Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

There’s actually something very important you don’t learn until the end of the video.  I watched it all, and if you intend to purchase this gun, I’d watch the whole thing.

Report from South Carolina.

“We’re at a standstill both with gun reform and gun expansion,” Charleston Democratic Sen. Marlon Kimpson said this week. “I don’t think you’ll see any of those bills come to the floor this year and, if they do, it will be purely for political posturing.”

Senate Bill 139, which  would allow anyone to carry a weapon without a permit, is on the Senate calendar for second reading, but falls further behind every day on the chamber’s contested slate. Carrying weapons without a permit is known by supporters as “constitutional carry.”

But most bills on either side of the issue remain without hearings in committees. Kimpson is a sponsor of Senate Bill 731, which would expand background checks, also known as closing the Charleston loophole. The bill has been pushed every year since a white supremacist slayed nine black church goers in Charleston in 2015. It would extend the wait time for FBI background checks from three days to five days in South Carolina.  It is stuck without a hearing in the Judiciary Committee.

A guy by the name of Peter Zalka is at the root of trouble-making on this.  Listen to his reasons, and make sure to notice the headline (“Pro-Second Amendment Group Concerned Over ‘Open Carry’ Bills).

“Passage of this bill will allow anyone to openly carry a revolver or semi-automatic handgun in any public establishment such as a grocery store, movie theater, or Walmart. Spending legislative time and effort to pass any laws that would make legal the open carry of handguns (with or without a permit) makes South Carolina no safer at best, with significant negative effects on our communities a given.”

Zalka called the proposed legislation a threat to public safety and public health.

“The world would look like a different place,” he said. “Imagine being in Charleston at a park or Spoleto, something like that, and all around us there are folks wearing their guns on their hip. They have no training, no permit, no understanding of South Carolina laws.”

Zalka said he spent the day hand-delivering letters of opposition to lawmakers, including letters from physicians, law enforcement, and other nonprofit organizations.

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Groups like South Carolina Carry feel the opposition is simply fearmongering.

“We are surrounded by open carry states. North Carolina has open carry, Georgia has open carry, Tennessee has open carry,” said Dan Roberts, Outreach Director for South Carolina Carry. “They all have vibrant tourism industries and no problem with people being terrified at the sight of a firearm. So, is South Carolina somehow special? It’s ridiculous.”

He had a moment of truth there.  This is all about the effete gentry class in Charleston wanting to make sure their tourism isn’t affected.

But the truth is also told by South Carolina Carry.  ““We are surrounded by open carry states. North Carolina has open carry, Georgia has open carry, Tennessee has open carry,” said Dan Roberts, Outreach Director for South Carolina Carry. “They all have vibrant tourism industries and no problem with people being terrified at the sight of a firearm.”

There won’t be blood running in the streets, and that lie was told in Texas, Oklahoma and everywhere open carry has been legalized.  It’s been debunked, so let that one go, controllers.

So if you’re a South Carolina reader, have you joined South Carolina Carry?  Are you active in this fight?  The enemy sure is.  Because if you’re not active, you have no right to complain when you’re compared to California, Hawaii and New York.

American Rifleman has the scoop, but Ammoland does a little better job by giving stats.

Actually, neither had the scoop on me.  I had discussed this very gun with Steve Mayer at RRA back in December of 2019.

My only complaint about Rock River Arms guns is that the ones that I’ve had seem to have weighty front ends.  I had always thought they needed to be a little more on the cutting edge for reduced-weight hand guards.

With the unloaded weight of this gun coming in at 6.8 pounds, it seems like they’ve taken up the challenge.

Steve also points out that if you don’t want to buy the whole gun, they sell the upper separately.

This picture comes to us via reddit/firearms.

It is said that “Marine Sgt. Rudy Soto Jr. was atop the chancery roof, armed only with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver. The U.S. ambassador at the time did not believe the Marine Security Guard needed M-16 rifles. His shotgun jammed, and the small-caliber handgun was next to useless at that range.”

That isn’t necessarily related to this picture, although this picture appears to be of a Marine holding a revolver during the Tet offensive near the U.S. embassy.

As to the issue of a “small-caliber handgun” being next to useless at that range, whatever.  A 9mm pistol would have been equally useless.  That’s not what interests me.

Readers know that I’ve had a fascination with just how far (back and forward) in history revolver usage goes in war.

Paul Harrell is up first.

One thing we learn from this is that you need to hit your intended target to achieve slow-down and energy dump.  Walls can be very little protection, depending upon the choice of gun and round.  Next up, Shawn Ryan.

His presentation, along with Paul’s above, shows that an AR-15 is a bad choice for home defense if there is a possibility of hitting nearby (neighbor) homes.  Rifle rounds have a lot of penetrating ability.

Shawn’s presentation shows that personal defense rounds dump enough energy in the target, interior and exterior walls that persons who may be in other locations outside the home would be safe.

This all points to pistol caliber PDW (pistol carbines) being the safest gun to shoot in neighborhoods, since the lower muzzle velocity combined with the hollow nose and walls give enough energy to kill the intruder but not enough to cause penetration through exterior walls, while also providing the aiming of a rifle.

But the moral of the story is to hit your target.  That’s where the energy gets deposited.

Shooting Sports USA.

Armalite’s original blueprints specified a 20-inch barrel, 12-inch (measured from the upper-receiver face) gas-port location and a ballpark 12,500 PSI gas-port pressure level. Those are the “rifle” specifications, which work just fine. Therefore, the problem isn’t in the design. Rather, it’s in the redesign. The shorter the front end is, the more redesign has its influence. Carbine-length barrels and especially pistol-length barrels create a condition where using the same ammo there is higher gas pressure at the gas port.

An AR-15 has a “direct impingement” system. Propellant gas is bled off through a gas port in the barrel, this gas goes through the gas manifold or “gas block,” through a gas tube, and into the carrier key atop the bolt carrier, and that’s the end of the line—the resultant force deposited into the key starts the bolt-carrier assembly in motion.

Think of this gas system as a pressure chamber with two valves—one at the gas port and the other at the muzzle, and the moving bullet opens each valve as it crosses each plane. Therefore, the spacing of the valves matters greatly.

The better way to think of this is each is an orifice (even though an adjustable gas block is an adjustable orifice), not a valve.

As the bullet enters the barrel bore and moves forward, the space (volume) behind the bullet is increasing, which lowers the pressure of the contained gas behind it. More available barrel-bore volume before the gas port translates to lower pressure at the port. So, post-gas-port barrel length influences how long the system is “sealed” under full pressure, and the shorter the length, the shorter time. Again, the bullet is serving as a plug that’s sealing all the pressure in the system—until it exits.

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Approximate figures for M855 (genuine 5.56 NATO) chamber pressure is about 60,000 PSI; pistol-location gas port pressure, 50,000; carbine-location, 33,000; mid-length, 27,000; rifle-location, 19,000. Thus, 5.56 NATO is hot and getting hotter, and it has been for years.

Installing a heavier buffer and also a stouter buffer spring buys time. Both increase resistance to the bolt unlocking, thus delaying it from moving. The heavier buffer better resists movement and moves slower. The stouter spring increases in-battery load against the bolt carrier, increasing its resistance to initial movement, and the carrier also then moves slower coming back against the buffer.

“Just put an adjustable gas block on it” is also routine advice, and, yes, that helps, but ideally such devices should be used to tune function. If it’s needed just to make the gun run, then the chances are certain something else was missed, most likely in the architecture. That’s where we’ll find the cure.

[ … ]

That’s easy enough with a carbine-length front, 16-inch barrel. A mid-length gas port is located 2 inches farther ahead of carbine-standard. It effectively also shortens the post-port distance by the same amount meaning lower pressure getting in and a shorter time the system is under maximum pressure. Both are good things.

If you’ve got a hankering for an AR-platform pistol, choosing a 10.5- or 11.5-inch barrel makes it possible to get a carbine-length gas system affixed, and that is a 3-inch additional length over the common 4-inch pistol-port, and a significant reduction in post-port length. That really tames a little gun.

I think it’s becoming fairly routine advice to choose the right gas system for your gun as a first step to correct over- or under-gassed systems, rather than tinkering with the gas block.

This is what the author is calling the “architectural” solution to the problem.  This isn’t exactly the same thing as having an adjustable gas block on a new AR-10 6.5 Creedmoor with a fixed 20″ barrel for folks who want to shoot hotter loads or those who want to hand load specialized cartridges and need to make slight adjustments on the block to ensure reliable operation.