Kevin is leaving tomorrow evening. Barb and I are packing tonight. Our plane leaves at noon tomorrow but we will be in Tonopah until Friday which means we will miss out on the super secret event on Thursday evening.

The gun stuff I'm packing includes:

• Gun Blog 45 and 200 rounds of ammo
• STI Eagle 5.1 and 200 rounds of ammo
• Shot timer
• Spotting scope (I hope I can find it!) and tripod
• .300 Winchester Magnum and 100 rounds of ammo
• Laptop computer with Modern Ballistics (yeah, I'm a geek)
• Some cleaning supplies

Anything I'm missing that I can legally take on the plane (no, I won't be bringing my chemistry set) and would be nice to have on the range Saturday?

Update: I can't find my spotting scope so I'm not bringing the tripod. I am bringing my laser range finder and a pair of good binoculars.

Earlier today Say Uncle sent me an email asking if I could help out a reporter looking for "someone of authority" to address the body armor versus deer hunting ammo issue. I know a lot more about exterior ballistics (I wrote Modern Ballistics) than terminal ballistics but I'm not totally ignorant of it either. So I agreed to "look up a few references" for the guy.

My email, with very minor edits, to the reporter follows. His email response indicated he was happy with my answers.

Say Uncle asked that I address your “deer ammo going through body armor” story. I’ll address it as best I can but strictly speaking I’m not an expert. I’m a very well informed hobbyist.

Although there is occasional some controversy over the National Institute of Justice testing procedures and standards they are still “the standard”. You can read their standard here.

Their main page on Body Armor is here.

Probably the part that is most relevant to your issue is the body armor classification. This can be found in section 2 starting on page 17. The basics are that body armor is classified according to the level of protection it provides. Those classes are, in order of increasing protection level:

• Type IIA (9 mm; .40 S&W)
• Type II (9 mm; .357 Magnum)
• Type IIIA (.357 SIG; .44 Magnum)
• Type III (Rifles)
• Type IV (Armor Piercing Rifle)

Most law enforcement officers wear type II or IIIA. Higher levels of protection require metal or ceramic inserts which increase the weight, bulk, and the body heat retention. See also Section 6, Selecting the Appropriate Level of Protection in this document. At some point in the tradeoff between comfort and protection the police officer will stop wearing the armor on an everyday patrol. In a high risk entry/arrest situation they are more likely to upgrade to type III armor if it is available.

The problem certain well intentioned politicians get into is that they don’t realize the body armor problem is as much a velocity problem as it is a bullet construction problem. Certainly sharp pointed Teflon coated tungsten carbide (a very hard metal used for metal working tools) bullets will penetrate a higher level of armor than a blunt nosed soft lead bullet. But that only goes so far. Increasing the velocity of the bullet by a few hundred feet per second will overcome the inferior construction in most applications. Rifle bullets are much faster than common pistol bullets. The typical handgun bullet is on the order of 1000 fps. A typical modern center fire rifle bullet leaves the muzzle at a velocity on the order of 2500 fps or greater.

I’ve done some informal testing with the 30-06 rifle on an engine block. The Speer Reloading Manual says of this rifle cartridge, “It is safe to say that the 30-06 Springfield is the best-known and most successful centerfire cartridge ever developed.” In a typical hunting load (see http://www.federalpremium.com/products/details/rifle.aspx?id=260) at 100 yards from the muzzle the bullet is still traveling at over 2600 fps. The tests I did were with a target cartridge and bullet (http://www.federalpremium.com/products/details/rifle.aspx?id=148). At the muzzle this bullet is traveling at about 2700 fps and is still going at over 2500 fps at 100 yards. I was shooting into the side of a six cylinder car engine from the early fifties from about 50 yards away. This was a very heavy engine block compared to today’s cars yet the target bullet would penetrate half way through the block penetrating the water jacket, one side of a cylinder and frequently one side of a piston. A very high velocity (1350 fps at the muzzle) 9mm bullet shot at the same engine block only knocked the rust off of the metal. It did not dent or crack the side of the engine.

It is a very different problem to stop a rifle bullet than to stop a handgun bullet. Although it isn’t quite this simple you can think of it as an energy problem. The energy of the projectile is proportional to the mass of the bullet times the velocity of the bullet squared. That is E = m V². The mass of a common hunting bullet is on the order of 150 to 180 grains. The mass of a pistol bullet is on the order of 125 to 200 grains with the heaver bullets moving much slower than the lighter ones. The rifle bullets typically are moving about 2.5 times as fast as the pistol bullets. Hence they will typically have about 2.5² or about 6 times as much energy as the pistol bullet.

Even the ancient 30-30 Winchester cartridge has a muzzle velocity of nearly 2400 fps with a 150 grain bullet (http://www.federalpremium.com/products/details/rifle.aspx?id=28) which will cut through the typical concealable body armor worn by law enforcement on a daily basis. Higher end rifles for larger game such as, the still very common, .300 Winchester Magnum with a 165 grain bullet (http://www.federalpremium.com/products/details/rifle.aspx?id=592) have muzzle velocities of over 3000 fps. Run the numbers on that and see the sort of problem the body armor is facing.

Hence, the NRA claim that outlawing ammunition on the basis of its ability to penetrate typical body armor would result in the banning nearly all common rifle hunting is true. It is possible the politician did not have that intention but that would be the result.

That is probably more information than you really wanted but I hope it answers your questions. If not or if you have any further questions please let me know.

The NRA has a special deal going on with Midway and Aimpoint.

Pat Kelley (who won the USPSA match I was at on Sunday--I came in third and seventh out of 18) has a bunch of really neat gun and gun related pictures on his media website. Here are some samples:

You put on the most politically incorrect event on the planet.

Pat Kelley
October 5, 2008
Referring to Boomershoot.
[Pat was at the USPSA match I went to today. I think it has been 10 years since I have seen Pat. He remembered me and said a lot of flattering things. I was a little embarrassed because he is such a great shooter he is totally out of my league. But he wasn't talking about my shooting ability. See also these quotes from him in other posts:

• Quote of the day--Pat Kelley
• Shotgunning: 12 shots in 1.73 seconds

He also tried shooting my Saiga 12 gauge. He had never shot one before. He was not able to out-shoot it even though he believes it probably is possible. I wish I had thought to put a timer on him and see what sort of splits he got. I just saw a blur of fire expel from the ejection port and the 10 round magazines were empty.--Joe]

Excuse me, I've got some video to watch. . .

Kevin Baker
October 3, 2008
Hey! We're on Video!
[On the Gun Blogger Weekend videos that are now up on Down Range TV. See also the blog post from producer Marshal Halloway and the news release (pointed out to me by Sebastain). But it was an email from Say Uncle that first informed me.--Joe]

I got a call tonight from Barb's sister who lives in California. I had talked to her and her husband about guns in years past and while not really opposed to them they wouldn't want one in their house.

Barb had talked to her last weekend and I knew she were planning to join the NRA just to annoy her liberal friends and neighbors. I also knew their daughter who is in college in Missouri wants to get a gun so she can defend herself. I didn't know that Barb's sister and her husband are planning to take up shooting as a hobby. She asked me about ranges and do they rent? And she wanted a recommendation for a gun to start out with. I told her a .22 to lessen the chances of picking up bad habits and reduce the cost.

I also sent her a link to the NRA yard signs so they can tweak the neighbors without even flashing their membership cards.

I need to get them up here for Boomershoot next spring. That will give them some goals.

I think this has been around sometime earlier but I still laughed when a co-worker send me a link today. It could just be the Alzheimer's has shortened my memory enough to make it funny again:

Last night the cops visited to try to help resolve an incident when Boyfriend From Hell of the landlady at my underground bunker kicked in her bedroom door. I was at work at the time but Barb was there and called me to let me know what was happening. I left work immediately and told Barb to tell the cops I would be entering through the rear tunnel and that we would stay away from the action going on above ground.

Shortly after I arrived and greeted Barb the landlady knocked on our door and wanted to talk. A couple of cops showed up a minute or two later and stepped into my bunker to offer some advice to the landlady. I was packing with the only thing concealing my STI Eagle and a spare 18 round magazine was my Boomershoot coat. It was much too warm in there and I wanted to remove the coat without alarming the cops. Even wearing the coat probably seemed a little odd and the cops might have guessed I was packing just from that but there was no need to openly display the gun on my hip. In full view of the cops, but hidden underneath my coat, I untucked my Boomershoot golf shirt and used the tail of it to cover up the equipment on my belt and then took off the coat. I draped the coat over the target on the back of a chair from my testing the Gun Blog 45 a few days ago:

About five feet away from the cops, leaning up against a dresser was a rifle case. About eight feet behind the landlady they were talking to were two IPSC targets on the wall I use for dry fire exercises.

I wonder if the cops suspected there were guns nearby? If so, they didn't give even the slightest hint of noticing. I did find it a little odd that one of them gave me his card and told me his cell phone number was on there--but they didn't give the landlady a card or even their names.

I find it hard to believe they were so incompetent to not notice and would rather believe they were cool with it. Especially since they said they couldn't leave her there if she was afraid for her safety (which she said she was) with the boyfriend who can't currently be evicted. My offers to give her advance rent money on the spot to stay in a hotel or to stay on our couch went over well with the cops and they finally left.

Barb and I took the landlady to a restaurant for some food and she slept on the couch in our room last night. She left my underground bunker this morning without Barb or I talking to her and I can only presume she is working on getting him legally evicted today since she called work last night to take a day of vacation today.

I'd offer to loan her a gun but Boyfriend From Hell manages to keep stealing cell phones and keys from her purse so I don't know how she would manage to keep a handgun away from him.

More details will be posted as they become available.

Daughter Xenia sent me these links:

• Change is coming
• Pretty Woman
• McCain Who?
• Palin Power

I like the last two best:

As I reported earlier I had a dead battery in the Crimson Trace Lasergrips. As Rob pointed out the case is tight enough that if the master switch was left on the grip switch would be activated when the gun was cased.

I installed the new battery and the laser came to life but wasn't right. It was just like it was when I tried to use it at Summer Camp. It appeared to be hitting the pin for the slide lock and what light hit the target was a blob instead of a laser beam. Further testing indicated the laser lens was either dirty or possibly defective. I tried using an ordinary cotton swab with alcohol but I couldn't detect any improvement after repeated cleanings.

Say Uncle sent me an email saying he had similar problems with his laser and when he used the swab supplied with the grips rather than ordinary cotton swab it cleaned up and worked correctly. The cotton swab is just too large to deep down to the laser lens. I was able to confirm his results. My laser now works as expected.

I practiced drawing and dry firing with the laser probably a 100 times. I discovered that frequently I don't have a solid grip on the gun with the middle finger on my strong hand. It isn't gripping the gun strong enough to turn on the laser. It turns out sometimes my weak hand will push it forward as I wrap my weak hand around my strong hand during the process of gripping the gun. I'm going to modify the process some so I get a better and more consistent grip.

I also used the draw and dry fire exercise to observe the movement of the gun as I put the sights on target and pulled the trigger. One observations instructors in the past had made that I was not pushing straight out to the target but instead was pointed the gun above the target then bringing it down. It appears I have fixed that error in my draw stroke.

These laser grips are proving to be useful even before I have fired a single shot with them.

As we were filling out the paperwork so I could be approved to exercise my Constitutionally protected right to own a firearm the clerk behind the counter asked, "What model is that?" I thought about it a moment and said, "I guess we can call it a 'Gun Blog 45' just like what it says on the side." He agreed and after 45 minutes of paperwork and a phone call to the FBI (the first NICS check ever done on me--I always managed to avoid them with my concealed weapons permit in the past) I got my Para-USA Gun Blogger Summer Camp gun last night. The same one I shot last month at Blackwater. Yeah, I purchased the gun I said has a Pri 0 bug. I was convinced by several people that learning to shoot it right wasn't that outrageous of a suggestion.

Para-USA LDA with Crimson Trace Lasergrips
(Click to see higher resolution version)

I immediately bought some ammo--230 grain FMJ Magtech (the cheapest ammo on the shelf) and 230 grain Winchester Ranger (hollow points). I went to the range and loaded up one magazine of each. I put my targets at 30 feet which is the same range as the target that came with the gun:

I loaded the FMJ ammo and fired a shot. The gun failed to feed the second round into the chamber. Grrr... I had lots of problems with that at Blackwater but the problem went away after shooting a few hundred rounds and then lubricating the dirty gun. But this time the gun was clean and fully lubed. I racked the slide and continued to fire and had no further problems.

I was fairly satisfied with it: 

Magtech 230 grain at 30 feet.

I fired all eight rounds of the Winchester Ranger without incident except the last round which I pulled a little bit when I fired:

Winchester Ranger 230 grain at 30 feet.

This was better than the factory target!

Ammo makes a difference!

I didn't do any fast shooting as I had other things I wanted to do last night. That will be coming up soon. I need to see if I can train myself to shoot fast while taking my finger nearly off the trigger between shots.

The batteries appear to be dead in the laser grips. There is just the faintest glow coming out of them. I bought some new batteries but haven't installed them yet. A report on Crimson Trace Lasergrips will be coming soon. I have two guns equipped with them now.

Others who have received their Gun Blog guns from Para-USA:

• David Hardy
• JR has his waiting at Rick's place
• John D got the .45 and the 9mm

While at the Gun Blogger Summer Camp last month I won a set of Crimson Trace laser grips--whatever set I wanted. I finally got around to asking for a set to fit a Ruger Mark II. I received them but haven't installed them. I went to range tonight thinking I would put them on and try them out but wasn't thinking ahead. I forgot to bring tools.

They look very cool but a full report will have to wait for a few days.

Six of us made it to the event (click on the pictures to see higher resolution versions):

Left to right, Phil, American Mercenary, Misty (wife of American Mercenary), Barb (my wife), and Gay_Cynic.

Barb insisted I should post a picture of myself as well, so here it is:

Joe Huffman and Gay_Cynic.

We had a nice time. No concrete plans to take over the world or anything. A report on Gun Blogger Summer Camp was requested. Gay_Cynic wanted to know if Tamara was as delightful in person as she is to read. I said she was but she seemed a little bit shy which I didn't expect.

Phil and I talked about our plans for guns to take to Reno next month.

We talked about Seattle Mayor Nickels attempts to break the law and ban gun owners from carrying on City property. Phil reports Nickels will release his plans after getting an opinion from the state Attorney General. If I recall correctly Phil said that was due out on October 20^th which will be in time for the election.

In response to something American Mercenary said about Democrats and socialism I said those people have a different set of basic assumptions about reality than I do and Phil says he will have blog post about that on Monday. I'm looking forward to it.

American Mercenary informed us about the use and misuse of full auto in the army. He explained a use I hadn't really thought of before. He said a machine gun set up in a street can prevent anyone from crossing for many hundreds of yards but that same gun on a roof is of limited use.

Barb and Misty talked extensively about being the wife of a military man. Xenia will soon be in that position and Misty has been living that life for quite a while now. Barb arranged for Xenia to take some pictures, "When Misty has her baby." Of course this was ambiguous to me. My first inclination was this probably meant during delivery--which seemed a little odd. But the shock on Barb's and Misty's faces when I wanted clarification on this point got me on the right track.

However, they call their piston kit a "direct impingement gas piston system."  Anyone else see a problem here?  It may be nitpicking (and please correct me if I'm wrong) but "direct impingement" is exactly that one thing that a piston system is not.  When Stoner came up with his piston-less operation back in the day, he called it "direct impingement" to describe his system of channeling the gas back into the receiver where it "directly impinges" on the bolt carrier without an intervening piston rod or tappet.

JR has created another slide show from pictures and music from Gun Blogger Summer Camp. For reasons explained in his post the music he used was my first choice. But after looking for a minute or two I didn't find it and gave up to use stuff I already owned.

Enjoy.

As taught by the experts. I was taught this by Insights Training and then had it reinforced by Todd Jarrett a couple weeks ago.

I highly recommend it.

Registration for the 2009 Precision Rifle Clinic is now open. You don't have to attend the Boomershoot on Sunday to participate in the clinic on Friday or Satuday. They are in close proximity in space and time but are, essentially, independent.

The prices for this type of training is amazingly good. And it includes shooting at a few boomers as well.

High winds with ice pellet storms. For me, that was uncommon for the Boomershoot but not the worse I have experienced at the Clinic so take it as it was. The winds we had offered an excellent opportunity to practice our wind doping and we learned our lessons and gained some confidence that we could stay on top of such winds well enough to hold IPSC size steel targets as long as we could see them. Such conditions were extreme but I doubt anyone will forget the experience or more importantly, how the Clinic shooters dominated these conditions. I am sure firing in 25 – 30 MPH winds and ice pellet storms will be something the shooters won’t soon forget.

Eugene Econ
Boomershoot 2008 Precision Rifle Clinic After Action Review
[I remember seeing a young woman at the clinic who had arrived from Austin just the day before. She was bundled up in winter clothes and the only skin exposed was part of her face which was getting pelted with ice pellets. I asked her, "Are you having fun yet?" She said she was. At the time I thought she was probably a very good liar but she signed up for Boomershoot 2009.--Joe]

I just finished the book Trigger Men: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper. It is a great book. I had no idea how important snipers were to the efforts in Iraq--especially the battle against IEDs. And in an urban environment too. In the mountains of Afghanistan, and the jungles of Vietnam, sure, but in the cities? I was wrong. They are doing 800 and 1000 meter shots in the cities. They would climb the walls of a families house while the family was sleeping and hide in their attic for a couple days and unless they did some shooting the family wouldn't know they there until they said good-bye on the way out. Amazing stuff.

Bolt-actions guns, technology that has been around for 100 years, is more important than multi-million dollar weapons and vehicles in fighting the enemy. The sniper rifle is the ultimate precision "bomb". It can kill one bad guy with an RPG in a crowd of women and children and not do anything worse than splatter the innocents with blood, brains, and bone.

I highly recommend this book to people of the long gun.

This weekend I spent a bunch of time culling the 1000+ pictures I (and a few others) took at Blackwater into a slide show set to music.

It's 11 minutes long and 31+ MBytes but here is the result. I like to play it with the volume cranked up to just below "noise complaint to the police"--especially at the beginning.

Update: Embedded version:

Para-USA Gun Blogger Summer Camp 2008 from Joe Huffman.

We now have another convert from the dark side. Caleb is now a believer in John Moses Browning.

Barb and I have made plans to attend the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno this October. We won't be there the entire time. We are first going south to Tonopah where Barb's father lived for several years. We will be in Reno sometime on Friday afternoon or evening and will be there all day Saturday. Sunday we probably will do something that isn't particularly gun related such as hiking or museums but if others want to hang out with us that would be fine.

I probably will bring my .300 Win Mag for long range fun on Saturday, at least one handgun, and my shot timer.

If you listened to the Gun Nuts on August 19 you would have heard me wonder how Jarrett was going to handle the wide range of shooting ability in the participants when we showed up on August 22. I believe I had the most training going in. A partial list of my firearms training:

• General Defensive Handgun
• Intensive Handgun Skills
• Low Light Handgun Skills
• Handgun Retention & Disarming
• General Defensive Rifle

Most of the others had not had any formal training. Other students who have taken courses from multiple schools have wisely told me that when attending a new class you should approach the class with an open mind and if you can take just one good thing away then the class was worthwhile.

Jarrett did a great job of dealing with the disparity. He obviously had to get everyone up to speed with the fundamentals such as grip, trigger control, and sight alignment. He did this on the first day mostly in the classroom. On the second day he did something everyone was impressed with. He made marks on our hands that helped us get the grip right:

Robb Allen's hands with the Para USA LDA .45 in full recoil. Notice the smoke leaving the ejection port?

Notice the mark on Robb's right thumb just below the joint? There is a matching mark on his left hand. These two marks line up when he was holding the gun properly. It's difficult to see but there is also a mark on his right hand directly behind the beaver tail safety underneath the slide. This mark should be directly in line with the long axis of the gun and the axis of the shooters arm.

When I saw what Jarrett was doing with these marks little shivers went through me. This was a brilliant teaching aid. I was the next to the last person to get the marks and he told me I was the only person to already have the proper grip. John D. to my left and the last person also got it right. I had made a very slight modification to my normal grip when I showed it to him. I had to shift my right hand just a little to get the proper alignment. The single stack gun is much narrower than what I am used to and once I got the marks on my hands I began practicing my draw making sure that the lines matched up even when I was drawing at full speed.

The draw was one of the areas where Jarrett cut some corners on the training. He talked about it some but didn't have us do any drills specifically working on the draw. He focused on doing a safe draw but not much on speed. This probably was a wise thing considering the other things that were going to be a lot more fun and new to the more advance shooters but in terms of self-defense shooting this probably was more important.

We shot at 8" plate racks from about 15' as we were pushed to shoot faster and faster. This was very frustrating for me because my plates would go down hard enough they would bounce back up. Some plates I put down three times only to have them remain standing.

We did some 25 yard slow fire shooting to verify our trigger control and zeros. On an silhouette target my gun was giving me head shots when I aimed at the chest. Jarrett verified it did the same for him and adjusted the sights for me.

Our range had the capability to give us moving targets:

Looking carefully on the left you can see the remotely reset steel plates then the turning targets. The two rails on the right are for targets that, from the shooters perspective move horizontally left and right. All of these were utilized.

This was nearly all new to me. In competition I have shot at moving targets and moved while shooting but I have had near zero formal training on it.

We shot at the turners. We were given two seconds to empty our eight round magazines into silhouette targets.

We shot over, around and through barricades:

Me, shooting at a steel plates over a barricade. Photo by JR.
Yes, I was taking advantage of my height when everyone else had to use two different shooting positions to get access to the same targets.

Me, supervised by Todd Jarrett, shooting around a barricade. Photo by JR.

We shot on the move. We advanced on the targets while shooting (photo by JR):

We shot at horizontally moving plates while standing still. We shot at plate racks while we were moving horizontal.

We shot at horizontally moving plates while we were moving both left to right and right to left.

The things I took away from this was:

1. Follow through on your shots with the moving targets. Keep the gun pointed at the target even after you fire. The gun just happens to go bang every once in a while as you are pointing it. It got so I could hit the moving targets almost as fast as the stationary targets.
2. When you are moving you need to keep your knees bent to keep yourself level.
3. Walk like you are on a tight rope or balance beam. This keeps you from rocking from side to side as you walk.

Me, supervised by Todd Jarrett, shooting at a steel plate while advancing. Photo by JR.

See also this video from Sebastian:

We did some rapid fire from the hip shooting at a steel plate about 18"x24" in size from just a few feet away from us. The point was to be able to get the gun on target in a close quarters situation. Below you can see Tamara, having just completed the drill, getting a little further instruction from Jarrett on the topic:

We then did some plate shooting from 35 yards. Here is Kevin hammering the plates (and having them bounce back up) at distance. 

One thing that I found as a glaring omission was learning to reload quickly. It was appropriate given the time constraints and disparate training of the students but I was hoping for some "fine tuning" of my reloads.

My biggest surprise was how useful laser sights are for training. I'm not convinced they are particular useful for the shooter as he or she is actually shooting but as an instructor or by video taping as the student is shooting a lot can be learned and taught. I was previously of the opinion the most useful aspect of them was as a toy for dogs and cats. One small example is to have the student shoot rapidly and watch the path of the laser on the target. It should track nearly straight up and down without overshooting the point of aim. Similar lessons can be learned and taught in transitioning from one target to another.

The most fun was the shoot house. I already have a full post on that and won't go into that again except to say that I disagree with Kevin with what was happening while we were taking turns going through. Kevin is of the opinion ninjas from Gunsite Ranch were spying on us. I think this was actually a vulture from the Brady Campaign hoping for some blood to be spilled:

At Blackwater last weekend we used ammo supplied by International Cartridge Corporation.

The ammo worked great. I have zero complaints about the performance of the ammo. Accuracy was excellent. We fired the ammo about five or ten from steel plates (that is what Tam was doing here) with only a hint of dust coming back when the wind was right. It is made of sintered copper and tin so it is non-toxic. Because there is no jacket the bullets can be made accurate. The major factor in bullet accuracy is the jacket being of different thicknesses on one side than another. This puts the geometric center of the bullet at a different point than the center of gravity. As the bullet traverses the barrel the bullet rotates about its geometric center. As it exits it rotates about it's center of gravity. If the two centers are not the same it will "jump" a little to one side as it makes the transition. This will cause the bullet to go in a slightly different direction than that which the barrel was pointed. Hence the homogeneous, sintered, bullet can be made more accurate.

The bullets are also made with a lubricant for release from the mold during the manufacturing process. This lubricant is part of the structure of the bullet and is still present when the bullet is fired. Along with the tighter diameter tolerances (about 0.0005") the guns shooting these bullets run much cooler. Todd Jarrett told us of full auto guns having barrels cool enough to hold the gun by after emptying a complete magazine loaded with this type of ammo.

The ammo rep on-site with us said the price was about the same as hollow point ammo. He also said the bullets were not available for reloading. Something about them being too fragile and cracking in reloading presses. This seems a little odd. They didn't crack when we dropped them on the gravel in the shooting bays. They didn't crack when we dropped them on the concrete. The didn't crack when they were fired.

I also found where they are sold for reloading. From their dealer page click on http://www.frangiblebullets.com/. There you can find prices, loading data, and lots of other interesting information.

One thing you will notice about the bullets is they are much lighter than the same caliber lead bullets. This is because the materials used, copper and tin, have a lower density than lead. They can, and are, loaded to higher velocities and can reach IPSC major power factor in .45 ACP, 10mm, and probably .38 Super. Minor PF can apparently be reached with 9mm. .40 S&W appears to be unable to reach major PF.

If my blood levels of lead were on the high end of normal I would probably buy the bullets and reload them in my pistols for practice and competition. As it is my lead levels are on the low end of normal and lead bullets are cheaper (in .40 S&W about $0.18 versus $0.11). And in any case I don't think I would use the bullets for self-defense. I'm inclined to believe that heavy, deep penetrating bullets are better fight stoppers than light bullets that leave a lot of fragments behind upon entry.

Another reason I would be disinclined to use the light bullets is the recoil. For the same bullet momentum (Power Factor in USPSA terminology) you get more recoil. This is because more powder is used with the light bullets and the high velocity powder exiting the barrel adds to the total recoil. The recoil s also spread over a longer period of time with the slower moving bullet. Hence a light fast bullet causes a very "snappy" recoil which tends to be uncomfortable. I noticed this with the .45 gun I was shooting over the weekend. The recoil was much different than what I expected from a .45. I asked what the bullet velocity was on the 155 grain bullets we were shooting. About 1150 fps I was told. Normal .45 ACP velocities are in the range of about 750 to 925 fps and you feel more of a "push" than the "slap" I was feeling.

Still the lead free frangible bullets have their place. I could see indoor ranges requiring lead free bullets or steel plate competitions requiring frangible bullets. I remember taking a pistol class once and the instructor telling us that for every class they usually have, on the average, one injury from the back splatter from the steel targets. They had about 10 students per class and were firing about 1000 rounds each on steel so there were a lot of bullets going down range and eventually the odds would catch up with someone. The injuries were always minor and required nothing more serious than a Band-Aid but still the injuries did occur. Wrap around eye protection and either directly facing the targets or facing away was required. Those concerns would be eliminated with ICC's frangible ammo.

Tonight the Gun Nuts will have another show on the events from this weekend. I don't know for certain who will be on. I was invited again but thought I would just listen and let other people talk this time. The live show starts at 2300 Eastern, 2000 Pacific time.

Para USA, Blackwater USA, Blackhawk, International Cartridge Company, and Crimson Trace will probably all be topics of discussion and will all get well deserved praise.

Woke up this morning in Arlington VA (I fly back to AZ this afternoon), opened the motel room door, and this was the view.

The firemen say a room on the next floor burned up. After two trips thru the shoot house, this really isn't that exciting. Hmmm, a motel fire. Be careful not to trip over the hoses while getting some coffee to wake up.

David Hardy
August 26, 2008 4:46 AM PST

I've done a lot of USPSA shooting but never anything in a 360 degree shoot house with a dozen rooms, real doors, and real hallways in it. As various people said in various ways during our visit to Blackwater "This place is made of awesome."

The walls were made of plywood covered 2x4s with steel plating on the outside walls to contain the bullets. The USPSA targets we used were mounted on bullet traps. We used frangible ammo from International Cartridge Corporation which worked extremely well (Sebastian has more on the ammo).

There were buildings in various configurations including one with the building named "R U Ready High School". We used range T7 that could have been an office building or a home.

In front of our building were walls and a gate that could be used for breaching exercises.

They have the repair materials for the breaching practice walls nearby.

The shoot house is a metal roof with partial walls coming down from the eaves to about 10 feet above the ground. The interior with the walls, doors, hallways, targets, etc. has a smaller footprint and has about eight foot walls. Some shoot houses had catwalks overhead. T7 did not have the catwalk and the video guy had to use a ladder to peak over the walls and get his footage.

Just 100 feet or so from our shoot house was this hulk. Apparently used a different type of exercise.

This sticker was on the inside of the plane wreckage.

The white board on the front of the building shows this is really a classroom not just a place for fun. Rob Allen is supposed to report on what we saw on the white board. You won't want to miss that post.

More pictures, and drooling, about the shoot house is available here.

Because we could only run one person at a time through the shoot house we spent a lot of time standing around talking. Here Caleb* explains how things should be done to the rest of us.

This was also the place where Caleb and I settled our bet. Originally I had suggested an El Presidenta and Caleb agreed. But it was clear it was going to be a hassle to find and set up a range for that so we agreed to use the shoot house course since that was to be timed and a winner determined anyway. I was concerned about the 9mm versus .45 aspect which the USPSA rules for the El Presidenta would have taken into account. But we were using USPSA targets here and I figured we could use the time and the hits and again use USPSA scoring and have the 9mm versus .45 disadvantage compensated for. But then the scoring was announced by Todd to be merely time with a miss counting as a three second penalty and a hit on a hostage to be a five second penalty. This put me at a disadvantage. I was shooting a high recoil gun with a Light Double Action trigger with a bug that had been haunting me anytime I tried to shoot fast versus Caleb shooting a light recoil gun with a single action trigger which was working well for him.

Caleb was the second person through the shoot house and what sounded to me like an okay time. Not great but not bad. 24 rounds in most types of environment should be completed in about that many seconds for an average IPSC shooter. But with the eight round magazines, numerous doors to open, and it being a surprise stage it should have taken me about 30 to 35 seconds. Caleb did it in about 46.3 (I forget the exact number on the tenths) but he hit a hostage which, according to the rules, gave him a 51.3. All I had to do, in my mind, was not make any mistakes. I went through immediately after Caleb and had at least three malfunctions of various types with the gun. I also ran down a hallway that was a dead end and had to back up to go the proper way. I made a bunch of mistakes but still turned in a time of 49.89. Good enough to win but not anything to be proud of. Caleb now owes me free ammo for life**.

As reported earlier Caleb only cried for a little while***. The brown paster on his chest is his "badge" for shooting a hostage.

* I'm kidding. Caleb was not the least bit arrogant or a braggart. I think we both knew shortly after the shooting started on Friday that it was going to be a close match.

**  Just kidding, it's two hundred rounds of 180 grain FMJ .40 S&W.

*** Again, I'm kidding. The "crying" incident was two days earlier. I don't know how I managed to get the above picture. I just took so many pictures that one of them "fell into my lap" for exploitation.

I won the bet with Caleb today. Caleb reported it live from the range. I won only because I made fewer mistakes than he did. In a second run through the house with a different configuration I again beat him by a slim margin because I made slightly fewer errors than he did. In both runs through others beat us. My second run was good enough for second place and I won a set of Crimson Trace laser sights.

You have the potential to be a world class shooter.

Todd Jarrett
August 22, 2008
To me while on the Blackwater range. He was making a joke for the video being made for Michael Bane's television show.

Due to requests from the Tamara Fan Club Unwashed Masses (see the comments) the pictures are heavy on Tamara.

I also took the first picture on JR's post.

Caleb has pictures up too.

The view from in front of the hotel a little after 7:00 AM this morning.

Soybeans in the background.

Almost ready for the trip to breakfast.

Our guns have lasers in the grips by Crimson Trace and they have people here shooting with us.

Rob showing off our transportation while on site.

Kevin Baker.

Say Uncle.

Dave Hardy.

John D.


JR.

Tamara.

Kerby Smith is the guy behind this from Para USA side.

Todd was able to make an improvement in Robb's shooting. Say Uncle in the background.

Tamara.

Rob Allen.

Caleb is going to be a formable opponent for our modified bet.

No. Tam is not pissed and about to try shooting Todd with an empty gun.

Don Gwinn and Michael Bane.

Crimson Trace rep, Sebastian, and Say Uncle.

Say Uncle getting a lesson on cleaning a 1911 gun from Todd Jarrett.

Kevin hitting 8" plates at 35 yards.

This is the gun (with part of the serial number obscured) I have been shooting:

Custom guns just for us knuckle dragging gun bloggers! How cool is that?

I had some problems yesterday and finally figured out what was going on (with a simpler repro of the problem by JR). If the gun cycles, you let up on the trigger to the first click, squeeze (it will hit a hard stop without firing), then let up until the next click, then pull the gun will lock up. You have to manually cycle the slide (roughly the equivalent to a computer reboot) to recover. I mentioned this to Kerby, the Para USA guy, and he said, "Yes. It will do that. Don't do that. After the gun cycles move you finger until the nail touches the front of the trigger guard then do your pull." He went on to explain that this is because I've been shooting single action guns for a long time. Others that shoot double action or Glock type actions before using a Light Double Action (which this is) don't have this problem.

At Microsoft we call a bug that is easily reached and causes the program to crash a Priority 0 bug. Priority 0 bugs must be fixed before the product is shipped. Telling the customer, "Don't do that" isn't really an option for a released product.

Yesterday I had many failures to feed as well. After oiling the gun this morning those problems went away until very late in the day when the gun got dirty again. And after adapting my shooting technique to avoid the system lock up (and the required reboot) I did pretty well. On the last big "stage" at the end of the day with shooting on the move, shooting movers, and plates racks I had the best run of anyone (possibly even Todd who fumbled some reloads and had other problems) until Caleb shot the stage with a borrowed gun that had 18 round magazines. The rest of us used eight round magazines and I required five magazines to complete the stage.

At the end of the day several of us, including me, were able to hit the eight (?) inch plates at 35 yards half the time or better.

I have to conclude the gun works well as long as you don't run into that one bug.

Draw your own conclusions as to whether the gun (your version would look like this) is for you.