Glock Lawsuit

I found this one in a Glocktalk thread last night but didn’t get to posting it. Some guy ran into trouble with his Glock 36. He sent it into Glock, they replaced a part and it was sent back. The problem continued. He sent it in again and after six months they returned it saying the gun was within specs. In the end he had to take them to small claims court where he did end up winning.

That’s a pretty pathetic way to handle your customers Glock. Just saying.

It’s Official Everybody is Making a 1911

For a 100 year old design the 1911 sure is popular. But it should be because it’s an amazing weapon platform. These days everybody is making one and now we learn from The Firearm Blog that Magnum Research is going to release one next year.

It appears as though Magnum Research isn’t producing them in .50 AE sadly. Yeah sorry I’m not more excited about this but a new 1911 coming out has become the news of the month kind of thing and I just expect it now.

Congress Members Trying to Bar Posting of Sensitive Government Documents

Remember the lead of the TSA Standard Operating Procedures document a bit back? Well it appears as though three jackass congressmen want to make it illegal for websites to post such materials. From the article:

In their letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (.pdf) on Wednesday, Reps. Peter T. King (R – New York), Charles Dent (R – Pennsylvania) and Gus Bilirakis (R – Florida) asked, “How has the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration addressed the repeated reposting of this security manual to other websites, and what legal action, if any, can be taken to compel its removal?”

They also asked if DHS is “considering issuing new regulations pursuant to its authority in Section 114 of Title 49, United States Code, and are criminal penalties necessary or desirable to ensure such information is not reposted in the future?”

That’s right Peter T. King, Charles Dent and, Gus Bilirakis want to bar websites from posting leaked government documents because our transparent government by the people and for the people doesn’t want citizens to see such documents.

Because I’m in a rather prickish mood I thought I’d do my duty and post the document on this site. So here it is everybody a copy of the TSA Standard Operating Procedures [PDF] document. Enjoy.

Alan Grayson is an Asshole

That’s my official stance since Random Nuclear Strikes has reported Florida Representative jackass Alan Grayson has threatened to give fives years of prison time to somebody who dares criticize him.

Well when I see somebody doling out threats to people using the first amendment I like to help by exercising my freedom of speech. Mr. Grayson I provide you with this:

Go fuck yourself with it. Also you’re an asshole.

Glock Generation 4 Pricing

No this blog hasn’t become the all Glock all the time blog. But they are popular and they are brining out something somewhat new (kind of?). Anyways The Firearm Blog has obtained pricing information on the next generation of “perfection” (that just happens to need improving every few years). They found dealers, MSRP, and law enforcement prices. It doesn’t look like the prices between current Glocks and the next generation ones is all that different.

Springfield XD Detail Strip

Since the carry holster for my Springfield XD is down for repairs I decided it would be a great time to completely disassemble the gun and give it a thorough cleaning. In doing this I learned a very valuable lesson, reassembling the Springfield XD sucks.

I striped the gun completely to the frame. Every component was removed. It’s amazing how much crud gets missed in a basic field strip and cleaning. Anyways due to the frustrations I encountered I’m going to make some notes in regards to detail stripping and reassembling the Springfield XD.

First thing to note is removing the striker. Getting the cocked indicator out is simple enough, you press in the indicator guide and slide off the rear plate. When you get the plate off out comes a spring and the indicator, but not the striker. If you look at the top of the gun you’ll notice a roll pin, this is holding the striker in. You have to take a punch and hammer to gently tap it out from bottom to top (the bottom hole is smaller than the top one by a slight bit). I hate roll pins. Unless you have a special roll pin punch it’s far too easy to damage a roll pin during removal and more likely reassembly. I personally do not like this design choice at all.

That’s not too big of a deal though since I’ve had the striker out before. What sucked was the frame itself. Pulling apart an XD is a simple ordeal. Remove the take down lever (it wiggles out) and the two pins above the trigger. That removes the locking block and trigger assembly. That’s the easy part.

Removing the sear involves another pin located in the rear rails on the frame. Tap it out and the sear and accompanying equipment come out. The ejector is held in by another blind pin which you can see in the left rear rail (all directions are assuming your looking at the gun as if you were aiming it). This pin serves two functions, holding the ejector into place and keeping tension on the spring that probably flew out when you removed the previously mentioned pin. You can remove the blind pin by inserting a flat head screwdriver on the right end of the pin and pushing it out.

But now comes the fun part, the grip safety. Removal is simple, punch out the pin on the gun’s grip. Off pops the grip safety and it’s spring. Take out the magazine catch, which is another pin, and you’ve completely striped the gun, simple.

Most guns the instructions for reassembly are to just reverse the instructions for disassemble it, not quite so with the XD. So if you’ve detail stripped your XD’s frame here are some tips I have for you to reassemble the gun.

The first thing you should do is reinsert the ejector, sear assembly, and accompanying pins. If you start with the grip safety you’ll find yourself pulling it out later to redo it. Assembly of the aft-mentioned parts is mostly doing what you do to remove them in reverse. But only thing to not is when you reinsert the sear spring you need to hook one of the arms under the ejector’s blind pin. This can be a bit of a pain but I found using a Phillips screwdriver and getting the arm into one of the slots makes this job fairly easy. Just press the arm down, move the pin over it, and you’re done.

Here comes the hard part, the grip safety. Fuck this part. When you removed the grip safety you probably noticed the spring isn’t symmetrical. There are two arms coming off of the spring, one much longer than the other with a bend at the top. When inserting the spring that arm should be on the right side of the grip safety. If you look carefully at the spring you’ll notice the hole the pin is supposed to travel through it’s a perfect hold. The short arm crosses over the hole, this is going to cause some pain.

To reassemble the grip safety you need to insert the spring into the safety lever and than gently insert the lever into the rear of the gun. Do not even the slightest bump agains the spring will make it pop out and you’ll get to start all over. What I did was held a flathead screwdriver against the bottom of the spring on the front of the lever to hold the spring in. This will allow you to get the spring in far enough to insert a very small screwdriver (think of one you’d use to tighten the screws on a pair of glasses) through the grip safety pin hole on the frame and into the pin hold on the lever and spring. Not insert this tiny screwdriver through the left side since you’ll need to drive the pin through the right side.

Look at the grip safety pin. You’ll notice a little notch slightly left of center. This notch is important. You need to slide the pin in from right to left with the side the notch is closer to being inserted first. Remember the spring arm crosses the pin hold? Well that arm fits into the pin’s notch. While still holding the spring in with the tiny screw driver drive the ping in far enough to hold the spring. Now you will need to use that screw driver to pry the small spring piece that crosses the pin hold out so the pin can pass through. Once you get the pin through you should just press down on it until you feel the arm click into the notch. If the arm isn’t perfectly nestled into that notch the grip safety will press in but won’t pop back out again. You may have to move the pin back and forth slightly until it all fits together.

Reassembly of the rest of the gun is just a reverse of the disassembly. It took me a good hour to get that grip safety back in there properly (partially because I put it in before the sear assembly and had to take it out again). It’s a pain in the ass. I realize my description is hard to follow and pictures would be better but I didn’t have the foresight to take pictures and I sure as the Hell am not taking that thing apart again unless is breaks.

As I’ve been comparing the XD and Glock I can say this really put me off the XD path. It’s such a stupid design. More thought should have been given to reassembly here. I’m going to detail strip my Glock and than I will actually compare the two operations but I can’t imagine the Glock being even 1/10th as hard as the XD to reassemble.

If you’re going to detail strip the XD I highly recommend obtaining a copy of AIG’s Springfield Armory XD Pistols Armorer’s Course video. It covers the reassembly of the gun in good detail and you’ll want that detail less you do it wrong (like inserting the grip safety pin in backwards).

Palm Ares

OK this is cool. I just got notification that Palm Ares has entered public beta. This is certainly a geeks only thing. Ares is Palms WebOS development environment that runs in your web browser. Think of it as Eclipse, Visual Studio, or Xcode in the web browser and you’ll have a decent idea of what Ares is.

This means WebOS developers can not write software for Palm’s new phones without having to actually install anything on their computer. I’ve only played with it for a short while so far but will admit it’s pretty cool. Of course I’m still a fan of having my stuff on my computer with my tools so if I don’t have an Internet connection I can still work. But if you’re into this whole cloud computing thing and want to write WebOS projects this could be for you.

Glock Generation Four News

It appears some more information is bring released about the next generation of Glock pistols. Says Uncle has a possible picture of the new pistol while The Firearm Blog has found mention of new Glock 17 and 22 models being mentioned on a firearm distributor site.

There is talk that the new model of Glocks will have a redesigned recoil spring but that isn’t apparent in the previously mentioned picture. What the picture does show is the new Glock will have swappable back straps, a more aggressive but not as aggressive as RTF2 frame, and what appears to be a larger magazine release (hopefully ambidextrous).

I still don’t understand how Glock would improve their pistols which they claim are prefect. But I do love the fact they are moving to swappable back straps. Why? Because when I mention swappable back straps on the XD(M) pistols a Glock fan boy usually crows about how that is just another unneeded part that will break. I’m guessing it’s not going to be a great new innovation from Glock. Fucking fan boys.