Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

I missed this one from Texas Plinking about a month ago.  If I could have one more 1911 (honey, why do you need another 1911?), I think it would be this one.

I want to be just like Jerry when I grow up.

Ammoland has the details.

Coming in at 6.8 pounds, I really like the lightweight handguard.  The price point seems right too (MSRP: $1100), and I think it’s a good addition to their stable given the usual unavailability (and high cost) of 458 SOCOM and the much higher availability (and lower cost) of 450 Bushmaster.

Jeff Minick.

As I write these words, a reproduction of the 1897 Sears Roebuck Catalogue, published in 1968 by Chelsea House, sits at my elbow.

The fat catalog is a casual reader’s delight and a historian’s treasure trove. Here are medicines like laudanum, herb tea, and castor oil. Here are tools, bobsleds, gasoline stoves, windmills, bicycles, clothing and footwear, valises, books, clocks and watches, fountain pens, banjos and snare drums, furniture and cutlery, buggies and wagons. (The price of most surreys is under $100, a belt is fifty cents, a child’s high chair a dollar, a ball room guide for gentlemen twenty-five cents.)

And in the Sporting Goods Department we find 28 pages of guns, ammunition, and accessories.

Here we have weapons ranging from the Daisy Air Rifle to “Our $1.55 Revolver,” from shotguns for $7.95 to Marlin Repeating Rifles. Sears, Roebuck & Company also sold ammunition, pistol holders, reloading tools, and cleaners for these weapons.

No one was monitoring these sales. The government had no part in regulation. No one conducted background checks on the buyers. Indeed, Sears brags that it is “the headquarter for everything in guns,” that their prices are below all others, and that “we will send any revolver to any address.”

Yikes, right? Even a common laborer, for three or four days wages, could order a Saturday night special from Sears. With guns and ammo so easily available, we might guess that the streets of every American city and town were running red with blood every day of the week. Mass murder surely occurred on a weekly basis. Assassination and terrorist attacks must have happened so regularly that no one blinked an eye.

We might guess so, but we would be wrong.

In 1900, the number of murders and “non-negligent homicides” in the United States was approximately 1 in every 100,000 inhabitants (This figure and the others in this paragraph include all murders, not just those by firearms.) In 1980, that figure was close to 11 murders per 100,000 people. Since then, that figure has declined to between 4 and 5 murders per 100,000. (For a deeper analysis, see here.) Bear in mind too that unlike today, a gunshot wound in 1900 frequently resulted in death.

These statistics contrasted with the easy availability of guns should raise some questions. Why in 1900, when firearms were so readily accessible, were murders so infrequent? Why are murders today quadruple what they were in 1900? Based on what gun-control activists tell us, shouldn’t we expect the exact opposite?

He has his answers, but in my opinion they are all connected and symptomatic of the higher order issue, which we all know as a rejection of God and His law.  It’s a cultural issue, not one of hardware.

There’s actually something very important you don’t learn until the end of the video.  I watched it all, and if you intend to purchase this gun, I’d watch the whole thing.

Report from South Carolina.

“We’re at a standstill both with gun reform and gun expansion,” Charleston Democratic Sen. Marlon Kimpson said this week. “I don’t think you’ll see any of those bills come to the floor this year and, if they do, it will be purely for political posturing.”

Senate Bill 139, which  would allow anyone to carry a weapon without a permit, is on the Senate calendar for second reading, but falls further behind every day on the chamber’s contested slate. Carrying weapons without a permit is known by supporters as “constitutional carry.”

But most bills on either side of the issue remain without hearings in committees. Kimpson is a sponsor of Senate Bill 731, which would expand background checks, also known as closing the Charleston loophole. The bill has been pushed every year since a white supremacist slayed nine black church goers in Charleston in 2015. It would extend the wait time for FBI background checks from three days to five days in South Carolina.  It is stuck without a hearing in the Judiciary Committee.

A guy by the name of Peter Zalka is at the root of trouble-making on this.  Listen to his reasons, and make sure to notice the headline (“Pro-Second Amendment Group Concerned Over ‘Open Carry’ Bills).

“Passage of this bill will allow anyone to openly carry a revolver or semi-automatic handgun in any public establishment such as a grocery store, movie theater, or Walmart. Spending legislative time and effort to pass any laws that would make legal the open carry of handguns (with or without a permit) makes South Carolina no safer at best, with significant negative effects on our communities a given.”

Zalka called the proposed legislation a threat to public safety and public health.

“The world would look like a different place,” he said. “Imagine being in Charleston at a park or Spoleto, something like that, and all around us there are folks wearing their guns on their hip. They have no training, no permit, no understanding of South Carolina laws.”

Zalka said he spent the day hand-delivering letters of opposition to lawmakers, including letters from physicians, law enforcement, and other nonprofit organizations.

[ … ]

Groups like South Carolina Carry feel the opposition is simply fearmongering.

“We are surrounded by open carry states. North Carolina has open carry, Georgia has open carry, Tennessee has open carry,” said Dan Roberts, Outreach Director for South Carolina Carry. “They all have vibrant tourism industries and no problem with people being terrified at the sight of a firearm. So, is South Carolina somehow special? It’s ridiculous.”

He had a moment of truth there.  This is all about the effete gentry class in Charleston wanting to make sure their tourism isn’t affected.

But the truth is also told by South Carolina Carry.  ““We are surrounded by open carry states. North Carolina has open carry, Georgia has open carry, Tennessee has open carry,” said Dan Roberts, Outreach Director for South Carolina Carry. “They all have vibrant tourism industries and no problem with people being terrified at the sight of a firearm.”

There won’t be blood running in the streets, and that lie was told in Texas, Oklahoma and everywhere open carry has been legalized.  It’s been debunked, so let that one go, controllers.

So if you’re a South Carolina reader, have you joined South Carolina Carry?  Are you active in this fight?  The enemy sure is.  Because if you’re not active, you have no right to complain when you’re compared to California, Hawaii and New York.

American Rifleman has the scoop, but Ammoland does a little better job by giving stats.

Actually, neither had the scoop on me.  I had discussed this very gun with Steve Mayer at RRA back in December of 2019.

My only complaint about Rock River Arms guns is that the ones that I’ve had seem to have weighty front ends.  I had always thought they needed to be a little more on the cutting edge for reduced-weight hand guards.

With the unloaded weight of this gun coming in at 6.8 pounds, it seems like they’ve taken up the challenge.

Steve also points out that if you don’t want to buy the whole gun, they sell the upper separately.

This picture comes to us via reddit/firearms.

It is said that “Marine Sgt. Rudy Soto Jr. was atop the chancery roof, armed only with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver. The U.S. ambassador at the time did not believe the Marine Security Guard needed M-16 rifles. His shotgun jammed, and the small-caliber handgun was next to useless at that range.”

That isn’t necessarily related to this picture, although this picture appears to be of a Marine holding a revolver during the Tet offensive near the U.S. embassy.

As to the issue of a “small-caliber handgun” being next to useless at that range, whatever.  A 9mm pistol would have been equally useless.  That’s not what interests me.

Readers know that I’ve had a fascination with just how far (back and forward) in history revolver usage goes in war.

Paul Harrell is up first.

One thing we learn from this is that you need to hit your intended target to achieve slow-down and energy dump.  Walls can be very little protection, depending upon the choice of gun and round.  Next up, Shawn Ryan.

His presentation, along with Paul’s above, shows that an AR-15 is a bad choice for home defense if there is a possibility of hitting nearby (neighbor) homes.  Rifle rounds have a lot of penetrating ability.

Shawn’s presentation shows that personal defense rounds dump enough energy in the target, interior and exterior walls that persons who may be in other locations outside the home would be safe.

This all points to pistol caliber PDW (pistol carbines) being the safest gun to shoot in neighborhoods, since the lower muzzle velocity combined with the hollow nose and walls give enough energy to kill the intruder but not enough to cause penetration through exterior walls, while also providing the aiming of a rifle.

But the moral of the story is to hit your target.  That’s where the energy gets deposited.