gun stuff/Team Gun Nuts

What Women Want

Posted on by Shelley
image courtesy of www.weaponoutfitters.com

There is one thing the gun industry has a lot of trouble understanding: women.  Despite the push in recent years to get women more involved in the industry and the tremendous success of that push as shown by campaigns such as Women of USPSA and the appearance of blogs such as the Girls Guide to Guns the industry is still mostly staffed by men.  That means there are men in the back rooms designing us pink plastic guns and purses that my grandma would find fashionable.

NEWS FLASH: THIS ISN’T WHAT WE WANT!  I don’t care how pink your piece of junk, breaking down, awful to shoot, itty bitty “adorable” gun is, I don’t want it.  Women have a right to awesome guns same as anyone else.  If I want a pink gun I’ll go buy my M&P JG (oh wait, I already want one) or get a Sig P238 and put adorable pink grips on it.

Not that Sig isn’t guilty as well, take a look at the P238 Lady model:

Photo from Sig Sauer

It’s bright red with tacky gold embellishments, really Sig? I have been known to drift toward one firearm or another for aesthetic reasons, I think my Kimber is pretty but it’s also a functioning lightweight carry gun that’s not bright pink and over embellished.  I can carry it around and my fellow gun shop employees don’t make fun of me.

One thing that 1911s and P238s have going for them the gun industry should take into consideration as something “girly” is the ability to personalize the gun.  I can go buy whatever kind of grips I want for either of these firearms and suddenly I have a nice gun that I like to shoot and is mine.  This is the real reason we all have 50 pairs of shoes; so we can personalize our wardrobe and come up with unique outfits on a daily basis.  We like things to be our own and be different, continue to give us the ability to make our guns how we want and you will continue to sell guns to us.  Try stuff pink plastic down our throat and we’ll throw it back at you.

The only way to really get women interested is by giving them good guns to shoot.  Stop marketing things to women by making guns pink, give us good guns and then let us make them ours.

podcasts

Gun Nuts Radio and Knight’s Armament

Posted on by Caleb

Click here to download yesterday’s episode of Gun Nuts Radio, featuring C Reed Knight III of Knight’s Armament.  A big “thank you” to Knight’s for appearing on the show, and we’re looking forward to have them back again in the future.  Also available on iTunes by clicking the button below!

Gun Nuts Radio | Blog Talk Radio Feed

Next week, Gun Nuts will be back and broadcasting live in primetime – we’ve got a great guest coming up, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, check out old episodes by visiting the website at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts

shooting/Team Gun Nuts

What makes good practice

Posted on by Shelley

One of the major mistakes of many novice shooters is not knowing what practice makes good practice. You can go out and shoot at a target all day long but unless you are making changes to improve you may end up just developing habits and frustrating yourself. There are actions that can be taken to avoid this detrimental series of events.

Never try to shoot beyond your ability. There is a line between this and pushing your boundaries that is sometimes hard to see. The main thing is to keep your goals attainable. For example, I am currently trying to get my FAST drill below 15 seconds. I am currently shooting between 15.09 and 16.5 seconds, therefore making this a difficult yet attainable goal.

Figure out what you’re doing wrong and correct it. Don’t keep making the same mistake until you frustrate yourself and start making more. Pay close attention to what you and the gun do during each shot that may cause you to throw shots. Your ultimate goal should be to know where your shot went without looking at the target, but this takes time. First you have to get used to what a “good” shot feels like then you can start looking at what the “bad” shots are doing and identify that with the feeling (whether it be a physical or mental mess up) and eventually recognize that feeling when it happens.

Stick to proven drills. The drills you find at, for example, pistol-training.com are there for a reason. Shooting at a hole in paper will only get you so far. The drills are not only beneficial to your shooting but also provide you with quantifiable feedback and allow you to track your progress.

Take a class if you haven’t already. A basic handgun course never hurt anybody. I had been shooting shotguns for years and handguns for a few months when I took Insight’s Basic Handgun course last February. It’s not about what you do or don’t know, it’s about having someone give you a proven method rather than collecting information from the guys at the range. It also gives you the opportunity to have someone knowledgeable watch you shoot and provide you with feedback.

The only real practice is good practice. It’s far more difficult to break bad habits than it is to take the time and necessary steps to build good ones to begin with.

GunUp/Top Shot

GUNUP.com adds Top Shot competitor Kelly Bachand to their Pro Staff

Posted on by Caleb

SEATTLE, WA (February 1st, 2011) GunUp.com, the authoritative community for gun enthusiasts to share, discuss, review, and compare guns, announces their sponsorship of “Top Shot”competitor Kelly Bachand.

“Kelly is a champion High Power Rifle competitor who embodies the enthusiasm for the Shooting Sports that we want to support,” says Dan Hall, CEO of GunUp.com. “He is a hard working, local student so sponsoring him was an easy decision. We are excited to have Kelly be part of the GunUpPro Staff.”

“Not too long ago I would have thought the words “Pro Staff” and my name didn’t belong in the same sentence,” adds Kelly Bachand. “I’m very excited to be part of the GunUp Pro Staff. Their vision and use of technology resonated strongly with me. I hope my youth, drive, and humility bringa unique perspective to the team.”

Kelly joins fellow competitive shooters, Caleb Giddings and Mike Gallion, as part of the GunUp Pro Staff. The GunUp Pro Staff contributes monthly articles to GunUp and field questions asked byGunUp Members on their recently launched Question & Answer section.

podcasts

Today on Gun Nuts: Knight’s Armament

Posted on by Caleb

Today at 2pm Pacific (5pm Eastern) we’ll be live on the air with the guys from Knight’s Armament.  Tune in to the live stream at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts as we discuss Knight’s commitment to the civilian market, competition shooting, what you should do as a consumer if you experience issues with a Knight’s product, and plenty more.  This should be a great episode, and as always for our faithful Army of Downloaders (30,000 downloads of the two new episodes!) the episode will be available on iTunes as well.  Tune in this afternoon at 2pm Pacific time for Gun Nuts Radio, brought to you by GunUp.Com, the future of guns online.

AR15/Ruger

Ruger SR Series: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Posted on by Caleb
SR-556, SR9c, SR40

Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege to shoot almost 10,000 rounds out of the various guns in the Ruger SR series.  The SR series consists of Ruger’s SR9/40, the SR9c, and of course the SR-556, Ruger’s AR-15 pattern piston gun.  After nearly a year shooting these guns, it’s time to take a hard look at what Ruger got wrong, and what Ruger got right for each of the guns in the series, starting with my favorite entry in the SR series, the SR-556.

Ruger SR-556

Like I said, this is my favorite gun in the SR series.  I think the SR-556 is probably the best gun in Ruger’s tactical/self defense market as well.  Let’s take a look by the numbers at what I like, don’t like, and just don’t get.

The Good

  • Accuracy – the Ruger can shoot.  At night, offhand, with iron sights and a white light I was able to make hits on targets at 100+ yards.  The rifle shoots very well.
  • The features – Troy rails, good sights, Pmags from the factory, good trigger, Hogue grip, basically the rifle is set up with a lot of the aftermarket parts that people would buy for an AR platform rifle.
  • Intangibles – the rifle has a mid-length system for its piston, and because of the weight of the piston system is a bit heavier than a lot of other ARs.  What that means is recoil reduction and muzzle flip reduction.  5.56 doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot of recoil anyway, but the factory Ruger SR-556 has less than your standard M4gery.
  • Reliability – once I figured out how to adjust the gas system, the gun has been boringly reliable.  Read the manual!  It tells you how the ejection pattern of your gun indicates if you need to adjust the gas system or not.

The Bad – Note: these are features that I think could use improvement

  • The flash hider – It’s not an A2 style flash hider, and just kind of looks weird sitting on the end of the gun.  I fully intend to replace this with a Surefire or Miculek muzzle brake, which will then effectively make the gun recoilless.
  • The stock – After going full out on the rest of the accessories, the stock is just kind of there.  A Magpul MOE stock would definitely enhance the appearance and function of this gun.
  • The weight – I like the weight of the gun, for 3-gun and competition it’s perfect.  However, other shooters have complained about the weight.  This is a personal issue, but because it’s been reported, I want to bring it up.

The Ugly

  • Heat build-up – I hold my rifle as far forward as I can get my support hand on the gun.  This is currently the hot-shot way to hold an AR.  With the SR-556, if you do this you absolutely have to have the rail covers on the gun.  The problem is that the gun only comes with 3 rail covers, so the exposed part of the rail collects all the heat from the gas piston system.  For 1 or 2 magazines it doesn’t matter, but over the course of a match I’ve found I need to wear a glove on my support hand to keep from burning myself.

The SR-556 is my favorite gun in the SR series.  Yes, the heat build up issue is problematic for series 3-gun and tactical shooters, but it can be ameliorated by purchasing another rail cover from Troy to throw on the exposed part of the rail.  I have a couple of ARs, but if I had to pick one to actually carry around should the zombies come, I’ll throw a VTAC sling on my SR-556 and use that.  I strongly recommend the SR-556 for anyone looking to get in the piston AR market without having to

SR-556 6.8 SPC upper

mess around.  In fact, what I really recommend is that you buy the SR-556 upper, and mount it on your lower.  The SR-556 is also available in 6.8 Remington, which is personally where I think this rifle really shines.  You can purchase a 6.8 Remington upper from Cheaper than Dirt or from Ruger directly, however the price is better at CtD.

And now I’m off to order my muzzle brake and MOE stock for the gun to really finish making it the rifle I want it to be.

Tomorrow and Friday we’ll continue the series with the SR9c and the SR40.

KAC

Knight’s Armament Q&A

Posted on by Caleb

Tomorrow on a special broadcast of Gun Nuts Radio, we’re going to do a live Q&A session with Knight’s Armament!  This session came about as a result of the SHOT SHOW kerfluffle involving Team Gun Nuts and Knights. I deeply regret my role in that, and while the original post that I published following the incident itself was ill-timed and unprofessional, I’m very excited to see that Knight’s is engaging with online content providers and really looking to get involved with the primarily civilian and competition shooter base that reads us here at Gun Nuts.

If you have a question for Knight’s Armament, post it in the comments here, or email it to me at [email protected] – we’ll read the questions live on the air with a Knight’s rep and open up a dialog between them and the consumer side of things.  That’ll be tomorrow on Gun Nuts Radio, and I’m really looking forward to the episode!