I think a good case can be made, especially in the thick southeastern hills and woods, for a scoped levergun/revolver pairing in 44 or 357 mag. Going from a 4″ revolver to a 16″ rifle barrel boosts .357 and .44M velocity by better than 25%, and the steadier or rested rested scoped rifle is going to give better real-world accuracy results as well.
The velocity boost for 22LR is not as great coming from a longer rifle barrel, the payoff with a 22 rifle is it’s very quiet, especially with subsonic ammo, because the powder charge is practically spent, and there just isn’t much muzzle blast left over.
I think a good case can be made too. But I prefer to wait until Henry designs and distributes a side-gate loading .44 magnum rifle. They have them already for select calibers. Paired up with a .44 magnum wheel gun, that would be a great combination.
He does an educated review of the most recent NICS data. I agree with his assessment, and I see prices increasing while inventory begins to decrease over the year 2020.
Three incidents confirmed incidents of open carriers robbed or attacked, only one fatality, and one thwarted attack. One of those victims was killed when he chased the now-armed robber down. Two of the open carry incidents can only be dubiously considered to be true cases of open carry. Six of the incidents, the majority, were confirmed to be concealed carry.
What did these events have in common? Most of these events took place during the hours of darkness. What appears to be common thread with those who were disarmed is carelessness, including:
Repeated failures of situational awareness by letting the bad guys get too close.
Failure to use a retention holster (including off-body carry).
No will to fight back.
No skills at retaining control of the weapon.
Using the gun as a talisman rather than a serious tool.
The majority of these incidents show, or at least hint at, major failures in judgment and basic self-defense techniques. Human failure, not systemic failure. Three equivocal documented events in recent news don’t amount to a denunciation of open carry as dangerous. It’s like saying concealed carry, with its higher rate of incidents, should be discounted as well.
The assumption that an openly carried weapon constitutes an invitation for victimization is false in light of the isolated incidents. A few events do not constitute an abundance of evidence. Rather, abundant evidence is available that open carry is indeed a deterrent to crime while concealed carry lacks that deterrent factor.
With six incidents of weapon theft during concealed carry in this informative article. Frankly, there aren’t enough incidents to convince me that any of this is statistically significant, even though I think this is a good analysis (concerning the primary point of situational awareness).
Bob Owens (when he was alive) used to pan open carry on the basis that it was an invitation to weapon theft. I disagreed, and still disagree with his successors at Bearing Arms who also take his position.
And I will open carry whenever I think it’s appropriate and I wish to remain comfortable by avoiding the necessity for concealed carry.
Lately, I am hearing “experts” claim that a rifle has to be dirty and fouled to shoot accurately. The prevailing theory is that the copper smears fill in the imperfections in the bore and make it more like a hand-lapped barrel. That is wrong on so many levels.
I have tested hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of rifles over my 40-year career as a gunwriter and have shot countless groups with those rifles. There is one simple truth I have learned: Clean barrels shoot much better than fouled barrels.
You must remove all the copper fouling. That means using the proper solvents and spending as much time doing so as is needed to get it all out. I have experimented with a lot of different approaches, but nothing I have found works better than an ammonia-based solvent. Right now, Montana Extreme Copper Killer is the best I have tried. When you open the bottle, the ammonia will make your eyes water, your sinuses seize up and your guts curl into a ball. That’s why it works.
Keep cleaning until you can wet the bore with solvent, wait a timed 5 minutes and then run a patch through and have it emerge out of the muzzle free from blue stains. How long will that take? Nobody knows. It might take five patches or it might take 500. About 70 percent of the time, this alone will correct a misbehaving rifle.
Here I am again asking for gunsmith advice on this. Since ammonia can cause stress corrosion cracking of steels, I am wondering how best to clear it all out, whether to use Hoppes after cleaning with an ammonia based solvent, then simply use patches to dry it, or perhaps, my favorite tool, a barrel mop?
First of all, I prefer the 7.5″ barrel, not the Banshee. I also found that it ate everything I fed it. But I really like Browning BPT Performance Target FMJ (for the CMMG and pistols), which increases muzzle velocity to 920 FPS. I also recommend to the video author that he shoot .450 SMC, which will run 1120 FPS.
I found it easy to ring steel (8″ diameter) at 100 yards with an EOTech red dot, regardless of the ammo brand. It’s easy to shoot 300 or more rounds with this gun and feel like you’ve only just begun range time. It’s that much fun, that accurate for a pistol caliber carbine, and that light on recoil.
ZCQOTD: “A carry gun without a reasonable amount of wear on it should be a source of shame, not pride.”
I’ve blogged before about how I feel that a gun with a bellicose name like the “Wilson Combat CQB” or “Springfield Armory Professional” that looks like it never gets used deserves the epithet “Minnie Pearl gun”.
An inanimate object isn’t deserving of anything. It just is.
I’ve put thousands upon thousands of rounds through pistols, and I try to take good care of them, inside and out. I don’t always pull that off, and there are scratches, normal wear and usage marks, dulling of the finish, etc., but generally I try.
I’ve explained before why I try. When a smartass salesman at a gun store once told me that he shouldn’t have to spray any gun with aluminum parts down with Rem oil or any other kind of protectant because aluminum doesn’t rust, I replied, “Aluminum doesn’t rust, but it does corrode in the presence of salt, and your body has numerous salts. Corrosion and rust are different chemical processes in that rust only oxidizes iron and its alloys, whereas corrosion occurs with other metals. Rust is a subset of corrosion.” High pressures (such as would be experienced in the chamber / barrel) can also lead to IGSSC (intergranular stress corrosion cracking) due to the stretching of grain boundaries and crystalline structures.
So rather than be a fashion Nazi and assume that the appearance of your firearms says something about your soul, I prefer to let you decide how clean, scratch-free and pristine you keep your firearms. If you do better than I do, then more power to you. The better you take care of your machines, the better they take care of you. I hate machines that don’t work, almost as much as I hate it when people abuse machines. We are in a continual fight against the second law of thermodynamics, whether with your automobile, your HVAC or your firearms. I don’t consider it an article of shame to take care of yours. Entropy always increases. Why help it along? Why not slow it down when we can?
I consider John Moses Browning and Eugene Stoner to be the two premier weapons designers in American history, and certainly, Browning much more prolific.
The “Extreme Defender” did very well. I thought it would, and had blogged on this in the past. The nose flute is designed, combined with the spinning bullet, to cause localized hydrostatic shock with velocities lower than that caused by bullet velocity alone would with a FMJ, whether pointed or flat nose (which is somewhere near 2200 FPS).
5 years, 6 months ago
