I have now signed up to shoot the Brownell’s Lady 3 Gun match, where I will be sponsored by GunUp Publishing, but up until last week I had never seen a 3 Gun match in action. I decided to head an hour south and east of Atlanta to South River Gun Club, the location of Atlanta 3 Gun’s monthly club match, to remedy this. It was also my first chance to see the location where the ladies-only major match will be held this coming October.
A friend forwarded me this video on Facebook:
After watching the video, my first and immediate thought was “that’s not a holster, it’s just a strip of leather!” My second thought was “what a dangerous and silly way to carry a gun.”
Top to bottom: Ruger GP100 Match Champion in modified Blade-Tech holster, TerraLux TT-1, Safariland Comp-III speedloaders, and 4Wheelguns.Com speedloader holders.
Ruger and Blade-Tech provided me their respective pieces of kit as part of sponsorship deals. The TerraLux is one of my favorite lights ever, and seems to disappear off my desk whenever I don’t keep a weather eye on it.
Remember that pretty Browning Hi-Power in .40 from yesterday? Those pretty white stocks…cracked after 25 rounds. I normally wouldn’t feel bad, but the gun belongs to a friend who lent it to me to test it out.
However, it provides an interesting contrast, especially when viewed side by side with the Beretta 92 Type M reviewed below; which has extremely ugly but also very functional grips on it. The grips on the Hi-Power were a lot prettier, and obviously when it came to functional shooting, a lot worse. They were slippery and didn’t provide much recoil control, which is important on .40s, and of course they had the small issue of coming apart.
Obviously, we wouldn’t recommend such grips for a serious defensive or competition pistol, hence the tongue in cheek title of this post. I used #warriors ironically, so I think it’s okay. However, that’s not to say that there is no place for stocks like this, because I am frequently reminded that there exists and entire world of gun ownership outside of the small training/competition community. I know it may come as a shock to you, dearest reader (because it shocked me) but some people own guns simply to own them! They don’t plan on shooting matches with them, or taking a weekend 500 round pistol class, they just…like to have them. Kind of like how Jay Leno owns cars, I’d imagine.
For people outside the training/competition community, grips like these serve a very nice purpose: they look good on the gun. I really did like the off-white contrast with the dark frame, and it’s too bad that under shooting they came apart. But not all things are designed for me, and that’s something I have to remind myself of on a regular basis. A Ferrari 250 California would be a pretty lousy daily driver, but you don’t buy one to “take it to the shops.”
I bought a used Beretta 92FS Type M from a friend of mine recently. The 92FS Compact is one of my favorite carry guns, and the Type M is sort of the perfect expression of that, because it’s a single stack 9mm. It holds 8 rounds in the magazine, has a traditional double action/single action operating system, and in every other respect is largely identical to its full size M9 brother, save a shorter barrel.
My gun has also been modified, it’s benefited from an action job, stippled grips which look ugly but work, forward cocking serrations, and XS Small Dot sights. More on the sights later. The trigger is one of the best examples of a traditional double action gun that I’ve ever shot, with a clean 11.5 lb take-up in DA mode and a 4 lb in single action.
The quick review consisted of tossing the Beretta into my range bag to shoot when I was heading to the range to do some serious training for Indoor Nationals; I grabbed 100 rounds of PMC 115 grain 9mm ammo on my way out the door. At the range, I found the gun to be pleasant to shoot, superbly accurate, and boringly reliable. Here is a 5 shot group shot from a sandbag at 20 yards:
That was with the XS small dot sights. You can shoot good groups with XS Sights, but it takes a lot more work than it would have with proper sights such as Novaks or a similar design. The reason is that your feedback on front sight to rear sight relationship is very gross for making fine shots; and while it’s possible as demonstrated, it requires a lot more attention to detail. That group ended up at about 1.5 inches, I’d like to shoot the gun again with some proper match/defensive ammo to see how accurate it really is. The only thing close to an issue is that magazines that have ammo in them don’t drop free. An empty magazine will absolutely drop free of the gun, but a partial mag won’t and will require you to manually remove it.
The Type M was discontinued by Beretta, which is too bad. In today’s concealed carry revolution, I think it would be a nice fit to Beretta’s lineup, especially now that they’ve brought back the double-stack 92 Compact. If you do manage to find a used Type M for sale, don’t buy it. Send me an email with a link to the auction, and I’ll see that it gets a good home. If you do buy it though, be warned that magazines are made from unicorn horn powder fused with the tears of Chuck Norris and cost roughly eleventy billion dollars when do you find one for sale.
All jokes aside, this really is a great gun. It’s really the only gun that’s ever made me want to be truly unfaithful to my beloved revolvers.
I remember when this image started making the round of the internet a while ago. People would look at it and think “oh, that’s what I’m doing wrong” because their groups would be off, or they’d be throwing shots or something like that. The problem is that this image has almost nothing to do with modern, two handed defensive pistol shooting.
The BHP in .40 S&W is the only .40 that I’ve ever really been interested in. When FN made the .40 HP, they actually beefed the gun up considerably to handle the increased pressure of the round. This gun, a loaner from a good friend has been off to visit a custom shop as evidenced by the front and back checkering, custom sights, and excellent trigger.
I noted a column in the Outdoor Wire about how the scoring system in the shooting sports is broken, because the way we do it now doesn’t allow for real-time spectator participation. I agree 100% with the column, and it dovetailed nicely with another rant I had about technology in the firearms industry, specifically timers.
The CED7000 Pro is a really good timer. By the standards of any other consumer electronic, it’s ancient technology tottering along. In an age of tablet computers that weigh less than a volleyball and have more computing power than my 90s era desktop, it’s ridiculous that our very best timer is something like this.
Here’s what match scoring would look like in a perfect world: you’d have an all-in-one device, about the size of an iPhone that records the time, then allows you to enter the scoring (points down, target hits, whatever). You’d have all the different shooting sports profiles entered into the device, so you could select “USPSA Match” and go to work. You wouldn’t need pen-and-paper score sheets, because this magical device would use WiFi, so that all the scoresheets would be digitally pushed to each device from the central scoring PC. In the software backend, you’d have the central scoring PC that pushed the data on shooters (class, name, shooter number, division) to the devices, and each device would be digitally “assigned” to a stage so that the data coming back would go to the correct spot.
So when a shooter finishes his run, the RO goes through and scores it, enters the data on the Sorcery Device, the shooter views his scores and hits a button labeled “Accept”, and the score is magically submitted to the database. The central scoring computer would be linked to a monitor or something so shooters could see live progress of how the match was progressing.
The crazy thing is that we have the technology right now to do that. Even if we didn’t use a magical all in one device, we could get a 75% solution with the use of iPad/iPhone technology and a good scoring app. But I’ll tell you right now why it won’t happen, and this makes me sad: $$$$
Building the technology, and more importantly building it right and robust will cost money. No one is going to do that kind of work for free, and the people who have the technical skills to do it would rather make money doing something else than building an amazing technology that would receive limited implementation. Because local ranges and clubs aren’t going to drop $50 on software and $1000 on the devices necessary unless they’re an especially progressive and forward thinking club (shout-out to ENPS who are squared away). So, how could this work? If it was top-down. For example, if IDPA bought a program like this, and then mandated that all major matches buy the program and be compliant by 2015, providing co-op dollars to help ease the cost. That would work. That would be a game changer. I actually hope that IDPA’s partnership with the cool bros at RangeLog turns into something like this, because if there’s anyone that could build this scoring app and do it right, it’s RangeLog.
Admit it, you’d love to see this kind of scoring system used. It would make matches so much interactive, to the point where being a match spectator might actually be fun!
I was researching an article on running over-pressure .40 ammo in your guns (protip: don’t) I happened on this comment from a user of said OP .40 ammo which reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to write basically forever:
Incredible product. In a range full of .45s, .40s, 9mms, etc, the roar of this cartridge had people turning their heads and coming over to my port to ask what the hell I was shooting. The recoil was just the slightest bit more than standard .40 loads and the accuracy is phenomenal. For a cartridge that delivers more at the muzzle than any other auto-loader out there, you should not hesitate to try this round – thanks
That photo of course is the result of that sort of behavior, blown up guns and hurt hands. But what I really want to talk about is “That Guy” – every range has him, everyone knows him. He’s the guy at the public range with the SBR Mosin Nagant, or the bump-stock on his AR with the muzzle break. He can’t hit anything, but he’s content to make a considerable volume of loud noises and then wait for everyone to turn and look at him to see what he’s shooting because it’s SO LOUD. Then later he’ll go home and write this post on Arfcom: “Today I had my first rangetrip with the new .443 Loundeboomer AR kit! It was awesome, it shot a fireball 10 feet long, and when I finished two flawless magazines everyone was looking at me.”
I think we can all agree that we hate that guy and he sucks. And unfortunately, there really isn’t anything that can be done about that guy, so long as he’s obeying all the range rules and not causing any safety issues. I mean, there are little things – not paying attention to him is a start, but the internet has removed that as an effective deterrent, because derp will find other derp to commune with online (this is why places like Arfcom and Kotaku exist). That holy communion of derp will develop into a pretty severe “derp black hole” from which no reason or light can escape. But really, what are we to do about that guy?
Mostly, go about your business. I have a special set of ear pro that I use when derp is around, they’re Peltor ear-muffs that have 30 dB reduction. I’ll also keep a bag of earplugs in range bag, and will step off the line if necessary to double-bag my ear protection. Once, I decided that it just wasn’t worth it, and went home to dry fire instead.
That guy. What to do about that guy. Honestly, nothing. Let him have his fun, because as long as he’s not causing a safety issue, it’s all harmless. Then later point and laugh as his silly forum posts about his modified Mosin Nagant.
In honor of Valentine’s Day (or in celebration of it passing with minimal collateral damage) I’d like to tell you a story of a great love shared by two top gunners.