Gun Nuts Media

For their 2010 Shooting Sports competition on their 100th Anniversary.  The even is going to be held at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia.

Taking place July 26 – August 4, 2010, the administration of the shooting sports Merit Badge Midway and the various discipline-specific Action Area ranges (shotgun, air rifle, black powder rifle) will depend heavily on NRA-Certified Range Safety Officers (RSO) and Instructors.

Obviously, that’s over a year and half away, which is good news if you were interested in getting involved, because it means that there is plenty of time for you to get certified if you’re not already.  Click this link to get more information on becoming an NRA Certified Range Safety Officer or an Instructor.

I shot the Steel Match at Marion County Fish and Game this weekend with my ParaUSA Gun Blog 9mm.  I had been practicing reloads for a good chunk of the week, since I hadn’t been shooting in a while, and also because hitting the magazine well on a single stack 1911 isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do at speed.  The short version of the story is that I felt like my reloads were pretty snappy, especially on the stage where you had three big steel gongs at about 11 yards, and you had to shoot each gong six times with a mandatory reload inbetween – a minimum of 18 rounds and two reloads.  I had to shoot 19 rounds because I missed on on the last gong, but I got them all out and the reloads in about 12 seconds…so like I said, I felt good about my reloads.

Yesterday, I was doing reloads with the Para 16-40 Limited for practice, and let me tell you – after a week of reloading that single stack 9mm and shooting it in competition, trying to hit that big ol’ doublestack magazine well on the .40 is like trying to hit the Grand Canyon with a rock.  Which is to say – pretty easy.

And that brings me around to Cool Thing I found today on Wilson Combat: a magazine funnel that attaches using the grip screws and requires no modification to the pistol.  I suppose “found” is the wrong word, since I read about it in Bill Wilson’s book, and was interested to see if it was an item they still catalouged.  I’m happy to see that they do.

Mrs. Ahab and I went to the local Gander Mountain this weekend, although not on a gun related excursion (sadly for me).  While there, I perused the available firearms to see what was in stock, and like everywhere else, EBRs were in short supply.  Not only that, but a lot of pistols were gone as well.  For example, the previous time I was there, they had a shelf full of Walther P1 pistols in pretty solid condition, this time half of those pistols had been cleaned out.

In terms of semi-automatic rifles, they had very, very little left.  Two Remington R-15 VTR rifles were the extent of the AR pattern rifles, plus one Beretta Storm in 9mm, a Ruger Mini-30 and a Ruger Mini-14 in 6.8 Remington SPC.  I almost bought the Mini-30 right then and there.  Now, normally Gander Mountain has a few more ARs, as well as 4 or 5 M14 (or M1) style rifles on display as well, but all of those had been cleaned out.

Tuesday night on Gun Nuts Radio, we’ll be talking about this run on firearms, as well as making recommendations to people about what rifle to buy if they’re in the market for an EBR.  Tune it at 9pm Eastern time.

In keeping with the Bond posts, Wikipedia has given me a comprehensive list of all the firearms used by James Bond, ever.  Not just in the movies, but in all the books, including the books not written by Ian Fleming.  Fun Bond factoids: did you know that in the first novel not written by Ian Fleming, Bond is given an FN Model 1903, in 9mm Browning Long.  You know who designed that gun?  That’s right, John Moses Browning.  What’s interesting is that the reason that Bond was moved away from his traditional Walther PPk was because apparently during a kidnapping attempt on a member of the royal family in real life, a PPk jammed and was removed from service.  Thus, in fiction, the PPk needed a replacement.

Over his movie career, Bond has obviously used a lot of different guns, the most iconic being his PPk; although now he’s running a Walther P99 in all the new movies.  If you look at the list, it’s interesting to see how Bond’s guns have evolved with firearms technology.  Gone are the all metal guns, replaced by polymer blasters and HK submachine guns.  No matter if you’re a fan of the series or not, it’s a fun read for a firearms junkie.