Gun Nuts

We’re gonna need a bigger hammer.

Life is simpler when you read the manual. Photo originally posted on the NRA Range’s facebook page.

I need to add those to my daily routine. You can’t do them with an AR15, because everyone knows that the Mattel parts on the AR will break off under mild stress. If you do this with an M14, the pulse of awesomeness travels back in time and kills a VC in 1968.

Were were all noobs once. We’ve all made terrible decisions about what guns to carry, thought we couldn’t carry a gun because it was too big, and bought cheap guns because we wanted something more expensive that we couldn’t afford.

When a tragedy occurs, it is human nature to attempt to reason our way through it. We have all sorts of questions, and everyone of them is valid and reasonable to the mind of their creator. Yet, when I asked, last week, that we assess how the perpetrator of the Overlandpark, KS shootings procured his guns, the response was a virtual sock stuffed in my mouth. Don’t misunderstand, my feelings weren’t hurt, but it got me thinking, did I just elicit a fear-response? Do we gun owners, literally, fear the question, “How did that criminal get that gun?”

Some problems have simpler solutions than others.

Your goals as a shooter are going to influence how you train; at least they should if you’re training smartly. For example, a person whose only interest is self-defense will train differently than someone whose interest is IDPA; an IDPA only shooter will train differently from a Bianchi Cup shooter, etc. There are ways to cross over your training though so that training for X directly benefits Y.

At the 2014 SHOT Show, S&W announced two revolvers aimed squarely at the competition market: the 929 and the 927.

The dawn of the semi-automatic pistol era changed the service handgun landscape forever. Up until the Mauser became the first self-loader to be widely used in combat, the handguns of the battlefield were revolvers. There were some great revolvers that served nations, from the Colt SAA to the Webley and the S&W Russian. But semi-autos were easier to shoot, could hold more ammunition, and were easier to reload. There have been many great semi-auto service pistols, but these five stand atop the list. Starting with number five and working our way to number one, here are The 5 Greatest Military Pistols.

Px4 Storm, ready to toss back some shots.

On Tuesday, I took the modified Px4 Storm to the range to test the reliability. You’ve seen the results of the accuracy testing, so now let’s talk reliability. I was concerned that putting the D-spring from a Cougar might compromise ignition reliability with hard primers. As it turns out, my fears were completely unfounded.

U.S. involvement in the Global War On Terror, the expiration of a pointless and stupid federal “assault weapons” ban, and greater interest in gun ownership has all combined to push development on the AR15 family of weapons to new heights. Today the AR15 can be had in a highly refined, specialized form suitable for just about any shooting task you can conceive of. One of the areas of greatest benefit has been shrinking the size and weight of the weapon (while maintaining excellent reliability) to the point where it has now supplanted the previous king of compact, shoulder-fired weapons: The sub-machinegun.

I’ve just returned from another visit to New York City. I was there to celebrate with my family, the holiday of Passover, the redemption of the Hebrews from slavery in ancient Egypt. The night before we were to begin the festivities, breaking news came over the air waves. Jews had been targeted outside Kansas City. Many questions can now be raised about the man who perpetrated these crimes; Since he had been previously indicted on weapons charges, in 1987, how did he get the guns used in these crimes? As a known white supremacist in the area, why was no one able to prepare for and stop the suspect, prior to his attacks. But as we watched the details unfold, these were not my questions.
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Range Officers hate this one weird trick to improve your shooting skill!

I’ve just returned from another NYC visit, where an interesting thing occurred. As my family and I prepared to celebrate Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the exodus of our ancestors from slavery in ancient Egypt, we received word that an attack had been perpetrated against our people.

As we watched the news unfold there was no question we Jews had been targeted. With this kind if proof in front of them, how can we still see our safety as the responsibility of others?

On Monday, I put a Cougar D-spring in my Beretta Px4 Storm. On Tuesday, I took it to the range for testing. The first good news is that it ran 100%, cracked every primer I could put through it, even the rock-hard Winchester NATO ammo primers. The second bit of good news is that it’s quite accurate. Here’s a 25 yard group, shot off a rest using 115 grain Hornady Critical Defense.

The group measures out to about 1.9 inches, which is right where I’d like it to be for Critical Defense. It’s been my experience with that particular round that it tends to be extremely accurate, very reliable, and pleasant to shoot. Hornady Critical Defense feeds well, it’s accurate, and Hornady are good people. It’s everything I want in a pistol cartridge.

Here’s a bunch more rounds of Hornady Critical Defense pushed into a Bianchi Cup target at match speed for the 25 yard stage of the Practical:

I still haven’t figured out what to call this gun; but so far “D-Special” works pretty well. Because it’s not a true Px4 Storm D, but it’s…special. Like a snowflake.

Yesterday I wrote a post about five terrible guns you should never buy; noticeably absent from the list were Hi-Points. While I’m not a big fan of the Hi-Point, I do believe that they serve a valuable purpose in the gun market: if you absolutely need a gun for self-defense right now and only have 100 bucks, a Hi-Point will probably get through an entire magazine. I’d recommend a Hi-Point over a Taurus or a Kel-Tec, because those guns cost 300 bucks, and for 300 bucks you could buy a real gun. But that’s neither here nor there, because in yesterday’s post, despite it not mentioning Hi-Points in a negative light, one of the Knights of Ohio showed up to defend Hi-Point pistols.

Steve – I have got to say, Hi Points are cheap and ugly, but the damn things seem to function over and over. I watched a dude win 3 consecutive steel matches with a 9mm hi point. I won’t personally buy one, but I have to say, they go bang when asked to…

That got me to thinking: where are all these high r

I have a Px4 Storm. It is a very nice gun, chambered in 9mm, and I think it just looks great. It’s also a very easy gun to shoot, with a pleasant recoil impulse and an excellent DA/SA trigger right out of the box. However, what if it was possible to make the Storm’s trigger even better?

Beretta afficionados have long known that the quickest way to improve the trigger pull on a Beretta 92/M9 series gun is to pull the factory mainspring and replacing it with one of the springs from the DAO Beretta 92, referred to as “the D spring.” That plan doesn’t work on a Px4 Storm, because all of the models share the same mainspring. It doesn’t matter if you get a G, F, D, or C model – same mainspring in a Storm. However, there’s a possible solution, and that lies in the spiritual predecessor to the Storm: the Beretta 8000 series. The Cougar guns never really caught on, but importantly for our purposes, they did make a 8000 D series. After reading reports of other shooters swapping the D springs from Cougars int