Join us live tonight on Gun Nuts Radio at 7pm Pacific time (10pm Eastern) as we’ll be talking to Travis Marsh from Season 2 of Top Shot. This kicks off our Top Shot Reloaded interview series at Gun Nuts Radio; History has given us access to all the contestants, and you’re going to be hearing from them about their experience on Top Shot every Wednesday night during Season 2. We’re excited at Gun Nuts Radio to be the first outlet running these interviews, and hope that you guys out there enjoy them as much as we do.
So join me tonight, live at 7pm Pacific time at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts for the first episode in our Top Shot Interview Series featuring Travis Marsh!
From the email box, a reader asks a question which boils down to “what do you mean when you say ‘hobby gun’, and how is that different from any other gun?” It’s actually a great question, because it helps create an understanding of how the opinions here on Gun Nuts get framed. I personally have talked before about how I see the shooting sports through tunnel vision that often excludes activities outside my interest in competition shooting and defensive training. That focus has created two distinct categories of firearms in my mind, which I’ve taken to calling “Range guns” and “real guns”. “Range gun” is also interchangeable with “hobby gun”, because they both represent the same thing.
What’s a Range Gun?
When I think of a range gun, the guns that come to mind are fun guns, but not guns that I’d choose to win a match, defend my life, or take to a Pistol-Training.Com class. I have a couple of these myself, my single action .22 Magnum revolver comes to mind as a really good example of a range gun or hobby gun. This category is also where I tend to drop guns that don’t have a proven reputation for reliability; even if they’re from a reputable manufacturer I like to wait until they’ve been on the market for a bit before I give them the Gun Nuts Seal of Approval.
What’s a real gun?
Real gun or range toy?
A “real gun” is basically a gun I would depend on to save my life. These are guns that have proven records of reliability, are in common use in competition, law enforcement, etc; this is a gun that I would pick up out of the box and take to a 1500 round class and expect to be absolutely stone reliable for that class. For example, my S&W M&P Pro in .40 is a “real gun” – I’ve run over 1300 rounds through it so far, including a grueling 501 round 2.5 hour practice session. Most of the ammo has been BVAC 180 grain FMJ, and the gun keeps on ticking. Bottom line, a real gun is a gun that you can buy, get some mags for, and shoot 1000+ rounds out of in a class or match and not spend half the time trying to fix malfs to your gun.
Now, there’s a lot of cross-over depending on what you use your guns for. For example, for someone that uses a .22 rifle for varmint control, a Ruger 10/22 might be a “real gun” because it’s ready to do what you need it to do right out of the box. That’s sort of the defining factor between a real gun and a range gun. A range gun is essentially an expensive toy – it’s primary use is going to the range and converting money into smoke and noise, and I want to be very clear that there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that’s totally awesome. I would imagine that the great majority of the guns that are owned in this country are “range guns”, and that’s awesome, because it helps proliferate firearms ownership. But a real gun, a serious gun, or a working gun – whatever you want to call it, must be ready out of the box (I’ll make an exception for changing the sights) to do whatever it is you need that pistol to do. Whether it’s run during a defensive pistol class, win a trophy, ride in a radio car with you – that’s a real gun.
At Cheaper than Dirt. The longer I do this for a living, the less stuff I want on my gun that could possibly cause it to not go bang when I really need it to. I did leave the Sig P250, the XD45, and the FNP-45 off that list at the CtD blog. Not because I think they’re bad guns, but more because I don’t personally have a whole lot of experience with them.
Tam talks about how the modern incarnation of the 1911 is largely a “hobby gun”, i.e. not a serious firearm for self-defense because many of the modern guns don’t hold up well to serious wear and tear. They’re made for those “hobby” shooters, guys that run 100 rounds through their guns every couple of weeks or so and don’t really take classes or shoot competitively.
And that’s perfectly okay.
I like well made, robust guns. My personal 1911 is a Colt XSE Rail Gun, which is one of the guns Hilton Yam recommends for duty 1911s. It’s well built, it will probably stand the test of time, and I can likely shoot several thousand rounds through it without issues. And that’s all well and good, but one of the things that blogging for the last four years, writing for magazines, and interacting with the shooting community has taught me is that my expectations for handguns are way outside what the normal shooting community expects.
And that’s okay too.
In fact, the readers of Gun Nuts probably skew away from the “average” gun owner demographic, as many of you are competition shooters, trainers, and serious defensive shooters who will put thousands of rounds through your guns, but let’s be honest: most gun owners won’t do that. So I’m okay with $500-$600 price range 1911s that fall apart after 5,000 rounds, or that are filled with MIM parts. I’m a capitalist, after all and I like it when people make money. There’s a market for Taurus and other companies to produce those 1911s, because many people want that traditional 1911 platform and aren’t likely to shoot 10,000 rounds through it.
But now here comes the heresy part – because aside from nostalgia, there is no reason to buy a 1911 for serious social work any more. With the obvious exception of certain competition divisions such as Single Stack where the 1911 is all that’s allowed.
Again I repeat myself – for a serious fighting or competition pistol, there is absolutely no need to buy a 1911. A good, functioning 1911 that will be reliable is going to cost about $1,000. That’s the price of entry. If you’re in love with the .45 ACP cartridge, for $1,000 you could get TWO M&P45 pistols and a couple of spare mags, or you could get 2 used Glock 19s, a holster, some mag carriers, and a pile of spare mags and even have money left over to take an entry level pistol class.
I love the 1911 platform. In its heyday, it represented the finest of American craftsmanship and commitment to our soldiers. It is still a very easy to shoot and straightforward platform to operate, and makes an excellent competition firearm. But it doesn’t make good sense to lay out a kilobuck for a 1911, when that same money could be used to purchase a pistol which will perform right alongside it in reliability and accuracy and leave lots of money left over for parts and training.
Sitting behind the counter at West Coast Armory’s Indoor Range has given me the opportunity to see a lot of people use a lot of guns. The ones I’m most familiar with are the ones that live behind the counter with me: our rental guns. These poor firearms get rented to person after person after person, the more popular ones get 300-2,000 rounds a week (giving me 18,600 – 124,000 rounds a year) through them without a stretch of the imagination. These guns get beat up. Some of these guns have now been behind the counter with me for over a year now and I have a fairly decent idea of their reliability.
One stood out a little bit earlier this week when we tore it apart to clean it: The Sig Sauer P226. This is probably one of the most popular rental guns in the case, and this week when one of my co-workers pulled the gun apart to clean it we realized how much this gun could actually take. The gun was filthy. Now we try to clean our rental guns every week, perhaps two at most, so the fact the gun had gotten so dirty in such a short amount of time really makes a statement to how much use it gets.
There are a lot of guns in the case we have problems with, they end up in the gunsmith or sent back to the company every month or two. This Sig, despite the dirt and grime of popularity and abuse, and despite having grip screws stolen out of it, has continued to function flawlessly. I cannot recollect a time when I have had to help someone with the gun jamming through their misuse or through a problem with the firearm, making it not only reliable but easy for novice shooters to handle. It makes me wish I had an exact count of how many rounds people had put through the poor thing.
Looks like our spam filter got a little bit too energetic and picked off a couple of legitimate comments to various posts. Those have all been restored now to their original glory, however to let people know – posting a single line of text followed by a link is generally going to trigger the anti-spambot to destroy.
That’s right, History’s hit reality show Top Shot makes its triumphant return tomorrow at 10pm. There are a ton of places to get good coverage, obviously the Top Shot FB page, but in an awesome move, American Rifleman (the NRA) has started a blog by Season 1 winner Iain Harrison that will follow the show. It’s called Rifleman’s Reality, and you should check it out.
Over on Gun Nuts Radio, we’ll be playing the role of Letterman, interviewing the eliminated contestants the day after “their” episode airs. Make sure you tune in to Gun Nuts Radio on Wednesday evening for all your Top Shot chatter!
That’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly for the 3 people that didn’t figure out that. This is part three (and the final part) in our review series on the Ruger SR series of rifles and pistols, and it’s fitting that we close the series with the one Ruger I’ve shot the most, the Ruger SR9c. The SR-556 review is here, and the SR40 review is here.
Magwell not included
In my opinion, the SR9c is the best gun in the SR pistol series. It’s hard to compare it directly with the rifle, as there are things I like about both platforms, but I’d have to say if I was picking a Ruger firearm for concealed carry, I’d go with an SR9c. Which brings an interesting point about – why the LC9? The SR9c is compact, easy to carry, easy to shoot, and holds a bunch of rounds compared to the LC9. The whole “pocket 9mm” thing is just a fad that I don’t get. But anyway, on to the review.
The Good
Ergonomics: this gun just handles very well. The short barrel clears out of the holster in a hurry, it points well, had a low bore axis, and thanks to the dual captive recoil spring is also very mild in recoil.
Accuracy: like the SR40, the SR9c is actually quite accurate, especially for a gun so small. I was regularly impressed with the level of accuracy I was able to squeeze out of such a small gun.
Trigger: specifically, the trigger reset. The reset on this trigger is very positive, and very fast. With some practice, you can squeeze impressively fast splits out of this gun.
The Bad
Once again, the sights. At the risk of repeating myself, Ruger should have just put Novak or Heinie sights on the gun, instead of coming up with their own proprietary sight that doesn’t fit anyone else’s sight cut.
The safety: on the SR40, the safety was ugly. The .40 S&W had sufficient muzzle flip to make the safety a real flesh-reaper, however on the SR9c it’s just mildly annoying.
Ambi mag release: If you hold the gun with your hands as high as possible, and have even moderately sized hands, it’s actually quite possible to accidentally trip the mag release on the strong hand side of the gun with your firing hand. Combined with the magazine “safety”, this can render your gun dead – there is a round in the chamber, but the trigger’s dead.
The Ugly
Magazine disconnect safety. I don’t like it. Never have, never will. I think that across the board they’re a bad idea.
What I’d Change
I have the unique perspective of 5k+ rounds through an SR9c, and most of it in competition where speed and accuracy are everything. With that in mind, I’d make the following changes to all of the pistols in the SR lineup:
Make the thumb safety optional: this part should be something that a user and drop in/drop out at will. I don’t like it, so I’d get rid of it.
Switch to Novak sights: This way a user could replace the sights with any of the many aftermarket types that fit Novak cuts.
Delete the magazine disconnect safety entirely.
Change the mag release from a “true” ambi release to a reversible release.
I really do like the SR9c though. I think that this is probably the best gun in Ruger’s SR pistol line-up, since it’s the easiest to carry, very easy to shoot, and generally an all around good little carry gun. When people ask me for advice on polymer carry guns, my list is always the same: Glock 19, M&P, and Ruger SR9c. I think that between those three guns if you can’t find what you need, you’re in need of more help that we can provide at Gun Nuts.
One of the products I thought was really interesting at SHOT was the Shock Knife. Short version, it’s a force on force training knife that delivers an electric shock to the user when they’re “cut”. On the lowest setting, it feels unpleasant, and they wouldn’t let us test it on the highest setting at SHOT. Here’s Shelley getting shocked for science!
For those that are wondering, yes I also got “cut” by the knife, but we didn’t film that because who wants to see that?
Could this be the next Marine Corps fighting .45? I’ve had my Colt XSE Rail gun for a while now, but hadn’t really put it through it’s paces in any
Colt Rail Gun and Galco IWB
meaningful way. I’ve not even cracked 1000 rounds on it, which is partly because my time has really been consumed by shooting revolvers so far in 2011, and looks to stay that way as well. But the Colt deserved a good workout, so off we went to West Coast Armory in Bellevue, Washington with a bunch of Remington 185 grain semi-wadcutter match ammo.
The Colt has the following features:
Aluminum trigger
1913 accessory rail
Novak 3-dot sights (more on that in a bit)
Extended ambidextrous thumb safety
Wood stocks
One 7-round and one 8-round magazine
For magazines, I bought three of my usual Chip McCormick 8 round magazines with basepads, and the holster is a Galco Triton IWB. For the review, I figured I’d warm up at 25 yards. I try to do more and more shooting at longer ranges the closer I get to Bianchi Cup, as it’s good to practice at 25+ and out.
Target from Pistol-Training.Com
You know, 25 yards is a long way away. For the warm-up, I fired 25 shots at the 8 inch circle of the Pistol-Training.Com target. Each magazine was fired as a single, continuous string of fire. A side note – when using 8 round 1911 mags, it’s really easy to break your training down into blocks of 25 rounds. Take three mags, and top off the first one: 9+8+8=25. After 25 rounds, the target was pulled back in to check the damage. The goal here was to keep all 25 rounds in the 8 inch circle at the center, which would all be “10’s” on a Bianchi Cup target.
Looks like we have a “mission accomplished” for Goal
25 rounds at 25 yards
Number 1 with the XSE. I was shading my groups a bit to the right during this drill, and I think that’s in part because at 25 yards, the front sight obscured the entire 8 inch circle of the target. However, the Novak sights actually provide a pretty good sight picture; I’d like a wider rear notch than they have, but I’d also like a billion dollars and a unicorn. The Novaks provide a fast enough and accurate enough sight picture to get the job done should I need to engage at 25 yards.
10 yards
The next drill shrank the distance from 25 yards down to 10 yards for the Colt, but I also shrank the target area from an 8 inch circle down to the 3×5 box in the head of the target. Please note, if you’re doing this at an indoor range such as West Coast Armory, make sure that the target is hung so that the head box is at an angle where your rounds will not strike the ceiling. They tend to frown on that, and it makes you a bad person for shooting the range up.
The drill at 10 yards was otherwise the same – 25 rounds, each magazine fired as a continuous string. I was starting to get bored, because the 5 pound trigger on the Colt has good take-up with a good reset, and at 10 yards it was really not difficult to punch big .45 holes in the Pistol-Training.Com target. The goal was all 25 shots in the head box, and we get to put a second “mission accomplished” tag on this post. That one flier kind of annoys me, otherwise we could have gotten all 25 rounds in the
25 shots at 10 yards
same hole at 10 yards. At 10 yards, I noticed that gun is in fact shooting to the right just a little bit. This isn’t really a big deal unless I plan on using this gun for bulls-eye competition (hint: I don’t). By now, I’d fired a box of ammo for accuracy, and kind of wondered what I was I going to do next to test the accuracy. Then I noticed the little dot on the Pistol-Training.Com target and thought “Hey, maybe I can stick all my rounds in one hole in that dot at 10 yards”. So I figured I’d shoot one magazine at that dot and see what happened.
8 rounds at 10 yards
Well, that was pretty straightforward, actually. 8 shots, 8 hits in a 2 inch circle at 10 yards. The Colt 1911 XSE Rail Gun can certainly do one thing, and that’s shoot. Colt has submitted this pistol to the US Marine Corps for consideration as the new MARSOC M45 pistol, and the only other current serious entry is a pistol from Springfield Armory.
After the accuracy drills, I did still have a bunch of ammo left. That ammo was consumed on the FAST Drill (3 reps), drawing from the Galco holster and pressing out to the head or the body area of the target, and most importantly reloading the gun over and over again. That single stack magazine well is not an easy target to hit without an additional opening on it, and my fastest reload was only 1.99 seconds. Drawing from the concealed Galco holster from under a tactical sweater-vest (a la Mike Mers from AAC) the I could get two hits in the 8 inch area of the target in under 1.7 seconds. Two hits to the head were consistently around 2.2 seconds (which needs to be faster), but for not having run the gun hard until yesterday, I was pretty pleased with how it performed. I would recommend this gun whole heartedly to anyone looking for a 1911 with a rail though; Colt’s re-entry into the civilian market with their 1911s seems to be going pretty well. I’m going to keep running this gun and see how it performs in upcoming weeks – if I’m not shooting a revolver, I’ll probably be shooting my Colt.
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