Barry Elliot courtesy IV8888 Facebook

In case you hadn’t heard, Barry Elliot from the YouTube gun channel Iraqveteran8888 (and Moss Pawn and Gun) passed away over the weekend. IV8888 put up an announcement on their Facespace page yesterday, and I first read about it on ENDO this morning. Eric from MP&G followed it up yesterday afternoon with the 85th and final episode in their Gun Gripes series, titling it Final Farewell. Barry was one of my favorite YouTube gun guys, and like many others, I learned quite a bit over the last few years from watching him. He was a force for good in the gun community, and he will be missed. Godspeed, sir . . .

I’m forgoing the Lockdown of the Day™ today for a related article at reason.com, sent to me by Pascal, that discusses the mindset that results in my ability to have a LOTD every single day. Ohio Homeland Security has debuted the “Safer Ohio” smartphone app with the slogan, “If you see something, send something,” saying that concerned Ohioans can use it to snap and send camera phone pics of things they find suspicious, such as a messenger bag laying on the ground next to a file cabinet (an actual image from the 90-second tutorial video). The reason.com article says that deputizing everyone (or attempting to) has “done little besides generate an atmosphere of perpetual, low-level anxiety and excuses for official harassment.” It’s a quick read, check it out.

A kayaker in Maryland was believed to have been struck by a stray bullet on Saturday night, and though it didn’t kill him, you might be forgiven for being surprised, as capitalgazette.com is reporting it to have been a 357-mm bullet. Yes, you read that right. Specifically, “the NRP believes the bullet to be a 357-mm or 9-mm slug.” The man said he was floating on Main Creek when he saw a campfire on the shoreline where people were laughing and partying. Shortly thereafter, he saw a muzzle flash and immediately felt a searing pain in his abdomen. The bullet was lodged near his ribcage and was easily removed by hospital staff, consistent with a bullet shot from a long distance, according to Maryland Natural Resources Police spokeswoman Candy Thomson. Police are still investigating.

Speaking of kayaks, Tom in Oregon sent this in a while back, and it’s worth sharing… After my raffle ticket won a polar bear hunt, I booked my flight to the Yukon Territory. I took my trusty Ruger .375 Alaskan to harvest the beast. I was hunting with another raffle winner who had his own Inuit guides. Our hunting was done in seal skin kayaks working around the ice floes as the polar bears hunt for seals there. On the second day, the weather turned really bad and we quickly found ourselves in whiteout conditions with the snow and sleet coming down at a 45 degree angle. I was huddled in my kryptek all white arctic gear, while my Inuit guide was in his fur parka. He kept a can of whale blubber in the kayak and lit it on fire to try and warm us. I could see the other kayak doing the same thing. A wave caught the other kayak the wrong way and tipped their can of burning blubber over, catching the seal skin on fire, and sinking the hunters in the icy water. They were all dead of hypothermia before we could pull them into our boat. Which just goes to show you… You can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

Hickok45 and a STEN gun in extreme closeup (of the gun, not of Hickok). Good stuff.

A STEN is definitely on my “unlimited funds” list.

I know it’s pure marketing and doesn’t actually have any real educational value, but I don’t care. This Silencerco video is beautiful.

Man up, and buy one. Or move to another state.

And finally, Taofledermaus brings us a video of a German World War I MG08/15 light machine gun, 500 rounds/minute, belt fed and water cooled.

Add another to the “unlimited funds” list.

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61 COMMENTS

    • I consider myself lucky to have met Barry personally at Moss Pawn and at my local range where he was an instructor. He would talk to you as long as you wanted to, only pausing to answer the store phone that was clipped to his belt. 90% of the time when the phone rang at Moss Pawn, it was someone calling for Barry. Atlanta lost two icons this weekend. WSB’s traffic reporter Capt. Herb Emory also died from a heart attack. If you haven’t watched Barry on YouTube, you are missing some great information and entertaining humor. He is a true Southern gentleman. R.I.P. Barry

      • +1000 Michael I don’t usually make a big fuss about folks moving on, but we lost some good people this week, including the triathlete/Atlanta firefighter hit by a car in New Orleans. Life is short.

    • I learned and laughed at his videos. He seemed to have fun, especially on a few of the zombie videos. I will miss seeing his videos on youtube. RIP.

  3. Ohio Homeland Security needs many many photos of cops with donuts (or dogs).

    NO photos of MRAPs. Cops with MRAPs.

  4. RIP, Barry. Thanks for the vids.

    Another thing LOTD does is it gets them out of work…the students, the staff, etc.

    How many hours of lost “productivity” is happening in this country (in a weak / sluggish economy) due to this culture of fear? As the “Lockdown” concept spreads to other places (they are happening in hospitals as well as schools), less and less business gets done.

    It’s not just the actual lockdown time, either…what about all the time spent yacking about it after the “All Clear.”

  5. Funny that a weapon made for less than an Andrew Jackson will now set you back a huge stack of Benjamins.

    Sorry to hear about the loss of a YouTube great that showed firearms in a serious but fun way.

    • I’ll be over there to mow their lawn Friday. I’ll tell her that Mike said to slap me.
      She will do it without hesitation.

        • Where do you think I get my crazies from?
          She and I are going skydiving this summer to celebrate her 90th birthday. It’ll be our third jump together.

      • So would my mom. She’s put every kid in the neighborhood back in line at one point or another growing up. Up to an including our Daily Digest author, Matt in FL!

  10. One of the many reasons I like TTAG, is that I don’t have to hunt for stuff like cool videos.
    Barry will live on through their YouTube channel. I have enjoyed watching and learning.
    Thanks Barry, Eric.
    Rest in peace Barry.

    • Indeed. I learned to love wheel guns because of Barry. He had the trifecta – personalble, funny, and informative.

    • Tom, why you go and do that? My tax return just deposited last week and its burning a hole in my pocket! Not sure its an 11 waiting hole though….

      • Hahahaha
        I’ve been working a side job the last month and I’m toying between another squirt gun or a griz hunt in Alaska.
        I keep looking at Reisings and Stens.

        • I keep looking at Sten kits, but I feel it is sacrilege that I couldn’t build it to be full auto. The Hughes amendment sucks!

        • I’d go with the Reising. As I understand it, the bad reputation they picked up had to do with their being thrust into a role they weren’t designed for. They were hand finished and built for police use, not thousands of rounds between cleanings while being dropped in the mud and constantly dragged through rain and snow. Plus, hand finishing meant parts weren’t interchangeable in the field.

          The bad rep means a lot were scrapped. A Sten would be cheaper to feed, but they were also stamped out at high numbers. Most of them were preserved (if not worn out). My dad still talks about the Johnson he passed up in the ’70s because they were everywhere then, and he didn’t think the price would go up because they were never fully adopted; he was holding out for a Garand.

          Investment wise, go for the underdog. The Reising may have failed in combat, but I think it’s earning a different reputation as a shootable collectible. Of course, I’d love to spend more money on a gun than my car is worth, but I’d also like to have spent more on my car. Just because I’ve fantasized about it doesn’t make me right.

  15. RIP, Barry. That video of torture testing the hi-point and the outfit he wore was a great one. Add that to the one where they shot all sorts of rifle rounds out of the shotgun and it kept me entertained.

    Dude got hit in the stomach with a 14 inch gun and shook it off. Must have been wearing his superman underroos.

    You can have the sten gun.

    Tom, Tom, Tom….D’oh. I read that whole thing and knew it was a set up and still didn’t see it coming. Reminds me of the punch line for an old Roy Rogers/Dale Evans joke.”Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that ate your new shoes?”

    • Got a million of them… That bar-bitch-u-ate,
      If the foo shits, wear it,
      Obscene clone fall….

      • Somebody else has heard the “if the foo shits” joke? First time in 40 years I’ve run into that.

  17. I’m pretty sure the only branch of the military still using something as big as 357mm is the Navy. For the mathematically challenged, that’s 14 inches. Even they Abrams only shoots a 120mm.

    A historical note concerning the last video, all of the European powers sent pikesmen into battle in 1914. Seriously. Can you imagine riding a horse across that sage brush with nothing but a spear?!?

    • Last I heard they had retired the battleships. The biggest gun routinely carried by the navy now is the 5 inch. I believe that’s 125mm.

      Navy takes fits of testing new 6 and 8 inch guns but to the best of my knowledge they’ve not adopted one yet.

      • I believe you’re right, although it is conceivable that they could bring battleships back out of mothballs if the need arose. I’m not sure what circumstance could occur that would warrant that. I believe that by the end they were sporting 22″ guns. I also believe that whenever the next great naval war occurs it will mark the end of the aircraft carrier, much like WWII marked the end of the battleship and WWI marked the end of the fortress. Perhaps we were all better off when pikesmen were a vital part of our militaries, but then we can’t be Luddites now can we?

        • The battleship Texas is still floating here in Houston. It’s got so many holes that I’m pretty sure it would never be seaworthy, but it has some badass 14 inchers. It would be pretty awesome to see it in action.

    • WWI was both the most historically interesting and worst place to be in the century. The demarcation of military history and politics.

  19. Wow. A really sad and unexpected loss. Barry and Eric made a wonderful, highly-informative entertainment and resource team. May he rest in peace. 🙁

  20. I bet whoever shot the kayaker was being a clown and shooting at the water 20ft away to get a good splash. Probably never saw the kayaker out on the water in the darkness. People have no idea how far a ricochet off of water can go. It’s not always like in a James Bond movie, where the bullets go straight down into the water.

  22. Rip Barry, thanks for showing how to make slugs.

    Regarding the kayak; don’t you wear survival suits? My brother and father both wear them when working in the North Sea. They keep you alive (and floating) for several hours in freezing water. I thinn they keep you alive for 12 hours? There are different types.

  23. Don’t shoot out over open water people. “Be sure of your target and what is beyond it”. Bodies of water make a uniformly terrible backstop

  27. RIP Barry

    Though it’s never a good time for a good man to die, this was way, way too soon.

  28. I loved Barry’s lost arts videos and those videos are what led me to subscribe to iv8888. I still go out and shoot cuts slugs and very nearly got a deer with one last year.

  29. I liked Barry on the show, but at least now he can’t go out driving drunk/drugged and potentially crash into anyone anymore.

  31. Hey, I had a Sten gun in Vietnam in 1972. Didn’t know what it was, somebody gave it to me when he left the country, but I recognized that picture instantly. Real piece of junk, never got to shoot it, which was good, since in Da Nang they took my XM177-E2 away whenever I was on the ground, the Sten was for self defense if Charlie decided to visit my barracks. The bolt was one piece, as in, the firing pin was molded in, did not move. Rest of the gun besides the 3″ barrel was stamped sheet metal. Seems like it should have been 9mm, but hazy memory says it was .45 ACP. Was that possible? I estimated it would cost around $3.

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