NSSF Education
The NSSF’s new educational campaign is for the media, to teach them about the modern sporting rifle.
The “modern sporting rifle” being another word for “AR15”. Awesome work, guys.
Ruger SR-22 Rifle: The 10/22 gets dressed up
Ruger has announced the new Ruger SR-22 rifle, which is the time honored and tested 10/22 action in a Nordic Components AR style frame kit. It seems like everyone that jumped in to the AR market is now making AR trainers in .22LR, which if you ask me is a smart decision, since .22 LR is still far more economical to shoot than .223. The advantage to Ruger’s design is that it allows the SR-22 to accept most aftermarket 10/22 parts and barrel. The major drawback however is that it’s not a true AR trainer, as the safety, mag release, and function of the rifle are pure 10/22.
The MSRP for the rifle is $625, which puts it above both the Colt M4 .22 and the S&W MP-22 in terms of price. I’m also not 100% sure that you couldn’t buy your own 10/22 and build a gun exactly like the SR-22 for less money, but that remains to be seen. I hope this rifle is successful for Ruger, I truly do, because I hope that every new gun that’s introduced makes it big on the consumer market. However, if you’re looking for a true AR training platform, look to the Smith & Wesson MP-22 first. If you own a 10/22 and want a gun that scares hippies and Senators but interfaces with all your gear, the SR-22 might be right up your alley.
Gun Nuts Tonight: NDs, NCIS, and more acronyms
Tonight’s show is a hodgepodge of topics of interest that we’ll be discussing. First and foremost, we’ll be talking about Negligent Discharges of firearms, and what can be done to prevent them. We’ll also be covering some news items, as well as talking about the return of my favorite bad tv show, NCIS. Join us tonight at 9pm Eastern time – the location is the same: www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts. As usual, the call in number for tonight’s show is 347-539-5436, and we’d love to have your comments or opinions on any of the issues that we discuss!
Don’t forget, 9pm Eastern time – Gun Nuts Radio!
Ammo question
I’m committed to shooting wheelguns for my two remaining major matches this year, which sort of puts me in a world of hurt for .45 ACP ammo. I need at least 500 rounds of practice ammo for next month alone, but at current prices, that puts me in a situation where I’m looking at shooting steel or aluminum cased ammo out of all my guns.
I’ve run some Wolf through my 625 without any issues – all the rounds went off like they should, and I only started to see sticky extraction after about 100 rounds, which was solved with a pass from my bore snake. My concern here is if anyone has ever encountered any issues running high round counts of steel cased ammo through a revolver? I wouldn’t run Wolf in a semi-auto because I’d be worried about beating up the extractor, but it seemslike there’s less possibility for damage running it in a revolver. So, I put the question to all of Gun Nuts Nation (you see what I did there, pdb?) if anyone has experience with lots of steel cased rounds in a 625.
On a side note, I picked up a box of Blazer ammo the other day to try it out, mostly because the aluminum cased ammo scares me a lot less than steel cased stuff. I noticed something when looking at the rounds – the Blazer .45 ACP rounds I have use small pistol primers as opposed to standard .45 ACP rounds which use large pistol. I wonder why they do that?
Let's play a game
It’s called “spot the mistakes”. I’m posting a quote, absolutely unedited from a thread at TFL regarding Accidental/Negligent Discharges of firearms. I honestly didn’t read the whole thread, because this particular line just…well…jumped out at me.
Was sitting on the toilet playing with my new fangled Para-Ordinance 1911 with 13 round magazine.
To make a short story shorter I accidentally fired it into the wall tiles. Bullet penetrated the tile but never made it past the wall. Typical thought the gun was unloaded but due to the hammer being back after working the slide I decided to dry fire instead of release and ease the hammer down.
Owned one other 1911 since than, but have never been a big fan of the safety mechanisms on 1911s.
I have several thoughts here, not the least of which is “spellcheck” but that being said, let’s begin at the beginning. “Sitting on the toilet playing with my gun”. I’ll call that strike 1. Sitting on the can is probably not the best location to be inspecting your new heater. Take care of business, then go futz around with your gun. Strike 2 comes when he “thought the gun was unloaded” because the the hammer was back after he racked the slide. What? You took the exact action necessary to load your firearm and then you thought it was unloaded? So then of course instead of doing the smart thing and dropping the magazine, then running the slide to eject any live rounds, he decides “must be unloaded, let’s dry fire the thing.”
Finally, strike 3 is the last sentence, where he blames the ND on the mechanical safeties of the 1911. That just bugs me to death. That ND happened because the chap in question committed a series (not one or two) of firearms handling errors that led directly to a bullet hole in something that didn’t need a bullet hole.
Now, I’m not trying to make this guy look bad, which is why I’m not posting his name or linking to the thread. But I wanted to post the exact content of his post specifically because it shows the lack of logical process that can lead to an ND – this guy was lucky he didn’t injure someone. Have some patience, wait until you’re at a more…appropriate place to hand your firearm, and for crying out loud learn the manual of arms on your guns, people. Here’s the safe procedure for dry firing a firearm:
- Finger off trigger
- Eject magazine/open cylinder and eject rounds
- On a semi-auto, rack the slide and look down the chamber to insure no rounds remain.
- Lower the slide/close the cylinder.
Now your gun is safe to dry fire. Always remove the ammunition feeding device before dry firing your gun. If your gun has a magazine disconnect safety, then your gun is broken and you should get a gun that isn’t fundamentally broken from the factory.
Holy Altitude Sickness, Batman
I just found out that Gunsite is at 5000 feet in elevation. Now, I grew up in the High Desert of Southern California around 3000 feet of elevation, but I also have lived at or around sea level for the past 10 years. Yeeeeeeeesh.
USPSA 2009 Limited, Revolver, and Limited-10 Results
The 2009 USPSA Nationals have come to a close, and now for many shooters they have a couple of days to rest and relax before the IDPA Nationals in Tulsa. However, for some, the USPSA Nationals conclude the “shooting season”, as fall weather begins in many parts of the country, the days get shorter and the shooting hours are limited. It was a great year at the Nationals – here’s a link to the previously posted Open/Production Nationals Results. Now, here are the results from the Limited, Limited-10, and Revolver races.
Limited:
Champion: Ted Puente
High Lady: Jessie Abbate
Limited-10
Champion: Dave Sevigny
High Lady: Randi Rogers
Revolver
Champion: Cliff Walsh
High Lady: Annette Aysen
Monday-Morning Quarterback
Honestly, my first thought when I read those scores was “holy smokes Jerry Miculek didn’t win?” Congratulations to Cliff Walsh on his big win in Revolver division! The other divisions had some interesting races, as in Limited-10 Dave Sevigny and Bob Vogel flip-flopped from their finish in Production Division, with Dave taking top honors. Travis Tomasie, Manny Brag, Mike Voight, and Todd Jarrett round out the top 5 in the Limited Division, with only 2 match points separating 2nd from 3rd in a tough match.
On the ladies’ side, Jessie Abbate continued to win everything in sight, taking top honors in Limited Division as mentioned above, with the next highest lady shooter finishing over 100 match points behind her. In Limited-10, Julie Golob took 2nd Place Lady coming in behind Randi Rogers of Team Glock.
The Limited-10 division looks like it’s going to be a big pool full of scary fish for some time to come, as many of the top Production shooters can effortlessly cross over to L10 using gear that is very similar to their Production gear. That pool will only get scarier if S&W introduces an M&P Pro in .40 S&W.
Congratulations to all the shooters for a great match – good luck to those of you that are headed out to Tulsa for the IDPA Nationals, and for the rest of you, enjoy some downtime. I hope to see a whole lot of the Production Division shooters come out to Bianchi Cup next year and step up the participation in Bianchi Cup’s Production Division.
Revolver Gear: Must have
Competitive shooting at any level has a significant “gear oriented” aspect. Once you get the holsters, moonclip holders, guns, ammo, etc, a lot of shooters figure that they’ve got all the gear they need to go shoot a match, and in most cases they probably do. However, as the round counts and matches start to go up, you find you start needing more and more tools and do-dads in your range bag. 1911 shooters need their bushing wrenches, everyone should have a set of screwdrivers, and Glock shooters need their creepy little portable Gaston Glock Shrines.
For revolver shooters, there is one item which in my estimation is an absolute “must have” piece of gear. If you’ve shot enough matches with a wheelgun, you’ve probably had a stage where the carbon fouling in your cylinder caused a round to hang up on the way in during a reload, which throws off your entire COF. The simplest solution for that, and something I carry in my range bag at all times is the Bore Snake from Hoppes. I’ve mentioned them before on the blog, but that was primarly in the context of a cleaning tool. As a field/match expedient cylinder cleaner, they can’t be beat. Pull it through the six chambers one at a time, and you’ve solved your issues with carbon fouling.
The one caution is that if you’re shooting a revolver with a titanium cylinder, you might not want to use the bore snake, as the brass bristles built into the tool might abrade the magical cylinder coating on the inside of your wheelgun. However, if you’re running a 627 or a 625, a Ruger Security Six/GP100, or pretty much any standard revolver with a steel cylinder, you need one of these in your range bag. There’s nothing worse than slamming a Comp-III speedloader in place, and then looking at the cylinder to see one recalcitrant round just sitting there, half an inch above the cylinder, mocking you. Take a minute every couple of stages to clean out that cylinder and you’ll be a much happier camper.
USPSA Revolver Nationals – Current standings
With one day of competition under their belts, here are the current standings in the USPSA Revolver Nationals. One comment, really – only 34 shooters in the whole division? Come on wheelgunners, I know we can do better than that.