Archive for the 'Guns' Category

NYT.

The Biden administration is closing a major loophole in a new federal rule intended to regulate the sale of pistol parts that can readily be turned into untraceable homemade firearms, in an aggressive expansion of its crackdown on so-called ghost guns.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives directed vendors who sell partially finished frames of Glock-style handguns — the pistol grip and firing mechanism — to treat them like fully completed firearms, which are subject to federal regulations. The move, outlined in an open letter to federally licensed gun dealers, requires sellers to mark the parts with serial numbers, and for buyers to undergo criminal background checks.

The guidance could severely restrict the sale of unregulated and untraceable “80 percent” frames and receivers that have been linked to thousands of crimes, a top goal of the gun control movement. Such parts only require simple alterations to become operational.

The move, should it survive likely legal challenges from gun rights groups, would be among the most significant executive actions President Biden has taken to fulfill his campaign promise to stem the scourge of handgun violence, an effort highlighted by the passage of a bipartisan gun deal in June.

But federal officials told The New York Times earlier this month that the leadership of A.T.F. had done little to stop retailers from continuing to sell the unfinished, unregulated frames, outside of the kits.

A.T.F. officials said that they had been simply weighing various legal approaches before issuing their guidance on handguns. But they were also clearly under pressure to toughen the policy, and have spent the past few weeks working on the new guidance in conjunction with senior lawyers at the Justice Department and White House officials, according to three administration officials familiar with the situation.

Under the new guidance, vendors and manufacturers who fail to comply with the technical requirements outlined in the letter would face penalties ranging from the possible loss of their federal licenses to criminal prosecution.

Yet the move, which the Justice Department described as a clarification of the regulation, is not without risk. Because the rule was created through executive action, rather than a statute validated by Congress, it has given companies confidence that they can keep selling individual gun parts.

Administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss possible litigation, said the new guidance would almost certainly be challenged in federal court on the grounds that it violates the Gun Control Act of 1968, which allows people to build firearms for their personal use without submitting to background checks or applying serial numbers.

Isn’t it a hoot how, when a regulation, law, or lack of regulation or law, doesn’t do exactly what some controller – rulemaker wants it to do, it’s considered a “loophole?”

Biden is just doing what Trump did in his precedent-setting move to ban bump stocks by rulemaking rather than forcing the Congress to do their job.

Biden’s plan may in fact suffer from an even further weakness, i.e., it explicitly contradicts another law.

How sweet.  Queue up the popcorn – the court cases will prove to be numerous and amusing.

He does a nice review of the gun, including reasons for owning one.  I consider the .22 magnum round to be a legitimate self defense round for bipeds, perhaps not for the bush.

There is another reason – in most states, you must dispatch deer with a .22 rimfire pistol, and nothing larger.  This meets the requirement.

Source.

New Jersey’s state Senate narrowly passed a new concealed carry gun control legislation Monday, with one Democratic lawmaker joining Republicans in saying it is unconstitutional, according to NJ.com.

The bill would require gun owners who seek a concealed carry permit to purchase liability insurance and take training courses, while also increasing permit fees and restricting guns in “sensitive places” like schools, public parks, courthouses, bars and private property, according to the legislation. The bill received bipartisan criticism, with Republican state Sen. Michael Testa calling the bill “absolutely wrong” and Democratic state Sen. Nicholas Sacco saying it is unconstitutional and will face legal challenges, according to NJ.com.

Litigated it certainly will be.  The liability insurance is simply a way of punishing gun owners.  How do we know that?

It’s simple.  If one is deemed innocent, he will be exonerated in court even if he has to pay for legal expenses.  The NJ senate doesn’t care about this expense and they aren’t demanding that gun owners be prepared to legally defend themselves.

If he’s guilty of a crime, insurance won’t pay anything.  Insurance doesn’t cover what’s termed “torts with intention,” or “intentional acts of liability,” which it will judged to be if the gun owner is found guilty of a crime.

So this is just a way to punish gun owners, while lining the pockets of insurance company executives.

Responding to Bruen, the jerks in New Jersey passed yet another gun control bill.

If you live in New Jersey – why?

I had never really thought of bolt throw in the practical terms he discusses it, i.e., interference with scopes and mounts.  That seems to be basically the only reason it really matters unless you’re really into the mechanics of bolt lugs and how they fit up.  Let me know in the comments if you disagree.

For the record, I could listen to Ryan Muckenhirn discuss tying his shoe for an hour and it would be interesting to me.  But even more interesting would be to get an invitation to a hunt with him.  Any kind of hunt – pronghorn, upland birds, anything.

Ian does a very good job of explaining head space and the potential risks of having it wrong.

Field & Stream.

There is a 150-grain hunting bullet that at 100 yards will penetrate at least 23 inches and expand as much or more than either with similar bullets. Not only that, but it will do so while producing just 13 foot-pounds of recoil energy when fired from a 7-pound rifle. That’s 6 and 11 foot-pounds less than the .308 and .30/06, respectively. So, what is miracle cartridge? It’s the .30/30 Winchester.

How could the ancient .30/30 possibly outperform two 30-caliber cartridges that are considered by many to be the best big-game cartridges of all time? The answer is simpler than you might think. With conventional bullets, the higher velocities of the .308 and .30/06 cause more bullet erosion, which reduces weight, and in turn, penetration.

You might argue that the higher impact velocities of the latter tend to create more tissue damage. That’s true, and if sufficient penetration is reached by all three of these, the ones fired from the .308 and .30/06 might in fact put an animal down faster. But not any deader, and none of that is quantifiable. What really counts is penetration …

In his 1970s book, The Hunting Rifle, Jack O’Connor talked about an old hand he’d encountered who’d hunted Wyoming, Montana, and the Yukon, and typically took 17 or 18 elk with a single box (20 rounds) of .30/30 ammo. He told O’Connor that a moose, lung shot with a .30/30, would run about 75 to 100 yards and die. Well before that, African professional hunter Wally Johnson took a .30/30 Winchester to Africa and used it to kill lions. The effectiveness of the .30/30 Winchester on big game should never be questioned; it has more than a century of proof sanctioning it.

Given the untold numbers of deer taken with Winchester Model 94s and Marlin 336s over the last century, it should come as a bit of a shock that some of today’s younger hunters will ask: Is the .30/30 good for deer hunting? Um, yes. For decades and decades, it was consider the deer cartridge.

Right on.  Preach it!

The normally reliable Ron Spomer did a recent video favorably comparing the 300 Blackout to the 30-30.  It’s so wrong in my opinion that I’m not even linking it.

The 300 BO has a 125 grain bullet travelling at 2215 FPS.  The box of 30-30 I’m looking at now shows a 150 grain bullet travelling at 2390 FPS.  25 grains and 175 FPS is enough difference to make a difference.  Remember, the energy computation squares the velocity.

This comes via Ken’s site.  It should be a daily stop for you.

Remarks: Listen carefully to what the CEO said when they brought the idea for the predecessor to the Model 70 to him.  In my own experience, CEOs rarely if ever make good or right decisions for companies.  It would nearly always be better to put major company decisions up to a vote of the employees, bit a second option would be to use a random number generator to make company decisions.  It would usually be better than what corporate officers decide.

Slav Guns has this fun video of unboxing of his new Savage 110 Switchback, which apparently was only built in a limited run and only available through Sportsman’s Warehouse.  He obviously intends to remove the action and put it inside a chassis.

One commenter remarks, “I’m waiting for the Ruger Predator.”  I didn’t know they were intending to build a 6mm ARC bolt action gun, but he might have meant the Savage 110 Carbon Predator, which is available in 6mm ARC.  He said that the Savage 110 Tactical was being built in a 16″ or 18″ barrel, defeating the point of the 6mm ARC.  The Savage 100 Carbon Predator is also being built with a 18″ barrel.

Right now not even the Savage web site shows this in 6mm ARC, while Shooting Illustrated says it is.

Field & Stream has an article up on low recoil deer cartridges.  Their list is as follows.

• .223 Remington
• .224 Valkyrie
• .243 Winchester
• .257 Roberts
• .25-06 Remington
• .260 Remington
• 6.5×55 Swedish
• 6.5 Creedmoor
• 6.8 Remington SPC
• 7mm-08 Remington
• .30-30 Winchester
• 350 Legend

It’s beyond me how you could write an article on the best low recoil deer cartridges and not mention 6mm ARC, using a bullet twice the weight of the 5.56/.223, essentially the same velocity, with only slightly more recoil.

Perhaps it’s the lack of viable bolt action rifles in this round, but you can still use an AR for the hunt.  Grendel Hunter has as many or more 6mm ARC uppers as they do 6.5 Grendel.

I remain disappointed at the slow adoption of this cartridge.

Source.

The writer has it at (5) Lee-Enfield, (4) AR-15/M-16, (3) Mauser Gewehr 98 / Karabiner 98k, (2) Mosin-Nagant, and (1) AK-47 and derivatives.

They don’t do much in the way of producing evidence for their assertions and I have my doubts.  For example, who is to know how they counted AR-15s/M-16s?  If you sum the total deployed to SE Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, other armies across the globe, and AR-15 and variants, including upper and lower receivers sold separately, would you have come up with their number of 20 million?  I seriously doubt it.  I think there have been more than 20 million full ARs sold in America just in the civilian market alone.

However, it’s worth nothing that the gun that was built for conscripts (AK) who didn’t know how to shoot and didn’t want to mechanically understand the gun has been quite successful.

That’s one observation that should be made, of course, that genius Eugene Stoner designed his rifle for the professional soldier who needed MOA or sub-MOA performance, and wanted to understand how to work on his rifle.  As it is said, the AR is an MOA gun, while the AK is a minute-of-man gun.

Furthermore, America was built, at least up until the 1980s or so, with garage, backyard and farm mechanics working on cars, gun, and machines of all sorts, repairing them, cleaning them, and making them better.  Eugene Stoner knew this, I suspect, and didn’t worry too much that it was “too professional” of a rifle for the professional soldier.

From my point of view, Stoner understood the AK about as well as Kalashnikov did. Watch and tell me I’m wrong.

Here are the preceding two videos of Stoner and Kalashnikov at the range (Link 1 and Link 2).  One day I’ll embed the entire Eugene Stoner tape library for viewing.

Outdoor Life has an article entitled The Best Scope Rings of 2022.  They go the spectrum from Seekins to Night Force, from Zeiss to Leupold.  As for prices, they go from budget (just over $50) to around $500.

That’s what I’ve noticed about this market – the massive divide in price point.  Precision Rifle Blog has a rundown of what the long range competition shooters use, and as anyone might guess, it leans towards the pricey end of things with Nightforce being the most prominent of the choices.

Spuhr makes some very expensive mounts/rings too, mostly in the range of $400, up to $500 for quick detach mounts (which in my book are preferable to fixed mounts and rings).

What are the experiences of our readers?  Do you find much difference between moderately priced rings and the pricey ones?  Which ones do you prefer, and why?

I find that the really cheap ones are really cheap and not much worth having.