Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Ammoland:

This is another one that is different for everybody. In the beginning, I went to the range every two weeks and put a couple hundred rounds at paper targets.

I also practiced dry fire in my house (with no one home, because, you know, it feels kind of silly – even though it isn’t) at least twice a week.

This was mainly drawing, firing and firing while moving either backwards or quartering away from the target. Later my Son bought a SIRT training pistol – a full weight replica of a Glock 19, with a removable mag and a two stage laser trigger – and I practiced with that the same way.

Beyond practice, you need to read, Read, READ! So many books that help you to understand concealed carry, guns, tactics and practice.

Read them. Study them. Practice them. When you’ve read a book, sign the inside of the cover and date it. Why? Because if you ever have to defend yourself at trial, what you know and don’t know may be the difference between going home to he family and living in a hell called prison for the rest of your life.

At trial, you are able to give evidence only to what you knew at the time, and how it may have affected your lethal force response. If you shot a man who had a knife and was 18′ feet away, being able to explain to a jury what the Tueler Drill is and the part it plays in JOA – Jeopardy, Opportunity and Ability – will go a long way to helping yourself.

If you didn’t know this information in advance, you would not be able to bring it up at trial. Keeping records of what you read can be a great help to yourself and your attorneys, should the need arise.

I don’t think dry fire practice is silly at all, and it certainly doesn’t feel that way.  Furthermore, as I’ve recommended before, I wait until no one is in the house, turn the lights out at night, make sure my tactical light has fresh batteries, and practice room clearing techniques.  How do you know you don’t bang the doorways with your rifle muzzle without practicing it?  Do you have a plan for sweeping the whole house?  Which room do to tackle first?  Does it make a difference if anyone is in the house?  Do it change your plan?  Do you have the movement mechanics worked out for hallway and room to room transition?

But this last recommendation from Ammoland is also very good on threats outside the home.  So in the interest of being able to prove that you’ve thought about the Tueller drill, watch this video in its entirety.

Of this post, Leigh Haines writes the following via email.

I’ve seen this happen when an individual “limp-wrists” an automatic by not holding it securely enough. It was a S&W Model 59 that was clean, well maintained, and running quality brass. Five different people shot it with no issue, but the next kept having jam after jam. After watching him for a minute, I had him tighten his grip, and the failures lessened. I say lessened, because this particular individual lacked sufficient forearm strength to maintain a proper hold on the grips. As he got tired, he would loosen his purchase on the pistol – allowing the recoil to rotate it in his hand, rather than cycle the slide. Needless to say, he didn’t get to shoot the 1911.

News from Canada:

BOIESTOWN, N.B. — A New Brunswick restaurateur has survived after a misfiring rifle showered his face with bullet shrapnel.

Douglas Lyons said a bullet exploded in the chamber as he tried to load his Savage Axis .30-06 rifle Sunday while testing it in the woods ahead of a planned hunting trip.

“The firing pin fired and blew that shell up on me, and that’s what hit me in the face,” Lyons said Wednesday from Boiestown, N.B., where he owns the Tipsy Canoe restaurant.

“The covering of the bullet and the powder and all that stuff in there came up and struck me on the side of my head. Cut my face open there quite a bit.”

Lyons said he had dropped his four sons off at Sunday school and went to the woods with some friends to sight his rifle. He took his gun from its case, and tried to load it, but the bolt wouldn’t lock.

The firing pin went off as he pulled the bolt back on his third attempt, the bullet still in the chamber, he said.

“The barrel was pointed away from me. It was quite a moment. The gun went one way and I went the other,” he said.

Lyons said he bought the gun a year ago at a store in Fredericton, and said the firing pin should never have fired in that position.

He drove himself out of the woods, despite his friends’ pleas not to, and his wife later drove him to a hospital in Fredericton.

He said he had lost a lot of blood, and felt light-headed and cold by the time he got to hospital about 90 minutes after the misfiring. Doctors found and removed most of the shrapnel, although he said they want the swelling to subside before they take the final piece out.

Lyons remains in a lot of pain, he said, but is mostly glad the damage wasn’t worse.

“My ears are still ringing, I’ve still got a friggin’ headache, but the main thing is I’m still around here to talk it about I guess,” he said. “It could be worse, I could be blinded or whatever, right?”

“The firing pin fired.”  This is a strange writeup and it isn’t clear to me what happened.  Here is a picture of the round still in the gun.

So what is your judgment?  What did this guy do – try to slam the bolt into battery and end up striking the primer with the firing pin?  You can visit the URL and see pictures of his shot up face.

In tonight’s debate, Hillary said this: “What the District of Columbia was trying to do was protect toddlers from guns.”

Here is the URL to the Heller decision.  Here is the URL to the oral arguments.  Extra credit to any reader who can find reference to the words “toddler,” “baby,” or “child” anywhere in the decision or oral arguments.  Hint: CTRL-F works for PDF.  Take it away folks.

This is an interesting drill.  I imagine that the point is that you have suffered an injury during close quarters battle and need to reload.  I don’t of any range anywhere I have ever gone to where you would be allowed to do something like this.  Obviously, he has his own private range.

Ammoland:

At our Urban Rifle (Carbine) Courses, most students bring ARs, as you might imagine, but we see dozens of other types/brands, some of which I was heretofore only marginally aware, so many are the companies, worldwide, making small arms today.

But my colleagues and I, Dave Spaulding, Tom Givens, Mas Ayoob, James Yeager, Frank Sharpe, Manny Kapelsohn, Jeff Chudwin, Clint Smith, Freddie Blish, et al continue to see repeated handling errors, which during a genuine encounter for which we train, will be fatal!

Some students pick it up right away. Others fumble repeatedly. Most “get it” eventually, training themselves to avoid common AR rifle handling errors!

We instruct students to grab the 30-round magazine (which most use) with the support-side hand as they would a pop-can and smartly insert it into the magazine well. Then, strike the bottom of the newly-inserted magazine. Then, grab it and tug downward, trying to pull it back out.

When the magazine stays in place, it’s good to go.

Conversely, when it comes right back out again, it was never locked in place correctly!

I’m not trying to cast doubt on experts and their recommendations for gun handling, but perhaps this has to do with poor quality guns and poor quality magazines.  But I’ve put thousands upon thousands of rounds through ARs, and I’ve never once had a magazine fail to seat, and I don’t routinely strike the magazine on the bottom.

What about your experience with the AR?

At this reddit/guns post?

By mounting the light directly on the barrel, he’s adding a secondary harmonic, possibly exacerbating a primary node or creating an anti-node, or creating nodes completely out of sync with other nodes, and fundamentally changing the way the barrel vibrates.  Someone needs to tell him to remove the light and figure out another way.

Yea, Rob.  Simple.  But not easy.

NRA Blog:

• Circa 1650 – The Kalthoff Repeating Flintlock: As Mike Blessing explains, the Kalthoff Repeating Flintlock came into production in the 1650s, seeing combat in the Siege of Copenhagen in 1659 and later during the Scanian War of 1675 to 1679 — 132 and 116 years, respectively, before the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. While manufacturing and repair costs kept the Kalthoff out of mass production, it represents the reality that “high capacity” firearms are not a contemporary concept, as some models of the Kalthoff boasted magazines of up to 30 rounds – the same number of rounds in a true standard-capacity AR-15 magazine of today.

• Circa 1750 – The Cookson Volitional Repeating Flintlock: A lever-action breech-loading repeater, is one of many similar designs to make an appearance on the world stage beginning in the 17th century. The revolutionary mechanism at the heart of the Cookson repeater dates from 1680 and was originally known in Europe as the Lorenzoni System, named for Italian gunsmith Michele Lorenzoni of Florence. Long arms utilizing this system were produced in other European nations and in the United States until about 1849. The Cookson rifle dates from 1750 and features a two-chamber horizontally mounted rotating drum. After firing the rifle, the cycling process could be repeated until the two magazines, with their seven-shot capacities, were empty. Although other breech loading rifles were introduced in later years, the Cookson-type long arms were unique in their ability to fire multiple shots without reloading.

• 1777 – The Belton Repeating Flintlock: Philadelphian Joseph Belton’s repeating flintlock design reportedly boasted a 16-to-20 shot capacity, using the superposed load mechanism. Sources indicate there was correspondence between the inventor and the Continental Congress in 1777, as the he had reportedly been commissioned by the Congress to build 100 of his repeaters for the U.S. military, with the order being dismissed solely for cost purposes. This discussion presents strong evidence that the founding fathers were perfectly able to conceive of “high capacity” repeating firearms.

• 1782-1804 – The Nock Volley Gun: The close quarters of Naval warfare demanded a powerful, yet compact firearm that could provide abundant firepower. The Nock Volley gun fired seven shots all at once from seven clustered bores. This powerful rifle was issued nine years before the dawn on the Second Amendment.

They left out the wonderful Girandoni air rifle.

This is a wonderful and interesting rundown of the semi-automatic firearms available prior to and immediately after the war of independence.  Go read the NRA Blog article for more detail, as well as the context.  But I’ve explained the second amendment properly interpreted before (at least in my own view).

The second amendment discusses the right to bear arms and be free of federal interference in the context of the states’ desire to keep that interference from happening.  That is the historical milieu in which it was written.  The founders only needed one excuse to prevent federal government interference with the states on firearms, and they chose the most likely and obvious choice, i.e., the militia.  The second amendment is not a treatise on the foundation of liberty.

It’s an illogical jump to cast that as the only reason for the right to own and bear arms.  If you had discussed regulation on the right to own and use a tool of their trade to protect their families, hunt, and ameliorate tyranny with a colonial man, he would have buried you under the remotest prison.  God gave us our rights based on man being created in His image and the expected duty to work and subdue the earth to His glory.  The militia was a convenient excuse for a certain clause in one part of the constitution.  Limiting our rights to our understanding of that clause is a mistake.

And there’s more.

We don’t “hide behind” the second amendment.  It doesn’t grant us the right to own weapons.  God does that Himself.  The constitution is a covenant between men for how they will live together.  Like all covenants, there are promises and curses.

Look folks, if our wise founders had wanted the citizenry armed with inferior weapons to the king, they would never have said the things they did, fomented a revolution, or hid behind trees and killed, only to melt into the woods and mountains to kill another day, fighting a war of insurgency like none which had gone before it.

The founders ensured a covenant that codified man’s rights to firearms for the purpose not only self defense (which is assumed but left unaddressed by the second amendment), but for the second amendment remedy against tyranny.  There is no other sensible way to see it.

I notice that Kyle doesn’t shoot his rifle with the “aggressive plates forward” stance that seems to be popular these days. I’m not saying you have to, but that’s how I was taught and I find it comfortable with AR-15s. Of course, not so with bolt action hunting rifles or shotguns.