If you put the average company size at about 45 men, that would put in man power/fighting strength to 3 companies in the rear. Thanks Yan you are being extremely helpful. Your welcome Dan, that's what we are all here for, to share info and debate this battle [and others of course]. I suppose keeping around a hundred men in a unit to protect the train as it moved through enemy country, is OK, but I don't know why things like extra food a stores could have been detached and then corralled to the rear. If you map the location and fix it to a location you call easily fall back too, then you wouldn't need a hundred men. Just two from each company plus Autie Reed, Boston Custer and the other half a dozen or so civilian packers would do. That would give you around thirty in total. That would free up around seventy men to return to their companies plus B Company, but that begs the question, which battalion gets the B company?
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azranger
Brigadier General
Ranger
Posts: 1,824
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Post by azranger on Feb 7, 2018 12:51:55 GMT
The only way to have an automatic firearm is to possess a firearms tax stamp. I recently bought a suppressor and the process took around 6 months. I had to be finger printed and passport type photos taken. Unlike Hillary I know that a suppressor reduces noise but they are not silenced weapons unless the ammunition is reduced to sub sonic velocity.
For Custer's soldiers the ammunition and shorter barreled carbine could make a difference in the sound level. The break point is around 1100 feet per second. So anyone shooting a .45-70 round would have the bullet leaving the barrel in excess of 1100 fps and it would make a distinct sound.
The Colt single action army can be cycled faster than a semiautomatic rifle so it is not the cyclic rate that is an important. California limits magazine size which only means you have to have more guns and/or magazines. As far as the police being outgunned that is not the issue. Individual officers may only carry handguns but you have to look at proficiency of officers and what they are allowed to carry. There are officers that have never fired any type of firearm before being hired and among those are some that don't care about their marksmanship. They barely qualify each year. Agencies are worried about getting sued because officers shoot the wrong person due to poor marksmanship and therefore a marksmanship test is required. In our state we also have to pass a judgmental shoot test which includes shoot, don't shoot, and a verbal challenge. I was a subject matter expert for the state of Arizona in regards to the Firearms Training Simulator abbreviated to F.A.T.S. I would train officers on how to operate the system and more importantly how to select the scenarios.
What I observed was that scenario's had doctors and attorney's along with administrative law enforcement review the scenarios on the disks for hits and when the shooter shot. An officer could pass if shooting just a little slower then the bad guy. You could fail by shooting inappropriately for many reasons but you could pass if you got shot. I wanted my officers to shoot appropriately but in that window of a good shoot to shoot first. What I am saying is that if a police officer gets shot there is less department liability than if a bystander or even a bad guy gets shot.
If someone wants to tell me its OK if one of my family members gets shot because it was a single shot rifle we can all guess the response. If someone wants to tell me police officers are outgunned then it is their Department policy and a concern for political correctness. Our military is unarmed on their own bases by rules and regulations not by the lack of military weapon systems or the individual soldiers to deploy them. They are unarmed not outgunned. They have the guns but are not allowed to carry them.
There is zero way to take all the semiautomatic guns in our country with our second amendment. If it ever comes to attempting to do it we will see who the shooters are and it will be ugly. There are millions of semiautomatic AKs in the world that would be available for import along with anything else illegally imported.
I think one only needs to look at the ACW and single shot rifles to see they were effective in killing lots of soldiers.
If you want to fear something fear the guys that use bolt action rifles and compete at 1,000 yards. Yesterday I was at our Ben Avery facility in Phoenix for a firearms instructor meeting and a qualification shoot with our new SIG P320 40s. On the way to the headquarters I passed our 1,000 yard range and they were holding a competition meet there. When compared to most law enforcement officers and military soldiers those long range shooters and their rifles really do outgun most LE and military. It would take a police precision rifle shooter or a military sniper with a precision weapon system to not be outgunned.
In some countries you can be outgunned by a person with a .22 or even a .25 auto since there are no guns. In this country you are more likely to be unarmed by choice or by rule/policy/law rather than outgunned.
Regards
Steve
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colt45
First Lieutenant
Posts: 439
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Post by colt45 on Feb 7, 2018 15:34:21 GMT
Agree completely with you, Steve. It is not so much the weapon as the training and ability of the person using that weapon. As to the Colt SAA, I shoot two of them in Cowboy Action Shooting matches, and almost all of our competitors, me included, can get 5 rounds out faster than anyone using a 1911 or other semi-auto pistol can, so you are again correct that cycle rate is not the important factor. When I was in the police academy years ago, we had a number of recruits who had never shot a weapon of any kind, and with the proper training, became reasonably good shots. However, the required recurrent qualification and training is what made all our officers superior to the average street thug shooter.
Sadly, even recurrent training at the range under controlled conditions does not ensure an officer will be competent under stress. In the 1970's, FBI stats indicated that the average police shooting occurred at ranges averaging 6 feet, and multiple rounds were fired and very few hits on intended targets.
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Post by dan25 on Feb 7, 2018 16:03:42 GMT
Yan, Just a follow up.
It appears the notes I have for the roster are incorrect. I still come up with only 55 men. I have 0 for D co., and 0 for M co. I don't recall where I found the roster on line. I have been searching and have not found it again. I did find another roster online, after checking it, seems to be close to mine with a difference of only 3 men. Any hints where to find a more accurate one?
regards dan25
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 7, 2018 16:05:37 GMT
Up to now Britain has only been hit by terrorists using either a knife, homemade bomb or by using a vehicle as a weapon, not like on the continent were they are armed with AK47s or any other number of automatics or grenades. That is down to Britain being an island and the tight security which stops weapons like that getting in. The home grown terrorists in the UK, has limited access to fire arms, which is lucky for us and not like on the streets of Paris or Brussels, where ISIS terrorists fought running gun battles with the police and army. I hope we never see anything like that on our streets and luckily up to now we haven't.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 7, 2018 16:13:53 GMT
Dan, Fred Wagner's books are a great source for this type of information, especially his book "Participants in the Battle of the Little Big Horn" I think his info is slightly different then mine, so I will get in touch with him tomorrow to see were I have gone wrong. The totals I have for C, E, F, I & L are fine, it is the other seven were I have different figures, I have had those numbers for years and I thought that they were correct. I think Fred has only used the names of the men known to him, because each company should have had at least six. Sorry for the confusion, just take no notice of me in the future Try this link; link
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azranger
Brigadier General
Ranger
Posts: 1,824
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Post by azranger on Feb 7, 2018 16:30:23 GMT
Up to now Britain has only been hit by terrorists using either a knife, homemade bomb or by using a vehicle as a weapon, not like on the continent were they are armed with AK47s or any other number of automatics or grenades. That is down to Britain being an island and the tight security which stops weapons like that getting in. The home grown terrorists in the UK, has limited access to fire arms, which is lucky for us and not like on the streets of Paris or Brussels, where ISIS terrorists fought running gun battles with the police and army. I hope we never see anything like that on our streets and luckily up to now we haven't. I know Ian
My grandfather said they had to send you guns so you could defend yourself.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 7, 2018 16:38:29 GMT
I think we gave those to the LDVs [dads army], if he meant in 1940, well yes we needed everything we could get our hands on, as we were fighting the best war machine known to man. We had to leave vast amounts of ordnance in France, which left us a little short. But we struggled through and had them on the ropes in Egypt, then you lot came to our aid.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 7, 2018 18:04:42 GMT
Regardless of the numbers of personnel assigned to the pack trains, and my personal number ranges up to the 130 or so mark, what we cannot know is how the close presence of those trains effected tactical decision making. That to me is the key question.
Certainly not having them present would have had a more flexible effect, on what, where, and how to maneuver.
I think it is a distinct possibility that Custer chose to have them close up,possibly thinking that he would have to start an immediate pursuit after his initial attack(s) and he wanted no delay in being able to start that pursuit, which calling the trains up from the deep rear would entail. Of course you do have to win the battle and start them running, before you commence a pursuit.
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Post by dan25 on Feb 7, 2018 19:34:45 GMT
Yan thanks again.
I found my missing men. I compared the names from freds list to those of mine. It seems some of mine were listed on the hilltop fight not with the pack train. I never gave it a thought when I originally wrote them down that men from L company listed on the hilltop would have been with the packs.
QC, wasn't the packs already headed that way? How would you make the mules move any faster than they choose to move. If Custer wanted them closer maybe he should have stoped and waited.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 7, 2018 20:55:21 GMT
Yes I agree with QC, Custer kept the pack train moving and adding the extra troopers would have aided the over stretched civilian packers in keeping the whole column mobile and up to speed.
The Cooke note to Benteen would add weight to this, Custer would want Benteen to bring the packs forward, but how he thought that he could do this if he found any hostiles' I don't know.
Custer may have sent another messenger to either Reno or Benteen in the shape of Pvt Golding [G Company], they found him hiding in some bushes when they were looking for Hodgson's body, some say he was one of Custer's orderlies as he was retained by Cooke on the 21st.
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