Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

For those of you who are custom gun makers and/or reloaders.

At Outdoor Life.

They cover Magpul, Caldwell, Javelin, Warne and Harris.

I don’t like the Magpul, and frankly I’m not sure I really like any of them.

I do like the Accu-Tac bipod, but of course it’s more expensive.  There’s no accounting for taste, except that mine tend towards the more expensive for whatever reason.

Do readers have suggestions on bipods they like, and why?

I think Tim is underplaying the importance of functional reliability, and thus doesn’t appreciate the radial delayed system in CMMG.  It’s very hard to get reliable feeding, bolt cycle and operation with pistol rounds in a carbine and CMMG has done that.

But that’s just my opinion.

At Shooting Illustrated.

I’m not sure what makes these so great.

On another note, I was wondering if there’s something different for the same or less price as Pelican out there?  I recall I stumbled on a booth at a gun show a few years ago demonstrating their cases (both rifle and pistol), and I was very impressed.  I can’t recall their names.  If I can find a card from the show I’ll post it.

Related point, Condition 1 seems to have a loyal following and be pretty sturdy.

Any comments or input?

I clean my muzzle loader every time I shoot it.  I’ll let an AR-15 go several hundred rounds before I even ponder whether I should maybe think about planning to plan to clean it some time in the future (but not today).

I know a guy who proudly stated to me that “The sun won’t got down on me before I clean a gun I shot that day.”  The only reason I didn’t tell him he’s wasting his time is that he shoots CommBloc guns with corrosive ammunition.

News from Springfield, with some running commentary.

SPRINGFIELD — Smith & Wesson president and CEO Mark Smith says the company doesn’t want to make an enemy of the state of Massachusetts.

But he feels at least some lawmakers have made an enemy of Smith & Wesson with legislation that would ban the manufacture in Massachusetts of firearms that are unlawful to sell here.

The legislation is a response to mass shootings involving semiautomatic rifles made by Smith & Wesson and other companies. Advocates say high-capacity magazines and high rates of fire make the guns too dangerous for civilian hands.

Whether you have enemies is sometimes not up to you.

“We are under attack by the state of Massachusetts,” Smith said Friday.

CEO for two years and operations director for a decade before that, Smith gave a tour of the bustling, half-million-square-foot factory a day after announcing the company would move its headquarters and 550 jobs in production and management to gun-friendly Maryville, Tennessee. It’s not a move the company wanted to make, he said.

It will cost $125 milli million “that I didn’t want to spend,” Smith said.

Riding a wave of brisk gun sales, mostly to first time-buyers, Smith & Wesson said revenue hit $1.1 billion in the most recent fiscal year, up from $529.6 million a year earlier.

“Why would I disrupt that?” he said.

Smith & Wesson said it is relocating a total of 750 jobs to Tennessee from Springfield and its other sites. The company is also closing a plastics factory in Connecticut and a Missouri distribution center it opened in 2019.

Construction in Maryville is expected to begin later in 2021 and be substantially complete by the summer of 2023. No employees will move for two years.

A substantial operation will stay in Springfield, including the forge, machine shop and revolver assembly. There will still be 1,000 jobs here, many of them highly skilled and high-paying, the company said.

I understand the felt need to keep highly skilled revolver mechanics on staff rather than lose them due to a forced move, but this may not be up to S&W.  More on that later.

In just more than three years when the transition is complete, Smith & Wesson’s revolvers will still be manufactured here and stamped “Springfield, Massachusetts.” But the company’s semiautomatic rifles — the industry calls them modern sporting rifles while opponents say assault rifles — and semiautomatic pistols will be made in Tennessee.

News reports from Tennessee said Smith & Wesson may buy the land for only $1. It is part of a larger incentive package that includes seven-year tax abatement that could result in about $8 million in company savings, according to sources The Daily Times granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the deal.

That’s corporate welfare, and in I’m opposed to it.  The move should have been made a very long time ago, and the market should dictate where they move, not incentives.

Smith & Wesson said its move was prompted by legislation proposed earlier this year by Springfield state Rep. Bud L. Williams and others that would outlaw part of its manufacturing business. That includes feeding devices capable of containing 10 or more rounds, trigger pulls requiring pressure less than 10 pounds, threaded barrels that accept silencers and other military-looking hardware.

“They are moving their headquarters. That’s what corporate does. We are trying to save lives,” Williams said this week.

John Rosenthal, a co-founder of Stop Handgun Violence, which backs the bill, said Thursday’s announcement came the same day as the fourth-anniversary of the Las Vegas shooting where a gunman fired on a concert crowd. Fifty-eight people were killed that night, and two others died later. More than 850 were injured.

If that’s what really happened in Las Vegas, then release and honest and true report explaining how the room was spotless after thousands of rounds had been discharged in that room, rather than covered in soot, carbon and powder residue.

Smith said Friday that it was the proposed law that prompted the move. The products the legislation singles out are what consumers want, and they make up 60% percent of Smith & Wesson’s sales, he said. Limiting those products for sale to the military or law enforcement isn’t feasible because Smith & Wesson’s share of those markets is too small.

Be sure to understand that it’s not just the AR-15 suite of products that the communists don’t like in our hands, it’s the M&P pistols too.

Smith — no relation to the company co-founder — said it doesn’t matter that the proposal is just a bill, one of dozens filed each year that often don’t get a hearing, much less a vote on Beacon Hill.

“Honestly, we know we could have defeated it this session,” Smith said. “But it will be back the next session and the session after that.”

It will take years to move the operation, he said. So if the company waited for the bill to pass, it’d be too late.

“I just can’t operate with that big a risk hanging over the company,” he said. “We only started this process once the bill was filed. Then and only then.”

Once Smith and his executives decided they had to move, they found it made sense to close the Missouri and Connecticut plants as well and consolidate some operations in Tennessee.

The plastic parts from Deep River, Connecticut, go into the rifles and pistols, so that needs to be near the assembly lines. The distribution system needed to move from Missouri.

“But it was the need to move from this law that triggered all the other discussions,” Smith said. “We didn’t want to do this.”

The forges, giant steel hammers that shape aluminum or carbon steel, pounding parts out of metal blocks, are hard to move. So are hundreds of computer numerical control milling machines used to shape the metal. That’s why they’ll stay in Springfield.

Revolvers don’t have attributes targeted by the proposed law, so work assembling them will also stay here. It’s painstaking work that takes a great deal of training and experience. Assemblers dry-fire the weapons and adjust them based on the sound of the metallic click until they get it just right. It’s why the jobs that are staying are so highly paid.

You should move everything, excepting nothing at all, not even the heavy equipment.  Oh, and rather than “Revolvers don’t have attributes targeted by the proposed law,” you should have said “Revolvers don’t have attributes targeted by the proposed law at the moment.”  Try, try to understand.  It isn’t just semi-automatics they communists don’t like.  It’s any firearm in the hands of anyone but a state actor.  Semiautomatics are just in line first.  They’ll eventually have the bolt action deer hunting rights locked up tight at a state armory to be checked out only by state-approved hunters for the duration of the hunt.  Anything else that fires a projectile will be anathema in the hands of anyone who isn’t functioning on behalf of the state.

“If I was doing this to save a dime, why would I leave the highest-paid jobs behind?” Smith said. “We love Springfield. We love Mayor (Domenic J.) Sarno. We didn’t want to leave.”

You shouldn’t love him.  He hates you and wants to see you out of business.  And you shouldn’t want to stay in a place like that.

Some workers whose jobs are not moving have asked to relocate anyway. That’ll open up a Springfield position for someone on the relocation list who wants to stay.

“We want to take as many of our workers with us as we can,” he said.

Good.  You should take all of them, and if some don’t want to leave and they happen to be revolver mechanics, then make them understand that they won’t have a job in two years and in the mean time it’s their responsibility to train other revolver mechanics.

“The message is to highlight the area,” he said. “We are going to be talking about what it’s like to raise your family here. We are going to talk about residential prospects, what housing is like.”

Muir said the region sells itself as an outdoor recreation hub close to Knoxville, with the University of Tennessee, and to Nashville.

“Our pitch, at least in Blount County, is that we are the peaceful side of the Smokies,” he said. “Get a cabin and enjoy the mountains peacefully. It’s just a way to get away and relax in a calm area.”

Get out of communist areas like Massachusetts, and towards more liberty.  You won’t regret it.

ZeroHedge.

Less than six months after gunmaker Kimber Mfg. moved from New York to Alabama due in part to ‘gun and business-friendly support’ from the red state, Smith & Wesson is moving out of Massachusetts – and will relocate its headquarters to Maryville, Tennessee in 2023, according to Bloomberg.

The nation’s largest gun manufacturer cited restrictive legislation currently under consideration in Mass., which if enacted, would prohibit the company from manufacturing certain guns in the state they’ve called home for nearly 170 years.

“These bills would prevent Smith & Wesson from manufacturing firearms that are legal in almost every state in America and that are safely used by tens of millions of law-abiding citizens every day exercising their Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights, protecting themselves and their families, and enjoying the shooting sports,” said SWBI CEO Mark Smith.

“While we are hopeful that this arbitrary and damaging legislation will be defeated in this session, these products made up over 60% of our revenue last year, and the unfortunate likelihood that such restrictions would be raised again led to a review of the best path forward for Smith & Wesson,” he added.

The move will bring 750 jobs to Maryville, along with a $125 million investment, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development.

Lower cost of living was also a factor in the move, according to Smith.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said in a statement that the move will cost the city 550 job, which he described as ‘devastating’ for the families involved. The city said they would attempt to work with the gunmaker to try and retain 1,000 remaining jobs.

According to a person familiar with the move, the company will keep some production in Springfield.

The good.  S&W is moving.  What took you so long?  You should have made this move a long time ago to grab a part of Gun Valley Moves South (and here is Part II).

The bad.  You should have made this move a long time ago.  You waited too long, just at the time when housing prices are at a peak.

The ugly.  You’re leaving some manufacturing in Massachusetts.  This is a bad move, and you’ll live to regret it, from unionization from one plant to another, to further restrictions on firearms manufacturing.  What – you don’t really think this is the last, do you?  It’s better to get it all done at one time.

If you recall when discussing the Beretta 1301, I posed the question why Ernest used mineral spirits to clean shotguns rather than routine stuff (e.g., Hoppes solvent).  I never got any answers from my smart readers, so I posed the question to Langdon Tactical, and got this answer.

Hoppes is a Bore solvent only. Mineral Spirits cleans the inside and outside and doesn’t leave any residue. We recommend Lucas gun oil, we have found that it is the best overall oil.

Slugs are personal preference, you’re able to use them no issues, but it’s all preference whether to use rifled or not. We don’t recommend any chokes, we believe what the gun comes with works the best!

I may have to try out Lucas gun oil.  I don’t have any of that.

I thought you might be interested.

CTD.

Super-Full And Extra-Full Chokes

Known as gobbler getters, these are ideally suited for the headshots necessary in turkey hunting. They have extra-tight constrictions and the densest patterns.

Full Choke

A full choke has tight constriction and a dense pattern, delivering approximately 70 percent of a shell’s total pellets in a 30″ circle at 40 yards. It’s best for trap shooting, waterfowl pass shooting, turkey hunting, and buckshot loads.

Modified Choke

The modified is characterized by less constriction than full choke, delivering approximately 60 percent of a shell’s total pellets in a 30″ circle at 40 yards. Excellent for all-around hunting of waterfowl, long-range flushing of upland birds (such as late-season pheasant and sharptail grouse) as well as other small game. It’s also used for trap shooting.

Improved Cylinder Choke

Even less constricted than modified, the improved cylinder distributes approximately 50 percent of a shell’s total pellets in a 30″ circle at 40 yards. Ideal for close-in small-game shooting, upland bird hunting (such as quail, grouse, and pheasant) as well as hunting waterfowl close over decoys. Rifled slugs also perform very well with this choke.

Cylinder Bore

A cylinder bore provides no constriction and distributes approximately 40 percent of a shell’s total pellets in a 30″ circle at 40 yards. It’s most often used by law enforcement for service shotguns.

Skeet Choke

A skeet choke is a specialty choke that sends approximately 50 percent of a shell’s total pellets in a 30″ circle at 25 yards. This type is designed to deliver optimum patterns for close-range skeet shooting.

I found this informative as a good summary, but one of the best things I learned was in the comments.  I confess I didn’t know this.

Q: Is it safe to shoot 12 gauge slug on the Benelli M4 with a modified choke?

A1: It is not recommended to shoot slugs through a modified choke. Cylinder and Improved Cylinder are acceptable for rifled slugs, as they have the least constriction. Additionally, you can purchase a rifled choke, which will allow you to shoot sabot slugs (at what level of accuracy, I am not sure).

A2: Not only can shooting a slug through a full choke be potentially hazardous to the barrel (and in very extreme cases the shooter), accuracy will typically be poor since the slug is heavily compressed as it passes through the choke. I typically recommend cylinder bore or improved cylinder for shooting rifled slugs, though I know some old timers that swore by their modified chokes for slug shooting.

If some shotgunners would like to add to this, do so in the comments.