And it looks like amazing weather for today’s club level IDPA match. High in the mid-60s, with a bit of wind, but otherwise awesome weather.
Come out and shoot!
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Caleb breaks guns!
Posted on November 6, 2009 by Caleb
After this weekend, the 2009 shooting season is pretty much over for me. I usually take December/January off from “serious practice” since it’s usually too dang cold to shoot anyway around here. However, this year I’m going to try something new: the winter torture test. What we’re going to do is take a current production firearm and over the course of 2 or 3 months shoot 20-25k rounds through it, and see what happens. Even better, the shooting will be recorded and broadcast on the Gun Nuts Youtube Channel so that you’ll be able to follow along with the progress. However, we need to determine what firearm you guys want to see us shoot the wheels off of, so to speak. The three options I’ve come up with are as follows:
I was kind of reaching with the third option, I couldn’t figure out what else to put there, so I just kind of dropped that in because I saw one in Gander Mountain yesterday. Write ins are also an option – post your idea for a write in handgun in the comments, and if I think it’s cool I’ll add it to the poll. I’ll leave this poll active for a week and post reminders about it so that we can max out the votes. Voting is Chicago style, so vote stacking is encouraged!
Filed under: Torture Test, gun stuff | 24 Comments »
Grass fed beef
Posted on November 6, 2009 by Caleb
“You are what you eat”, they say. They say that cows fed on this grass or that grass make the best beef. What you feed yourself, you animals, is important, they say.
It’s also important when it comes to semi-automatic pistols. More importantly even than “what” you feed your semi-auto pistol is how you feed it, namely the type and quality of the magazines you use. Ask someone who has done a serious amount of shooting with modern handguns what the most common failure point of semi-automatic pistols is, and they’ll all say the same thing: “the magazine”. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use cheap magazines. In fact, I think that you should buy several cheap magazines for your defensive pistol, especially if you carry a 1911. If you have cheap mags, use them in practice only, because it will create an opportunity for spontaneous malfunction clearance drills. Learning how to clear malfs is always a good thing, so those $5/10 mags gun show specials do have a place in the galaxy.
They don’t have a place on your belt for serious matches, or for defensive use though. Magazines, like any other gun part need to be maintained, inspected, and changed. I’ve always been amazed by people who will go and buy a $500-$900 defensive pistol, and then go out and buy the cheapest magazines possible to feed their pistol. Seriously, if you go out and buy a spanking new Beretta 92FS, and then run out and buy some wretched gun show specials for magazines, do not be surprised when your 92 will only feed reliably from the factory mags.
Just like holsters, you get what you pay for with magazines. If you buy a cheap mag, make sure you test it thoroughly. Sometimes you will get a gem that works, but until you’ve ran upwards of 100 rounds through a single magazine you don’t really know if it’s reliable or not.
Filed under: gun stuff, self defense, shooting | 5 Comments »
Fort Hood
Posted on November 6, 2009 by Caleb
Yesterday afternoon, I put up a link to the Warrior Song, not knowing what was about to take place at Fort Hood in Texas. There, a man took the lives of his fellow soldiers, and while his motives are not clear at this time, what is clear is that today we are a lesser nation for the loss of the lives of those soldiers.
The Warrior Song got me thinking, though – about the nature of our grief for those soldiers who lost their lives yesterday. Whether they were a clerk, a cook, an accountant, a rifleman, it doesn’t matter – each and every one of them was a warrior. So yes, mourn their passing. Grieve for their families in their hour of lost. Grieve for our nation, for we are indeed a lesser country for each warrior we lose. But never forget that they were the best of us; as long as nation remains one where men and women volunteer to defend their nation, we are truly a great nation.
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Make a hippy cry
Posted on November 5, 2009 by Caleb
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We are truly spoiled
Posted on November 5, 2009 by Caleb
I was reminiscing about a conversation I had with Jim Shepherd at Gunsite about how spoiled the modern generation of shooters is, especially when comes to the mechanical accuracy of firearms these days. Think about it for a minute: you can go to your local gun shop and for $600-$1000 buy a commercial AR-15 that will shoot right around 1 minute of angle with commercially available factory ammo. When you read magazine articles from quite some time ago, this kind of accuracy was what was expected of precision rifles, a lot of time high dollar custom jobs. Now, if you buy a rifle that “only” shoots a 2 inch group at 100 yards, it’s “not very accurate”.
This doesn’t stop at just rifles, though. Modern commercial handguns are so accurate it’s stupid, capable of accuracy far beyond what the average shooter can wring out of them. A perfect example of this was demonstrated at this year’s Bianchi Cup, where Dave Sevigny using a stock Glock 34 was able to score 1806-101x, a score which put him ahead of many shooters using customized 1911s with optics and other gear. While that’s in no small part due to Dave’s ridiculous shooting ability, it doesn’t hurt that his Glock is more accurate from the factory than most factory handguns of 2 generations ago.
I don’t want people to think for a minute that I think it’s a bad thing how spoiled we are, mind you. I think it’s awesome that our levels of precision and engineering are such that we can mass produce tremendously accurate firearms for as little money as it costs us to so do. Technology is cool, and the advent of CNC machining has allowed us to make tremendous leaps in accuracy with firearms.
Filed under: gun stuff | 8 Comments »
AKs for $350!
Posted on November 5, 2009 by Caleb
Madness! I just got my latest edition of the Century Arms catalog, and they’re running Romanian AKs for around $350-$375. That seems to be the going price right now, as you can order them from AIM Surplus for about $379. If you want to “go big” you can get a Hungarian side-folding stock AK for less that $400 from AIM.
I don’t own an AK, but for those prices it’s worth buying one. Just don’t do anything to do, buy it, leave it stock, and shoot the wheels off it.
Filed under: rifles | 5 Comments »
Tiger McKee on the AK
Posted on November 5, 2009 by Caleb
In today’s Tactical Wire:
There are a lot of accessories out there for the AK, but I think it’s perfect as is. You just have to remember what it was designed for, and learn and practice the techniques for operating it. If you don’t own one it’s still a good idea to know how to work them. There are millions of them out there, and your chance of coming across one is very likely. If you’re fighting with a pistol, and the opportunity to acquire an AK comes up, you need to be able to use it properly. (emphasis mine)
The embolden part is actually the most important part of that, because I think that in the whole AK vs. AR kerfuffle that too many people are trying to make the AK into an AR, or compare rifles that aren’t really comparable. The AK was well and truly born out of the sewers and streets of Stalingrad, in the sense that the battles the Russians fought in WWII shaped their combat infantry doctrine.
Filed under: rifles | 3 Comments »
IDF Naval Commandos seize Iranian arms smugglers
Posted on November 5, 2009 by Caleb
But we should totally trust the Iranians with nuclear refining technology, right? I mean, it’s not like they’re trying to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah or anything.
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