Category: Guns and Gear

Rail Mounted Cameras

Have you ever taken a trip to the range, shot extremely well, and taken the target home only for people to say you cheated and punched holes through the paper manually? Have you ever ran an awesome USPSA match and wished you had a recording? Well now you can verify your awesome shooting in any way via the wonderful world of rail mounts video cameras!

Personally I’ll keep them off of my rifle to save the embarrassment of my poor shooting.

Also that’s a pretty sly way to turn a little piece of the Consumer Electronic Show into a gun show. Kudos to Contour the manufactures of the rail mounted camera.

Be Prepared… To Be Underwhelmed

Says Uncle let it be known that Glock is apparently going to be holding an hour long press conference at the SHOT Show. What will they talk about? Well this will spark a ton of talk about the fabled Glock carbine again but I’m betting they’re just going to talk about the Gen4 pistols and their success.

Glock is a rather boring company (not a bad thing, so long as their pistols keep working I like boring) and rarely seem to announced anything too spectacular. I’m betting this presentation will be rather underwhelming.

Springfield XD(m) 3.8 Compact Released

It appears as through Springfield Armory has actually listened to the comments made by their customer base and forwarded that information to HS in Croatia. Some time ago Springfield announced the release of the XD(m) 3.8 which was advertised as an ideal solution for concealed carry. The problem laid in the fact that the barrel may have been shorter but the grip, the hard part of the gun to conceal, was still full sized.

Springfield has now announced a “compact” version of their compact gun. Basically it’s a standard XD(m) 3.8 with roughly one inch shaved off of the grip length. Personally this is what I think the 3.8 should have been from the word start, it’s nice to see it get released in this configuration.

So How About that Microstamping

Somebody by the name of Ronni Chase was apparently murdered by a person using a firearm… in California which is impossible because they have such strict gun control laws. It seems one of the “mysteries” surrounding the murder was the lack of shell casings at the scene of the crime. Well the good boys at the local police department have finally come up with an explanation as to why there aren’t any shell casing:

Officials believe that the gun used in the slaying of Chasen was a .38-caliber revolver, a fact that would explain why no shell casings were found at the scene of the crime.

In revolvers such as a .38 caliber, officials explain, shell casings remain in the chamber after firing rather than being discharged at the shooting scene.

Well, no shit. That’s some mighty find investigating there. Lord knows it would take me a few days to figured that one out.

But this post isn’t here to dwell on the fact the powers of observation of some are in constant question. I want to have a brief discussion on something that anti-gunners have had a hardon for, microstamping. According to the anti-gunners microstamping is this amazing technology that marks the casing fired from a handgun with a serial number. Using this microstamped serial number police can trace the firearm used in a crime back to the owner. The anti-gunners like this technology so much they are pushing for laws to require such technology in every state of the Union. California is looking to pass one of these laws but are figuring out the actual implementation of this technology is pretty much impossible.

Those of us with a clue on firearms looked at this proposal and rolled our eyes. Hitmen aren’t stupid, in fact any successful hitman is actually pretty smart. They found a “loophole” to the microstamping laws even before they were laws. This “loophole” is called a revolver. Amazingly a revolver doesn’t just toss it’s brass every which direction, it keeps them in the chamber. This means no shell cases are left behind (as the police in the story figured out) and thus any microstamped serial number is going to be worthless. This is where the anti-gunners will probably push for a law requiring revolvers to automatically eject their brass upon firing because they’re morons who don’t know the first thing about firearms.

I’ll also mention that the media is going to shit bricks when they find out about our other “loophole,” brass catchers.

Rail Guns Kicking Ass

You know what’s awesome? Making a world record. Know what’s even more awesome? Breaking your own record. Following in the steps of Manowar who broke their own record for loudest concert ever, the Navy has built a rail gun that broke it’s own record for blowing shit up:

Navy scientists set a world record Friday during a test of an electromagnetic railgun, a tractor-trailer sized weapon that sends a 20-pound projectile rocketing through the air at seven times the speed of sound.

The futuristic gun was tested twice at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., and the first shot generated 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel, a world record for muzzle energy, the scientists said.

HELL YEAH! Think about that for a moment, a gun that propels 20 pounds of projectile to seven times the speed of sound. That’s 7,882 feet per second or 5,374 miles per hour. Roughly translated that equals about FUCKING AWESOME on the awesome scale. The video the Navy put out seriously needs a heavy metal soundtrack put to it.

Of course rail guns are still illegal to use for hunting in Wisconsin.

Interesting Case Design

The Firearm Blog has the skinny on a proposed case design that replaces our tried and true brass casing with platic spiral cases. I see a few problems with this design myself beyond the lack of heat transfer mentioned on The Firearm Blog. The biggest issue I have is the fact these cases are almost guaranteed to not be reloadable.

Brass is malleable so after being blown out from the pressures inherit in firearm cartridges they can be resized back down to a specified size. Plastic does not have this advantage and I can’t imagine any plastic being strong enough to survive multiple reloadings. Just chambering and extracting the case will probably damage it beyond repair due to the physics involving plastic slamming against metal. The idea behind the case is that they will extract better but I don’t think extraction is really that big of an issue anymore. Most rifles and pistols have a very low rate of failure these days.

Methods of Training

Although I mentioned the fact that I was at a range two nights ago I forgot to mention the most entertaining part. A man was in the stall next to us teaching his girlfriend/wife/who-knows-what-relation to shoot a handgun. I will give this man kudos on doing that but also shake my head at his method of training.

First if you’re a lady heading to the range let me give you this pro tip (which I received from a female friend who pointed this fact out); high heels do not for a good time at the range make. This goes double if you’re new to shooting. I don’t think I have to explain the laws of physics involved with high heels making a very unstable platform but they also offer poor support for when you step on empty brass casings and tumble over. Lucky for the girl in the stall next to us that didn’t happen but it’s a real possibility so please ladies wear sensible footwear at the range.

The guy had a good shooting stance. He was leaning forward aggressively, feet spread a correct distance apart, and he had a good grip on his pistol. His student was shooting with feed spread very far apart and standing straight up. When you teach somebody to shoot also teach them a proper stance. I can understand a proper stance being difficult to achieve when wearing high heels and refer you to the paragraph previous to this. Having an improper stance from the start makes that stance habit forming and thus harder to get away from when you want to learn the correct way of doing things. Try to establish the correct procedures for doing things from the start.

Finally I have this little quip; the time you’re using to teach a new shooter is not the time to show off. It’s intimidating for a new shooter to watch an experience shooter unload a magazine into a target with some semblance of accuracy. This guy did this several times. If you want to shot off pick the proper time.

Beyond those criticisms I have to give the guy credit for getting a new shooter to the range and making it an enjoyable experience for her (he was smart and didn’t spend time ridiculing the woman for not being a pro shooter from the start).

Rhino Review

Thanks to The Firearm Blog I found a link to review of the new Chiappa Rhino revolver. For those of you who haven’t heard of it the Rhino is a new revolver with a rare feature, it fires from the bottom cylinder instead of the top one. It’s an interesting design and did garner a favorable review from American Rifleman. Of course come to think about it I don’t think I’ve seen an unfavorable review in American Rifleman so your mileage may vary.

I really want to try one of these things out with a full .357 magnum load. It would be interesting to see how much lowering the barrel on a revolver reduces the muzzle climb.