MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE - FRAUD

 

Sspoonisoried

You can tell a lot about a person by their guns.

I didn't realize this, but...

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene

is a total fraud as a gun person.

Let me tell you about what I see from this ad posing menacingly next to AOC and the squad with a gun (that

Facebook

already banned by the way, so I don't understand why her page is still up).

Her rifle is so wrong it startles me.

Beyond the fact that it has slightly ridiculous height-over-bore issues - and, thus, a large amount of mechanical offset at close range - her forward scope mount bridges the gap between the upper receiver and the forend. This is a big no-no - the forend is not anchored to the barrel as securely as the upper receiver. At the very least, your forward scope mount can twist out of rotation and throw off your aim.

This is why I ran a $250 ADM Recon-X one-piece scope mount in competition with a forward cantilever. It puts the scope far enough forward that the eye relief works, but I don't have to "bridge the gap" with separate scope rings like she's doing.

What MTG has looks like, quite frankly, $50 UTG/Leapers scope mounts off of Amazon, mounted by someone who didn't know what they were doing.

She is using either a $500 Leupold VX-3 or more likely a $350 Mark AR scope. That is a cheap consumer-grade "plinking" scope. Notice the low, capped turrets - you're not supposed to adjust the dials on those. You're supposed to set it once and forget it. That's not a long-range scope; that's a hunting scope.

By comparison, in competition, I ran a $2,500 Leupold Mark VI 1-6 with a first focal plane mil reticle and Schott glass. That is a scope rugged enough to use as a blunt force weapon that is also suitable for shooting out to 500, and the adjustable diopter and glass are so good you can use it without glasses, because you just adjust the scope for your farsightedness or nearsightedness. Before SOCOM settled on the Vortex Razor HD, it was Leupold's candidate for their general purpose daytime optic competition, which made it popular with competition shooters.

It has uncapped, exposed, dials with a locking-zero feature so you can dial elevation and windage on it at speed. This makes it useful for military people who need to shoot in a hurry; this also makes it very useful for competition shooting, because I can dial in zeros for different kinds of ammunition I might use (77-grain Sierra Matchkings versus 55-grain M193, for instance) and simply hold over once I set my zero.

I sincerely, sincerely doubt Ms. Taylor Greene even knows what any of that is. Because what she's shooting is specifically designed for, and marketed at, lifestyle-brand poseurs who don't know what they're doing.

Notice she has a bipod and a vertical forward grip on it.

This is, again, a clear sign of someone who does not actually shoot.

You push forward on a bipod to create a rigid abutment against recoil for the rifle to bounce against, when you're using a bipod. This is called "loading the bipod" in long-range shooting. Tod Hodnett talks about it a lot in his shooting videos; he used to advise pushing hard so that the rifle would stay level and you could monitor the vapor trace of the bullet on the way to the target - something you can only do if you have an expensive scope with very, very good glass - but he's shifted recently towards advising a moderate to light load on the bipod. This is a very common concept.

You pull back on a vertical forward grip, or at least use part of it to "C-clamp" the forend of your rifle, when you're moving, so that it keeps the rifle tucked into your workspace - the roughly 1.5 - 2 foot bubble of space in front of your torso where your arms have the most strength. The rifle will tend to rise slightly under recoil as well, and pulling inwards helps control that.

You don't use both at once. Why would you put a 1.5 steel pound bipod on the end of your rifle that you have to hold up if you're going to be walking around with it?

The kind of setup you see MTG with here - that's the kind of thing I see on young men with more money than experience who only shoot their AR-15s at the static range at 50 yards. That rifle setup she has is laughable for competition and even stupider for actual combat; it's almost the mere formality of a weapon.

Look at her barrel. That's an 18" barrel with an A2-style "bird cage" flash hider on it. Again, this is wrong.

On a 18" Noveske Rogue Hunter I set up, I built it out with a $150 BattleComp II on the muzzle because it kept the rifle level like nothing else I've ever experienced, and even though it was boomy and loud on the sides, screw people on the sides. On a 13.7" Infidel with a permanently attached KX-5 brake to make 16.1", I set it up with a forward-facing flash compensator and linear brake that directs all the concussion forward, because short of a can, there's not much better of a solution for people who work in fireteams or shoot weapons indoors.

The flash hider she has on there does nothing practical. It's about $15. It's just a silvery version of the standard issue A2 flash hider that has come issued on every "poverty stick" M16A2 ever built (they're still in service, that's what the kids call them now) since your granddaddy shot at NVA with them in '65. Taylor-Greene's imitation A2 flash hider doesn't even look like it can mount a suppressor, looking closely at it, the mounting grooves at the base are wrong.

I'm not telling you secret American gunfighter knowledge here; this is incredibly obvious stuff you pick up within about a month of adapting to having a gun, in my experience.

This is just how you set up a fighting gun. If you are not a total moron (to be fair, there's a lot in gun sports) and you shoot at all, doing anything besides plinking at the range; if you train, at all, or if you shoot competitively, you know to set up a simple, light, usable gun with at most a flashlight and a forward grip on it, with a reliable, correctly mounted optic.

What Taylor-Greene has is not that.

She has a sporting rifle with a ridiculously impractical scope on it, mounted horribly, and she hung every attachment she had on it so that it looked impressive to the marks. I'm mildly surprised she doesn't have a fake IR laser off Wish, a dangling plastic Tac-Sac (don't Google that) and an espresso machine hanging off there too.

It's even more startling because you'd imagine that Ms. Taylor-Greene or whoever she's working for would have enough money that they could set up a rifle right, or at least hire someone to do that.

That is her entire gimmick, she's Crazy Gun Lady The Elder; Lauren Boebert is Crazy Gun Lady The Younger, and between the two of them, they make up the worst Salient Arms International (if you're at work - don't Google that) gun advertisement you've ever seen in your life.

Yet her guns are worse than some Hollywood guns I've seen. Don't even get me started on her 10.5" AR pistol.

It is not new to run exploitative ads for the gun industry implicitly promising that guns will get women to find you attractive, instead of being a red flag (seriously, it's not a good look). At least swimsuit sexploitation ads have nice guns though.

This is a level lower than that. This is what a truly stupid hobbyist who's shot, maybe, a few times in their life, puts on their gun and poses on Instagram with.

I didn't even realize until I took a closer look, but... the filter that people should have for Ms. Taylor-Greene is not "dangerous insurgent".

That implies competence.

The filter to apply is "dangerous novice and poseur lifestyle model". The derogatory term that men use in the firearms industry is "gun bunny". There's a simpler and more value-neutral way of putting that.

MTG is a total fraud. She's not dangerous except from being stupid, which can still be, to be fair, quite dangerous.

You can tell if you know what to look for.