Month: December 2009

TSA Get it All Wrong Again

So another terrorist prick tries to blow up a plane. Just what we needed right? Well TSA is further proving their motto of, “We’re not happy until you’re not happy.” They’ve implemented a bunch of pointless rules that are so blatantly meaningless that I fail to see the reason they were even thought about. Of course security expert Bruce Schneier has something to say about it:

And what sort of magical thinking is behind the rumored TSA rule about keeping passengers seated during the last hour of flight? Do we really think the terrorist won’t think of blowing up their improvised explosive devices during the first hour of flight?

Yes that’s right keep people seated for the last hour of the flight. What will this do? Make the terrorist attempt to blow up the plane sooner. Of course he mentioned this is a rumor and it would seem asinine to believe except the TSA have done equally dumb before. It’s believable. He also mentioned the only two things that have been done that make flying safer:

Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.

But the best quote is this:

Only one carry on? No electronics for the first hour of flight? I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.

I agree, very strongly.

Advantage Arms .22 Conversion Kit for the Glock 30

For Christmas to myself from myself I obtained an Advantage Arms .22 Conversion Kit for my Glock 30SF. The 30SF is my new primary carry gun and thus I want to practice with it as much as humanly possible. Alas a predicament exists the 30SF fires .45 auto ammunition which is a touch expensive. On the other hand nothing I’m aware of is cheaper than .22LR. Thankfully Advantage Arms decided a market exists in combining both full size pistols and .22LR ammunition.

First what the kit is and what it isn’t. What the kit consists of is a replacement slide and magazine. The slide consists of your usual stuff including a firing pin, barrel, and recoil spring. One very nice thing about the slide is the size and shape are the same as your Glock so with the kit on you can still practice with your standard holster. The kit also allows you to practice with the trigger on your Glock, be it the stock one or an aftermarket one. What the kit isn’t is a perfectly accurate representation of your Glock, the slide weighs much less than the factory one. This in itself is fairly obvious because a puny .22LR round isn’t going to budge a slide made for a .45.

First off installation is a breeze. You remove the slide from your Glock and than put the Advantage Arms slide on. It’s no different than field stripping your Glock and than putting the slide back on. You couldn’t make it any easier. Likewise you need to use the Advantage Arms magazine with the slide since a regular Glock magazine isn’t going to hold .22LR ammunition.

The magazine is simple enough. Form-wise it’s almost exactly the same as the Glock factory magazines. This means it goes right into the grip without any need for an adapter. It also drops free, usually. The Advantage Arms magazines don’t have the full metal liner that Glock magazines do any hence it’s lighter. Usually the magazine simply drops free but oftentimes you have to make sure you really push in the magazine release. If it doesn’t drop free you just have to give the gun a firm shake downwards. Advantage Arms is located in the People’s Republic of California so 10 round magazines is all you can get. And they’re expensive coming in at $25.00 a piece from the manufacturer. Also they’re in short supply at the moment as nobody has any in stock (much like the kit itself). And finally the kit only comes with one magazine which is a drag in my opinion, but whatever.

There are two types of kits. The target and the law enforcement ones. You don’t have to be a law enforcement officer to get the law enforcement model, and that’s the model I got. The difference between the two types has to do with the sights. The law enforcement model uses stock Glock sights. You can replace them with any sight that fits a Glock. The target model has proprietary sights that are raised up higher than standard Glock sights. From the factory the law enforcement model has a stock Glock front sight and an adjustable Glock rear sight. I really like the fact that this kit uses standard Glock sights. If you want to put night sights on your Glock you can and you can also put those same night sights on the Advantage Arms kit so you’re practicing with the same setup.

When you open the box there is a very large orange piece of paper alerting you to the fact the kit is finicky with ammunition. They recommend Remington Glod Bullets or CCI Mini-Mags. The not also strong recommends against any Remington Thunderbolt, Federal, or Winchester ammunition. I had some CCI Mini-Mags and Remington Cyclones around so those are what I tested with.

Since I’m talking ammunition let’s start with that. Another note mentioned that the kit may not settle in for a couple hundred rounds so until then you may experience higher failure rates than expected. I notice this. With both types of ammunition I had with I experience on average one failure per 10 rounds. But as I shot more and more rounds through it the failure rate started dropping pretty decisively. I got about 200 rounds through today and the last fifty fed through with only two failures. Both ammunitions performed roughly the same although I noticed slightly more failures with the Remington ammunition. I expected as much since I always have more failures with bulk Remington ammunition, but for the price I don’t care. And even with all the failures the kit is more reliably than my Smith and Wesson 22A I got for uber cheap.

The failures aren’t all bad either. Since the kit operates the exact same as the standard Glock setup failures make great opportunities to practice failure drills. Tap, rack, bang works just fine with the Advantage Arms kit.

Accuracy was very good for a .22 pistol. I had no problems hitting a man sized target at 25 yards with it. My groups weren’t great but again they never are. With multiple magazines you can practice reload drills but I only have the single magazine the kit comes with at the moment. Still performing draw and fire drills is great with this kit. Likewise I can work on my point shooting without feeling like I’m wasting a ton of expensive .45 ammunition. All these reasons are why I wanted this kit in the first place and it does very well at all of them. Overall I’m very happy with this kit.

Unfortunately nothing is prefect. The kit itself is the price of a .22 pistol coming in at $265.00. Still I think the advantage of being able to practice cheaply on your desired platform is worth the money. Likewise if you pistol is a .45 auto like mine (Advantage Arms makes kits for 1911s and other Glock models as well) you save a butt load of money when using the kit. This will make up for the cost of the kit after some time.

Because many people hate reading entire reviews I’m going to include a simple bullet point summary.

Pros:
– Easy installation and removal
– Perfectly mimics the function of your pistol
– You can practice with the same trigger
– .22LR is much cheaper than .45 auto
– Uses standard Glock sights

Cons:
– Expensive
– One includes one magazine
– Magazines are expensive and capped at 10 rounds

XD vs. Glock: Detail Strip

In the continuation of reporting my findings in my grand experiment I’m going to talk about detail stripping the guns. I posted my findings on detail stripping my XD a bit back so I don’t have to reiterate much there. I also did the latest episode of Truth About Guns which covered my findings throughout the entire experiment so go have a listen.

Anyways click the first link to learn what it takes to detail strip an XD. Go ahead and read it, the post will be here when you’re done. Seriously this post isn’t going anywhere. Done reading it? OK good. Let’s talk about detail stripping the Glock 30SF. To do this you’ll need the following tools:

1 x 3/32″ punch

Got that? First the slide. Once you remove the slide from the frame you need to remove the recoil spring and the barrel just as you would when detail stripping an XD. From here the steps differ greatly. On the Glock you’ll need to remove the rear slide plate. There are two things you’ll need to do here. First look at the part of the striker protruding through the cutout on the bottom of the slide. In front of it (against directions are given as if you’re holding and aiming the gun) there is a small plastic sleeve. Use the punch to push the sleeve forward. While holding pressure on the slide use your thumb to slide the rear plat off. Make sure to keep your thumb over the exposed holes because things with springs will try to pop out.

Once the plat is off remove the striker assembly and the other spring which I’m at a loss of it’s correct name as I type this. The striker assembly can be further taken down by pushing the spring back which will cause to plastic cups to fall off. To remove the extractor turn the slide upside down, ensure the second spring mentioned is removed, and push down on the firing pin safety, the extractor should fall out. There you go you’ve taken the slide down now for the frame.

The frame has three pins, a trigger pin, locking block pin, and the frame pin. Use the punch to push out all three. Once removed the slide lock lever will come right out. Remove the locking block from the frame (you may need to use the punch to wiggle it out a bit). Now you can remove the trigger which is attached to the trigger bar. Use the ejector to pull out the assembly at the back of the gun. To remove the trigger bar turn it outwards from the sear assembly and life it up a bit. Unhook it from the spring. That’s it.

Putting the Glock back together is the same steps in reverse. The only note I need to make is when inserting the slide lock lever. Once the trigger and locking block are in the gun place the locking block pin in first. Than put in the slide lock lever. The spring on the slide lock lever pushes on the locking block pin and uses that for tension. After that place the other two pins in, assembly the slide, and put the two components back together. You’re done.

Seriously it’s so much easier than the XD to field strip it’s scary. This step certainly goes to the Glock.

Merry Christmas

Well it’s Christmas Eve here and I thought I’d get ahead of my duty to wish everybody a merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, or whatever the fuck you want me to say and not get all offended for wishing you well).

I’ll be bunkering down in south eastern Minnesota where Mother Nature is reminding us that Al Gore is full of shit.

Up Next on California’s Ban List, Gun Safes

Apparently an 11 year old child decided playing inside a gun safe was a good idea. He got locked in there.

Furthermore the employees apparently didn’t remember how to open it so they called the fire department. The employees eventually got it open without the need to blow anything up. And of course this happened in California so look for gun safes becoming illegal there or warning labels required on the front warning about the possibility of getting locked in.

Glock Generation Four Pictures, The Actual Gun

I can’t take credit for these sadly, I’m not Mr. Exclusive. But MrVvrroomm over on the MNGunTalk forums posted some pictures of what appear to be an actual Glock 22 Generation Four pistol. Here are the pictures:

If this is some Photoshop trickery it’s bloody good. Anyways we can see the removable back strap, new grip texture, new magazine release, and new recoil spring.

Digital “Rights” Management Proven Useless Again

I’ve always found the term digital rights management to be an idiotic one. You don’t need your rights managed. But alas that’s the name that became popular and many companies used it. For instance Amazon uses it on downloaded e-books for their Kindle. Its use is an attempt to prevent copying of the material but alas an ingenious hacker has cracked it.

I have no problem paying for e-books so why do I care about this? Because I want to be able to use my documents on other devices. Maybe somebody in the future will build an e-reader that I like better than the Kindle. What will I do? Re-purchase all my books for the new platform? Well that’s the only option unless the Kindle’s DRM gets cracked, which it just did. I’ll try out the tool and report back on it this weekend (not a copy is available at the link, get it before Amazon pulls a DMCA notice and gets it removed).

Oh and here is a link to the blog of the person doing the fine work.

And for the sake a clarity I just want to make it clear that this tool allows breaking Kindle books obtained via Kindle for the PC. Cracking Kindle books on a Kindle has been possible for quite a while now.