The Truth About Guns

In an eery coincidence firearms trainer John Farnham sent the follow email to one of our readers yesterday warning of the potential for another mass shooting at Ft. Hood:

New threat to American military bases:

Federal authorities are frantically searching for a self-professed Islamic jihadist, Muhammad Abdullah Hassan (aka “Booker”), who has threatened to duplicate the Ft Hood Massacre of November 2009. He was recruited by the Army, but then immediately discharged due to his threats. Agents interviewed him, but then inexplicably cut him loose, a move they now sincerely regret! . . .

Military posts around the Country have been put on alert. Who is going to protect all these defenseless, unarmed members of our so-called “armed” services from gun-wielding lunatics? The solution to this situation is too obvious, so it will be, once again, ignored completely by the promotion-con

Just over a month ago I had the chance to test out and review 300 Below’s new Tactical Triad firearms cleaning and lubrication kit, but it wasn’t yet actually available for purchase. This has since changed, and you can now purchase the entire kit as well as many of the individual components on Amazon. Links, details, a follow-up on the review (including a technical note and some comments from a TTAG reader on his experience with it), and a special 10% off discount code for TTAG readers all after the jump . . .

• The Tactical Triad kit is available on Amazon here.
• 10% off coupon code, valid through April 30th at midnight Pacific Time, is:  TTAGTTAG
• If you visit 

If this had happened yesterday, we’d have thought it a tasteless April fools joke. From kcentv.com: “We have reports that there are several injuries from this shooting. There is at least one patient being transported to the hospital. We are also getting reports of victims in the Battle Simulation Center on 65th and Warehouse. The suspect is still at large. The shooter was said to be in building 33026 which is the Medical Brigade Building. Fort Hood has been put on lockdown.” You may remember from the Hassan massacre that Ft. Hood, like most military bases is a gun-free zone. Live reports at the above link. Watch this space.

AAC’s Ti-Rant and SilencerCo.’s Osprey are both 9mm suppressors, and they compete for the same audience. They have their differences and their trade-offs, but they cost about the same amount of money and they do exactly the same job. So the question then: which one is better? To answer that, the nice folks at Austin’s Silencer Shop brought out a couple of each version and we shot them side by side. To my ear, AAC’s Ti-Rant is the winner — but only by a hair. And honestly, I might prefer the Osprey’s unobstructed sight picture over a hair more noise suppression. Listen for yourself. When the audio in the video cuts over (the wind stops) that’s where I used the more accurate audio from the device near the muzzle.

By Christopher Cicchitelli

As a fervent Second Amendment supporter and the founder of a technology company, I’ve followed the ATF eForms story with great personal interest. It showed great promise at first, cutting wait times down to under 60 days…and then it imploded. Exactly what happened was a question we’ve all asked, and until reading the ATFs announcement yesterday I didn’t really have a good idea. However, in that announcement I believe the ATF tipped us off to the key that unravels the mystery . . .

First, some full disclosure: prior to starting my company, CastleOS, I worked as a contractor to a government R&D lab where, among other responsibilities, I designed integrated systems and managed servers for

Back before the big gun blogs existed, back before President Obama was elected, the AP ran a news article that showed how much the culture has been conditioned to fear firearms: ”‘I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms,’ said (Supreme Court Justice Antonin) Scalia, noting that as a youth in New York City he was part of a rifle team at the military school he attended. ‘I used to travel on the subway from Queens to Manhattan with a rifle,’ he said. ‘Could you imagine doing that today in New York City?’” I have heard other reports of people carrying long guns openly in New York City in the 1950s, with no police being called, no schools locked down, no panic, no problems. Why was this so back then, but not now? . . .

The Sa. Vz. 58 is an excellent weapon system, but its stock configuration is admittedly a bit dated. Fortunately, there are quite a few firms that invested in modernization programs for the venerable little carbine. One of these, an Israeli firm named FAB Defense, makes Vz. 58 accessories authorized for use by the Czech military.  The Mako Group distributes FAB Defense products in the United States, and was kind enough to send me some T&E samples so I could pimp out my Vz. 58. I’ve been running the FAB Defense products through their paces for two months and can now make a full report to the Armed Intelligentsia . . .

It’s no secret that corrupt politicians are more of a factor in large urban centers than in rural communities and small towns.  The same applies to organized crime. Both are associated with urban areas. It’s much harder for significant corruption to exist when the amounts are smaller, the people involved mostly know the politicians personally and there are fewer large public works projects to play favorites with. A significant exception might be planning and zoning, where local elites tend to wield great power, have little accountability, and where significant money is at stake . . .

It’s also clear that corrupt politicians and organized crime figures hate the idea of an armed populace. When you’re stealing, cheating, and extorting people on a daily basis, some of them are bound to take exception to it. Push them far enough, and a few will inevitably decide to push back, even at the cost of their own lives. Do it long enough, and it becomes a virtual certainty.

slate.com‘s published a photo gallery called THIS IS WHAT GUN OWNERSHIP LOOKS LIKE IN AMERICA. Click here to view. Then tell us if you think the gun pics betray Slate’s anti-gun bias, your pro-gun bias or what.

The Czechoslovakian Sa Vz. 58 assault rifle has to rank high as one of the least understood and most underappreciated military rifles of the twentieth century. Case in point: for many years I thought that it was simply a copy of the AK-47. But I’m not alone: I’ve even seen it described in books as being an “AK.” However, outward appearances aside, they only thing the Vz. 58 has in common with an AK-47 is the round it shoots:  the M43 (7.62 x 39mm). In fact, internally this rifle has more in common with Walther P38s, Beretta 92s, Brens, and Glocks than it does with an AK-47. Over the past couple years, I had the opportunity to test two civilian-legal adaptations of the original Czech design: the D-Techniks Vz. 58 “Sporter”, and a Century Arms International Inc. parts kit build called the “Vz. 2008.” . . .

Some classic warbirds, like the original CZ75 and the venerable 1911, were just designed too soon to understand the need to clip lights, lasers, can openers and iPods to them. Recover Tactical has just released this Israeli grip/rail adapter which can teach your old warhorse a few new tricks. But only if you don’t mind the decidedly tech/tactical look of this wraparound Total 1911 Makeover accessory . . .

The CC3 was designed by Tamir Porat, the brains behind the IWI Tavor. The all-polymer unit is available in Black, OD and Desert Sand colors, and installs with standard tools in just a few minutes. And it’s only $50, which is far less costly than even the cheapest gunsmith rail installation. Since it only has to hold lights and lasers (or bottle openers for Darwin Award contestants) it will probably do its job ju

The time has come once again to justify to advertisers, gun companies, and the mainstream media why we (TTAG) matter. All those three constituencies care about is how many eyeballs we can bring to the table, so the better we do, the more we (potentially) get. The more advertising dollars, the more guns to review, the more invites to gun control debates and so forth. Other websites (we’re too classy to name names, but you can figure out they are) go to great pains to keep their traffic stats a state secret. We don’t roll that way. So let’s take a stroll through the stats from this past quarter and see how TTAG is doing . . .

While we usually get a nice traffic bump from the SHOT Show, the January time frame also seems to coincide with other events that bump up the number of viewers in and of themselves. One year it was a gun tattoo. The last year it was aftermath of Newtown and the NY SAFE Act passing in the dead

“It’s a bit strange to me that you think you need to carry a gun when you’re having a cheeseburger.” – Chef Sean Brock in Want Guns With That? Chefs Find Politics Hotter Than Kitchen [at nytimes.com]

Early last year, a British-born photographer named Charles Ommanney traveled around the U.S. photographing Americans with their guns, on an assignment for the German magazine Stern. Instead of photographing the subjects at a firing range or at an NRA meeting, he wanted to capture them in their homes. He was seeking a sense of “normalcy” and trying avoid the “predictable NRA-bashing” that is often common in such projects. He was surprised at how easy it was to get people to let him take their picture, saying if he tried to do that in England they’d look at him like he was a lunatic. But for the Americans it was in no way abnormal . . .

because for these folks, their guns are a “perfectly normal extension of their lives.” Slate has a

“Suppose I’m legally carrying a concealed gun at a business when armed robbers show up,” Jan Miller postulates in her letter to latimes.com. “Fearing for my life, I just want to get out of the store, but the front door is the only way out. Let’s assume I can’t tell who is whom by how they’re dressed.” OK, that’s the set-up. TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia is sure to have some tactical advice for Ms. Miller’s thought experiment. Find cover or concealment, draw your weapon and wait to see what develops. Never fire on a drawn gun – unless you have to. Bottom line: it’s better to have a gun in that situation than not in case the armed robbers decide to kill everyone. Ms. Miller doesn’t see it that way . . .

How will I k