Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Guns.com.

The CZ 1012 line of gas-less semi-automatic shotguns is not only new to the company but fairly new to the market at such a reasonable price point, with MSRP on our test CZ 1012 All-Weather set at only $690.

Rather than cycling the action using dirty gases, CZ uses a spring within the bolt assembly to harness energy during the shotgun’s recoil motion, and then essentially re-uses this energy a split second later to both rotate and unlock the twin lugs from the barrel extension. This withdraws the spent shell and feeds the next round.

While the majority of semi-automatic shotguns are cycled with the gases generated through the gas system, the 1012 takes a page brought to popularity by Benelli and their Inertia Drive. Inertia scatterguns have been around for years, but that technology generally comes at a much higher cost.

[ … ]

If you’re still thinking the system may be too good to be true, especially for the price, the proof is in the pudding—or in this case—in the Guinness Book of World Records. For reference, the new 1012 action was the one used by competitive shooter David Miller and his hand-selection team of four youngsters to break the Guinness world record.

Together, they fired 20,425 Aguila shotguns shells through nine guns over 12 hours. They smashed the previous record by busting 14,167 clays, with one shooter using the same shotgun for the span of the event. The others only switched once.

I really like the cammo gun they’ve built.  If I heard her correctly, she said the patent on the intertial system expired and CZ apparently took advantage of that.

It’s nice to see a moderately priced auto-loader.  This gun might be in my plans for the future.

Watch all of this video (it’s long) or my comments will make no sense at all.

Allow me to weigh in a bit.  I’ve never seen or heard of this guy (“Caleb” from Gun Nuts Media – I have no idea if that’s his real name or a nom de guerre).  I have visited his site once as you’ll see below, and I’ll never visit again.

He impresses me as a spoiled little boy, a narcissist, a child who was never spanked, a liar, and a drama queen who writes click bait for his web site and soap operas for his YouTube channel.  He’s much too emotional for my tastes.

If he was never spanked as a child, he certainly was by Paul in this video.  He deserved it.  I agree with everything Paul said, but even if I had not, there’s a moral issue at stake here.  It comes from Leviticus 19:32.  “Caleb,” if you need help with exegesis of that, write me a note.

On the issue of revolvers and “hitting” or slapping the ejector rod, I’ve done that as long as I’ve been shooting revolvers.  I’ve never had a problem.  The only problem I’ve ever had was with a S&W R8 revolver.

It’s tolerances are tight, and it’s very accurate.  I’m sure those are related things.  I could have taken the time to ream the cylinder a bit and gotten better performance, but there would still be the issue of the forcing cone being so tight against the cylinder.

Within 50 rounds without fail, shooting high power .357 magnum ammunition which of course runs very hot, the metal would expand and cause either (a) the brass to fail to come out of the cylinder (which necessitated me striking the ejector rod pretty hard), or (b) the cylinder seizing against the forcing cone until the gun cooled down.

I dumped the gun.  It was a wonderful gun, but I just wanted to shoot more than it would allow without heating up too much.  Every other wheel gun I’ve ever shot only had that problem to a much less degree, this one to a much greater degree.

So if you needed any more information about Gun Nuts Media, here is something they have to say about what should be your own choice.

Basically, it’s 2019, and if you aren’t shooting 9mm as a primary pistol cartridge, you need to re-evaluate your life choices. It’s now an undisptued fact that modern 9mm ammo can give ballistic performance on par with 40 S&W, 45 Auto, and pretty much every other handgun cartridge.

“Re-evaluate your life choices.”  Being a bit dramatic, are we?  If you shoot anything other than 9mm you need to “re-evaluate your life choices.”

Okay, first of all, it’s simply not true.  Oh, it may be close for two-legged threats, but it’s certainly not true for four-legged threats.  Moreover, if someone happens to shoot .45 ACP or .40 S&W better than 9mm, or .38 Spl better, they should be allowed to shoot whatever works for them without internet know-it-alls telling them not to.  Some rounds push, some rounds snap and cause more pronounced muzzle flip.

Either way, I don’t think there’s a nickel’s worth of difference between someone telling you that you shouldn’t be allowed to have such-and-such gun, and someone telling you that you should shoot such-and-such a gun because I say so.  Each is a different form of collectivism.  I can’t stand collectivists.  Mind your own business.

And “Caleb,” grow up, little boy, and quit being a drama queen.  Maybe when you do, you can be like Paul.

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.