Another New Shooter

This weekend ended up being a combination of ups and downs. Being this isn’t the personal life of Christopher Burg blog (Most of the time) I’ll leave the downs out of it. The up of this weekend was I got another new shooter out to the range.

Well I shouldn’t say a new shooter but a shooter whom went only once and wasn’t thrilled. I don’t know why people think starting off a new shooter with a 12 gauge shotgun is a good idea but they seem to keep doing it. Anyways the new shooter, Monica, wanted to try handguns and needless to say I’ve got a couple of those on hand. I also have another female friend who likes to shoot and came along. I find that it’s best to have another woman around when you’re taking a new woman shooting and that proved to be a good move again.

I started her off with my Glock 30SF equipped with the Advantage Arms .22 conversion kit. This proved to be a mistake on my behalf because it was so cold the kit was malfunctioning left and right. On top of that Monica appeared to be afraid of the Glock. So I switched her over to my Smith and Wesson 686 .357 magnum revolver loaded up with underloaded solid lead .38 special rounds. She liked that gun a lot more than the Glock. Surprisingly with very little coaching she was hitting paper no problem with it. Usually when you give somebody a large firearm their instinct is to flinch which throws the rounds south.

We also had Monic shoot my other friend’s EAA Witness in .45 auto. I figured it best to start Monica off with a .45 from an all steel gun as opposed to my recoil happy lighter than air subcompact Glock. In the end she decided the .38 special was more to her liking and kept shooting that.

By the end of the range trip she was happy and enjoyed the new experience. Nothing like taking a new shooter out to make your weekend good.

GSM 3G Encryption Cracked

Are you on AT&T or T-Mobile? Bad news if you are the encryption use for their 3G networks has been cracked. Don’t panic quite yet though:

“This is a nice piece of work. This is breaking the math, not just an implementation,” said cryptographer Bruce Schneier. “They found a practical, related key attack. It’s not clear whether it can break actual traffic or whether it’s useful operationally. Related-key attacks are a form of cryptanalysis that showed up about 10 years ago, but they’re rare in the real world because you need the related keys.”

So what happened? Well the GSM guys took a cryptographic algorithm and decided to modify it. This is never a good idea. The modifications that were made actually broke it. This further proves that if you’re going to use complex mathematical algorithms make sure you know exactly what you’re doing. Head over to the link to get more details.

Impossible Shooting in Japan

This is impossible. There was a shooting in Japan. How can this be? They have some of the strictest gun control laws on the books combined with a police state. It’s also like the anti-gunners are wrong or something. From the story:

At least two people have been killed and two others injured when a gunman opened fire at a bar in western Japan, officials say.

Well I guess we’re back to the real world again where gun control doesn’t prevent violence. Instead criminals will get firearms and those who are disarmed due to obedience of the law will simply find themselves as targets unable to defend themselves. Haven’t there been enough examples of gun control failures to show it doesn’t work yet? Oh and to make a point:

Police are investigating the gunman’s motive. Shootings are rare in Japan, where there are tough gun control laws.

Such attacks are often linked to gangsters known in Japan as yakuza.

Yes shootings are rare in the police state of Japan but those that do occur are linked to *gasp* criminals! I’m noticing a pattern here.

It Just Dawned On Me

As I’m sitting here something just dawned on me. As I’m typing this I have the following applications open on my laptop:

  • Google Chrome
  • NewNewsWire
  • Apple Mail
  • Quicksilver
  • Safari
  • Eclipse
  • iCal
  • VMWare Fusion
  • Terminal
  • Activity Monitor
  • System Preferences
  • KisMAC
  • Scrivener
  • Preview

And the system is running flawlessly. Boy how far we’ve come in computer. Although I’m used to stable multi-tasking I’m now remembering, not fondly, the days of Windows 3.11, Windows 9x, and Mac OS Classic where having multiple applications running at the same time was a risky proposition. Man thing have certainly improved.

Hell the sleep mode on my laptop works which was also a risky thing back in the days of my machines that run older operating systems. The number of kernel panics (UNIX version of Blue Screens of Death for you Windows folks) I get in a year can be measured on one hand as opposed to the old days where system crashes weren’t a matter of if but when (And When usually mean sometime that week).

Yes our computer operating systems are far more complex than they were just a mear 10 years ago (My God it’s been a long time since Windows 9x was in use). Yes modern operating systems take up gigabytes of space instead of kilobytes of spaces. But you know what our systems are far more stable nowadays then ever before. I love the advancement of technology.

.50 BMG Goes Boom

We’ve all ready stories about Glock, XD, AR-15, and various other gun kabooms. But rarely have I seen one involving a .50 BMG rifle. Well here one is. The rifle doesn’t look to banged up but by God the aftermath looked pretty bad.

It sounds like the shooter used a hammer to close his bolt. Pro tip, if the bolt isn’t closing properly that’s the rifle’s way of telling you there is something wrong.

Violent Anti-Gunners

Says Uncle shows us the difference between peaceful pro-gun people and violent anti-gunners. The violent anti-gunner said the following:

In several of my comments, I made derogatory remarks directed at the trolls. I said some nasty stuff. Some colorful language was used. I stand by that language. I also stand by my offer to face them one on one and punch these idiots in their faces. That’s how I roll.

Meanwhile Uncle the peaceful pro-gun activist retorts with:

If he threatened me, I’d go to a local judge and get a restraining order taken out against him. That’s how I roll. Because I don’t have something to prove. To my wife.

Once again pro-gun people prove that we’re peaceful individuals who resort to violence only when absolutely necessary.

Glock New York 1 Trigger Spring

After a rant I thought I’d post some actual content that is worth reading. I purchase and installed a Glock New York 1 (Known most commonly as the NY1) trigger spring into my 30SF.

For those who aren’t familiar with Glock pistols or their various factory trigger the NY1 spring replaces the standard s-shaped trigger spring in Glock pistols. It does two things. First is makes the trigger pull more consistent. But more importantly, in my case, it increases the trigger pull weight. A stock Glock trigger pull is about 5.5 pounds depending on where you measure it. Installing the NY1 spring bumps that weight to roughly 8 pounds.

Increasing the trigger pull weight may seem strange, most people try to lighten their trigger. For those of you who read my previous post Two Schools of Carry Permit Holders you probably already know why I dropped in the NY1 trigger. For those who didn’t the reason is to avoid a charge of accidental discharge in a self defense situation.

I like taking advice from people who have experience and knowledge greater than mine (In other words almost everybody). I’m reading Combat Handgunnery by Massad Ayoob. In the beginning on the book he talks about various popular guns. In the section about Glock pistols he mentions he has and often carries at Glock 30 with the NY1 trigger spring in it. The justification made sense to me. It increases the weight of the trigger pull to such a point that a lawyer is going to have a hard time claiming you accidentally shot a person.

This is an argument that has been used before when a police officer had to use his gun in self defense. In the case the officer was accused of pulling back the hammer of his revolver making the trigger pull weight almost nothing. The lawyer then continued to argue that the police officer most likely didn’t mean to pull the trigger but accidentally set it off during the excitement.

Well I really don’t want that kind of trouble. Increasing the trigger weight isn’t a problem for me either. My first handgun was a Smith and Wesson 686 .357 magnum. Although it has a hammer I almost always shot it in double action. Likewise my Ruger LCP is double action only. I’m used to heavy triggers and my accuracy (What little I have) isn’t hampered by them. So long as the trigger is consistent I’m pretty much set.

Installation of the trigger also reaffirmed how simple Glock pistols are. I’m not going to write out how to do it because it’s something best put in video form. Luckily Eric Shelton from the Handgun Podcast already made a video about doing exactly this. So here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p52Z75UAKC8]

Anyways with the NY1 trigger spring installed there is a noticeable difference. The trigger is heavier and requires more force. With that said it’s still comfortable to pull back. I think increasing the weight much further wouldn’t gain much benefit as the NY1 trigger spring adds enough weight where I feel a negligent discharge is doing to be unlikely. Furthermore the NY1 trigger spring is built heavier than the factory spring (Which is just a spring) so it will probably last longer. Overall it’s a good, cheap (The part is under $3.00), and easy modification to make.

The trigger also lacks the various pull weight. The factory Glock trigger seems to get heavier as you’re pulling it back (I’m not referring to the slack at the beginning of the pull but when the trigger starts exerting pressure). I know quite a few people put in a NY1 trigger spring with a 3.5 pound connector to gain a more consistent trigger without increasing the weight. I can definitely see why that is done, although I don’t see the gain being worth the cost of the 3.5 pound connector (Which is actually fairly expensive for a Glock trigger part).

I Don’t Get This

OK I hang around a lot of different gun communities and hear a lot of different things. There is one particular community where a handful of members take every opportunity to bash the NRA. That’s fine, the NRA makes a lot of stupid mistakes. But it’s the reasons they bash them that I find rather idiotic.

It seems these people’s only argument is that the NRA is some front end for Republican neo-conservatives. Of course they always say GOP implying that all Republicans are neo-conservatives but I can point to quite a few good Republicans such as Ron Paul (Yes stereotypical example for a libertarian to pick but I don’t care, it’s my site and I can do what I want).

Anyways the recent argument stems from the fact the NRA wants to grab 10 minutes of Gura’s time in the McDonald vs. Chicago case. Gura, for those of you who don’t know, is the lawyer on our side. Now I have reservations about this as well because Gura has proven himself a very competent and able lawyer. The NRA is mostly not happy with how Gura is going after the case and want to add another spin on it. I’m not going to get further into details because, as usual, Sebastian over at Snowflakes in Hell has already create amazing posts related to that.

What I’m complaining about is the argument of a certain individual. He is saying the NRA is trying to grab this time because they want to ensure Gura’s argument isn’t the reason for this case to be won. Why? Because, being GOP shills, they want to ensure one specific right isn’t given further power, marriage. Yes that’s right. Apparently the NRA doesn’t want the case to be decided upon by Gura’s case because it would somehow also allow gays to marry.

Doesn’t get much dumber than that ladies and gentlemen. As you’ll note I’ve left out the community and names. This is because I don’t want to negatively impact that particular community as it’s usually pretty good.

Of course that begs the question why write a long post on my blog ranting about it? Because it’s my site and I get to post what I want.