Hultafors Trekking Axe courtesy hultafors.com

Shoulda been a DGU: Three people were injured in a hatchet attack in an east Texas Walmart early Sunday morning. The attacker was a transient who had the hatchet (not pictured) with him when he entered the store. He attacked two female employees, and a male customer was slightly injured trying help the women. Police did not believe that the transient knew the women, and there is no known motive. One woman was treated and released, the other spent a few days in hospital. The customer was only slightly injured and refused medical treatment. The transient was arrested and remains in jail on $225,000 bond charged with three counts of aggravated assault . . .

Today’s Lockdown of the Day™ is brought to you by Albany, Ohio, where the Albany campus of the Alexander Local Schools was locked down Friday afternoon after ammunition was found on campus. According to the recorded robo-call statement from ALS (which you can hear here), the school went on lockdown, “authorities were called and the incident was investigated.” It was determined that there was no weapon at the school (that they found) and that it was safe to dismiss students from the afternoon. I remember very specifically getting my hands on some .22 cartridges on one occasion when I was a kid, and a 12 gauge shotgun shell on another, and carrying them around in my pocket all day, just because they were cool. I never got caught, and nobody died. I’d be hung from the rafters nowadays.

A Minneapolis police officer’s duty gun, ammunition, and uniform were stolen from his personal vehicle back on November 26th. The items — a .45 Smith & Wesson, the uniform, two loaded 14 round magazines, one 10 round magazine, and 37 more rounds in a bag — were contained in a large duffle bag, which was removed from his vehicle outside a Walgreens in St. Paul. “But the story is dated December 13th,” you say. “Why is only in the paper now?” you ask. Well, that would be because the press only found out about it when a search warrant was filed on Friday. The MPD probably figured it was better to keep it on the down low, lest their spotless firearms responsibility record be tarnished.

Mossberg 702 plinkster courtesy palmettostatearmory.com

If anyone needs a .22 for a Christmas present (or any other reason, really), Palmetto State Armory has a basic model Mossberg 702 Plinkster on sale right now for $119.99, normally $176.00. At that price, you can get three for the normal price of two. Get one to keep, get one to give, and still have a spare! In stock as of 8:35 p.m. ET, here.

Missouri State University has a week-long campus-wide game that the students play called “Humans vs Zombies.” It’s pretty popular, as the game in October had some 500 participants. It runs 24 hours a day for a week, outdoors, not inside. It starts out like a game of tag, where tagged humans become zombies. Humans can defend themselves by stunning the zombies with rolled up socks or NERF guns. {Needle scratch} Wait, NERF guns on a college campus? The horror! Well, apparently that’s what some people think. Last year, a professor called 911 and put a classroom on lockdown when he thought he saw a gun, and the university’s safety and transportation department got several calls to its non-emergency number while the game was being played. As a result, university officials are considering banning NERF guns from campus. Meanwhile, the organizers of the game, who say participants are required to sign safety waivers and are not allowed to paint Nerf guns to make them look like real guns (they’re usually orange or lime green), have not halted their plans for spring game, to which they hope to draw closer to 1,000 participants.

Most of you are familiar with the USFA ZiP .22LR, which Jeremy S. reviewed for us back in April of this year. YouTuber mattv2099 did a his own video review of it back in May, when it showed a tendency to jam ejected cases into his hand in a manner that seemed calculated to cause injury. Then in October, he tested it again, this time with the BX-25 25 round magazine, a test which it thoroughly failed. Apparently USFA knew they had issues, so they put out a fix, euphemistically called an “upgrade kit,” I suppose because it “upgraded” it from non-working to working. mattv2099 did another short video of the installation of the upgrade kit (it’s two springs, longer than original), and finally, below you can find the video of the finished, fixed gun. Along with a shadow silhouette of a heretofore unseen lady friend, who is apparently matt’s inspiration (and also a not-too-shabby baker).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfksE3tnUlg
Whaddya think? Would operate with?

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42 COMMENTS

  1. I say a failed first round chambering is a big issue. I would never invest money in this. I still say epic fail, especially with the groups.

    • I got the impression the first round chambering was inherently not as vigorous as a cycling of the slide under fire would be. It looked as though he had to rack the slide by squeezing the front end rearward; he probably wasn’t letting go of it fast enough and it therefore wasn’t moving forward with enough force.

      If one was going to fail, I’d much rather it be the first one than any subsequent one. You can chamber the first on your own time, hours or days before you have to use the gun. (In a gunfight though–should you be unfortunate enough to be in such with this–you’d have to remember not to swap mags until you have plenty of time.) It’s also possible that if you do a reload with a round still in the chamber, it would function, because you are not doing it manually.

      If indeed the group was what he thought it was (I doubt it because it looked like a lot less than forty holes to me), it would be tolerable in a defensive situation.

      It beats a Jennings. But not by enough to make me want to go buy one. Especially since I *did* just buy a CZ-75 compact yesterday (Suck it, Obama).

  2. Hatchets should be on a ten day waiting period, with mandatory background checks. After all they are one of the original assault weapons… For the children…

  3. I carried ammunition to school “just cuz they where cool” once also, when i was in grade school, of course this was in the post columbine “summery executions for all violators” era so had I been caught I imagine I’d have exspearenced more reeducation than I did as a result of my normal violations of the collective social order.

  4. When I was in elementary I wore a ball chain necklace with a 7.62×39 round on it, if that were today I would have been expelled, probably charged with a felony as an adult and possibly tied to a post for lashes.
    Sad state of affairs today. That wasnt even that long ago.

    • When I was in grade school my dad started reloading and made me a necklace with brass and bullet from a 357 I wore it to school no problem, although the bullet was lead… It made a sweet pencil in a pinch.

    • And of course those in the know might have simply added that you had to be a commie, carrying that round with you.

  5. Back in the early 90’s or late 80’s I brought a pocket full of 22lr to middle school. I had been shooting that weekend totally forgot that all the pockets in my coat were full of ammo.

    I gave some bullets away to people.. One of which was found and confiscated by a teacher.

    A cop was dispatched to the school. And the school cop and the other cop they sent confiscated my bullets and technically arrested me. But immediately released me to the custody of the school… The school did nothing to me. They cops being tough were the punishment. Whatever. Look at me now! 🙂

  6. Kind of a dismal supply of .22 ammo… Just sayin.

    Back when fanny packs were cool. I went to Cozumel and had mine on only to find a dozen rounds of 9mm in it. I had fun leaving them on window sills, street corner signs, etc.

  7. I live 20 minutes away from that Walmart and I frequent it every now and then. For those who have never been to Marshall it is a average sized town and for something like this to happen is unheard of. Scary to think I could have been there that day. Has shaken everyone up and hope the victims recover quickly. Not surprised though that the guy didn’t do more damage, there are usually one or two police officers who are in the parking lot hanging out by the entrance.

    Only thing I heard about the scumbag is that he was a hobo who was traveling from place to place and just walked in and starting to attack people for no reason. We also had another recent incident, in Longview which is about 30 minutes away from Marshall, about another guy walking into a hospital and started stabbing people.

      • Unfortunately it is catching up to our quaint little part of Texas. This area is pretty rural and lately the crazies seem to be increasing. People are talking more about self defense and are getting their CCW’s more than ever now. I’m honestly surprised no one shot the bastard since a lot of people in this area do carry and there is no 30.06 sign on that Walmart.

  8. I have a ball chain necklace with a 5.56mm round that I used to wear all the time since I got it when I went on a trip to New York on the Intrepid. After VTech, I stopped wearing it since I kept getting a bunch of weird looks from all my classmates.

  10. I remember inadvertently taking a coat pocket full of firecrackers to middle school. Didn’t even realize i had them until the end of the day and i’m pretty sure no one would have given a shit, but today i probably would face the electric chair.

  11. The university where I work also has a game of humans vs. zombies every fall semester.

    The school paper publishes the rules, the news service puts out a news release, the internal communications unit puts several notices in the daily faculty/staff announcements. About the only place it isn’t publicized is on the home page.

    Maybe it’s the saturation coverage or the fact that the campus police have given it their blessing, but there haven’t been any issues. I get quite a kick out of watching the paranoid groups of Nerf-gunners navigating the perilous plaza outside my office.

  12. That Mossberg .22 is the same price at Cabela’s right now, if you want to skip the FFL and shipping fees (and live close to a Cabela’s store). I dunno if it’s a good rifle or not, but thought I’d point it out.

    • I don’t have personal knowledge, but I’ve seen them used at Appleseed. Also, I think a buddy of mine has one, though his has a wood stock, and he uses it to great effect on varmints and pests. It seems to be an alright rifle.

      • With the right ammo they are damn accurate and reliable. My stainless one is my go to .22, I can get nickle sized groups of five at about 40 yards with cheap remington thunderbolt ammo.

      • Yep, my Plinkster is a dead shot to about 125yards with a simple bubble package BSA 3-9x scope. With velocitors it puts down everything up to about 20 pounds immediately. It’s been very effective around the farm for several years. Clean the barrel every 75-100 rounds and you can cover a 3shot group at 100yds with a nickel. I love it.

  13. Garden spades look dangerous too. And those things with the hooked claws and pointy ends – they make me cringe! I saw someone walking around a hardware store with one of those things, and my hands started shaking so bad, I couldn’t dial 911, and ended up in a fetal position behind a fertilizer bag.

    While I lay there, helpless and apoplectic, a leaf blower stared angrily at me from the next aisle, and I thought about just how easy it would be for someone to come along with a lighter and a can of solvent, and turn that leaf blower into a flame throwing mass murder machine.

    Thats when I crapped my pants, and passed out in a pool of my own urine…

    • Don’t even get me started on the common household chemicals in the paint department and their intermixability.

    • 🙂
      That must’ve been a truly epic day at the hardware store. Suddenly Ace doesn’t seem like such a helpful place…

  14. In college we used to shoot each other with airsoft guns, many of which were basically gun replicas with no orange barrels. I broke mine and accidentally turned it into a full auto and almost nailed the RA in the face.

    I have a feeling I’d be getting a cavity search nowadays…

  15. The only zip gun upgrade that would make sense to me would be to move the damn charging handle away from the muzzle. Still wouldn’t be a buyer after that though.

  16. No way would I buy something so poorly thought-out in the first place as to have the charging handle where it is.

    Also, would attaching the zip to the underside of an AR barrel (its main claim to fame) turn it into an SBR? Because you’re sorta attaching a stock to it?

    • Attached to a rifle, it would indeed be considered an SBR. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to pay the gummint $200 to attach that worthless and dangerous POS to a perfectly good AR.

  17. Back in the 60’s, when I was in 5th grade, I took my family’s Civil War Spencer carbine for show-and-tell. I walked all around campus with it. I was a “patrol boy”, a group of kids who were stationed at street crossings around the campus to stop cars and let kids cross the street when school got out. We had a 6th grade “sergeant” who went from station to station checking things out. He carried that Spencer all around the perimeter of the school as he went about his rounds. No lock-downs. No active shooter response. No SWAT Teams.

  18. The 702 is a great fun gun and very handy I have one.. In my high school days I would take a old Ranger 22 LR to school break it down and put in my duffle bag and a box or two of 22’s and on the days of study hall (3 days) was my last class would cut out early and go hunting or shooting along the railroad lines (no one ever knew) was all my own area… and lots great FUN… Today they would put me in jail and throw away the keys… was a time we still had freedom here and was able to get pistols mail order NO QUESTIONS asked and know what it was safer back then. You have had to enjoyed liberty to understand what we have lost…

  20. I think we should “swat” this guy. Nobody should have that much 22lr ammunition in this day and age.

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