The Firearm Blog

Here is a simple technique that may help some of you.

Mac over at The Bang Switch compares some budget Red Dots.

Check out the review.

The Danish weapons blog Krigeren (translation: “Warrior) reports that the Danish military has chosen the M60E6 as its next GPMG. The M60 beat out its arch-rival, the HK121.. The new GPMG weights almost 3 KG less than earlier models of the M60 On a personal note, I would have loved to have had this during my time in the Corps. 

The complete weapons package includes optics, thermal, lasers, rangefinders, and more. The rate-of-fire is dropped from over 1200 rounds per minute in the current M/62 to a tame 550 for the M60E6. With the lower ROF, the Danes claim increases in accuracy and reduction in collateral damage.  The Danish MoD will purchase approximately 700 pieces with delivery later this year.

Global Digital Solutions (GDSI), a company whose shares are not listed on any major exchange, which has a market cap of just $65 million, a share price of just $0.80, no known products, no company logo and just two employees have made an offer to purchase the Remington Outdoor Company.

So who is GDSI? I have no idea. I had never heard of them before. This is how they describe themselves on Facebook:

Global Digital Solutions is refocusing its business strategy on positioning itself as a leader in providing small arms manufacturing, complementary security and technology solutions and knowledge-based, culturally attuned social consulting

Culturally attuned social consulting? Clear as mud. Their Facebook page claims they are a small arms manufacturer as well as a grenade and munitions maker. They claim they are in the process of acquiring RPG-7 maker Airtronic Inc. who went bankrupt. Airtronic’s assets are worth  $1.25 million. They claim Airtronic “manufacturers critically important ar

Y-man here again, apologies for the long silence once again…

About my trip to the US in February this year: well, some ancient Roman said it all: “I flew over, I shot a lot, I purchased even more!” I had a swell time in the US, Dallas and in Atlanta. Even the cold weather, snow, iced up roads and power cuts did not dampen my experience or cool the excitement I had (See what I did there? “Dampen”, “Cool”? Ha ha! )

I am not going to bore you guys with a lot of words: the pictures and videos below tell a spectacular story themselves.

I got into Dallas on 04February, after the Delta flight out of Lagos had to make an unscheduled stop in Orlando before connecting through Atlanta because the plane almost ran out of fuel earlier than planned due to headwinds. Man, it was okay, but quite a bit scary.

In Dallas, I was hosted by one of our own; a writer on The Firearm Blog: Alex C. who made it a wonderful experience. Many thanks to you Alex C!

Testing out the SureFire 2211 Wristlight compared to other weapon lights.

Knight’s Armament (KAC) is now making a second version of the company’s SR-15 IWS carbine.  According to KAC, the Mod 2 has a number of new features including:

• a URX4 hand guard with Keymod accessory mounting points.  KAC states the URX4 keeps the barrel cooler and reduces the gun’s overall weight when compared to other rail systems.
• a proprietary Mod 2 gas system that minimizes leakage and ensures more consistent operation in harsh conditions.
• a gas block secured with a locking ring instead of taper pins to increase barrel rigidity and eliminate the need to custom fit the gas block to the barrel.

The rifle is also designed to be ambidextrous, with magazine and bolt releases on both sides of the receiver.

• caliber: 5.56 NATO
• barrel:  hammer forged, chrome lined
• barrel length:  16″ with a 1:7 twist
• gas s

A few weeks back I got to head to a local company based out of Tumwater, Wash. and take a tour of their manufacturing facility.  During SHOT I posted some information about some of their products and that post can be found here.  Killer Innovations is a company that is just getting their start in the accessories market, at least under their own brand name. They have been doing OEM work for several companies making top notch AR equipment for some time now.  Just recently they began making scope rings and muzzle brakes.  In their own meticulous way they have made products that are awesome in terms of quality, design and price.  At just $49.95 their brake is designed and made better than any brake you will find in the $150 price range.

At SHOT 2014, SureFire had a new freefloat handguard on display. It is a minimalist handguard with a picatinny rail on top. At first glance it does not seem like anything special. But upon closer inspection it has picatinny mounting points built into the rail sides. It is a clever design that does not require any picatinny rails. However you can add them if you so desire. I see this as a possible contender to the Keymod style handguards.

Take a look at the pic below, you can see how the Scoutlight interfaces with the hand guard.

Take a look here

The first formal university study (that I know of) has concluded that for new shooters the use of red dot sights on a pistol leads to statistically significant higher hit ratio on paper and higher accuracy over irons.

Authors James E. Ryan and Robin Adler or Norwich University provide the following Executive Summary:

This project examined the comparative effectiveness of traditional iron pistol sights with
Trijicon, Inc.’s red dot optic sight. Twenty-seven students from Norwich University participated by undergoing a simulated training course of fire using International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) silhouette targets for four different stages. Thirteen students used iron sights and 14 students used the optic. The results of the project indicated that there was a statistically significant difference favoring the optic for “hits on paper” in Stage 1 (15 yard slow fire) and for accuracy (hits near the center mass of the target) for all four stages of fire.

Of note, the shooters were all students simulating new recruits for military or law enforc

Walther announced a new pistol, the CCP, at the IWA Outdoor Classics 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany.  The CCP, or Concealed Carry Pistol, is a single-stack 9mm handgun that uses a gas delayed blowback system that Walther calls the SoftCoil system.

As Walther describes it, the SoftCoil system “significantly reduced recoil” but maintains a recoil spring that is “soft” for easy manipulation of the slide.  Walther states that the SoftCoil system reroutes gas pressures, which allows for the light spring.  Additionally, the system uses a non-tilting barrel instead of a tilting barrel which is typical to a

A rare moment caught on camera. The two skeet clays collide in mid air.

H&K their new HK243 at IWA ’14. The HK243 is a modern sport variant of the H&K G36 rifle and chambered in .223. There are two variants, the budget HK243 S SAR and the premium S TAR.

The HK243 S SAR features the G36 gas system and ambidextrous charging handle. It has a side solder stock in the traditional G36 style. It has no forward rail and the sight picatinny rail is made of polymer. It take G36 magazines but a magazine conversion kit allows the use of HK416 magazines (it may allow other AR-15 magazines, but the H&K brochures do not mention this). It has a threaded barrel but no flash hider.

Smith&Wesson is going to make a M&P version of their 380 Bodyguard.

Check it out here

Many months ago, our favorite Nigerian shotgunner, Y Man announced that he would be coming to the States on business here. Immediately I thought about a possibility of him making a detour to Texas in order to hang out, shoot guns, and fulfill his wishes to experience some firearms that he would normally not get to shoot back home, where firearm ownership is not commonplace. I commented on his announcement that if he came to my neck of the woods, we would make sure to get as much trigger time as possible. I got in touch with Y Man after I asked Steve for his contact info, and after much planning and effort we both were able to coordinate and come up with a schedule that allowed him to visit the Lone Star State for a few days in February. Y Man came to town and it was there that our odyssey began.

First thing was first: Y Man needed a cowboy hat to be an official honorary Texan, and he is pictured above wearing it. We also got some fantastic Texas BBQ that he thoroughly enjoyed alongside his favorite dish, po

Wired highlights what seems to be excellent nature photographs. Hidden within them are German snipers, well camouflaged. Can you find them?

The photographs are the work of Simon Menner, an accomplished German photographer. Simon has an extensive website with some fascinating projects including photographs of Jewish graves named Adolf and murder weapons.

Readers, how did you fare?

I found 4; and only because I know they were there.

I got a chance to shoot this at Media day at the Range for SHOT Show 2014. My immediate impression was that it is remarkably similar to the Beretta CX4 Storm. However the CC10 has a forward magazine well. The grip has a grip safety. It is a fun plinker. I felt that as I started getting comfortable with the gun it was easy to shoot faster.

What a spectacular failure. A Russian 9k22 Tunguska  anti aircraft weapon system goes haywire with live fire.

There is a video looking at the Tuguska and one from inside the Tuguska.

Click here to see the Tunguska Out of Control

Even though the 2014 SHOT Show ended over a month ago, there were a lot of things there that we released and displayed for the first time.  Although I am finding that the industry is going away from launching at SHOT or NRA so their products are not buried along with every other product launch.  I did see a lot of innovative products this year, and a definite theme to the show in terms of what everyone was doing and where they were taking their product lines.  It almost became redundant at points, going from booth to booth being shown the same things over and over. I wanted to recap some of what I saw at SHOT this year in a hope that our readers would be able to get a better idea of where the industry is headed, and the things that I saw just about every company was doing.  While everyone has a different style to their product, the basic premise was the same.  These were the themes that I saw repeated this year.

It seems like everyone is doing Keymod now, and that probably is because everyone is.  Every booth I stopped into was eager to show me their new keymod system th

At first glance, the photo above looks real, but your eyes deceive you. The picture is actual a fantastically detailed computer rendering of a cut-away AK-47 by DeviantArt user ABiator.

Taking it a step further, ABiator has cut-away drawings of the venerable 1911, Multiple Grenade Launcher, & a Mosin-Nagant. With my eyes, they are near indistinguishable from real photographs.