You can join the US Concealed Carry Association here. Membership gives you access to all the articles in the magazine in handy online format. You get writers like Mas Ayoob, Todd Green, Gabe Suarez, Rob Pincus, Tam, and some guy that was on a reality TV show. The magazine also recently went advertisement free, meaning no bias on the reviewers.
HK45c blows up
Guess what? Reloads were involved. Reloading is a dangerous activity, and requires extreme attention to detail. Double charges and overcharges can put you at serious risk of injury. If you do choose to reload, I cannot overemphasize the importance of doing it in a controlled environment with no distractions. This is my personal opinion, but when loading ammo to be used under any circumstances, that should be your sole focus. Not loading and watching TV, or loading and chatting with your buddies. Your cartridge fabrication process should be your only focus. Think about it for a second – when you’re reloading, you’re creating a tiny bomb that you plan on intentionally detonating inside a device that you’re holding in your hands. I don’t know about you, but if I’m setting off an explosion that close to my face, I want to be certain I did my due diligence to make sure I used the correct measurements.
DRT .223 Ammo testing
My buddy Richard Mann is testing DRT Ammo’s 60 grain .223 projectile on whitetail deer. I’m curious about DRT Ammo’s terminal performance, as I’m a big proponent of frangible ammunition being the way of the future. Richard’s three part series on DRT ammo is here – warning for one graphic pic in part 2:
It appears from the tests that the DRT .223 ammo was sufficiently lethal as a bambi-whacker. As usual, shot placement is king – shoot an animal in a non-lethal location and your damage won’t be as good, but shoot it somewhere important and it seems to die. I wonder if the 60 grain .223 would be sufficient for feral pigs, as I might be going on my very first hog hunt this year.
Your carry gun part 2
A week or so back, I wrote the “What does your carry gun say about you” post as a lighthearted jab at the various guns that people carry. I left some off the list, not intentionally but rather because they just didn’t occur to me at the time. I also had a lot of people ask me questions, like “what do you carry?” When I am not carrying a gun for an article or for a review, I carry either a 5 shot revolver and a speedloader for it, or I carry a 1911. Like many 1911 owners, I also have a box full of spare parts and magazines; the mags I’ve had the best luck with personally have been the McCormick 8 round magazines.
I have really enjoyed everyone’s comments to the original post, the “user added” ones about their various guns were pretty fun, and I had a quite a few laughs! So by popular demand, I’m doing a couple more for some guns that were left off the list.
What your carry gun says about you, continued
Beretta
What you think it says: I choose to arm myself with the weapon of choice of the United States military, used by steely eyed killers across the globe to slay our enemies in CQB situations.
What it actually says: I really liked Lethal Weapon. Like, a lot. It is possible that I have a Martin Riggs mullet-wig.
CZ
What you think it says: This gun is the most commonly used firearm in NATO countries, adopted by many nations for use in their elite forces. It combines the best of the new world and the best of the old world, it’s so awesome that Jeff Cooper used it as the basis for the Bren 10!
What it actually says: I am a gun snob. I wanted a high capacity 9mm, but something exotic and european. I drink lattes and drive a foreign car.
Springfield XD
What you think it says: A grip angle reminiscent of the 1911 with safeties that are familiar to the shooters of JMB’s classic pistol, but with a high-capacity magazine and lightweight polymer frame! Truly we live in a fantastic modern age.
What it actually says: Marketing works on me. I didn’t buy this gun when it was being imported as the HS2000 and was 200 bucks cheaper, but slap “Springfield” on the slide and show me some pictures of Rob Leatham looking cool with one and I’LL BUY IT YES.
STI
What you think it says: I carry the finest example of the 1911 platform in existence. Built to exacting specifications by master pistolsmiths and used by the top competition shooters in the world, this is truly the modern example of a samurai sword. Plus, they used them in Monster Hunter International and that book was rad as hell!
What it actually says: I have LOTS of money. Instead of buying a sensible pistol for $500 and spending the other $2k on ammo, mags, and training I chose to blow half a month’s salary on one gun that is so expensive I’m afraid to shoot it. However, Monster Hunter International was still awesome as hell.
That’s it for this time, but post more in the comments! Those were great, and you guys were killing me with them!
Quest for Master Class – Stage 2
There’s an all new installment in the Quest for Master Class available at Downrange.TV! This time we’re breaking down stage 2 of the IDPA classifier, which is actually my favorite stage. It’s fast, and can be shot at lightning quick speeds. This is often my favorite stage to give myself a cushion for stage 3 or to recover from mistakes on stage 1. Check out the latest episode of the Quest for Master Class at Downrange.TV!
The Killer myth
Ian has a great post up at Snowflakes in Hell about the myth of the killer. It’s a great read and covers a lot of interesting info.
1000 Rounds a month
Remember last month’s challenge? Did you make it 1000 rounds of logged and tracked centerfire ammo in the month of August? I did, but I barely scraped by. Here are my log entries for the month of August:
8/7/2010 46 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/10/2010 17 Ruger SR9c -00
8/10/2010 207 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/11/2010 250 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/17/2010 45 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/19/2010 150 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/19/2010 105 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/22/2010 90 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/24/2010 45 Gun Blog 9mm
8/26/2010 150 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/26/2010 50 Ruger SR9c – 00
8/29/2010 124 Gun Blog 9mm
That works out to 1279 rounds in August. Sadly, I’m not going to come anywhere near my 2009 round count numbers in 2010; between work and Top Shot I just haven’t been shooting nearly as much as I’d like to. I am on a good pace in September though, over 500 rounds fired in the course of just over a week.
Now for September, we’re going to have a slightly different challenge. Instead of shooting over 1000 rounds that you log, I want you to pick a standard drill. El Presidente, a USPSA classifier, FAST Drill, whatever you like. Shoot it once cold, then through the month continue to revisit the drill. The goal should be to improve your score by 5-20% depending on the drill and your skill level. If you’re a C-class USPSA shooter, practice the drill until you can shoot it fast enough for B-class, that sort of thing. The important thing to do is pick a metric that you can use to objectively measure your performance, and then pick a goal for improvement.
Also, if you did the 1000 round challenge, post your logs and results to the comments!
Let there be light!
Lately, I have had the opportunity to regularly practice my low-light shooting, and as I mentioned previously when talking about lasers the experience has been illuminating (I crack myself up). A couple of fun observations I’ve had:
- Sights that gather light are better than sights that don’t. Non-illuminated 3-dot sights are the worst for low light, fiber optics or gold beads are better, and actual night sights are best.
- Guns that produce light are awesome, whether it’s with a laser or an onboard flashlight.
- That whole argument about how “ported guns will ruin your night vision” is nonsense. In low light, my 625 shoots a fireball out of the cylinder gap that doesn’t ruin my night vision, so I have a hard time believing that 2-4 tiny jets of flame from ports will.
- Your sight picture doesn’t change when it’s dark. Seriously, if there is enough ambient light to see the sights and it’s a situation where you’d use them anyway, then you should probably use your sights.
- Point shooting can be very helpful. Last night’s stage in particular had 2 initial targets that were wide open and less than 5 yards – point shooting those guys will you fast and accurate hits.
- Marksmanship doesn’t change. I’ve seen people utterly go to pieces when the lighting changes on targets they would have shot clean in regular light. Sight picture and trigger control are the same whether or not you can see perfectly.
I really can’t encourage people enough to shoot their carry guns in low light. Take a class, go to a club match that does that, but the opportunity to shoot your defensive firearm in a situation that’s similar to an actual defensive shooting scenario is incredibly valuable. Low-light shootings are wildly different from brightly lit indoor ranges or shooting on a sunny afternoon; but at the same time they’re not so different that you have to reinvent the wheel to shoot in low light.
Bold steps by NRA
NRA is challenging the law that prevents 18-20 olds from buying handguns from FFL dealers. That is a very bold move! Read the case details at this link. If you had asked me 2 or 5 years ago if I thought we’d see a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the purchase ban on handguns for 18-20 year olds, I’d have laughed and laughed some more. Yet now we have what appears to be an excellent case and a solid chance. I’m not going to get my hopes up, but I have to admit this would be cool.