Oh, that was McGovern. Oops. I’d much rather vote McGivern anyhow.
Ordnance
127 posts
From Oleg Volk:
At the start of this week, I asked Derek to make the database of armedpolitesociety.com available to my designates for backing it up to other servers. He dragged his feet but promised to make it available on Thursday. That didn’t happen.
When I called him, he said that he was busy. It’s the same claim he made to THR staff. Asked when he would make APS database available, he said: “I talked to a couple of moderators on THR and I think it should be part of the whole settlement with THR. I won’t release it.”
Feel free to publicize this event.
I own armedpolitesociety.com domain name, so I can move the forum. I would prefer to move it with the current content intact. My lawyer will be in contact with his.
I really wanted to believe that there were two sides to this issue. Experience has shown me that disagreements that seem cut-and-dried rarely are, so I was willing to solicit input on the situation from both sides. Continued...
In 1899, Smith & Wesson introduced the .38 Military & Police 1st Model Revolver. It first saw service in the Philippine Insurrection in .38 Long Colt, and in the stateside market, it was chambered in .38 Smith & Wesson Special. The .38 Special, as it came to be known, is possibly the most widespread and important handgun cartridge of the 20th Century.
There’s been a great deal of exposition over the last twelve hours regarding the ownership dispute over the High Road forum. At the moment, Derek Zeanah seems to be the only one with permissions to access the database, and Oleg’s admin privileges have been suspended.
At first, I refrained from casting judgment. I didn’t know all the facts, and at this point, I still don’t. However, exiled moderators, some of whom I know, have begun sharing a bit more information, and although there were mistakes on both sides, certain things are clear.
One of the few firearms forums I put up with seems to be struggling under an ownership dispute. The High Road is a level-headed well moderated forum in which I’ve frequently been able to find usable information from people who know what they’re talking about.
Last night, the forum went down with a message from Derek, which said he would explain the situation when it came back up. As of this morning, he and Oleg have made conflicting statements regarding the circumstances.
Myth #1: Revolvers are not as accurate as semiautomatic pistols.
Myth #2: Short-barreled revolvers are inaccurate and only good for close-range combat.
Reality: You really need to practice more.
Star Bonifacio Echeverria was founded in the Eibar region of Spain in 1905. During World War I, they produced clones of Mannlicher and Gabilondo pistols under contract. In the 1920s, they focused development on the Modelo A and B series.
The Modelo A was chambered in 9×23mm Largo (*) while the B model was chambered for the more common 9x19mm for export. While the Spanish military initially adopted the Largo loading, they would later switch to the B model, and the pistol would remain in service there until the 1990s.
The above was shot with the model BM, which is the compact version.
You don’t need to spend a month’s pay for a good handgun. There are several alternatives out there for less than $300. Case in point: the Bersa Thunder.
This little gun really surprised me. I was function-testing it for a customer, and the group on the right comprised the first magazine. Impressed, I reloaded and touched off eight more.
For ~$250, you could do far worse. Even considering my marginal marksmanship, the little Argentine pistol is as mechanically accurate as anything I’ve shot.
In some cases, a lack of forethought can create no end of confusion. Take, for example, the “Thirty Eight.” The 20th Century has seen innumerable .38-caliber loadings, and using the wrong one in your weapon could have some pretty disastrous results.
In fact, very few .38 cartridges actually use a .38 caliber bullet. What follows is a quick tutorial on .38 cartridges.
A friend compares carrying a gun to wearing ladies’ underwear. It’s comforting, and as good as it looks, it’s not something you’d want to have to explain to a random person on the street. It’s a secret you keep to yourself, but one that could save your life one day (*).
It’s vital to have one that fits the hand just right. Under stress, the weapon needs a sure grip, and one in which the sights line up naturally. The quality of grips is a rarely-mentioned factor in this.
Sometimes, a good loading just can’t get a break. The 10mm was introduced in 1983, based on suggestions from Jeff Cooper. He’d imagined a cartridge that could match the speed and flat trajectory of the 9×19mm with the heavier projectile of a .45 ACP, basically splitting the small/fast vs. large/slow debate down the middle.
This had been tried before, of course. The .41 Magnum was an earlier attempt to reconcile the .357 and .44 Magnum loadings. Based on the .400 Eimer wildcat cartridge, it could propel a 210gr bullet at 1520 ft/s, dumping a biblical 1080 ft/lbs of energy (1). Sadly, the .41 never caught on, and it faded into a sort of semi-obscurity, kept afloat by reloaders and aficionados who saw its potential in a wide range of loadings.
I wonder if it might have succeeded given a catchier name…something like .400 Lightning. Or the Four Bore Groin Punch. Continued...
This is a Smith & Wesson Model 67, the stainless Combat Masterpiece in .38 Special. According to Supica & Nahas, it was manufactured in 1974. This one’s a no-dash model from the first production run and has the stainless sights. It also has the tapered and pinned barrel, which would later be replaced with a straight, heavy barrel to match the Magnum frames.
At least that’s what I hear at least once a day from yokels who see me carrying one. Their arguments are puerile for the most part, and they all seem to echo the same misguided sentiments.
The first is accuracy. People will claim that the revolver is somehow inaccurate. What they really mean is that they can’t shoot it well. In fact, the revolver, having a fixed barrel, is capable of greater accuracy than many automatics. Case in point:
S&W 696, .44 Special, 8 yards, 2″ bullseye.
First things first. Clips and magazines are not the same thing, and the terms are not interchangeable. Confusing the two is very annoying.
Here’s a simple rule to remember the difference: if it has a spring in it, it is a magazine, not a clip.
A magazine is a spring-loaded mechanism used to load ammunition. With the exception of revolvers and top-break shotguns, most modern firearms load cartridges from a magazine of some sort. Bolt-action rifles and some older military ordnance utilize internal magazines, while most other modern firearms use external magazines.
Everyone who’s been abroad has seen the Ugly American. They’re tourists. They flaunt the local laws, they mock any customs they don’t bring with them, and they get offended because not everybody in the world speaks English.
Then they throw a self-righteous hissy fit because their rudeness doesn’t get rewarded.
The good news is, you don’t have to travel to a foreign country to see this animal in the wild. You just have to take a look at what the gun culture has turned into right here at home.
If you’re new to it, great. Welcome aboard. Bear in mind, you’re entering a culture with roots and customs going back several centuries. We’ve got rules, they’re important, and not following them could get someone hurt of killed.
We’re a bit sensitive about that sort of thing, as you could imagine.
Josh Sugarmann, director of the Violence Policy Center (VPC) has a Federal Firearms License (FFL). This is the same guy who raised fees on FFL applications and drove home dealers out of business, claiming
The FFL is a public safety scandal created by the very agency charged with enforcing federal firearms laws. By giving a federal gun-dealing license to virtually anyone who can come up with $30 and isn’t a convicted felon, ATF has put criminals in the business of selling guns.
Yet, according to the BATFE database, Sugarmann has held an FFL for at least a dozen years.
You can keep your ugly carbon-fiber high-speed-low-drag tactical holsters. Leather has worked for five centuries of pistols, and it still works today.
This is another of Tom Dyer’s modified Tom Threepersons holsters. Essentially, it’s a cross between the Threepersons and the old Bucheimer Federal Man that we brainstormed together. (I’ve described it in detail here.)
All the design needs is a name. Something with an Old West resonance. If you feel so inspired, drop me a line.
Another great holster from Tom Dyer.
California Governor Schwarzenegger has signed off on bill AB 1471, which requires all new handguns manufactured for sale in his state to be “microstamped.” This involves an expensive, untested and unverified technology (corporate boilerplate doesn’t count as verification) designed to imprint the serial number of the weapon on the spent casings it fires.
Of course, it’s a proprietary technology, so we mere citizens don’t get to know the details, but it apparently uses engraving on the breech face and firing-pin to “stamp” the fired casing, thereby making it easier to trace guns used in crimes. The bill also requires all ammunition to be serialized.
Download this chart. Live by it. It will help you.
Dennis Marschalko made these wonderful grips for Katya, my Bulgarian Makarov:
Repeat after me: the magazine is part of the weapon. Again. Better.
It always amazes me to see people who keep their guns immaculate but never clean the magazines. Cleaning them seems to be an afterthought. With automatic firearms, the most common causes for feeding failures involve the magazine. A dirty magazine can cause all sorts of trouble.
You can write any kind of claptrap these days, and as long as you call it a “blog,” you don’t have to worry about backing up any of your assertions with facts.
Case in point: Laura Washington’s silly little diatribe, called “Let’s Pry Open Those Cold Dead Hands.”
She starts by claiming that Americans are crying out for more gun control. Apparently, the standards in Journalism school have sunk to such a degree that the only attribution required is, “national news polls.” It seems that corporate entertainment product has replaced research these days.
“If I lived back in the Wild West days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I’d carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like, ‘Hey look. He’s carrying a soldering iron!’ and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, ‘That’s right, it’s a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice.’ Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.”
–Jack Handy/Phil Hartman, Saturday Night Live
Repeat after me: real life is not Rainbow Six.
Sure, lots of guns have features of debatable utility that are somehow supposed to make them “tactical.” That doesn’t mean you need them. Nor should those be the basis for the selection of a self-defense firearm.
Essentially, the list of priorities should read as follows:
- Reliability
- Controllability
- Reliability
- Accuracy
- Reliability
- Ergonomics
- Reliability
- Caliber
- Reliability
- Capacity
- Reliability
See the pattern? The most important factors boil down to this: get a gun that works and that you can shoot well. Everything else is peripheral.
Everyone’s got a friend who’s “into guns,” just like everyone’s got a friend who’s “good with tools.” I wouldn’t trust anyone but a certified mechanic to service my brakes, so why would I entrust firearms training to someone who’s only a casual enthusiast?
I hear this one all the time, and with all due respect, it’s just not true.
There are quite a few guys in law enforcement who are so good as to inspire awe and envy in even the best civilian shooters. Unfortunately, those officers are in the minority. Most police officers are only required to shoot twice a year for qualifications. For many, that’s the only time they spend at the range.
Another neglected stray finds a loving home:
It’s a classic K-Frame, manufactured in 1988. The actual model number is 66-3. With this iteration, the recessed cylinder was abandoned, but the gun was given an endurance package to reduce cylinder endshake. The firing pin is still mounted to the hammer, which is the way it should be.
Unless you’re in the industry, you probably haven’t heard of OSHA’s proposed 1910.109 standard. The new standard would have effectively made it impossible to operate a gun store or indoor range of any sort.
Here are the essentials:
- The definition of “explosives” would be expanded to include “small arms ammunition, small arms ammunition primers, [and] smokeless propellant,” lumping such things in with dynamite and high explosives
- As such, any facility containing ammunition or components thereof would be subject to the rules governing high explosives
- No person would be allowed to carry ammunition or firearms in such facilities. This would also affect police departments and military installations
- No person would be allowed to smoke within 50ft of the facility
- Facilities containing “exlosives” would have to be evacuated during any “electrical storm.”
One of the biggest myths is that, if our friendly Federal Government had control of all transactions, we’d all be safe from guns.
The reasoning goes that, since criminals obtain the majority of their guns through illegal and surreptitious connections, life should be made harder on those who sell guns legitimately.
Go ahead and read that again.
“That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me! You know what that is? It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany. It doesn’t show up on your airport X-ray machines, and it costs more than you make here in a month!”
–John McClane, Die Hard 2
Gotta love Hollywood when it comes to gun education. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve been asked about the infamous “Glock 7.”
Too bad it doesn’t exist.
On to myth number two: hollowpoint bullets. We know all about these, don’t we? They can puncture body armor, they blow people across the room, and doctors have to be careful removing them from the victim, lest they explode during excavation.
Sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it? Well, I’ve seen all three of those scenarios enacted in prime-time television dramas within the last year. You’ll hear all of them soon in electorial posturing, too.
Alright, we’re gearing up for an election year. You’re likely to hear alot of things about guns. If you’re not a shooter and/or a politician, you’re going to hear a great deal of heated rhetoric, and it’ll present a very contradictory picture.
You’ll hear that guns cause ordinary people to turn into raving savages, you’ll be told that hundreds of children die every day, and most of all, you’ll be told that it’s for your own good to have them taken away from you.
Question what you hear.
Skunkabilly strikes again! If you don’t get the joke, try reading this.
“An especially dangerous kind of firearms have come to be used, which are called wheelock, with which a homicide can easily be committed. His Excellency, knowing that these are devilish arms, prohibits their being carried without explicit authorization, under penalty of having a hand publicly cut off.”
–City Ordinance, Ferrara, Italy, 1523
This is one of the first gun control laws ever penned. Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (yep, they still had those then) passed similar edicts a few years previously, and the first gun-grabbing legislation took hold in Austria and the Netherlands.
Another day, another piece of Mall Ninja Tactical Recon Deployment (M.A.N.T.A.R.D.) gear. Today’s exhibit is a bayonet mount, complete with blade, for a CZ 75 SP-01.
A bayonet. For a pistol.
Lest you think that this is something I just overheard when I had the tinfoil cap off, here it is, in all its blurry glory:
It took awhile, but I finally got a set of grips I’d always wanted from Hakan Pek. They’re black laminate with a slight concave swell at the thumbrest.
The federal appeals court in Washington D.C. ruled Friday that the district’s 30-year-old ban on handguns in the home is unconstitutional. That’s a victory for common sense. What’s more important is that, for the first significant time since United States v. Miller, the courts have given an opinion regarding the question of individual firearms ownership.
Gun control advocates will try to sell you the idea that the Second Amendment is either: a) an antiquated throwback to the days of colonial resistance from King George or b) that it refers to the national guard and not individual citizens. Both assertions are patently false.
The Second Amendment guarantees the right of Americans to keep and bear arms in defense of liberty. Period.