ammo

9mm NATO stopping power

Posted on by Caleb

A guy who would know said “they’ve built entire graveyards for guys killed by 9mm NATO ball ammo.” While the team here at Gun Nuts always recommends quality defensive ammo, we also believe that having a gun with bullets of some type in it is better than nothing.

9mm nato ball

For a number of reasons, I’m a fan of 9mm NATO ammo, and if I had no choice but to carry FMJ ammo in my guns, it’d be NATO spec ball ammo. Important things to remember about 9mm NATO, it is loaded to a higher pressure than regular 9mm 115 grain FMJ, and usually produces a snappier recoil impulse. What’s funny is that whenever someone starts talking about “stopping power” they mention how .45 ACP ball ammo has been dropping guys for 100 years. They then conveniently forget that 9mm ball ammo has been doing the same thing for just as long.

Handgun stopping power is a myth, so the title of the article is a bit misleading. I know that NATO ball ammo isn’t going to be any deadlier than any other FMJ 9mm ammo, but I still like it. It’s like a security blanket. I know that ammo loaded to this exact specification is in use across the world putting fools in the dirt, and that makes me feel better. So whenever I see some for sale, I usually end up buying it.

I’m not saying that you should dump your Ranger/HST/Gold Dots for NATO ball. Definitely not. I’m certainly not going to take the XTPs out of my gun and replace them with this ammo. But if it was all I could get my hands on, for some reason I’d feel better with NATO ball than plain jane FMJ.

3 Gun/women

A New Girl in 3Gun Nation’s Pro Series

Posted on by Gabby

20140319-102355.jpgThis past weekend marked the beginning of the 3 Gun Nation’s 2014 Pro Series Tour. In Owasso Oklahoma the best of the best met and kicked off a competition that will continue until early 2015. Janna Reeves, the newest member of the Noveske 3 Gun Team, is one of 12 women who make up the women’s division. Having won the Qualifier back in February, Ms. Reeves went into this weekend with high expectations of herself. Unfortunately, she came back to her new Georgia home, less than than thrilled with her performance.

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self defense

Self-defense: not everyone is out to get you

Posted on by Caleb

The internet is a funny place. This morning, I read an article on Jezebel, a site I normally only read if I want to pressure test my cerebral arteries. The article is written by a woman to explain why she doesn’t trust men. It’s actually quite sad when you read it, but it also got me thinking about how we teach self-defense tactics. From the article:

[T]his afternoon found me out by the river, choosing a patch of grass near a tree and sitting down to read. As I did so, I took note of the two men hanging out nearby—safe, ordinary guys, I thought.

An hour later, I…put away my book, stood up, wrapped the scarf around my shoulders once again. It was only as I started to walk away that I noticed two faces turning to follow me and caught the words being thrown in my direction. “…Mademoiselle. Excusez-moi, s’il vous plaît.”

I'm using this image because the author of the other article would find it offensive.
I’m using this image because the author of the other article would find it offensive.

She goes on to call that “Street harassment” which had me scratching my head, because to me it sounded like a Frenchman saying “excuse me, miss.” Now, I will accept the possibility that it could have been a trap, and dude 1 could have been laying in the distraction while dude 2 sneaks up behind her with a club. That’s a bit far-fetched though, but I do admit that it’s a possibility.

The problem that this woman has though has nothing to do with street harassment, it’s that she doesn’t know how to manage unknown contacts. In her world, everyone with a penis is a possible threat, a rapist in the bushes waiting to lunge out and assault her womanly flower. Can you imagine how stressful it must be to jump to condition orange every time you see a member of the opposite sex? It would be terrible. We spend a lot of time and energy talking about recognizing potential threats, which is a good thing. One of the side benefits of being able to recognize a potential threat is that it’s also easier to recognize people who aren’t threats.

Yes, the world is a scary place and there are genuine bad people in it that would like to do all sorts of bad things to you. Odds are though that they’re not going to politely approach you and say “excuse me” on a sunny afternoon in a public park. We should all keep our guard up, and we should all get training on how to recognize potential threats. Because knowing what a potential threat looks like means that we can relax a little bit and enjoy life since we also know what non-threats look like. As it turns out, not everyone is out to get you. Even if you’re a woman.

lionheart

Lionheart LH9 500 round update

Posted on by Caleb

Technically, this is a 498 round update, but so far the LH9 has ticked along pretty boringly. In this case, boring is a good thing. Exciting guns are ones that constantly malfunction and I have to spend time and energy figuring out why they’re not acting the way I want them to act. 1911s are frequently exciting. So far, the LH9 is boring in all the right ways.

edc items

I’d give you a stats breakdown, but 498 rounds with zero malfunctions is it. I’ve run it through various drills and exercises, and I will share some of those here. The first is about the DA+ trigger system, which is definitely taking some getting used to. I’m trying really hard to resist the urge to stage the trigger, which is something I illustrated in this video. When I’m shooting quickly, it’s easy in DA+ mode to just pull the trigger straight through and not stage it. However, when I’m taking a precision shot such as on the Practical at 25 or 50 yards, or shooting Dot Torture, the temptation is really strong to stage the trigger to the SA notch and then finish it from there like a SA gun.

When I shot Dot Torture on Friday, I deliberately avoided staging the DA+ part of the trigger. That led to the worst Dot Torture score I’ve put up in a while, a 42/50 at 5 yards. The big problem I’m having is that when I’m shooting a traditional DA trigger such as a wheelgun, I just roll through it slowly on tougher shots. The LH9’s DA+ means that a “slow roll” method stops at the SA notch. I may just start using it like that for tough shots. Just pull it to the SA point, and then go from there. At 50 yards on the Practical, I couldn’t not do that. There’s just too much fine sight alignment that needs to take place at that range for me to quickly race through the DA+ first shot.

I’m genuinely liking the LH9. I’ve got a shipment of ammo coming in tomorrow with some of my favorite 9mm bullets, 115 grain Hornady XTPs loaded in it for me to test. I want to see just how accurate this gun is with the gold standard of JHPs!

editorial/news

Gun News: Everyone panic, Obama Executive order bans import of new 7.62×39 ammo!

Posted on by Caleb

Yesterday, in response to the current situation in Russia/Crimea, the President issued an executive order and everyone freaked out. They freaked out because a casual reading of the executive order would make it seem like the President banned the import of any guns/ammo made in Russia…except he totally didn’t do that. Politico has a reasonable article about the EO which has this important bit of text:

Monday’s order authorizes Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to work with Secretary of State John Kerry to impose asset freezes and travel restrictions on “any individual or entity that operates in the Russian arms industry, and any designated individual or entity that acts on behalf of, or that provides material or other support to, any senior Russian government official,” the White House said in a statement.

That’s important, because it means they’re not going after companies like Wolf and TulAmmo that sell and important ammo in x39 calibers (5.45×39, 7.62×39), so for the time being at least those rounds will still be generally available in their classic, steel-cased cheap form.

wolf 7.62

Of course, no amount of reason can stop the gunternet from losing their collective minds, so what we should all do right now is panic buy all the 7.62 Russian we can find, regardless of whether it’s made in Bulgaria or Russia or somewhere else. That’s not to say that the current situation in Crimea couldn’t have ripples in the US market, because some Wolf ammo is made in the Ukraine, and obviously the Tula factory is in Russia. An actual shooting war between those two nations would likely affect the US market, because domestic production would likely get diverted to the actual war effort.

However, as far as the President banning import of new ammo? Didn’t happen, and everyone needs to calm down. I’m tired of having to defend this administration because people are too busy getting hysterical instead of doing a little research. I’m not even saying that Obama doesn’t want to ban ammo imports or that he won’t in the future, I’m just saying that right now, this time, he didn’t.

Glock

10-8 Performance and Glock .40?

Posted on by Caleb

We awaken this morning in bizarro world. Hilton Yam of 10-8 Performance and Modern Service Weapons has started…shooting a Glock 22. Yes, the Glock 22, the notoriously hard recoiling gun that I’ve oft derided as “silly” because it doesn’t offer an real performance gains over the 17. But his reasoning is solid:

As a full time firearms instructor and trainer, I feel that it is important to have at least one pistol in each of the common LE calibers in order to be able to speak intelligently to their performance aspects. Further, with the current volatile state of the ammunition industry, it is nice to have guns in various calibers so as not to become a victim to supply. I recently burned up a lot of my 9mm, but realized I still had a lot of .40 piled up from when I thought I was going to shoot a lot of Limited and Limited 10 in USPSA. Thus enters this Glock 22.

Gen 4 Glock 35 Arredondo

I get where he’s coming from, and I generally agree with his premise. I also agree that the Gen4 Glock 22 improves and solves a lot of the issues with the Gen2/3 22s, and with Hilton adding the Glock Tungsten Guide Rod that will soften up the recoil somewhat. My experience with the major caliber Gen4 guns has been with the 35 and the 21, I used the tungsten rod in both of those and it worked very well.

Everyone knows I’m not a big fan of the .40. But I can understand Hilton’s reasoning in going with the Glock 22 as a test platform, since it’s very likely a lot of his students will be carrying that same gun. Personally, if I had to have a Glock in .40 S&W I’d go with the 35, because I feel (subjective) that the extra slide and barrel length do make the gun a bit more shootable. Either way, 10-8 Performance running Glock 40s still puts us in bizarro world.

gun stuff

Strange roads

Posted on by Caleb

I just realized I’ve never owned a Glock 19. I had to think about it pretty hard, because I’ve owned the following Glock models:

  • 34
  • 35
  • 17
  • 22
  • 29
  • 21

But never a 19. Despite the fact that it’s the first carry gun I recommend for people, I’ve never actually bought one with money. Weird, right? But being a gunwriter takes you down a lot of strange gun roads, I mean right now I’m carrying a DA/SA pistol imported from S. Korea that takes 3rd Gen S&W magazines in an appendix holster designed by Travis Haley. And you know what? I like this gun a lot.

lh9 incog

That’s just an example of some of the strange roads I never thought I’d be travelling. I’ve been running this blog for 8 years now, and it’s taken me to places I couldn’t have possibly imagined. If you’d told me in 2008 that my blogging would have turned into a full-time job, two successful companies, and opportunities to literally travel the world I would have laughed at you and gone back to work at the hotel I was managing at the time.

But this post is about guns, and that’s the weird thing. I own an AK and a Scout Rifle right now, but no ARs. Why? I don’t really need an AR for anything. I have a single action revolver in .357 Magnum and a single-stack Beretta 92, but no Glocks. Not a single one in my possession right now. But hey, it’s no big deal. One of my co-workers noticed that I don’t really get attached to guns, and that’s true. I’ve had a few guns that I’ve really liked, some I regret that I’ve sold, but mostly guns are like baseball bats to me: they have a purpose, I use them for that, and I don’t really get attached to them. In fact, the only guns I’ll never, ever sell are the three that my father gave me as gifts. Those I’m keeping.

I will say by way of concluding this rambling, introspective piece that I love my job. It’s afforded me many opportunities, and I get to play with all kinds of neat guns I’d never otherwise get to use. Who knows what could happen, next month I could be knee-deep in Glock 19s…

gun stuff

All guns are always loaded

Posted on by Caleb

But some guns are loaded-loaded. One of the interesting side effects of working in the firearms industry and constantly being around guns is how Rule 1 (all guns are always loaded) gets treated in different situations. For example, in my immediate area right now there is one loaded gun (my carry gun) and 12 guns that I know for a fact aren’t loaded. Now, does that mean I’m going to pick up those unloaded guns and not check them first to make sure they’re unloaded? Of course not.

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