Category: The Gun Thing

Not just the guns, but all the stuff that goes with them

Welcome Wagon

Immigration, The Gun Thing

Reader Mike S. writes and suggests a housewarming present:

“Every incoming Afrikaner should be given a Green Card and a rifle. Not a Mauser but a good American-made one. Maybe a Ruger American II. Either in .30-06 or 7×57 (for tradition’s sake).”

Well, if you’re expecting an argument from me against such an action, you haven’t been reading this website for very long.

When I read this, though, I thought that a Ruger “Ranch” model would be more appropriate, given the heritage of our newest (legal) arrivals:


…but in looking at the available chamberings (see link), I find them… unsatisfactory.  Certainly not the calibers that our Seffrican imports would be familiar with.

So yes, either .30-06 (American) or .308 Win (which every Seffrican rifleman is familiar with), and therefore either the Hawkeye Compact (.308)


… or the longer-barreled Hawkeye Hunter (.30-06 or .308)

Both are extremely tasty, and I’d take either one in a bushveld minute.

HOWEVER:

Let’s get creative, here, and consider giving them a rifle with which every Seffrican of a certain age is familiar:

Ho yuss… the FN-FAL / DSArms SA-58 — note the “SA” — or, to give the thing its Seffrican name, the R1, along with four spare magazines and a couple hundred rounds of 7.62x51mm.

This choice achieves two objectives:

  • gives our new “settlers” (heh heh) a means of self-defense, and
  • sets the anti-gun socialists’ collective hair on fire.

Anyone have a problem with this idea?

Afterthought:  also, a .22 rifle (e.g. the Ruger 10/22) and a thousand-odd rounds of ammo because it’s a household appliance and every home should have one.

Thoughts For The Upcoming Hallmark Holiday

The Gun Thing

…from the folks at Palmetto State Armory:

Tagline:  “Roses Are Nice. Rifles Are Better.”

My sentiments exactly.  Roses die, but a decent rifle is forever.

So for all you lucky guys out there whose wives enjoy shooting, here’s a thought (link in pic):

I’d have suggested one with rose-pink furniture, but PSA doesn’t sell them.

Range Test: CCI Subsonic

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Last week I had to go to Academy for something or other that New Wife wanted me to get… and as any fule kno, this is dangerous for Yer Humble Narrator because Academy has frequent sales of ammo.

And so it came to pass that yea, they had a sale on ammo — specifically on CCI Subsonic 40gr, of which type I had absolutely none on hand in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere.

So I picked up a few boxes thereof — at 4c per round yippee — but on the road home, a thought occurred to me:

Would the lighter-loaded subsonic ammo have a different point of aim than the Mini-Mag 40gr?

Two hours later found me at the range, duly equipped with Marlin 880SQ, ammo and sandbag to make the test.

Poop:  the rifle range was closed for maintenance, so I had to use the 25-yard pistol range.  The distance was not really a problem — it’s just an informal comparison test after all — but sadly, the shallow shelf in the pistol bays precluded using a sandbag, so I had to shoot off the bipod, which tends to be less accurate than a big sandbag.  Oh well.

I’d recently cleaned the 880, so I popped off a few fouling shots, and then got down to business.

Double poop:  since the last time I did a .22 test, my eyes have gone totally shit, ergo:

If I stare through the scope long enough, the two lines eventually resolve into one, but after while, as we all know, the gun starts to shake a little after a prolonged hold.  Ugh.  This getting old shit really sucks.  Anyway, I decided to shoot using the right-hand cross-hairs, but it wasn’t an optimal situation.  [le sigh]

Anyway, I observed the usual discipline:  no fiddling with the scope between shots or strings, same hold on the target (dead center of the diamond), and so on.  So we have the same rifle, same scope settings, same location, same day, same shooter (gawd help us), same bullet weight, same ammo manufacturer.

Here are the first two 5-shot strings with the Mini-Mag 40gr.

(with called flier)

…and here are the two best 5-shot strings with the Subsonic 40gr.

 

There’s some drop, but not a substantial one methinks. When I fired a full magazine (10-shot) string, however, the group tended well towards the bottom-right quadrant of the target circle.

On the whole, however, the Mini-Mags are consistently more accurate than any other .22 LR ammo I’ve ever fired.

Anyway, I fired off a few more strings of the subsonic, with no appreciable difference, and put the gun down to let the barrel cool and to take a bathroom break.

Comment 1:  even with hearing protection, there was a pronounced difference in the sound between the Mini-Mags and the Subsonics — I mean, I’m pretty sure I could have fired the Subs without hearing protection.  (I couldn’t test that, of course, because there were other shooters on the line, and they weren’t using subsonic ammo, believe me.)  In the open air, though?  Hmmm.

Comment 2:  I’m not sure why all my shots were pulled to the right, unless I should have used the left-hand crosshairs.  Aaargh.

When I came back, I decided that I’d had enough testing, and instead fired off some other .22 ammo I happened to have in the shooting bag — mostly just cheapo plinking stuff.  The results were quite interesting:

 

 

To be fair, I think the Remington Golden is actually a 36gr bullet (not 40 as noted), so maybe that would explain the different fall of shot.

But the Aguila?  I think MOAR TESTING is required…

…but I maintain that the CCI Mini-Mag .22 LR ammo is my go-to feed for my Marlin 880SQ rifle, and pretty much every .22 gun I’ve ever fired.  YMMV.

Second-Best

The Gun Thing

We’ve had this conversation before on this website:

Should Your EDC Be A Throw-Away Gun?

The fact is, if you are involved in a self-defense shooting, say goodbye to your pistol.

The police are just doing their job, and one of their tasks is to collect evidence; ergo, your gun ends up in an evidence bag. Typically, the police will hold your firearm for a specified period until the investigation is completed.

If you are cleared and no charges have been filed, you can expect to get your gun back. Maybe. There is no set timeframe for returning your gun to you. Every state is different. But your gun will be logged as evidence.

Since I started to conceal carry—about the time Glock Gen3 pistols were introduced—I decided to be on the throw-away side of the fence. Both my EDC and pickup truck guns are throw-away guns.

Okay, I’ve thought about this issue a lot, and I think I disagree with Bob Sadowski on this one.  Here’s why.

Let’s be honest:  unless you live or travel in a high-crime area, the chances of you being involved in a self-defense shooting are fairly slim.  That’s not to say it’s impossible, of course — none of us is going to sign on to that foolishness.

But for my part, I want to know if that situation does happen to me, that I can absolutely, positively depend on my gun, and that confidence may well be the thing that saves me from harm.  I don’t want to feel any hesitation that when the hammer drops, there’ll be a boom and the bullet will go where intended.

To be fair, Sadowski is not recommending going with a cheap gun — let’s leave Saturday Night Specials to the criminal element, and let them deal with the consequences of a mag falling out of the gun, or a firing pin snapping, or all the other mishaps that El Cheapo guns are prone to.

But using my own situation as an example:  my everyday carry gun is a Springfield 1911.  It’s not a Nighthawk or an Ed Brown 1911, but it sure as hell isn’t a Jennings or Raven either.  I’ve always been reluctant to spend the extra money necessary to climb up the flattening shallow slope of the quality curve;  sorry, but “good enough” is fine for me, whether guns, cars, watches or even food.  (That I don’t have the wallet to be able to afford the premium is neither here nor there — when I have had the wherewithal, I’ve never spent it.)

So if I do have to ventilate some scrote to protect me or mine, then yeah, my Springfield could end up rusting in some poxy evidence locker somewhere.  That would be sad, believe me, but then again, it’s a sacrifice worth making because that means it worked as I expected it to do.

What I’ve done is make sure that my backup EDC is also a 1911, and should I lose the Springfield under the above circumstances then I’m going to have equal confidence in its replacement.

I’m not going to be held hostage by sentiment or some romantic notion of ownership.  At the end of the day, as much as I love my Springfield, if it fulfills its intended purpose, then it’s a job well done and yeah:  I can believe that it gave up its life for me.  How’s that for romance?

But I’m not going to leave the Springfield at home and carry a Glock 21 (which I couldn’t care less about losing because I have little regard for the spongy-triggered Glock pistols, as any fule kno).  Thanks, but no thanks.

As for a truck gun… well, that’s a whole different set of circumstances (assuming that we’re talking about a long gun like a shotgun or rifle).  Here we’re talking about shall we say some crowd control instead of just one or two individuals.  And under those circumstances, I really don’t care what happens to the piece if I’ve used it as intended.

What I’m more worried about is the possibility of theft (which is not an issue with a carry piece).

But I’ll tell you what:  a truck / trunk gun should not be that M1 Garand National Match, no matter how much you trust it to take care of business.  Honestly, one of those Mossberg 88 pump-action shotguns — preferably the second-hand one you picked up at that gun show for $90 all those years ago –should be the direction of your thinking.

Now, if you’re fairly sure you might be involved in some serious action… then you should stay home.  Seriously.  Only idiots go out looking for trouble.  But if there’s no choice in the matter, then take the very best long gun you have — and I don’t mean that $15,000 A.H. Fox side-by-side, of course;  I’m talking about an AK-47 or AR-15 because we’re talking about Last Resort / End Times / SHTF action, and you owe it to yourself (and to whomever else you’re protecting) to take the absolute best you can.  Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

But the chances of that happening are even less than being accosted by some scrote at a 7-11 when you popped out for an emergency pack of baby food.  The Random Goblin Encounter is what your EDC is for;  End Times will be a different situation altogether.

Pick your gun accordingly, and be careful (but prepared) out there.

Range Nous

The Gun Thing

I probably need to explain the title of this post to my Murkin Readers, because in the non-Murkin Anglosphere, the word “nous” is not pronounced like the French “noo”, nor does it mean “we”.

In the English sense, “nous” is pronounced like “house”, and it means common sense, or knowledge of the way things are — as in “show some nous” when someone is acting inappropriately, or “a little bit of nous would have gone a long way in preventing that unpleasantness”.

So having condescended, let me now explain what “range nous” means.

There are some gun ranges where you are pretty much allowed to spend all the time you want in your lane — most notably in outdoor ranges run by good ol’ boys, or ranges dedicated to time-swallowing activities such as sighting in a new scope, testing various kinds of ammo, or breaking in a new rifle.  These ranges are to be treasured for what they are:  a rare and vanishing resource for us gun-lovers.

Most ranges — and I speak specifically of urban or suburban indoor ranges — have set time limits for a range session, such as 30 or 45 minutes.  If you are going to shoot off a reasonable number of rounds or shoot a couple-three different guns, therefore, time is at a premium.

Which is why I get mildly irritated — and it happens often — when some young guy — it’s always a young guy — arrives at his lane, puts up his target, and then sets about filling the twenty or so 17-round mags for his Glock — it’s almost always a Glock or similar — and then gets surprised when his range time expires before he’s had a chance to shoot off all those mags.  It also happens, although less frequently, with guys clutching their AR-15 poodleshooters and thirty-round magazines.

FFS, guys:  load up your mags at home before you get to the range and aren’t in essence paying for time that should be spent shooting instead of maintenance.

Me, I put up my target, pop the safety and start shooting, mere seconds after the target has stopped shaking.  If I’m going to be paying someone for me to shoot my guns, I’m damn well going to be shooting.  Before I even walk out the door, the spare mags / speedloaders are full and ready for action.

It’s called “nous”, and while it is regrettably missing in so many parts of my life, at the range I haz it (as the kids say nowadays.