Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

News from Texas:

As the 2017 legislative session approaches, some in law enforcement are asking lawmakers to revise the open carry law.

During the 2015 legislative session, lawmakers approved the open carrying of handguns by licensed Texans. As the 2017 session approaches, some in law enforcement are asking those lawmakers to revise the current law.

After the ambush in Dallas, their police chief, David Brown, mentioned that open carry complicated things at the scene of the shooting. He says law enforcement had a difficult time figuring out who was exercising their right to openly carry, and who may be a criminal. The executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas says they won’t push for a repeal of the law, but will make suggestions for changes to help law enforcement.

Brazos County Chief Deputy Jim Stewart says he supports revisions to the open carry law.

“The open carry is focused more on pistols, and in my personal experience, I’ve seen one person since the law went into effect openly carrying a pistol. I think these folks with the long guns, with rifles slung over their shoulders, that is of concern of me,” said Stewart. “That’s not covered under open carry. They’ve been able to do that for years, but particularly as we experienced in Dallas where the shooter was shooting with a long gun, how are they to know who the shooter actually was when you have so many people going around with long guns?”

Here’s a hint for you.  The bad guys are the ones shooting at you.  As a matter of fact, your officers went to the sound of the shooting without regard for tactical advantage.  That’s partly why so many perished.  The fact that some guy was seen in a picture openly carrying a long gun was investigated by other people, not the ones who responded to the shooter.  Your officers were pinned down, and a picture of someone carrying a rifle was the last thing on their minds.

You’re lying about this.  And that annoys me.

News from Connecticut:

BRIDGEPORT – The maker of the type of gun used at Sandy Hook and several other mass shootings won a partial victory in a Bridgeport courtroom Thursday.

The hearing is part of a lawsuit that several Sandy Hook families brought against Remington Arms.

Remington Arms is fighting to keep certain company documents related to the marketing of the AR-15 rifle secret.

The judge in the case said Thursday that she is willing to seal at least some of the documents from the public to protect the company’s business interests.

Sandy Hook family members believe certain internal marketing strategies will prove AR-15 makers are negligently selling military-style weapons to civilians.

If they win, it could open gunmakers up to hundreds of wrongful-deaths all over the country.

You’re “willing,” are you?  Thy will be done, Barbara?  Here’s what else you should be willing to do.  Go to your supervising judge, turn in your robe, go before the media, and tell the world that because you are a loathsome political hack and a toad who cares nothing about the law, you are resigning your position and beg mercy from the people you abused in your station.

Can we count on your being “willing” to do that, Barbara?

Prior:

Sandy Hook Families Call Remington Repugnant In Court Documents

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Update On Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

Discovery In The Sandy Hook Families Versus Remington Case

Matt Bracken’s article at WRSA or Ammoland is well worth your time.  In order to understand what I’m saying about it, you need to go read it.

For non-permissive environments, Matt has given a good option.  If it appears at the outset a bit absurd, consider why we have to do things like this to begin with.  This is why I prefer legal open carry.  Concealed carry means almost by definition that your weapon will be a “smallish” to medium frame gun.  With open carry it can be larger.  Additionally, you don’t have to bother with things like sweating your weapon in the summer, or the lack of comfort associated with IWB or ankle carry.

I personally wouldn’t engage in the OWB/concealed carry suggestion he advocates with improvised holsters, but if that works for you and you prefer it, then by all means do it.  I like much better the use of sacks, satchels, bags, and small backpacks for carry of a larger sidearm along with ammunition.  I also see a tactical light in his kit.  I never go on a road trip without one, and sometimes won’t even go down to the grocery store without one.

The Precision Rifle Blog has a very interesting piece up on semi-automatics (in this case, AR style rifles) versus bolt action rifles for precision shooting.  It is noteworthy that, according to PRB, “there isn’t a single shooter among the top 100 competitors in the Precision Rifle Series (PRS) using a semi-automatic rifle. Why not? Even though speed, maneuverability, and recoil management are huge parts to that game, the best shooters are all running bolt-action rifles. Some believe that is because AR’s can’t achieve the same precision as bolt guns, so the goal of this test was to quantify the precision difference between a couple of high-end gas guns and a custom bolt-action rifle.”

But they put all of this to the test by comparing bolties and ARs in a side-by-side competition.  It’s worth your time to go investigate his findings.  He uses the 6.5 Creedmoor for his test, and I’ll comment on this in a moment.  It’s also noteworthy that the group sizes look like this.

Now let me speak for a moment on testing for MOA.  Barrel harmonics and its effect on bullet placement is a heuristic process.  It will follow the Central Limit Theorem.  If you shoot three or five shots and claim that your MOA is thus-and-so, you haven’t really given us useful information because you don’t have fractional standard deviation (relative error) and variance of the variance (VOV) information along with the test data for us to ascertain how good it is (and it won’t be good with such few shots).  Understand what I’m saying.  The more rounds you put down range, the more you will fill in the tails of the distribution and the wider your MOA will be (or at least, you will be able to give us your MOA with its associated standard deviation).  There is no such thing as MOA.  There is only MOA with its associated standard deviation.

This is a pet peeve of mine, but when anyone – shooters or manufacturer – tells you that a gun is 1 MOA “out of the box,” they aren’t really telling you anything about how many rounds they used to make this judgment.  But moving on from this, I’ll note that the high-end ARs are performing very well.

There is another point to be made.  I’ll turn to WeaponsMan for his observations.

Money spent on accuracy not used is money wasted. In economic terms, it’s an opportunity cost. 100%, to a first approximation, of shooters, would improve their lethality and therefore their safety in an armed encounter if they put those dollars into ammo, or, especially, training. Yet the guy who balks at taking a pistol class (unless maybe he can take it from a high-speed “operator” who wears designer Multicam down to his skivvies) will drop that money on a tuned 1911. Who are you going to shoot with that 1911? If you’re the late Paul Poole, you shot F-type silhouettes at 100 yards to get people’s attention; if you’re a ranked competitor, you might need that edge when X-rings decide who takes home the trophy. But who are you going to plug with a .45? A burglar in your bedroom? A carjacker in the pax seat of your Prius?

The waste of excessive accuracy is not the only problem with high-precision weaponry. Yes, precision costs money — any gunsmith, machinist, hell, any biologist sequencing a bacterial genome will tell you that. Costs rise asymptotically as you approach the goal of perfection.  And yes, all this is bad. Because money is fungible, at the defense ministry or service finance level, a dollar spent on excess accuracy is a dollar than can’t buy training ammo, tank fuel, medical supplies or new radios (or anything else).

But the things that make for optimum accuracy alone may not be suitable for a general purpose weapon. Have you ever wondered why all M1 Garands or M14s weren’t National Match rifles? It’s not just because Uncle Same Numba Ten Cheap Charlie. It’s because some of the NM “improvements” are only improvements for the express purpose of match competition. Tighter parts fit? Hand-lapped locking lugs? A “blueprinted” or tight chamber? A smaller rear-sight aperture? All of these things are wonderful when your target is a bullseye at 500 yards, but they’re no help when your target’s the 10,000 screaming Norks or Chinamen who are coming to take your position or die trying. Indeed, since history tells us that you’ll be facing that human wave in bitter cold, blowing sleet, enervating heat or jungle monsoons, accuracy for a service rifle is defined as practical accuracy that a real-world rifleman (who is not NRA Distinguished or the owner of a Presidents Hundred tab) can employ in real-world combat.

Engineers have a saying for this. “The best is the enemy of the good.” Excess performance over practical specs has uncertain benefits but very real costs.

Yea, engineers have another saying too.  Good, fast and cheap.  Choose any two.  I have chosen the middle of the road.  Rock River Arms has a nice competition grade rifle (5.56) with an 18″ stainless steel barrel, sleek barrel shroud and muzzle brake, and it’s not cheap, but it also isn’t top of the line expensive.  It’s advertised as 0.75 MOA, and it’s obviously designed for 3-gun competition (as well as some distance shooting competitions).  I have one on order as a complement to my RRA 16″ barrel carbine with rails.

Folks, 0.75 MOA challenges the best that most bolt action rifles can do.  This is true of 5.56 mm, and I see that the 6.5 Creedmoor bolt actions are similarly challenged by AR designs.  I’m not sure that the same can be said of 7.62/.308.  In fact if you read the forums on the AR-10, commenters are rather down on the lack of similar design features / lack of modularity, breaking parts, higher expense to get the accuracy, and other things.  It may be that accomplishing this kind of accuracy with .308 in semi-automatic invokes the observations about too much expense to get the accuracy.

And 0.75 MOA challenges what I can do with a rifle as well.  Other manufacturers have similar designs for 3-gun and target competition with ARs (they usually involve 18″ SS barrels and a muzzle brake).  It’s good to see manufacturers closing the gap between semi-automatics and bolt actions on the smaller calibers, but I’m not sure that I expect for this progress to hold for the larger calibers.

WNCN.com:

SNOW CAMP, N.C. (WMFY) — A teenage girl is credited for scaring off intruders at her parents’ home with a rifle.

It happened on Lambe Road in Snow Camp around 12 p.m. Thursday.

Kirk Puckett, a spokesperson for the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, said two sisters, 12 and 13, were inside the home when they heard knocking on the front door.

Puckett said when they looked outside, they saw three unfamiliar men. He said the older sister grabbed her dad’s rifle.

The suspects then broke in through the back door. Puckett said the 13-year-old pointed the rifle at them, causing them to run away without taking anything.

[ … ]

“There’s a school of thought where folks will say, ‘I’m armed, and if someone comes in my house someone is going to get shot or die,’” Puckett said. “There’s the other school of thought to retreat. Where someone would retreat out of another exit. Go into another room and barricade themselves.”

Wait!  This is impossible.  It doesn’t fit the narrative.  According to the progressives, she should have shot herself because guns are more dangerous to the person wielding them than to the person at the end of the barrel.  And she should have just waited around to be raped or killed.  According to the progressives.

As for whether a person flees or fights, if you’re not in a confined space and have means of egress, evasion and escape, then it might pay to retreat (of course, while maintaining situational awareness), especially if you’re not in your own home.  But the notion that one should just go hide in a closet or try to jump out of a window is profoundly bad counsel.  Criminals can close the gap very quickly, and you just might hear that knock at the door to the closet, or jump into the arms of a rapist or murderer.

Get guns.  Learn how to use them.  This teenage girl managed to do just fine.  And I don’t want to hear another damn word about how people who haven’t been trained in all of that LEO super-ninja stress control can’t defend themselves.

The Boston Globe:

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said Wednesday she was cracking down on the sale of guns that, she said, were designed to skirt a state law banning assault weapons.

Healey said she had put gunmakers and sellers on notice that they were not allowed to sell the guns, which she said were intentionally designed to circumvent the ban by incorporating “small tweaks that do nothing to limit the deadliness of the weapon.”

The attorney general said at a morning news conference that the law remained the same, but her office would change the way it enforced it.

While manufacturers have deemed certain weapons in compliance with state law, she said, her office had looked at the issue and concluded that they weren’t.

“The gun industry does not get to decide what’s compliant,” she said during the event, where she was flanked by law enforcement officials, community leaders and anti-violence activists. “We do.”

[ … ]

Healey spoke after penning an opinion piece in Wednesday’s Boston Globe, in which she said the gun industry was taking advantage of a legal “loophole of potentially horrific proportions.”

She said her office had begun looking at the law in the wake of the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, where a gunman killed 49 people.

Healey said the recent killing of police in Baton Rouge and Dallas, along with the fatal shootings of black men at the hands of police, have only added to the urgency.

She described her action as “a step” toward reducing gun violence.

“It is not a total panacea, I recognize that, but it is a step,” Healey said.

She said her office had notified dealers in the state that they cannot sell guns whose “operating system is essentially the same as a banned weapon.”

Operating system.  Got that?  That means semi-automatic weapons of all kinds.  She doesn’t mean DI systems as designed by Eugene Stoner for the AR-15.  All semi-automatic weapons can discharge one round for every pull of the trigger.

Ms. Healey has declared herself the only sovereign potentate who gets to adjudicate on everything and anything she wishes.  She’s queen.  And gun owners should willingly bypass, smuggle, and disobey this edict however and whenever they can.

The author of this article at The Boston Globe, Akilah Johnson, is obviously trying to show the human side of gunsmiths and mechanics at Smith & Wesson as opposed to the ugly, boogeyman portrait the progressives paint.  But it reminds us (1) that Smith & Wesson has no business whatsoever still being ensconced in Springfield, and (2) this would never have to be done in most other locations in America (can you imagine a journalist having to show the human side of gunsmithing in, say, Charlotte, N.C., or Greenville, S.C.?).

Furthermore, this article isn’t really very friendly to Smith & Wesson or the place they live for the discerning gun owner.  Consider.

… to many, including US Representative Richard Neal of Springfield, who participated in that demonstration on the House floor, it is the hometown company.

“My own position has always been: Be helpful in that every police officer or patrolman in America ought to use a Smith & Wesson, and I think the American military ought to use a Smith & Wesson,” Neal said in an interview. “At the same time, there will be disagreements as it relates to guns.”

Their own member of the House participated in that juvenile sit-in, and would presume to mention firearms ownership within the context of LEO and the military, but noticeably didn’t mention anyone else.  What a horrible place for Smith & Wesson to do business.  Just horrible.

“It’s a good job,” co-worker Marc Holland called out from across the bar at the neighborhood watering hole early one morning last month.

Holland, 54, retired after 25 years at a paper mill and was looking for a way to stay busy. Six years ago, a friend at Smith & Wesson told him about an opening. Now, he works the machines that make triggers among other things.

“I can do like 3,600 triggers in a shift, over 10,000 in a week,” he said.

Excuse me, but I wouldn’t be bragging about how many triggers I could push out to the next mechanic if I were you.  Instead, I would be bragging about how I focused my time and effort on quality and craftsmanship.  Listen to me, Smith & Wesson gunsmiths and mechanics.  There are so many pistols, revolvers and rifles out there that competition will run you into the ground if you begin to work the line in order to maximize production instead of quality.  Gun owners will notice.  You’ll be shut down not because you can’t produce enough, but because we’ll be calling your stuff shit, and we’ll do it over forums, in blogs, and at the range.

Refocus on quality.  Tell me something about how you wake up in the morning and can’t wait to work that trigger to ensure its smooth action for that working-man buyer who is just like you, earning a living by the sweat of his brow.  Don’t tell me how fast you can do it.  I suppose that’s why I buy from the S&W performance shop if I buy S&W.  I know somebody has put some knowledge, skill, effort and craftsmanship into it.  I want to know that somebody left part of his soul in that machine when I pay that kind of money for it.  I leave my soul at work many a night when I leave.  It’s all I’ve got, and I’ve given it to a job I consider a blessing, with professionalism and excellence.  I want you to do the same thing, and if you can’t do it I want to know because I’ll never send another penny your way.

Neal said House Democrats were left with little recourse besides the sit-in to get the attention of US House Republicans, which after mass shootings in Orlando and San Bernardino, Calif., and Aurora, Colo., he figured would be easier to do.

“This highlights how difficult it is in America today to have a conversation about these sorts of things,” he said. “The majority in the House makes no effort to accommodate the concerns of the minority. That was true when we were in the majority, and it’s true now.”

Neal said he supports background mental health checks, closing gun show loopholes, and keeping those on the government’s no-fly list from being able to purchase firearms.

“I think those are reasonable positions by any standard,” he said.

The barber shop owners’ late father once worked for Smith & Wesson. Ralph Ricciardi, 45, said when his father first emigrated from Italy, he needed steady work before he could become a citizen. At the time, authorities did not consider being a barber secure employment.

“So my father actually made guns, from ’70 to ’74,” he said while cutting a client’s hair. “He opened up his shop in ‘74.”

“It’s just like a business. It’s just like a store or something,” said David Tancrati, 58, as he waited to sit in Ralph’s chair.

“We don’t even think about it. It employs a lot of people.” Ciro Ricciardi, 47, Ralph’s brother said.

Well, you should think about it, about the Puritan work ethic that brought you this kind of industry to begin with, and about the good weapons do for mankind.  If the only thing you can be proud of is a paycheck, and you have to ignore the product you’re making, you’re unworthy of the industry that calls Springfield home.

And to Congressman Neal, it’s easy to have conversations about guns.  We do it every day here.  And not one more law.  And I’ll converse with you about that until your eyes turn red and your heart stops, but conversing won’t change my mind.  Just as Springfield is unworthy of S&W, you are unworthy of the trust the people of your state have placed in you.  You should be ashamed, and I only hope that in the future, you get to look at the shuttered doors of the Springfield S&W plants as they have shut down and moved.  May your precinct turn into a ghost town.

Outdoor Life:

There’s nothing new about the quest for a good bear-country sidearm, and what we’re carrying is evolving. Giant revolvers, though still popular, are somewhat antiquated. The Glock 20 is rapidly becoming the preferred arm of choice, and for good reason. It is more streamlined, more shootable, and it carries more ammo than a revolver, yet it is still dependable and powerful. My pal Andrew Brady of Lone Star Armory showed me a few tricks to improve a stock Glock.

Replace the Sights

Chances are an encounter with a bear that requires using a pistol will happen very fast. You may not even have time to aim, but any edge you can give yourself helps. XS Sight Systems makes by far the fastest-acquiring sights that I have used. In particular, I recommend its Big Dot express sights ($125).

Swap the Barrel and Recoil Assembly

A quality aftermarket barrel ($140) will increase accuracy. The new barrel, along with a guide rod and recoil spring ($40), can be easily swapped out while your pistol is field stripped.

Modify the Grip

The grip angle on Glocks is a big turnoff to some shooters. Their relatively “steep” angle gives a shooter the feeling of awkwardly having to point the pistol down, compared to a 1911, in order to level the sights. We outlined the steps to change the grip angle below. Grinding on a new pistol might feel counter­intuitive, but you end up with a better-shooting gun.

It just keeps going on in this article.  I am a fan of the 1911 with its eleven degree grip angle and narrow profile, and I don’t like the feel of the sharp edges of a Glock.  If you don’t want to shoot a 1911 but want a double stack higher capacity magazine, why not choose a Springfield Armory XD or XDm which is modeled in the same fashion of the eleven degree grip angle?

Or why not choose a .357 magnum or .44 magnum revolver?  Why would anyone spend the kind of effort and money necessary to pull this off when you can buy a new gun for the same amount?  I think the gunsmiths at Hyatt Gun Shop would look at you weird if you brought them these plans.

And for the record, a .45 ACP has proven enough to turn a bear away.

Remington filed a motion to withhold certain information concerning its Bushmaster brand of AR-15s, based mainly on the proprietary nature of said information.  For those of us who deal with technical information or trade secrets, this is routine and customary.  It is certainly not out of the ordinary, and the motion could have to do with information Remington wants to keep from being disclosed.  What if they have studied the rifling twist rate to  tweak it to produce a little more stable bullet flight, or studied barrel length to make it effective at longer distances, or whatever.  I don’t know, I’m just making this up as I go because I don’t know what they know after having invested their time and wealth in making a better rifle.  That’s the point, and that’s why Remington wants its information withheld from public disclosure.

Enter the Sandy Hook families again.

The families suing the maker of the AR-15 rifle used by gunman Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook massacre called a request by Remington Arms to keep company materials secret so that the company keeps its competitive advantage “repugnant,” according to a new filing in the case.

“Remington did not become the country’s leading seller of military weaponry to civilians by accident. It ascended to that position through its calculated marketing and pursuit of profit above all else,” lawyers for the Sandy Hook families wrote in a response objecting to a protective order filed by Remington.

As part of their lawsuit, families of victims have asked Remington to turn over its marketing materials in the belief that they will show that company intentionally marketed its high-powered rifles as “weapons of war” to civilians who had no business owning such guns.

“Plaintiffs lost family members, including children, in the service of that bottom line. Now Remington wants them to do more to protect its profitability,” the motion reads.

So let me translate.  We, the Sandy Hook families, don’t care about your God-given rights to defend yourself and your families the best way you see fit, nor do we care about the fact that in the court of public opinion, we lost and these weapons are entirely legal.

Furthermore, we don’t care that we don’t know what we’re talking about, and that virtually every gun in civilian use has a military application, from shotguns used for room clearing in Now Zad, Afghanistan by the Marines, to Remington 700 bolt action rifles used by Marine snipers in Iraq, nor that virtually every military weapon has a civilian application.

We don’t care about the fact that there isn’t the distinction between the two that we’re claiming, and we don’t care about the fact that weapons truly get tested by the civilian community, who has to spend their own money for the guns and reviews them on blogs and YouTube, rather than the military who has to use what the Pentagon buys for them, nor that vast improvements have been made to military weapon systems by applying civilian-based gun modifications or tactics developed in 3-gun competitions or the gaming community.

Hell, we don’t even care about the fact that there is a federal law against what we’re doing, called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and that we’re basically relying on a raving-bitch SJW judge named Barbara Bellis to help us through what would otherwise be dismissed with prejudice.  We don’t care that the weapon used in Sandy Hook was stolen.  No, we don’t care about anything but us.

The real morally reprehensible actions are being taken by the Sandy Hook families, not Remington.  How utterly despicable.

Prior:

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Update On Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

Discovery In The Sandy Hook Families Versus Remington Case

I’ll let the lawyers weigh in on this one as to the legal ramifications of what this fellow did.  Readers can weight in too, but I wanted to focus on whether this was wise (h/t Uncle).

There is an interesting discussion here about this.  My take is that a mob, or any potential assailant for that matter, can close the gap very quickly.  I don’t fault the man for unholstering his weapon.  Neither do I fault him for walking backwards and very carefully while trying to pay attention to his surroundings.

What I would say though is that if he thought he was under threat, when he was out of range he should have retreated and gotten away.  I would have.  Remember, egress, evasion and escape.  That he came back will probably be a problem with a prosecutor.