Glock is looking for fans to submit photos of them for possible inclusion on Glock’s 2011 calendar. Pretty cool, and a neat way to show your enthusiasm for your favorite firearm.
.50 AE Enfield
That’s actually pretty cool. Now you can have the perfect longarm to go with your gold plated Desert Eagle!
Comprehensive abandoment of reason
Try reading this blog post and the associated comments without facepalming. Try. The money quote from the blog post:
Hunters carry them when they want to take down large game.
The “them” that she’s referencing? 9mm 147 grain Hydra-Shok JHPs. Show me someone claiming to take down big game with a 9mm, and I’ll show you a liar.
Talk about missing the forest for the trees
When did Kahr start making fullsize, all steel single stack pistols in .40 S&W and 9mm? This is completely unreasonable, but I kind of want one of these. 
Like I said, it’s not a reasonable desire on my part, because a heavy pistol with low capacity and a striker fired trigger really doesn’t fit any particular carry or competition niche that I have, but that doesn’t stop my brain from going “huuurrrgggg waaaannt”.
Of course, I like single stack guns. I’ve been wanting a single stack 1911 in .40, but those run north of $1200 for good a good specimen. The T40 and T9 run right around $700-800 street price, which beats an equivalently made 1911 in that same category. Plus, no one I know actually competes with a Kahr, so I’d get to be an pretty, individual snowflake of uniqueness. Or something.
In all seriousness though, this looks like a cool idea, and I’m appalled that I’ve gone for several years without direct knowledge of these guns. If Kahr made a 10 round extended magazine for the T40, I’d buy 2 and shoot them in USPSA Limited-10. They also make a 7 shot polymer .45 ACP, which would actually be pretty cool for IDPA. Because of IDPA’s weird reload rules, a 7 shot magazine generally allows you to be at slide lock for most of your reloads which can be a definite advantage in that particular game. The thing that hurts the T9 and T40 is their ammo capacity – the T9 is only an 8 round gun and the T40 is a 7 shooter.
Apparently these guns have been around since 2004, and I’ve just completely missed the boat on them. That’s sad!
Cimarron Holy Smoker
I saw this gun, the Cimarron Holy Smoker on Red’s Trading Post FB page, and I want one. You have to have seen the excellent 3:10 to Yuma remake to really 
get why I’d want one of these. In the film, Russell Crowe’s character, Ben Wade is the ne plus ultra of gunfighters, and his pistol is a 4.75 inch barrelled Colt with the cross inlaid on the grip just like this gun.
The Cimarron Holy Smoker comes exactly as you see it in the picture, the MSRP is $890. Cimarron does make excellent Single Action clones, and this one is hard to beat for sheer “that’s a cool looking gun” factor. I’d buy one if I had 900 bones sitting around or if I was seriously thinking about getting in to cowboy shooting again…which actually, there are a lot of cowboy clubs out here.
UFC and firearms
American Rifleman interviews UFC hall of fame fighter Matt Hughes. A lot of interesting stuff in that article, actually – one of Matt Hughes’ proudest moments in life is when his son took his first deer with him. That’s pretty cool.
Spotlight: Firearms Academy of Seattle
Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the Firearms Academy of Seattle and talk to the owner Marty Hayes. FAS has a great facility, with set ups for 
low light or no light shooting (the picture at right was illuminated entirely by my camera flash), 360 degree shoot houses, a 200+ yard rifle range for SWAT training, and my favorite goody of them all, an all steel range with color coded targets.
The steel range (click for fullsize) has 27 pieces of steel, all painted different colors. So for example, an instructor could call out “red” and the shooter would only shoot the red poppers in front, or “black and blue” and they’d have to engage the properly color coded targets. Or for fun, you could have a student try and clear each piece of steel, hitting the IPSC chest plates twice each for a test of the student’s ability to shoot fast and reload under pressure.
FAS also has two modern classroom facilities which are necessary for the pen-and-paper aspect of firearms training. Whether you’re training cops or private citizens to carry firearms, a classroom component is extremely important to make sure the students posses a technical and “brain level” grasp of the material before rounds start flying downrange.
Marty was a gracious host and an all around good guy – part of the reason I was there was to discuss the possibility of FAS supporting the Quest for Master Class, which I’m pleased to say that they’re on board. In fact, FAS will be clearing and creating a special IDPA classifier bay with a permanently set up classifier stage to IDPA specs for use on the Quest for Master Class. That’s going to be awesome, and it’s going to allow us to do a lot more filming and shooting – a big time crunch was always the amount of time it took to set up the stage, but now we’ll be able to roll up, shoot, film and go!
If you’re in the Seattle area and you’re interested in top notch training, you should definitely check out The Firearms Academy of Seattle. I’d say that even if they weren’t providing us with range facilities for our use, because I know one of the instructors there.
A follow up to the cleaning post
Yesterday, I told you to stop cleaning your guns all the time. I mean it. But because people have asked, I do want to explain that there is a difference between “not cleaning your gun all the time” and “neglecting your gun”. Also, there are different levels of cleaning. When I say “don’t clean your guns every time you shoot them” I’m not talking about muzzleloaders or guns that you shoot corrosive ammo through. Of course you need to clean those. If you have a safe queen that you only shoot once a year and the rest of the time it sits in pristine condition in your safe, clean that when you shoot it. Should you protect your guns from rust if you shoot them frequently? Absolutely.
What I’m really railing against are the people that fire a box of ammo through their Glock/Beretta/FNH/whatever at the range once every couple of weeks and then carefully field strip the gun to clean every single teeny part. To me, that’s excessive cleaning. I’m not opposed to running a bore snake through the barrel after 250 rounds – you don’t need to, but you’re not going to hurt anything. In fact, as I’ve mentioned in two places, there is one type of cleaning that I’m absolutely OCD about – the cylinders on my competition revolvers. This is one area where it pays to keep a specific part of the gun clean and shiny, because dirty cylinders can cause rounds to stick on a reload and that will kill a stage at an IDPA match. Trust me, I’ve been there.
Believe me, I’m not saying that you can’t clean your Glock every 100 rounds if you enjoy doing that. It’s your gun and your time, and you’re free to do whatever you want. But for what it’s worth, every single person I’ve met that shoots guns for money and shoots those guns lots and lots doesn’t clean them but every few thousand rounds or so. So protect your gun from fingerprints, and protect it from rust, but you definitely don’t need to strip it and clean it every time you go to the range (unless you only go the range 2 times a year).
Shooting tips with Max Michel part 3
This tip from Sig Sauer pro shooter Max Michel covers shooting around a barricade – this would be helpful for any IDPA shooters to watch.