{"id":89162,"date":"2018-03-05T13:46:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T18:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/blog\/?p=89162"},"modified":"2018-03-05T13:46:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T17:56:11","slug":"clay-combat-congressman-brian-mast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/clay-combat-congressman-brian-mast\/","title":{"rendered":"Clay Blasts Combat Vet, Congressman Brian Mast for Supporting Black Rifle Ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

\ufeff<\/span><\/p>\n

Florida congressman Brian Mast begins his op-ed in the New York Times<\/a>, thusly, “The most important and unregrettable time of my life was the 12 years I spent in the Army. I became a bomb technician because I wanted to save lives. I nearly gave my own life for that \u2014 I lost both my legs and a finger when a roadside bomb detonated beneath me \u2014 and have known more heroes than I can count who died defending others.”<\/p>\n

Don’t get blindsided by the setup.\u00a0 Rep. Mast is throwing his combat experience in your face to elicit sympathy and to set himself up as an authority on firearms<\/a>.\u00a0 Playing the humble hero card may work on many readers.\u00a0 Not me.\u00a0\u00a0I am also a combat Veteran, retired from the U.S. Army Special Forces. I know a thing or two about gunfights, having been in my fair share.\u00a0 And I’d like to challenge some of the claims Rep. Mast makes in that NY Times piece as well as to push back on his stance that the government should ban black rifles.<\/p>\n

Below you’ll find some excerpts from the article along with my rebuttals.\u00a0 I’m callin’ Rep. Mast on the carpet.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mast: When I was with others on the battlefield and we saw a chance to save a life, we didn\u2019t have a meeting about it; we acted immediately. I never worried about becoming a casualty myself.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Clay:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know about you, but we didn\u2019t spend a great deal of time looking for chances to save a life. We spent pretty much all of our time trying to kill the enemy. The only lives that might need saving were our own guys, and that doesn\u2019t obviously require orders. It\u2019s common sense. And sometimes when it is epically heroic, we hand out medals for it. But I find your emotional virtue-signaling insulting.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mast: Most nights in Afghanistan, I wielded an M4 carbine and a .40-caliber pistol. The total barrel length of my M4 was approximately 14 inches with Trijicon ACOG sights, as well as an infrared laser. I usually carried 10 magazines stacked with 20 rounds of 5.56-millimeter ammunition each.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I find your loadout extremely suspicious. First, let us address the 10 magazines of 20 rounds each. Why were you the only guy in Afghanistan carrying a Vietnam-era loadout? A 30-round magazine has been the standard since 1971. I will grant you, I know some snipers and other high speeds that would often carry a SINGLE 20, in case they needed to pull off a shot from a specific, awkward, firing position, or so they would know said magazine was their last. But no one carried a full load of 20s. No one.<\/p>\n

Aside from the obvious need to reload more, at issue is the current magazine pouch design. A 20 is much harder to remove from any known MOLLE-compatible magazine pouch. So why, exactly, were you carrying such a setup? Also, the standard infantry loadout is 7 magazines by 30 rounds. Your 10×20 puts you at 200 rounds, 10 short of a normal load. Why, exactly, would you carry more magazines but fewer bullets than your counterparts?<\/p>\n

Perhaps you misspoke and meant you carried 10 magazines with 30 rounds each. That is also rather strange. In Afghanistan, most people were looking to lighten the load, not increase it. Your 10 magazines is a bigger loadout than the average grunt, which makes even less sense given your job. As an EOD member or \u201cbomb tech,” you already had a pile of extra equipment no one else did. At least my EOD attachments always did. So at a time and place when every other soldier was trying to lighten up, you intentionally added extra weight to your kit?<\/p>\n

***Shop for an AR-15 on GunsAmerica<\/a>***<\/h2>\n

Forty-caliber pistol, huh? At the time you were injured, only two units in the Army and one in the Navy had access to .40 caliber pistols, Glocks to be specific. The obvious defense here is that you were in a JSOC support unit, the 28th Ordnance Company. But the key phrase here is \u201csupport.\u201d The action arm of JSOC isn\u2019t known for handing out specialized equipment to supporting elements, especially when it is a harder to master and more expensive to feed the weapon.<\/p>\n

Pictures of the 28th Ordnance Company online show members carrying standard SOPMOD 2 M-4 variants, not H&K 416s. I find it extremely hard to believe you got the pistol from an assaulter’s\u00a0loadout, but not the rifle. Strange, to say the least.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure why you told us you were carrying \u201cTrijicon ACOG sights.\u201d Did you mean a Trijicon ACOG sight? Since an ACOG is a one-piece 4x magnified scope, known by everyone in the military as \u201ca sight,\u201d not \u201csights\u201d? It is also rather curious you were running an ACOG in 2010, not the replacement given in the SOPMOD 2 kit in 2008. That would be a Spectre DR ELCAN 1-4. You will also remember, we had to turn in all of our ACOGs. Not only had they been replaced, but the ACOG had a bible verse etched on the side by the manufacturer. Everyone had to go back to have it removed.<\/p>\n

Why exactly are you bringing up the infrared laser, by which I am sure you mean the PEQ-15 or ATPIAL? Did Nicholas Cruz drop in blacked out, and commit his massacre with Panoramic NVGs that he stole from SEAL Team 6? More on that in a minute.<\/p>\n

Your rifle was either 10.5 inches or 14.5 inches in barrel length. Which makes it actually less lethal than a civilian model AR-15, which must include a 16-inch minimum barrel length not to be considered an SBR. Velocity drops as the barrel is shortened, which I am sure we all know. Maybe more people would have lived if Cruz had been using your actual \u201cweapon of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, either you don\u2019t remember correctly, or you are a liar. Traumatic Brain Injury maybe? It would make sense with your IED injury, lots of us have them. But if that is going to be your defense, maybe you shouldn\u2019t be making national policy.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mast: I have fired tens of thousands of rounds through that rifle, many in combat. We used it because it was the most lethal \u2014 the best for killing our enemies. And I know that my community, our schools <\/em>and<\/strong> public gathering places are not made safer by any person having access to the best killing tool the Army could put in my hands. I cannot support the primary weapon I used to defend our people being used to kill children I swore to defend.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Are you referring to the bullet in this case or the rifle? Because either way you are wrong. If you meant the bullet, you need to have your head examined. Almost any round (.375 Cheytac, 7.62×51, even .270 Winchester) is more lethal than the round common to the M4 family of weapons, the ubiquitous 5.56×45 NATO.<\/p>\n

223 Remington is so weak on the power scale, it is illegal to hunt deer with it in most states. In the civilian world, it is considered a varmint round, useful for prairie dogs and woodchucks. You didn\u2019t carry it in the Army because it is the \u201cmost lethal.” You carried it because back in the ’60s a Pentagon study concluded it carried<\/a> an optimal balance of weight and power, for a force that often used 50,000 rounds to kill one enemy soldier. That stat is the official one from Vietnam.<\/p>\n

If you mean the rifle, you are again wrong! Statistically speaking, artillery is the \u201cbest for killing our enemies.\u201d And if you only want to include individual-sized weapons, that would be the belt-fed medium machine gun M240B. If you are implying best shot-to-kill ratio, well, most snipers still have bolt actions. The Vietnam\u00a0stat on those was 1.3 rounds per kill.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mast: I also know that I am made less safe by the threat of tactical rifles. I am confident I can eliminate an active shooter who is attacking with a pistol because the attacker would have to be close to me. But the defense my concealed 9-millimeter affords me is largely gone if the attacker is firing from beyond 40 yards, as he could easily do with the AR-15.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

So you can shoot accurately up to 40 yards with your handgun? Neat. Not bad for a mortal, but your argument is still stupid.<\/p>\n

Last summer, I was able to easily score hits with a Dan Wesson Fury 9mm out to 160 meters<\/a>. Jerry Miculek is on video shooting 9mm to 1000 yards. So in addition to banning AR-15s, are we going to ban match grade barrels in pistols?<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO:\u00a0A 1911 Crushing Targets at 180 meters \u2014 Dan Wesson Elite Series Brings the Fury<\/a><\/h2>\n

Maybe the next step after AR confiscation, we will demand all 9mm ammo be downloaded to a point where it can\u2019t possibly go past 40 yards? That should be about 200 feet per second, I\u2019ll work the ballistic coefficient out later.<\/p>\n

A rifle does make shooting longer ranges a lot easier, I will grant that. But in your pistol only world, what stops a bad guy that actually has some skills? Nothing it turns out. So next on the slippery slope, you need to ban pistol red dots, training, and any bullet faster than a slingshot. Let me know how that works out.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mast: No firearm is evil. Guns are tools that fulfill the intent of their users, good or bad. But we\u2019ve seen that the rifle of choice for many mass shooters is the AR-15…\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>The Second Amendment is unimpeachable. It guarantees the right of citizens to defend themselves. I accept, however, that it does not guarantee that every civilian can bear any and all arms.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Well, it is either unimpeachable or it isn\u2019t. Only a complete cuck tries to have his cake and eat it too. Which is exactly what you are doing if you follow your arguments to their logical conclusion.<\/p>\n

I want to be able to defend myself and my family from anything and everything, a midnight burglar all the way to a full-scale invasion by a foreign power. Not to mention domestic terrorism perpetrated by any and all aggressors, from Antifa to Big Brother and everyone in between.\u00a0 Rifles are kryptonite to tyranny. You would do well to remember that.<\/p>\n

In closing, stop being a pussy; tell us what you really think. If you want to ban guns, by all means, get after it. But run on a platform of abolishing the 2nd Amendment, like a man. Good luck with getting your peers in Congress to agree. But at least you can look us in the eye as an honest dealer.<\/p>\n

***Shop for an AR-15 on GunsAmerica<\/a>***<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it is either unimpeachable or it isn\u2019t. Only a complete cuck tries to have his cake and eat it too. 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