Category: Guns and Gear

Are IDPA and IPSC Good Practice

Caleb over at Gun Nuts Media has a great post dealing with the old argument that IDPA and/or IPSC will get you killed. I agree with his post entirely. His post states that no IDPA and IPSC are not going to teach you tactical skills, they are going to give you practice at handling a firearm under stress. I think that kind of skill is far more important for your average armed citizen than learning how to enter a house while coordination with fellow team mates. I may have to defend myself some day but chances are I’m never joining the SWAT team.

I think it was Massad Ayoob that said IDPA isn’t good training, it’s good practice.

Say Hello to the Dumb Gun

Here’s a bad idea in motion. It’s a $10,000 .22 “smart” gun. The principal is simple, the gun only fires when it’s close enough to a watch that the owner would need to wear.

Of course one would inquire about the usefulness of a gun that fails to function because the battery in a watch died. Furthermore the designers put a nice bright LED on the guns that is green when the gun is activated and red when it’s not. Of course in the middle of the night when you don’t want to give away your position you’re rather fucked. Speaking of the night what happens if somebody breaks into your home and you have to act fast? Grab the watch, throw it on, and fire?

This gun looks like failure incarnate.

Gunzilla

Well it’s been positively dead around here but fear not after this week things should start up again. Anyways since I have a little free time I thought I’d give my thoughts on a CLP I recently tried called Gunzilla.

One of my friends has been proclaiming it as pretty good stuff so I finally tried it. This stuff is pretty bloody awesome. The first thing to note is that Gunzilla is made from plant byproducts making it “all natural” or “organic” or whatever hippie name you want to attach to it. The bottom line is Gunzilla doesn’t have harsh chemicals common in cleaners. Better yet this CLP has very little smell; what little there is smells of vegetable oil.

So how does it clean? Pretty well. I took it after my AR-15 a couple nights ago to test it and the gun cleaned up pretty quickly. I will admit it wasn’t atrociously dirty by any means but it was the only gun that wasn’t cleaned so that’s what I had. Gunzilla cleaned it up very well although not noticeably better than most other cleaners on the market.

What Gunzilla did very well was lubricate. That stuff makes everything it touches turn into a slick and slippery mess. Of course this makes it less than fun to work with but it also means it will work great at reducing friction. I haven’t shot the AR-15 since cleaning it so I don’t know how well Gunzilla will hold up but I certainly will post my findings the next time I take the gun out.

Overall I’m impressed though. Somebody managed to make a CLP that doesn’t reek of chemical cleaner and it cleans. I’ll post a more proper review after trying it on more guns and getting some range time in with a gun cleaned with Gunzilla.

Sonny Crocket Will Be Proud

I’m sure many people reading this can figured out what I’m going to be talking about in this post by the title. The Firearm Blog has some information about the Vltor Fortis pistol.

First it’s going to be released in limited numbers. Only 700 of the Vice model and 500 of the Spec Ops model. Second the gun will use EAA Witness magazines, not actual Bren Ten magazines as they are more rare than unicorns. Finally, as I’ve mentioned before, the Fortis pistol will be officially called the Bren Ten as Vltor purchased the rights to the name.

Sadly the price will range between $1,099 and $1,299. That’s a lot of money to own a reproduction of an ’80’s legend (And by legend I’m talking about the magazines because as far as anybody is concerned they don’t exist).

Smith and Wesson Enter .380 Market

Well it seems Smith and Wesson are following the crowd and have introduced a .380 pocket pistol of their own. Much like all the rest it seems to be a double-action only pocket pistol. Unlike all the others Smith and Wesson decided to toss on a manual safety.

They also introduced a new pocket revolved. Nothing too fancy.

Both guns are produced under the moniker Bodyguard. Likewise both have integrated laser pointers.

Shot Show Extravaganza

Thankfully The Firearm Blog is covering this year’s SHOT show because I sure am not. I’m going to pull a Leo Laporte here and meta cover the SHOT show. In other words I’m going to be posting about stuff I think is cool or interesting.

First up Bushmaster has officially launched their ACR platform. There isn’t much to say about it really besides the price tag hovers between $2,685 and $3,061. Ouch! For that price the rifle better make breakfast for me in the morning.

The next interesting thing I seen is Beretta’s evolved 92A1 and 96A1. These two are 9mm and .40 S&W evolutions of the well known 92SF and 96. What new things are brought to the table? Higher magazine capacity, some ergonomics, and of course RAILS! That’s right this isn’t your Daddy’s Beretta this gun can mount the combination laser, light, and bayonet!

Anyways more posts as I find them and pretend I’m some kind of journalist.

ABC News “Discovers” “Secret Bible Code” on Military Equipment

Here is an interesting e-mail I just received. Apparently ABC News just “discovered” super secret Jesus Bible code on some of our military equipment. From the article:

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The Michigan company, as you can guess, is Trijicon. Trijicon has been putting Bible verse references on their equipment from day one as far as I know. But of course according ABC News this is some great pushing of Christianity. Oh but this is classic:

“This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,” said Weinstein. “It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”

I call bullshit.

This entire thing is stupid. First of all this isn’t some mysterious “Bible code” it’s printed in plain sight. It’s always been there and Trijicon has never been shy about it. Second I doubt any enemy combatants can see that tiny print while they’re being shot at and hence aren’t going to know they were shot by a “Jesus gun.” Those of us big into guns have known about this for a long time meanwhile ABC News reports this as if they discovered it and it’s some kind of grand conspiracy.

Don’t like the fact that Bible versus are printed on your optic equipment? Here are two options. First file it off. Second buy something else. I understand military personnel generally don’t have a choice in the equipment they are issued but for us private citizens it’s a right we enjoy, voting with our dollar. If you’re in the military and it offends you so dearly that your equipment has a Bible verse printed on it realize you probably have other equipment with similar “secret” markings.

This isn’t a separation of church and state issue. This is an issue of a private company making a product. It’s not military officials making soldiers pray to a Christian god, or forcing soldiers to carry a copy of the Catholic Bible. It’s some markings on a gun put there by the manufacturer because the founder believes in Christianity. Quite a few companies do things like this.

Meet the Glock 21SF and CMMG’s .22 AR-15 Conversion Kit

So the gun show this weekend ended up being very fruitful. My friend obtained a CMMG .22 conversion kit for his AR-15 for the cost of a song and dance. That thing is wicked fun. All the conversion kit does is replace the bolt and magazine, installation takes roughly 30 seconds. Once installed you get the have fun with cheap .22LR rounds.

We tested it out by shooting steel plates. The kit operated very well once he found the ammunition it liked. It’s strange firing an AR where there is literally no recoil. Anyways some of the plates were rather stubborn and wouldn’t go down with a single strike, but they went down after a good ten strikes in rapid succession. Seriously I can not emphasis how much fun the kit was.

For myself I ended up getting a Glock 21SF at the show. The one I got had the standard 3rd generation frame, ambidextrous magazine release, and the standard Glock rail. The dealer also had one with a picatinny rail but finding holsters for that particular model can be a nightmare. Anyways I obtained the gun because I want to start IPSC this year. I didn’t really want to use my 30SF due to the fact it’s just not a great competition gun (Small and heavy on the recoil). On the other hand I wanted to practice with my carry gun. The 21SF allows the best of both worlds in that it’s a larger and therefore heavier gun while having the exact same controls as my carry gun.

We took it to the show as well and I ran 100 rounds through it. As expected it worked like a dream. It shoots very nice and I really like how a full sized gun feels in the hands. Have an ambidextrous magazine release is also nice in that it makes shooting it left handed easier. I know a lot of people simply say to hit the magazine release with your middle or trigger finger but being my fingers are quite long I have to completely change my grip (Most to push the gun forward) so I can move my finger back far enough to hit the release. This is uncomfortable and time consuming so I prefer to hit the release with my thumb.

As with my 30SF there is one thing I don’t like. Slamming in a fully loaded magazine when the slide is forward is difficult (Not nearly as bad as the 30SF though). I expected this and since I’ll be doing limited 10 I won’t have to concern myself with having a full 13 rounds in the magazine.

Otherwise the gun seems pretty great. I’m going to reserve final judgement until I get more trigger time with it but so far I love it. As a bonus it fits perfectly into my 30SF carry holster. That saves some time having to find a whole new holster for it.