Archive for the 'Guns' Category

DFW CBS:

About 20 other people were wounded. Investigators collected at least 15 empty magazines that held 30 rounds each at the scene, suggesting the assailant fired at least 450 rounds.

Many more details emerge from this report and others.  It’s easy to second guess people in time of distress, and we certainly must feel sympathy for those poor people and keep them in our prayers.

But I simply don’t understand why some of the men of the church didn’t attack the shooter when he stopped to reload.  Were there men in the congregation or was it all women and children?

This shooter should have been met with the barrels of 50 pistols in his face the minute he walked in with a rifle.  Thankfully, a good man was on the outside and exchanged fire with him immediately outside the church as he was retrieving a pistol from his running vehicle to continue the carnage.

If you haven’t spent the time to watch and listen to all of this video, you should.  It will be the most important 30 minutes you’ll spend this month.  He said he believes that the “Holy Spirit was on him.”  I have no doubt that is true, and Steve Willeford was used by God to stop the carnage that awful morning.  Christians need to make sure this doesn’t happen again by waking from their national coma.

Via reader Richard Fuher.  Watch it all.  There are real men left in America.

After discussing the S&W 686 several days ago, the thought occurred to me that there must be a newer Performance Center 686.  Sure enough, there is.  This one is a beautiful firearm, unfluted cylinders, 7-round capacity, and an interesting speed release thumbpiece for the cylinder.  Let me know if any readers happen to have this model.  I find it very interesting.  I’ll also remark that this isn’t a bad price for a Performance Center gun.

By now you’ve heard of the horrible shooting at the small church in Texas.  Take careful note that the perpetrator was done in by an armed citizen.

Another local resident, Johnnie Langendorff, who had witnessed the gun battle, said both he and the unnamed neighbor had jumped in his truck and gave chase.

In a Facebook post, Langendorff’s girlfriend Summer Caddel described how the pair had ‘jumped in my boyfriend’s truck and they chased that sick b*****d down in pursuit until the cops could catch up. He was able to run the shooter off of the road on 539!’

Langendorff told ABC 12 that he’d been speeding at 95mph, while on the phone to dispatch, while the neighbor kept his rifle trained on the gunman’s car.

As they approached a sharp curve in the road, near the 307 and 539, he said Kelley appeared to lose control and his car swerved off the road.

‘That’s when I put the truck in park,’ he said. ‘The other gentleman jumped out, and had his rifle on him. He didn’t move after that.’

Within minutes of the reports of this hitting the air, I had two questions: (1) Why are the FBI and ATF involved, and (2) Why haven’t we heard of a motive?

There is this report discussing the shooter being a member of Antifa, and how according to his own words he intended to start a civil war by “targeting white conservative churches.”  If this report is true – and you likely won’t ever hear that in the MSM nor will the FBI or even local law enforcement ever tell you this – it would answer both of my questions.

But let’s assume for the moment that it’s not true.  It doesn’t matter why he did it for purposes of my point.  It could have been Antifa, Muslim fascists or a belligerent worker who had been fired.

I heard over the national news how some churches had even gotten “permission” to allow a concealed carrier into the facilities.  What?  Permission?  To carry a weapon for self defense?  Permission?

Listen to me, Christians everywhere.  I’ve harped on this and will continue to until Christians wake up.  If you don’t emerge from your slumber, you’ll be run over like a train hit you.  You’d better arm up and prepared to defend yourselves.  No matter what you have been taught, you are not safe in your places of worship.  Make it so.  Make it safe for yourselves, your families and your congregants.  God expects you to.  He demands it.

Reddit/r/firearms:

My cat stole a part of my revolver, Ruger replaced it free of charge, paid for shipping both ways, improved the trigger and sent me a pretty nice oiled up cleaning rag free of charge.

Here’s the rundown, after going out shooting I came home and disassembled by revolver – besides the cats I was the only one home. After I disassembled it I went to the bathroom, came back and found my cat on the table – tossed her off and then did a thorough cleaning.

My hammer dog mysteriously disappeared. I searched for that thing for an hour. It even got the point where I tried to shake it out of my cat. GONE. VAPORIZED. F***.

Well, I had heard some great things about Ruger’s customer so I gave them a call. The lady I spoke to on the phone was polite as I embarrassingly explained the situation.

What I expected: 25$ shipping there, 25$ shipping back, 25$-50$ for labor/parts.

What I got: A free of charge shipping label from ruger to send the Revolver in, no charge for labor, no charge for parts and no charge for them to send it back and a sweet cleaning rag to boot.

F***ing wow. To make things better the trigger is better than it was before, and it was pretty nice to begin with for a GP100.

I want to reiterate what just happened, because I’m still pretty stunned by how great the company treated me.

I f***ed up and they fixed it for me free of charge.

Easily one of the best customer service experiences of my life.

Now, some folks would say that this is a good way for Ruger to go out of business.  Those people have probably never run a successful business either.  I had a similar experience with my GP100.  It’s a beautiful firearm, and it’s trigger is as good as any S&W Performance Center trigger I’ve ever shot, in both single and double action.

Well, I’m not going to tell you what I did because it’s embarrassing, but Ruger handled it free of charge and I will never, ever get rid of that GP100.  I’ll keep it the rest of my life, I’ll recommend that other people buy the GP100, and I’m more inclined to get another Ruger product because of the great customer experience from them with the GP100.

So here’s a note to Ruger.  You know how to run a successful business.  Don’t ever change.

Shooting Illustrated:

High-pressure symptoms are probably the most commonly encountered stop signs our rifles provide. Inspecting spent cases whenever you try new ammo, changing a handload recipe or shooting in drastically different atmospheric conditions can help you spot potential issues. Primers warn us in the form of “blowing” completely out of the brass, cratering (a slightly raised lip around the firing pin indention), flattening out or being pierced by the firing pin. Minor flattening or cratering is not uncommon, especially when firing heavy bullets. Either condition needs to be watched, but neither is cause for alarm so long as it is minor and limited to one ammo type.

But, when multiple factory loads are showing these signs consistently, it is time to have the rifle looked at by a qualified gunsmith or the firearm’s manufacturer. The same goes for blown primers, damage to the case head with semi-automatic rifles or brass flow into a bolt’s ejector-pin hole on any gun: A minor amount is not abnormal for heavy loads, but excessive or consistent damage is cause for concern.

Consistently pierced primers warrant more immediate action. Checking your brass will reveal piercing, but sometimes you get an earlier warning from a blast of gas in your face and the contents of an external magazine littering the ground under your rifle. This is your cue that it is time to stop and find the source of the problem. Piercing can force small discs of primer material into a bolt’s firing-pin hole, eventually causing other problems. A jammed up firing-pin bore can stop pin movement and possibly fix the firing pin in the forward position. That may lead to a “runaway” machine gun, firing every time the bolt slams forward on a fresh round or worse, firing out of battery. A full-auto surprise is bad enough, but a gun that fires out of battery can be catastrophic for the shooter and anyone nearby.

At any sign of primer piercing, stop using the suspect ammunition and ensure the firing pin and bolt are closely inspected for proper function or damage. Just a few pierced primers can erode a firing-pin tip, leading to greater primer-piercing frequency, leading to more firing-pin damage, and so on.

Other harbingers of pressure trouble include bent firing-pin-retaining pins, broken extractor pins, bent or broken extractors, a sudden increase in recoil/muzzle blast/gas without a change in ammo, case-head separation or spent cases that are split or ruptured. In each case, it makes more sense to stop what you are doing and look for the source of the problem(s) than it does to just keep banging away.

Read the rest at Shooting Illustrated.  I would have thought most of this is common sense, but perhaps not.  There are the harder to find issues as well.  I once went shooting where the Range Officer was a gunsmith, and he took interest in the brass my pistol was ejecting.  Close inspection of it, along with me, showed that it was heavily charred on one side, while the rest was clean.  It turned out that my barrel was out of round and had to be replaced.  To this day I thank that man for his attention to detail (if he happens to be reading this).

The point of this is that we all have to be mechanics if we’re going to be good shooters and sportsmen.

Shooting Illustrated:

Using a barrel bushing wrench or comparable tool, depress the recoil spring plug. The plug is located directly below the barrel bushing. After depressing the plug, rotate the barrel bushing to one side. Take care with this step because the recoil spring plug holds the recoil spring back tightly. If you are not careful, the spring will eject the plug into whatever dark, impenetrable corner exists in the room you are working in. When the spring is loose, the recoil spring plug can be removed from the end of the spring and set aside. The spring itself will still be held in place within the slide.

Turn the gun right-side down. Hook your thumb against the front of the trigger guard – without touching the trigger – and wrap the fingers of the same hand over the slide. (Hooking your thumb inside the front of the trigger guard rather than around the grip safety allows you better access to the slide for the remainder of this step.)

Push the slide back and align the rearward, raised portion of the takedown lever with the disassembly notch in the slide (the first notch is the slide stop notch and the second, smaller one is the disassembly notch). Holding the slide in this position, use the fingers of your other hand to begin pushing the takedown lever pin free from the receiver. If you need a visual aid, simply continue to hold the slide back and rotate the gun so you’re looking at its right-hand side. You will see the circular, raised pin located centrally above the trigger guard.

Once the takedown lever pin has been pushed partially free of the receiver, you should be able to remove it entirely from the left-hand side of the receiver. Set the takedown lever aside and slowly release the slide.

Re-assembly tip: When replacing the takedown lever, be sure the barrel link is upright and lined up with the corresponding hole in the slide. Otherwise, the pin will not fit.

The barrel bushing is the most hazardous part for me.  If you’re not careful, you’ll put your eye out or put a hole in your ceiling.

This is a keeper along with the firearm manuals themselves for my 1911s.  It’s a good companion article to Revolver Disassembly and Cleaning.

Editorial at Toledo Blade:

Police officers in Ohio already face too many threats to their safety when they take to the streets to protect their communities. They should be able to know whether someone they are approaching is armed.

But the Ohio House approved a measure last week that would weaken the state’s concealed-carry laws. It would ease penalties on motorists who fail to promptly alert officers during traffic stops that they have a weapon in their car. The bill is now headed to the Ohio Senate.

What is proposed instead is that a person stopped by authorities could simply hand over his concealed-carry permit with his driver’s license.

The bill also would reduce the severity of the charge for failing to notify the officer from a first-degree misdemeanor to a minor misdemeanor.

The original version of the bill would have eliminated entirely the responsibility for concealed-carry permit holders to notify officers that they were armed, which is disrespectful to law enforcement, and simply reckless.

The bill’s proponents say that law-abiding concealed-carry permit holders should not have to alert anyone to the fact that they are armed. That is also disrespectful, and arrogant.

Advocates for the bill say it would only clean up ambiguous language by removing “promptly,” which can be arbitrarily interpreted. But why not define the term instead of removing a reasonable requirement?

Considering how quickly an interaction between law enforcement and any armed civilian can escalate, it seems more logical that the law-abiding permit-holders would want to immediately alert officers to the presence of a weapon.

Many gun owners who seek out concealed-carry permits do so because they believe carrying a weapon makes them safer. But no one is safer in a situation when police are surprised by a gun.

What the editorial should have said is “We advocate informing cops about weapons because we like to see goober cops shoot weapons carriers.  We like to see that because we have weapons carriers.”

It’s simply insulting to claim that criminals or someone bent on danger to someone else would inform cops of their weapon.  “Why yes, officer, I have a concealed firearm, and I intend to use it to ensure you don’t get home safely at the end of your shift.”

Anyone who informs a LEO about weapons cannot possibly be the real concern, and LEOs know that, and so does the editorial board of the Toledo Blade.  And since the criminal won’t inform a LEO about weapons, everyone really knows that informing LEOs is not relevant to anything at all.

This is really all about being, as the editorial put it, “disrespectful” to LEOs.  Because statists will be statists, and they will always have their armed enablers.

The Ohio Senate should pass this bill.  Why would anyone carrying a firearm want to voluntarily put himself or family in danger from some trigger happy buffoon?

From the “I carry” series.  It’s a nice presentation, but I do have a few nits after you watch the video.

First of all, I don’t like Kydex holsters.  Like you, I have a box full of holsters, and none of them are Kydex.  I don’t even like Kydex knife sheaths.  I much prefer leather or Cordura.

I like the tactical light, and I really like the speed loader.  I have a different belt (Black Hawk Rigger’s Belt), but like the video I recommend a good belt as the foundation.  I’m not much on short fixed blade knives.  If I’m going to carry a fixed blade knife it’s going to he a large one.  Otherwise, I like a rugged folder, and it MUST have serrations.

Here’s an equally interesting video on ten things you didn’t know about the S&W 686.

Michael Brown at WND:

Good Lord.  There are so many confused thoughts, sentiments and alleged doctrines strung together in haphazard fashion that it’s hard to know where to begin.

First of all, let’s stipulate that Islam is a political religion whose main tenet is the implementation of Sharia, by force if necessary.  Warfare is the way of things, and it’s easy to become a Muslim since it involves the mere citation of a few doctrines out loud regardless of belief.  Islam is a religion only for simpletons, amenable to barbaric and bloody conflict.  It was never designed to be anything else.  It was fabricated to keep Muhammad’s band of fighters from splintering and wandering off.

On the other hand, Christianity, true doctrine, includes the robust doctrine of the Holy Spirit who persuades, convinces, and changes the heart of man, regenerating his mind, volition and desires.  We need no such thing as forcible implementation of Christianity, for that would be to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit, who, as the wind, blows wherever He wants as His sovereign will dictates.  It would be obscene to attempt to force conversion since no one but the Holy Spirit can do that.

That must not be confused, as this writer does, with the fact that Christianity doesn’t have to be the pacifist, beatnik, long haired hippie flower child faith that people in America seem to think.  They’ve believe that because they have been taught it by ne’er-do-wells and idiots who don’t know anything about Christian doctrine.  True enough, Christians have been persecuted around the world, from Mesopotamia to the Coptic Christians in Egypt, in Armenia with the genocide at the hands of the Muslim Turks, and on and on the sad, sorry list goes.

But there is a different example for us, namely, the Crusades, where we saw Christian warriors who fought to save the Christian world from extinction.  God preserved the true faith, as He always will, but He used the hands of warriors as secondary causes.  It is this example we should follow, not that of passive Christianity who willingly allows women to be raped, children to be killed or converted, and men to be beheaded, all in the name of love for Christ.  Love for Christ doesn’t mean hatred for fellow men such that we are willing to see them perish at the hands of barbaric mobs.

The author, Michael Brown, doesn’t give much attention to the very important notion that defense of self and others is not only a right, but a duty if one is going to be faithful to the Decalogue.  Furthermore, he isn’t studied in the concept of Good Wars, which is a logical and Biblical extension of the Decalogue.  Christ was crucified for the sins of His people (Matthew 1:21).  Christ also had to take the cup that was before Him because of the will of His father.

Our deaths will provide vicarious atonement for no one, including ourselves.  Christ’s instructions in the sermon on the mount involved personal relationships, not state interactions, covenants, or tyranny.  More to the point, tyranny is an abomination to God’s authority over mankind in all of its aspects.  It violates the warp and woof of the entirety of the Holy Scriptures.

Weapons were sanctioned by God as a consequence of evil in the world, and so it will be until the end.  Simpleton commentaries that assume that Jesus was a Bohemian hippie flower child do nothing to further men’s understanding of true doctrine, or how they should then live.