Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

I learned something simply from watching this video.  I look forward to the next installments.

Tamara K.

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).

This has happened to me more times than I care to count (or tell you about).  It’s frustrating too.  You’d think I’d learn after a while.

In 6.5 Creedmoor.

Yea, well, I’ve never been invited.  But I’m not Jerry, so there’s that.

At Ammoland.

For now, available only in .35 Remington, .38-55 Winchester, and .30-30 Winchester.

I saw a comment from Matt Bracken a few days ago with which I agreed.  There is a good argument for having a wheel gun and a lever gun in the same caliber (and I don’t have to point out that it has to do with ammunition compatibility, with the rifle round having a somewhat higher muzzle velocity than the revolver).

But for me to become interested, they’re going to have to expand the line to include other calibers, e.g., .44 magnum.

From The Drive.

Great idea.  Put the explosion closer to the shooter’s ear and cause even more hearing damage.

In the mean time, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the M4 or M249.