Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Underestimating the Antifa Movement (Reprised)

 



I had posted this back in 2017,  This is background for a post that I am working on that I will try to post tomorrow.  Antifa to me is the "Red Guard" of the progressive left.  They are called out whenever any street violence is necessary to make a political point.  Antifa used a page out of Mao's little Red Book "We will move through the people like the fish through the sea" and they do especially when they have the L.A.Mayor(Bass) and the city council providing political cover for their activities.  There is more stupidity planned for this weekend in other blue cities in support of the political cause of the progressive left.



This is from my 2020 stash of meme's

ANTIFA has kinda exploded on the scene during the 2016 election cycle.  You saw them mostly attacking Trump supporters.   To an ANTIFA group, they consider us "Nazi's" and sub human.  Now where did they come from?   Well I believe that they are a continuation of the "Occupy Movement"

  Remember them in the 2012 and the 2014 election cycles, the "Occupy" group were center stage as "the Soldiers of Soros".  I have blogged about them frequently.  Now the Occupy groups have grown up into the "ANTIFA" movement.  They are still supported by the same cabal of leftist but now you have municipalities supporting them.  The ANTIFA movement counts as fellow allies, the BLM movement and the environmental groups.  They tend to band together to harass anybody that don't believe like they do.  And nobody can believe like they do because they are "True Believers" and everyone else will fail the ideological litmus test.  In their world, you can't have dissent, because if you do, than you are wrong and deserve to be punished for deviating from dogma.  The ANTIFA movement are the ideological soldiers of the modern Left.


It is easy to mock the ANTIFA movement as mostly feminist and beta males, and to a large extent that is accurate, but there is the hardcore center that well is "Hard". Those are the ones that do all the fighting and bicycling locking people. They have been demonizing their opponents and deriding them as "Nazi's" and when believe that your opponent is sub human, than you lose the "Taking human life" issue off the table because "we are evil and we deserve it." This is a dangerous mindset and the hardcore ANTIFA believe this and those are the ones you have to watch. You never underestimate people, especially since they are a fan of marxism and to use Mao's little red book as a reference "The Guerrilla can swim among the people and be one with them." What is going on is you have the early makings of a insurgency especially when a lot of city government supports them.


 Here are some definations from "Urban Dictionary" when I used the word "ANTIFA"

ANTIFA
Short for (militant) anti-fascists.

Middle-class champagne socialist/communist/anarchist white boys who don't like nationalists or fascists. They consider themselves to be rebelling against the establishment, whilst upholding all of its ultra-politically correct views.

Antifa only dislike racism when its carried out by whites, and do not have the bottle to stand up against anti-white racism; leading to many people on the right to refer to them as 'traitors'. I'd rather just call them morons.

Most are teenagers and university students who grow out of the fad when they start paying taxes.
Antifa is stupid. 

Anti-capitalistic, anti-personal freedom (unless you agree with them) anti-spiritual, anti-point. Harbors a social superiority with lack of civility or natural intelligence. These dim bulbs (at best) can be characterized by, greasy hair, basement dwellings and being totally devoid of any style or attraction. Usually spotted lurking at night in large groups of marauding retards of like mind (or lack thereof) near a large University or College, anywhere they can find safety in shear numbers (because their pussy's) but has been known to venture out in the daylight to antagonize, mace women, light garbage cans and cop cars on fire at DJT rallies for money.
We don't care if you're 80 years old, we are ANTIFA and were delivering a knuckle sandwich old man. 
Short for antifascist

An antifascist is somebody who is usually young, upper to middle class(wo)man who sits in their parents house standing against racism on their computers while sipping expensive wine. Most of them are anarchists or far-leftists such as communists or Marxists (or any socialists for that matter.)

When they get off their computers and go into the real world, they usually flood the streets in packs waving red and black flags symbolizing anarcho-communism, or maybe they just fly black flags or red flags. Since they are too dumb to realize that anarchism and socialism were ideas written from behind a desk and not able to be used in reality.

Usually antifa groups will not fight in a one on one match with a skinhead, they always attack in packs or cells. However, most are vegans and/or hippies so this is understandable since they're all weaklings.

Even if you do not agree with half of what I said, these people are politically correct hippies who adopt the most mainstream political views and then they make it look like they're a special fucking snowflake.







For progressives, Donald Trump is not just another Republican president. Seventy-six percent of Democrats, according to a Suffolk poll from last September, consider him a racist. Last March, according to a YouGov survey, 71 percent of Democrats agreed that his campaign contained “fascist undertones.” All of which raises a question that is likely to bedevil progressives for years to come: If you believe the president of the United States is leading a racist, fascist movement that threatens the rights, if not the lives, of vulnerable minorities, how far are you willing to go to stop it?
In Washington, D.C., the response to that question centers on how members of Congress can oppose Trump’s agenda, on how Democrats can retake the House of Representatives, and on how and when to push for impeachment. But in the country at large, some militant leftists are offering a very different answer. On Inauguration Day, a masked activist punched the white-supremacist leader Richard Spencer. In February, protesters violently disrupted UC Berkeley’s plans to host a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart.com editor. In March, protesters pushed and shoved the controversial conservative political scientist Charles Murray when he spoke at Middlebury College, in Vermont.






As far-flung as these incidents were, they have something crucial in common. Like the organizations that opposed the Multnomah County Republican Party’s participation in the 82nd Avenue of Roses Parade, these activists appear to be linked to a movement called “antifa,” which is short for antifascist or Anti-Fascist Action. The movement’s secrecy makes definitively cataloging its activities difficult, but this much is certain: Antifa’s power is growing. And how the rest of the activist left responds will help define its moral character in the Trump age.



 

Antifa traces its roots to the 1920s and ’30s, when militant leftists battled fascists in the streets of Germany, Italy, and Spain. When fascism withered after World War II, antifa did too. But in the ’70s and ’80s, neo-Nazi skinheads began to infiltrate Britain’s punk scene. After the Berlin Wall fell, neo-Nazism also gained prominence in Germany. In response, a cadre of young leftists, including many anarchists and punk fans, revived the tradition of street-level antifascism.

By the 2000s, as the internet facilitated more transatlantic dialogue, some American activists had adopted the name antifa. But even on the militant left, the movement didn’t occupy the spotlight. To most left-wing activists during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years, deregulated global capitalism seemed like a greater threat than fascism.


Trump has changed that. For antifa, the result has been explosive growth. According to NYC Antifa, the group’s Twitter following nearly quadrupled in the first three weeks of January alone. (By summer, it exceeded 15,000.) Trump’s rise has also bred a new sympathy for antifa among some on the mainstream left. “Suddenly,” noted the antifa-aligned journal It’s Going Down, “anarchists and antifa, who have been demonized and sidelined by the wider Left have been hearing from liberals and Leftists, ‘you’ve been right all along.’ ” An article in The Nation argued that “to call Trumpism fascist” is to realize that it is “not well combated or contained by standard liberal appeals to reason.” The radical left, it said, offers “practical and serious responses in this political moment.”






Those responses sometimes spill blood. Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny people whom they believe to be white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa’s partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force.




Such tactics have elicited substantial support from the mainstream left. When the masked antifa activist was filmed assaulting Spencer on Inauguration Day, another piece in The Nation described his punch as an act of “kinetic beauty.” Slate ran an approving article about a humorous piano ballad that glorified the assault. Twitter was inundated with viral versions of the video set to different songs, prompting the former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau to tweet, “I don’t care how many different songs you set Richard Spencer being punched to, I’ll laugh at every one.”



The violence is not directed only at people like Spencer: In June of last year, demonstrators—at least some of whom were associated with antifa—punched and threw eggs at people exiting a Trump rally in San Jose, California. An article in It’s Going Down celebrated the “righteous beatings.”





Antifascists call such actions defensive. Hate speech against vulnerable minorities, they argue, leads to violence against vulnerable minorities. But Trump supporters andalt-right groups see antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble, which they in turn seek to reassert. The result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a conservative affiliated group announced that he would host a march in Sacramento to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento called for a counter-demonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were stabbed.




 
A similar cycle has played out at UC Berkeley. In February, masked antifascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police during a rally against the planned speech by Yiannopoulos. After the university canceled the speech out of what it called “concern for public safety,” "ALT-Right" groups announced a “March on Berkeley” in support of “free speech.” At that rally, a 41-year-old man named Kyle Chapman, who was wearing a baseball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, and a mask, smashed an antifa activist over the head with a wooden post. Suddenly, Trump supporters had a viral video of their own. An alt-right crowdfunding site soon raised more than $80,000 for Chapman’s legal defense. (In January, the same site had offered a substantial reward for the identity of the antifascist who had punched Spencer.) A politicized fight culture is emerging, fueled by cheerleaders on both sides. As James Anderson, an editor at It’s Going Down, told Vice, “This shit is fun.”






Antifa believes it is pursuing the opposite of authoritarianism. Many of its activists oppose the very notion of a centralized state. But in the name of protecting the vulnerable, antifascists have granted themselves the authority to decide which Americans may publicly assemble and which may not. That authority rests on no democratic foundation. Unlike the politicians they revile, the men and women of antifa cannot be voted out of office. Generally, they don’t even disclose their names.
Antifa’s perceived legitimacy is inversely correlated with the government’s. Which is why, in the Trump era, the movement is growing like never before. As they believe that the the president derides and subverts liberal-democratic norms, progressives face a choice. They can recommit to the rules of fair play, and try to limit the president’s corrosive effect, though they will often fail. Or they can, in revulsion or fear or righteous rage, try to deny "Nazi"s" and Trump supporters their political rights. From Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland, the latter approach is on the rise, especially among young people.
      I am not sure what the future will bring, but I see all the fighting in the streets and I recall pictures of Germany in the 1920's and early 30's when the brown shirts squashed all dissent and burned books and other things to force people to conform to a certain ideology and if they didn't they went to one of these places..





I am afraid things will happen again like before.  When people forget the lessons of history, they are doomed to repeat it.  And the sad thing is that history isn't really taught anymore unless it is politically correct.

Monday, June 9, 2025

Monday Music "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" By Tears For Fears"

 


I decided to roll with Tears for Fears on the Monday Music.  I remembered this song got a lot of airplay on the MTV.  I really liked the sing and the resulting beat.  I have the album "Songs from the Big Chair" it is one of my first CD's that I bought when I got my CD player from the PX in Robinson Barracks in 1987.  I immediately burned a copy for my cassette player in my Mustang that I had.  Even now I can listen to the song and album from cover to cover.

    
"Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is a song by the English band Tears for Fears. Originally released in the UK on 22 March 1985 it was the band's ninth single release in the United Kingdom (the third from their second LP: Songs from the Big Chair) and seventh UK Top 30 chart hit, peaking at number two in April 1985. In the US, it was the lead single from the album and gave the band their first Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit on 8 June 1985, remaining there for two weeks. It also reached number one on both the Hot Dance Club Play and Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales charts in the US. The song has since become the pinnacle of Tears for Fears' chart success.
In 1986, the song won "Best Single" at the Brit Awards.  "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was somewhat of an afterthought during the recording of Songs from the Big Chair. According to Roland Orzabal, he initially regarded the song as a lightweight that would not fit with the rest of the album. Originally, the lyrics of the song were "everybody wants to go to war", which Orzabal felt was lacklustre. It was producer Chris Hughes who convinced him to try recording it, in a calculated effort to gain American chart success.
    In 1986, the song won "Best Single" at the Brit Awards. Band member and co-writer Roland Orzabal argued that the song deserved to win the Ivor Novello International Hit of the Year award, claiming that the winner—"19" by Paul Hardcastle—was not an actual song, but only a "dialogue collage"


The promotional clip for "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", filmed in early 1985, was the third Tears for Fears clip directed by famed music video producer Nigel Dick. It features Curt Smith driving an antique Austin-Healey 3000 sports car around various Southern California locales, including Salton Sea and Cabazon. Interspersed with these clips are shots of the full band performing the song in a London studio. Along with the clip for "Shout", the "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" video had a big hand in helping establish Tears for Fears in America, due to its heavy amount of play on the music video channel MTV.

Sunday, June 8, 2025

My Self Defense Story (reprised)

 

This was supposed to post yesterday but I got "squirreled",  I had done a post on Friday and this was referring to the belief that those that own and use guns were cowardly.  an assertion made by limousine liberals that are protected by security and live in gated blue bubbles where they are protected from the effects of their decisions and the rest of us have to deal with the results of the decisions that are foisted in us due to the control they have on the legislative process.

The first time I had to "display" a gun to frighten off a potential Threat was in the early 90's.  I was a manager at Domino's Pizza in a town the next county over where I live at now.  A bit of background, when I got out of the service in 1991, I got a job with Kawneer as a door fabricator.  You look at the bottom center of the door, if it is a metal door, usually with glass and what not, but it will have a label that looks kinda like this:

I kept my license plate from my first F150, I snagged the logo during a break.  Well anyway, I was working Kawneer and there was a job slowdown and the entire 2nd shift was laid off.  I was pissed, we did 2 times the work as first shift, but they were union and we were not, we got the axe.  Well I had started working at Domino's Pizza as a driver and was offered a management job.  I got transferred to the store in another county because they needed an assistant manager and off I went.  Well shortly after I got there someone broke into my 1991 F150 and stole my Springfield govt model .45.  I had used it in single stack competitions in Europe.  I was pissed off, that was a good 45 and I still know the serial number.  Well for months afterward I had visions of walking out of the store and seeing the other end of my .45.  I had bought the 45 and my Ruger P89 at the Nellingen Rod and Gun Club in Germany.  Well since then I had a habit of keeping my P89 in the store with me, yes it was in violation of Company policy but I didn't care.  Well one day I had just closed the store and there was a tapping on the glass and there was one of my drivers. he was still in uniform his name was "Gus", well "Gus" was a driver that was drawing disability from the VA for having mental issues. The Store manager had hired him, we were hard up for drivers and he seemed to be ok.   well I let him in and locked the door as he came into the store while I went back to the office to close out the daily report and count the till.  Well when I sat down, I habitually took the Ruger off the desk and sat on it with the butt sticking out.  Well the driver "Gus" came into the office as I was finishing the paperwork for the day and started counting the money to go into the moneybag.  Well "Gus" was talking needing money to buy "some company" if you know what I mean, apparently he knew of a person that sold affection by the hour.  Well he was talking about getting money and visiting her, while I was counting down.  He commented that he was broke and needed some money and I commented while I was counting,"Man I can't help you, I am broke until payday."  He then pointed to the cash I was counting down and commented"What about that?" and I replied calmly..."Naaa.......That belongs to the store,"..By this time I seriously regretted letting "Gus" in to the store, I was picking up some bad vibes from him.  As he kept talking I glanced up at the shelf above my desk and looked at the "HSPP" book, it is "Hourly Sales and Payroll Percentages".  It tracks the sales from the same period last year, it is a tool used by the manager to get a rough draft for labor and sales to plan the schedule and the food.  I recall a year before where a store off Old National Hwy in Atlanta where a manager had his head bashed in with a bat by a driver who proceeded to take the till and when they found him the next day, he had smoked it away in a crack house. but the blood spatters were on the HSPP book so when the store staff got the figures, they had to deal with the dried blood spatters.  Well I was getting the "Deja vu" feeling.  I still acted calm closed up the bank bag and picked up the clipboard where I was putting the daily figures, you know the daily sales, the food percentage and the labor percentage for the day and how they impacted the weekly and monthly figures. We called it the "Daily Keys"  I proceeded to stand up, pick up the Ruger P89...

from the chair and put the pistol under the clipboard as I carried the clipboard to the data entry station outside the office and proceeded to enter the "Keys".  Well "Gus" saw the pistol and freaked out, and yelled "What are you doing with a Pistol??!"  I replied as I was entering keys "The pistol is there in case someone tries to rob me when I go to the bank  after I leave the store.."  He ran out of the store.  I quickly followed and locked the door after he left.  I then went over and sat down had the shakes and knew that I was very lucky, Sure "Gus" didn't physically touch me, but I am convinced that if I didn't have the pistol, "Gus" would have attacked me to get to the store receipts.  and with him being taller than I am and crazy, I have severe doubts on how I would fare in a physical assault.  I stayed in the office for a couple of hours before I left and yes the pistol was in my hand when I locked up the store and headed to the bank and home.  "Gus" came back for his regularly scheduled shift but he avoided me after that and quit a couple of weeks later.  Well the Ruger, I had to sell her a couple of years later to pay some bills.  I regretted doing so but I was desperate to bring in some money.  This was the salad days for me and the soon to be spousal unit.    Even today, I still count myself as fortunate from that incident, it could have gone pear shaped in a hurry, and I was lucky.  I kept analyzing what did I do wrong, well what I did wrong was let him into the store, but in my defense I have done that in the past with other drivers and the company was nice while I closed the store.  I have had to pull a Pistol 3 more times doing pizza stuff in 2006/2007 after the Ford plant shut down. I had started delivering Pizza to "keep the Wolf at bay" while I look for another job. I quit when I got my job with my present employer, I didn't enjoy the pizza delivery business anymore and the customers were changing.  Way back when I delivered for the first time in 1985, if you were robbed, they just took the pizza, but in this day and age, they would rob you, take your car and kill you just for street cred.  I never had to fire my private weapons in defense of my life and I am glad. I had concerns because the robbery attempts were never in *da hood* or the apartment complex or the trailer parks, they were in the subdivisions with a large section 8 population, you know the houses that had the lawn chair furniture, expensive game systems and flashy cars out front,  and I was afraid that one day I would have to fire my personal pistol in defense of my life then get pilloried by the press and the D.A for shooting a *youth*  but Pizza boy was going home to his wife and 4 year old son.  I also am glad that I had the pistols when I did because things could have turned out differently.

Friday, June 6, 2025

Stephen King "Guns" A Notion that guns belong solely to those that lack courage""

 I saw this on Quora, I personally think King is a leftist elitist that is out of touch with reality and is shielded from reality by his personal wealth and bodyguards.  The rest of "us" don't have that luxury.  Here is some background on the "Nairobi Incident".   I have my own incidents where being armed saved me from a beating and possibly getting killed.   I will probably post that one tomorrow.


The notion that guns belong solely to those who lack courage represents a basic view. A true story reveals the incorrect nature of this belief.

Christian Craighead served as a British soldier who assisted at the Nairobi terrorist attack in 2019. Using his gun and skills, 

Through his heroics he protected numerous people who followed his direction to safety.

Fought against several terrorists

He utilized local police forces to conduct the necessary attack prevention.

During an attack on Nairobi the public named him Obi Wan Nairobi because of his heroic demeanor combined with exceptional skill as a certified expert. He received an exceptional award because of his courageous behavior.

The story demonstrates that guns function as any instrument without essential moral value. The outcome depends on how gun operators utilize their weapons. People who cause harm depend on guns as their instrument of injury to others. Gun ownership in trained hands of courageous individuals such as Craighead brings life-saving benefits through which they successfully stop terrible events.

The members of Craighead's team express their spirit with "Who Dares Wins". The events in Nairobi demonstrated how owning a weapon enables one to perform brave acts that disprove the belief firearms make individuals cowardly.


    Now in the spirit of the post, I surfed around and got information on the rifle used by

"Obi-Won Nairobi".  The sources is "The Sandboxx"






January 2019 feels like a decade ago at this point, but I’m sure many of us remember the pictures coming out of Nairobi. Five Al-Shabaab terrorists attacked civilians at the DusitD2 complex, and an unlikely hero emerged. At the time, an unnamed, masked SAS commando showed up to save lives and kick ass. His pictures became famous as he escorted civilians out and engaged the enemy. We know him now as Christian Craighead. We know the man, but about his rifle? Today we are going to break down Craighead’s Nairobi rifle.

The Nairobi rifle base gun

In contrast to the rest of the British Army, the British SAS do not use the L85 rifle, a weapon that’s arguably one of the worst modern service rifles. Instead, they have teamed up with the Commonwealth and use Colt Canada rifles. The Colt Canada C8 series rifles are essentially AR-15s, or M4/M16s at their core.

From Craighead’s Instagram

The C8 represents the carbine version of the rifle; the British call it the L119, with Craighead using the L119A2. The L119A2 takes the C8 and heavily modernizes it. The weapon features a monolithic upper receiver designed by LMT.

The rifle is produced in two barrel lengths, a 10-inch, and 15.7-inch barrel. The Nairobi rifle uses a 10-inch barrel. Monolithic uppers are very rigid, and this helps the accuracy and zeroing of both large optics and laser aiming devices.

Understandably the rifles use 5.56 and use pretty standard M4/M16/AR15 controls. There are a few changes, the most common being the larger Colt Canada charging handle and an ambidextrous safety and ambidextrous magazine release. The weapon has a safe, semi, and full auto mode.

Related: Rifles in Ukraine – Beyond the AK

The Optic – SIG Romeo4T

When the Nairobi rifle first surfaced, people were shocked to see a SIG optic. SIG’s optics are rather new, so it was a nice surprise. SIG’s Romeo4T is a compact red dot optic that’s part of their premium-grade optics. It’s got a solar backup panel, a selection of four different reticles, and an interchangeable mount.

This was not a standard-issue optic but provided for Test and Evaluation. Apparently, the SAS purchased a few more Romeo4T optics eventually.

The Stock – Magpul CTR stock with riser

The L119A2 seems to come with the Magpul CTR stock, a six-position collapsing stock. It’s a simple stock, but it’s very well made and is a proven stock platform. It’s more minimalist than several options. Craighead seems to have attached a riser to allow for a higher cheek weld when using his optic. I’m not sure if that’s just something he prefers, or if it’s standard among SAS commandos.

Related: This is what spy fiction leaves out about the CIA

The Light – Surefire M620

The Surefire M620 is distinct from the other M600 models by its mounting platform. The mounting flatform tells us it’s an M620. The M620 is a 500-lumen white light with 13,000 candelas. Surefire lights are tough as nails and have been the choice of numerous military forces across the world. Craighead seems to have an IR filter sitting on his light.

Magazine – Magpul Gen 3

The Nairobi rifle feeds from a Magpul P-Mag, specifically the Gen 3 model. Gen 3 represents Magpul’s attest effort and is their toughest, most reliable magazine yet. It’s rugged, works in the worst environments in the world, and is the standard magazine for the United States Marine Corps.

Related: The Marine Corps has a weapon maintenance problem

Sling – Proctor Rifle Sling

I could be wrong here, but it seems that Craighead used the Proctor Rifle Sling, which would be an odd choice. The Proctor sling is a 2.3-ounce minimalist design that comes ready to mount. It’s relatively easy to adjust and is simplistic but effective.

Suppressor – Surefire FA556SA

I’m not a huge suppressor guy. I love them but can’t identify most suppressors just by looking at them. So, I’m trusting some online sources that said that the suppressor on the Nairobi rifle is the FA556SA. On a 10-inch rifle, a suppressor is a godsend. It helps reduce noise which is especially valuable for shorter-barreled rifles as they tend to be on the louder side. It also helps tame muzzle rise, and reduces muzzle flash, as well as concussion.

Laser Sight – LA-5 PEQ 15

See that weird-looking box in front of the optic? That’s a laser aiming device. It’s used mostly in conjunction with night vision for aiming under night vision. However, it does have a visible laser with numerous IR options. I would say Craighead likely didn’t fight much at night with the Nairobi rifle due to the awkward placement of the device. It’s present but out of the way as well. I’m not sure why else he’d set the device up this way, but he is clearly a competent professional.

Who dares wins

Christian Craighead certainly lived up to the SAS’ motto that day. He stormed in to assist local security forces, took down at least two of the five attackers, and saved countless civilians. He did this with a mask on, a pair of Armani jeans, and his Nairobi rifle.

This event was one of the first times the L119A2 was seen in an operational capacity and showed us once more that Stoner’s gun will never die

Thursday, June 5, 2025

"A Marine Sweeps the Top Marksmanship contest in all categories since 1959"

 I was reading this off "Yahoo News" and a line on this article caught my eye,  For some reason it reminded me of my friend "Old NFO" and his grayman series of books with "PaPa Cronin and Jessie" shooting and embarrassing all the highspeed shooters with all the racegear.

“I got beat by a 68-year-old man and a 12-year-old little boy,” Garcia remembers. “And that’s when it lit a fire, like, realizing that there’s so much more to marksmanship. I was a Marine who thought that he was a really good marksman, and then getting humbled up in town made me realize how much we don’t know about marksmanship.”

   Well anyway I figured it was worth a post.

   I'm not sure if the pictures will come through.   THey Did but will not let me resize*dang it*

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Payton Garcia holds up an M1 Garand rifle presented to him at the Marine Corps Championships at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, April 18, 2025.
Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Payton Garcia holds up an M1 Garand rifle presented to him at the Marine Corps Championships at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, April 18, 2025. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Joshua Barker.

Long before Marine Staff Sgt. Payton Garcia matched a 66-year-old Marine Corps marksmanship record last month, he was pretty sure he was a good shot.

“I did my first [Marine Corps marksmanship] match in 2021, and I did relatively well. I got a silver pistol badge on my first time,” Garcia told Task & Purpose. “Then I went to a match on the civilian side, thinking that I was, like, ‘The Shooter.’ The best ever.”

He was not.

“I got beat by a 68-year-old man and a 12-year-old little boy,” Garcia remembers. “And that’s when it lit a fire, like, realizing that there’s so much more to marksmanship. I was a Marine who thought that he was a really good marksman, and then getting humbled up in town made me realize how much we don’t know about marksmanship.”

Now a member of the Marine Corps Shooting Team, Garcia may still not be “the best ever,” but his performance in April at the Marine Corps Championships — the top annual marksmanship competition for Marines across the service — was so dominant officials had trouble finding a historic equivalent.

Shooting against 80 Marines and competitors from other services and nations, Garcia won both the rifle and pistol categories, a sweep that no shooter had pulled off since 1959. He also won the competition’s multi-gun contest, an event added in recent years.

“We were curious about that during the actual conduct of the match, and we dug through all of our history books and records,” said Capt. John Bodzoich, the shooting team commander. “And what we found is, in the 124 years the team’s been around, and since the establishment of all these matches, Sgt. Garcia is the second Marine in history to do a clean sweep of the championships. So of the thousands of Marines that have come through, he’s the second one ever to win both high rifle, high pistol, and high overall [score].”

Garcia’s path to the top marksmanship awards in the Marine Corps, he said, traces directly back to getting smoked by a senior citizen and a grade schooler.

“One of the biggest things that went into my improvement was actually learning how to train,” Garcia said. “Actually sitting down and deep-diving into the fundamentals of shooting.”

Shooting against civilians and absorbing non-military training techniques, he said, was different than traditional Marine marksmanship training.

“Just like any other sport, there are build-ups to each one of those fundamentals that you need to do,” he said. “Structuralizing training and isolating skills that I’ve learned from those local matches, and realizing that it’s not all just about shooting. There’s a lot of mental aspects that go into shooting, where you’re competing at any level, realizing that you need to be in the right headspace.” 

Trained as a fuel specialist rather than in combat arms like infantry, Garcia says he’s often asked if competition-style shooting is applicable in the field. 

“You ask me what my MOS is, and I answer, I’m a bulk fuel specialist,” he said. “I don’t know much about tactics, but I do know that putting rounds as accurately as possible on a target as quickly as possible will translate to the tactical world. ”

The Marine Corps Shooting Team was established in 1899 to bring together top shots who would compete with elite shooters of all kinds, then share what they learned with Marines in the fleet. Based at Quantico, Virginia, the full-time team members spend about half their time training for and sponsoring competitions, and the other half training and working with marksmanship instructors and experts inside the Marines.

Marine Staff Sgt. Payton Garcia moves towards a firing line at the Marine Corps Championships marksmanship competition in April 2025.
Marine Staff Sgt. Payton Garcia moves towards a firing line at the Marine Corps Championships marksmanship competition in April 2025. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Daniela Chicas Torres.

Garcia said his success demonstrates that marksmanship can be taught to almost anyone. Growing up in Lawrence, Kansas, he said, he had virtually no exposure to firearms beyond a few unsupervised moments that would probably terrify a Marine instructor.

“Before I joined the Marines, I had just shot a pistol or a rifle into a dirt berm or the trash with no target,” he remembers. “It was more for fun.”

The annual Marine Corps Championships, held in Quantico, is a culminating event among shooters who advance through qualification competitions at major bases like Camp Pendleton in California and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Across 30 events, shooters face scenarios that the shooting team has dreamed up based on their experience in civilian practical shooting competitions. This year’s stations included shooting lanes from boats, from a balance beam, and even with a mandatory bench press set before shooting.

In one event, Garcia said, they created a shooting lane in which Marines had to shoot around a barricade while balancing on one leg with a 45-pound ruck on. In another, shooters arrived on a station that appeared to be a trash pit, with tires, ammo cans, pallets, wheels and other debris. From that, they had to build a barrier up to a preset level to shoot from. 

They also shot a wide range of weapons. “We were able to shoot the M1 Garand, the M1014,” Garcia said in a Marine Corps press release. “We shot M16A2s, a lot of iron sights, and it was such a breath of fresh air.”

The competition covered eight days.

“I went into this year with the expectation that I just wanted to make it difficult for someone else to win,” Garcia said. “I’m going to shoot my match and support anybody that I can.”

As the top shooter, Garcia was awarded a historic trophy: his own M-1 Garand rifle, the same kind used by Marines in World War II.

He didn’t keep it and instead gave the rifle to Sgt. Kai Byrom, the highest-scoring first-year competitor, a mortarman and marksmanship coach with Weapons and Field Training Battalion, Parris Island. 

“I thought it was more important to isolate and kind of award the next generation of Marines,” Garcia said. “So I thought it was important to spread marksmanship knowledge and to light a fire under some of the newer guys by awarding or deferring the M1 to that Marine. It’s more important for the next generation, and not about us.”

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Payton Garcia holds up an M1 Garand rifle presented to him at the Marine Corps Championships at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, April 18, 2025.
Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Payton Garcia holds up an M1 Garand rifle presented to him at the Marine Corps Championships at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, April 18, 2025.