1911

1911 FAIL

Posted on by Caleb

So last night, I went to install my brand spanking new TURBO SPEED Dawson Precision Magwell on my Para 16-40. No big deal, I thought – the instructions couldn’t have been clearer: Tap pin out, slide magwell into place, tap new pin in and PRESTO you’re reloading at the speed of light.

I should have known better.

After beating the pin out of my gun, I slide the magwell into place, and low and behold, the pin holes in the magwell and the gun itself don’t line up. Turns out I’ll need to remove some material from the grips to make the magwell line up, which is no big deal. I make this realization, take the magwell off, and in so doing, manage to dislodge the mainspring housing from the gun. No big deal, I think, I’ll just pop it right back on, and so I do after some looking and reference to see how it goes back together.

I get everything put back together, and function test the gun to make sure I didn’t inadvertently break something in my soon to be open blaster. Rack slide, dry fire…hmm…the trigger seems kind of light, that’s weird. Oh well, try it again, rack slide, dry fire, hold trigger down and rack slide again to simulate the function of the gun…and holy balls the hammer’s not staying back.

What’s happening now, is that if I dry fire the gun, and the rack the slide while holding the trigger to the rear (to simulate what would happen if I fired the gun) the hammer stubbornly refuses to stay back, and instead follows the slide forward as it returns to battery. I am thinking that somehow when I put the mainspring housing back, I messed up something in the trigger/hammer/grip safety linkage, but I have no idea what. Obviously, help, ideas, etc are appreciated.

Uncategorized

Chicks and Guns

Posted on by Caleb

Uncle (in a shocking post more than two lines) talks about chicks, guns, and why your doctor is asking you if you have a gun in your house.  This is my favorite part:

First of all, it’s not their business. Second, you’re not doing yourself favors by lying and staying in the closet. I think gun owners should out themselves so that we can show the world that we’re not crazy survivalists with black helicopter fantasies and that we are normal people with normal lives who do normal things.

But you should read the whole thing.

gun control

A Three Percenter

Posted on by Caleb

I am a Three Percenter, but not in the sense that you may or may not have heard the term used before.  Rather, I’m a Three Percenter in the sense given by Sebastian in this post:

If 3% of gun owners were as involved in political activism as they supposedly are at preparing for civil war, we’d be an unstoppable political force.  There would be no need to argue about where the line is, because it would be political suicide for any politician to get anywhere near it.

I’m part of the 3% that we’re trying to get active and involved in political activism. You know why getting 3% of gun owners actively involved in political activism would make us unstoppable? There are as many as 80 million gun owners in the Estados Unidos, and 3% of that number is 2,400,000. Two million, four hundred thousand political activists would be an army the likes of which the modern political system has never even seen. Essentially, it would be like mobilizing the entire NRA membership of the NRA to become involved in the political process – doing things like going door to door, working to elect pro-gun political candidates, and changing the system.

You give me 3% of gun owners willing to do that, willing to do the thankless grind of political activism, willing to even occasionally lose battles but not the war – you give me that 3% and we’d change the system for you.

shotguns

WECSOG

Posted on by Caleb

Speaking of gunsmithing, I finally found a fix to the problem I was having with the Horrible Frankenshotgun.  You see, because it’s a cobbled together monstrosity, the pin for the stock never quite fit right, and would drop out or worse, cut my hand when shooting.  A .22 LR case wasn’t long enough or wide enough to get the job done, and a .25 ACP case was too wide.  Then other day at the range, I was shooting some .22 Magnum, and I picked up one of the empties and had a gunsmith epiphany right there on the spot.

Once I got home, I took an empty .22 Mag casing, and dropped it in the pin hole for the stock.  It didn’t quite go all the way in, but a couple of taps with a mallet drove it in for a perfectly snug fit.  Now the stock doesn’t move around, and I don’t have to worry about the pin cutting my hand or falling out.

Note: the tape doesn’t contact the stock anywhere, I’m not damaging the gun.  I just needed something to fill the grip out a little bit, so it would fit my hand.

1911

The dreaded words

Posted on by Caleb

I had emailed Wilson Combat the other day, asking about which Bulletproof slide stop I needed to buy for my Para P16-40 Limited, since they only catalog options in .45 ACP and .38 Super/9mm.  Here’s what the customer service guy at Wilson emailed back to me:

You would need to purchase the .38/9mm and modify it to work properly in a .40S&W.  I would strongly suggest you have a competent pistol-smith install this part for you.

Tam noted last week the bolded words in that sentence mean “bring money” when you go the gunsmith.  Somehow, the fact that the Wilson Combat guy said “strongly suggest” really doesn’t make me a happy camper.

Uncategorized

This is why I don’t like checking guns

Posted on by Caleb

TSA enabling a new breed of theft.

They both say there are organized rings of thieves, who identify valuables in your checked luggage by looking at the TSA x-ray screens, then communicate with baggage handlers by text or cell phone, telling them exactly what to look for.

Every single time I travel with a firearm, I worry about this happening.  It’s actually part of the reason that if I’m traveling with firearms, I prefer to drive if it’s at all within a reasonable driving distance…and my definition of a reasonable driving distance gets further and further every time I hear about something like this.

self defense

Tam sez:

Posted on by Caleb

You fight like you train.  Honestly, I don’t have a whole lot to add to her post; other than the fact that I carry whenever and wherever I’m legally allowed to.

I am also a wholehearted believer in the value of competition as a training and survival aid – yes, the stress of competition shooting is not the same as the stress of a gunfight, but it is at least stress, and it helps train the mind to perform complicated actions such as reloading under difficult conditions. I also believe in realistic training, which is why this Saturday (unless it’s canceled due to dangerous weather conditions) I’ll be shooting the IDPA Match at Atlanta Conservation Club in the predicted 33F and possible snow showers. If you’re in the Indy/Metro area and you’d like to shoot, drop a note in comments here. If the match gets canceled I’ll know around 0600, and I’ll put a post up at 0700 so you don’t have to get out of the house for nothing.

The last comment I have on training is carry a spare magazine. Something like 90% of malfunctions in a semi-automatic pistol can be fixed by ripping out the magazine and putting a fresh one in the gun, so in addition to having the extra rounds if you need them, it’s a nice “break-fix” in case your gun goes down.

Always carry. If it’s legal and you can, you should be.

news

Gun Nuts Radio: HS Precision, Mumbai, and more

Posted on by Caleb

I apologize for the delay in getting the summary post from last night’s Gun Nuts Radio up – it was an excellent show with lots of great commentary from listeners both on call-ins and live in the chat. As always, here is a link to raw .mp3 file of the show for you to download.

The first part of the show, we spent discussion Plaxico Burress’ recent case in New York, with his charges of carrying illegally etc, and having a negligent discharge, etc etc. Not a lot of controversy there, as the general consensus seems to be that he’s an idiot anyway. We moved on from there to a further discussion of the ugly incident with HS Precision, and their endorsement from Lon Horiuchi. For further details on what started all that, see this link. One of the more interesting conversations that came from that is where do we draw the line for forgiveness? A caller was particularly interested in us, as a community, being able to present a united front and not give the anti-gun groups more ammo to call us “crazy” or “deranged”; and he had a valid point. I personally feel that it comes down to personal ideological choices – when you as an individual feel that they’ve done enough to be welcomed back. I know a lot of gunnies who still won’t buy from Smith & Wesson because of the deal with the Clinton administration; and there are some people who haven’t forgiven Zumbo despite his recanting. Ultimately, it is a personal issue – but I hope that people do bear in mind that one gun company failing is bad for all of us.

There was a lot more talk on HS Precision, but you should listen to the show to hear it all. After that, we moved on to talk about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, where I proceeded to take a beating on the air. I’m mostly kidding, but I did find that I was in mild disagreement with many people who believe that a few armed citizens could have made a significant difference in the outcome. While I agree that a few armed citizens could have made a difference on an individual level, I just can’t shake the feeling that in that particular situation a couple of armed citizens with handguns wouldn’t have turned the tide.

However, I’m also willing to admit that I could be wrong – as it was pointed out, Jeanne Assam stopped a determined man who was armed with a rifle with nothing but her pistol and a serious set of guts; I’m reminded that the badguys in the Mumbai situation weren’t exactly high-speed-low-drag operators…but mostly I’m reminded that thanks to India’s terribly restrictive gun laws, we’ll never know. That in and of itself is a tragedy – that men and women were not even granted the opportunity to have the best tools at their disposal to defend their lives from violence, and because of that, we’ll never know if an armed citizen would have made a difference.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can always listen to the show yourself.

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