Miscellaneous Gun Stuff – Page 5

Another Gun Blog Incinerated to Ash

I’m fairly disconnected from the gun blogosphere. It’s not that I don’t like my fellow gun bloggers, it’s just that I don’t have time to operate a blog and follow a bunch of them. Of the small number of gun blogs I read frequently one of my favorites has been Tam’s (if the link goes to a blog then it’s happy days and you can ignore the remainder of this post). She managed to wield snark like a surgeon with a scalpel. Sadly she has deployed a desiccator^* over her blog (Shall Not Be Questioned is another one of the handful of blogs I follow regularly).

Since I’m fairly disconnected from the gun blogging community I’m also the last to know about any ongoing drama or issues my fellows are dealing with. Based on the comments I’ve read it sounds as if Tam was dealing with the fun and excitement of a cyber stalker. Those can be a pain in the ass and are great at ruining any enthusiasm one may have for any online activity. Needless to say I understand why she burned her blog to the ground but I must also admit that it will be greatly missed.

I came into this gun blogging game late. Since I started several of the old timers have hung up their hats. Blogging requires a bit of work and doing it day in and day out for years isn’t easy and the pay usually sucks. Not to mention the difficulty of writing about one topic for years without falling into the trap of repeating yourself (because, let’s face it, there are only so many things to talk about regarding guns). I haven’t reached burnout point yet in part because I have broadened the topics I write about. Frequent blogging has also helps my writing skills considerably so I’m inclined to keep doing it just to keep the skill practiced. But there may come a day when I decide to deploy a desiccator over this site.

^*Obscure reference probably warrants context:

Dark Reign was totally underrated.

Replacement Parts for Your SPAS-12

If you’ve been reading this site since almost the beginning you know that I’m the proud owner of a SPAS-12. It took me 13 years (my desire to have one was a result of Jurassic Park, which I first saw when I was pretty young) to obtain one but the wait was worth it. The SPAS-12 is a fun gun but it’s an unsupported platform that was never terribly popular. What that means is replacement parts, when they can be found, are expensive. Furthermore some of the factory parts in the SPAS-12 don’t age well. Two parts in particular, the folding stock shock absorber and the receiver buffer, are made of a plastic that becomes brittle with age.

My SPAS-12 didn’t have a shock absorber on the folding stock when I obtained it. But the buffer was there and in working order. That changed when I did something really stupid, I let another person shoot my rare and no longer supported shotgun. The SPAS-12 comes from an era when 2 3/4″ shells were the only shells for all practical purposes. One day when I was shooting with a friend he asked if he could shoot it. I said yes, then quickly asked if his shells were 2 3/4″. He answered in the affirmative and I believed him. As it turns out the shells he was using were 3″ and after firing the first round the shotgun jammed up. When I got it unjammed I also learned something else, the receiver buffer had broken off. I was pissed but I also failed to perform due diligence on a gun that I knew spare parts weren’t easy to come by. Lesson learned.

Fast forward to today. The SPAS 12 Project has newly manufactured spare parts for sale! I ordered a folding stock shock buffer and an old style receiver buffer that showed up last night. Unfortunately they accidentally sent me a new style receiver buffer but it only took a quick e-mail to get everything sorted out so I could exchange it for the correct one (overall I’m very happy with how quickly they replied, other one or two man online operations I’ve ordered from haven’t always been as responsive). But I did get the folding stock shock absorber installed.

First let me say that the shock absorber is somewhat rough looking but well made. It’s made of a very dense polyurethane that flexes but not easily. Without the shock absorber the end piece of the folding stock has a habit of moving forward slightly when you shoulder the weapon. After repeated firings in this condition the piece wears at the locking button hole and eventually the piece cracks. Although I haven’t been able to test fire the SPAS-12 I can say that the play in the rear piece of the stock is entirely gone after installing the shock absorber. So far it looks like a quality piece.

As I messed with the gun I also noticed that the magazine spring appears to have aged beyond its useful point. While most of the shells reliably eject out of the magazine and onto the lifting gate the last one or two will eject very lazily and sometimes not fully. Thankfully the magazine spring, like the o-ring for the gas system, is easily replaced with Remington 1187 parts.

Obviously I can’t give a final verdict on the parts until I’ve test fired the gun. But the new style receiver buffer that I was sent looks and feels like an quality piece. I believe it will work well for a long time. So if you’re in need of spare parts for your SPAS-12 the people running The SPAS 12 Project are a good place to look. They also sent a few extra o-rings free of charge, which is appreciated since they have a habit of disappearing.

Bad Decisions with Weapons are Dangerous

If you regularly read any gun-related news source you’re already aware of the 9 year-old kid in Arizona who accidentally killed a firearm instructor with an Uzi:

A nine year-old girl in the US has killed her shooting instructor by accident while being shown how to use a high-powered submachine gun.

The instructor was giving the girl a lesson at a shooting range in Arizona when the recoil from the automatic fire caused her to lose control of the Uzi.

Charles Vacca, 39, was shot in the head and died after being airlifted to a hospital in Las Vegas.

I feel bad for the kid. She will probably suffer a lifetime of guilt for what happened. But none of this was her fault. Ultimately the fault lies with the instructor. A firearm instructor is supposed to have a deep understanding of the weapons platforms he’s giving instructions on. That implies knowing that giving a small child a difficult to control weapon is a bad idea. For somebody my size and with my training an Uzi isn’t terribly difficult to control. It does want to continuously raise its point of aim but that can be controlled. If you know what you’re doing. Most 9 year-old kids are unlikely to know what they’re doing with a fully automatic firearm.

Some people want to put some blame on the parents. I’m not familiar with how much firearm knowledge the parents had. When you have little or no knowledge about something it’s difficult to make informed decisions, which is why you usually seek instruction from a professional. From what I’ve read, and details are pretty scarce, the parents did the right thing by taking their child to a supposed instructor (while he may not have been certified by any well-known organization an individual with little knowledge on the subject is unlikely to know how to verify subject specific credentials). So I can’t see any grounds for blaming the parents.

In the end this was a tragic situation and will likely result in a girl scarred for life.

Low Speed, High Drag

I spend a lot of time making fun of the high speed, low drag crowd. Some might be surprised to learn this since everything I wear is “tactical” (which means operator who operates and areas of operations to some but means lots of useful fucking pockets and light-weight materials during the summer to me) but I find most of the firearm advice from the Super Awesome Operator (SAO) crowd to be stupid at best and dangerous at worst. Thankfully I’m not alone:

Something else that disturbs me is the desire to look cool while shooting. Way too many shooters are learning their skills from You Tube from people who have a particular look versus having skill and experience. Just because an instructor has a beard, wrap around glasses and tattoos does not mean he is an “operator” even if he does talk the lingo. Nonsense cool sounding terminology does not mean the instructor has greater skill or insight, it just means he/she spends time making stuff up. A “non-diagnostic, linear stoppage manipulation” is still just a “tap-rack” and giving it a cool sounding, complicated name does not make it better. In reality, it makes it more difficult and if you take the time to truly study armed conflict you will understand that simplicity is often times the key to prevailing in the pandemonium that results. It is not “dumbing down” training to try and make it simpler and easier to accomplish.

This is one of my biggest gripe with the SAO crowd. A large majority of them choose form over function. You can go on YouTube and find any number of people wearing a tactical vest covered in AR-15 magazines with a sidearm in a drop-leg holster doing fancy transitions, Captain Kirk rolls, and absurd shooting drills. These SAOs will wax on about how important the skills they practice are and why you should pay them money to teach you. What they almost seem allergic to is the concept of simple is generally preferable. Yes, you can Captain Kirk roll between targets to engaged them. Yes, doing so will keep you on the move. But doing so will also cause your barrel to cover a lot of things it shouldn’t be (because if your muzzle should have been covering them they would be threats you were engaging not space you were transitioning the point of impact through). It will also increase the amount of time it takes for you to aim your firearm at the next target since the motion of rolling is pretty jarring and requires the entirety of your body to move. Meanwhile a simple turn will allow you to cover less unintended space (since you can just aim your gun towards the ground during the turn) and increase the speed of target acquisition since you don’t have to realign every fucking muscle and bone in your body. Turning doesn’t look as cool though so SAO shy away from it.

Furthermore most people aren’t going to be wearing a tactical vest cover in AR-15 magazines while carrying a rifle. And most of us aren’t going to be in a situation where we have to engage the entire fucking Mongol Horde (not to mention few people survive an encounter where it’s just them versus ten or more opponents). Shooting drills that involve a bunch of targets are fun but they serve little practical purpose for a majority of people who carry a defensive firearm outside of a war zone.

As a general rule when seeking firearm instruction try to find an instructor who uses plain English, focuses on simplicity, and spends more time teaching you how to property operate a firearm than performing acrobatics. In other words if an instructor looks low speed, high drag they are more likely to teach useful skills than if they look high speed, low drag.

Wolf Blitzer Demonstrates That He Doesn’t Understand Firearms Use of Force

Wolf Blitzer has never stuck me as a particularly intelligent man. No intelligent man would willingly stay on board the sinking ship that is CNN. Then again he could still be there simply because nobody else will take him. Either way he decided to demonstrate his lack of intelligence by asking why police officers shoot to kill:

Blitzer’s questions arose during a discussion on the unfurling conflict in Ferguson, Mo. over the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

“They often shoot to kill,” Blitzer said of police. “Why do they have to shoot to kill? Why can’t they shoot a warning shot in the air, scare someone off if they think they’re in danger. Why can’t they shoot to, injure, shall we say? Why do they have to shoot to kill?”

Toobin said police are trained to “never fire a warning shot” and to “never fire a shot to injure.” He explained that if police fire their guns, they must “accept the risk” that they are “gonna kill somebody.” Adding that: “If you are not prepared to kill someone, don’t fire the gun.”

A firearm is considered a deadly force weapon and for good reason, they cause major bodily harm that can lead to death. Using deadly force is only acceptable in most areas if there is an immediate risk of great bodily harm or death. If anybody, whether they be a police officer or a peaceful human being, doesn’t feel that they are in immediate risk of great bodily harm or death they shouldn’t be employing a firearm in any way.

But what’s the harm in firing a shot into the air? The fact that Blitzer even asked that proves that he doesn’t understand how a firearm works. What goes up must come down (unless it achieves enough velocity to escape the effects of gravity but no man portable weapon can do that yet). If you fire a shot into the air the damn bullet has to come down somewhere and there is no practical way for the shooter to know where in the hell the bullet is going to land. It may land in an empty parking lot or it may land of grandma’s head. And attempting to inure somebody with a deadly weapon is really fucking stupid. Even if you put a hole in somebody’s extremity they still risk the possibility of bleeding out. It’s the same risk somebody would face if you ran a javelin through them.

The reason use of force continuums usually discourage using deadly force weapons for any situation not needed deadly force is because employing a deadly force weapon necessarily makes the situation potentially deadly. This isn’t rock science, it’s common sense. If a police officer needs to scare somebody they can grab a baton and extend it.

The Vatican Armory

By today’s standards the Vatican’s Swiss Guard look goofy as fuck. While their purple and yellow uniforms look as out of place in today’s world as plated mail their weapons, at least the ones stored in the armory, are pretty modern:

Rifles of the Swiss Guard have long been whatever is standard with the Swiss Army. Since 1990, that has meant the SIG SG550 rifle. This 5.56mm NATO select-fire rifle has a 20.8-inch barrel and is one of the most accurate and reliable modern combat rifles. Its 30-round clear lexan magazines clip together like ‘jungle mag’ style for rapid exchanges. The Guard owns both the standard StW90 rifle variant and the SG 552 Commando model (with 8.9-inch barrel, 19.8-inches overall with stock folded). With the Swiss military tradition of marksmanship, it’s guaranteed that these soldiers can use them if needed.

[…]

In the 1970s, these guns were augmented by HK MP5s from West Germany, one of the first instances of the Guard using non-Swiss made guns. Today the Guard now carries the ultra-modern HK MP7 PDW chambered in 4.6×30mm. This is a good choice as these same types are used by US Navy Seals, German GSG9 and just about anyone who doesn’t agree with Jerry Tsai.

The article has many pictures of the Swiss Guard and the armory, which is full of both modern and historical weaponry. Where else in the world will you see rifles like this:

alongside plate armor like this:

The Vatican’s Swiss Guard even have Glock 19s with the Vatican seal imprinted on the slide (you can’t go to Hell for shooting somebody with one of those, right). I would love to have an opportunity to tour the centuries of history that that armory (and the Vatican itself) contains.

A Gun isn’t Always the Answer

I’ve picked up an interest in martial arts over the last year or so. This interest has lead me to start studying two arts (one being judo and the other being too rare to mention without giving away exactly where I study). Of the two judo would probably be considered the practical art by most of my readers since it can be applied in self-defense (although, honestly, my primary interests in judo are sport and physical fitness). Whenever martial arts enter the self-defense discussion in shooting communities there are one or two people who have to say some variation on “I carry a gun. Why would I waste my time with martial arts?” I’m fairly certain that the people who say this are just disinterested in studying martial arts and feel as though they need to justify that disinterest in practical terms. They don’t, which is perfectly fine. Nobody should be ashamed to admit disinterest in something. But trying to justify your disinterest by giving a practical sounding, albeit bullshit, reasons is stupid.

And I do believe the guns-exist-so-martial-arts-are-stupid justification is bullshit. The argument makes the assumption that firearms, which are arguably the best weapons an individual can reasonably carry, can solve any and all self-defense scenarios. That’s not the case. Just as there are many self-defense scenarios there are many solutions. Martial arts, as they relate to self-defense, are like pepper spray, Tasers, and batons in that they give you more options. The more options you have available to you the more scenarios you can find solutions for.

It’s story time. Not too long ago I was at a party. As one would expect this party involved a lot of drinking. I refrained from imbibing as I was a designated driver but there was a good number of drunk people present. One of the drunk people strongly disagreed with something I said and decided the best way to resolve our disagreement was with force. He took a swing at me and I was able to block the blow, get his arm behind his back and place a majority of his weight on one foot, and slip that foot out from under him so that I could gently lower him to the ground. Take note of the word “gently”. This was one of those situations where I felt minimizing the amount of force used was important. Everybody at the party was socially connected to one another through no more than two degrees of separation. In such an environment pulling a gun on a fellow party goer would have caused everybody else there to hate me (and it would have been way more force than the situation warranted). With absolutely trivial martial arts knowledge I was able to resolve the situation in a way that didn’t cause too much of a ruckus.

Carrying a gun gives you an option to deal with specific self-defense cases but they don’t work for every self-defense case. There are a lot of places that prohibition firearms. Many self-defense situations don’t warrant deadly force. Social settings can greatly limit your responses. The more options you have available to you the more scenarios you can resolve satisfactorily. It’s impossible for any individual to have a tool for every potential self-defense situation so you must decided what situations you are most likely to face (risk assessment) and plan accordingly. As I said in the beginning of this post, my interests in judo are primarily sport and fitness, but it also gives me an option for a class of self-defense scenarios that I feel are common (which is a relative term because self-defense situations in general are very uncommon for most of us): somebody engages you in a way unlikely to cause great bodily harm or death but needs to be countered to prevent injury. It’s a situation that a gun is ill suited for and is a counterargument, in my opinion, to the claim that one doesn’t need [non-gun self-defense opinion] because he or she carries a gun.

I’m Boycotting GunBroker

GunBroker has been a useful site. Without it I wouldn’t have my SPAS-12 and accompanying choke tubes. But it is time for me to say farewell to it. As it turns out GunBroker prohibits users from using one of the best tools available for protecting free speech online: Tor:

GunBroker.com is now detecting if users are connecting to them through Virtual Private Networks (VPN), proxy servers or Tor. Users who are detected using these services are being given one warning to stop using these to access the site or have their account terminated.

If your site doesn’t allow users to access it via Tor then you aren’t getting any of my money and I will do what I can to convince other people not to give you money. Protecting free speech online is just as serious as protecting the right to keep and bear arms in my book.

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.

Ermahgerd Weapon Lights

Do you have a weapon light mounted on any of your rifles or handguns? If so you’re a bad person. At least that’s what I get from the Denver Post’s recent article disguised as a study that attempts to link weapon lights to negligent police shootings:

In a deposition, Flanagan expressed his remorse and made a prediction.

“I don’t want anyone to ever sit in a chair I’m in right now,” he said. “Think about the officers that aren’t as well trained, officers that don’t take it as seriously, and you put them in a pressure situation, another accident will happen. Not if, but will.”

Flanagan was right. Three months after the October 2010 shooting in Plano, a 76-year-old man took a bullet in the stomach from a New York police officer trying to switch on the same flashlight model.

At least three other people in the U.S. over the past nine years have been shot accidentally by police officers with gun-mounted flashlights, an investigation by The Denver Post found. Two victims were fellow officers.

In Colorado, Denver’s police chief banned the use of tactical flashlights with switches below the trigger guard after two officers accidentally fired their guns last year.

One of the officers may have shot a suspect when his finger slipped from the flashlight switch to the trigger, firing a bullet into a car window of the fleeing driver.

How your finger could slip off of a light activation button located on the grip is positively beyond me. But reading through this article one is supposed to take away how dangerous weapon mounted lights are. In reality the article demonstrates that police departments provide poor training for offices.

I’m a firm believer that you should become intimately familiar with any weapon you plan to carry. You should know how everything on it operates normally, how it will likely fail, and how to recover from any failures. If you add accessories to a weapon you plan to carry you should know how to properly use them. Any failure due to inadequate training isn’t an indicator that the equipment is faulty, it’s an indicator that the training is faulty.

If police departments are having problems with officers and weapon mounted lights it demonstrates that those departments really suck at teaching their officers how to use weapons with attached lights. In my opinion it also demonstrates the poor quality of the officers since weapon mounted lights aren’t fucking rocket science. On lights with with a switch in front of the trigger guard I guess I can kind of see a scenario where a very inept person could negligently discharge the firearm when trying to activate the light. But I can perceive of no scenario where a light with a grip mounted switch could lead to a negligent discharge when the user went to activate the light. The trigger finger doesn’t even touch the switch. I think you would literally have to be retarded to fire a gun when you were really trying to press the grip mounted light switch.