Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Aesop has a post on drop-leg holsters with interesting remarks and also interesting comments to the post.

According to her blog, the above is a dumb holster idea.

“Basically, unless you’re wearing a plate carrier or LBV or something that interferes with a normal belt mount, you should probably leave the drop-legs to Hollywood space pirates and B&W cowboys.”

Oh really?

Point of order.

Look, I can give you eleventy times and places where a drop leg of any type is weapons-grade dumb (self-castration optional); BTDT and got the t-shirt. But I can also think of several situations where it’s pretty wizard-level. And let’s face it, not everyone is a Travis Haley gunslinger, nor trying to be one.

What about for someone who’s not trying to look tacticool at all, but maybe earning a living driving a truck all day, or a cabbie, an Uber/Lyft driver, or a pizza delivery guy?
(Not in NYFC or similar anti-gun locales, but in places where the Constitution still applies most days.)

[ … ]

Sit in a car, a delivery van, or a semi rig cab, and show me your IWB or appendix-carry draw, against, say, a robber or carjacker.With your seatbelts on (in observance of the law, natch), and maybe wearing a jacket, just to make it interesting for you.  I’ll wait.

(We won’t even talk about where that IWB is digging into you all shift, or where your appendix carry muzzle is pointed, sitting in a vehicle seat. And to be sporting, we won’t stipulate that one might be a bit on the portly side.)

Now, sit in a car seat, same conditions, and tell me where your hand falls on your upper leg:
unless you’ve got gorilla-length arms (which you’d need to get to any ankle rig), that’d be right where this holster sits. Handy. Readily available. Not pointed at your junk.
Five stars.

Several things caught my interest in this.  First, I just can’t stand a one-size fits all approach to anything, and it sounds like Aesop agrees.

The Travis Haley video at the link has Travis sporting a Kydex holster with retention.  I hate Kydex, and I’m not an operator in SOC.  I choose not to wear Kydex – just because that’s what I choose to do, and I choose to do what I want.  I’m not interested in being tacticool.

I also hate appendix carry.  I hate sticking a pistol barrel into my groin / lower stomach.  It isn’t comfortable and I refuse to do it.  I can carry at 3:00 (IWB), on my ankle, or OWB.  I simply will not carry IWB appendix.

And I recently discussed how the 1911 fits my arthritic hands because of its narrow frame.  Everyone’s physique, capabilities, and jobs are different.  I can see sitting in a car or truck as a driver and needing something other than high waist carry (my seatbelt interferes frequently with me).

Similarly, Travis can make the suggestion to carry as high as possible with a drop-holster, and with the few I’ve worn I would agree, and he can make the suggestion to simply move gear around to facilitate that, but it’s not that simple.

My Marine son and I have talked about this before.  He hates drop holsters.  When clearing rooms and moving quickly through domiciles, the holster bangs on couches, flops around, and gets in the way of every movement.  It might be nice to say “move gear,” but that involves leaving behind SAW ammunition drums, or some other essential gear he might have needed for 16 hours in Fallujah.  We’re not talking about cops doing a ten minute job.  We’re talking all day and into the night, house to house, room to room, sometimes nothing happens, sometimes gunfire is streaming through the doorway.  Besides, the body armor he was issued wasn’t so amenable to wearing a drop holster high.

He also has an interesting view of the C-clamp or thumb-over-bore grip.  Yea, it looks cool, and he’s used it, but if you think you’re going to use that grip for 16 hours in Fallujah, you’re mistaken.  You can hold that for five minutes, and then you’re using another.  That’s for short-term direct action ops, not long term urban combat.

So in his job he had to use a drop holster.  He hated them.  In other jobs, people might need them.  I have no need of one, but open carry from time to time with a much higher holster, sometimes leather, sometimes Cordura.  I never use Kydex because it’s a free country and I don’t have to.

In the gun community we need to recognize differences in sex, physique, comfort, need, job and simple differences of opinion concerning what people like.

Shooting Illustrated.

On average, with the shorter barrel there was a 12-percent reduction in velocity (100 fps). The smallest difference—26 fps—was recorded with the Buffalo Bore 110-grain Barnes TAC-XP load. The most-extreme variation—200 fps—was recorded with another Buffalo Bore load, the +P Outdoors-man, which utilizes a 158-grain, hard-cast, Keith-style bullet. More important than the velocity loss was how the slower velocities affected terminal performance. This is because when it comes to stopping bad guys, penetration and expansion are what matter.

The average penetration depth for the nine loads fired from both barrel lengths was 14.28 inches. The average penetration variation between barrel lengths was only 0.80 inch. For all practical purposes, that’s irrelevant; individual loads can vary more than that from shot to shot. However, comprising that average were a few extremes worth mentioning.

The 140-grain Hornady XTP load penetrated 2.25 inches deeper from the longer barrel simply because of its 99-fps faster impact velocity. With the 110-grain Hornady Critical Defense load, an 85 fps decrease in velocity caused the bullet to penetrate 1.75 inches less. However, with the 125-grain Golden Saber +P load, the longer barrel delivered 3 inches less penetration because the bullet deformed with a larger frontal diameter at the only slightly higher (57 fps) impact velocity. It should be noted that the hard-cast Outdoorsman load passed through all 28 inches of gelatin, regardless whether it was fired from the 1.9- or 4-inch barrel.

With regard to expansion, there was minimal difference. The average variation in expansion between rounds fired from a 1.9- and a 4-inch barrel was a mere .04 inch. The lone exception was the Winchester Silvertip bullet. Out of the 1.9-inch barrel, it expanded with a frontal diameter of .66 inch, but out of the 4-inch barrel it had a recovered frontal diameter of only .4 inch. The higher impact velocity (132 fps) overly stressed this bullet and caused it to shed 46 percent of its original weight. Out of the shorter barrel, the bullet retained 99 percent of its weight.

There was one load that stood head and shoulders above all others. The Speer 135-grain Gold Dot Short Barrel load only varied .5 inch in penetration depth and .03 inch in expansion, even though there was an 83-fps difference in impact velocity. Obviously, this load is aptly named; Speer purposely engineered it to deliver optimum performance from short barrels. Not only did it perform near identically from both barrel lengths, it delivered what many consider optimum terminal performance from a defensive handgun. Any load that will penetrate in excess of 12 inches and expand to 1.5 or more times its original diameter is noteworthy.

First of all, I think this is good news for ankle-carry small frame and short-barrel revolvers.  There just isn’t much of a loss in performance.

Second, it looks like Speer has done a very good job with .38 Spl. ammunition, calling it the “Short Barrel Load.”

I don’t normally link him up, but this is a fairly nice rifle and he has a good experience with it.  It looks like he’s shooting Wilson Combat 350 Legend magazines, and his accuracy looks good.

Uncle.

Grip angle and natural point of aim will not make you a better shooter.

A gun feeling “good in your hand” also will not.

I’ve been a practicing registered professional engineer for a very long time.  But until recently I had not studied ergonomics and biomechanics, and things like pronation and abduction, axis of action, first, second and third class levers, resistance to circulation, kinetic chains, etc.

I would have been more likely to accept these pronouncements before I engaged in my recent study.  Now, not at all.

I don’t think an experienced shooter should try to bias another, which I wouldn’t do anyway.  Readers have always known that I recommend you shoot what you like, feel comfortable with enough to practice a lot, and get good with what you like and can afford.

I shoot .45 ACP better than I do 9mm and .40.  I don’t know why, because I’ve shot a lot of ammunition, but it’s the way it is, after tens of thousands of rounds.  I also shoot a 1911 better than I do a double stack design.

Here I probably know why.  With the gnarled up knuckles of my fingers from RA, I get good purchase on the slimmer frame of a 1911 easily and efficiently.  If you don’t suffer from RA, you have no basis to comment on what I need to shoot efficiently, whether grip angle, frame design, length of pull, or whatever.

A 1911 isn’t for everybody, and a Wilson Combat pistol isn’t for me because I can’t afford one.

Ergonomics does exist, and it’s a science all its own.  I recommend folks schedule an encounter with the study materials.

Either way, it’s always a little oddball to me when somebody says (a) there is only one way to do this, and it’s my way, or (b) nothing matters, not even the things you think matter, because I say so.

TFB.

Let’s make the argument that 5.7 is, just for fun and for the purposes of this article, as suitable for personal defense as 9mm.

If we wanted to bolster a case that 5.7 is a viable defense round, we could start with this punny line: The 5.7 uses a bottlenecked case, like the .357 SIG, which is theoretically supposed to increase feed reliability. Second, 30% lower felt recoil is going to translate into better accuracy, better shot placement, and faster follow up shots. Third, the 5.7 can squeeze 20 or (as Hop learned in the video above) 21 rounds into a full-size frame for more capacity than 9mm. Fourth, the ability to defeat body armor is a plus – according to FN, the SS190 cartridge type can defeat two stacked Level II vests at 50 yards.  The round will also go through a vest and remain effective – allegedly penetrating 11 inches into ballistic gel after punching through a Kevlar vest. Fifth, we have the advantage of the increased range we discussed above, albeit this is of limited use for the reasons noted.

[ … ]

Moving away from gel and paper, there’s empirical evidence suggesting that the 5.7 is effective.  Over forty countries have adopted the 5.7, including the USA at a federal and state level, most notably, the US Secret Service. According to an article from the Dallas News, the Five-seveN is sought after by Mexican drug cartels for its effectiveness, and FN’s pistol can fetch $5,000 on the black market because of its performance, especially against armored targets. And as macabre as it might be, I reluctantly note for purposes of this discussion (and because someone was definitely going to say something about it in the comments anyways if I didn’t) that the 5.7 round was used in the most deadly American on-base shooting of all time, killing 13 and wounding over 30 when an Army major-turned-terrorist used the Five-seveN in an attack against fellow soldiers.

I’ve addressed this before.  I would carry the round for personal defense.

And if I’m not mistaken, his conviction on 13 counts of premeditated murder was short one.  One victim was pregnant.

Ammoland.

The Bishop Ammunition and Firearms 458 SOCOM 1895 GBL Lever Action chambered in 458 SOCOM comes with all the foregoing plus additional features other manufacturers charge extra for and now joins our line up in 458 SOCOM with our 458 SOCOM Hunter Bolt Action and the AR458 SOCOM Rifle. The 458 SOCOM 1895 GBL Lever Action was designed specifically for those situations where an AR-15 rifle is either not permitted for hunting while riding the range hunting feral hogs, or for those that want something completely different.

It’s a nice looking and powerful gun, but my question would be why?  When the lever guns at Big Horn Armory are available, what is the hoped customer base for this gun?

Hold your breath.  MSRP = $2,999.99.

I understand.  They’ve got to get their R&D money back out of this.  The ammo will be expensive though, just like the gun.  Let me know if any readers get one.  You can do a review of it.

Military Times.

When Winchester Ammunition announced their straight-walled .350 Legend cartridge at SHOT Show 2019, only CMMG and Ruger had firearms chambered in the new round.

Now, roughly one year later, the potent round appears to be gaining traction with additional gun manufacturers with the latest adopter being Franklin Armory.

The cartridge was developed in response to various hunting laws in the United States that restrict calibers to straight-walled cartridges. This effectively restricted hunters to .30-30, .45-70 Gov or similar rounds in lever-action, or breech-loading rifles.

To give hunters an auto-loading alternative, Winchester developed the .350 Legend – a round that functions in a modified STANAG magazine in standard AR-15 magazine wells.

Despite being developed initially as a hunting round, it is equally as effective as defensive cartridge. There are even super-heavy subsonic loads available for shooters running a suppressor who want more ballistic energy than .300 BLK.

I’m not sure why it flew under the radar, but Rock River Arms also has an offering in 350 Legend, as well as uppers.

From Shooting Illustrated.

EOTech’s HWS offerings are extensive, but L3Harris (EOTech’s parent company) is no longer the only kid on this block. Vortex offers its own take on HWS in the form of its Razor AMG UH-1. Hampton told me that Vortex’s holographic system is different than EOTech’s, but I suspect that to the user, the differences will remain hidden inside the optics. Vortex’s HWS appears to be in the same size and weight category as EOTech’s EXPS family, but instead uses an enclosed-style housing.

Good review.  I guess I’ve been a little out of the loop.  I didn’t know that EOTech wasn’t the only Holographic sight maker now.

This guy does a good review of the new Arken Optics scope.

Rex also does an unboxing review.

Here is the web site.  The quality looks high for the prices.  I like the idea of good optics without the huge price tag.  Seems to me that quality scope prices have come down drastically because the the interest in long range precision shooting.

Good.  I like competition.

News from PRCa.

A majority of Californians, including gun owners, support an “amnesty” program where high-capacity firearm magazine owners can turn them in, “no questions asked.”

More than 62 percent of Californians surveyed said that they favor such a program, which 51 percent of gun owners also said they supported.

The results, published in JAMA Network Open, come from the Violence Prevention Research Program at University of California, Davis. Researchers interpreted data from an online survey of 2,558 California adults that was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs.

Hmm … an “online survey.”  So the authors of the survey and the article want you to believe that the gun owners of California who own standard capacity magazines don’t want them, and don’t really know what to do with those plastic boxes they have in their closet?  They want to “turn them in” to someone in authority.

They don’t know how to use a hacksaw and cut them into pieces.  They don’t know how to start fires and burn them up, but they don’t want those things at all so they need an amnesty to turn them in.

Right …