Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Shooting Illustrated.

1X magnification, of course, obviously meant for a MSR.  Decent price point: $365.  Auto dot shutdown upon no movement for five minutes, total of 1000 hours on middle setting.

BlueMountainEagle.

What made me start to wonder was when I started comparing the .270 to the 7mm Remington Magnum that I usually hunt with. As it turns out, I can fling a 140-grain bullet from my .270 just as fast as a 160-grain bullet in my 7 mm. The 7 requires a 2 inch longer barrel, which means more gun weight. It also requires more powder in a bigger case leading to a significant bump in recoil. Are those extra 20 grains worth all that?

Then I started looking at the shiny new toy in town. These days the 6.5 Creedmoor seems to be the man, and I admit, it does pretty well. However, the .270 throws its bullets between 100 and 200 feet per second faster. While bullet weights top out around 140 grains in the 6.5, you can find bullets up to around 160 grains in the .270, which would be a better choice when you are chasing the big stuff. Well, the 6.5 has less recoil, you say? Yep, by about 1.5 foot pounds. You are one sensitive dude if you can notice that difference.

Well then, why not step up to the .30-06 then? After all, you can lob bullets over 200 grains with it. It certainly isn’t a bad choice, but with the heavier bullets, recoil goes up as well and velocity goes down. These days we have a plethora of good bullets to choose from. So while I do believe in heavy-for-caliber bullets, there is no need to overdo it. The .270 deals out bullets that will handle anything we hunt around here. While the good ol’ .30-06 can pretty much keep up with the .270 with comparable bullet weights, the ballistic coefficient of the 30-caliber bullets is pretty poor. That means its trajectory won’t be as good.

I have to say that I like the lower recoil of the 6.5 Creedmoor, having shot both the .270 and the 6.5mm.  However, I’ve looked into the ballistics of the .270 versus the 7mm magnum and the 300 WinMag.  There isn’t a whole lot of difference, and if I wanted to take large North American game, I’d still choose the .270.

Gun News USA.

Deputies said the 18-year-old and a 17-year-old male broke a resident’s patio door window. The 53-year-old disabled resident was home alone when the teens broke the window and reached inside and unlocked the door, according to investigators.

The resident fired one shot, killing the teen who was in front, deputies said.

The second suspect, Aren Lacour, as well as 18-year-old Ayanna Harrison, were detained at the scene. Deputies said Harrison was the driver of a nearby getaway vehicle.

Deputies said the getaway vehicle, a white four-door Mercedes-Benz, is linked to other burglaries in the area.

This is news from greater Houston, Texas.

So once again we learn something here.  First of all, home invasions aren’t just with single individuals.  More often than not these days, there are multiple individuals involved.  You have to be prepared with the sort of weaponry necessary to defend your home and hearth against multiple invaders.

Second, we learn (yet again) that someone doesn’t have to be all tacticool and put rounds down range like Jerry Miculek in order to effect self defense.

I’m not disparaging the idea of getting to the range as often as you can, or steeling your mind for the fight.  I’m saying that the notion that fear for your life is incapacitating to someone is just not necessarily true.  The home invaders were teens.  She was a woman.  She was 53 years old.  She was disabled.

Enough said.  Guns are the great equalizer.

Brownells on AR gas and buffer systems.

Eh, okay, whatever.  I accept what they’re saying for nominal applications, but for fine tuning I think there is more to it than that.

On another but very interesting note, Brownells is assisting in the Covid-19 analysis.

Brownells, an 80-year-old, Iowa-based online firearm, and firearm accessories supplier has joined forces with Folding@Home to lend its excess computing power to help combat the COVID-19 virus sweeping across the globe.

Folding@Home is helping with an international effort to understand the molecular structure of the virus in hopes of finding ways to defeat it. Folding@Home has called on individuals and companies with excess server space and computing abilities to help execute computer modeling simulations to help speed up an otherwise huge and lengthy task.

“Our IT team learned about the Folding@Home project and their work using computer modeling to better understand the molecular and protein structure of the virus,” said Brownells IT Director Curt Graff. “We are committed to helping protect our country by virtue of our personal protection and sustainability products, but we see this as a way to support the international community in a time of significant need.”

Brownells anticipates it will donate at least 1,300 hours to the project and run approximately 200 simulations on behalf of COVID-19 research.

Okay, so this is really cool, and some of you may be confused, so I’ll do my best to explain this.

Processor speed hasn’t significantly increased for many years, but the ability to utilize threaded calculations has.  Many PhD theses have been written on “massively parallel” computing, and most high performance computer codes today (that require billions of calculations) are written to be able to utilize thousands of cores (written, of course, for HPC, or UNIX High Performance Computing clusters).  In my recent work, I’ve used more than 1400 cores for approximately 20 wall clock-hours for each simulation.  That requires a lot of computing power.

Why on earth would Brownells have this kind of computing capacity, you might ask?  I suspect, but I don’t know with certainty, that Brownells has these capabilities because of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and FEA (finite elements analysis) for ballistics and bullet design.

Someone could prove me wrong by calling Brownells and discussing this with them, or I can.  It might be interesting to find out.  If they don’t have it for those reasons, they have it for some other reason, and it would be interesting to know.  A number of large corporations who do advanced computing have access to thousands of cores, as do the national laboratories (who have the largest computers).  It was a bit surprising to me that Brownells has access to the kind of computing power that these computer codes will need.

But I think it’s cool.  Does some reader want to call Brownells and let us all know?

Either way, it’s nice to see that a firearms giant is helping in the battle against Covid-19.  Hey, if Brownells helps find a treatment, do the gun controllers promise not to use that treatment?  After all, they wouldn’t want to be in bed with the gunners, would they?

The ammo shelves are empty except for the low quality stuff (and some very expensive match grade stuff, going for more than $1 per round for 5.56/.223).  9mm PD rounds are also completely unavailable, although .45 PD ammunition can still be found.  But it’s not even a safe bet that you’ll get a gun if you try.

Sales of guns and ammunition are soaring across the US as fears of possible social unrest amid the coronavirus crisis are prompting some Americans to turn to firearms as a form of self-protection.

On the west coast, long lines of customers were queueing up outside gun stores to stock up on deadly materials. At the Martin B Retting gun shop in Culver City, California, the queues stretched round the block throughout the weekend.

One customer told the LA Times: “Politicians and anti-gun people have been telling us for the longest time that we don’t need guns. But right now, a lot of people are truly scared, and they can make that decision themselves.”

Larry Hyatt, owner of one of the country’s largest gun shops, Hyatt Guns in Charlotte, North Carolina, told the Guardian that the scenes of mass buying at his store were virtually unprecedented. “This is only the second time in my 61 years of business that we’ve seen anything like this,” he said, adding that the first occasion was the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012.

“We are experiencing a massive rush to buy guns and ammunition as people feel the need to protect themselves and their families.”

Hyatt said that the type of guns being bought was reflective of the fear prevalent among customers. There was almost no interest in hunting rifles. Instead, people were opting for target guns and there was big demand for AR-15 semi-automatic assault-style rifles.

Asked why he thought the spike was happening, Hyatt replied: “Financial meltdown, pandemic, crime, politics … you throw it all into the pot, and you have one hell of a mess.”

Sales were especially pronounced in North Carolina and Georgia, which experienced a leap of 179% and 169% respectively. Other states with large increases included Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Illinois and New York.

I’ll have to give Larry a wink and a nod the next time I see him for always being the one interviewed on this sort of thing.

Just before Obama’s administration when the issue of gun control came up right after the November election, the Saturday before Christmas Larry’s shop sold over 1000 ARs in a single day to people lined up outside.  He armed the equivalent of a Marine Corps infantry battalion in a single day.

Two months ago you could have gotten them for a fairly reasonable price.  I’m sure those days are gone now.  They may return, but if you waited for whatever reason to buy guns and ammo to protect your family for the near future, you waited too late.  You didn’t listen to me and my readers on this.

From American Rifleman.

The Henry is the coolest looking gun on the list.  We discussed it before.  TheAlaskan wants the .44 magnum.  I want the .357 magnum.

Actually, I want both, so I have TheAlaskan beat.

I’ve had my eye on this one for quite some time.  I probably wouldn’t carry it as my sole PD weapon, but I sure would as a backup weapon. It’s light and it looks good. And who doesn’t care about looking good?