It just wouldn’t be Christmas without .40 hollowpoints

Santa Claus Uses Handgun to Protect Children From Terrorists

Here’s the Christmas card sent out by the Citizens Committee to Keep and Bear Arms:

blam

I have some concerns. First of all, Santa is not using an approved grip or stance for handgun shooting. One-hand shooting is not recommended, and the loose grasp he has on the firearm is going to result in instability, poor aim, and possibly total loss of control.

Second, although he has the children pushed behind him, there is an infant directly below the handgun. Not only could a terrible mishap occur if his gun somehow went off while pointed down, but raining hot brass from an autopistol on infants is very poor form.

Third, the terrorist does not appear to have any firearms himself and is soletly armed with explosives. Santa is not only risking everyone’s life in that room by pointing a firearm at the explosives, but he’s missing the opportunity either to shoot the bomber directly in the head — thus ending the terrorist mission — or to physically assault the bomber and remove him from the area so that he cannot demolish the tree or kill the children. Merely threatening him with the firearm may result in far worse results than either shooting him in the head or tackling him. Since the terrorist is very clumsily using dynamite sticks with fuses, there is unlikely to be any dead man’s switch or trip wire that would frustrate this attempt, and a terrorist taken alive is far more valuable to the international community than a corpse.

Therefore I cannot support arming poorly trained Santa Clauses. Even though the threat to Christmas may be very serious, reflexively arming previously unarmed sectors of society is likely to result in more harm than good.

A bigger version of the card is available from the url above; I resized it.

I think I’d buy a Hummer if I could have one of these too.

bang

The Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS) is mounted on top of a HMMWV and controlled from a command center within the vehicle. This system can mount the M2 50-cal machine gun, the M240 medium machine gun, the MK19 automatic grenade launcher, and the M249 squad automatic weapon in addition to a powerful color day camera, an infrared camera, and a range finder. This system allows the gunner to sit within the armored vehicle and, using a computer screen, control the weapon with the use of a joystick. Prior experience with Xbox desired but not required.

via Defense Tech blog