Category: Guns and Gear

Rail Mounted Power

This is a neat idea that doesn’t seem to actually solve the problem it’s designed to. The Firearm Blog brought to our attention the Rifle Integrated Power Rail (RIPR). It’s pretty simple, a battery that provides power to rail mounted accessories through the rails. It seems like a novel idea since you’d no longer be required to carry additional batteries for every accessory on your rifle.

Of course there’s also the major downside; if the RIPR fails all of your accessories go down. This seems to eliminate and advantage considering the following:

We’re not that worried about a RIPR battery going tits up. You would of course carry spares with you. We’re more worried about the plug-in unit/rail (into which the RIPR battery is inserted) failing. If that goes down, you’re done–unless you have spare batteries for the individual accessories, of course.

So now you carry additional RIPR batteries as well as batteries for your individual accessories. That seems to add weight to both the rifle and your load out. Convergence is good in some situations and not so hot in others. Having a small portable computer in your pocket that can make phone calls, listen to music, browse the Internet, and act as a GPS navigator. The reason such devices work well is because losing all of those functions is a nuisance.

Convergence doesn’t work so well when redundancy is critical. For instance a RAID 5 array on a server prevents a system from dying if any single hard drive fails. RAID 0 on the other hand means your entire server will die if any single drive dies. The reason servers generally use RAID 5 is because having the entire system go down if a single drive fails is not acceptable. Once the system is down anything that relies on that server is now useless. The same would go for the RIPR, if it fails every power-using accessory on your gun dies. If these accessories include a flashlight or some kind of night optic requiring power your rifle is now pretty useless in the dark. Personally given the size of the RIPR and the fact that you would still need to carry batteries for individual accessories I feel it’s a solution in search of a problem.

SAD Pistol

I have a friend who is into single-action revolvers in a big way. He’s gone so far as to say when he gets a carry permit he wants to carry around a Ruger single-action revolver. Personally I’ve always through of the idea as idiotic retarded [I have to piss of those r-word people periodically]. Double-action revolvers and semi-auto pistols both have advantages and disadvantages to one another. Single-action revolvers have some of the advantages of their double-action kids but with severe drawbacks added into the mix. I always through of using a single-action revolver for a carry gun as self-retardation in a self-defense situation.

Well it seems Gunsite has launched a Single-Action Defensive Pistol class to their roster. I will fully admit that a single-action revolver will work in most self-defense situations so long as you can draw, cock the hammer, and fire fast enough. The problem is if you get into one of those corner case situations where a reload is necessary. In these cases pistols shine as they are very quick to reload and each magazine holds more ammunition on average than a revolver. Double-action revolvers is very practical with the use of speed loaders, speed strips, or moon clips. Then you have the single-action revolvers which are impossible to load quickly simply by the fact they’re designed to extract one case at a time and load one round at a time.

Still I can’t really see why this class exists. Are there enough people out there who actually carry a single-action revolver? If there are why do it? Seriously it just seems like you’re purposely handicapping yourself unnecessarily.

Glock Gets Approval to Bring More Jobs to Smyrna

A while back I mentioned Glock wanted to expand their facilities and bring more jobs to Smyrna, Georgia but were being blocked by people who didn’t want those jobs in their neighborhood. Well good news everybody, via The Firearms Blog I found out that Glock was granted their land request. This means they can expand their facilities which is certainly a very good thing.

Flying with Guns

I’m sure you’ve heard enough people say you should pack a gun in with your luggage if you don’t want it to be riffled through without you present. Well here is a Defcon talk about doing exactly that.

For those of you who aren’t aware the idea behind this is simple. In order to fly with a firearm said gun must be placed in checked luggage. The luggage must be a hard sided case that is locked. But here is the real kicker, it must be locked in such a way that only you have the key. TSA approved locks (locks that can be opened by a TSA master key) aren’t approved for luggage containing firearms. This means anytime the luggage is to be opened you must be present to unlock and relock the case.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Just Not Those Jobs

Apparently those bastards at Glock want to expand their factory and create some new jobs. Apparently local residents don’t like this idea:

Families who live nearby said they are worried about gunfire so close to their back yards.

“They’re not making toys — they’re making guns, and when you make guns there’s going to be byproducts through that process. They’re also testing the guns,” said resident Kim Childs.

Yup there are going to be byproducts… like employment opportunities in the community. How date Glock try to benefit the area by making new jobs available.