American Handgunner online

How nifty! Reading a magazine on the PC is the future, I guess.

Tops in the issue are FNH's Competition model FNP-45, and the first hand account of the shooting of Rep. Kathie Lee Giffords.

That's good news

Alcohol doesn't kill brain cells. I'm relieved. Really.

Never heard that excuse

An Arizona Republic story about Anthem Republican Lori Klein's carrying of a gun in her purse while at the Legislature said she showed off its laser sighting by pointing it at a reporter interviewing her in the Senate lounge.

According to Klein, the gun has no safety but there was no danger because she didn't have her hand on the trigger.

Wow. The normal, knee-jerk excuse has always been "Relax! It's not loaded!" This politico's dumb-ass attack takes it up a notch though.

There is also the addendum excuse given that the reporter sat in front of her laser, which is still a moronic thing to admit to. Why was she fondling her firearm in a public building to begin with?

***Update: The story has changed yet again, with even more equivocation thrown in for good measure. Klein says that she cleared the Ruger's chamber before pointing it at the reporter, and the reporter says that he found out later that it was loaded. How it was determined that it was unloaded is unknown. It sounds to me like the pistol is a Ruger LCP with the Crimson Trace Laser on it, and that she had it in the zippered case that it comes with tucked down in her purse. My recommendation is that Ms. Klein get some firearms safety instruction, and also attend a course to learn how to safely carry the gun and have it more readily available than in a zippered pouch.

Also, the reporter she pointed the gun at was interviewing her because of Klein's insistence on carrying the gun into the Statehouse two days after Rep. Giffords was shot. Not said is how many days after the shooting of Rep. Giffords is it considered appropriate to carry a gun for protection in the eyes of the media, but then again the media doesn't need to make sense to create controversy. Any port in a storm, I guess.

Mob of teens brutally beats mom holding 4 year old

The attack happened Thursday afternoon inside Folwell Park on Minneapolis’ north side.

Shawnee Twiet says she was in and out of consciousness when the attack happened.

“As soon as I hit the ground, I just started feeling just everything coming from everywhere,” Twiet said. “I mean blows coming from the back of my head. I felt somebody grabbing the back of my hair.”

She suffered a black eye, bruises all over her body and imprints on her back.

This animal-like behaviour is why politicritters push so hard to control everyone's lives; we may think that the majority of Americans are responsible people who do what's right, but I'm thinking that America's majority are made up of a bunch of violent, self-serving, primitive people who pass on their dishonor to their violent, self-serving, primitive spawn.

When the cops and government have to respond to these shenanigans, then they're going to push for more laws and tools to get the job done. If honorable Americans can keep this behaviour from happening, perhaps by simple parenting, I would think that there would be no reason for local government to invent things to keep the savages at bay. At some point a large group of teens are going to make a big mistake during the victim selection process and wind up being "introduce[d]. . . to the fine craftsmanship of Springfield Armory." As unfortunate as that will be, hopefully it will end this trend for teenagers to clump together and kick good people in the head.

Good movie gunfight

Everyone loves the big shootout in the movie HEAT, and of course there's the "Yo homey, is that my briefcase" scene from the movie Collateral, and now I find a clip from the movie Sinners & Saints, which I had never heard of ***NSFW Language***:



There's some damn good gunplay in there -- urban prone; Old style Springfield Operator reloads; Krink reloads; bad guy shooting indiscriminately; hot hostage chick; Aimpoints & C-Mores; Beretta Storms -- there's something for everyone.

Found in ARFCOM General Discussion.

For the 10mm lovers

Wilson Combat has 10mm ammo that's not the watered down stuff that you see in Gander Mountain. Three different weights available: 140 grain, 155 grain, and 180 grain ammo.

I don't have a 10mm any more -- something I intend to remedy in the future -- but if I did I would be trying this ammo for self defense.

Winner!

This is the most disturbing thing I've seen all week. Clever, but disturbing none the less.

Why not hire Batman instead?

It would be a better idea than the one proposed:

On the heels of an uptick in violence that claimed the life of an off-duty cop, Newark's city council voted Thursday to require all late-night restaurants that serve less than 20 people at a time to have an armed security guard posted from 9 p.m. to closing.

Mmmmm hmmmm. I see. So you want the restaurants that presumably bring in the least amount of profit to shoulder the major financial burden of hiring an armed dude to just stand there, all because a cop was gunned down by scumbags who sped by suddenly in a car and open fire? What exactly is an armed guard supposed to do to prevent a drive-by shooting? Would an armed guard fare better at stopping a drive-by than a cop? Will the city pay to have ballistic glass installed on the restaurants, and buy body armor for the guards?

Here's a novel idea: why don't you allow the store owners and patrons to be their own armed guards? How hard is that? It's doubtful that it would prevent drive-by shootings, but it would certainly make the stores a harder target for thieves and thugs.

If it seems like I have a lot of questions, it's because the idea of making small businesses hire armed security is a stupid fucking idea. It's the sort of non-solution that can be expected from a city council of Newark; although it does seem that Newarkians don't really give a damn about protecting themselves, so maybe it's warranted.

The Mob is dangerous

At this point, I pass over several mob attack stories every week. There are many of them. Today, Captain Curt links to a story from Milwaukee where a mob of "youths" attacked as many as twenty people, beating them savagely:

Minutes later Bublitz saw a male friend hit in the temple and fall down. Her fiancé told her to run to safety. James Zajackowski, 28, said things suddenly turned chaotic.

"Within 30 seconds to a minute, bottles were flying and people started getting punched. I was in shock. I thought, 'Really? Is this really happening?' I was on the ground, people were trying to get into my pockets, I could feel their hands but I held on to my cellphone and my wallet," said Zajackowski, a census worker.

Emily Mowrer, 27, was not hurt but saw her friends beaten and punched and full beer bottles thrown at them. Her boyfriend was punched. She saw Perry lying with blood on her face, not moving. She called 911 on her cellphone.

"I saw some of my friends on the ground getting beat pretty severely. They got away with one of my friends' bikes. Some people had their wallets stolen," said Mowrer, who owns a house with her boyfriend in Riverwest. "It didn't seem like it was a mugging - it seemed like an attack. Like they weren't after anything - just violence."

Read that article. There's several accounts of people hit with bottles and beaten while on the ground. Wallets and property can be replaced, but when you have a large group of people hitting someone with hard objects -- in the head, no less -- and punching, kicking, and stomping while they are helpless on the ground, my logic says that that is attempted manslaughter. Tell me that if you smashed a full beer bottle over the forehead of a police officer that you wouldn't be charged with that very crime, and rightly so.

These attacks have gained traction in the news, and all the savage youths are thinking that they can do the same thing. I don't see the Milwaukee police doing a whole lot as far as finding the little scumbags and locking them up. Let's hope Wisconsin folk take advantage of their new law when it gets signed and look out for themselves.

Terrifying testimony

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Rising from his seat at the witness stand in a New Orleans courtroom, Michael Hunter lifted a model AK-47 assault rifle to demonstrate on Wednesday how a fellow police officer blasted five civilians during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Hunter, in the most detailed account to date of the shooting on the Danziger Bridge, said the officer stood above three men and two women and sprayed them with bullets at close range as they lay terrified on a sidewalk on September 4, 2005.

There are multiple things to be outraged about in this accounting of how New Orleans police shot and killed unarmed people on the bridge; and even if you don't believe everything that was testified in court, any one allegation is damning on its face; you can't dismiss everything. It's accounts like this one or the one posted yesterday that are the reason for the current rift between Americans and law enforcement.

Fortunately, in Virginia, we don't get the crushing effects of mother nature like in other parts of the country, so the scenario of an apocalyptic SHTF situation in the wake of a storm or earthquake is highly unlikely, but that doesn't mean that "high risk" situations are not created out of whole cloth.

I have some friends in my local Sheriff's Departments, and with the exception of them specifically, I fear the rest of them. That doesn't mean that I don't appreciate what they do or the dangers that they face, but while they have nothing to fear from me - any interaction that they have with me will be peaceful on my part - I don't trust them to not completely trample on my rights and/or escalate things when they interact with me. It's a shame that that's how my feelings are, but I know that I'm not alone.

4th Generation GLOCK

I'm leaning towards the Glock 19 for my new foray into AIWB, and I've been catching up on the differences between the 3rd and 4th generation models that Glock has come out with. I'm getting mixed results, with a large number of problems being reported from the 4th generation. Someone on GLOCK Talk posted this video that made me laugh my ass off. Funny stuff!

Negligent discharge caught on video

Nasty. ***NSFW Language***

I have to disagree with the self inflicted victim -- negligent discharges do not happen. It is not something a gun owner should expect or believe will happen to them at any point in time. You do not practice gun safety with the expectation that it will happen to you; you practice gun safety with the expectation that you will not be the one on a YouTube video expaining how you shot yourself. Also, the blame does not lie with the safety being inadvertantly disengaged when you draw from the holster because your finger should not have been inside the trigger guard until the sights were on target.

That being said, I don't like holsters with doodads on them. This includes the Blackhawk! Serpa holsters, of which I have several and use them. I see the Serpa as being a safer alternative in a retention holster when you re-holster, as there are no flaps to worry about finding their way into the trigger guard like with a snap holster.

Finger is only authorized to be on the trigger when you are ready to shoot.

Rule #3 - "Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you are ready to fire."

Need a suit and tie for CCW?

Check out these 10 helpful tips if you ever have to have a suit taylored around your carry piece. There's some really good advice in there, things I had never thought of.

AIWB Litmus test

Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give Appendix Carry (AIWB) a shot this weekend. Since I don't have a hoster made specifically for AIWB, I had to improvise adapt and overcome using what I had on hand. I decided to use this BladeTech IWB holster with a Glock 17, and I experimented around a bit with concealment and drawing.



The BladeTech had to be set up for a straight draw, as it has been used previously with an FBI can't for IWB at the 4 - 5 o'clock position on my hip. Holsters designed specifically for AIWB carry are made to angle the grip of the gun in toward your abdomen, which the BladeTech does not; and in order for me to make this happen in the short term with this holster meant I had to get creative. A plastic clip from a BlackBerry holster served just fine for the weekend. Clipping it onto my pants so that it was sandwiched between my belt and the holster at the trigger guard made sure the gun's grip was torqued in towards my man-fat so that it wouldn't print.

Bonus points for me using the words sandwich and man-fat in the same sentence!

Here I have the holster stuffed down my britches at the 2 o'clock 12:30 position on my beltline. You can't tell, but I'm sucking in my gut. A picture of my beer belly consuming kydex is not family friendly, let me tell you.



Here's the same shot with the gun resting in the holster. Notice the black plastic clip against the holster at the trigger guard, and that the grip is somewhat flat against my abdomen:




Without that clip there the Glock's grip sticks out. AIWB holsters will probably do a better job at this than the clip, mind you; I had to use something though in the interim or I wouldn't have been very successful this weekend.

This is what it all looks like from the front:






Once you get the gun in the right spot, it's very comfortable, even while sitting or driving. As Terry pointed out in comments, having a gun with a decent sized muzzle (not a sub-compact) is better for AIWB because it provides leverage against your body's tendency to have your belly push the top of the gun out. Also, keep the gun vertical, and make sure nothing gets between the belt and the grip of the gun where it meets the trigger guard. I had to make sure the plastic BlackBerry clip didn't do that as it would screw up my draw.

Speaking of the draw, this is the best part about AIWB carry. After clearing the Glock, I did a couple of hours worth of drawing and dry firing using empty magazines. I'm going to make a bold statement: there is no faster way to draw a gun from concealment. The only method of carry that I can think of that is as fast is competition rig carried openly on your belt at 3 o'clock. For one thing, you don't have to rip your shirt up high with your support hand, which means your support hand is not reaching all the way across your body and is much closer to the grip when the gun clears the holster. Your hands rest naturally near the gun, and it takes only a moment to get your shirt pulled up the six inches needed for your gun hand to get the gun out.

I was simply astonished how fast that I could get the Glock out and have the sights on target from concealment. This has to be why criminals often carry here; although I would not place a loaded firearm in my waistband without a holster. After my practice session with draws, I have to carry AIWB. That's all there is to it. Hip carry is practical and all, but you lose the natural draw that you get with AIWB. I can't stress it enough though that when you RE-HOLSTER your pistol that you do it very slowly and deliberately. If you're one of those who is accustomed to speed holstering after a string of fire, than chose a different method of carry.

As far as driving while using AIWB carry, I never understood how it could be comfortable until I tried it. Once I got the holster placed right while standing and drawing, I didn't have to re-adjust when I sat down; the holster kind of went away. It's also way more accessible when sitting than with hip carry. For all day comfort, that one I'm going to have to wait out. AIWB does favor the svelt folks who don't have a gut, and I noticed that if my pants sagged down to where my belly fat could hang over the top of the gun I would end up with a sore spot there. Placing my pants snuggly on top of my hips alleviates the problem though. An undershirt is a must - if you don't have an undershirt the holster will try to grab skin while you move, especially if the holster has a sweat guard.

I'll have more once I get some real AIWB holsters. A range report will certainly follow, as snapping in on random objects in the home is well enough, but actual live fire will reveal more.

Crowd Control

This news report was posted on YouTube in December of last year and is the first I heard of the incident. A US Marine home on R&R from Afghanistan was at a movie theater with his wife and was attacked afterwords in the parking lot by a group of teens numbering about twenty. They took him to the ground and beat him, and one of the attackers punched his wife in the face and knocked her out cold.

This sort of attack is one that I find to be the most relevant to where I live. There's not a whole lot of gang activity, at least not like what there is in a major city, but there are large groups of aggressive teens that beat people and rob them. About a year ago a man and his girlfriend were jumped at the local movie theater by a group of Hispanic teens while crossing the street, and they hurt him badly.

Twenty attackers is a huge disparity of force, and constitutes a deadly threat in any scenario I can think of. The chances of getting kicked or stomped in the head or falling and busting your dome piece after getting knocked out is very serious. Such numbers of scumbags may not need double stack capacity to be addressed as they will probably scatter in all directions on the first shot, but the comfort of a having 15+ rounds on station with a couple more magazines in reserve seem to be a good idea.

Sometimes gun owners impress me

The other day I was pointing out how gun owners can be complete fuckwads and eat their own, but today I was pleased to see that less judgmental gun owners can be extremely generous.

The gun owner I was defending in the first link carries a Smith & Wesson Sigma pistol, which some folks commented was a giant piece of shit and that he should just not carry it. The more logical commenters defended his pistol choice, and several have even gone as far as to provide the capitol for the OP's (Assault-Rifle-City) choice of handgun from a local FFL. Mr. Assault-Rifle-City is currently on active duty protecting our country, so the offer is especially warranted. Others are chipping in to provide ammo and holsters and stuff.

A success story, if you ask me. Good hearted gun owners not only came to his defense, they helped him overcome a major financial hurdle in the acquisition of a new handgun.

Thanks for your service, Assault-Rifle-City!

The Sum of its Parts: Part 2

The barrel, bolt, and upper receiver for my ongoing MK12 Mod 0 build came in yesterday from Les Baer. What a beauty the barrel is; it's a shame I'm going to have to have it turned down. It really isn't as heavy as I thought it would be. If you can't see what the cartridge it's chambered in is from the pictures, it's the .264 LBC AR.





The barrel extension fits very snug in the upper receiver, which I suspected would be the case considering that Les Baer rifles are reported to shoot so well. Normally when you slide the barrel into the upper, there is some notable play because the inside diameter of the upper can not be of the exact same size as the outside diameter of the barrel extension. I have an AR with a .004" difference between barrel and receiver that I seated with a bed of Locktight to help with point-of-aim shift when the barrel gets hot. To do that, you literally coat the extension with Blue Locktight and bolt it onto the receiver. Another remedy is to measure the difference betweem the two like I did, and then buy the appropriate sized shim stock to fit the pieces together snug; this I learned from reading tips and tricks from Highpower shooters. I won't have to do any of that with these parts.

Weird thing is that the Les Baer receiver needs to be modified slightly in order for it to fit onto the DPMS lower receiver. The front take-down pin goes through the upper just fine, but I have to put a good amount of downward pressure on it to get the rear take-down pin to fit. I don't necessarily have a problem with this because it makes the upper and lower fit together like a vice; I just hope that there's no issue with the bolt carrier binding.





For fun, I tried to bolt the barrel up as it is so that I could shoot a few rounds downrange and have the once fired cases. Using these cases that have been stretched to the inside dimentions of the chamber, I would then fill them with water and note the difference between the empty weight and water weight. The figure you get from that gets entered into QuickLoad, and you can predict what a bullet/powder combo will do before you even make it. Too bad though that the barrel nut from the PRI handguard will not fit over the barrel, so it's off to ADCO for some turning on their lathe. Once I get the barrel back from them it's getting a coat of parkerized-black Alumahyde from Brownells -- can't have the Tangoes (groudhogs) spotting my shiny barrel, now can we? I'll also coat the Les Baer upper with the same dark earth Alumahyde coating as the rest of the rifle.

I expect a range report in the next three weeks or so.

Youth gun violence

They apparently start them out early these days in Prince George's County.

Sometimes gun owners depress me

A Soldier (call him OP) posted in the ARCOM General Discussion thread about a run in he had with law enforcement while open carrying a handgun with his wife at a restaurant. The cop obviously did not know the law, or that OP was open carrying because that is the only lawful means he has to carry a firearm, and threatened to charge him with brandishing. This happened in Kentucky, which allows for open carry, and from some of the commenters on the thread has no known statute for brandishing.

The result of the encounter ended well enough, with the cop going on his merry way when OP stood on his rights. The result in posting the encounter on a pro-gun forum ended up attracting some of the most ignorant so-called gun owners who not only gave the OP shit about open carrying, and also attacked his equipment and gun choice, they go on to suggest that he break the law and carry concealed. This is out of the belief that open carrying takes away your element of surprise, and offers nothing in return.

It should be said that the OP was open carrying because he is not yet 21, and cannot apply for a concealed handgun permit. He followed the letter of the law and carried his gun the only way he could, but that is lost to many who commented on his post. There is one particular commenter who openly admits to breaking laws that he does not agree with, and then tries to ply the OP to do the same based on a belief that open carry shouldn't be allowed because. . . . well, that's not at all clear.

Sometimes gun owners are our own worst enemy. We see that from time to time.

Getting more and more deadly

The Marine Corps has decided to have new recruits shoot their M16s with optics. To me, this is good news. From all that I have read, Marines are shooting far better in combat using optics than they ever did with irons. This decision is a pilot program to find out if the Corps will have better shooting Marines because of the optics, and could be reversed if the data comes back unfavorable. Also, new recruits will still be taught how to use iron sights, so it's not like they will be going anywhere anytime soon.

Found at Ace of Spades.