Why would an American feel the need to carry a gun in Pakistan?

One wonders for such an answer.

Now, you tell me if you would pick up a job working as a US government employee in that torn up country and not carry at least a pistol. That place learns pin the noose on the American in elementary school, so they're no doubt experts at it by the time they've made it to adults.

I pray for the best for Mr. Davis.

Bermuda chooses Ruger

Neat-oh!

Bermuda Soldiers in basic training using Ruger Mini-14s!

Also, a Swedish Carl Gustaf M45 and grand pappy's shotgun spotted amongst the rubble in Afghanistan.

All at MP.net

Close range gunfight

Count me out.

This is video footage with audio from the recent shootout at a Detroit police station.


Yikes!

I would have wanted to be anywhere but there at that moment. It puts it into perspective when you consider standing on a static range shooting at paper, and you are putting round after round into the target with great accuracy. From what I can see here in this video, the whole daggone ballgame changes when your paper target comes and finds you at your desk and starts blasting away with a shotgun.

As a rather large and intense Drill Instructor once told me, "when you're being shot at, I promise you that you will be so low to the dirt that your helmet will plow a trench into the earth!"

I think his statement was accurate!

Home up on the range

Twas a beautiful day on the range yesterday. I got some work done too, some bittersweet. I have poured a lot of time into perfecting handloads using IMR 8208 XBR with 155 grain Nosler J4s, and yesterday I proved that those loads shoot accurately, but sadly were too hot. This was confirmed when the ballistics of these rounds at range did not match the speeds advertised by my CED M2 chronograph a month before, and in fact was waaaaaay off.

The CED M2 did not accompany me home in the same condition it was when we arrived, which is no great loss considering it had only given me one realistic reading in five trips to the range. I'm fighting intent to send the remainder of the device back to Competitive Edge Dynamics with a smart ass letter. It's amazing the devastation that seventeen rounds of 230 grain lead round nose will do to shitty plastic.

On to happier things, I had loaded up some Reloder-17 rounds with 175 grain Nosler J4s for a ladder test, as I only had fourteen of those bullets left and I wanted to put them to the best use. At 570 yards I got a perfect reading on where the two nodes were, which confirmed my suspicions almost exactly.

A disclaimer: work up your own rounds for your own gun, and do not rely on what you see on the internet for a starting load. If you do not know what you are doing, get help from someone who does or you may wind up destroying your gun and your face. Reloading is fun and safe when done right, and can be disastrous when done wrong.

With that said, I have already done a great deal of shooting with this combination, and know where I need to be. I started out with two sighters of 47.6 grain charges: one for 100 yards, and one for longer range, which both of them printed where I wanted. You can see the second sighter in the below picture just above and to the left of the 8" bull. For the charged loads of the test, I dropped down 2 MOA from my sighter, and had marked the bullets with colored sharpies to make the impacts readable. The bottom three shot holes are 47.6, 47.8, and 48 grains of Reloder-17 under the 175 grain bullet, grouping nicely on the same horizontal plane. I anticipated the top of the lower node at 48.1 grains, so this is good data to me. After that, the 48.2 and 48.4 grain loads walked up the target, and then the 48.6, 48.8, and 49 grain charges grouped well. At the 570 yards I was shooting, I had 12 1/2 MOA of elevation dialed in on my scope. The top three charges could stand to come down 1/4 of a MOA, which would put my velocity at 2,710 fps. That's awesome from a 20" barrel, and defies the 2,560 - 2,600 fps readings that I got from that shitty CED M2 chrono.



Here is my 100 yard target which I used to zero the 8208 XBR loads. The bottom right shot hole was my first round which jammed the gun. With the DPMS/SR-25 style bolt, the cam pin can be inserted either way through the bolt carrier, and if you dont pay attention during assembly, you will have your brass cases ejecting into the left side of the receiver instead of out the ejection port. The M16 bolt can only be assembled the correct way, so I guess old habits die hard. After that I had a little zeroing and shooting position adjusting to do, evident by the bottom middle target, with the bottom left being a solid five shot group from my rifle, and what I expect from it accuracy wise. At 400 yards I was printing 3" five shot groups, but I had ejector swipe marks on all the case heads and slightly flattened primers, meaning that these loads were too hot. Also, earlier OCW testing over the shitty CED M2 chrono had given me velocities of 2,783 fps with these loads, but actual testing gave me velocities nearing 3,000 fps!!!! Waaaaay too hot!! I may back down to the other load in the near future, but for now I'm going to do some seating depth testing with the Reloder-17 loads. Also, check out the top left group from my little DPMS AR. Not bad for a 7 power scope!



The Mosin Nagant carbine that I picked up awhile ago loves PRVI ammo in the 150 grain loads, but produces some fierce recoil! It certainly beats the corrosive Russian ammo I had been shooting. Here is a three shot group at 100 yards off sandbags:



Here is a three shot 10" group at 400 yards off sandbags, shooting between the visible 3" orange dot on the right and another just outside of the picture on the left. With open sights and a short barrel, I'll take that group any day.



Other than that, I did a little shooting with the old 1911 at 100 yards for fun with my wheel weight handloads. Good stuff. Now I've got some more loading to do to reach my goal of having perfect handloads. Do you think I'll ever get there?

A modest proposal

This week in Washington, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey introduced three very modest gun regulation bills, including one making it more difficult to sell guns to people on the terror watch list.

HMMMmmmmm. . . .lemmee get this straight Ms. Collins, you think it modest to impede millions of Americans purchasing a gun every year by having federal agents screen them against a secret list of names numbering over a million arbitrarily assembled at random by federal employees who cannot be held accountable? Sound about right?

Jeez, I would hate to see what you consider a radical proposal. Oh yeah, this:

Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, the State Legislature is considering a bill to honor the Browning M1911 pistol by making it the official state firearm.

Gail Collins considers a law that impacts no one in any substantive way at all an absurd idea, yet thinks that a law that would impact Americans for years to come is modest. Pretty backwards if you ask me, but then again, I'm talking about a woman who is confused about the meaning of the word "terror:"

The terror of the National Rifle Association is so pervasive that President Obama did not want to poison the mood of his State of the Union address by suggesting that when somebody on the terror watch list tries to buy a gun, maybe we should do an extra check.

So a group of people who advocate the peaceable ownership of arms are terror[ists]? That puts a qualifier on exactly who she believes should be on a secret government list, no? I guess this prophetic understanding that she has in that branding non-violent people with a dark label and forever restricting or taking away their rights is "extremely mild," while ensuring a dead man who designed a bad-ass nine shot pistol is honored in his state is radical somehow leads us to want to send her nice comments on her shit article telling her about how smart she is.

The rest of the article is disgusting, and one can see right away how partisan she is.

Beretta ARX160 spotted at SHOT

Seen on this thread at MP.net.

Also, the Albanian Special Forces are killing bad guys in Afghanistan with them right now; scroll down for a pic. I don't know how I would feel about wearing a maroon beret in combat, but oh well. I wouldn't mine having the ARX as an issued weapon though. That thing is light and feels good in your hands.

I really dig the exchangeable barrel system, as well as the magazine release options. Can't wait for it to enter civilian sales, because I want to pick one up. After handling it, as well as the SCAR and ACR, I have to give the Beretta the hat tip. It doesn't weigh a metric ton, and it's really well thought out. Let's hope it doesn't cost a bazillion dollars like the ACR though.

Better to be hung by twelve than carried by six?

An American consular employee shot and killed two gunman in Pakistan in blatant self defense, and yet he may still be charged with murder just for the hell of it apparently. The Beretta pistol that he used is alleged to be illegally kept, as Pakistan does not really bless the idea of non Pakistani government types carrying weapons, and that's the only thing I can see him getting hung up on. The question I have is whether or not he would be executed for murder if he's convicted.

Time will tell if the Obama administration will come to his aid in all of this; the SOTU address might not have pandered to the unarmed victim crowd, but it's a safe bet to say that publicly supporting the actions of the consular employee in the shooting would be bad press.

Interesting to me is that the only non-scumbag to be killed/manslaughtered in the incident lost his or her life to the grill of a car. Also, the local savages are beating their poop-smeared war drums and protesting over an American who dared to "violate their sovereignty" (snicker) by carrying a pistol in that violent country, and discard entirely that he carried it in the first place because he was concerned that violent militants may just pull up next to his car on a motorcycle and point rifles at him. It's not like Pakistan is known to be a refuge of peace for Americans or anything, and the article even covers two other attacks on Americans in Pakistan.

I guess Pakistan's economy is doing well enough that we can keep the millions of dollars in monies that we've been pouring into that hellhole, and maybe spend it somewhere where it will be more useful.

The Marine Corps loves 1911s

Says Uncle links to an article saying that Marines are looking at the likes of Springfield Armory and Colt for a decent fighting piece in .45 ACP, presumably in a 1911 as that's what all the cool cats want these days. Some idiot will no doubt offer it in multicam.

I seem to recall seeing a railed Remington 1911 wearing OD green coating at the Modern Day Marine Convention, so they may intend to cast their lot into the the mix as well. Kimber I'm sure will be there also; they have a history of providing 1911s to the Marine Corps.

Slugging it out long range

The Firearm Blog has a video of a man shooting foster style slugs at 230 yards from a smooth bore shotgun offhand using the standard blade sight and compensating by guess. In the video you can see the trace of the slug as it arcs towards the target. You can't tell from the first part of the video, but the second part from the camera at the target shows that he's minute-of-scumbag for sure.

I recently fired some Brenneke slugs from a Mossberg 835 at 100 yards without as much luck, and the experience has piqued my interest. I never knew that slugs were worthy out past 100 yards; now I'll have to give it a shot (pun intended).

The ladies like to shoot too

A thread at Sniper's Hide with real live ladies and their long range rifles. I wouldn't want to piss any of them off!!!

SHOT show p0rn

MP.net has a thread on it that's pretty good, with more digital camo! Lots and lots of pictures of military belt fed goodlyness.

Crenelated bezel on a suppressor? I guess some people want to make tangos comply quietly. I like the offset iron sights that clip onto the rails of your rifle.

And what is it about multicam that makes people so damn crazy? I have some for predator hunting, and it works great, but apparently all you need to complete your cool operator ensemble these days is a pair of boots with multicam soles, and of course you have to have a brace of petite beauties with big bewbies clad in multicam swimwear on your arm. Weird.

Anyways, enjoy the pics!

Only metal detectors can stop gun violence

Unlike a number of suburban police departments, Detroit precincts do not have metal detectors and the front desks are not fitted with Plexiglass-type shields. They do have security cameras.

Which all add up to what, exactly, in regards to stopping a lunatic with a shotgun from walking in a-la Matrix style and shooting cops?

What is it with you media people having to pin some sort of explanation or qualifier on everything, no matter how stupid? About the only thing that would have stopped this attack before it happened is if the gunman was hit by a bus crossing the street towards the precinct. Thankfully, this attack punctuated the argument that hard targets are better at stopping violence once it starts, as the idea of a lone gunman throwing down against multiple armed and armored folk ending in favor of the more numerous is generally thought to be sound.

I bet Chesty is laughing his ass off

Just like I am.

I'm glad someone pointed out how downright silly some Marine Corps traditions can be. That one always grated on me.

Why not a study I can get behind

This short article explains that based on a recent study, DC is tied with Chicago on the worst traffic congestion in the nation, but I'm pretty sure the 70 hour figure is an extreme lowball number. To get at some truth, one has to scroll down and read the comments from the people who live here and drive this nightmare every day.

There does seem to be little interest in widening the I-95 corridor from Fredericksburg to DC, unless of course there's a way to bilk money from people by building a special lane for hippies and 18 passenger vans. Then you can only imagine the possibilities.

I learned about cause and effect in like 6th grade, and even then I could have told you that if you build thousands of homes every year and attract tens of thousands of people and families into an area in a short amount of time, you will have a horrendous spectacle of a roadway system unless you address it first. Fucking duh!

So now we have smarty pants people who presumably come to work wearing a white labcoat with pocket protector telling us that they're pissing away public funds studying the effects of piss poor infrastructure management, and then comparing notes to see which major city sux the most.

Well, thank you very much! I can take all that information that you just gave me and do exactly nothing with it, because I've sat in NYC, LA, DC, and Houston traffic, and can tell you without a single bit of doubt that the city management fumbled the fuckin ball bigtime there, and the locals are the ones paying with their time and funds! Super job!

Now, why don't you smarty pants types do us all a favor and do a study to find out the names of the people responsible for mismanaging the roadway systems so we can write them a nasty-gram, or kick them out or kick their ass for making all of us sit in traffic for days out of our lives while they pocket the money from letting greedy developers make a sport of cutting down all of our trees to make shitty homes! I can do something with that information!

Emotion makes for a baseless argument

Reading this Washington Post hit piece about how Colin Goddard is influencing lawmakers to enact gun control, one has to wonder why the author doesn't talk about the flip side of it all.

As you can read in the story, Goddard survived the gunman's attack at Virginia Tech, and the point is pushed that he carries more weight in the gun control argument because he knows first hand what it's like to be shot by an armed lunatic while at school, and the rest of us don't. There is no mention at all about why Goddard also carries weight to the argument that packing thousands of unarmed people in a small area with minimal security attracts armed lunatics of all types, and the outcome of an event like that will be the same despite whatever law gets passed to prevent it.

Again, for those who don't know:

The most fatal school massacre in US history was committed with a bomb.

The most fatal act of terrorism in the US was committed with commercial airliners hijacked using boxcutters.

The most fatal act of domestic terrorism in US history was committed with a bomb.

The second most fatal spree killing in modern world history was committed using a shotgun, a sword, and an axe, the first was committed with a rifle and grenades.

None of this is addressed in the article, nor is there any mention of potential unintended consequences. It seems that the sum of the story is that Goddard has an edge because he's been the unarmed victim getting bullets pumped into him while he lies defenseless on the ground, and that should be the best policy. He's also a fudd, so there's that too.

Arguments based entirely on emotion don't get much pull with me. How about putting some facts in there somewhere for the people who aren't so naive.

This is gonna be good!!!

In case you are not aware, every once and awhile someone will request a photoshop of a picture on ARFCOM, which never ends up like it's supposed to but always entertains.

This one is going to be epic. You don't want to miss it!

Precision rifles

Love em'!

Here is a sexy LWRC REPR, which is almost the same thing as my 308, but way cooler.

Here are some Accuracy International pictures.

64 pages of precision goodness.

Dropping acid should be a crime

Obviously what Prince George's county needs these days is some statutes making attacks like this a felony. Maryland is under siege by angry hoodlums; there have been fourteen homicides in nineteen days, so something has to be done. Disregard what the ignorant and tone deaf anonymous commenter wrote in the second article erroneously suggesting that the populace -- not a lack of laws known to effectively regulate malicious human behavior -- is to blame for the scourge of violence. It is Mary-land after all, where everyone is perfectly happy, including disenchanted drug smoking former girlfriends of your recently paroled lover who buy up Assault Solutions (sounds like a cool name for a gun shop) with such wild abandon and use them to bend people to their will.

It's clear that Easy access to dangerous chemicals with no background checks or rectal exams means that any terrorist can get their hands on some and maim or kill. If we could ban a third of the shit that is sold at Wal-Mart, we could end this senseless violence once and for all.

Good grief, what a cesspool PG county has become. The feds have stepped in to help the local cops, who are asking the helpless community to chip in, all the while the cops are increasing their presence in a "show of force". Is that even going to help? Something tells me that knocking on doors, pulling over 1,500 cars, and handing out 100 misdemeanor citations is not going to bring the scumbags to their knees. Just like South East DC, I think it would take a biblical intervention to straighten that whole area out.

There is a way though for PG residents to find real safety from the violent people among them, and it doesn't involve massive police effort or baseless promises from a clueless mayor:

Move.

Pack your shit and move 3 miles West, across the Potomac River, and there you will find a nice place to raise your kids where your chances of getting shot, stabbed, or having your face melted off are slim to none. Be advised though, Alexandria is under a crime wave too, and the police have suggested turning your house light on at night to deal with it, so you can spend your money on good light bulbs instead of kevlar. If you happen to be one of the scumbags causing so much problems in Maryland or DC, know that unlike most of the folks in those areas, Virginia natives are perfectly capable of helping the cops quell community violence, and don't be surprised to see VCDL presence there.

Undead ahead

Zombie sighting in Hampton, Virginia.

Thinking about buying a 1911?

Head over to Mike's Spot for some very helpful commentary on your choices. Did I mention that there's pictures?!!