Would you like some .38 Special ammo that will shoot through a small moose? Perhaps you’re worried that your carry round won’t penetrate 35 inches of ballistic gelatin after defeating four layers of denim and a 2×4. If so, the Double-Tap .38 Special +P 158 grain lead semi-wadcutter is the round for you.
While I may joke, this is a round that offers serious penetration. After an initial batch of faulty gel produced weird numbers, some re-calibrated gel showed around 30 inches of penetration from the Double Tap load, which pushes 1000 feet per second out of a 4 inch GP100 using its Keith style SWC bullet. It actually has so much penetration that I wouldn’t hesitate to use this as a backwoods load for hiking places where there are dangerous animals that want to eat you.
It’s also a very accurate load. Out of a Ruger Security Six it shoots under 2 inches at 25 yards, and will produce similar accuracy out of my j-frame, provided a stable trigger pull. So it’s both accurate, and powerful. It’s also surprisingly shootable, despite pushing a .38 to nigh Magnum levels of velocity.
The only criticism I have of the load so far is that it managed to tie up my j-frame with fouling after about 100 rounds. It seems that rod around which the cylinder pivots was excessively fouled, leading to the gun stopping up and being unusable until heavily and thoroughly cleaned. Interestingly, that issue did not repeat itself when using the load out of a six inch revolver, which leads me to believe that unburnt powder was the culprit and not leading as I’d previously thought.
Bottom line is simple: this is an accurate, hard hitting load for your .38 Special +P guns. If you’re worried about over-penetration, don’t use it. However, if you need to shoot through something like a bear’s skull or several pieces of pine lumber and still get insane amounts of penetration, this is the round for you. I’m hoping for a break in the weather to get out and chrono it through the six inch gun, because I’m curious to see if it will make major.
Heading out tomorrow for the first ever IDPA Back-Up-Gun National Championship, which is sure to be an interesting match. For the longest time, IDPA has honored the BUG Division at local matches and had side matches for BUGs, but never before has there been a sanctioned Back Up Gun Championship.
For the first ever BUG Nationals, held at the S&W Shooting Center in Springfield, MA, IDPA will recognize two divisions, SSR and SSP. All small semi-auto pistols will be in SSP, and all revolvers in SSR. What’s interesting is that as a result of the way the BUG rules are written, there are two types of guns you can shoot in any division – honest BUGs and Gamer BUGs. For example, my buddy Josh Lentz, multi-time SSR Champion is shooting a 686 with a 2 inch barrel. Perfectly legal according to the BUG rules, but definitely a bit of an advantage over people shooting 2 inch j-frames. I want to stress that I’m perfectly fine with that, because the rules are written in such a way as to allow for that sort of thing.
Similarly, in the semi-auto division allows pistols with up to a 3.8 inch barrel; meaning that you could run an XDm 3.8 in the match with a full size grip and be perfectly legal. You’d be competing against guys running micro .380s, and you’d probably beat them all other factors being legal.
For my part, I’m shooting an actual BUG, my carry gun. It’s a Smith & Wesson 640 Pro Series, and it’s one of the best j-frames ever made. I do wish that I hadn’t sold that Model 60 Pro Series I used to own, because that would be about the perfect gun for this match. I am very interested to see what the percentage of “True” BUGs to “guns that meet the BUG rules” is going to be at this match. Personally, I support the gamers. I hope that most people show up with 3 inch, full size revolvers and 3.8 inch semi-autos and that guys like me with j-frames or micro 9mms are the minority and not the majority.
I really like that IDPA has put together a match where people can shoot their actual carry guns. The number of j-frames and pocket .380s and 9mms out there is considerable. What I like even more is that the way the rules are structured…you don’t have to shoot your carry gun at all. I think that seeing who’s shooting small carry guns and who’s shooting gamer guns will be very enlightening on where the culture of IDPA is heading vs. where it has been.
We’ve been talking about rimfire revolvers for self-defense, and as a part of that I had the chance to take the Ruger LCR-22 in .22 LR out to the range this weekend. First off, let’s talk about why someone might choose to carry a .22 LR revolver over a more potent cartridge: ummmm……because it has less recoil?
In truth, the best reason I can think of to carry a .22 LR revolver is shootability. This gun, at 25 yards off a sandbag produced an 8 shot group under 2 inches, pictured above. That’s 1.9 inches of accuracy out of a DA only gun in .22 LR. It’s also ridiculously easy to shoot well; head shots at 25 yards were no problem, and you could dump an entire cylinder of 8 rounds into the upper chest of a target as fast as you could pull the trigger at 25 yards.
That doesn’t address the primary area where a rimfire snub gun is lacking; and that’s terminal ballistics. Even if a .22 LR will penetrate 16 inches in ballistic gel, it’s making an awfully small hole. It’s not a service caliber like 9mm or .45 ACP, so it doesn’t enjoy the technological advances in bullet technology that those cartridges have seen. Also, it’s just less reliable. In my testing, even with good quality ammo the little Ruger did have a light hammer strike.
But don’t rule the .22 LR Ruger out yet. As mentioned, it’s easy to shoot well. The trigger is good from the factory, and because the gun has no recoil whatsoever it is, as mentioned, extremely easy to shoot rapidly and accurately. That’s not a bad thing for a carry gun to be, especially if you’re selecting the Ruger because you have issues with recoil in larger calibers like .38 or 9mm. That is a niche where a .22 LR gun like the LCR-22 can fill in quite nicely – carry guns for the recoil sensitive. Some people do want to carry a gun for self-defense but really, really don’t like recoil. Rather than suggesting that these people HTFU, there are guns on the market that they can carry. The LCR-22 is light, so carrying it won’t get annoying, it’s accurate, and it has no recoil. So for someone who wants the perfect unobtrusive carry gun, it starts to make sense.
There’s a caveat however – if you’re going to carry a mousegun like this, you need to practice with it. A lot, actually. More than you’d probably practice if you were going to carry a proper gun in a larger caliber, because the marginal caliber that the LCR-22 is chambered in means that shot placement is even more important than it usually is. The good news is that because the gun doesn’t beat you up, you can actually practice with it enough to build a sufficient amount of skill to get good, accurate hits.
Ultimately, .22 LR revolvers are not an ideal choice for a defensive gun. It beats a sharp stick certainly, and for a small niche of people it’s a perfectly logical choice. If you’re in that group of people, I’d heartily recommend the little Ruger LCR-22. It’s light, easy to shoot, and you’ll actually practice with it.
I’m always on the look out for new gadgets that will make range time more fun. Sometimes, these items are not particularly gun related, but make such a deference that I feel the need to share them. When I began frequenting an outdoor, rather than indoor range, I noticed a new tool requirement. My favorite range, at Clybell Wild Life Management Area in central Georgia, provides target stands with metal bases and wood uprights with a rectangle of cardboard tacked to the top. These stands are preferred because bullets are less likely to ricochet off of their parts. However with the dust and heat, tape and sticky backed targets don’t work as well as they should. Due to this issue, I now carry thumbtacks in my target holder. The problem has been, that tacks fall off or get shot and then I need more. Often I end up borrowing a neigbor’s staple gun. These tend to be the best solution but the ones the guys bring are usually heavy and require a lot of upper body strength to operate.
Found this awesome WWII recruiting poster for the Coast Guard, and I’ve been saving it for today. Happy Veteran’s Day to everyone who has served. I hope you can enjoy this day however you see fit, whether that’s with friends and family, or playing GTA 5 in your skivvies and eating cheetos. You’ve earned it.
Spetznaz. What images come to your mind when I say that word? If you’ve been on the internet for a while, probably something like this:Â
Go-go backflip hatchet attack!!
Here in the States we don’t know much about how the Spetsnaz does things, which isn’t surprising given that they are the most elite military force of a foreign nation we’ve had something of a rocky relationship with over the last century or so. In the United States we have a few elite counterterrorism units of our own and generally we don’t know much about them either, except what we see in movies. Or maybe inappropriate details leaked by some executive branch dweeb trying to impress people at parties.
In the gun world, we occasionally get bits and pieces of information about how certain elite units train for the many dangerous missions that they undertake. Certain drills or practices may show up in a book or in a movie or in a press report and people start thinking “Do they really do that?” It’s complicated because sometimes, yes…they really do that. Whether or not “that” is actually a good idea is a different question altogether. On Pistol-Forum someone posted this gem from a TV show that shows some apparently legit Spetznaz guys demonstrating some drills they use in training:
The statistically minded among you can try to count how many times the four major rules of firearms safety are broken in that clip…but it’s a lot.
I know, I know. “They’re Spetznaz! They’re highly trained and have killed more people than you!” That’s all certainly true, but someone can be well trained, extremely tough, and can still do things that are dumber than a bag of hammers. Actually shooting your teammates with live ammunition isn’t really a good idea, full stop. I don’t care who you are, putting bullets into your buddies is a bad thing. Now I can’t say for sure if the drills seen in that video are actually used by Spetznaz or not, and I doubt many people have the bonafides to do so. On the one hand, they’re Russians and the Russians are nuts like that. On the other, they’re Russians, and it’s not unprecedented for the Russians to put on a show solely for the purpose of making others say “The Russians are nuts like that.”
If you poke around out there in internetland you see lots of speculation about this sort of thing and, worse, you sometimes see imitation of it. The theory goes like this: Instructor Whoever finds out at some point that Elite Group A has people next to targets with live fire going on in some circumstances, and then Instructor Whoever decides to incorporate that into his basic handgun classes. If the guys who use that practice are hardcore warriors, and we all want to be hardcore warriors, then we should do it too! Right?
Erm…no. It may be 100% true that a particular elite military or law enforcement unit does, in fact, have members of their team or other living, breathing no-shoots right next to a target that someone is engaging with live fire. That, however, is only part of the picture. Typically the person who is in the position to pull that trigger with the VIP or teammate next to the target is in that position after having undergone a rigorous selection process designed to bring in candidates that show an extraordinary ability to perform under extreme levels of stress, and has undergone extensive training and preparation prior to that moment. Generally that moment is being supervised by experienced professionals and some of the best trauma response available anywhere is on standby just in case something horrible happens. Years of preparation typically precede that moment, and the structure of what happens is dictated by decades of experience.
If you divorce the drill itself from all the important context that exists in Unit A’s training, the risky thing they do to prepare for a specific mission becomes the damnably stupid thing that a typical student in a handgun or carbine course has absolutely no business trying to imitate.
It doesn’t really matter if we’re talking about a video showing drills supposedly used by Spetznaz or rumors of how a group like DEVGRU or FBI’s HRT supposedly trains: If you divorce the drill from the context they came from then the benefit from the drill evaporates and the risk goes through the roof. The risk/reward calculation goes haywire, with all reward leaving the room and the risk growing to enormous proportions. Incompetent imitation of advanced training techniques does not produce warriors, it produces casualties.
It’s all fun and games until someone’s on the deck bleeding out from a totally preventable gunshot wound. Trust me: You don’t want to be the one on the ground OR the one responsible for putting someone in that position. Don’t try this stuff at home.
The problem is it’s not true. You shouldn’t be surprised even for a second that TMZ (or Fox News for that matter) would expand on the truth a little bit, but here are the hard facts: Tom Cruise never said that his work was as hard as fighting in Afghanistan. The statement that TMZ and Fox are reporting on was made during a deposition – Cruise is suing a publishing company for defamation, because they said he “abandoned” his daughter during and after his divorce from Katie Holmes. As a part of that deposition, Tom Cruise’s lawyers compared his filming schedule to being deployed over-seas. Here’s the actual series of quotes from the deposition, which is available online for anyone interested.
Lawyer: Now, your counsel has publicly equated your absence from Suri for these extended periods of time as being analogous to someone fighting in Afghanistan. Are you aware of that?
Mr. Fields (Tom Cruise’s lawyer): Object to the form of the question, you may answer.
Tom Cruise: I didn’t hear the Afghanistan, but that’s what it feels like, and certainly on this last movie, it was brutal.
Lawyer: Do you believe that the situations are the same?
Cruise: Oh come on, you know, we’re making a movie.
So, the actual facts are: Lawyer says to Tom Cruise that Cruise’s lawyers have compared his absence from Suri to being in Afghanistan, Tom Cruise says he didn’t hear the Afghanistan part, but yes being away from your daughter for a long time does suck.
The story kind of changes when you actually have the facts, doesn’t it? Too bad Fox News and TMZ weren’t interested in doing any actual reporting. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am disappointed at how gleefully people have jumped on this without bothering to do the least bit of fact checking at all.
Since you seem to be confused on the issue of “freedom of speech” I’ll make it a little easier for you, Dick. “Freedom of speech” does not mean “Freedom from consequences.” Your freedom of speech exercised in the column that got you fired was fine, and you now you get the reap the consequences of exercising your freedom without thinking it through.
Meanwhile, thousands of Guns and Ammo’s customers exercised their freedom of speech calling for your head, and then Guns and Ammo exercised its rights as your employer and fired you because you upset the people whose advertising dollars and magazine subscriptions pay your salary.
Top: Colt Cobra .38 Special; top left, S&W 640 Pro Series .357 Magnum; middle, Ruger LCR22 Magnum.
Bottom row, left to right: S&W 637 Wyatt Deep Cover .38 Special, Ruger LCR-22 LR, Taurus Model 85 .38 Special.
I’m not a fan of the logo feces on the Deep Cover or the Barami style bolt-on grips, but the gun does have a sweet trigger pull. Put some sweet beamz from Crimson Trace on it, and it would probably rock.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
