Archive for the 'Ammunition' Category

Link.

I’m guessing this is a Bass Pro Shop or Cabela’s.

From WiscoDave.

If anyone wants to know what the temperature of the country feels like at the current moment, we just sold 300,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition in less than 15 minutes.@Timcast @sourpatchlyds @philthatremains @IanCrossland @AdamCrigler @iansmithfitness @MLChristiansen

— Fenix "Kulak" Ammunition (@FenixAmmunition) January 15, 2021

This isn’t helping availability or cost.

I wouldn’t doubt it, there’s money to be made.  I’m not certain who’s declaring that no ammunition is being made, but I don’t think they understand basic supply and demand economics.

That’s not the name of a court case, but I expect it will be in the future.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has accused the Fort Worth-based website Cheaper Than Dirt, which primarily sells firearms, ammunition and hunting gear, of price gouging at the start of the pandemic.

The AG’s office identified over 4,000 sales that involved price gouging and has directed Cheaper Than Dirt to pay $402,786 in refunds to consumers, according to court documents filed this month.

Over 100 people have complained to the AG’s office about Cheaper Than Dirt, the Houston Chronicle reported earlier this year.

The same week that Gov. Greg Abbott made a pandemic-related disaster declaration in Texas, ammunition orders to Cheaper Than Dirt substantially increased. In response to the increased demand for its products, the website raised the prices on hundreds of its products, according to the AG’s office.

The Texas AG’s office has identified ammunition as a necessity and, as a result, is arguing that those price hikes were against the Texas Business and Commerce Code. The code forbids businesses from “taking advantage of a disaster” by selling “fuel, food, medicine, lodging, building materials, construction tools or another necessity at an exorbitant or excessive price.”

Additionally, the following weekend that Abbott issued the disaster declaration, Cheaper Than Dirt manually raised its prices outside of its normal schedule.

“Making these manual ‘real-time’ price changes caused confusion for consumers because the prices consumers saw on the website pages when selecting items for purchase were different from the prices that appeared in the final check-out cart,” the AG’s office said in court documents.

Some of the comments I’ve seen online point to declarations of guns and ammunition as being essential and necessary, and you can’t benefit from that in a time of emergency (not that I agree with Covid being an “emergency”) and then raise prices without running afoul of the law.

On the other hand, making stores and products available in an emergency isn’t the same thing as buying them for you, or even ensuring price controls.

I don’t believe in price controls.  No free market advocate believes in price controls.  I’ve seen the CTD ads in my in-box and if I stupidly open them, I usually laugh out loud at the prices.

You can find better ammo prices elsewhere by a large margin.  It just requires a little work.  I choose to ignore the CTD ads, almost never visit their web site, and just don’t shop there.  They’ll probably never get any business back from me.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.  Screw the customer, lose your customer base.  The government should have nothing to do with it.  However, I will say that letting people drop things in online carts and then raising the prices is pretty stupid.  There should be a time-out on carts, and users should be informed what that is.

An informative video from a legend.

Ammoland.

The Army Ordnance folks around the beginning of the 20th Century had seen the failures of round-nosed, full-metal jacketed bullets in the British .303 rifles, and our own .30 U.S. Government (aka “.30-40 Krag”) in stopping a determined armed assailant.

They reasoned that since their .38 Long Colt Model 1892 revolvers had shown similarly poor results, and the re-issuance of the .45 SAA (Single Action Arm) into combat had added to the eventual defeat of the Philippine Moros, our military review board sought to adopt another large bore handgun. The British too paralleled this thought process, and as early as the mid-1880s they had already started issuing some of the first .455 Webley revolvers as a result.

By the middle of the first decade of the 20th Century, Colt was developing, along with the genius designer of most of their handguns, John Browning, a .45 cal. semi-automatic pistol. While the original development utilized a 200gr bullet at approximately 900 feet per second in 1906, the Ordnance Department subsequently desired a cartridge that approximated the old .45 Colt revolver cartridge in power, while being shorter in length than the substitute standard .45 S&W Schofield round.

Thus, the 230gr RN FMJ bullet at 850 fps nominal speed was created, and it found a home in the concurrently developed Colt Model 1911 pistol, the longest serving pistol of any military force to the best of my knowledge, some 75 years of official issue.

In the civilian world however, it has remained as popular as ever. Due to the existence of new generation jacketed hollow point bullets, it still retains its terminal ballistic advantages of expansion and consistent penetration compared to smaller bore diameter offerings. A recent detailed study indeed illustrated that the Federal HST 230gr standard pressure rounds offer 16” of penetration and consistent 0.85” of controlled expansion with no bullet fragmentation in an unofficial “FBI heavy clothing test” into simulated ballistic gelatin.

One other thing that is not mentioned much is that its stopping power is achieved without superior “sectional density,” high pressure, or high velocity. It operates at a very low 21,000 copper units of pressure, it has no supersonic crack, and is, therefore, nearly ideal for use with a suppressor. The recoil, while “there,” is more a push than a quick snap, while controlled-pairs shooting aimed rapid-fire are pretty easy to do out to ten yards and can usually be within an inch of each other. I’ve done it, and I’m just not that great a shot.

Moreover, the . 45 ACP cartridge has long borne the brunt of technical development as a precision target shooting round as well as being a supremely controllable defense round. In both the original 230gr RN,FMJ format for “hardball matches,” as well as reduced weight 185gr and 200g target matches, it remains one of the most accurate service pistol rounds extant.

And of course, with the hotter loads you can get from Buffalo Bore and Double Tap, you can send a 230 grain ball at around 1050 FPS, or a 450 SMC at 1120 FPS, and be okay for defense against large predators.

I like the push instead of the snap.  I love shooting the .45 ACP more than any other cartridge, pistol or rifle.

To me it’s not just a competition or self defense round.  If somebody said, “Hey we’re headed to the range, grab a gun,” the first thing I’d reach for is a 1911.

This is not good news.

At the same time that gun sales have skyrocketed as more Americans reach for a firearm to protect themselves from threats real and perceived, warning shots abound that should have gun rights advocates on edge.

The latest is the court ruling allowing a lawsuit against the Cabela’s store in Cheektowaga to proceed after it sold ammunition to then- 19-year-old Jake Klocek, who used it in a handgun to accidentally kill 19-year-old Anthony King, a friend he’d invited over while housesitting for an Elma couple.

The suit by the victim’s family contends that Cabela’s – a defendant along with Klocek and the Elma couple – “knew or should have known its failure to use reasonable care” in selling the ammunition to someone like Klocek would result in serious injury or death.

But that claim hinges on the fact that Klocek, under 21 at the time, could not legally buy handgun ammunition.

However, he could legally buy long gun ammunition. And as Cabela’s attorneys point out, the ammunition in question – .45 ACP – can be used in both handguns and rifles. If the clerk asks and the buyer says it’s for a rifle, how is the store supposed to know, short of having a polygraph machine at every register?

Nevertheless, the fact that both a State Supreme Court justice and an appellate court allowed the case to proceed is likely to ripple through the retail firearms industry. If the case makes it to trial and King’s parents win, it’s easy to envision it precipitating more of the types of marketplace constrictions that anti-gun politicians can only dream about.

[ … ]

If this case proceeds to trial and Cabela’s is found liable, I would expect it – and parent company Bass Pro Shops – to join the list of businesses making it harder or impossible for law-abiding shooters to find the guns and supplies they want.

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) doesn’t matter to these courts because no one will enforce it.  Federal Marshals won’t be dispatched to arrest local judges who let stupid things like this go forward, and the Supreme Court hasn’t the balls to take up something like this.  So lower courts do what they way to do, unencumbered by any rules or social mores.

As if things could get any worse for gun owners and ammunition buyers (guns won’t work without ammunition), keep this in mind for the future.

Shooting Illustrated.

CCI’s Clean-22 coating technology has been around for awhile now, helping rimfire shooters getting the most range and power from the .22 WMR. New for 2020, CCI has introduced the Maxi-Mag Clean-22 segmented hollow point (SHP), which features a polymer bullet coating that reduces copper and lead fouling in the barrel with leaving excess residue.

““New Maxi-Mag Clean-22 SHP is the industry’s only segmenting hollow-point bullet in .22 WMR,” according to CCI Product Line Manager Dan Compton. “Personally, I like its Olive Drab Green color on the bullet which gives it a hunting look, and I can’t wait to hear stories and see photos from our happy customers who use this new magnum rimfire round on prairie dog towns, in the squirrel woods and for their fur trapping efforts.”

The SHP bullet splits into three equal sizes upon impact, greatly expanding wound channels on small game, including varmints. The 46-grain bullet features a polymer design and allows for separation at lower velocities and longer distances than other conventional copper jacket designs.

It’d be interesting to see ballistic gel tests with this round.