Guns and Gear – Page 5 – A Geek With Guns

New Executive Order Places Sanctions On All Kalashnikov Concern Products

I’m sure you’ve already heard the news but in case some of you haven’t a new executive order was issued that effects gun owners. Obama, as part of his pissing match with Putin, has placed further sanctions on Russia included all Kalashnikov Concern products:

374. If I own a Kalashnikov product, is that product blocked by sanctions? Am I able to resell a Kalashnikov product at a gun show or other secondary market?

If a U.S. person is in possession of a Kalashnikov Concern product that was bought and fully paid for prior to the date of designation (i.e., no payment remains due to Kalashnikov Concern), then that product is not blocked and OFAC sanctions would not prohibit the U.S. person from keeping or selling the product in the secondary market, so long as Kalashnikov Concern has no interest in the transaction. New transactions by U.S. persons with Kalashnikov Concern are prohibited, however, and any property in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest is blocked pursuant to OFAC’s designation of Kalashnikov Concern on July 16, 2014. If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014]

There goes Saiga rifles and shotguns as well as Vepr rifles. This prohibition isn’t retroactive, most likely because enforcing such a thing would be impossible, so if you already own a Saiga shotgun or rifle you can keep it (unlike your health insurance). But importing new ones is strictly verboten so supplies will go down and prices will go up.

All of this because our government feels as though it absolutely must get into another conflict with Russia.

Five Advantages of the Semi-Automatic Pistol

I came across an old article that discusses five advantages of revolvers. The article wasn’t unfair but I felt as though the advantages being given to the revolver was mostly applicable, or similar, to semi-automatic pistols. So I decided to go through the list and replace revolver advantages with similar pistol advantages. Keep in mind that I’m not implying that pistols are superior to revolvers. Only you can determine what is the best type of gun for you. I couldn’t care less what you carried or preferred.

Pistols are Efficient

The nice thing about modern pistols, especially the popular polymer frame ones, is that their internals are very simple. Unlike revolvers, which have roughly a bajillion springs so they can pull the hammer back and rotate the cylinder when you pull the trigger, there really aren’t a lot of parts inside of a pistol. They usually consist of a trigger that activates a striker that sets off the chambered cartridges primer. The action usually operates on the recoil of a fired cartridge instead of internal mechanical mechanisms. Detail stripping a pistol is generally much easier than detail stripping a revolver thanks to the simplified internals.

Pistols are Reliable and Field Repairable

Revolvers are often held in high regard for their reliability. Since revolvers aren’t reliant on ammunition and proper grip they can ignore many malfunctions that can occur on pistols. But the number of malfunctions one will encounter on a modern pistol, assuming they are using proper ammunition and not limp wristing like a bitch, are very few. I can count the number of malfunctions that I’ve encountered with my Glocks on my fingers. Not only are malfunctions rare but they’re generally field addressable. While malfunctions on revolvers are rare they are mechanical devices, which means they will fail. The problem is when a revolve fails it’s usually out of commission until you can take it apart and address the mechanical failure. Malfunctions on pistols tend to be ammunition related and can be correct in the field with the proper clearance procedure.

Pistols Will Fit Anyone

Pistols come in all sizes. You can get large full-size pistols from Glock, Springfield Armory, Smith and Wesson, FN, Beretta and almost every other pistol manufacturer. You can also get midsize and compact pistols from these same manufacturers. Want a full-size competition pistol? No problem. Would you prefer a Glock 21, Smith and Wesson M&P, or a Springfield XD? Need something that will fit in your pocket? How about a Ruger LCP, Smith and Wesson Shield, or Beretta Nano? Whatever your need you can find a pistol that will fit it.

Pistols Use Magazines

One of the reason modern militaries and police departments largely choose pistols is because revolvers don’t hold much ammunition and take longer to reload than pistols. With a revolver you generally have five or six shots. When those have been expended you have to open the cylinder, eject the spent casings, and load new cartridges. Loading new cartridges can be done one at a time, with speed strips, or with speed loaders. Speed loaders are the fastest of the three but they are shaped similar to the revolver’s cylinder so they tend to be awkward to carry. Pistols on the other hand can carry a lot of ammunition. Many full-size 9mms, for example, hold 17 rounds in their magazines. If you also have a round chambered that’s three times the capacity of a revolver. When you do run out reloading pistols is as easy as pressing a button to drop the empty magazine, inserting a fresh magazine into the grip, and releasing the slide (assuming you fired the pistol to empty).

Pistol Triggers are Reasonably Weighted

My first handgun was a revolver so I grew up on a heavy trigger. But many people didn’t and find heavy triggers difficult to use accurately. Fortunately most pistols have lighter triggers. The popular polymer frame pistols often have five or so pound triggers. That means they’re light enough for most people to shoot accurately but heavy enough to avoid being negligently fired.

Designer of Smart Gun Says Smart Guns are Safer

Ernst Mauch, the man behind the Armatix iP1 so-called smart gun (really a gun with an onboard authentication system), recently wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post where he states that smart guns are safer than regular guns:

Respect for this freedom to protect your family as you see fit is a major reason I believe that gun owners in the United States should have the right to purchase personalized firearms using high-tech safety features. The reality is that firearm safety has not meaningfully advanced in the past century. Nearly every other industry has transformed its safety features — often multiple times — in that same period. Given how tragic the misuse of firearms can be, guns should be no different.

While firearm safety hasn’t meaningfully advanced in the past century it still doesn’t hold the record. Sword, for example, haven’t meaningfully advanced in regards to safety in over a millennium. Clubs also haven’t advanced in regards to safety for even longer. Why is this? Most likely because firearms, swords, and clubs are weapons and weapons are meant to cause damage. Ernst’s claim that nearly every other industry has advanced its safety features ignores most industries involving weapons.

Armatix offers market-based solutions for improving gun safety. We understand that any time a major new technology enters the market, some people will be skeptical, and that is why it is important to clarify exactly what the Armatix pistol is.

As far as I know Armatix hasn’t been lobbying in the United States for mandating that all firearms include built-in authentication systems. That being the case I have no issue with Armatix introducing its iP1. Let the market decide whether or not gun owners want such technology. So long as Ernst and Armatix rely on the market to decide whether or not people should buy their firearms I have nothing against them.

The firearm also detects the proximity of the watch, meaning that even if the gun is stolen after the code has been keyed in, it cannot be fired. If the gun and the watch are both stolen, the thief might as well throw them out because the gun won’t fire without the correct five-digit code.

This is something I didn’t know about the iP1. In addition to having the watch you also have to know a five digit code. That further complicates things will offering relatively little additional security. Five digit codes can be brute forced pretty quickly. Even if the watch itself implements mechanism to slow down a brute force attack that means little if the thief is in physical possession of the watch. Downloading a copy of the watch’s firmware will allow an attacker to bypass any watch implemented slowdown mechanisms, which will likely render the five digit code irrelevant.

The thing to take away from this article is that the author isn’t unbiased. He designed the authentication system and is therefore invested in making it sound good. On the other hand he doesn’t indicate that he wants to lobby for mandating his design be including in all handguns, which is a good. I have no objections to the technology itself although I don’t have any interest in it since its reliability hasn’t been proven. But I also cannot accept his claim that firearms like the iP1 are inherently safer since he has a direct business interest in saying so and there are a lot of scenarios where the technology could cost you your life (for example, if your arm with the watch is injured you could be unable to fire the gun with your functional hand).

Why Firearm Access Control is a Futile Effort

The issue of access control technology built into firearms (erroneously called smart gun technology by advocates of gun control) has been a hot topic as of late. Anti-gunners want it and gun owners want nothing to do with it. But the argument is irrelevant and Forbes, in an article trying to explain why gun owners should fear access control technology in their firearms, explains why:

10. Firearms must be able to be disassembled in order to be cleaned and maintained. One of the principles of information security is that someone who has physical access to a machine can undermine its security. Smartgun manufacturers need to show evidence that criminals who steal smartguns cannot modify them to work with the smart technology removed or disabled (or that preventing any components from being accessed that are accessible in conventional weapons will not impact the durability of the weapons).

Physical access is the ultimate killer of any security system. If an individual has both physical access and unlimited time they can bypass any security system. After all security systems merely buy time. An effective security system is one that takes longer to bypass than an attacker is either willing or able to invest. With access control technology on firearms both of those criteria are met since the owner necessarily has permanent physical access.

Mandating access control technology in firearms is entirely futile. The technology won’t survive even a few days once it’s introduced to market. With that said, the technology would give us something fun to play with at Defcon.

Don’t Let Fear Stop the Progress of Firearm Technology

After Beretta revealed its PXi4 series of sensor laden pistols I started thinking of many cool things that merging electronics and firearms could enable. Then I got to thinking of a criticism I sometimes here in regards to marrying electronics and firearms, which is that the existence of such technology would lead to it becoming legally mandatory. This criticism isn’t entirely without merit. Ed Markey, a senator from Massachusetts, recently introduce the Handgun Trigger Safety Act of 2014. The act would require all handguns manufactured three years after the passage of the act to include technology that only allows them to be used by authorized individuals. It’s a great gun control tactic since such technology isn’t widely available. In fact the Armatix iP1 is the only pistol on the market that advertises such technology and it hasn’t been widely tested yet (not to mention it’s only available in .22 Long Rifle).

Alas I don’t believe the fear of access control technology becoming mandatory in firearms should stop the firearms industry from pursuing more high-tech firearm designs. After all, the technology doesn’t even exist yet and we’re already seeing legislation mandating access control for firearms. Whether the technology exists is irrelevant as far as legislation is concerned. But more importantly the advantages of merging electronics and firearms are many.

I touched on some of them when I was fawning over the Beretta PXi4 and have touched on other advantages in an earlier post. When you look at the advantage of tying a round counter, recoil sensor, slide cycle timer, trigger pull weight recorder, chamber pressure sensor, malfunction counter, and other statistics to a heads-up display or mobile phone the possibilities become practically limitless. Imagine being able to instantly call up the number and type of failures a particular gun has suffered over the years you’ve owned it. You could see, for example, that cartridges that operated at specific pressures caused a certain error. Tuning ammunition to give a desired bullet velocity while maintaining a minimal desired amount of recoil would be trivial. If you encountered an error that you had previously encountered years ago you would be able to call up that data and see what changes you had to make to get around it (because let’s be honest, after a few years we usually forget a lot of fine details about how we fixed something). Buying a used gun would involved less guess work if you could demand the data for the total number of rounds firearm and number of errors experienced from the current owner.

As a species we are merging electronic technology with all of our other technology and it is inevitable that firearms will receive the same treatment. In a generation or two gun owners will likely be just as baffled by guns that cannot report the number of rounds fired since it was purchased as we are by flintlock rifles today (that is to say there will only be a handful of people who know how to properly operate or understand the older technology). The sooner we get underway with his merger the sooner we get all of the kinks worked out.

Fear is a terrible motivation for failing to pursue a new technology. Allowing fear to prevent us from advancing technologically only hinders our species’s potential. Yes, there are wicked people who want to use technology for nefarious things. Senators want to use technology to enact gun control. Military leads want to use technology to reign more efficient death and destruction down upon their enemies. But those wicked people won’t stop their pursuit simply because good people are afraid of the technology. We might as well reap the benefits because we will certainly be dealing with the consequences regardless of our decision.

Beretta Shows Us the Potential of True Smart Guns

Smart gun is a dirty word in gun rights circles. This is because the term is used by gun control advocates in their crusade to restrict gun owners. But smart gun technology doesn’t have to be a dirty thing. There are a lot of neat features you could enable by including on-board electronics in firearms as Beretta is planning to show us with its new PX4i Storm series:

Beretta’s newest Law Enforcement pistol, unveiled at DSA ’14, is the Beretta PX4i Storm. This pistol is a standard PX4 Storm that been wired with electronic sensors which can track when rounds are fired, how many rounds are in the magazine, the status of the safety and even if a round is in the chamber or if the hammer is cocked.

[…]

If a police officer removes his PX4i from its holster the iProtect system could, for example, automatically notify the police dispatch as well as other officers nearby and route them to assist the officer in trouble. This can all be done without the officer having to make a radio call. It can even detect if an officer is injured or killed and issue an appropriate alert.

This is neat. I would love to have some of this technology in my competition pistol. Being able to automatically track the number of rounds fired would help me know when to replace wearable parts. It would also be interesting if the gun could record my draw time (which is possible since there is an accelerometer), the amount of time is takes me to go from drawing the pistol to firing the first round, and how long it takes me to perform a reload. If the technology was done correctly you could event eliminate the need for a shot timer in single-gun competitions by having the gun record the span of time between the first draw and the last round fired. Heck, if the guns were setup to communicate with one another you could even eliminate shot timers from multi-gun competitions.

Combining this technology with Bluetooth would open up a realm of possibilities. Imagine tying a firearm with something like Google Glass. At any time you could look up and know exactly how many rounds remain in your weapons magazine, whether or not a round is currently chambered, if there is a malfunction, how warm the barrel is (it would be helpful to receive an indicator if the barrel has reached a temperature where accuracy begins to deteriorate), how much charge remains in the optic’s battery, and so on.

I’m sure this technology will be pooh-poohed by a lot of gun owners. Many gun owners seem to dislike radical changes in firearm technology because they believe it will decrease reliability. But if there’s something electronic optics have taught us it’s that reliable electronics can be built and they can benefit our shooting. It won’t surprise me if the PXi4 has initial reliability issues but those issues will get resolved in time. Additionally there’s also the fact that electronics can be included in a firearm in such a way that an electronic failure won’t hamper the operation of the firearm itself, which I assume is how Beretta has designed the PXi4.

SHOT Show 2014

We’re getting close to the end of this year’s SHOT Show. While I used to get excited about this show because I’m always interested in learning about new firearms that will be hitting the market I’ve found myself caring less and less each year. At this point I think it’s safe to rename SHOT Show to the New AR Pattern Rifles and 1911s Show. Granted, there have been a few unveilings that haven’t been based on the popular black rifle or the 100 year old handgun but not many.

New news regarding the Beretta ARX100 has probably been the most exciting thing that I’ve read about from this year’s SHOT Show. While the ARX100 isn’t too evolutionary it is at least something different.

One of the downsides of being interested in firearms development is that the technology, in a large part, is mature. But I would love to see somebody unveil a prototype Guass or laser rifle. It doesn’t have to be practical, affordable, or ready for market. Just seeing something so different would make me excited for the show again.

Anyways, that’s my rant for the day.

Upgrading My Reloading Setup

I’ve been reloading since I was a teenager. Since then I have been using the RCBS Rock Chucker I started out with for all metallic cartridge reloading. It’s a decent setup but it’s slow. I finally decided that I’m an adult and it’s time I stepped up my reloading operation. So I spent Christmas morning with my father setting up this bad boy:

I am now rocking a Hornady Lock-N-Load AP. Needless to say I’m looking forward to the decrease in reloading time.

Oak Park Heights to Get a New Gun Range

Good news fellow Minnesotans, we’re getting a new gun range in Oak Park Heights:

A gun range, retail space and Airsoft practice facility will replace the abandoned Denny Hecker Ford dealership at the southeast corner of Highway 36 and Stillwater Boulevard in Oak Park Heights.

Minnesota Outdoor Shooting Sports hopes to open the Minnesota Shooting Academy on the site by July 1 next year. The city council approved the site plan review and variance to allow a 40-foot freestanding sign Oct. 22.

The 56,000 square-foot facility will be modified to include two gun range areas, a small gym and lounge, retail space and a small cafe.

When it comes to places to shoot the more the merrier.

Semiautomatic 3D Printed Handgun

I guess my prediction came true. The year hasn’t even closed yet and we now have designs for a semiautomatic 3D printed handgun. As with most 3D printed firearms so far it’s an ugly thing but one that uses several easily acquired firearm components:

***UPDATE: Files available on Defcad.com and Fosscad Twitter!***
I have designed a .22 LR Semiautomatic firearm. Unlike former designs such as the Shuty, this design uses almost all plastic parts (All non-plastic parts currently except the FCG cannot physically be plastic or a semiautomatic will not function) and uses weights to bring the bolt to a correct weight. You will need the following parts:
*3D Printer with ABS capability
*AR-15 FCG
*AR-15 Buffer Spring
*Ruger 10/22 Mag Spring
*AR-15 Firing Pin
*1x8mm metal insert (Case extraction)
*.44 bullets to weigh down bolt (More info in the .readme)

It’s very interesting to see how quickly 3D printed firearms are advancing. The rate of advancement really shows how powerful cooperation between a group of people from around the world can be. Thanks to 3D printer technology we are beginning to see a world where prohibitions on physical goods are infeasible. I believe it’s also important to note that these prohibitions aren’t being killed by political activism but by direct action. People from around the world who believe in freedom of information created designs for physical objects that can be replicated by anybody with a 3D printer, which are becoming cheaper and more capable every day.