Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

KVRR.com:

A North Dakota State Representative wants you to be able to carry a loaded concealed firearm without a permit.

Eleven other states have implemented what are called “constitutional carry laws” while another four have adopted limited versions of the law.

In North Dakota, an open carry state, Representative Rick Becker says he doesn’t believe passing constitutional carry would make much of a difference.

“This bill allows people to do the same level of carrying as a class two without going through the process and payments and all the requirements,” said Becker.

Although gun advocates might like the idea of not having to go through such a rigorous process to conceal carry, constitutional carry could pose possible issues for law enforcement.

Falling short of endorsing or opposing the bill, law enforcement said part of the application process requires license holders to register with the BCI.

It helps police easily identify who may have a concealed fire arm.

Aha, I see confusion.  I think I can be of help here.  The police should assume that everyone is armed all of the time and proceed as if it’s their right to be armed.

Now that we’ve dispatched that roadblock, I’m glad I could be of service.  Drop by any time.  As for the police, I should charge for my advice, but I don’t.

Popular Mechanics:

Garand never accepted royalties for his work and instead gifted the gun’s design to his adoptive homeland. Congress tried to grant him a $100,000 reward of gratitude, but nothing ever came of it. Garand continued working at Springfield on other designs until he retired in 1953. He died on February 16, 1974. He was 86.

Approximately 5.5 million M1 rifles were made between 1936 and 1956, and then proved themselves in some of the most difficult battles ever fought by the U.S. military. The M1 was finally replaced in 1961, by the select-fire M14, a rifle which owes much of its lineage to John Garand as its receiver, bolt, and sights were nearly identical to the M1.

I didn’t know that about John Garand.  By my estimation, the U.S. has had three premier weapons designers: John Moses Browning, John Cantius Garand, and Eugene Morrison Stoner.  It’s a shame that the complete Stoner system of arms wasn’t employed by the Army and Marines, including the Stoner 63.  It’s my understanding that the Stoner 63 is actually still in use among SpecOps today.

On a related note, Military.com has a history of long guns recently published, dealing in part with the M1.  I find it amusing that Lee Ermey is still complaining about the loss of the .30-06 round in favor of the .308 NATO.

“This was really a game changer as it was semi-automatic and held eight rounds,” R. Lee Ermey, better known as the “Gunny”, former United States Marine Corps staff sergeant and host of the Outdoor Channel’s “Gunny Time”, told FoxNews.com. “It could be argued it helped win World War II.”

After the war the military planners sought to find a one-size fits all rifle, and the result was the M14, which was actually developed to replace four different weapons systems that included the M1 rifle, the M1 Carbine, the M3 “Grease Gun” submachine gun, and the M1918 Browning Automatic Bar (BAR). The upsized M1 had its fans, including the Marine Corps, which still issued one to each platoon in the Vietnam War.

“The M14 could hold its own against the bad guy gun, the AK-47,” added Ermey. “The problem is that it went with a smaller round than the M1, so it lost some of its punch.”

I find this video to be very helpful regarding 1911 lubrication.

Denver Post:

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The U.S. Marine Corps has selected Magpul Industries as the exclusive maker of ammunition magazines that Marines will use in combat.

Magpul is a private company that makes accessories for firearms, including magazines, grips, sights and slings. The company also recently started selling soft goods like hats, belts, shirts and gloves.

The operations, shipping and manufacturing portion of Magpul is based in Cheyenne, while its headquarters is located in Austin, Texas.

A press release from Magpul says the Marine Corps selected Magpul’s GEN M3 PMAG series of magazines after several years of testing.

The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports that the company had added a second shift to handle demand for its products. Magpul started with 102 employees in Cheyenne but now employs 380.

Magpul, which used to be based in Erie, pulled out of Colorado last year in protest of a gun-control bill that Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law in 2013 prohibiting the sale of gun magazines that hold more than 15 rounds in the aftermath of the Aurora theater shooting.

I’ve seen comments to the effect that the Marine Corps has been using these for a while.  Yea, well, not so much.

Perhaps individual Marines have had these magazines shipped to them by their families while deployed, and their commanders allowed their use rather than throwing them away, but I suspect most Lt. Colonels wouldn’t want to see pictures of their men using these things, only to have the promotion board asked if there were other instances of use of unauthorized equipment.

These guys can be rather puckered when it comes to authorized equipment, especially if some Marines have it and some don’t.  This way, everyone will have the best, and they will have the same thing.

Congratulations to Magpul.

H.R. 3799 is in the top ten most viewed bills the week of December 23, 2016.  Simply put, this bill would do as follows.

… amends the Internal Revenue Code to: (1) eliminate the $200 transfer tax on firearm silencers, and (2) treat any person who acquires or possesses a firearm silencer as meeting any registration or licensing requirements of the National Firearms Act with respect to such silencer. Any person who pays a tax on a silencer after October 22, 2015 may receive a refund of such tax.

The bill amends the federal criminal code to preempt state or local laws that tax or regulate firearm silencers.

The equivalent bill in the Senate is S 2236.  I assume that once voted on, a committee would be assigned to work out any details if there end up being differences.

By the way, Pat Toomey was asked about his support, and he wrote an entire letter without answering the question.  Don’t wait on that wet noodle to support any bill recognizing your just liberties.  Would someone in Pennsylvania please run for his office?  No, wait.  No offense to the ladies reading this, but if he has male plumbing, I want a man in the office rather than Pat Toomey.  Ladies who support my liberties are just fine.  I don’t want any more eunuchs.

It is encouraging, though, that the interest seems to be there, and people are asking.  Note to Senate and Congress.  We’re watching and taking names.

I find that concealed appendix carry is acceptable for me while standing or even walking.  I simply cannot do it comfortably while sitting.  I must carry 3:00 or thereabout, and my carry in the small of the back advertises too much.

Of course, open carry is the most comfortable.

The Federalist:

Consider the events of the the past week. A Maryland teenager shot and killed an adult deer after it broke down the door of his house. In South Carolina, a deer smashed through the window of a Gold’s Gym and raced through the weight room as terrified humans scattered. In New York City, the beloved Harlem deer that somehow made its way into the heart of America’s largest city died after police tranquilized and captured it.

These aren’t just zany wild animal anecdotes. This is what happens when state and local governments don’t let people shoot deer. The fact is, deer populations across the country are about a hundred times what they were a century ago. The only thing that will stop the deer uprising is if Americans are allowed to kill more of them.

In his 2012 book, “Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds,” Jim Sterba chronicled a dramatic swing in the fortunes of our continent’s wild animals overt the past century. By 1900, centuries of more or less unregulated hunting and trapping had reduced wild animals populations in America to mere remnants. The conservation movement, writes Sterba, began as a response to this dire situation, and was spearheaded by public figures like then-New York governor Teddy Roosevelt. Public lands were set aside for wildlife refuges and parks, limits were set on hunting, and efforts launched nationwide to restock wildlife. It took time, but the conservationists were successful.

Too successful, it turns out. Wildlife damage to crops and infrastructure now exceeds $28 billion a year, with $1.5 billion from deer crashes alone. Chicago now has thousands of coyotes. Texas has about 3 million feral hogs (and counting), which cause an estimated half-billion dollars in damages every year.

Yes, and the cost of feral hogs in Georgia is even worse, having put entire farms out of business.  Here’s the problem.

First of all, when states began modern game management techniques, it made some sense.  This has caused herds populations to rebound to enormous sizes compared to even what they were in the days before humans and animals fought over the same land.  But as the herd size increased, the inevitable occurred.

States began to see the herds as their own property, charging for tags, huge sums of money in certain cases, and they began to put limits on the kinds of firearms that could be used, limit the hunting season, and control even what time of day or night you could hunt.  Some of this makes some sense even if it involves self policing rather than the nanny state assuming the power to themselves (i.e., caliber size to ensure an ethical kill), but the states controls are implemented for the wrong reason.

Only the king’s men may hunt in the king’s forests, they think.  The second problem is that control freaks have passed laws just about everywhere concerning if and when you can discharge a firearm.  I’ve had Coyotes coming down the road towards me, and I had to use other means besides a firearm to chase them away because, you guessed it, it’s illegal for me to discharge a firearm where I live.  Only the police can do that.  Apparently, only the police need to engage in self defense, according to the state.

Yes, we’re going to have to hunt the herds back down, but we’re going to have to be allowed to discharge firearms when we need to.  And by the way, limits on feral hogs, whether bag limit or when or how they can be shot, make no sense at all.  If your state has such a limit, then the state rulers hate you and love the money it brings in to license you to hunt and tell you how and when to do it.  They hate you because hogs are destructive to the environment and can harm you and your children, and they love money because they have no scruples.

It wasn’t a negligent discharge.

But there’s more to it than meets the eye.  It wasn’t just an equipment malfunction.  According to the reddit/r/firearms discussion thread, this modification was done to the firearm.

1. He installed an aftermarket hammer and sear that were labeled “gunsmith installation only”.
2. He disabled the firing pin block safety on his firearm for a shorter reset.

So here are the moral(s) of the story.  First, the rules of gun safety are considered “defense in depth.”  Follow all of them, all of the time.

Second, if you cannot properly do sufficiently complex modifications to your firearms, then don’t do them at all and let a gunsmith tackle the job.  That’s their job.

Tom McHale has a very good article at Ammoland on AR-15 rifle barrel lengths and whether it matters.

Remember that you have two competing effects on muzzle velocity.  First, it’s advisable to get as much work out of expanding gases as feasible in order to increase muzzle velocity.  Second, there is friction in the barrel, which is a detriment to the work being done by the expanding gases.

So there is a turnover point on the curve of barrel length versus muzzle velocity, where you no longer gain muzzle velocity with increased barrel length.  So McHale performed some testing of barrel lengths, and this is what he came up with.

The difference between the 16″ and 18″ barrel is greater than the difference between the 18″ and 20″ barrel.  But barrel lengths greater than 18″ doesn’t buy you much.  McHale also has some data on the .300 Blackout round that looks interesting.

The one thing he didn’t give us is the effects of 14.5″ barrels (as with the M4), or pistol length barrels (e.g., 10″ barrels).  I would like to see some test data on that, and unless persuaded otherwise I have to believe that the SpecOps trend to use shorter and shorter barrels lengths along with suppressors is adversely effecting muzzle velocity.

From Reddit/r/Firearms commenter:

Step 1) Elect Republicans

Step 2) Hearing Protection Act <— now here

Step 3) Show that scary NFA items aren’t inherently more dangerous and their deregulation doesn’t increase crime

Step 4) Remove SBRs from NFA

Step 5) Repeat step 3

Step 6) Allow new registration of post-86 MGs under NFA

Step 7) Repeat step 3

Step 8) Remove MGs from NFA, repeal NFA

Yep.  That’s what I’ve been trying to say.  It has to be done in stages, boys and girls.  Be patient, but diligent.  Keep pressing, never give up.  Grass roots activism is our friend.  Inch by inch, step by step.