A veritable sundae of PSH

The article that I’m linking to here is about a gun buyback program in Brunswick, GA.  Now, I think gun buyback programs are pretty stupid, and have said as much on these pages before.  In short, it’s a great way to A) destroy some history, and B) destroy some evidence.  Generally, dumb.

However, this gun buyback and accompanying self-congratulatory article contains so much incorrect information and PSH that I had to say something about it.

The gun in the hand of Glynn County Deputy Sheriff Michael Johnson was hardly as long as his forearm.

“Now what you have here is a sawed-off, 12-gauge shotgun,” he said, snapping the weapon’s foldable stock into place. “A very good street sweeper. You can conceal this gun and take out a room full of people with one shot.”

A folding stock does not make a gun a sawed off shotgun.  Since there isn’t a picture of the gun, I’m going to assume that this deputy has no idea what he’s talking about, and just called a gun with a folding stock a “sawed off shotgun”.  I’m comfortable in making that assumption based on the fact that the deputy said “you could take a room full of people with one shot”, referencing the shotgun.

For those of you that don’t know, that is quite simply a lie.  A shotgun, even a sawed off shotgun, is not going be able to disperse the pellets in a wide enough pattern to “take out” an “entire room”, with one, or two, or even three shots.  Contrary to what you see in TV and movies, shotguns need to be aimed; and just sticking a sawed off shotgun into a room and pulling the trigger will not kill “an entire room”.

Additionally, I am glad to see that the Sheriff’s office in this article had a “no-questions asked” gun turn in.  The reason for that is that if this “sawed off shotgun” was actually “sawed off”, possessing it without the proper permits from the BATF is a felony.  Which means that the Sheriff’s Office let a felon literally through their fingers.  Of course, since I highly doubt that this gun was actually a sawed off shotgun, I’m not too worried about that.

Now, there was a delicious cherry that was graciously placed on my Monday morning “sundae of PSH”, and I must share it with my dear readers.

“This is a Reuger 9mm,” he said, taking the ammunition clip that was with the gun out of the bag. “But this is the 75-round clip that came with it.”

He snapped the clip into the body of the gun, completing what was already a sinister appearance.

“This gun had completely fresh, hollow-point rounds when it was brought in,” he said. “So it hadn’t gone very long without being used. It doesn’t take too much work to make a weapon like this fully automatic.”

Now, I don’t claim to know everything about guns, but I have never heard of a “Reuger” 9mm.  Perhaps the author meant to write “Ruger” 9mm, and made a pretty silly typo.  Now, the typo itself would be bad enough, but the bit about 75 round magazines and fully automatic just makes my head spin.  Assuming for a moment that this gun is a Ruger P-Series handgun, I don’t believe (and I could be wrong) that they make magazines larger than 30 rounds for those.  But somehow, I don’t think that Deputy Fife is going to know that.  The bit about “completely fresh” hollow points is almost as ludicrous as the entire article.  It makes bullets sound like some kind of produce.  I can see the article in G&A now: “Checking Hollow-Point freshness, 3 tips to ensure that your rounds don’t rot”.  Also, if anyone knows how to convert a P-Series Ruger to full-rock-and-roll, well…that would be pretty cool.

Now, if the “9mm Reuger” was a Ruger MP9, then that is a different story.  However, just like the “sawed off shotgun”, I highly doubt that.

If you look at the picture that comes with the article, it looks like for the most part the cops collected the usual assortment of junky old wheelguns and potmetal .22s.

Normally, I’d blow by a gun buyback article like this without even paying it a second glance.  My problem with this article is that it’s so poorly written, and the information being given out by deputies is so misinformed that I had to say something.  This article is a monument to the ultimate marriage of poor reporting, and Barney Fife law enforcement.

2 Comments

  1. Assuming that it was a Ruger P89, the bit about about “sinister appearance” is just so much mediot sensationalist crap. I have a P89 and its bigger brother the P90, and both of them are just ordinary, plain old semi-auto pistols. Absolutely nothing sinister-looking about them — unless, of course, one views guns as inherently evil, which is certainly a possibility on the part of the reporter and the Barney Fife he quoted. And I’d love to know how one gauges the “freshness” of ammunition, too…

  2. I don’t really know of any guns that ship with drum magazines by default (save for Thompson sub-machine gun clones and whatnot).

    I don’t know why anyone would convert a pistol to full-auto. I know “machine pistols” do exist, but it still is rather ridiculous.

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