Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Readers can weigh in on what sight they prefer and why.

This is a pretty good review of the Beretta 1301.  The “plasticky” feel could be helped by use of Aridus Industries parts and a Magpul stock and forend, like Langdon Tactical does when they modify the gun.

News from S.C.

A South Carolina gun store owner faces an involuntary manslaughter charge after police said he shot one of his employees in the face in an attempted prank.

Jon Whitley, who owns Coastal Firearms in the Wando area, was arrested Monday nearly a month after the death of Stefan Mrgan.

Authorities found Mrgan inside the store’s lobby with a gunshot wound to his lower face on Nov. 2, news outlets reported.

A police affidavit states that Whitley placed a replica Glock BB gun among real firearms in the store with the intent of pranking Mrgan. Instead, Whitley mistakenly picked up and fired a real gun at Mrgan, according to an incident report.

Whitley is a retired major in the South Carolina National Guard and former reserve deputy for the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office, The Post and Courier reported.

Mrgan, 36, was a former member of the Army Special Forces, according to the newspaper.

Court records show Whitley was granted a $15,000 personal recognizance bond by a judge Monday.

So in addition to the other rules of gun safety, for the idiots among us, we can add “Do not play pranks with guns.”

Actually, I think that’s covered under the first four.

We’ve covered both of these guns in previous posts, and guys really liked the CZ Shadow 2.  According to this review, the performance and specs of both guns are about the same.

Beretta apparently built this gun to compete with the Shadow 2.

I missed this video when it first came out.  Sorry about that.

I’ll take one of each.

American Rifleman.

The subtle fact about Thanksgiving and the arms that were present is that there were lots of arms present. A staggering number of guns, to be exact. Captain John Smith of Jamestown, Va., wrote in 1609 that they had 24 cannons and 300 muskets, way more than the number of men currently on hand to use them. Firearms were perhaps the only commodity that the first colonists had in any abundance.

The types of guns they used to defend their small enclaves were mostly the same types of arms currently in use in Europe at the time. Matchlocks were the first common type of long arm developed in the 16th century. Generally a 10-bore smoothbore that fired a 12-bore round ball, matchlocks were fired by means of a slow match, a burning length of rope and hemp, impregnated with saltpeter to aid in its burning.

A pull of the trigger, or lever, brought the burning match into contact with the exposed powder in the frizzen pan at the breech of the gun, beginning the chain of events that eventually sent the round, lead ball flying down the barrel. A few matchlock actions have been excavated at Jamestown by archeologists, but far more snaphaunce actions have been found. This corresponds to the written inventories of Jamestown (as well as Plymouth beginning in 1620) that showed almost 1,000 snaphaunce muskets vs. only 47 matchlocks on hand.

Well, whatever else one wants to argue, you can’t legitimately argue that our forebearers weren’t well armed.

Any video with Ryan Muckenhirn is worth watching.  I love his podcast videos.

Simple.  I like simple.  G96 + Isopropyl Alcohol.

I’ve always believed that the NRA supported the NFA and GCA not just because they believe in gun control, but also because monied men wanted to protect their investments in what is now NFA items, and make more money on top of that.

It just wouldn’t do for the poors to be able to have the same things as them.

This is a great ten minute talk by Ryan Muckenhirn.  I highly recommend the whole ten minutes to you.

He discusses a number of interesting things, including G96, Barricade Wipes, bluing, SS rust (it’s actually more akin to corrosion, which is a subset of rusting), and Cerakote.  He’s also a big fan of Cerakote, except don’t apply it to bearing parts like bolt lugs.  It changes tolerances.

Here’s an interesting factoid for your consideration.  Just like bluing is intentional rusting for the protection of the metal underneath, rusting is initiated on the inside surface of the piping of Reactor Coolant Systems for the same purpose.  It’s called passivation.

Seen at TTAG.

Open carry is materially different from concealed carry. It’s often designed to be menacing, to intimidate the public and public officials. And after the debates around Rittenhouse, it’s time to rethink open carry, as a matter of ethics and law. https://t.co/2daiagOyJI

— David French (@DavidAFrench) November 16, 2021

What a foppish, effete, dainty man.  He and Robert Bateman may want to meet and have some egg plant and bean sprouts together.

I was sitting in a casual seafood restaurant on the Eastern Shore of Virginia not long ago. It is a place well known for the quality of their crab and inshore fish. It was early on a quiet Sunday morning. The brunch hour approached and, more importantly, we were hungry. We were passing the Delmarva Peninsula at the time, an area I know well from my youth. My wife sat opposite me across a plain varnished pinewood table and my baby daughter sat in a high-seat next to me. Three tables of this roughly sixty-table restaurant were filled.

As we ate, looking over the beautiful waters at the Island House Restaurant in Wachapreague, I noticed over my wife’s shoulder the large man sitting in the table next to ours. It is not all that often that I notice people significantly larger than I am, but this guy qualified enough so that one could not help but look when he got up a few feet away. Going I know not where, I also noticed something else, the obvious presence of a concealed weapon at his hip, nominally, loosely “concealed” beneath his oversized T-shirt.

Really? A gun, at Sunday Brunch? Are you seriously that afraid of the 75-year-old farming couple, the only other people in the restaurant, who probably raised the daughter who babysat you 30 years ago? Or is it the middle-class transient family of three, with the baby, us, who frighten you? I mean, really, there were eight people in that restaurant at the time.

Then, over the next hour, as the 30 or-so retirees and perhaps 20 more obviously in for a post-Church-service special Sunday Brunch folks came in, I came to realize how absolutely delusional the fellow must be. What kind of idiot carries a gun in a family restaurant for family brunch? Well, that would be one of the folks influenced by the NRA-approved “Molon Labe” movement.

He can’t even hide his disdain for the man, not even as it pertains to his weight.  Of course, he didn’t have the guts to tell the man he thought he was fat, nor to ask him why he openly carries.

I have always believed, and continue to, that gentlemen carry their weapons openly.  The founders and their sons did, with John Adams carrying a rifle to shoot squirrels on the way to school in the morning.

Criminals try to hide their weapons.  As for everybody else, it’s all psychological.  The fact that a weapon isn’t in plain view doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  Notice that Bateman begins with his disdain for open carry (or loosely concealed, as he called it), and then to the fact that he had a firearm at all.

It isn’t really open carry to which they object – it’s carry at all.  They don’t want you armed.  As for French, well, it’s David French.  What do you expect?  Realistically, though, he should replace “designed to be menacing” with “he obviously hates IWB carry and sweating and corroding his weapon.”

Sometimes a rose is just a rose.