Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Editorial at Toledo Blade:

Police officers in Ohio already face too many threats to their safety when they take to the streets to protect their communities. They should be able to know whether someone they are approaching is armed.

But the Ohio House approved a measure last week that would weaken the state’s concealed-carry laws. It would ease penalties on motorists who fail to promptly alert officers during traffic stops that they have a weapon in their car. The bill is now headed to the Ohio Senate.

What is proposed instead is that a person stopped by authorities could simply hand over his concealed-carry permit with his driver’s license.

The bill also would reduce the severity of the charge for failing to notify the officer from a first-degree misdemeanor to a minor misdemeanor.

The original version of the bill would have eliminated entirely the responsibility for concealed-carry permit holders to notify officers that they were armed, which is disrespectful to law enforcement, and simply reckless.

The bill’s proponents say that law-abiding concealed-carry permit holders should not have to alert anyone to the fact that they are armed. That is also disrespectful, and arrogant.

Advocates for the bill say it would only clean up ambiguous language by removing “promptly,” which can be arbitrarily interpreted. But why not define the term instead of removing a reasonable requirement?

Considering how quickly an interaction between law enforcement and any armed civilian can escalate, it seems more logical that the law-abiding permit-holders would want to immediately alert officers to the presence of a weapon.

Many gun owners who seek out concealed-carry permits do so because they believe carrying a weapon makes them safer. But no one is safer in a situation when police are surprised by a gun.

What the editorial should have said is “We advocate informing cops about weapons because we like to see goober cops shoot weapons carriers.  We like to see that because we have weapons carriers.”

It’s simply insulting to claim that criminals or someone bent on danger to someone else would inform cops of their weapon.  “Why yes, officer, I have a concealed firearm, and I intend to use it to ensure you don’t get home safely at the end of your shift.”

Anyone who informs a LEO about weapons cannot possibly be the real concern, and LEOs know that, and so does the editorial board of the Toledo Blade.  And since the criminal won’t inform a LEO about weapons, everyone really knows that informing LEOs is not relevant to anything at all.

This is really all about being, as the editorial put it, “disrespectful” to LEOs.  Because statists will be statists, and they will always have their armed enablers.

The Ohio Senate should pass this bill.  Why would anyone carrying a firearm want to voluntarily put himself or family in danger from some trigger happy buffoon?

From the “I carry” series.  It’s a nice presentation, but I do have a few nits after you watch the video.

First of all, I don’t like Kydex holsters.  Like you, I have a box full of holsters, and none of them are Kydex.  I don’t even like Kydex knife sheaths.  I much prefer leather or Cordura.

I like the tactical light, and I really like the speed loader.  I have a different belt (Black Hawk Rigger’s Belt), but like the video I recommend a good belt as the foundation.  I’m not much on short fixed blade knives.  If I’m going to carry a fixed blade knife it’s going to he a large one.  Otherwise, I like a rugged folder, and it MUST have serrations.

Here’s an equally interesting video on ten things you didn’t know about the S&W 686.

Shooting Illustrated:

Wilson Combat improved the design of its high-capacity 1911 magazines, bringing new technology and innovation into the company’s extended design that enhances the capabilities of any standard 1911 pistol.

The magazine redesign includes a new high-strength magazine spring that’s made entirely from stainless steel, which enhances the corrosion resistance and performance of the magazine, extending its service life and enhancing the reliability of the already-dependable design. The heavy-duty magazine spring also brings with it the added benefit of ensuring positive engagement of the slide stop, as well as retaining spring tension under load for extended periods of time, allowing owners to keep their pistol magazines loaded without fear of weakening the magazine spring.

The Wilson Combat 10-round 1911 magazines also include an ETM-style nylon follower that self-lubricates for enhanced operation, as well as a totally new wraparound base pad that is made from polymer and allows for a secure, extended grip as well as quick and easy reloading. The base pad also includes dimpled areas that allow for easy marking, ensuring that shooters can keep track of their magazines with simple numbered markings. The baseplate is also easily removed for maintenance and is designed to withstand repeated impacts often sustained by dropped magazines.

I agree with one of the commenters on this piece.  This is an advertisement for Wilson Combat.  I’d much prefer that they do some testing and report the results to us.  On the other hand, I’ve heard very good things about Wilson Combat 1911 magazines, and their work to bring us a higher capacity magazine is smart.

I would also like to know how this stacks up against Chip McCormick magazines, especially with their newer feed rail technology.

Any comments from folks who have used both (or either) is appreciated.  I’d like to benefit from your insights before I spend my money.  Or … Wilson Combat and Chip McCormick could just send me some to review over the web site.

Forbes:

1) The 2,300 Special Agents at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are allowed to carry AR-15’s, P90 tactical rifles, and other heavy weaponry. Recently, the IRS armed up with $1.2 million in new ammunition. This was in addition to the $11 million procurement of guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment procured between 2006-2014.

2) The Small Business Administration (SBA) spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to load its gun locker with Glocks last year. The SBA wasn’t alone – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service modified their Glocks with silencers.

3) The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a relatively new police force. In 1996, the VA had zero employees with arrest and firearm authority. Today, the VA has 3,700 officers, armed with millions of dollars’ worth of guns and ammunition including AR-15’s, Sig Sauer handguns, and semi-automatic pistols.

4) Meanwhile, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agents carry the same sophisticated weapons platforms used by our Special Forces military warriors. The HHS gun locker is housed in a new “National Training Operations Center” – a facility at an undisclosed location within the DC beltway.

5) Loading the Gun Locker – Federal agencies spent $44 million on guns, including an “urgent” order for 20 M-16 Rifles with extra magazines at the Department of Energy ($49,559); shotguns and Glock pistols at the General Services Administration ($16,568); and a bulk order of pistols, sights, and accessories by the Bureau of Reclamation whose main job is to build dams, power plants, and canals ($697,182).

6) Buying Bullets in Bulk – The government spent $114 million on ammunition, including bulk purchases by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ($66,927); the Smithsonian ($42,687); and the Railroad Retirement Board ($6,941). The Social Security Administration spent $61,129 on bullets including 50,000 rounds of ammunition plus 12-gauge buckshot and slug ammo.  The EPA special agents purchased ammunition for their .357 and 9mm revolvers and buckshot for their shotguns. While Bernie Sanders claimed that the biggest adversary to the United States was climate change, the EPA stood ready to fight in ways we couldn’t have imagined.

7) The DOE (Department of Education) is armed and ready with 88 law enforcement officers possessing arrest and firearm authority. They’ve purchased buckshot for their shotguns and 40-caliber ammunition for their Glocks. DOE special agents dress in body armor. Their spending on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment was up 25 percent during the last two years under the Obama Administration. Yet, in 2016, it took a pair of armed U.S. Marshals to arrest a man for his unpaid $1,500 student loan!

He goes on, with the Department of Interior, Department of Agriculture, etc.

FedGov is arming up.  You can take guesses why, and post them in comments.  They are the standing army that the founders feared so much.  And for very good reason.

Outdoor Life:

Gunsite Academy teaches that once you’ve reloaded your handgun, you should point your thumb toward your chest and grasp the slide between your thumb and all four fingers. Then you should forcefully pull the slide to the rear and release. This will disengage the slide stop, and as the slide goes forward, it will chamber a cartridge from the new and fully loaded magazine you’ve just inserted. Instructors who advocate using the slide stop as a slide release argue that it’s faster. It probably is. Others, like those at Gunsite, who teach releasing the slide by pulling it to the rear, suggest that pushing down on the slide stop with your thumb is a fine motor skill, and that fine motor skills can deteriorate when you’re under stress. They can and do.

I’m sure it depends upon what you’ve learned and practiced your whole life.  That said, when I first began shooting pistols I used the slide stop / slide release to chamber the new round.  I found that I didn’t like the movement of the pistol when I did that, and that in order to move my thumb around to get good contact with the slide stop, I had to change my grip ever so slightly, loosing “purchase” on the gun.

I almost never use the slide stop now.  I grab the slide and cycle it.  And for whatever reason, I hate the phrase “rack the slide.”  I prefer the phrase “cycle the slide,” although it’s not a complete cycle when it’s merely released from the stop.  So maybe I should use the term “release the slide” if it’s not a full cycle.

What do readers do?

As always, John is a nice guy and knowledgeable to boot.  I do have two comments about the video though.

First of all, I’ve run pistols with fiber optic sights for a long time, and I’ve never once seen them crack, fall out or break.  I give them much more credit than he seems to.  Plus, I really do like the way the optics jump out at you when you present.  And I couldn’t really care less what police in America use.

Second, I’ve also presented in the dark with use of a weapon-mounted light before, and the argument that “if you have enough light to properly identify the target, you can see you pistol sights,” doesn’t hold water with me.  The pistol sights are behind the light.  You can always point-and-shoot, but that’s an inferior option to aiming.

I have no experience with red dot pistol sights.  If some company wanted to send me one (Trijicon?), I would be more than happy to give it a review.

WKTV:

Ilion Mayor Terry Leonard tells us he received word Wednesday from the plant manager that Remington will enact involuntary furloughs due to market conditions and high inventory levels. Leonard says days will be taken out of the production schedule.

It’s hard to see how Remington pulls out of this slump.  Many manufacturers are hurting at the moment, but Remington is dealing with (a) declining quality [so I am told, I have no Remington firearms], (b) the Walker Fire Control System, and (c) union labor.

The best thing I could recommend is to close up shop in New York, move the entirety of their operations South, and focus on quality.

Oh, and as for that ridiculous Sandy Hook lawsuit that just won’t go away, fight it, but rather than expend legal fees, stay out of the state and never sell another product in Connecticut, which is what they want anyway.  Hell, I wish every firearms manufacturer would refuse to sell in Connecticut, starting with the police.

By the way, we’ve yet to see even a single death certificate for any alleged Sandy Hook shooting victims.  Remember that.

Kitup at Military.com.

The U.S. Army’s chief of staff recently made a bold promise that future soldiers will be armed with weapons capable of delivering far greater lethality than any existing small arms.

[ … ]

As Milley was speaking, Textron Systems officials were showing off their new Intermediate Case-Telescoped Carbine, chambered for 6.5mm on the AUSA exhibition floor.

Textron’s cased-telescoped ammunition relies on a plastic case rather than a brass one to hold the propellant and the projectile, like a conventional shotgun shell.

The ICTC is a closed bolt, forward feed, gas piston operated weapon, weighing 8.3 pounds. The 6.5mm case-telescoped ammunition weighs 35 percent less and offers 30 percent more lethality than 7.62mm x 51mm brass ammunition, Textron officials maintain.

“I think the most important thing is what we have been able to do with the intermediate caliber, the 6.5mm in this case,” Wayne Prender, vice president of Textron’s Control & Surface Systems Unmanned Systems told Military.com. “We are able to not only provide a weight reduction … and all the things that come with it – we are also able to provide increased lethality because of the ability to use a more appropriate round.”

Textron officials maintain they are using a low-drag “representative” 6.5mm bullet while U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, or ARDEC, is developing the actual projectile.

“We actually used three different bullet shapes and we scaled it,” said Paul Shipley, program manager for of Unmanned Systems. “We scaled 5.56mm up, we scaled 7.62mm down and took a low-drag shape and ran that between the two” to create the 125 grain 6.5mm bullet that’s slightly longer than the Army’s new 130 grain M80A1 Enhanced Performance Round.

Textron officials maintain that the new round retains more energy at 1,200 meters than the M80A1. At that distance, the 6.5mm has an impact-energy of 300 foot pounds compared to the M80A1 which comes in at about 230 foot pounds of energy, Textron officials maintain.

“The increased lethality we are referring to has to do with the energy down range,” Shipley said. “You can take whatever kind of bullet you want, compare them and it’s going to have increased energy down range.”

Okay, so let me get this straight.  The Army doesn’t know how to shoot as it is, and while focusing on racial diversity, gender issues, gays in the military, women in combat arms, and declining physical standards, are going to teach young boys and girls in the “Big Army” how to shoot 1200 meters with a battle rifle that will have a larger punch (to the shooter), be more physically demanding to shoot, and have no civilian analogue?

Consider.  Most of the real advancements to weapons design are made in the civilian market.  PMags came from the civilian market.  The 6.5mm Creedmoor came from the civilian market.  Less weighty rails and barrel shrouds came from the civilian market.  I could go on, but you get the point.  The military is the beneficiary of what happens in the civilian world, no vice versa (this is one reason I think that the limitation on civilian ownership of machine guns will eventually weaken the military, because no one is designing an open bolt system that gets vetted by the civilian market).

If you’re in the military, you use what you’re given.  If you are not, you get to spend your money however you want, and you do the research necessary to find the best product that meets your needs.   Innovation is driven in the market, not by the military.  If a company designs a poor product for the civilian market, it gets called crap ten thousand times over the forums and people don’t buy it.  The company goes out of business.

I see much pain if big army goes down this road.  They will have recoil issues, parts breakage, no one to whom they can turn for counsel who has actually shot this thing before, ammunition problems, accuracy problems, and on and on it goes.  I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.  If the military wanted this to work, they would have to vet it in the civilian market first.

But it all looks like a solution in search of a problem to me.

Here is a broad ranging discussion thread where the commenters throw down with each other, referencing an AR-15 discussion thread where Mark LaRue apparently hinted at the willingness to accept gun control.  Some commenters at reddit think not, but here is what he apparently said.

“Like I said, if I come up with a way to use a waterhose to shoot up all your ammo faster, does that mean waterhoses are protected by the second amendment?”

He also apparently said this in support of the NRA.  Now, I have to admit that the comment makes no sense and seems to me to be nonsensical.  It could have been clear and made sense if it just included a typographical error, and should have read … “does that mean waterhoses aren’t protected by the second amendment?”  It would make sense because it would be using a superlative to make a point, or arguing a fortiori, from the lesser to the greater [why stop with bump stocks, ban waterhoses too], or even reduction ad absurdum.

But what he may be doing is lampooning gun owners’ reflexive tendency, as he sees it, to defend anything under the rubric of the second amendment.  In fact, I think this is close to the truth.  Mark LaRue goes on to release a statement correcting himself, but it may be too little, too late.  He also uses obscenity against a member of the AR-15 forum later on in the discussion thread.

What is the matter with these guys?  Seriously, what’s wrong with their thinking?  Why not say nothing at all, and do your best to serve the gun community with high quality products for as cheaply as you can sell them?

Well, I may be in the market for a high end AR-15 first quarter of next year.  I think LaRue Tactical is off my short list.

Men and women enjoying their God-given RKBA.