More on the S&W bribery sting

John Haughey over at OutdoorLife’s Blog has an interesting article on the SHOT show round up of Smith & Wesson lawbreakers.

The article is surprisingly sympathetic. As you know from my post The Smith & Wesson indictment irony I hardly share John’s sympathy.

From my point of view, what happened at S&W was pure greed. After a blockbuster year thanks to Obama, they still needed more money, and were willing breaking the law to get more of it. Without personally knowing the inner workings of S&W, I can say with confidence that they have numerous lawyers, all of which would know better then to say bribery would be a good thing for the company.

I do agree with John on the ridiculousness of the following:

“Let’s see, at $75,000 a year, it’s $6,250 a month per agent,” he calculates. “$6250 x 30 months = $187,500 per agent. $187,500 x 250 agents = $46,875,000 to arrest 22 people.”

Voila! That’s $46.875 million of your tax money to arrest 22 people, or more than $2.1 million each.

If FBI agents really do make $75k /year and all 250 of them were working solely on this sting, then that is a crazy amount of money. It would definitely work out to much more than $2.1 million if you factored in expenses besides just their salaries.

I’ll take this opportunity to make the same joke as I did in my last post:

If you are sympathetic towards S&W, buy some handcuffs – HERE

Reuters coverage of the S&W SHOT show incident – HERE

Hat Tip: SayUncle

2 COMMENTS

01-26-2010

Can your current business cards shoot stuff? Didn’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my current ENDO Tactical business cards. They are very simple, clean looking, and nice and thick.

The problem is though, they don’t “do” anything, so they are likely not very memorable.

Enter the Penny Shooter, and the Cardapult..

With both of those you can shoot around 15 feet according to the videos. Very neat designs…

« Click to continue…

8 COMMENTS

01-26-2010

.45 GAP Gen4 Glocks and the Florida Highway Patrol

Recently the Florida Highway Patrol conducted testing for a new duty pistol in Tallahassee, Fla. One of the pistols they tested was the Gen 4 Glock. The problem is Glock is only offering the Gen 4 in 9mm and .40 S&W, and FHP wanted a .45. To secure the contract of “about 3000 pistols,” Glock agreed to manufacture a special run of Gen 4 pistols chambered in .45 GAP.

I know the “purpose” of the .45 GAP is to have the ballistics of a .45 ACP, but in a smaller volume cartridge. What’s wrong with .45 ACP though? or even .40 for that matter?

The standard magazine capacity of the fullsize .45 GAP Glock model 37 is 10 rounds. The Glock 21 (.45 ACP) standard magazine capacity is 13 rounds. One clear disadvantage of the G37, especially in a law enforcement environment.

According to Jeff Quinn’s article on the G37 at Gunblast.com:

The grip frame dimensions are where the two guns differ, and the smaller size of the model 37 does indeed offer improved ergonomics for those who prefer the feel of the medium frame Glocks. A comparison of the critical dimensions are as follows:

	Glock 21 .45 ACP	Glock 37 .45 GAP
Magazine Thickness	1.15 inch	0.904 inch
Grip Circumference	7.75 inches	7.375 inches
Grip Thickness	1.292 inches	1.182 inches
Grip Front to Back	2.155 inches	2.08 inches
Trigger Reach	2.938 inches	2.793 inches
Barrel Length	4.605 inches	4.59 inches

Why exactly does Florida need/want the .45 GAP though? Have they had failures in stopping bad guys with .40 or .45? Are there a bunch of new officers with small hands?

Coming from the Beretta 96, one would think that Florida Highway Patrol would be used to a large grip circumference, and that a Glock 22 or Glock 21 wouldn’t be hard to get used to.

Maybe is it an Elitism thing, where they want to brag to everyone that Glock custom made them a new model?

I would hate to see the bill for the cost of 3000 custom Glocks. I’m sure Florida tax payers would also cringe, especially knowing there are at least 2 other perfectly great off the self models that their highway patrol could be carrying.

Maybe someday this .45 GAP cardridge will catch on. Glock sure pushes it in every issue of Glock Annual.

I definitely have not noticed .45 GAP ammo at any of the gun stores I frequent, though maybe that’s due to the large amount of dust that likely collected on the box, making it unreadable.

Full story on Florida’s Gen4 .45 GAP glock purchase over at BlueSheepDog – HERE

29 COMMENTS

01-26-2010