The Truth About Guns

[h/t Aharon]

If you’re like a lot of us, you double up your hearing pro, especially when shooting indoors. Some type of in-the-ear plugs under a pair of muffs. On the plus side, it’s a cheap solution that does a good job of protecting your ears and making sure you’ll be able to hear your grandchildren someday. Assuming you want to. But it can be hard to carry on a conversation or hear range instructions. But Essency is has come up with a new solution, GunSonics!, for smart phone owners designed to turn your inexpensive passive ear muffs into active hearing protection that they say outperforms expensive electronic muffs. Basically, you buy their $10 app for your phone, shove standard earbuds in your audio canals, then put your passive hearing pro over the top. We’ll be giving GunSonics! a try to see if it’s worthy of that exclamation point or not. In t

By Andrew in AZ

The M16 rifle has been in U.S. military service for nearly five decades. Some features such as barrel length, calibers, sighting options, and choice of hand guards may have evolved over the years but the basic components and operating system designed by Eugene Stoner remains unchanged. With the M16’s continued use into the 21st Century, much has been written about preventive maintenance, care and cleaning of this rifle in recent times. With the present use of the M4 Carbine, it is easy to overlook the lessons of the past . . .

I don’t normally review books–there are those who doubt I can actually read–but I do come across a gem every once in awhile. One recent find is the M16A1 Rifle, Operation and Preventive Maintenance published by

By Jonathan Yaphet

Gun laws suck. Yes, truly groundbreaking stuff you just read, I’m sure. What I am addressing specifically, though, are state carry laws. People who carry (or in a few too many places, people who want to carry but cannot due to ridiculous laws) know that we don’t actually live in a single continuous country. We live in a group of 50 separate countries, each with really lax border security and a common language . . .

Each one of these sovereign states (see what I did there?) has their own set of gun laws and none of them are identical. Most of these laws are a hodgepodge of competing cultures, ideals, and generations spanning up to and over 200 years of legislation. While I am sure most of the readers are familiar with some of the more infamous examples, such as California, New York, and Illinois, even states that are considered to be gun friendly have

“Nearly 1,000 people have been charged under the NY Safe Act in the eight months since the tougher gun control law was passed, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services,” syracuse.com reports. “Nearly 90 percent were accused of a crime that pre-dates the new act – including having a sawed-off long gun or an unregistered pistol – but was elevated to a felony when the Safe Act went on the books Jan. 15. The arrests dealing with the more controversial portions of the Safe Act, including possession of a large capacity magazine or a newly defined ‘assault weapon,’ are far fewer . . . Across the state, 20 pe

When I first saw the Hera Arms magazines, I was excited. It was like they took Magpul’s design and improved the optics, making it look bad-ass with a space age twist. It was cool, and I’m always happy to give a cool new design some exposure in the hopes that they keep producing quality stuff. But my hopes were soon dashed the very first time I loaded up a magazine . . .

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what it looks like when the feed lips on a magazine split. I loaded this magazine exactly once, slammed it into the magazine well just like I’ve done with my Magpul PMAGs countless times before, and it started malfunctioning m

By John Sager

In my relatively limited time as a gun enthusiast, I’ve found that there are at least two groups of people who commonly get screwed over in the great wide world of firearms: 1) those with small hands, and 2) lefties. And of course, I fall into both of these groups. After taking a few classes from KR Training here in the Austin area (reviewed on TTAG), I became acutely aware of the idea of gun fit and trigger reach. Although I consider myself a card-carrying GLOCKophile, I realized I’d needed to compromise the grip on my Glock 19 in order to get my trigger finger off the frame. In short, the gun just didn’t fit me as well as it could . . .

So as I entered market for a competition-suited pistol, I knew I wanted something easy to shoot that would provide me the best fit possible. Any southpaw-friendly features would be a bonus. Enter the

Ohio State Seal

As with most states, Ohio pre-empts local governments from enacting gun ordinances that are stricter than state law.   To allow such laws would make the exercise of Second Amendment rights a legal minefield, as it would be practically impossible to keep up with hundreds of variations in the law that could make a perfectly legal act on one side of the street a serious crime on the other side. Cleveland challenged the preemption law in 2010, claiming that “home rule” prevented the state from restraining the cities’ power. The Ohio supreme court, though, upheld earlier rulings in favor of state authority to protect Second Amendment and state constitutional rights . . .

B

“This tragedy comes down to his access to guns of mass destruction. At a scrawny 112 pounds he was not much of a physical threat. With his Bushmaster AR-15 he was a killing machine. If anything, this report vindicates the passage of the tough new gun laws in Connecticut, broadening the definition of assault weapons that cannot be sold in the state, prohibiting the sale or purchase of high-capacity magazines like those used in the Newtown shooting, and requiring more in-depth background checks for all gun purchases.” – Editorial, Lanza report leads back to issue of guns [at theday.com]

The guys over at 3-Gun Nation had hoped that they would get a big response from the 3-gun community for the regional matches of 2014, but they never expected it to be quite this big. The plan was for the registration for the four regional matches to open at 9 PM the night of Thanksgiving, but as the appointed hour arrived the site was completely inaccessible. Apparently the load was simply too much, and everything stopped working. It was like watching the launch of Obamacare all over again. . .

My day job is working for a large hosting company, and so I see this all the time — companies that don’t have enough servers to handle the load and flop spectacularly when they have something big going on. It’s one of the reasons I have come to love the F5 LTM/GTM, and to a lesser extent the Brocade ADX. But I guess the 3GN guys skimped a bit on the hosting and are paying the price. Here’s the email that went out when they finally ca

I’m surprised, but every-YouTube-channel-and-it’s-brother didn’t put out a “blowing up a turkey” video for Thanksgiving. I’m not sure if it’s just because pumpkins are cheap and turkeys aren’t, but I’m strangely pleased, because even I wasn’t looking forward to a week+ of exploding turkey. In fact, only one of my subscribed channels did a turkey video, but it was Jerry Miculek, and he did it in style. No C4, no det cord, no .50BMG, not even Tannerite. Just a massive 400 grain .460 Weatherby Magnum at about 2600 feet/sec. Watch that bird come apart at 20,000 frames per second! After the jump, a few Black Friday sale alerts for your shopping pleasure. . .

First, the MidwayUSA .22LR ammo backorder deal that I told you about back on Halloween is still available. A 1400-round bucket of Remington Golden Bullet for $59.99 + shipping (limit 1) can be backordered with an expected in-stock date of 1

The Electric Light Orchestra recommends that you hold on tight to your dreams. Jeff Lynne had less to say about your nightmares. You know those chilling dreams when you think “holy sh*t I’m in trouble there’s nothing I can do I’m going to die” and then wake up? Like that. Only real. And, hopefully, there is something you can do to avoid death or disfigurement. Something other than using your gun. After all . . .

An armed American could well find themselves in a situation where their firearms training does them no good. Most People of the Gun consider a CLICK instead of a BANG as the seminal nightmare moment and practice clearing their weapon to prepare for a failure to fire. But the chances are your gun will fire when the S hits the F—but you might not be able to fire it.

You know; the bad

Beretta introduced the ARX-160 a few years back, and we were there. Introduced as a response to the FN SCAR project, the lighter, plastic-based firearm that features some slick visuals and a couple nifty mechanical tricks that has made it a darling of the Call of Duty crowd. Unfortunately, those features don’t seem to translate really well into Lego medium. Anyway, take a peek for yourself.

Earlier this year, I visited Outpost Armory in Tennessee, and decided it might be fun to start writing about gun stores I visit in my travels. Today’s piece is on a store close to home on the southwest side of Austin that I’ve passed dozens of times on my way out to the ranch.  Set in what appears to be a former rail station, Storied Firearms is a small gun store that offers an old timey feel. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Reader David B. writes:

For some time, I have been pondering where all the .22 ammo is going. Our Wal-Mart gets a small shipment every Wednesday and our Dick’s Sporting Goods gets a minuscule amount every Thursday. Surely, I thought, the ammo has to be going somewhere. Well, I have confirmation that it most definitely is. It has been stockpiled by RETAILERS for the past several months in anticipation of Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season . . .

We, the gun owning public, have been tools used by the corporate execs to drive business at their stores and up the foot traffic as we search for a few rounds to shoot every week. The .22 shortage, for all intents and purposes, has been deliberately created–not by the ammo hoarding public or by the ammo manufacturers, but by the retailers. I noticed that Dick’s has a huge amount of .22 ammo for sale on Black Friday. They are advertising nationwide 525 rd br

“Dallas police said two children — ages 5 and 13 — found a handgun inside a home in the 1800 block of Maryland Avenue and started playing with it in the garage,” khou.com reports. “The gun discharged and a bullet struck the five-year-old, who was listed in serious c

The key to running a handgun in shooting competitions is the ability to quickly get back on target after making your shot. Hitting the first target is easy, but it’s all about how quickly you can take down the next ones. The ability to make quick follow-up shots comes only after hundreds of hours of practice on the range, or thanks to winning the genetic lottery like a Lena Miculek. A few companies have been developing some products to try and make it easier to control the recoil of a firearm and get it back on target quicker, and one of those companies has come out with a device known as the Speed Ledge.

If you lose your shotgun choke wrenches as quickly as I lost mine (about two shotguns ago, IIRC) Leatherman’s new ‘Pump’ shotgun multitool might be just the ticket. And it works on semi-autos too.

Make the jump over to The Truth About Knives for more.