Archive for the 'Guns' Category



Beretta 1301 Tactical Mod 2 Chisel Stock Review

BY Herschel Smith
2 months, 2 weeks ago

Outdoor Life.

Folding stock on the Beretta 1301 Mod 2.

Of the seven tactical shotguns we tested in the roundup, none could approach the speed with which we were able to accurately shoot the Beretta 1301.

The folding stock from Chisel Machining is an elegant bit of kit. It has a lot of qualities that enhance the operation of the Beretta and, if for some reason you have a 1301 without this stock and feel like splurging, I highly recommend the upgrade.

This is a nice piece of kit, and it will fit any version of the Beretta 1301.

It’s not cheap, but if you want the folding stock to make the gun smaller and lighter, this bit of kit seems to be worth it.

Disclosure. I have been paid nothing for this. Go read the review at OL.

Will Sporting Clays Become the Standard Training Defense Against Drones?

BY Herschel Smith
3 months ago

Perhaps so, says John Farnham.

In fact, Benelli is now actively marketing this idea, claiming that their autoloading shotguns, with #4 buckshot, are effective against airborne drones out to 50m, maybe even 100m (although I think 100m is mostly fantasy).

Shotguns are good for and still used in combat anyway. All militaries should be skilled in the use of shotguns. The only thing that gives the individual fighter a chance against drones in the shotgun.

Besides, training with sporting clays will likely improve your defensive shotgun use.

History of the 444 Marlin

BY Herschel Smith
3 months, 1 week ago

Very interesting video.

Fourth Circuit Upholds Maryland AWB

BY Herschel Smith
3 months, 2 weeks ago

Source.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Maryland’s decade-old ban on military-style firearms commonly referred to as assault weapons.

majority of 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges rejected gun rights groups’ arguments that Maryland’s 2013 law is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

Here is Mark Smith on the subject. I still predict the supreme court will find a way to run from the issue. Barrett will side with the women on the court, including Roberts.

AR-15s,Firearms,Guns Tags:

Is Your Pistol Drop Safe?

BY Herschel Smith
3 months, 2 weeks ago

Interesting and amusing video, but I would have preferred to see more done on the 1911 designs.

They didn’t seem to know that there is a difference between the Series 70 and Series 80 designs, as one of the comments note.

Frankly, I’m not sure they have the knowledge base to fully answer the question(s) on 1911, carry status, and various designs that keep it safe (e.g., Springfield Armory’s titanium firing pin design).

If any experts/gunsmiths would like to weigh in, please do so. I’d like to know what you think.

Firearms,Guns Tags:

Surprising Ruling on AWB From NJ

BY Herschel Smith
3 months, 3 weeks ago

So maybe now since there are conflicting opinions on the AWB, the supreme court will take up the issue.

Nah. They’ll keep running from it like screaming little girls.

Note to Smith & Wesson Sales, Marketing and Engineering

BY Herschel Smith
3 months, 3 weeks ago

This note was sent to S&W sales, marketing and engineering.

To whom it may concern,

At my blog we’ve discussed the fact that Smith & Wesson has gotten into the lever action long gun market at long last.

We have noticed that this platform would be ideal for cartridges that are traditionally S&W cartridges, such as the 460 S&W magnum and the 500 S&W magnum.

Besides, at the moment the only way to obtain a rifle chambered in these cartridges is to purchase from Bighorn Armory.

It sure would be nice to see Bighorn Armory get some pricing competition in these calibers.

I would be interested in obtaining a rifle chambered for 460 S&W magnum, and would devote several posts to a review of said rifle.

Thank you for your consideration.

Trump Assassination Attempt: More Than One Weapon, More Than One Shooting Distance

BY Herschel Smith
4 months ago

I’m not going to get too far into the theories yet about everything else associated with the ugly event that unfolded a few days ago, but I have always followed some basic rules for thought. Among the most basic is the need for consistency. I don’t believe narratives – I believe data. After all, I’m an engineer.

There is an idiot writing for Slate named Myke Cole who penned a commentary titled “Was Thomas Crooks a Good Shot? He Didn’t Need to be.” I’ll let you go read the article for yourself, but there are a number of false statements such as the lack of recoil of the AR-15 being good for not jolting the rifle out of position. Specifically, he states “My experience shooting my M4 was that it was incredibly stable, aptly counteracting the recoil that throws shots off.”

Recoil doesn’t throw a shot off. Recoil may make it more difficult to regain sight picture, but it doesn’t throw a shot off. The bullet has long left the barrel before the shooter’s shoulder moves backwards from recoil (or before, say, a bolt action gun rotates about the pivot point and the barrel moves up).

Furthermore, thank goodness the shooter was using a crappy AR-15 build rather than a Tikka bolt action hunting rifle in 6.5CM, .308, Winchester .270 or 300 Win Mag. A Tikka is a << MOA rifle, whereas that crappy AR he was shooting was probably a 2-3 MOA gun.

Anyway, the narrative is apparently that this shooter was so bad that he was thrown off the shooting team in school for being dangerous, but so good because of using an AR-15 that he could take a single cold bore shot and come within 1 MOA of killing the president (without him turning his head), but then so bad (and here is the real rub for me) that a man on the very back row of the bleachers to Trump’s very left (looking at the stage) was shot and killed. That poor man was a long, long ways from Trump.

If something is inconsistent, it cannot be true. Remember what I said about having rules for my life? I don’t believe things that are inconsistent. This had bothered me since the shooting. I never accepted that we know the full story, and we may never know the full story. But there is a reason that man on the back row of the bleachers perished that day, and it wasn’t because the shooter was good, or bad, or so good, or so bad, or was using an AR-15.

There is much more to this story, and you know it. We all know it, the FedGov knows that we know it, and they can’t make up lies fast enough to cover this up. Trump’s team never requested more SS protection. But oops, now that we’re being investigated, we regret to inform you that we lied and maybe they really did request more SS assets. So sorry.

The Secret Service, after initially denying turning down requests for additional security, is now acknowledging some may have been rejected.

Now acknowledging means we lied and we want to cover that up as some sort of confusion before the investigation castigates us. But now, on to the things I have concluded thus far that make some sense of the poor man in the last row of the bleachers being shot.

Eleven shots were fired that day. Not 6, not 7, not 8, not 9, not 10, but eleven shots. Eleven shots were fired that day. It would be interesting to have examined the weapon the shooter used, and to recover the bullets he shot if possible, and mostly to have recovered the spent brass from the roof. But as local LEOs pressure washed the roof that very day, we will never know. Someone knows, but not us. Not you and me. I doubt there were eleven spent brass casings on the roof.

Next, the shots were fired at four different and distinct distances that day. Not one, not two, not three, but four different distances. What? They didn’t really think we weren’t going to analyze the audio signatures from that day? I will have to say that while not conclusive, I’m not so sure that the figure on the water tower wasn’t a human. But as of yet we don’t know. After all, while the shooter used a drone, the SS had no assets in the air.

There was an open window in the building adjacent to the roof of the building the shooter was on, and more troubling, the single image I’ve seen of the roof of the building shows the shooter’s rifle being some distance away from the shooter (I estimate 20′).

You can fill in the blanks for what we don’t know, or do know, or suspect, but we already know the things I said above. The narrative they have posited is inconsistent and thus cannot be true. There were eleven shots fired that day. Those shots were fired from at least four different distances.

There was more than one shooter (the would-be assassin) or two shooters (the would-be assassin plus the sniper team who took him out).

Prove me wrong.

Idiots Who Believe The Trump Shooting Was Fake Or Staged

BY Herschel Smith
4 months ago

They’re out there – people who believe strange things about bullet ballistics as if there’s some sort of magic to the science. Interestingly, it’s often the people who think they are the most dedicated to science who believe it has some sort of magical properties.

Polling data from Morning Consult shows 34% of registered Democrats believe it’s “definitely credible” or “probably credible” that the shooting was staged, according to The Washington Free Beacon. Another 18% of Democrats don’t know/aren’t sure whether the shooting was real.

Staged. As if it’s possible to shoot << 1 MOA into an ear, and as if someone would put themselves at risk to pull something like that off.

Here are a couple of good videos, but before we get into them, remember a few things. There is a difference between accuracy and precision. Accuracy has to do with how well your gun does at targeting the same view you have in your crosshairs. Precision has to do with how well your gun groups even if the gun is zeroed on the target.

When we speak of a sub-MOA gun, or a 1 MOA gun, or 1.5 MOA gun, it’s almost always an imprecise figure of speak. Technically, we should speak of a gun that is _____ precise (fill in the blank with 1 MOA or whatever), tested with 5 rounds, or 7 rounds, or 25 rounds, or 100 rounds, using cold bore conditions, with a relative error of ___% (or fractional standard deviation of ___).

It’s easy to say that a gun shoots 1 MOA. It’s much hard to shoot the requisite number of rounds with that gun to get a passing standard deviation with the data. A 3-shot or 5-shot group rarely proves anything. The grouping will increase with increasing number of shots (even under cold bore conditions) until the tails of the distribution are filled in and you have met the Central Limit Theorem. I think most readers will understand what I’ve said here.

This is math, and I know what I’m talking about.

It’s a shame that people rely on politics to inform them rather than admit when they don’t understand mathematics. The inability to admit ignorance is called stupidity. Ignorance isn’t a sin. Stupidity is.

Now to the videos. No one in their right mind would believe you could pull off a fake or staged shooting like this to damage just an ear, especially with a cheap rifle using a red dot sight rather than magnified optics.

Chris Costa Reviews the Smith & Wesson 1854 Lever Gun 44 Magnum

BY Herschel Smith
4 months, 2 weeks ago

I like it that S&W is in the lever gun market now. Frankly I just don’t like the polymer furniture. But they do sell a walnut gun that is beautiful.

One commenter observes that it would be nice for S&W to come out with more calibers, and specifically, the 460 S&W mag and 500 S&W mag. After all, they are S&W cartridges.

That would provide some nice competition with the 45-70.


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