Remember Taurus’s 28 gauge revolver? I’m sure you do it was only unveiled a week ago. Are you excited to get one? Too bad because the agency of fun killing, the Bureau of Alcohol Tabacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have apparently ruled the hand cannon is a short barreled shotgun. I guess that basically ends the world’s most retarded revolver competition between Smith and Wesson and Taurus.
Tag: Gun Industry Information
Potential Addition to Banned Shotguns in the Works
Via Snowflakes in Hell I learned that everybody’s favorite agency of overreached government authority is up to its old tricks against. The Bureau of Everything Fun Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is going to issue new rules regarding shotguns:
Today, the ATF announced at the 2011 SHOT Show that a new ruling would be issued on Monday, January 24, 2011, regarding the importability of certain shotguns. ATF informed the audience at the ATF Townhall meeting that they wanted to ensure that they were properly and justly enforcing the requirements of a shotgun being for a “sporting purpose.”
What does this mean? Most likely that future importation of popular sporting shotguns such as the Saiga AK-based shotgun will become verboten. Although it’s a very popular three gun shotgun the ATF will completely ignore that fact I’m sure. Basically the Saiga has the bad fortune of being an awesome shotgun that accepts magazines that hold more shot shells than is politically accepted.
ATF ruling on shotguns is also the reason the SPAS-12 became illegal to import because it served no “sporting purpose” (even though I’ve used mine to shoot clays several times now). The worst part about this whole situation is the people don’t get a say, the ATF has the authority to do pretty much whatever the fuck they please and we slaves can just shut up and like it. Well we can shut up and like it or work to abolish the ATF. Personally I’m down with the second option.
Glock’s SHOT Show Event
Remember when Glock announced that they would be having a big event at SHOT Show this year and I said to prepare to be underwhelmed? Well, I was right:
I posted a few weeks back that Glock was going to have a press conference on Tuesday. The conference was canceled, so I don’t have any exciting news there.
That’s just slightly more uninteresting than I was expecting anyways. Glock makes a damn fine gun but they really don’t do anything all that exciting.
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.
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.
Hitler is Going to be Really Unhappy
First Hitler finds out the price of the ACR is much higher than he was originally quoted and now he’s going to find out that the expensive gun is being recalled:
During routine testing, Bushmaster discovered a design flaw which could result in multiple rounds firing continuously when the trigger is pulled. This unexpected firing of multiple rounds creates a potentially dangerous situation.
Yes the gun can go full auto under certain conditions which will certainly put you in the dog house with the Bureau of Fun Regulation (better known at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives).
Glock Generation Four Sub-Compact
I’ve learned via Every Day, No Days Off that the Glock 4th generation sub-compact pistols should be coming out sometime soon. He is a scan of an advertisement on his site which shows the sub-compact Glocks will have the same interchangeable backstraps of their larger brethren.
I’m still waiting for the new Glocks in .45. Although I have no desire to rid myself of my 30SF I would like a Gen4 21SF. The 21SF is the gun I use to shoot USPSA and sadly mine happens to have the ambidextrous magazine release. I say sadly because the ambi mag releases on Glock pistols are known for not dropping magazines reliably. This is where somebody will stated Glock magazines aren’t “drop-free.” Frankly I don’t give a damn. My Gen4 17 and 30SF both drop magazines free and the only reason Glock released fully lined magazines is so they would drop free and thus appease the American consumers. In USPSA not having drop-free magazines costs time and I’m not a fan of that. Additionally it would be nice to have the larger magazine release button on my competition pistol.
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.
Bottom Cylinder Firing Revolver Shipping
According to The Firearm Blog Chiappo has begun shipping the 2″ version of their Rhino revolver. The Rhino peaked my interested because it’s one of the rare revolvers that fires from the bottom cylinder.
The idea is pretty simple, the lower the bore axis on a handgun the less muzzle flip you have to deal with. Glocks are noted quite often as having a very low bore axis while XD pistols are known for having a higher bore axis. Frankly I own both and can’t tell the difference but still I have to say the Rhino Revolver is on my hopefully-get-somebody-maybe list just because I would like a revolver that shoots from the bottom cylinder.
I don’t know much about Chiappo (in fact I never heard of them until this revolver came up some months back) so I don’t know if they have a reputation for making shit or not. I do know that the Rhino appears to have no real rear sight to speak of which kind of turns me off. But the gun in unique enough where I’m certainly interested.