Bomber Had An M-4 Carbine Rifle - What Are The Odds?

Per the NY Times (and others), the second bomber was captured with some impressive equipment:

Along with determining that the suspects had made at least five pipe bombs, the authorities recovered four firearms that they believe the suspects used, according to a law enforcement official. The authorities found an M-4 carbine rifle — a weapon similar to ones used by American forces in Afghanistan — on the boat where the younger suspect was found Friday night in Watertown, Mass., 10 miles west of Boston.

Two handguns and a BB gun that the authorities believe the brothers used in an earlier shootout with officers in Watertown were also recovered, said one official briefed on the investigation. The authorities said they believe the suspects had fired roughly 80 rounds in that shootout, in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev was fatally wounded, the official said.

A real M-4 carbine with three round burst and full automatic capability meant for the military or law enforcement? Not a civilian semi-automatic knock-off that would qualify as a dreaded 'assault weapon'?

Or are these reporters unaware of the difference? After all, we have only been mooting assault weapons since last December.

Still, its an odd lost opportunity for the media to score political points. Think how much safer we would have been if the bomber had been limited to a more conventional looking rifle.

 

Comments

[Frau Sauerkraut über alles!]

"Rap and Islam are an effing match made in hell."

Rob, didn't Suspect #1 like both? He's now enjoying his 72 versions of hell.

[Dublindave]

The NRA and its ilk could have used an insignificant change to existing gun law to inoculate themselves from any future legislative assault. A willingness to bend a little in the face of a horrendous tragedy buys you an awful lot of public good will and it sets up the 'slippery slope' argument to justify future intransigence.

Not everyone can be as smart as Dublindave. It's hard envisioning the big picture.

[Tom Maguire]

That's the same round fired bt the M-16.

But if I can trust Wikipedia, the M-4 barrel is 5.5 inches shorter. Less time for the powder to burn, less muzzle velocity, less accuracy and power.

But much handier when jumping out of a HumVee or operating on the mean streets if Fallujah at close range.

[Janet]

Speaking of the NRA...I got my NRA cap today! I'm gettin' quite the chapeau collection. A Jayne Cobb hat from Frau, a camo/cross hat from Ann, & a NRA cap.
My neighbors will have a cow if I wear the NRA cap....

[jimmyk]

So there is a level playing field aspect to it

Yeah, but as I said, if that were the main argument they could make it revenue neutral by cutting the rate. I don't hear anyone proposing that. It's a revenue grab.

Also, "level playing field" is a slippery concept that easily morphs in to "keep out the low-cost competition." Think about all the street vendors that materialize at mealtimes. They don't have all the overhead and taxes that restaurateurs have, but it's a very efficient way to feed a lot of people.

[Danube of Thought]

My understanding was that the tumbling effect was not inherent in the bullet, but in the rifling of the M-16 barrel. You can see a variety of 5.56 exit wounds here; very few of them are tiny holes.

[Captain Hate]

Also, "level playing field" is a slippery concept that easily morphs in to "keep out the low-cost competition."

The government should ensure a level playing field by not changing a damn thing. The free market is all about discovering opportunities and acting upon them. Government reacting to that almost always produces bad policy.

[anonamom]

"The Weatherman are ten times worse than these two kids ever were...we cannot have a double standard."
It's a disgrace we glorify them with a movie( or something to that effect.)

HLS professor Alan Derschowitz today on Robin Young's Here and Now on NPR today.

FABULOUS rant!

[Rob Crawford]

Dersh is gonna find himself not being invited to parties anymore.

[cathyf]

Gee, I wonder about the possibilities of creating a mail forwarding business in one of the states with no sales tax? (Delaware, New Hampshire, Montana, Oregon and Alaska) It could dovetail nicely with a FedEx-style of shipping. (The model with FedEx is that every package gets flown to a central sorting site, sorted, and put back on a plane for its final destination. Yeah, FedEx is more complex now, but that was the original plan.) Imagine Delaware: for a small fee (which Delaware would get some cut of) you establish an address in Delaware and all of your packages get shipped there. Then the trans-shipping company would forward the packages on to the eventual address. If you get one of the big shippers to put in a sorting facility (as in lots of tax revenue to Delaware!) then all the packages get sent there anyway and it just becomes a computer programming problem.

[Captain Hate]

In a new USA Today poll released on April 23, only 49 percent of Americans support Congress passing a new gun-control law, with 45 percent opposing.

dumbassdave the sooper jeanyus

[Captain Hate]

Here you go, anonamom

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/04/22/dershowitz-i-don-t-understand-way-some-people-left-glorify-american-t

[pagar]

I don't see where anyone has addressed the real problem the US military is having with their weapons.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/04/its-an-obama-world-us-army-tells-troops-to-scrape-bible-verses-off-their-weapons/

[Rob Crawford]

pagar -- it only seems fair that the US military has special rules for handling Korans and references to Bible verses.

Kids gloves for the first, Dremel tools and black paint for the second.

[Richard Aubrey]

Fired the M14 squad auto version--heavy barrel, straight line stock, muzzle compensator, and bipod. Both from bipod and from the shoulder in 1969. I'm a big guy--205 at the time at Benning--and so it may have been easier for me. But it hummed quite nicely and didn't jump around.
Improved version of the BAR, although I never fired that one.
Simply switching a conventional M14 would probably have been considerably less effective.

[Jim Rhoads f/k/a vnjagvet]

Good for Dersh. He is liberal, for sure, but he is not IMO a hard leftist. His observations about Boudin, Davis, Ayers, Dohrn, Redford et al are exactly right. He has reached the point in his career that he can speak his mind without worrying about reactions from leftist colleagues. His opinions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are another example of this phenomenon.

[Cecil Turner]

The 19-year old is charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death.

Is it just me, or have we dumbed the definition of WMD down to meaninglessness?

This is the infrastructure to implement VAT and financial transaction taxes for the Federal Government.

That's exactly what it looks like to me. And as such, the worst possible bit of legislation for our time. The minimal possible upside can't possibly justify it.

But if I can trust Wikipedia, the M-4 barrel is 5.5 inches shorter. Less time for the powder to burn, less muzzle velocity, less accuracy and power.

All true, but not terribly significant. If the stats can be believed, the longer barrel gives 7% more muzzle velocity, 15% more muzzle energy. The increased efficiency due to the picatinny rail system is far more important, if you're comparing it to an earlier M16. Of course, you can have the best of all worlds with the M16A4 (and I probably would).

[Old Lurker]

Cathy...I would not say it was me, but friends doing a house on Nantucket discovered, since they had to have all their new furniture shipped to a moving & storage company on the Cape anyway (so it could all come over on a single ferry trip rather than dozens), that all items thus shipped to MA incurred a 6.25% tax while furniture shipped to an adjacent state had none. On several hundred $K, you know what they did.

I have a friend who lives on Nevis which, like many of those islands, uses outrageously high import taxes to fund their govt. So of course my friend has a mailing address at a storage facility in Miami...

[Jim Eagle]

Gun SN filed off. Illegal. Wonder where they got since there are strict gun laws to prevent that kind of thing:)

MT,

Probably know him (FIL). Where in the sand was he? Doing petro projects? Aramco or big contractor? I was in Jubail, Ras Tanura and Al-Khobar and Dharan.

[sailor]

The question is: where did they get the money to buy all this "stuff?" If there is no other connection with terrorists, did the money come from welfare payments to them??!!

[Jack is Back!]

Test.

Can't post, again.

[Jack is Back!]

Test.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Ricin suspect released on bond.

[anonamom]

Thanks Captain--something to post for my Twitter followers--
all ten of them ;-)

[Rob Crawford]

Is it just me, or have we dumbed the definition of WMD down to meaninglessness?

For law enforcement purposes, everything is a "WMD".

For international relations purposes, nothing is a "WMD".

[cathyf]

Is it just me, or have we dumbed the definition of WMD down to meaninglessness?

Or, did Bush REALLY lie when he said that there were pressure cookers in Iraq?

[Jack is Back!]

I think Dave (In MA) was the first to raise the suspicion of Tamberlan having something to do with the murder of his "American friend". Now its national news it seems.

Another JOM first?

[Jack is Back!]

I could be wrong - it could as easily been Rocco. Someone raise your hand.

[Rocco]

Wasn't me JiB

[jimmyk]

The first I saw of it was Clarice linking an article about it.

[Clarice]

I think it may have been me and the more I learn about ti the stronger is my suspicion of the link.

[Jack is Back!]

Clarice,

My apologies - just thought it was local it had to one of the Bostonians. What do you mean suspicious? Like in doubtful?

[narciso]

I recall it was one of the Bostonians,

[narciso]

but I don't remember which.

[Ignatz]

--Not sure business who choose to locate in low tax states quite see the "playing field" that way, nor do the citizens who vote to keep taxes low and business climate inviting.

Posted by: AliceH | April 23, 2013 at 12:52 PM--

Alice,
I was referring to the unlevel playing field of online retailers who do not collect sales tax versus local retailers which do, not high sales tax states versus low ones.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Are you all referring to the unsolved murders of three jewish men in Waltham?

[cathyf]

anybody else having a bear of a time posting this afternoon?

Has anyone seen a captcha lately? I'm wondering if the problem is that the code that is supposed to take you to the captcha screen got broken, and on those occasions when it wants you to enter the captcha it instead puts up the "Your comment has been posted" window and then it doesn't post because you didn't put the invisible captcha on the invisible screen...

[narciso]

They have their template, the wars are the reason why Martin Richards is dead, although they don't put it that way, of course, not the Salafism being preached by Feiz Mohammed or Suhail Webb at the ISB Mosque,!#$@$#%$^%&^*&*)

[Melinda Romanoff]

cathyf-

Haven't seen captcha in a while, and may explain why posts are getting treated like spam.

[Jack is Back!]

Mel,

Yes. One of them was, according to the guy who ran the boxing gym, Tamberlan's "best friend". Someone posted a news item that this could have been an "initiation" killing by Tamberlan back in '11. Now it is getting national attention.

[Ignatz]

--My understanding was that the tumbling effect was not inherent in the bullet, but in the rifling of the M-16 barrel. You can see a variety of 5.56 exit wounds here; very few of them are tiny holes.

Posted by: Danube of Thought | April 23, 2013 at 01:25 PM--

Rate of twist is related to aerodynamic stability and for how long a bullet remains aerodynamically stable.
All bullets if they can travel far enough will eventually become aerodynamically unstable as the heavy base inherently wishes to swap ends with the lighter tip.
But aerodynamic stability goes out the window once the bullet makes contact.

Wikipedia puts it succinctly;

The damage caused by the .223 (5.56 mm) "varmint"[29] bullet was observed and originally believed to be caused by "tumbling" due to the slow 1 in 14-inch (360 mm) rifling twist rate.[32] However, this twist rate only made the bullet less stable in air.[32] Any pointed lead core bullet will turn base over point ("tumble") after penetration in flesh, because the center of gravity is aft of the center of pressure.[32] The large wounds observed by soldiers in Vietnam were actually caused by projectile fragmentation, which was created by a combination of the projectile's velocity and construction.[32]

[Ignatz]

--Has anyone seen a captcha lately?--

No, but suddenly I've been released from comment purgatory and can post links and use html.
Don't know about pics.

[Captain Hate]

O/T Reading the dead tree letters to the editor in the WSJ in response to Judith Grossman's complaint against campus kangaroo courts has my blood boiling regarding one of my pet peeves; namely that any time a male is identified in the MFM of being accused of a crime of a sexual nature, even if he is exonerated of it there will always be small minded people who believe he was guilty of *something*. This was proven here in the Duke lacrosse case even though the state attorney took the highly unusual step of declaring the accused innocent of all charges rather than making no comment and leaving it open to speculation that they many have just beaten the charges. Even though I understand why they do it, the MFM's habit of identifying the perps in rape cases but never the accusers, even when their accusations have been proven false, violates any concept of equal rights of the accused and should be done away with imo. I am not condoning rape by writing this. I stated to friends during the Amirault case that there will always be people who believe they were guilty and their lives will never be free of that stain.

Btw most of the letters slatter Ms Grossman in a similar manner to what was written here previously.

[Jack is Back!]

No captcha seen in quite a while. I thought I lost a number of posts that showed up like 15 minutes later. Either the highway is slow with a number of detours slowing down arrival time or finding a parking spot is tough and you have to drive around for some time until one becomes available.

[Ignatz]

Of course as soon as I say that, I can no longer post links.

[Ignatz]

Can I post a pic?

[Janet]

Someone here wrote about that murder as maybe being a "proving" murder. If you kill them/him...we will trust you, kinda thing.

[Janet]

I haven't been getting Captchas. I usually get a lot too.
No trouble posting though. I haven't updated Firefox in a long time. Keep hitting "ask later".
I think I've still got version 18 or maybe even before that.

[Sue]

I have not had any trouble posting. Using Safari on smart phone.

[narciso]

Surprise, surprise;

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/04/23/House-Releases-Report-on-Benghazi-Attack

[Dave (in MA)]

I think Dave (In MA) was the first to raise the suspicion of Tamberlan having something to do with the murder of his "American friend". Now its national news it seems.

Another JOM first?

'Twas not I.

[Clarice]

2 of the men were Jewish. The third, Timberlan's friend was not--I read the facebook memorial pp and the Mess obit/

Theories:

Anger that Mess gave pot to Jihadi Jr.
To prove himself to his handlers.
Practice,
Revenge for 9/11
To better control by fear his wife and the younger brother.
All of the above.

For sure, it was a phony drug killing in my mind.

[Clarice]

By "revenge for 9/11" I mean, of course--not revenge ,but rater to commemorate it.

[Threadkiller]

" Description from clip one: Lou explained to the NC Legislative Committee on Election Law how activists flooded the polling precinct toward the end of the day, all with freshly printed (not even folded) "utility bills" and how the voters then proceeded to read to the poll workers. Many could not recite their address without looking at the piece of paper! The current version of NC's Voter ID law would raise the price of this type election fraud from about a nickle (for the fake utility bill) to about a dollar (for a fake plastic government employee ID card). Note: the video clipped before he finished his sentence. The voter was coded "unverified." Her vote counted, but the BOE was never able to confirm the person actually lived in Buncombe County. BOE staff followed the law, but it appears the law is designed to facilitate those wanting to break it.

Description from clip two: This brave mom spoke of her observations at the polls and how the rampant fraud was obvious to the point of discouraging her from even bothering to vote. The good news is that her testimony was heard at an official Legislative Committee meeting and it puts the truth to the lies about there not being such thing as voter fraud.

Description from clip three: Debbie recounts eye-witness elderly voter abuse and makes an impassioned plea for the Committee to get it right. They failed, but Debbie's testimony did not fail and her words will help NC get laws that actually push back against rampant election fraud.

Description from clip four: Election Observer, Larry Henson, told the NC Legislative Committee on Election Law how he confronting a woman who had already voted twice that same day and was back for Round 3. When he and the Chief Judge questioned her third attempt to vote (this time for a man), she got righteously indignant."

http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2013/04/video-election-observers-expose-voter-fraud.html?m=1

[hit and run]

Here it is:

---------------------

An intriguing possibility--the victims, including Tamerlin's "best friend" were probably Jewish--was this a test he passed for his handlers?http://www.businessinsider.com/murder-of-brendan-mess-the-best-friend-of-boston-bombing-suspect-tamerlan-tsarnaev-2013-4

Posted by: Clarice | April 20, 2013 at 02:57 PM

[maryrose]

TK'
Wow! This is unbelievable. I am so glad their voter fraud didn't work in NC but I wonder about the states where it successfully goes on. In Ohio with the exception of those claiming to vote twice and even a nun voting for her dead mother the system seems tighter.

[maryrose]

The voters who broke the law are being prosecuted,though the nun only got a fine and community service. It must have been her social justice intentions that helped her out.

[Sue]

I am imagining the press coverage if Bush was president and the FBI hadn't followed up on whatever the older brother's name is. The headlines would be interesting, for sure.

[Jim Miller]

Cecil Turner - Apparently the WMD comes straight from the text of our laws. I saw a number of posts about it this morning, but don't recall where. (Volokh?)

As I recall, essentially everything except actual firearms get classified as WMDs in our law.

[Jack is Back!]

Hit.

My deepest apologies. You were on the forefront.

[jimmyk]

Ricin charges dropped against the Elvis impersonator.

[Cecil Turner]

Apparently the WMD comes straight from the text of our laws.

Yeah, I know. Doesn't make it any less moronic. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see some future adversary put one or more of our airmen on trial for use of "WMDs" citing the same text. Dumb.

BOE was never able to confirm the person actually lived in Buncombe County.

Seriously? Pronounced "bunkum" county? Reminds me of the undercover guy named "Bobby Covert" (and the gallery folks laughing at trial).

[jimmyk]

oops, didn't see the new ricin thread.

[Skoot]

John Miller (former Associate Dir. DNI and NYC crime reporter) reported the pair assassinated the police officer as a means to obtain another handgun, but were unable to free it from his locking holster.

I couldn't tell in the pictures from Laurel Street (now taken down) if a long gun is used.

[Carol Herman]

Shot himself with a bibi gun! By the time the homeowner lifted the tarp, all Suspect #2 had was a bibi gun.

Did the bibi fall out onto the ground when he was put on his stomach for cuffing? At some point the truth will come out.

[matt]

was it an M-4 BB gun?

[hit and run]

I was just confirming that it was Clarice on the forefront, JiB.

[Clarice]

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/042313-653011-boston-attacks-hurt-obama-gun-and-immigration-agenda.htm?

Highlights more problems with the immigration bill. Good read.

[chah]

Seems like a lot of misinformation floating around. SWAT team members stated during an interview that there were no weapons or explosives found on him or in the boat. No gun fire came from the boat. It was all police, another contradiction to live reports which stated the gunfire came from the boat and police did not fire at all. All they had was a single handgun and a pellet gun. They reportedly attempted to steal the security officer's gun, but could not due to locking holster.

[ThomasD]

"How about the bb gun..."

Has anyone accounted for all members of Harvard's security force?