Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Following up our previous video, this one is a must see.  “All six of my six shots can be accounted for.”  That’s quite a statement.  I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to say that.

So when’s the last time you worked as an emissary and evangelist for the cause?  It’s easy.  And fun.  And you have to be patient.  And you can’t call people ugly names and curse at them.  And you have to teach them.  And you have to go slowly.  And you have to invest a little time.  You’ll lose some converts, and you’ll win some converts.  Do it for the win column.

Reader AZ Guy.

I specifically attended SHOT to speak with FLIR about some of their products. To say they were jerks to me would be an understatement and I actually walked away mid-sentence from one of their smug talking-heads. Fortunately, right across the aisle was US Night Vision corp and David there was happy to spend over 10 minutes educating me. He confirmed what someone wrote above, that FLIR is more interested in 50-pack sales to dot gov and dot mil customers. David also said that Trijicon has better firmware glue between the sensor and the display compared to FLIR and suggested the Reap-IR model. A soon as everyone gets back home next week, I will give them my business. usnightvision.com

I think we’ve seen this song and dance before.

This video, around the 43 second mark.

Shooting windows out of cars.  Grand theft auto and cop-games.  It looks like they’re the same thing, and Springfield Armory is going for that market.  Why you would want to do something like this anywhere except downtown Fallujah in 2004-2007 is anyone’s guess.

After discussing the wisdom and utility of having a lever action carbine and a revolver in the same caliber, I wrote a note to Mr. Anthony Imperato of Henry Repeating Arms.  He wrote back a nice note and explained that they had new models coming but didn’t like announcing until they had the models ready to ship.  Then he sent me some swag.

Today I exchanged another note with him and congratulated Henry’s engineers on a really nice release.  The Henry X Model.

The specifications can he found here (focusing on the one that interests me, the .357 Magnum).

17.4″ barrel, scope-mountable, fiber optic sights, 7-rounds, side gate loading (which was the feature I was waiting for), synthetic stock, and rail at the front (would be useful for hog hunting).  MSRP = $970.

I really want to get one and perform a review, but this one will have to go into the queue.  Wife would not approve at the moment, and neither would the bank account.

Aesop has a post on drop-leg holsters with interesting remarks and also interesting comments to the post.

According to her blog, the above is a dumb holster idea.

“Basically, unless you’re wearing a plate carrier or LBV or something that interferes with a normal belt mount, you should probably leave the drop-legs to Hollywood space pirates and B&W cowboys.”

Oh really?

Point of order.

Look, I can give you eleventy times and places where a drop leg of any type is weapons-grade dumb (self-castration optional); BTDT and got the t-shirt. But I can also think of several situations where it’s pretty wizard-level. And let’s face it, not everyone is a Travis Haley gunslinger, nor trying to be one.

What about for someone who’s not trying to look tacticool at all, but maybe earning a living driving a truck all day, or a cabbie, an Uber/Lyft driver, or a pizza delivery guy?
(Not in NYFC or similar anti-gun locales, but in places where the Constitution still applies most days.)

[ … ]

Sit in a car, a delivery van, or a semi rig cab, and show me your IWB or appendix-carry draw, against, say, a robber or carjacker.With your seatbelts on (in observance of the law, natch), and maybe wearing a jacket, just to make it interesting for you.  I’ll wait.

(We won’t even talk about where that IWB is digging into you all shift, or where your appendix carry muzzle is pointed, sitting in a vehicle seat. And to be sporting, we won’t stipulate that one might be a bit on the portly side.)

Now, sit in a car seat, same conditions, and tell me where your hand falls on your upper leg:
unless you’ve got gorilla-length arms (which you’d need to get to any ankle rig), that’d be right where this holster sits. Handy. Readily available. Not pointed at your junk.
Five stars.

Several things caught my interest in this.  First, I just can’t stand a one-size fits all approach to anything, and it sounds like Aesop agrees.

The Travis Haley video at the link has Travis sporting a Kydex holster with retention.  I hate Kydex, and I’m not an operator in SOC.  I choose not to wear Kydex – just because that’s what I choose to do, and I choose to do what I want.  I’m not interested in being tacticool.

I also hate appendix carry.  I hate sticking a pistol barrel into my groin / lower stomach.  It isn’t comfortable and I refuse to do it.  I can carry at 3:00 (IWB), on my ankle, or OWB.  I simply will not carry IWB appendix.

And I recently discussed how the 1911 fits my arthritic hands because of its narrow frame.  Everyone’s physique, capabilities, and jobs are different.  I can see sitting in a car or truck as a driver and needing something other than high waist carry (my seatbelt interferes frequently with me).

Similarly, Travis can make the suggestion to carry as high as possible with a drop-holster, and with the few I’ve worn I would agree, and he can make the suggestion to simply move gear around to facilitate that, but it’s not that simple.

My Marine son and I have talked about this before.  He hates drop holsters.  When clearing rooms and moving quickly through domiciles, the holster bangs on couches, flops around, and gets in the way of every movement.  It might be nice to say “move gear,” but that involves leaving behind SAW ammunition drums, or some other essential gear he might have needed for 16 hours in Fallujah.  We’re not talking about cops doing a ten minute job.  We’re talking all day and into the night, house to house, room to room, sometimes nothing happens, sometimes gunfire is streaming through the doorway.  Besides, the body armor he was issued wasn’t so amenable to wearing a drop holster high.

He also has an interesting view of the C-clamp or thumb-over-bore grip.  Yea, it looks cool, and he’s used it, but if you think you’re going to use that grip for 16 hours in Fallujah, you’re mistaken.  You can hold that for five minutes, and then you’re using another.  That’s for short-term direct action ops, not long term urban combat.

So in his job he had to use a drop holster.  He hated them.  In other jobs, people might need them.  I have no need of one, but open carry from time to time with a much higher holster, sometimes leather, sometimes Cordura.  I never use Kydex because it’s a free country and I don’t have to.

In the gun community we need to recognize differences in sex, physique, comfort, need, job and simple differences of opinion concerning what people like.

Shooting Illustrated.

On average, with the shorter barrel there was a 12-percent reduction in velocity (100 fps). The smallest difference—26 fps—was recorded with the Buffalo Bore 110-grain Barnes TAC-XP load. The most-extreme variation—200 fps—was recorded with another Buffalo Bore load, the +P Outdoors-man, which utilizes a 158-grain, hard-cast, Keith-style bullet. More important than the velocity loss was how the slower velocities affected terminal performance. This is because when it comes to stopping bad guys, penetration and expansion are what matter.

The average penetration depth for the nine loads fired from both barrel lengths was 14.28 inches. The average penetration variation between barrel lengths was only 0.80 inch. For all practical purposes, that’s irrelevant; individual loads can vary more than that from shot to shot. However, comprising that average were a few extremes worth mentioning.

The 140-grain Hornady XTP load penetrated 2.25 inches deeper from the longer barrel simply because of its 99-fps faster impact velocity. With the 110-grain Hornady Critical Defense load, an 85 fps decrease in velocity caused the bullet to penetrate 1.75 inches less. However, with the 125-grain Golden Saber +P load, the longer barrel delivered 3 inches less penetration because the bullet deformed with a larger frontal diameter at the only slightly higher (57 fps) impact velocity. It should be noted that the hard-cast Outdoorsman load passed through all 28 inches of gelatin, regardless whether it was fired from the 1.9- or 4-inch barrel.

With regard to expansion, there was minimal difference. The average variation in expansion between rounds fired from a 1.9- and a 4-inch barrel was a mere .04 inch. The lone exception was the Winchester Silvertip bullet. Out of the 1.9-inch barrel, it expanded with a frontal diameter of .66 inch, but out of the 4-inch barrel it had a recovered frontal diameter of only .4 inch. The higher impact velocity (132 fps) overly stressed this bullet and caused it to shed 46 percent of its original weight. Out of the shorter barrel, the bullet retained 99 percent of its weight.

There was one load that stood head and shoulders above all others. The Speer 135-grain Gold Dot Short Barrel load only varied .5 inch in penetration depth and .03 inch in expansion, even though there was an 83-fps difference in impact velocity. Obviously, this load is aptly named; Speer purposely engineered it to deliver optimum performance from short barrels. Not only did it perform near identically from both barrel lengths, it delivered what many consider optimum terminal performance from a defensive handgun. Any load that will penetrate in excess of 12 inches and expand to 1.5 or more times its original diameter is noteworthy.

First of all, I think this is good news for ankle-carry small frame and short-barrel revolvers.  There just isn’t much of a loss in performance.

Second, it looks like Speer has done a very good job with .38 Spl. ammunition, calling it the “Short Barrel Load.”

I don’t normally link him up, but this is a fairly nice rifle and he has a good experience with it.  It looks like he’s shooting Wilson Combat 350 Legend magazines, and his accuracy looks good.

Uncle.

Grip angle and natural point of aim will not make you a better shooter.

A gun feeling “good in your hand” also will not.

I’ve been a practicing registered professional engineer for a very long time.  But until recently I had not studied ergonomics and biomechanics, and things like pronation and abduction, axis of action, first, second and third class levers, resistance to circulation, kinetic chains, etc.

I would have been more likely to accept these pronouncements before I engaged in my recent study.  Now, not at all.

I don’t think an experienced shooter should try to bias another, which I wouldn’t do anyway.  Readers have always known that I recommend you shoot what you like, feel comfortable with enough to practice a lot, and get good with what you like and can afford.

I shoot .45 ACP better than I do 9mm and .40.  I don’t know why, because I’ve shot a lot of ammunition, but it’s the way it is, after tens of thousands of rounds.  I also shoot a 1911 better than I do a double stack design.

Here I probably know why.  With the gnarled up knuckles of my fingers from RA, I get good purchase on the slimmer frame of a 1911 easily and efficiently.  If you don’t suffer from RA, you have no basis to comment on what I need to shoot efficiently, whether grip angle, frame design, length of pull, or whatever.

A 1911 isn’t for everybody, and a Wilson Combat pistol isn’t for me because I can’t afford one.

Ergonomics does exist, and it’s a science all its own.  I recommend folks schedule an encounter with the study materials.

Either way, it’s always a little oddball to me when somebody says (a) there is only one way to do this, and it’s my way, or (b) nothing matters, not even the things you think matter, because I say so.